Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,46

they knew me better. This alone is proof of how ridiculous Kayla is, because I’ve had one conversation with her in my life, and it went: “Can I borrow a pen?” “No. My other one exploded.” But anyway, somewhere during the Fight for Finbar, laying down the trump card of Finbar knowledge, Jenny revealed to Kayla that I was a vampire.

So one day in mid-October, at the lockers only a few feet down from mine, Ashley Milano was going on and on about how I couldn’t have really caught Chris Perez in the hallway, couldn’t have really pinned him against the locker, couldn’t have choked him without getting my ass kicked.

“And Finbar doesn’t have any bruises or a black eye or anything,” Ashley Milano said. “And we would see if he did, because he’s really pale.”

“He’s pale for a reason,” Kayla whispered ominously, her voice carrying over her own breasts.

Ashley ignored that. “And Finbar would never win. Chris Perez skips, like, three classes a day to go to the fitness center. He’s in crazy good shape.”

“But I’ve heard Finbar’s, like… freakishly strong,” Kayla said.

They both looked over at me in wonder. I happened to be having trouble getting my locker open, which was ironic. When I did finally open it, I did it with a flourish and then kind of flexed. Awkwardly, of course.

“Finbar’s really tall,” Ashley admitted. “But his muscles don’t look that big.”

“But he’s got these crazy reflexes,” Kayla continued. “Finbar can sense danger.”

“How do you mean?”

Kayla fished a pack of Tic Tacs out of her cleavage and shook a few into Ashley’s hand before continuing her explanation.

“It’s like Twilight,” Kayla said. “You know how Edward stops the car just before it hits Bella in the parking lot? Finbar is like that.”

Kayla winked a bunch of times.

“Is there something wrong with your mascara?” Ashley asked.

“No,” Kayla said pointedly. “I mean, Finbar is like that.”

Ashley gasped. “Like…” She leaned over to whisper something into Kayla’s ear. Kayla nodded vigorously and both of them shrieked. Then they turned to look at me.

At that exact moment, I happened to be unwrapping a stick of Doublemint. I folded it nonchalantly into my mouth. Then I threw the wrapper on the ground, littering carelessly.

“He’s so cool,” Ashley sighed.

* * *

The second most unexpected reaction to my actions came about a week afterward, when I was leaving my Latin classroom. It was senior lunch period, and the hallways were crowded and noisy with people fighting over who got to drive and if they still wanted to go to Burger King now that the menu listed how many calories were in everything.

“Yo, Frame!”

I heard this call amidst all the brouhaha but continued down the hallway completely undisturbed. I didn’t respond to Frame. Frame is a football player’s name, a name that’s shouted in locker rooms and across fields. Frame is a name for rooms full of sweaty men. My brother, Luke, was Frame. So I didn’t turn around.

Then, I realized that Luke, owner and dominator of the name Frame, was ten miles south in the Bronx. I was Frame.

Pelham Public’s assistant sports director, this guy Coach Doakes, who has taken self-tanning way too far, was hurrying his pumpkin-colored self after me down the hall. I swear to you I thought he was gonna track me down and chew me out for pussying out of gym and taking Nutritional Science instead. I was preparing an argument on how much I’d improved my quality of life by learning about the acai berry.

“Frame,” Coach Doakes said seriously. “Word is you’re a hell of a runner.”

“Huh?”

Word? What word? Oh, probably the words of every kid who’d heard that poetry scholar Finbar Frame had somehow scared the shit out of Chris Perez.

“I’d love to see you run,” Coach Doakes told me.

I looked at him, panicked. I thought he meant right then. I looked ahead of me and estimated how many freshman girls in ponytails I’d have to mow down to prove my athletic worth.

“What?”

“Tryouts for the track team are in ten days,” Coach Doakes said. “I’ve already got a lot of sprinters. Muscle guys. What I need is endurance. Long-distance guys. Long, lean guys like you. With a frame like Frame. Ha! Get it?”

“Yeah.” I gave him a queasy laugh.

“So you wanna run track?”

A vision of myself as the baby daddy from Juno, all short-shorts and bony shoulders, bounced disturbingly through my head. Any extracurricular that required tighty-whities made me wary. Then another thought made me wary. The sun. I