Red Moon Rising (4 page)

“Wow. I guess he's fallen off his pedestal,” Claire says, shaking her head.

We take maybe five more steps before I hear Gunther shout.

“Hey, wulf boy.” Gunther's holding open the passenger door of his Porsche for Alana Gibson. “Did you just call me a poser?”

I turn to Claire, who looks as surprised as I feel. I didn't think Gunther could hear me.

He shuts the door. “That's pretty funny coming from you, since
you're
the one trying to pass as a vamp.” His smile is big. His friends think he's hilarious. He puts on a confused face. “Did you also say you wished I'd shoot myself?”

“I didn't say that I
wished
you would.” Not out loud, anyway.

He walks around to the driver's side and opens the door. “You don't have to be scared. See, I don't care if you want me dead. I feel the same way about you. And by
you
I mean all your kind, but you especially. You don't even have to be dead. As long as you're gone.” He smiles big, his perfect white teeth gleaming.

“Is that a threat?” Claire asks him. “Did you just threaten to kill him?”

Gunther laughs. His idiot friends join in. “No,” he says. “I'm not threatening him or anyone else. I'm just saying how I feel. What I wish.” His eyes have held mine the whole time he's been talking.

Obviously, I need to ignore him and walk away. “Well, I guess it's a good thing for me—and ‘my kind'—that you're
not
in charge. Even though you think you're the king of this school, you don't actually have any power over what happens or doesn't happen to any of us.”

Gunther raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Okay, wulf boy. We'll see.” He pops the collar of his shirt, still wet and still expensive.

I look at him. Claire squeezes my arm, but I'm determined not to lose this stare-down.

Gunther raises his imaginary rifle at me, squints, and pulls the invisible trigger. His lips form another
ka-pow
, but he doesn't make a sound. He lowers his “gun,” then winks at me as he gets in the car.

Claire rolls her eyes. “That was just so cool and fun. Thanks for the experience. Now can we get out of here?”

But I'm not going to leave before he does. It would be like giving up.

Gunther starts the engine, then the car takes off.

I'm not sure what just happened, but I have a feeling I didn't come out on top.

S
aturday night. It's 9:40 p.m., and Juliet is late. Claire and I are standing in the shadows of Bartlow's Market. For thirty-five minutes we've been watching a bunch of kids hanging out at the far end of the parking lot. I'm nervous; Claire's annoyed.

“I'm thinking she might not show,” I say. “Are you thinking that?”

“I'm thinking I should never have said yes to you. I have better things to do with my time.”

“No you don't.”

“Okay, but still.”

I'm wondering if it's possible that one of those kids is Juliet and she's been there all along. No. I've been checking constantly, and my vision is sharp. Sharper than usual, even. Juliet isn't there. “Do I look okay?” I ask Claire.

“Not really.”

“What?” I'm wearing jeans, a new green Oxford shirt over a got heme? T-shirt, and my leather jacket. “What's the matter?”

“Well, you look like you always do, and that's not so good. No offense.”

“Thanks. If you're trying to make sure I don't get overconfident, it's working.”

Claire takes a look at me. I step back for inspection. “It wouldn't have killed you to shave,” she says.

“Yeah, right. I just did, like two days ago.”

“Well, maybe you're extra manly, but whatever; get rid of that stuff. It's gross.”

I touch my face—she's not kidding. My chin and jaw have stubble. Impossible. Vamp facial hair doesn't grow that fast; I usually shave three or four times a year, but lately it seems like I've done it nearly every other week. Now it's every few days? What's that about?

Claire pulls back the sleeve of her vintage green army jacket, the one she keeps in her locker because her mother won't let her wear it, and looks at her Tiffany watch. “How long are we going to wait? We've been here over half an hour.”

“I'm ignoring that, because you sound like a child. Anyway, you remember the signal, right?”

Claire laughs. “Wait, you're talking about a secret signal, but you say
I'm
acting childish?”

“I'm serious. When I put my hands behind my neck, then raise them up to stretch, that's the signal. I'll go into the store, then you wait at least one full minute before coming in after me. That way you can tell me how you think it's going.”

“Why don't I just go into the store a few minutes after you do? Why do we need a signal?”

“It's just better that way. What if I go in the store to use the bathroom or something before you've had enough time to evaluate the situation completely? Then what? No, we're using the signal.”

Claire shakes her head. “There's something wrong with you. Seriously.”

“Hey,” says a voice from behind us.

I jump. It's Juliet. And she looks really good.

“Sorry I'm late,” she adds. “I had a whole big thing with my parents.”

I knew it. I knew there'd be a good reason she was late. “Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, it's fine. They wanted me to stay home and sleep. But I told them that I could sleep in tomorrow. So.”

“So,” I say. Juliet turns her head a little and smiles at the space to my left. Which I remember isn't just a space. “Oh, right. This is Claire. My friend, Claire.”

They say hi to each other. “Yeah, I've seen you with Danny at school,” Juliet says.

No, no, no! “Right. You've seen us together. That's because she's my friend,” I say. “Claire, she's my good friend. Best buddy, really. I mean just…you know, we're
good friends
.”

Both of them are looking at me. Juliet is smiling, but Claire is staring like she's watching a car crash.

“Friends are welcome,” Juliet says. “Come on.”

We walk across the parking lot toward the bunch of kids. They're all human, I'm guessing. She introduces us to everyone—Matt, Emily, Victoria, Stefan, Jamie, and Michael.

Stefan finishes a story he was telling about a kid who got caught in his parents' basement, passed out with an empty bottle of vodka next to him. “They pumped his stomach.”

“I heard he was in a coma,” Jamie says.

“No. He had alcohol poisoning. They said his heart stopped for, like, ten minutes.”

“He'd be dead,” Juliet says.

“Maybe he's actually a vamp. Then he wouldn't die from it,” says Emily.

I notice a couple of them looking my way, obviously trying to figure out what I am. My blue eyes say one thing, my coloring and build say another. Some of the guys are sneaking looks at Claire. They probably don't hang around with vamp girls too often, and I always forget how pretty she is. To me, she's just Claire, so it's kind of funny to see guys checking her out. Not to mention that none of these guys is her type, due to their being guys.

They argue for a while about whether the kid's heart stopped or if something else happened. Then the subject changes to classmates from Millbrook. Of course, I have no idea who they're talking about, but that doesn't matter. I'm here with Juliet Walker.

She's smiling at me a lot, but not so much that it seems fake, so that's good. She includes me when she's talking, and looks at me, which is another good sign. But every time I look at Claire to get a sense of how she thinks it's going, she's talking to that girl Victoria.

I'm trying not to stare at Juliet while she talks. Just keep it cool. At one point she tosses her hair and I see that she's wearing earrings, hoops in hoops. I'm not used to that. Vamp girls don't usually bother with earrings, since the holes would close up the second they're taken out.

When the conversation turns to movies, Michael goes on about how bad the new Kurt Helsingermann movie is. “The action was lame. And that guy is too old now.”

This is my chance. “Helsingermann is the finest actor alive,” I say. I push my hair up like his. Claire catches my eye and shakes her head tightly, like,
don't do it
. But this is a specialty of mine. I point at each kid while I put on the famous Bavarian accent. “You, go get zee veapons!You, get zat antenna vorking again! Und you, take ze girl und take cover. Und me? I vill disable zat varhead, und zen…I'll come
back
!”

It gets a pretty good laugh. Claire is looking at the pavement, shaking her head, but what does she know about brilliant impersonations?

Juliet is laughing. She bumps her shoulder against mine. That means something. I'm sure of it.

She's not paying more attention to me than she is to the other guys. I don't know if it's because she doesn't like me more than them or because she doesn't want to be obvious. I look over to Claire, who's still talking to that Victoria. Thanks, Claire. Big help. You're supposed to be watching me. I put my hands behind my head and stretch, but she's not looking this way, and totally misses the signal.

I'm tense and forget not to grind my teeth. A white-hot arrow of pain shoots through my jaw and electrifies every nerve in my body. I yelp, in a less than manly way.

Everybody goes silent and looks at me. “Are you all right?” Juliet asks.

“Yeah, sorry. Bit my tongue.”

“Oh, I hate when that happens,” she says. Fortunately, the conversation starts up again. I do the secret signal twice in a row, and as I walk across the parking lot to the store, I'm still not sure Claire even noticed.

It feels like I've been standing next to the frozen food cases forever. I'm frustrated and I'm cold. If Claire doesn't get here in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to kill her. And what is up with that pain in my tooth? It doesn't hurt if I push on it with my finger, but it kills when I clench my teeth.

“Why are you hiding in the back of the market?” Claire asks.

“Where were you?” I say to her. “I've been waiting here for, like, half an hour!”

“You were waiting maybe two minutes. I was talking to Victoria. Sorry if I didn't stop her in the middle of a sentence so I could rush across the parking lot and into the store. That wouldn't have been
too
random.”

“Well, I was worried that you didn't see the signal.”

“Didn't see it? It looked like you were bringing a plane in for landing. Who wouldn't see it?” She looks through the glass freezer door, opens it, and peers inside.

“Claire! Come on. You're here on a mission and you haven't even been paying attention.”

“I've been paying attention. Just not every second.” She reaches into the freezer and takes out a bag of peas. It makes an annoying crunching sound as she kneads it back and forth in her hands. “How old do you think Victoria is? Guess.”

“We're not talking about Victoria. We're talking about Juliet.” I pull open the freezer door, take the bag of peas from her, and toss it back inside.

“She's a senior,” Claire says. “Doesn't she look younger?” She draws a smiley face in the fog on the glass.

I wipe it away and shut the door. “Would you please focus for one minute? Come on! You came here to help me read the signals. What do you think?”

“I think maybe she likes me,” she says.

“Juliet?”

“No. Victoria.” She opens the next freezer door and watches the glass fog up. She starts to draw another smiley face, but I grab her finger and hold it.

“Okay,” I say. “You don't even know if Victoria likes girls. Do you?”

“Not for sure, no. But I get that feeling.” She starts to draw with her other hand, still not looking at me. “She's cute, isn't she?”

I let go of her finger and give up. “Yes. She's cute. And I don't know how to tell if she likes you, so don't ask me.”

She draws a big smile on the face, and then adds horns, for no reason I can imagine. Trying to talk to her about Juliet is pointless. Suddenly I hear the quick, steady pulse of a heartbeat, right in my ears. But my heart doesn't feel like it's going that fast.

Claire looks upset. “I wish I'd worn my black lamé pants instead of this dorky skirt, which I don't even know why I bought in the first place. It's a bad look. The lamé would have been much cooler, right?”

“No. And I can't believe I'm saying this to you, but you look great,” I tell her. This night is so derailed it's not even funny.

Claire erases the face on the glass and starts another. “I think Juliet likes you.”

“Really? Why do you say that?”

Claire shrugs. “She had this look on her face when she was laughing at your Helsingermann impersonation. Which, by the way, was mortifyingly bad and is something you should never repeat in public.”

“What kind of look?”

“The right kind.” She shuts the freezer door. “I think it's time to stop being a coward, put a signal out there, and see what she does.”

I like the idea, even if I don't know whether she's talking about Juliet and me, or about herself and Victoria.

It's been light for hours and I still can't sleep. I keep thinking about what happened last night.

Whether Claire's advice to be brave and put out a signal was meant for me or for herself, she was right; on the bus ride home, she told me that she'd gotten Victoria's phone number.

After at least half an hour of agonizing, I finally got up the nerve to put my hand on Juliet's elbow, and she didn't move it. After I let go, I tortured myself wondering if she was just being polite, but then she put her hand on my back and kept it there.

Which was better than I dreamed—I should have been ecstatic. But then there was that surprise last night, and it's been giving me a nagging, dark-cloud feeling ever since.

Claire left the store a few minutes before I did, so it wouldn't look like we'd had a little strategy meeting. And I kept hearing that beating sound. Throbbing, like a racing heart. But when I put my hand on my chest, my heart was beating much slower than the sound. I had to be imagining it.

Except that it was just too clear, too real. I was definitely hearing it, and it was coming from somewhere in the store. I looked around, and then in the convex security mirror, I saw. On the other side of the store there was a guy, maybe in his early twenties, standing in front of the candy rack. He had a magazine open in one hand, his head tilted down as if he was reading, and with his other hand he was stuffing candy bars into his pocket, one after another. He was looking back and forth, up and down the aisle. Nervous. Jacked up.

And I knew. I walked toward him, just to make sure, and as I got closer the sound grew louder.

I was hearing the shoplifter's heartbeat.

I'd heard it from across the store. I don't know what that means, but one thing I do know: it's definitely not normal.