Vampire High Sophomore Year - By Douglas Rees Page 0,12

And what’s your biggest problem? Yours, personally.”

“You have no right to say anything about us,” Gregor said.

“What is your problem, man? Your biggest problem?” Turk went on.

“Do not try to reduce this to a question of myself,” Gregor said. “That is not the point.”

“It’s my point,” Turk said. “You’ve got everything, for God’s sake. You wouldn’t know real trouble if it pantsed you, tied you up, and left you in a tree house.”

For a second, Gregor looked puzzled. As insults went, that was a left-fielder. And the image was so ridiculous that I think he might have laughed.

Except I beat him to it. I couldn’t help it.

And that made Gregor turn on me.

“Sorry, man,” I said, trying to apologize. “She did that to me once. Except for the pants part.”

Justin put his hand over his eyes.

Ileana dropped hers.

Because one thing you did not ever want to do with Gregor was to attack his dignity, and he clearly had decided that we had just done that.

And there was one other thing that everybody at the table knew but Turk. It was the answer to her question to Gregor. Gregor didn’t have Ileana. I did. And he still hadn’t gotten over that.

Gregor stood there twitching, with his pale skin turning dark red. No one had ever actually seen Gregor lose it. There was always this iciness about his anger, even when he was beating you up. But now he looked like his head might pop off the top of his neck.

“You are ignorant. Useless. Arrogant. Even your stupid cousin is better than you,” he finally said to Turk. He stumbled over the words, which was not like Gregor. He usually said something fang-sharp and sarcastic when he was mad.

“But not wrong,” Turk said slowly.

Ileana reached over and put her hand on Gregor’s arm. She flicked her eyes.

Gregor looked around and saw that everyone in the dining hall was watching our table.

“You will never know how wrong you are,” Gregor said.

“Ooh. Slash,” Turk said, drawing one of her long black nails along her throat.

Gregor shook his arm free, snarled in a way that made me think what a great wolf he probably made, and turned away.

“Oh, boy,” I thought. “Welcome to tenth grade. Thank you, Turk.”

Turk turned back to her food.

“You know,” she said, “this salmon mousse is really good.”

But Ileana wasn’t going to let her change the subject that easily.

“You have a point, Turquoise,” she said. “But not as strong a point as you think. You have judged him too quickly. And Gregor has a point, too, don’t you think?”

“What I think is that he’s a spoiled, whiney brat,” Turk said.

“Gregor would not tell you this, but his mother is dead,” Ileana said. “Is that, perhaps, a large enough personal problem for you to respect?”

“Let me tell you something, Ileana,” Turk said. “About why I don’t worry whether I’m rude or not. It’s because people are always rude to me. And why? Because I don’t look like them. Don’t think like them. Don’t want to be like them. I don’t insult them just because they’re all about rock stars, or jock stars, or video games. I don’t care about that stuff, but I don’t dump on the people who do. But if you look like me, if you act a little different from what they’re used to, they’ll circle around you and try to peck out your eyes. And I’ll tell you something else. These vampire friends of yours don’t know how lucky they are. A whole school of people exactly like themselves to hang out with. A whole school. And I can’t even find one person.”

She got up from the table and left.

It was going to be a long year.

6

By the end of the day, the Rustle had gotten louder.

The new one. The cousin. She and Gregor are fighting. She was rude to him. Rude to our princess.

It was around me in gym, where we played half-court basketball, and I thought I heard it in the squeaks and whispers of the sneakers. It was in the scrape of Mr. Gibbon’s chalk on the blackboard during history. And by the time I walked into my last class, it was almost loud enough to actually hear. In fact, I did hear it. It was silence. Absolute and perfect silence.

“Welcome, Master Cody,” said the teacher, Ms. Magyar. “Or should I say—” And she rattled off some syllables that sounded like water running over stones. A greeting in high jenti that meant “Come before me