I heard a vampire slayer say from around the front of the convention center.
Uh-oh. It was only a matter of time before they multiplied two pi by the radius of this building, which was a geodesic dome, and found me 180 degrees around the back. Wait, hold up. That’s it! This building was a geodesic dome! (Okay, you’re right, a guy who knows what a geodesic dome is shouldn’t mock anyone for using the number pi. FYI—a geodesic dome is a building that looks like a golf ball.)
But I felt suddenly light and free. Because I had remembered this time the whole Alexandria fire squad had been called to our middle school because Luke had scaled a building and was camped out on top. The building he scaled was our indoor track, which was a geodesic dome. The fantastic thing about geodesic domes was that you could climb them.
Okay, not anyone could climb them. Luke could climb them, being the 80 percent ape that he is. It was a little more difficult for me considering I had zero climbing abilities and wasn’t wearing a belt.
But I reached up the base of the dome and found a hand-hold, and then found a ledge for my foot. I began to climb, fueled by the need to escape the Jacobs and the vampire slayers and those Bloodthirsty fiends. For one thing, I’d never been in a fight in my life. For another, if I were in a fight, it would become clear I wasn’t a vampire. I didn’t have super speed, super strength, or any kind of physical coordination.
Plus, one extra nasty little detail: I’m scared of blood. I hate blood. That’s one reason I try to avoid fights, violent team sports, and, come to think of it, CSI in any of its many incarnations. And, if I passed out at the sight of blood, everyone would know I was not a vampire. Being scared of blood wasn’t exactly good for my street cred. Or whatever the vampire version of street cred was. Coffin cred?
Oh, why had I given in to fantasy violence? Why hadn’t I brokered peace? Why hadn’t I suggested, “Let’s all join hands and sing the Ewok song from Return of the Jedi ! All species are welcome here!” Why had I even come to this Fantasy Fest? Why had I decided that becoming a vampire would result in less people wanting to beat me up?
Too scared to climb down, I crouched on top of the geodesic dome for an hour and a half. Twenty minutes into that time, it began to rain. The whole time I was anxiously anticipating my reunion with Jenny, during which, I was 99 percent sure, she would ask me, “Are you a vampire?” Had I been better with vampire attitude, she would have gotten the message that I was a vampire but didn’t want to talk about it. But I was never good at sending out cool and subtle signals—see my date with Celine for another example. Instead, all of my vampire behaviors and encounters so far, from my glamouring Ashley Milano’s boobs to my mom’s drug talk, had elicited the question, “What the hell is wrong with you, Finbar?”
I had set out to give an impression, to intrigue, to fascinate, to attract, even to seduce. I hadn’t set out to lie. I would have to tell Jenny the truth. And then this whole thing would be over. This snobby poet T. S. Eliot once said, “This is the way the world ends—not with a bang but a whimper.” This was how my vampire world ended—not with me getting banged, but with me on a weird roof, soaking wet, and with my pants sliding down my ass. Definitely reason to whimper.
When people started to leave the convention, I moved across the roof toward a position above the exit doors and watched people leave. Whoa. More than a few fantasy characters who had arrived separately were now going home together, looking pretty cozy. I didn’t even want to think about what a guy in a fur coat and a girl with a goat’s head would do on a first date. Oh, wait! There was Jenny!
“Jenny!” I hissed from my dome.
She looked up, puzzled.
“Jenny!” I hissed louder.
Then a group of vampire slayers headed to their car (wow, a new Land Rover. One of them must have a killer day job) and I ducked down again.
“We really scared the shit out of him!” one of the slayers