Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

'It is a favorite of his. Mayhap it’s even true! Something has to be. But to return to my earlier point, Douglas: it would be passing strange that our cousin should have ennobled the three boys and also you. And so soon after Victor!' She laughed airily. 'Is this woman trying to assemble a baseball team?'

'We could play night games,' Doug said, because he was nervous. I could be batboy.

'Is there anything you’d like to tell me about your benefactor, Douglas? Is there anything you’d like to tell me about Victor?'

'I don’t know what you’re talking about. Part of the reason…part of the reason I’m here is because Victor and I have been talking about the vampire who made us.' Doug saw Cassiopeia flinch at the word 'vampire,' but he pressed on, seeing an opening. 'I told Victor that I was going to try to find out more about her, and he wanted me to tell him everything I learned. He wants to find her.' This wasn’t the least bit true. Doug and Victor had been talking more and more at school, even nodding to each other in the halls, but in fact the hot mystery vampire never came up. 'He keeps bugging me about it. Like…he knows I’m smarter, so he figures I’ll have better luck figuring out who she is. It’s like I’m doing his homework for him.' He forced himself to take a sip of his tea. Wait for it, thought Doug. Don’t be too obvious.

'Hm. I suppose we all want to discover her.'

'I guess. I mean, I’m curious, but it’s all he talks about.'

'And has he indicated why he’s so keen to make contact?'

It was just what Doug hoped she’d ask, and he nearly pounced out of his skin. 'You know…I didn’t think so, but…a while ago, like weeks ago, he mentioned this movie he’d seen where a vampire — an ennobled person, I mean — turned normal after killing his…ennobler.'

Cassiopeia put her teacup very firmly down on the table. Not on its saucer. Not on a coaster, even.

'I’m sure it’s nothing,' Doug added. 'I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble or anything. It probably doesn’t even work, right? Killing your maker? I told him you’d probably have to kill the head of the family or something — and, besides, don’t do it. I said.'

Cassiopeia stood. So that was it. 'I must beg your forgiveness, Douglas. There is a matter that needs attending.' Doug stood as she passed him, and he turned to see Asa suddenly at his shoulder like Droopy Dawg, like you’d only just wrapped him up in chains and nailed him inside a crate and shipped him to Albuquerque but, surprise! there was Asa.

'Does it work, though?' Doug asked Cassiopeia. 'If it does, I won’t tell Victor ’cause, hell, who wants to encourage him, right? But if it doesn’t, I can get the whole stupid idea out of his—'

'Of course it does not work. I bid you good night and good hunting.' With that Signora Polidori swept out of the room.

Doug looked at Asa. Asa looked back, not so much at Doug as at the empty Doug-shaped space he’d soon be leaving in their drawing room.

'If young master would—'

'Yeah, yeah.'

They walked the familiar path back to the front door, Doug all the while staring out of the corner of his eye at Asa’s face, smelling his strange smell. He remembered, suddenly, the back lot of a cafe near Jay’s house. It was one of those unwanted places, free from adult supervision, where you were permitted the pleasure of doing nothing. He and Jay and Stuart had spent a lot of time there in middle school. Asa smelled like the Dumpster in that back lot, the surprisingly sweet smell of pastries slowly melting into flies’ nests and poison. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you told a person, but it made Doug feel kindly toward him.

'You know, um…Absinthe told me about your and Cassiopeia’s…relationship,' Doug said, and Asa paused at the door. 'I think it’s really…Well. I wouldn’t do that to a person, personally.'

Asa’s long, bell face was absolutely still and silent.

'I just wanted you to know that I understand…It must be really hard, your…situation. And I just wanted to…say that.' Asa opened the great door and stood to one side. Fine, thought Doug. He stepped out onto the front stairs and into the night air.

'Young master,' said Asa behind him.

Doug turned. Asa was still standing in the doorframe, blue-skinned against the warm embers of the hall behind him. Silhouetted like this, Doug could just barely make out a jagged smile in the corner of Asa’s lips, like a crack in his bell.

'My mistress misspoke. It works,' he said, and closed the door.

29 The undyed

OPHELIA HOSTED a hair-dyeing party for all the girls playing Puerto Ricans. It was something of a magnanimous gesture, after fighting tooth and nail for the right to keep her brown-sugar hair and pink bangs. Her family had Puerto Rican friends in New York, she argued — real Puerto Rican New Yorkers — and they didn’t all have black hair. But Samantha Todd, the theater director, was adamant — now that she’d cast Sejal in the leading role she wanted the other girls to match.

Mostly they watched the Natalie Wood West Side Story and ate. Ophelia, Sophie, Jenny Underwood, Emily Purvis, and Jordan Belledin needed to dye their hair, but of course Sejal didn’t. And Abby was playing a white girl, essentially an extra. And Cat was just there to assistant direct the whole thing.

'I can deal with the hair,' said Jordan as Cat picked across her scalp, 'but are we really going to wear dark makeup? Isn’t that supposed to be offensive or something?'

'Offensive?' said Sejal.

'I don’t mean offensive to have dark skin,' Jordan assured her, though it hadn’t occurred to Sejal to consider this until she was assured not to. 'I mean, it’s blackface, right? I think people get really upset if you wear blackface.'

'This’ll be brown face,' said Sophie. 'And brown neck.'

'And arms,' said Emily.

'You’re so lucky,' Jordan told Sejal. 'You don’t have to change anything.'

'Good thing we’re not doing Grease.' Ophelia laughed.

The girls fell silent. Sejal supposed they were thinking the same thing she was: If they were doing Grease, she wouldn’t be playing the lead.

'Crap, that’s my phone,' said Cat. 'I have goopy gloves.'

Ophelia fished the phone from Cat’s boxy velvet purse and sang, 'It’s Ja-ay.'

'Put it up to my ear. Hey, Jay! No, I’m at Ophelia’s. A bunch of us girls are here, trimming each other’s bushes.'

A couple of girls gave scandalized shrieks, and everyone laughed except Emily, whom Sejal had come to think took everything a little too seriously. 'Aah! Tell him we’re not really, Cat!' Emily said. 'He’ll spread it around school.'

'Shave a lightning bolt in mine!' shouted Ophelia.

'He knows when Cat’s joking,' Sejal told Emily. 'He’ll not spread it around.'

'He’ll tell Doug, maybe,' Emily whimpered.

'So what if he does?' said Abby. 'Doug doesn’t care about your business.'

Silence, again, apart from Cat’s brassy laugh — Jay must have said something funny. She looked abruptly startled, chastened, as if she’d just remembered she was in church and surrounded by sober, serious people. 'It just got really quiet here,' she said into the phone.

What did the other girls think when they heard his name? wondered Sejal. Surely they couldn’t be having the same thoughts as she. It really was a ridiculous idea. The way Doug had been acting, and Abby’s decline, and the stories from that store robbery and the bat that night — you didn’t just put all those pieces together any way you pleased. They had their own order, or lack of order. And although these pieces were all cut from Western cloth, she knew how it would sound to American ears if she, the Indian girl, started