Extraordinary<li> (14 page)

“Those faces,” I said. “Are those …?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Aren’t they lovely? They all got their wishes, but they didn’t keep their end of the deal. See the one in the bonnet? Her job was to count all the grains of rice in a bag. And the bag kept refilling itself! Ha!”

“That’s terrible.”

“But on the bright side,” he said as the last of the smoke withered away, “there’s another option for you.”

His grin got even wider.

“What?” I asked.

“You can’t really be killed if you’re already dead,” he said. “So if you want, I can arrange to have you made into a vampire ahead of time. You’ll satisfy the void in the universe, and you’ll still be able to walk the earth and kiss your boyfriend.”

“I can’t possibly convert,” I said. “There’s a whole process you have to go through before you can do the operation. You have to sign a letter of intent at least a week prior, and the dance is in a few days.”

“Oh, I know that,” he said. “You need a letter of
intent
a week ahead, then a letter of
consent
on the day of the
conversion. But we can get you one of those when the time comes, and you signed the letter of intent on Friday.”

“No I didn’t!” I said.

“Sure you did.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his overcoat. “You probably should have read the thing I had you sign when I dropped off the Wells Fargo Wagon, kiddo.”

I felt my face starting to burn.

“I like to plan ahead,” he said. “I can’t use the magic I get for myself, so I have to find creative ways to make it pay. I have a vampire buddy who pays me very, very well to bring him girls he can convert legally. More than I’d make using magic for stock tips or to rob a bank.”

He smiled again, used a paper towel to wipe his hands, then shoved it in his mouth and took a bite.

“Your buddy sounds like a sick bastard to me,” I said. “What, does he get his kicks converting girls?”

Gregory swallowed. “It’s like a spiritual thing for him,” he said. “Like a missionary performing baptisms.”

“Right,” I said. “That operation isn’t just dunking someone’s head in the water.”

He moved in closer, looking at me like Jason’s old pet snake used to look at mice just before it leaped out and broke their necks so it could swallow them whole.

“You won’t even have to feel it,” he said. “I’ll cast a little spell to put you to sleep, and then my vampire friend will take care of everything. You’ll still die the minute the dance ends, but the death won’t take, since you’ll already be undead. It’s either that or you can drop dead and stay that way. Your choice, kiddo.”

Some choice. Dying on the spot or becoming a teenager
forever. Either way, my chances of ever being an extraordinary person were shot. You can’t grow when your brain doesn’t mature.

Gregory took another bite of his paper towel, then offered me a piece. I shook my head.

“Even if I got converted, isn’t there a fifty-fifty chance I’d die and stay dead?” I asked. “It’s a dangerous operation.”

“Oh, we can do better than that,” he said. “That statistic is a bit skewed by all the vampires who try to do conversion without knowing what they’re doing. They don’t exactly teach it down at the Shaker Heights Institute of Technology, you know. You have to learn by trial and error. A vampire who can do it well can almost guarantee you’ll come out okay.”

“And this sicko friend of yours can do it well?”

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s a real pro.”

Even back when becoming a vampire was a major status symbol a few years back, I never went through that “omigod I wish I could be a vampire and live forever” phase, like a lot of girls.

Having to be seventeen for a full year is bad enough.

If I had to stay this way, I’d just end up all emo and mopey and douchey, like every other teenage vampire. Like, all the dark side that I kept under the surface would probably become all of who I was. There was no way I would end up being some intellectual hippie peace chick. I’d be carrying my crowbar everywhere I went, and I’d be strong enough to do a whole lot of damage with it.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” said Gregory. “You can take your chances and try to get Fred to go out with you if you want. But you’ll never manage it. We both know it. If
the dance comes around and you don’t think you’re getting kissed, I’ll be by your car, waiting. I’ll have a letter of consent ready for you to sign, and a cigar that’ll put you to sleep.”

I gave him a dirty look and tried to be brave.

“Go to hell,” I said.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “Take my word for it, you do
not
want to be there during tourist season.”

He wandered over to the bathroom mirror and started drawing in the fog with his finger—the drawing was either a dog’s face or a naked woman; I couldn’t tell. But I could certainly guess. He signed it by writing a swear word in the bottom corner.

“It’s really very nice of me,” he said, “giving you a way to get around the deal. I get paid and all, but it’s still very nice of me, don’t you think?”

“You’re a dick,” I said.

“So’s your old man,” he chuckled.

Everything he had said kept sinking in, until finally I buried my face in my hands and just started to cry. I was facing death, and it was all my fault for being such a terrible person.

When I dared to look up, Gregory was gone.

I sat there and sobbed and thought for a few minutes about all the things I had done wrong.

I was a fraud. A completely ordinary girl who wanted more misery than happiness in the world. More violence than peace.

And now I had to either seduce a vampire or choose between dying and becoming a vampire myself, which meant that I’d be this miserable and pathetic forever.

I wanted to grow up.

I wanted to live my
life
.

After a while, Amber came into the bathroom.

“Jennifer?” she said. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You seemed so happy a few minutes ago!”

“I’m not sure I can ever be happy again,” I told her.

She looked over at the mirror, at the swear words and the drawing of the naked woman, then back at me.

“Did you do that?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Did Mutual do something wrong?” she asked. “You’ve got to give him some time, sweetie. He’s still new to all this stuff.”

“No,” I said. “He’s been perfect today. It’s all me.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m a terrible, terrible person,” I said.

“Oh, sweetie!” she said as she gave me a massive hug. “No you’re not. You’re awesome! Everyone thinks so.”

“No,” I said. “I’m terrible, and fat.”

“You’re no fatter than I am. Who cares? You look great!”

“I’m also mean, and rotten, and a big fraud. And now I have to get Fred to kiss me at the dance.”

“Okay, back up,” she said. “Explain that last part.”

I took a deep breath and gave her the short version of the story. The little weirdo who had called me Grimace was some sort of magical pre-human who was using a limited allowance of magic to grant me a few wishes, including having Mutual come to town, but now I had to get Fred to kiss me at the dance, or I’d take my last breath in the high school
gym—if I didn’t want to become a vampire, so the death wouldn’t take. And it was all because I’d wished for Cathy to be miserable.

When I got through the story, Amber’s mouth was hanging open as if she were a codfish or something. I was sure, for a second, that she was horrified to find out what a spiteful, awful person I was.

But then she took a step back, looked at the drawing in the mirror again, and turned back to me and started to chuckle.

“You think this is funny?” I asked.

She moved from chuckling into actual guffawing.

“First of all,” she said, “you are just about the
least
spiteful and hateful person I’ve ever met. You’ve never intentionally harmed anyone or anything, except for some cheap crap from the dollar store.”

“And Cathy Marconi’s nose.”

“That was an accident, sweetie! You felt terrible about it.”

“Seriously, though!” I said. “I’m being stalked by a fairy godmofo, and I’m probably going to die! This isn’t funny!”

“Yes it is!” she said, between laughs. “That’s what’s so funny. There’re, like, a million girls out there who are saying ‘Omigod, I’ll just die if I don’t get to go to the dance!’ But you really mean it.”

She laughed some more.

“You don’t think I’m awful?” I asked.

“Jennifer,” she said, “this is the kind of thing that could
only
happen to
you
. First you almost get kicked out of town over a sixth-grade spelling bee, and now this. You’re totally going to survive it, even if this Grue guy isn’t just messing with you. We’ll all help. It won’t even be hard!”

That was when I first cracked a smile. Not a big one or anything, but one corner of my mouth turned up a little.

I really think that if Amber hadn’t come in and started laughing, I would have ended up sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth and crying. I probably would have kept doing it until the very night of the dance.

But instead, after a few minutes of talking to her, I stood up, stretched out, did a karate chop in the air, and said,

“Well, let’s do this thing.”

Amber always did make me feel braver.

I wasn’t some terrible person who deserved to be miserable, damn it.

I was St. Jennifer the Purple.

And I had the best friends a person could ever want. As long as they were around, I was sure I could handle finding a way to get Fred to kiss me. How hard could it be to get some guy to like me just long enough to kiss me at a dance?

And I could deal with a little weirdo like Gregory Grue. He’d be out of magic and back living in the trees soon enough.

When we came out of the bathroom, the radio was playing the Beatles’ version of “Till There Was You.” Jason and Mutual were still playing Pac-Man.

“You okay?” asked Jason.

“Jennifer’s having a weird night,” Amber said. “You want to tell them everything or should I?”

“You do it,” I said. Then I leaned over and whispered, “But don’t say I wished for Mutual. I’m afraid that might be … too forward, you know?”

She nodded, then gave them a very short version. Their
mouths fell open early, but the way Amber told the story made Jason start to giggle before she was halfway finished.

“So, anyway,” I said when she was done, “I need to apologize in advance, Mutual. I have to kiss another guy. It’s kind of a matter of life and death.”

He hadn’t said a word through the whole story.

But a smile spread across his face, and then he pumped a fist into the air.

“I love Iowa!” he said. “Something is always
happening
around here.”

We all laughed. “Mutual,” I said, “you must be the only person in the world who comes to Iowa for excitement.”

“I don’t know,” said Amber. “Someone from Nebraska might have tried it.”

Amber hadn’t told Mutual that I’d wished for him, but I’m sure it must have occurred to him that it couldn’t have been a coincidence that he got a ticket right around the time I’d been offered three wishes.

“Sounds like we’ve got a mission in front of us,” Jason said.

“An epic quest!” said Amber.

Mutual raised a can of grape soda and launched into a spirited excerpt from the St. Crispin’s Day speech from
Henry V
, the Shakespeare play he and I had both read in sixth grade.

“ ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’!” he shouted.

“Hear, hear!” I shouted.

And for a few minutes, we sat around on top of the washing machines and talked strategy, like getting me kissed was going to be a really fun challenge.

Now, once the “Jenny” in Eileen’s book gets the
assignment to kiss Fred, she and Amber embark on a whole series of harebrained schemes, like convincing Fred that she’s secretly a rock star in disguise (with help from her fairy godmother, who takes out her wand and makes her look just like Elvis—or what’s left of him—every time she takes off her glasses).

Or pretending to be a foreign exchange student.

Or (and this was my favorite) having Amber spread a rumor that every
other
girl in school has the black plague, and Jenny’s the only one he
can
kiss if he doesn’t want to get it himself (I don’t think the plague would
kill
a vampire, but I bet it still isn’t the most pleasant disease to have).

Well, we really did consider all of those that night in the coin laundry on Merle Hay. But we were bright enough to know they’d never work.

In between schemes, the Jenny in the book mostly stares out her window and cries. And all that would happen to her if she didn’t get kissed is that she wouldn’t become the princess of some weird kingdom where they measure ability to govern by one’s ability to get kissed (Eileen never says exactly what she’s going to be the princess
of
, but my guess is Panama City).

Meanwhile, I had death hanging over my head.
Death
, people. The kind of thing that made Hamlet spend the better part of a six-hour play moping around his castle, acting more emo than a teenage vampire.

And what did my friends and I do?

We laughed our heads off.

We few, we happy few.

Yeah, life’s hard, all right. But we were still laughing as we started driving back toward my house.

And you’ve probably noticed that Gregory had never said a word about making me a princess. But there is a princess in this story. In a way.