Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

brandished a big silver crucifix from his backpack—'take that!'

'Take that?'

'Yeah. Anything?'

'No, but like you said before, I’m Jewish. Where’d you get that thing?'

'Dark Matter. Here.'

Jay threw Doug the cross. Doug fumbled it, picked it up off the wet leaves. 'What am I supposed to do with it?' he said.

'It’s real silver. Plated. It doesn’t hurt?'

'Silver is for werewolves.'

'Some sources say vampires, too. Try sucking on it a little.'

Doug sucked on the cross. It tasted like fork. 'Nothing.'

Jay crossed the cross off his list, then they repeated the whole process again with a Star of David.

'Nope,' said Doug.

Jay tossed a pile of rice at Doug’s feet. Doug looked at the rice, then back at Jay. 'What? Do I eat it?'

'How many grains are there?' Jay asked.

'I don’t know — I’m not autistic, I’m a vampire.'

'But you don’t care? Some sources say if you toss grain on the ground in front of a vampire, he has to stop whatever he’s doing and count it.'

'These ‘sources’ wouldn’t all be Wikipedia, would they?'

'Mmmmm,' Jay hummed, 'mostly no. In fact — you know something? Remember when Vampire Hunters mentioned that thing about vampires having to be invited in? I remembered today where I’d heard it before. It’s in that Cody Southern vampire movie that’s always on cable. Love Bites.'

'I don’t remember that.'

'No, it’s true. I wasn’t sure either, but you can watch the whole thing online. And you know what else? Practically all the good vampires turn normal at the end because they kill the head vampire.'

Doug nodded slowly. 'Yeah. Yeah, I’ve read a comic like that, too. If you kill the vampire that made you a vampire you’re not a vampire anymore.'

'Well,' Jay interjected, 'in Love Bites it had to be the head vampire. Like, he’s the top of the family tree. Killing the gang leader vampire wasn’t good enough — Cody had to kill the antique store owner who made the whole gang.'

'That’s just a movie, though.'

'Yeah. It doesn’t really make sense, anyway. Like, how do you know who’s the head vampire? Wouldn’t the vampire that made the head vampire be the real head? Or the one who made him? How far back do you go?'

Doug thought about this.

'Anyway,' said Jay. 'The list. So. I know you usually cut through that Presbyterian parking lot on the way to school.'

'Yeah.'

'Do you still? Because then we’d know you can walk on hallowed ground.'

'Well, I can definitely bike on hallowed ground. If the hallowed ground really extends to the parking lot,' said Doug. 'Is this really an issue? Cemeteries are hallowed ground. Old-school vampires lived in cemeteries.'

'Hmm, yeah. Never mind.' Jay consulted the binder again. 'We know already that you have no trouble with mirrors, of course. Right?'

'Right,' said Doug. What he didn’t say was that in the weeks since the change he had avoided seeing his reflection whenever he could. It was superficially the same, but he felt no connection to the boy in the mirror. Victor had taken that, too. There was only an empty stranger; a funeral mask; a pair of weird, dead eyes. He didn’t see himself reflected at all.

He’d taken to keeping his bedroom mirror covered with a sheet, as if someone had died. Someone had, actually.

'Right,' said Doug again.

'And you’ve probably had garlic.'

'Oh, yeah. My mom puts it in everything. There was extra garlic in those Manwiches. Do you remember,' said Doug, 'in fifth or sixth grade, when she read that it was good for your heart or something? She used to have my dad and me take garlic pills, eat garlic at every meal…'

Jay was looking more and more uncomfortable. He nodded gravely as if recollecting some great tragedy, until Doug finally said, 'What?'

'That’s why…' said Jay, 'people call you Meatball.'

'What? No, it’s not.'

Jay stared at the ground.

Doug was incredulous. 'They call me Meatball because I’m short and…husky.'

'And smell like Italian food.'

'Shut up!'

'You don’t anymore!' Jay rushed to add. 'But you did back then. Especially during PE. It was like you sweated garlic.'

'Why didn’t you tell me? Shit!'

A fresh breeze ruffled the trees. A dead leaf caught in the hair of Jay’s heavy head.

'I don’t think anybody means anything by it anymore,' he said. 'It’s just something to call you. Cat isn’t being mean. She’s nice. Stuart calls you Meatball, but you guys are still friends, right? And Adam? He wasn’t even in sixth grade with us. He’s a senior.'

'Adam,' Doug snarled. 'That guy is completely full of shit. I saw him in Planet Comix over the summer. Twice. You were with me one of the times, for the McFadden signing.'

'Yeah. I guess he doesn’t like admitting he reads comics.'

'I guess he doesn’t like admitting a lot of things. You ever notice how he’s nicer to us when we’re away from school? But even then he’s still looking over his shoulder like the girls’ volleyball team is gonna jump out from behind a tree.'

Jay shrugged.

'Look, never mind,' said Doug. 'Just…what’s next.'

Jay looked at his list. 'Holy water. But I couldn’t get any.'

'And after that?'

'Um…here. Eat this mustard.'

16 Secret vampire shit

AT FIVE TO MIDNIGHT the boys approached the gate of the Hawthorne for the second time.

'I’m going to get in trouble for staying out this late,' said Jay.

'I know.'

'I’m sorry about the garlic thing.'

'I know.'

They unloaded Doug’s bike from the trunk and tucked it behind a hedge.

'I have my phone. I’ll call you if…something happens.' Doug thought this sounded stupid as soon as he said it. Of course 'something' was going to happen — he was going to walk into a house full of vampires. The thought that this alone was not necessarily going to be the lead story of the evening made him suddenly cold. He marched quickly from the car before Jay could offer any words of encouragement. His feet were damp.

The gravel driveway looped like a racetrack around spare ornamental shrubbery and an expanse of lawn so large and plain that it seemed designed to testify to how much land this woman could waste. Doug had rarely