Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,35
about the fangs?”
“What?”
“Did she ever ask to see the fangs?”
“No!” I protested. “I’m a nice vampire!”
“Things like that pop out involuntarily,” Luke said. “Like when Ms. Alexander tutored Sean O’Connor, and he got a huge—”
“All right,” I interrupted. “But your fangs don’t pop out involuntarily when you don’t have them.”
Luke stood there and thought for sixty seconds, which was a long time for him.
“You need to be faster,” Luke decided.
“What?”
“Faster. Stronger.” Luke began to sing Daft Punk by way of Kanye West. “Harder, better, faster, stronger…”
I gave Luke a disparaging look, one to prevent him from dancing.
“Look.” Luke flung a quarter of his cheeseburger across the room for emphasis. “Vampires are fast. And strong. Like, abnormally fast and strong. Like, Usain-Bolt-meets-Incredible-Hulk. Get it?”
“Whatever, Luke, I’m fast.”
“You need to be…” Luke clapped his hands and made a whoosh sound.
“No one’s testing me on being a vampire,” I said.
“I bet you a thousand dollars.” Luke hopped up onto a kitchen chair. “You’ll come to a vampire situation where you have to be fast.”
How I wished I could raise one eyebrow at a time.
“And that’s when you’ll thank me,” Luke said, grinning.
“Thank you for what?”
“Finbar Frame,” Luke announced, “I am going to be your personal trainer.”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “You are not.”
“I am,” Luke said. “I’m going to be your personal trainer. And you’re going to be a brick wall. You’re going to drive that vampire girl crazy… what’s her name again? The vampire chick? Sookie?”
“Jenny,” I said. “But she’s not, like, my vampire girl….”
“A girl.” Luke sighed nostalgically. “Jesus, Finn, you’re spoiled. Fuck Fordham Prep. I haven’t seen a girl in a year and a half!”
I decided that if Luke really made me work out with him, I would punish him by telling him all about Kayla Bateman and her unusual boobs. Then he’d really be jealous of me.
chapter 9
A combination of factors led me to use the word cock in my seventh-period AP literature class.
I’d been at Pelham Public for a month and a half now. And, for all that time, in the back of my mind I’d been ruminating about how sexual vampires were. I mean, isn’t sex the reason the vampire trend has lasted so long? Back in the day, Dracula seduced all these pale, ruffly virgins. Now, Chauncey Castle’s pale face glowers from Bloodthirsty posters on walls all over the country, fixed on teenage girls in their beds. And the girls love it.
Beyond the attraction factor, vampires are supposed to be really good at sex. Hence all of the talk about “the only thing harder and more powerful than Chauncey Castle’s fangs.” And hence all the action that made Virginia White’s breasts “shiver,” “quiver,” and “tremble” in every damn chapter of that book.
Frankly, I didn’t know what it meant to be good at sex. I’d always assumed my first sexual experience would be kinda like my trip to the Touch Tunnel in the Museum of Science and Industry. I’d plunge in blindly. I’d feel my way around while more experienced personnel watched and laughed from an infrared camera. And I’d hope to emerge before I ran out of oxygen.
In fact, I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of sex. It didn’t help that, at St. Luke’s, guys had this game where they would concoct ridiculous and fictional sexual terms, claim they were real but obscure, and taunt each other with them. Actually, usually they would taunt me with them, as I was a target who didn’t have the balls to admit I didn’t know what something meant. For example, Johnny Frackas would call across study hall:
“Hey, Fagbar, I bet you don’t know what a pickle flip is.”
A pickle flip? No, I didn’t know. In my head I’d file furiously through every Maxim magazine I’d ever stolen, or try to picture pages of my anatomical encyclopedia. I’d rack my head generating possible moves and positions and perverse acts that could constitute a pickle flip.
Well, the verb to flip generally means to rearrange from facedown to faceup. Or vice versa. Or, used in a more gymnastic sense, flip could mean a full three hundred and sixty degree turn of the body. Like a somersault. Pickle was pretty obvious. Pretty alliterative. Pickle equaled, well, you know. But I couldn’t do a somersault with my…
“Hey, guys!” Johnny Frackas would call out, interrupting my lengthy pause. “Fagbar doesn’t know what a pickle flip is!”
My face would turn red, and I wouldn’t have anything to say in return. And why not? Because I assumed that