You Suck - By Christopher Moore Page 0,77

and may in fact end up doing time for taking the vampire's art collection?"

"Like worse in that the hooker and the missing Animals aren't dead at all."

"How is that worse?" Then Cavuto realized how that was worse.

They climbed into the car and stared at the windshield for a while without saying anything.

Finally, after a full minute, Cavuto said, "We're fucked."

"Yep," Rivera said.

"The whole city is fucked."

"Yep."

Chapter Twenty-six

Being the Chronicles of Abby Normal:

Star-Crossed Lover and Tragic Fatale

OMG! We are doomed by our forbidden love! We are like from different feuding families, from the wrong side of the tracks, he is like year of the Rabbit and I am a Leo, so we are even star-crossed, and it's a well-known fact that rabbits and lions have a strained relationship. OMFG! He's so hot! He rocks my stripy socks. If we had moors, I would so be off brooding upon one, my delicate jaw muscles clenched as I stared off into the mist, feeling my profound missing-ness for him. (I can't believe that San Francisco doesn't have a moor. Everywhere you go we have automated, coin-operated robotic bathrooms, or Frisbee golf courses, or some new stainless-steel epileptic razor-blade public-art thingy, you'd think the least they could do would be to install a decent moor - because there are a lot more people who like brooding than like Frisbee golf. I'm pretty sure moors can be used for other purposes, too, like hauntings and hiding bodies and family picnics and whatnot.) Thus I am forced to do my brooding at Tulley's Coffee on Market Street.

It took most of the day for us to move the Countess and the vampyre Flood to Jared's room. First we had to wrap them up in duct tape and garbage bags to protect them from the sun, then get them down the hill from the Bay Bridge in the garden cart, which was totally physically hard, and not like taking X and dancing or playing DDR all night, more like work. Then, when we were loading them into the minivan, these two cops come by.

And they're all, "So, what are you doing with your piercings and your magenta-on-black hair, and what can we do to further repress your creativity? Bluster-blah-blah."

And Jared was all, "Nothing." All wussy and guilty-sounding. He had the front end of the Countess at the time and he totally just dropped her headfirst on the floorboard of the van.

So I was like, "Fucktard! The Countess is going to rip your nads off when she awakens!" (And she might, too, although when we unwrapped her she seemed unbruised.)

And the cop was all, "Hold it right there, kid." With his hand on his gun like I was going to go all Columbine on his ass or something. So I knew it was time for some strategy.

So I stepped over to the cop, and I started whispering like I didn't want Jared to hear. And I'm all, "Officer, I'm really embarrassed to even be seen like this. I'm a Kappa Kappa Delta pledge and we're doing this hazing thing. I wouldn't be caught dead dressed like this, but it's like the most popular and powerful sorority on campus."

And the cop is all, "What about the guy? He's not in your sorority."

And I was all, "Shhhhhhh. God, you want to hurt her feelings? They made her shave her head like that and she's having a hard enough time with that and being totally flat-chested. Frankly, I don't think she's going to make it. Everyone knows that KKDs are pretty. Hello." I batted my eyelashes and sort of pushed my basically invisible boobs together with my arms, as I have often seen done in music videos.

And the cop was all, "Can I see your student ID?"

And I was like, FUCK, because I didn't know which college would be most likely to have a sorority, so I went with my Berkeley student ID, because Berkeley is a well-known bastion of hippie behavior and higher learning in which a sorority girl would probably have to blow like a hundred football players just to keep her GPA up. And cops like football.

So he was all, "Okay, but make sure there's plenty of airholes so your friends can breathe."

And I was all, "Sure thing. See ya later, cop."

So when we got the masters to Jared's house, his step-mom was all, "So, I see you have your little friend with you."

And Jared had to play chilly, so he was like, yeah, we have a school project.