Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

Cat made a face. 'That word doesn’t even mean anything anymore. There’s a bunch of different styles in there: darkwave, batcave, deathrock, death metal, queercore, slowcore, nocore, shoegaze, postindustrial—'

'Jesus. How many different kinds of music are there?'

'I don’t know. Four hundred and twenty-seven. Lots.'

'At Booktopia there’s only, like, five,' said Doug.

'Booktopia doesn’t know dick,' said Cat, and she turned to Jay. 'So what do we do to get me using Linux?'

'Well,' said Jay, 'do you have all your files backed up?'

'Hell, no.'

'We should back them up first.'

'I don’t know anything about computers,' offered Sejal to no one in particular. Doug nonetheless treated it as an opening.

'I don’t know anything about music, apparently,' he said to her. 'It’s like…it’s like how many different kinds of musical labels do you need? There’s almost as many as there are bands. Like in the future we’ll reach some singularity and the ratio will be exactly one to one. ‘Hey, you like the Rolling Stones?’ ‘What kind of music do they play?’ ‘Oh, you know — mid to late Rolling Stones.’'

Sejal smiled. Barely. If there had been a smile-o-meter on her face, the needle would have stopped at 'Polite.' Doug retreated and sat next to Cat on the bed.

'You’re in good hands — Jay really knows computers,' he said. Jay gave him kind of a weird look but he pressed on. 'Way more than I do. He grew up learning a lot of stuff we didn’t ’cause he was homeschooled.'

'No way,' said Cat.

'Up until sixth grade,' Jay admitted.

His father had sent away for curricula and textbooks and Cricket magazine and acted as Jay’s one and only teacher until he was ten. He had play dates with other homeschooled kids, and of course with Doug. Then Jay’s mother came home one day with a child development study that concluded that homeschooled kids did worse in college interviews than their traditionally schooled peers. His parents panicked and rushed him into Doug’s junior high. It didn’t matter that another study refuted the first one just six months later — the damage was done.

It was as if he’d been raised in captivity, at Sea World maybe, and was used to popping his head above water every hour and showing off what he knew. But now out of a misguided concern for his welfare, he was being released into the worst kind of ocean. Middle school was shark-infested water, and even the other dolphins couldn’t understand why Jay was so eager to jump through hoops.

This had been an uncomfortable time for Doug. Jay had never met School Doug before, and School Doug didn’t want to be thought of as the sort of person who’d be friends with a boy like Jay. He hadn’t been so complimentary then.

'Seriously. Jay’s, like, a computer genius.'

Jay glanced at Doug and connected a hard drive to Cat’s laptop.

'What’s that for?' asked Cat.

'I’m going to drag all your files over here,' Jay answered. 'I won’t keep them or anything. I’ll delete them after we’re done.'

'You better. I got tons of lesbian porn on there.'

Jay flinched. Cat laughed.

'Kidding.'

'So. Speaking of lesbians,' said Doug.

It was a spectacular segue. It exploded and then lay there like a pile of dead clowns.

'Wow,' said Cat.

'I mean…I just…I was thinking about what you said about Ophelia.'

'I only said it because you asked,' Cat insisted. 'I probably shouldn’t have. Don’t spread it around, okay? She should get to decide who knows and who doesn’t. If she even is gay.'

'I think she is brave,' said Sejal. 'If she is a homosexual. It is not always easy, no? Even in America?'

'Are there gay people in India?' asked Doug.

Sejal shrugged. 'There are a billion people there, so…'

So maybe Sejal hadn’t been offended the other night after all. Or if she had been, she’d gotten over it pretty quick. Doug, for his part, didn’t think he really had much of an opinion about gay people. He didn’t know any. Except maybe Ophelia, now. If anything, he was possibly a little sick of them. They were always popping up in shows and movies and in the books he read. They used to be comic relief, but at some point it was like you weren’t allowed to laugh anymore, and the gay characters were Very Serious. Their whole character would be about them being gay, and how serious and unfunny and also completely normal it was. In each new book, especially, there seemed to be one or two. Like the author wanted to prove what an open-minded, big-tent guy he was.

And, because he was thinking about books, and because the room had been filling with a cold silence and someone had to jump in, he said, 'What do you guys like to read?'

'Kelly Link kicks ass,' said Cat. 'I read a lot of comics.'

'Mmm…' said Sejal. 'I am trying to think of someone I’ve read of whom you would have heard. Do you know Feluda? No? Jhumpa Lahiri?' she ventured, to dead stares. 'Zadie Smith? Nick Hornby?'

'That last one sounds familiar,' said Doug. 'I think I’ve heard of Feluda, but I can’t remember what she writes.'

'She is a he. And he’s a fictional character, not the author.'

'What kind of comics do you read?' Jay asked Cat.

'Um…I like Meat Cake and this one graphic novel called Ghost World. And a lot of Vertigo stuff. Especially Sandman, but of course that’s not a series anymore.'

'Yeah, I liked Sandman,' said Jay. 'I have a few collections of it. Now that guy writes movies and books and things.'

'Cat is having me read it right now,' said Sejal. 'I like it okay so far.'

'It gets better, I swear,' said Cat.

'It’s gets better for a while, but…' said Doug, 'Neil Gaiman doesn’t know how to end things, you know? He builds everything up to this huge battle in Dreamland and then, poof, it doesn’t happen.'

'Um, spoiler alert,' said Jay.

'It doesn’t happen because a big battle would have been juvenile,' said Cat. 'It — Sejal, cover your ears and hum for a bit unless you want the ending ruined.'

Sejal covered her ears and sang something Indian with lots of syllables.

'Okay,' said Cat, but she couldn’t continue without laughing. Sejal laughed back but didn’t stop singing. 'Okay. The Sandman doesn’t fight because he’s ready to die. The mess he gets himself into is actually this huge plan he’s been setting up for centuries without even realizing it.'

'I know,' said Doug. 'I know. Because he’s depressed, and he doesn’t want to be the Dream King anymore, but he doesn’t have the guts to just off himself.'

'He feels too responsible for his kingdom,' said Cat, her voice getting sharp. 'So he has this…secret plan to remove himself and be replaced with someone better, but the only way he can do it is to…not even let himself know he’s doing it and…I’m not explaining it well.'

'Because it’s dumb,' said Doug.

'It’s about him realizing he’s not a good person,' Jay mumbled. 'He knows deep down he should change, but he’s too proud to admit he was ever wrong.'

'Yeah,' said Cat, and she smiled at Jay.

After a moment she threw a pillow at Sejal, and Sejal stopped singing.

'What was that?'

'Jana Gana Mana,' said Sejal. 'It’s the Indian National Anthem.'

'You guys are probably right,' said Doug. He got down on the floor with Sejal. 'Jay’s always right about this