Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,31
reality, these crazy people around us both embarrassed and kind of impressed me. They embarrassed me because I couldn’t imagine walking into a public place with some horned mask or body paint. I would never even tell two hundred strangers that I liked to read, much less that I liked to read books about witches and dwarves. I thought about how the standard high school boy writes “I don’t read” under Favorite Books on his Facebook profile. Why? Because, whether it’s true or not, that’s the safe, conformist response. But not one of these Fantasy Fest-ers was a conformist, and they impressed me because of that. I was fascinated with the thought and time they’d put into their costumes, with the enthusiasm of Lord of the Rings fans debating metaphorical issues in Elvish, with the warmth of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Buffys embracing each other after months apart. One dedicated Harry Potter Dumbledore had grown a beard down to his knees. It must have taken him two years to grow that beard. Of course, he was, like, seventy years old. I guess by the time you’re that old, you don’t really care what people think of you. Or maybe none of these fantasy fans cared what people thought of them. Maybe that was what impressed me—their ability to put the weird things about themselves out in the open.
Speaking of people who put weird things about themselves out in the open, Jenny was tugging me across the convention center. She’d come to the Fantasy Fest mostly to get her book signed by Carmella Lovelace, the author of Bloodthirsty. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only Bloodthirsty fan in attendance. When we turned the corner, we saw a hundred-person line. About fifteen percent of those people were girls dressed in slutty white dresses to look like Virginia White.
When one Virginia with lame cleavage saw the book in Jenny’s hand, she said, “Better get in line, girl.”
“We’ve been here since noon,” added another, who had ketchup down her dress as fake blood.
Jenny smacked me on the elbow as we headed for the back of the line.
“Ow! What?”
“We should have come earlier,” she admonished me.
“I told you that I have a sun sensitivity,” I told Jenny. “We couldn’t come at noon.”
“It’s not even sunny today!” Jenny told me. “It’s about to rain! And why are you so sensitive to the sun, anyway? What’s up with that?”
A blond girl with hair like feathers jumped out of the line toward me. Because of my recent experience with the sword guy and the felt dragon, it was understandable that I jumped back and kind of shrieked like a girl.
“Hi!” she squealed. “How are you?”
The blond girl pulled me in for a hug, pinning my arms at my sides. Jesus, girls were really friendly at these things. Either that or my mom’s notes were right and I was a stud.
When she pulled away, though, I saw it was the blonde from the train. The girl who had started all of this by mistaking me for a vampire. Apparently she had branched out beyond her own creepy vampire book, Nocturnal Terror, to the more sexy Bloodthirsty.
“How are you feeling?” Blondie asked in a low voice, leaning toward me.
Jenny listened intently.
“Oh, fine,” I said politely. “How are you?”
“I’m sorry I called you out that day on the train,” Blondie said in the same low voice. “I shouldn’t have revealed what you were in a public place. I understand why you got so pissed. I’ll be more subtle from now on.”
“Oh, okay, well, thanks,” I said, hoping Jenny was picking up possible hints from this, but more strongly hoping to escape this psycho.
“Are there any others here?” the blond girl hissed.
“What?” I asked.
“Other vamp—”
“No,” I said quickly. “I mean…”
A boy, probably twelve years old, walked by sulkily with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed like Edward Cullen from Twilight—reddish streaks in his hair, all this powder on his face to make him pale.
“No real ones,” Blondie finished for me, her voice low and intense.
“How do you guys know each other?” Jenny asked, looking up from me to Blondie like a child trying to decode a grown-up conversation.
“Does she know?” Blondie asked me.
Jenny looked up expectantly. I felt intensely awkward. I felt even less comfortable with the idea of telling Jenny my fake vamp status than I had in school. And explaining Blondie would force me to say it.
“We have to go to the back of the line,” I commanded Jenny.
“Finbar!” Jenny