But her mother didn’t answer. She was already down the hall in her own bedroom yelling at Retta’s father about vampires, as if their existence were all his fault.
Retta wanted to disown them. She wanted to disown everything: her room, her house, her street, her town. She even wanted, after twelve years of best friendship, to disown Lottie, who sat down across from her at a picnic table during lunch on Monday and said, “You total slut,” without any prelude.
Retta looked up from her cup of strawberry yogurt and said, “What are you talking about?”
“I saw you,” said Lottie in a harsh, whispery voice. She leaned across the table and said, “I saw you ride home with that vampire kid last Friday. You didn’t go back to class. You totally went off with him.”
“What are you, some kind of stalker?” asked Retta, twirling her spork in the plastic yogurt container, trying not to look at Lottie.
“Stalker? Oh, really? Is that how it is?
“You are so dramatic, Lottie.”
“What’s his name?”
“Trevor,” said Retta, who could not help but smile a little after she said it, as if she were only telling one half of a secret, keeping the rest to herself.
“Uck,” said Lottie. “Even his name is a loser name. What are you going to do? Marry him and have loser vampire babies?”
“Grow up, Lottie,” said Retta. “You don’t know anything about him.”
“Neither do you, I bet,” said Lottie. She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back, sitting up straight. “I bet you don’t even know where he lives.”
“No,” said Retta. “You’re right. I don’t.”
“But he knows where
“I’m okay with that,” said Retta, and stood up to throw away her yogurt.
“Hey,” said Lottie. “Where are you going? What’s the matter with you? Retta?”
“I’m late for chorus,” said Retta, and kept on going.
Behind her, Lottie said, “Retta! I’m serious! You should be more careful!”
“I am,” said Retta over her shoulder. “I’m always careful. I’m nothing but careful.”
But there was nothing for Retta to be careful about, really, because when she stepped out of her last class and into the parking lot that afternoon, he wasn’t there. And he wasn’t there the next day either. Or the next. It was Wednesday, then it was Thursday, and although everyone was still talking about the vampires, it seemed like they might never see one again. There were a few people who now claimed they were vampires, of course: Jason Snelling, who had been a nose picker for as long as anyone could remember, so no one was really impressed; and Tammie Galore, an ex-cheerleader who had quit cheering because she’d fallen from the top of a pyramid a year ago, and six months of wearing a cast up to her crotch and having multiple surgeries to fix her leg afterward had left her afraid to return to the happy squad. Apparently she was a vampire, too, although she never revealed what kind, exactly. Most people assumed she was lying for the attention.
And there were others who came forward: a quiet librarian who wore cat-eye glasses and white blouses with pearl buttons, tight little navy blue skirts; a plumber who lived just three streets over from Retta, who had actually been in her house to fix a toilet, but since it was for pay it probably didn’t invoke the vampire right to enter a house once he’s been invited, said Retta’s father; an old man who played the saxophone downtown on Friday and Saturday nights, wearing sunglasses as if it were still bright out. Retta had always assumed he was blind. Go figure.
It was a week of lively discussion that followed the appearance of Trevor and his vampire friends. Even the PTA had met by that Thursday evening to discuss whether Mr. Masters should be penalized for having allowed the vampires to speak at all. “Of course he should be,” said Retta’s mother after she came home from the meeting. “He should be fired. We should sue him for endangering the lives of our children.”
“We only have one child,” said Retta’s father, hanging up his Windbreaker in the foyer closet.
“It’s a figure of speech, Clyde,” said Retta’s mother. “It’s a figure of speech.”
Retta left them arguing over the issue in the kitchen and went upstairs to sit on her bed and look at her room as if it would offer her something special at that very moment. But all she saw was her hairbrush, curling iron, an uncapped lipstick on the dresser, a rumpled bedspread, clothes she hadn’t worn in a long time strung out on the floor in twisted shapes like the chalked outlines of murder victims. Then her cell phone rang and she reached for it with extreme zeal, glad that, finally, the world had responded in a timely manner to her request for a reprieve from her own inertia. She looked at the call screen. It was Lottie. “Hello?” said Retta.
“Hey, did you hear about the PTA meeting?”
“Yeah, my mom and dad just got home,” said Retta. “Penalty or no penalty? Poor Mr. Masters.”
“Sounds like they’ll let it go this time,” said Lottie, “but not if he screws up again.”
“Lottie,” said Retta, “why are we even interested? We’re graduating. We’re out of here. If I want to talk to a vampire, I can. We’re adults, aren’t we?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. Then Lottie said, “You are so hot for that kid! I can’t believe it!”
“Shut up!” said Retta. “You’re not even listening to me.”
“You’re not even listening to yourself!” said Lottie.
“Whatever,” said Retta. “Anyway, what are you going to do this summer? Or next fall, for that matter?”
“I’m thinking about finding work as one of those people who do sleep experiments,” said Lottie. “They’re always advertising for those. Seems like a steady job.”
“Hmm,” said Retta, “sounds as good as anything I’ve got.”
“College?” said Lottie.
“Oh, yeah, that. My mom brought home an application for the community college the other day, said I could stay here if I didn’t feel like trying school somewhere else. I don’t know. Don’t British kids go on something called gap year after high school? Where they go to some poor eastern European country or some island in the Mediterranean for a year and help people out and stuff? That’s what I’d like to do. Maybe.”
“Retta, you’re not British.”
“I know,” said Retta. “It’s a figure of speech.”
“No, it’s not,” said Lottie.
Retta was about to ask if Lottie was going to pick her up on the way to school tomorrow, then maybe they could go to the mall afterward and stare at things and people, but as she opened her mouth to speak, a spray of pebbles rattled against her bedroom window. “Hold on a sec,” she told Lottie, the mall forgotten, and got up from her bed to look out.
It was night out, but beneath the big oak in front of the backyard’s mercury light, she could see him, his face covered in leafy shadows, the hands that had tossed those pebbles up to her window like he was out of some 1950s movie now stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled one out when Retta showed up at the window, lifted it into the air to flick her a wave.
She told Lottie it was her mom calling her, and clicked the phone off before Lottie could argue. Then she pulled up the window, stuck her head out, and whispered, “I can’t come out there. My parents would see you.”
“Then can I come up?” he whispered back.
“How?” said Retta. “Do you have a ladder?”
The next instant he was climbing her mother’s rose trellis, hand over hand, the tips of his shoes seeking purchase. In a minute he was three feet beneath her window. “Can you give me a lift?” he said, reaching with one hand, holding on to the trellis with the other.
“Are you serious?” said Retta. “I can’t lift you.”
“I’m lighter than I look.”
She sighed, leaned out, stretched.
He was telling the truth. He was light, so light, in fact, that she pulled him over her windowsill not quite like a rag doll, but not far from it. It made Retta want to diet. “What are you?” she said. “On a hunger strike or something?”
