Ten o’clock inched closer. The waitress threw us glances every fifteen minutes after eight o’clock. We ordered a lot of Coke and we ate two giant slices of peach pie. No doubt my mom and dad were having kittens about where we were. They had good reason to be worried. Their daughter was out hunting monsters on a school night. I’m sure Vince’s parents weren’t thrilled either. There would be panicked phone calls to each other’s houses and the discovery that we’d both lied. Perhaps it would be better if Ned killed us. Then again, we were proving to our parents we were hardcore. That’s why Vince had turned his phone off.
“Honey,” the waitress said as she served us more pie and a fresh fork, “shouldn’t you be going home?” Everyone knew that downtown Los Angeles wasn’t a place where two kids should be at night.
“It’s all right,” said Vince, “our parents are going to pick us up here.”
She walked away. I nodded my appreciation at Vince. An Olympic lying score of nine.
Vince slurped out the dregs of his root beer float. I played with the last fry on my plate. The longer the food lasted, the longer we could put off our inevitable encounter with Ned. The grumble of Vince’s straw as it hit dead bottom made me start. His plate was a graveyard for crumbs and scooped out pie crust.
“More fries?” I offered. I held up the last one as an offering.
“No. Should we go?”
I lowered my eyes, examining the metallic flecks in the tabletop Formica. “I don’t want to.” Just like that. Cat out of the bag. I couldn’t believe those words had come out of me.
“No way,” said Vince.
“I—well—” I readied myself for Vince’s ridicule. I would have teased him if he’d said that to me. Laughing loud and long, I would have called him a chicken. Vince didn’t laugh. He took money out of his wallet and started counting out the bill.
“Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.
“Are you trying to outbrave me, Vince?”
“It’s okay to be scared, Abby.”
“I’m not scared! I’m just nervous! Like stage fright!”
Vince sighed. “If you say so. Do we have some sort of plan?”
“We hide in his room and stake him just before he leaves at dawn.”
“You don’t think he’d notice us?”
“Not if we hide really well.”
“Abby, I bet his room is tiny.”
“We’ll hide in the bathroom.”
“Abby!”
“What’s he going to use the bathroom for? We’ll just stay in there until morning and pow! stake through the heart. Cool, right?”
“He may bring his victim back to his room. His victim might need the bathroom.”
There I had Vince. “It’s my theory Ned does not kill in his room. How would he explain the blood to his neighbors? My dad says blood gets into everything.”
“Okay,” said Vince. “We hide in his bathroom and stake him. That’s a plan. Or we wait by the clerk’s desk, and the clerk calls Ned to see us.”
How could anyone be so naïve? “The clerk is probably his Renfield servant.”
“Renfield?” asked Vince.
“That guy Dracula enslaves to make him help him. The clerk is probably Ned’s Renfield. He’ll help Ned and Ned’ll fang us for sure! My plan makes more sense. It’s the classic movie ambush plan.”
“It won’t work.”
“Shaking hands with the vampire won’t keep us alive!”
“All right,” Vince said, “we’ll see whose plan we use.”
Rock, paper, scissors was the way we’d used ever since we were small to settle disputes of a weighty nature. To my shame, Vince won. His paper completely covered my rock.
“Fine. We’ll do it your way. If I become a vampire, it’ll be your fault. My parents will never live that down.”
The bell jingled as the cafe door opened. Ned walked into the restaurant. I pointed over Vince’s shoulder, and Vince’s face slackened with surprise. The vampire was bringing the action to us.
Ned looked like a copy of one of his pictures in the yearbook. His jeans were worn, his t-shirt frayed at the neck, and he had duct tape on one of his sneakers. Hands shoved in his pocket, he swallowed, and then walked over to us like he was on his way to the gallows.
My fingers dug into my backpack and felt the reassuring angles of my crucifix. Would Ned attack us in a public place?
“Vince,” said Ned. No formal introduction seemed needed.
“Hi—um—Ned,” said Vince. “This is my friend Abby.”
“Hey, Abby.”
You know what makes movies better than real life? A script. When I had imagined this, my dialogue for Ned was better. All our dialogue would have been snappier.
“So,” said Ned. He stood by the table. The waitress glanced in our direction. “I hear you were looking for me.”
“Yeah,” said Vince. “We were.”
“But you started it,” I interrupted. “You’ve been following Vince. That’s stalking.” I rummaged around in my backpack. “Knock it off. Oh, and we found this at the roller rink.”
Ned grabbed the magazine. “Awesome!” he said, forgetting to menace or be sullen, or whatever he was trying to do. “I wondered where I’d left that.”
“Don’t lose it again. Getting the back issues is murder.”
Ned rolled the magazine into a tube and stuffed it into his back pocket. I winced. Handling a collector’s item like that!
After smoothly opening a path to conversation with the magazine, I thought we could get down to it. “What’s up with following Vince? Because we’ve found some notes you wrote to Mr. Cooper, and you know, it’s looking like—”
Ned squirmed.
Vince cut in. “Why are you following my parents? Why are you still so young? Are you a vampire?” Vince fingers drummed on the
