Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire (21 page)

“Please, Johann!” I pleaded as I realized what an idiotic idea climbing up there had been. He was a vampire. He could probably fly. But then again, he seemed to be afraid of bats. “Look, I know I messed up big time and you guys probably all hate me and rightfully so…”

“I’ll never understand how humans can think we are the monsters,” he said.

“You’re right,” I told him. “We’re so much worse. But you have to believe me when I say, I never meant to hurt you guys or put you in any danger. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’m sorry.”

He looked away. “Why are you here?”

“For Kayla,” I pleaded. “I found her and…” Before I could get any more out, he slammed the window and dashed out of his room. “What the…?” I wriggled across the branch to get a better look in the house, but then I heard the front door burst open and he was on the ground beneath me.

“Get down!” he commanded. “You will take me to her.”

“Wow,” I said, picking my way down through the branches. “I had a big speech ready with all the reasons you should help me…” I dropped down to the grass beside him and fell on my butt. “But that was easy.”

He reached down, grabbed the back of my shirt, and lifted me to my feet as if I were a marionette. Then he pulled me close to his face. His black eyes glinted in the moonlight. I shuddered, fearing this would be my last breath before he drained me of my blood. “Shut it, Yosie,” he growled.

“Okay,” I squeaked. He dropped me like a cat that was tired of a dead mouse. I slumped to the ground then picked myself up. “Follow me.”

We jogged three blocks to the big house and stood in the front yard. “She’s in there,” I said, pointing.

He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “This is where the love zombies live.”

“I know. It’s like freakin’
America’s Next Top Zombie
in there,” I told him. “Plus that…thing that runs HAG and my crazy social worker are inside, too, but…” Before I could finish yammering, he was striding up the front porch steps to the door with superhuman confidence.

“Maybe we should think of a plan first!” I said, scurrying along behind him, but nothing was going to stop him. “Johann!” I whisper-yelled as I stepped into the eerie hall. “Johann, where’d you go?” I made my way toward the back of the house, past closed doors and
a dark stairway. “We should really stick together, you know.” I saw a light shining out from a half-open door. I took a deep breath and pushed it open.

Johann stood in the center of the room, half undressed and surrounded by desperate love zombies who clung to him, tearing his clothes from his limbs.

“Jeez, Johann,” I said, stamping my foot. “Is this really the time to be getting it on with these zombie girls?”

“Yosie!” He reached for me like a man being pulled under water by piranhas. “Make them stop.”

“Take me. End this. Free me,” they moaned and pawed at him.

I stomped up and grabbed them by their skinny arms, tugging them away from him. “Okay, enough. Let go.” But each time I got one off of him another would worm in between us and cling to him. “What do they want?” I asked, still yanking girls away.

“I don’t know!” he cried.

“Bite me,” one of them wailed. “Bite me!”

“You bite me!” I said and shoved her to the side. She fell like a crumpled sock then picked herself up and came at him again. “Can’t you do something?” I asked Johann.

“Like what?” he said.

“I don’t know. What would the Lost Boys do? Use your superhuman strength or turn into a bat or something!”

For a half second, he looked bewildered.

“I’ll see why they’re freaking out,” someone called from the hallway. I knew that voice too well.

“It’s Maron!” I whisper-screamed and ran to hide behind the door.

Johann closed his eyes, bowed his head, wrapped his arms around himself, and exploded. “Aaaargh!” he yelled and shook like a dog that just came out of a pond. Girls flew off his arms and legs and landed heaped in a perfect circle around his feet.

Maron stormed into the room, took one look at the strange guy and stopped. “What the…?” she said, but Johann didn’t waste any time. He turned and flew through the open window into the darkness of the night.

Great,
I thought.
There goes the wimpiest vampire in the world.

w
hile Maron screamed at the lovesick zombies dragging themselves across the floor moaning for Johann, I slipped into the hallway. All I had to do was find Kayla and get us both out. That was it. Everybody else could fend for themselves. I had my own problems to deal with now. Namely Maron, who was still yelling at the zombies. At least she wasn’t after me. Yet.

In the kitchen, I found a staircase leading to the basement. A light shone up the steps and I heard voices. Of course, I thought. Where else would the scariest people in the world be? Could they be in the dining room? No. Perhaps on the back deck having a nice cookout? No way. The only possibility was down the cellar stairs. If I were watching myself in a horror movie, I would call me an idiot and tell me to get out now. But I couldn’t do that, because my friend was down there and she needed my help.

I searched around the kitchen for a butcher knife or a heavy candelabra to clobber someone with, but other than a wobbly table and a few broken chairs, the room was bare. Apparently love zombies didn’t throw dinner parties. So, without a weapon or a plan, I did the only thing possible (besides peeing in my pants)—I went down the stairs.

“Turn her a little to the left,” a man said, then a flash went off. “A little more.” Another flash. “Push her head to the right.” More flashes. “Yeah, like that. That’s right. Work it, baby. Work it, girl.”

I pressed my body against the dank cement wall and slowly crept forward. Between me and the voice were racks and racks of clothes. Mesh hoodies. Tiny tube tops. Plunging V-necks. Itty bitty micro-miniskirts and ripped-up fishnet hose. I scurried behind one of the racks and peered out through the hangers.

Huge lights illuminated a plain gray backdrop. A lanky guy with a frizzy comb-over and handlebar mustache clutched a camera. “Put some more girls in there,” he said. “Like they’re at a naughty slumber party.” He leered and laughed.

Atonia moved bodies in front of the backdrop. She pushed and pulled them, turning legs out, setting one girl’s hand on her protruding hip bone. She pushed another girl’s forehead back until her chin tilted up and her mouth hung open as if she were in pain.

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy said. “Just like that.” Atonia got out of the way and he started snapping pictures again.

Kayla stood in the center. They’d charcoaled her eyes, teased her hair like she was going to the prom in 1982, and smeared blood-red lipstick across her mouth. She leaned to the left, her arms heavy at her sides, her head dangling and her mouth half open. The other girls slumped over her like rag dolls trying to hug. They were all eyes, hair, pouting mouths, elbows, knees, and hip bones in the same hideous purple dress with black slash marks across the belly that Madison had worn to my trial. I silently gasped and pressed my hand against my mouth. It worse than I imagined. They were being forced to model Zombie Apparel!

“Some guy got in the house!” Maron shouted, as she clomped down the stairs behind me. “He had them all in a frenzy.”

Atonia and the photographer stopped the shoot and turned around. I was trapped and there was no place for me to go but inside the clothing racks, like a little kid hiding in a department store. I ducked and tried to climb inside the racks, but my foot got caught and I fell. Hangers clattered, fabric ripped, I sprawled face-first into the center of the floor, covered in trashy dresses. Nobody moved. Everybody just stared at me. So I stood up and tossed aside the clothes clinging to me. “Hey, Ms. Babineaux!” I said. “What a coincidence.”

Atonia blinked, trying to make sense of everything. “Did you…?” She looked at Maron but pointed at me. “Is she…?”

“I don’t know what she’s doing here,” Maron said.

“Just thought I’d help out!” I said and started cramming skirts and shirts back onto the rack.

Maron glared and came at me like a bull. I faked left then ran right and grabbed a rack of clothes. I spun it around and pushed as hard as I could toward Maron. It caught her in the boob and she stumbled off balance. As she careened sideways, clutching her right breast, I knocked over three more racks of clothes. “Run, Kayla! Run!” I screamed and dashed up the stairs. I exploded out of the stairwell into the kitchen and lurched around the corner where I hit a wall of girls. They packed the hall, moaning and shuffling.

“Move! Move! Get out of the way!” I yelled as I tried to push through them, but they were stacked three wide and five deep and drawn forward by some invisible force. I turned and ran the other way, into the kitchen again, still screaming for Kayla to get a move on. I barreled across the room toward the murky moonlight of the back porch. I reached for the door. I fumbled for the lock. I yanked and clawed at the metal, but something held me back. Hands around my waist dragged me down and pulled me to the floor. My knees crashed against old linoleum. I grappled for a corner of a cabinet, but something jerked me backward. I was flat on my belly being hauled against my will with my fingernails scraping across the floor. “No! No! No!” I screamed. “Help me! Somebody help me!”

Maron rolled me over on my back in the center of the kitchen. She huffed and snorted above me, her red
hair shooting from her head like flames as she pinned my arms to my side. “Get off me, you fat cow!” I yelled as I thrashed and bucked. My knee connected with her kidney and she howled. I did it again and again until she let go of me and rolled off, writhing in pain. I struggled to my feet and came face-to-face with Atonia.

“You get away from me,” I warned. “I don’t know what you are or what you’re doing, but you’re not going to get away with it!”

She didn’t speak. She just kept coming, slowly, steadily, silently. The doorway to the hall was still choked with zombie girls. Now the stairwell was clogged with the photographer and the girls coming up from the photo shoot. And between me and the back door was Maron, who’d managed to get to her feet, although she was clutching her side and breathing hard.

As Atonia got closer to me, I took a swing at her, but she was quick. She ducked and I missed. I ran in a circle and swung at her again but, like a cobra, she moved the top half of her body out of my reach then righted herself and kept advancing. I’d never been in a fight. Never taken a martial arts class or self-defense. There was only one way I knew how to use my body.

I counted in my head,
Five, six, seven, eight
. I clasped my hands in front of my chest, then reached into a high V above my head, I bent my knees, swung my arms, and just as Atonia lunged for me, I sprang, kicking my right leg forward and my left leg back in a hurdler jump. My toe caught her in the center of the chest and knocked
her back. She stumbled, stunned. Blinking at me.

When she got her balance, she gasped for air and said, “Was that a cheerleading jump?”

“Yeah!” I said, pumping my fist. “And there’s more where that came from!”

Atonia stood up straight and shook her head slowly.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Maron said then she laughed. “We hate cheerleaders.”

“Join the club,” I told them, readying myself to jump again.

In the fuzzy gray light I could see a change come over Atonia. She ducked her head against her chest, rounded her shoulders, and collapsed in on herself. Then the top of her scalp beneath the spiky black hair split open and peeled back. A shrunken, shriveled wretch writhed forward out of the shell of her body. Sparse tufts of gray hair stuck out from her bulbous skull. Her nose, a pointed beak, thrust forward sniffing at me. She opened her mouth, revealing rows of crooked, razor-sharp fangs.

“Holy crap!” I said, paralyzed with fear. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Neither did the photographer who gaped at the wretched creature and ran screaming for the door.

“Aw, you stupid ninny,” Maron yelled. She swiped, trying to grab him, but he wriggled past her, out the door and she made no move to chase him.

I looked back at the miserable creature Atonia had become. Wings unfurled from her shoulder blades and she flew at me. I threw my arm in front of my face then
hit the floor before I knew what happened. “Sleep,” she rasped, reaching for me with bony claws. “Sleep.” Her claws dug into my collarbone and my body grew heavy, as if I had been suspended in thick, liquid amber.

“No,” I moaned. “No.” I couldn’t move beneath her enormous weight perched on top of my chest, but I could feel her draining something from me. Taking it for herself. My childhood slipped away. Mornings, snuggled in my parents’ bed, my tiny feet finding a warm spot behind my mother’s knee. The smell of peanut butter toast and hot chocolate with marshmallows melting, steam thawing my frozen nose after sledding. My grandmother showing me how to pluck ripe black raspberries from the vines behind her barn, the taste bursting in my mouth, and then a pie cooling on the wire rack while we squeezed fresh lemonade. Aunt JoJo running alongside me, cheering me to pedal faster and hold on tight as she let go and sent me coasting on two wheels.

My first kiss. Kyle McIlhaney, red hair and freckles, tasted like barbecue potato chips and I pushed him away. Holding hands with Jarrett Duran, the first time my heart truly fluttered and how much I sweat when we went into the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven at Chloe’s sixth-grade birthday party. A new girl in eighth grade. Geeky in her braids and retainer, slurring all her
S
s. Madison. I didn’t laugh. Invited her to the pool. We played Sharks and Minnows and ate Laffy Taffy then pinky swore to be best friends forever because who
else would love “Hollaback Girl” and the Chronicles of Narnia as much as we did?

Atonia was draining it all from me, feasting off my memories and taking my life force for her own, sucking me dry like she had all the other girls. She would leave me a zombie, stuck between life and death, begging Johann to end the agony by sinking his fangs into my flesh. But I didn’t want to die. I had too much to do. Too many things left to accomplish. I fought to open my eyes and when I did, I saw a beautiful thing.