Vampire High Sophomore Year - By Douglas Rees Page 0,5

be friends. And they both helped me with my work until I got good enough to make Cs. Without them, I’d never have survived last semester,” I said.

“I’m still waiting to hear the part where you’re a hero,” Turk said.

“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “Well, it was to them. But all I did was give Justin a blood transfusion. Ileana was having her fifteenth birthday party, which is a major event to the jenti, and I was at the party feeling really out of it without him. I was probably the first gadje ever to get invited to something like that, and a lot of the jenti didn’t want me there. So I called to find out when he was coming. Justin couldn’t be there because, well, because he needed more blood than the average jenti and they were out at his house. The Warreners don’t have a lot of money. So I asked Ileana for permission to go over and give him a drink. Well, this turned out to be a huge thing to the jenti. It’s like, they have all this folklore about the kind gadje who just gives blood without asking for anything in return, and by the time Justin and I got to the party, everyone knew what I’d done.”

“So where does the water polo come in?”

“That was Justin more than me,” I said. “In fact, it was all Justin, really. He was hanging out at the pool with me, just the two of us, and all of a sudden he jumped into the water. Well, I almost freaked. I mean, here’s my best friend, and he’s just dived into something that can kill him. Only he doesn’t die. He changes. Into something like a seal. They call it a selkie. Turns out that little jenti like him, the ones with the brown hair and blue eyes, can’t fly or turn into wolves, but they can survive in water. No, not survive. They love it. So we just recruited a new water polo team from the selkie jenti and the state had to let us stay open.”

“Why did the state want to close you down?” Turk asked.

“We hadn’t met our minimum number of games for the year when Justin beat up the old team,” I said. “And some of them quit.”

“Justin. The little guy. All by himself. Beat up the team,” Turk said.

“I said he was little, I didn’t say he was weak,” I said. “There’s no such thing as a weak jenti.”

“But why did he do it?”

“They were beating me up,” I said.

Turk pretended to brush away a tear. “I’m all choked up,” she said.

“Do you want to hear this stuff or not?” I said.

“Oh, yes, please,” Turk said. “Only get to the good part.”

“There isn’t much more,” I said. “We trained the selkie team in secret, then we all showed up for the last game, and we got into the water. By the end of the game, the gym was full. Everyone in the school was watching. Even Dracula. Of course, I didn’t know it was Dracula then. Nobody but Horvath did. We thought he was just this big wolf the school kept around as a mascot.”

For the first time, Turk looked impressed.

“You know Dracula?”

“I just met him once for a minute,” I said. “Of course, he showed me around the school the first day. But that was when I thought he was just a wolf.”

“When do I meet him?” Turk asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He decided to stop being a wolf at the end of the year and took off for Europe. He’ll probably be back, though. Ileana is one of his descendants, and she’s important to him.”

Turk closed her eyes.

“Oh, Cody,” she said. “So noble. So brave.”

“I had a busy semester,” I agreed. And I resisted adding, “And I was looking forward to the next one. Until you showed up.”

4

Mom turned dinner into a big deal. Ileana and Justin were invited. Which gave her the rest of the day to cook, which she loved to do, and gave me the rest of the day to worry.

As for Turk, once she had swilled a few cups of coffee, she went back to her attic, pulled the steps up after her, and made more noise. It was hard to tell what she might be doing up there, but the sounds moved all over the second floor ceiling.

“You know, I really feel like a total New Englander now,” Dad said as