fully understand vampire attitude. So I had no choice but to work on my vampire look. In the hour left before Luke came back, I scrambled around the upstairs of our house, collecting all the sinister-looking clothes and accessories my family possessed. This included a black polo shirt Luke had since we were eight, a black button-up shirt that was too cool for my dad to wear, and a necklace of my mom’s that I thought was a fang but turned out to be Luke’s baby tooth on a string.

The necklace was ruled out first, obviously. Then I pulled the black polo shirt over my head. And believe me, that was not easy. That thing was tight. I looked like I should be raving at a club on the Jersey Shore. Except I couldn’t raise my hand above my head to rave because when I did, the sleeve ripped.

The polo shirt was out.

Next I put on my dad’s button-front shirt. It was kinda long on me (I’m pretty tall, but my dad, Tall Paul, is six-three). So when I tucked it in, the shirttail made a pretty nice bulge in the crotch of my jeans. That couldn’t be bad. Plus, the shirt was black, mature, and pretty vampy-looking. In my mom’s full-length mirror, I turned sideways and then turned the shirt collar up. Whoa. Too vampy. Like Count Whoever on Sesame Street. One ass-kicking for Finn at his new school if he wears this shirt, TWO ass-kickings for Finn… mwah-ha-ha.

Then, as I removed the bulge from my pants, I had an epiphany.

Vampires don’t care about what shirt they wear. Vampires don’t care about making impressions on the first day of school. Vampires don’t care about all the stupid little stuff that the Finbar Frames of the world care about, like being the first one out in gym class dodgeball, facing rejection by girls, and being mocked for carrying SAT flash cards in their pockets. Vampires don’t care that they can’t flaunt their tans at the beach, that they get stared at, that they’re different. Vampires don’t care what other people think. And that is vampire attitude.

At St. Luke’s, I always got to class before the second bell, which showed I cared about my grades. My name was always on the honor roll and the bylines of the school newspaper, which showed I cared about our school. I didn’t go to keg parties, which might seem uncaring, but which actually meant that I cared so much what other people thought of my dancing and my lack of beer tolerance that I didn’t dare show my face. I’d spent two years’ allowance buying snails for Celine and then chased her down the street because I cared too much. That’s why I’d ruined our date. And that’s why I’d never dated, kissed, or even danced with a girl. I cared too much about what they thought of me.

Well, the caring stopped now.

I threw Luke’s shirt and my dad’s shirt in the hamper. I got rid of Luke’s creepy tooth. I pulled my black pajama t-shirt back over my skinny white chest. For the rest of the day and that night, I wore that plain t-shirt. I wore it the next morning as I grabbed a piece of toast and ignored my mother’s plea that I should drink green tea (she’d been watching Dr. Oz). As I climbed into my Volvo and headed for my new high school, that same black shirt I’d been wearing for three days conveyed it all—coolness, apathy, and a little bit of BO.

chapter 6

What had I been thinking? I was a complete idiot.

It was easy to brave at home. At home I was bolstered by my little bookshelves and my mother’s blind love for her freakish offspring. It was easy to be brave and make plans when all I had to do was read a few books, survive an attack of solar urticaria, or absorb radiation from five hours of television. It was easy to make plans to seduce and impress everyone I knew when I knew no one in New York besides the three people obligated by law to love me: my mother, who gave birth to me; Luke, who shared my DNA; and my father, who didn’t know any better.

Now, driving to Pelham Public High School in my Volvo, I felt completely intimidated. Even my little silver car was cowed by the other bigger, beefier cars—the SUVs and Jeeps with their iffy safety regulations and that one