Kate and I were no longer… whatever Kate and I had been. But I was actually able to avoid lengthy conversations with my mother for that whole week and so didn’t have that much time to sit around like a hunchback ringing the death knell of my love life. After school, I’d begun training for winter track. Jason Burke was my training buddy. I was pleased to find he wasn’t in as great shape as I’d assumed. I think his muscles were just more defined because he had a spray tan.
In my spare time when I wasn’t running, I was catching up with Jenny. I felt bad. I’d kind of forgotten about her during the whole Kate thing. And I didn’t even remember that I had forgotten her until she invited me to a book signing but followed the invitation with, “But you’re probably busy on a Saturday night. Doing something with Kate.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Kate and I aren’t really hanging out anymore.”
“Really?” Jenny squeaked in delight.
Jeez, she really wanted to go to this book signing. She sounded ecstatic. Of course, she was mildly obsessed with this book. When we met up late Saturday afternoon and took a train into the city, Jenny chattered the whole time about the author and the book. The book was a “graphic novel,” which is a term that adults have created so they can read comic books when they’re middle-aged. Except this graphic novel didn’t have any superheroes, sidekicks, or anything that should have been on a five-year-old boy’s underwear. The author was this Irish guy who drew amazing pictures of his life in Dublin, drinking Guinness, chain-smoking, cheering for his hometown soccer team, and other manly Irish things.
I think of Irish guys as real men’s men, always drinking really heavy beer without throwing up and then punching some English guy’s crooked teeth out because they’re frustrated with centuries of colonialism. And playing rugby. Rugby doesn’t have shoulder pads or helmets. My ancestors were Irish, but somehow we got more wussed out with each passing generation. Although Luke would probably kick ass at rugby.
Jenny, who from the looks of her wouldn’t survive five seconds of rugby, got a special invite to the book signing because she wrote a review of the book for our school newspaper. Usually Jenny’s reviews don’t get published because she refuses to write about any movie with Vince Vaughn or Seth Rogen in it or to profile any Disney Channel starlet caught topless via text message. But the editor liked this graphic novel review because it had so much beer in it. I think our school newspaper editor has a drinking problem. It must be the stress of his job.
Anyway, Jenny had sent the author, Gareth, a copy of her review, which he loved, so we got to meet him before the event started at a bookstore in midtown Manhattan.
“Jenny!” Gareth crowed when she introduced herself shyly. “I’ve got to thank you for that piece you wrote on me. It’s the only nice thing that’s been written about me, other than stuff on the pub bathroom wall.”
Jenny flushed.
“Seriously, brilliant stuff, though,” he said.
Jenny introduced me, and Gareth was surprised by my name.
“I don’t meet many American Finbars,” he told me.
“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one,” I said.
“The Celt stands alone,” Gareth said. “Well, I should get reading. Get good seats, but not in the front row. Ya don’t want me spitting on you.”
Jenny seemed nervous around Gareth and she hurried me away. She pulled me so fast that I didn’t have time to look where I was going, and I bumped into a different short girl.
“Finbar!” the short girl exclaimed.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi, Celine.”
Surprisingly, I hadn’t thought about Celine in a while. After our disastrous date, I had expected to stew over the humiliation for months. But I’d been so busy being a vampire and starting at a new school and getting rejected by a whole new girl that I’d forgotten about Celine.
She looked the same, small and brown and sharp-looking. I couldn’t remember why I’d thought she was so pretty. Compared to Kate, Celine looked like she’d sucked a sour lemon. She pressed that sour-lemon face to mine and gave me a lame French air kiss.
“How are you, chérie?” she twittered. “I haven’t heard from you in ages!”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been… this is Jenny. Jenny, Celine.”
“Enchanté,” Celine said affectedly.
“You, too… I think,” Jenny replied.
“We should go grab seats,” I told Celine. “Nice to see you.”
“Who