At least she’s gotten better at it. Smiling, Ivy shook her head. Two weeks into high school, and elegant goth vampire Sophia was turning into a skateboard master – while Ivy had realised that the skatepark was the only safe place to study! Few of the Lincoln Vale goths loitered here, and the skater-boys had no interest in anything beyond their boards . . . well, and in Sophia, who was currently giving them all tips on how to perform her trick!
For once, Ivy didn’t have a single groupie racing to impress her . . . and she couldn’t have been happier about that. Right now, she really needed to finish her English assignment! Mr Russell wanted them all to read poems out in Friday’s class, and Ivy still hadn’t managed to choose one yet.
Sighing, she forced herself to look away from Sophia’s triumph and go back to flipping through the pages of her textbook. Ivy liked English – well, she liked middle school English, because she’d understood that more – but honestly . . . was every poem in this book written by someone in a seriously bad mood? Not every poet in all of history had been a vampire, had they?
‘Can I sit next to you?’ The goth-girl who’d suddenly appeared at Ivy’s side looked every bit as glum as a vampire poet. Her voice reeked of hopelessness.
Ivy narrowed her eyes. Was this girl a vampire? Her brown eyes looked genuine, not like contact lenses, so probably not. Unfortunately, that still left ‘groupie’ as a serious possibility.
Ivy looked at the rest of the large picnic table and gave up. She didn’t have any good excuses to offer. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But I’m busy with homework right now.’
‘That’s OK.’ The girl – her name was Penny Taylor, Ivy remembered now, from English class – sat down across from Ivy, dumping her black backpack on the table. It was studded with steel nubs and bleeding heart symbols, and Penny drooped even more as she looked down at it. ‘I like to sit in silence with people,’ she said, sounding miserable. ‘It gives me time to reflect. And to ponder things. Dark things.’
Did she seriously just use the word ‘ponder’ in a sentence? Ivy stopped herself just in time from asking exactly what ‘dark things’ Penny liked to ponder. That had the potential to be death-squint irritating!
Unless . . . She frowned. Was this girl for real, or did she actually have a dry sense of humour? If this super-goth pose was a joke, Ivy could kind of appreciate it. But . . .
‘Look . . .’ Penny sighed heavily. ‘A whole park full of people looking in the other direction.’ She turned to gaze soulfully at Ivy. ‘Do you ever feel that everyone in the world is looking in the other direction?’
Right now, it feels like everyone is looking right at me, Ivy thought. She had to bite down hard on her tongue to keep the words from coming out. Then she twitched with pain. Ouch! Her too-sharp fangs had just drawn blood. She stifled a moan as she put one hand to her cheek.
With a glance at Ivy’s poetry textbook, Penny reached into her backpack and pulled out her own. The front was covered with doodles – headstones and daggers, barbed wire and skulls – and from the shy look Penny gave her, Ivy knew she was supposed to comment on them.
‘Wow, that’s . . . very goth.’ Ivy gave a polite smile. ‘I can certainly tell which gang you belong to at school.’
‘Really?’ Light broke through the mask of misery on Penny’s face. Beaming, she pulled up her shirt sleeve. ‘Here, look! I just got this today.’
Obediently, Ivy leaned over and saw the temporary tattoo on Penny’s wrist: a ram’s skull with twisted horns. Seriously? She’s showing off a temporary tattoo? ‘Um . . . yeah,’ she finally managed. ‘Nice.’
It was true that Ivy liked all things Gothic . . . But weren’t temporary tattoos a bit childish?
Even if she’d been rude enough to say so, though, she couldn’t have gotten a word in edgeways. It was as if her admiration of Penny’s doodles had opened up a dam, and now all of Penny’s words were flooding out.
‘You wouldn’t believe where I went yesterday,’ Penny said. ‘A record store – can you believe it? Real, old-school vinyl in a real-life record store! I even managed to track down the EP of Death Rattle’s first live gig. That is seriously rare! Rare like a . . . a really rare steak!’ She lifted one hand to her mouth.
Is she about to be sick? Ivy stared at the other girl. ‘Ohh-kay.’
‘But we were talking about music!’ Penny visibly perked up. ‘You’ve heard of Death Rattle, right? They are an incredibly important goth band! Oh, and there are lots of other important goth bands, too. There’s the Pall Bearers, and . . .’
Ivy shook her head wonderingly as Penny listed off on her fingers every goth band she knew. It’s like she’s been cramming for a goth exam!
‘Wow,’ she said, finally breaking through the list. ‘You must be the ultimate student.’
‘Oh, no.’ Penny’s face crumpled. ‘Was it too much? A step too far?’
Ivy blinked. ‘Too much of what?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, forget it! You don’t have to pretend.’ Penny’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I knew you’d see through my act!’ she said. ‘Someone as cool as you . . . of course you’d know a genuine goth from a fake goth. I should never have even bothered trying. I’m such a loser!’ With a sob, she buried her face in her hands.
‘Hey!’ Shaking her head, Ivy hurried to the other side of the table to put a hand on Penny’s shoulder. ‘I don’t even know what’s going on!’ she protested. ‘Are you telling me this was all an act? You’re not even a real goth?’
Penny nodded without uncovering her face.
‘But what’s the point?’ Ivy slumped on to the seat beside Penny, her head whirling. ‘Who would pretend to be a goth?’
‘I hate goth stuff,’ Penny mumbled. ‘I hate the colour black. It’s so ugly! I like pink, sparkly things.’
‘Really?’ Ivy looked at Penny’s dyed-black hair and all-black outfit and let out a snort of laughter. ‘You should meet my sister, then.’