Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,23

yellow Hummer that didn’t give a shit about the environment. I tried to turn into the parking lot, but I got cut off by a red car whose driver was blasting gunshot sounds from a rap song. Ten minutes into public school and I’d already been in a drive-by!

Apparently I have an “I’m a pussy—cut me off” bumper sticker that I don’t know about, because after that first car cut me off, all these kids on bikes crossed the street in front of my car without looking. As I let them pass, for so long that I shifted into park, I reflected that it might be the diversity that was making me nervous about this whole new-school thing. After all, I am from the Midwest. According to Wikipedia, my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, has a population made up of “0.46% Black or African-American” people. Our neighbors were so excited when a black family moved in that they got them a welcome basket with the first three seasons of The Cosby Show on DVD. Back in Indiana, I went to school with a bunch of other white dudes in red vests and khakis. Most of them looked like me. And one of them was my twin brother.

But no one looked alike at Pelham Public High School. And you can bet your ass no one wore a tie. I parked my car in the farthest parking space from the school and got ready to hike the rest of the way. I didn’t want to take a closer spot, in case it was reserved for seniors or other students or something. And looking around, there were a lot of other students I wouldn’t want to mess with.

There were guys—guys with earrings, guys in tight jeans, guys with jeans around their thighs, guys who could fit my skull in their hands, guys who were bigger, tougher, tanner, and cooler than me. And there were girls—girls in spaghetti straps, girls in tight jeans, girls making statements, girls clinging to groups, girls rummaging in enormous bags, girls whose ponytails moved independently of their bodies (they must be witches to make them do that!), girls with sunburns, girls smiling so brightly I couldn’t look directly at them.

Trying to avoid eye contact with 150 kids at once, I slipped into the wave of movement toward the front door of the school.

“Hey!” a punk guy called from the hood of a rusted Chevy. One other guy was sitting there with him; another was sitting on the roof. They were sharing a cigarette, and all three were marking up their white sneakers with Sharpie pens.

I looked around me, then called back, “Hey.”

“Nice choice of parking spot,” the kid said.

All three laughed and looked down at my super-safe Volvo, which was chillin’ with its airbags, with a space the size of an Olympic pool between it and the next car.

I shrugged.

“Fag,” he called out to me.

As I cut from the student parking lot to the front of school, I saw my vampire plan through the eyes of all the different kids around me. And, through their eyes, my plan seemed really, really dumb. This guy was going to pretend to be a vampire to be popular! I imagined these kids whispering this to each other, posting it on Pelham Public’s version of a Gossip Girl website. Despite their diversity, all of them would join together to laugh at me.

My head fell down to my chest, Eeyore-style. Same sad, slumping Finbar. And, apparently, same uncoordinated, doofus Finbar—because when I wasn’t looking where I was going, I tripped over something. Actually, someone.

Perched like a gargoyle on the third-highest step, this girl pulled herself indignantly away from a large paperback book.

“You kicked me!” she squeaked, squinting up at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m so dumb. I’m sorry. It’s my first day here, and I really have no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing, so…”

“Are you a freshman?” the girl asked. “I’m Jenny.”

“No, I’m not a—”

“You’re really tall for a freshman,” Jenny said. “What are you, like six-two? You might be a whole foot taller than me. Let’s do back-to-back.”

When Jenny stood up to compare our heights, her book dropped to the steps. There were people rushing by us, so I stooped quickly to pick it up and prevent its being stepped on. The cover had a woman in a white dress that was somehow familiar—a white, lacy, cleavage-baring dress. And those large, drippy, overdramatic letters called to me. Bloodthirsty.

Jenny liked vampires! I straightened