Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

'Ohh,' said the girl with a sad tilt of her head.

It was a response Sejal would hear a lot in the following weeks and which she would eventually come to understand meant, 'Ohh, India, that must be so hard for you, and I know because I read this book over the summer called The Fig Tree (which is actually set in Pakistan but I don’t realize there’s a difference) about a girl whose parents sell her to a sandal maker because everyone’s poor and they don’t care about girls there, and I bet that’s why you’re in our country even, and now everyone’s probably being mean to you just because of 9/11, but not me although I’ll still be watching you a little too closely on the bus later because what if you’re just here to kill Americans?' There was a lot of information encoded in that one vowel sound, so Sejal missed most of it at first.

'Christ, Sophie, my gyno is Indian,' said Ophelia. 'Just because she’s from the Third World doesn’t mean she eats bugs. No offense if you do, Sejal.'

'’Felia, you can’t call them Third World anymore,' said Troy. 'It’s hurtful.'

'Says who?'

'Mr. Franovich.'

Ophelia farted through her teeth. 'Franovich.'

'What are we called, then?' asked Sejal.

'A Developing Nation.'

'Ha!' said Ophelia. 'Developing! Like they’re getting their boobies.'

'Isn’t that one of your old dresses, Cat?' asked Abby, who was similarly attired.

'The airport lost my bag,' said Sejal, 'but Cat and I wear the same size.'

'Really?'

'That’s sad,' said Sophie. 'About your bag. You probably had all kinds of beautiful kimonos or robes or whatever.'

'Just one sari,' said Sejal, 'and a salwar kameez my mom made me pack. Mostly it was jeans and shirts.'

'And your elephant god,' Cat reminded her.

And that, Sejal thought with a guilty pang. The faces of the other kids had soured suddenly, as if they could taste her shame. But then someone new spoke up behind her.

'Wow, you smuggled Ganesha in your suitcase? Isn’t he pretty big?'

Sejal turned to see Doug and another boy from math class. She smiled.

'Not always. Sometimes he rides a mouse.'

Doug sat, followed by the other boy, who pulled a book from his backpack and began to read.

'Hey, Meatball,' said Cat. Doug returned the greeting and extended it to everyone else. The other kids responded with nods or leaden 'heys' of their own.

'Meatball?' asked Sejal. It sounded like an insult, but nobody laughed, and Doug had taken it in stride.

'God, it’s like you know everything,' Sophie half sneered at Doug. 'Why do you know G’daysha?'

'Ganesha. I don’t know, from books. He’s…heh…he’s in this comic book called ‘The God Squad.’ You ever read that one, Adam?'

Adam started. His face contorted with hammy confusion as he muttered that he had no idea what Doug was talking about.

'You sure? They have a huge God Squad poster on the wall at Planet Comix.'

Adam shrugged. 'Whatever, Meatball. I don’t remember. I haven’t been there since junior high.'

'Meatball?' Sejal said again.

'Yeah,' Doug explained now. 'People just — I’ve always been called Meatball. Since, like, the fourth grade. I can’t even remember how it started, anymore.'

No one offered to remind him.

'And you don’t…mind it?' asked Sejal.

'It’s just a nickname,' Ophelia reassured her, 'it doesn’t mean anything. Like Dutch or Lefty or whatever. It’s not mean.' Her smile was peaceful and blameless. Most of the group nodded faintly, as if they’d needed reassuring, too. Even Doug.

'Ah! He’s blushing!' said Troy, pointing at Doug. 'You’re so pink right now.'

'Oh, he’s not blushing,' Sejal said, and turned to Doug. 'Right? You told me this morning.'

'Yeah. Yeah, over the summer I developed this sun allergy. It comes and goes.'

'I have that!' shouted Abby. 'I totally know what you’re talking about. It’s, like, sometimes, when I’m out in the sun awhile my skin gets this very fine layer of ash.'

'Really?' said Sejal.

'Really?' said Doug. Behind him, the other boy glanced up from his book.

'And now you have an aversion to crosses, too, right?' Ophelia asked Abby. 'And it all started — lemme guess — it all started when that emo boy gave you a hickey at Stacy’s pool party?'

Now Abby blushed. 'Maybe.'

Ophelia pulled a compact mirror out of her purse. 'Ooh, let’s see if you have a reflection. Whoop, you’re still in there. Not a vampire.'

'Did this emo boy break the skin?' asked Troy. 'Maybe she’s just turning into a vampire really slowly.'

'That reflection thing doesn’t work anyway,' Doug’s friend said suddenly. All eyes turned to him, and time stopped. There was a great black hole where his head should have been, sucking all light and heat and conversation. He hid behind his book again.

Doug rose, then, and strode off without warning, as if he’d seen someone or something he wanted. The other boy glanced over the edge of his paperback in surprise. Then his eyes returned to the group, his possum face flashing 'flee or play dead?'

'Your name’s…Jay,' said Cat. 'Right?'

'What?' said Jay.

Doug crossed the quad to the boys’ locker room and pulled his poncho back over his angry skin. The day was actually looking up. This new Indian girl continued to be nice to him. And he thought he might start working on Abby now, too. She was obviously dying to be made a vampire. So to speak. He wouldn’t have wished to leave the drama tree just then but for two things: one, the almost subconscious knowledge that the longer he stayed, the more likely he was to screw everything up. And two: he’d just spied Victor Bradley, walking alone. Not surrounded by sycophants or anxious girls, but alone.

And now Doug was, of his own free will, walking into the locker room. He hadn’t been required to take phys. ed. after freshman year, and since then this entire section of campus had been an ecological dead zone as far as he was concerned. This felt reckless and stupid. Not-ready-to-face-Lord-Vader stupid.

He was a vampire, sure, but the jocks were werewolves. They always had been, he understood that now. They had been bitten by something as kids and had changed in ways he hadn’t, and you needed a farmer’s almanac and a tent full of gypsies to foresee their sudden, savage benders.

He knew what happened when a vampire bit a person, and turned him. How much worse when a vampire turned a werewolf?

'Victor?' Doug said. His voice echoed through the stink. Was the locker room always this bad? No, of course not — it was his new heightened sense of smell. It always buzzed at human odors. Others, not so much. But this was even worse than he would have expected — it was sewage, rotten eggs, sulfur.

'Victor?'

Victor appeared then, from behind a locker bay. Half undressed. The star of the football team. The Boy Most Likely. He wrinkled his nose.

'Is that you?' Victor said.

'Yeah, if you mean…What do you mean?'

'Is it you that smells like that. It smells…'

'Dead,' said Doug. 'It’s us, isn’t it? We smell each other.'

The locker room was cool and windowless, like a crypt. They stood silently, neither really looking at the other.

'I was out of my mind that night,' said Victor.

'I know. I mean, I figured.'