"Pretty please?" I asked, dangling the game before his computer-strained eyes.
"Well…"
"You'll make it?"
"No, but I know someone who will."
For the first time ever I walked my brother to school—Dullsville Middle. The redbrick building, front lawn, and playground looked surprisingly smaller than when I had attended several years ago.
"I used to skip class and hide out over there," I said, pointing to a small athletics equipment shed.
"I know," he said. "'Raven was here' is scratched all over the side."
"I guess I skipped more than I thought," I said with a grin.
I felt like a towering gothic giant as I walked up the front lawn among girls sporting Bratz T-shirts and Strawberry Shortcake notebooks and boys with overstuffed Pokemon backpacks.
I figured we were meeting a corrupt shop teacher, but instead we were greeted at the entrance by an eleven-year-old red-haired wunderkind named Henry.
"What do you need to make fake IDs for?" I asked him. "Getting into Chuck E. Cheese's after hours?"
Billy Boy's friend gazed up at me, like he'd never seen a real girl up close.
"You can stare at my picture after you take it," I joked.
"Follow me," he said.
In the hallway we were stopped by Mrs. Hanley, my sixth grade math teacher.
"Raven Madison! You look so grown up!"
I could tell she had expected me to wind up in juvie hall or shipped off to a boarding school. She stared at my brother and me, obviously wondering how two such different human beings could come from the same shared DNA.
"I never realized Billy was your brother," she confessed.
"I know," I whispered. "I'm amazed, too."
"Well, some things haven't changed," she said, walking off. She kept looking back as if she had seen an apparition. I knew who'd be the subject of today's talk around the microwave in the teachers' lounge.
We stopped at Henry's locker, the only one with a combination lock that was hooked up to a garage door opener. Henry flipped the control switch and the combo lock sprung open. Computer games, electronics, and programming manuals were organized in racks like a miniature computer store.
He pulled out a digital camera hidden underneath a shelf.
"Let's go."
I followed them around the corner to the computer room. But it was locked. My heart sank.
"This can't happen! Break a window if you have to," I said, half jokingly.
Both geeky preteens looked at me as if I were the odd one.
Henry dug into the back pocket of his chinos and pulled out a worn brown leather wallet. He opened it and got out a credit card. He slid the card into the door, jiggled it a little, and within a moment the door slipped open.
"I like your style," I said with a smile.
Twenty minutes later I was staring at an eighteen-year-old Raven. "I look good for my age," I said with a wink, and headed for home.
4 Hipsterville
"Mom, I'm not going to Siberia. I'll be back in two days." We were sitting at Dullsville's Greyhound bus stop, outside Shirley's Ice Cream Parlor. She was trying to strangle me with kisses when the bus squealed to the curb in front of a few other young Dullsvillians heading out early for spring break.
As the bus pulled away and I waved good-bye from my window seat in the back, I actually felt a pang in my stomach. This would be my first trip away from Dullsville on my own. I even wondered if I would return.
I sat back, closed my eyes, and thought what it would be like if I became Alexander's vampiress.
I imagined Alexander waiting for me at Hipsterville's bus stop, standing in the rain, wearing tight black jeans and a glow-in-the-dark Jack Skellington shirt, a small bouquet of black roses in one hand. Upon seeing me, his pale face would flush with just enough pink to make him look alive. He'd take my hand in his, lean into me, and kiss me long. He would whisk me off in his restored vintage hearse, adorned with painted spiders and cobwebs, the music of Slipknot blasting from the speakers.
We'd park in front of an abandoned castle and climb the creaky spiral stairs that led to the desolate tower. The ancient castle walls would be lined with black lace and the rustic wooden floors sprinkled with rose petals. A million candles would flicker around the room, the skinny medieval windows barely letting in moonlight.
"I couldn't be without you anymore," Alexander would say. He would lean into me and take my neck into his mouth. I'd feel a slight pressure on my flesh. I'd become dizzy, but feel more alive than I'd ever felt before—my head would slump back, my body become limp in his arms. My heart would pulse in overtime as if beating for both of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I would be able to see Alexander lift his head proudly.
He'd gently let me down. I'd feel lightheaded and stumble to my feet, holding my red-stained neck as the blood trickled down my forearm.
I'd be able to feel two pointy fangs with the tip of my tongue.
He would open a tower window to reveal the sleeping town. I'd be able to see things I'd never seen before, like smiling ghosts floating above the houses.
Alexander would take my hand, and we would fly off into the night, above the sparkling lights of the town and beneath the twinkling stars, like two gothic angels.
The sound of clanging bells interrupted. Not the tinkling of bells signaling my arrival into the Underworld, but rather a railroad crossing warning of an incoming train, signaling the end of my overactive imagination. The bus was stopped in front of a railroad track. A toddler in the seat across the aisle from me waved excitedly as the black engine approached.
"Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!" he exclaimed. "I want to be a conductor," he proclaimed to his mother.
I, too, stared as the conductor waved his blue hat while the train began to pass us. Instead of new boxcars whizzing by us, a string of dilapidated, graffiti-laden freight cars lagged in front of us. Like the toddler across from me, who was likely dreaming of the glamorous life of a conductor—too naive to realize the demands of the job, isolation, long hours, and little pay—I, too, wondered if my dream of becoming a vampire was more romantic than its reality.
I was stepping into a world of the unknown, knowing only one thing: I had to find Alexander.
The official welcome sign to Aunt Libby's town should read, "Welcome to Hipsterville—Inhabitants must check all golf pants at the city limits." The small town was an eclectic mix of hip coffee shops, upscale secondhand stores, and indie cinemas where all forms of cool people presided— granola heads, artists, goths, and chic freaks. Every kind was acceptable here. I could see why Alexander and Jameson might have escaped to this particular town. It was in close proximity to Dullsville and they could easily blend in with the smorgasbord of other motley inhabitants.
I could only imagine what my life would have been like if I had grown up in a town where I was more accepted than ostracized. I could have been on the A-list to Friday night "haunted" house parties, been crowned Halloween Queen, and received straight A's in Historical Tombstones class.
Dad and Aunt Libby had both been hippies in the sixties, but while Dad morphed into a yuppie, Libby stayed true to her inner Deadhead. She had moved to Hipsterville, majored in theater at the university, and now worked as a waitress in a vegan restaurant to support her acting. She was always performing in an avant-garde play or a performance-art piece in some director's garage. When I was eleven my family watched her stand onstage for what seemed like days, dressed as a giant snow pea and speaking in broken sentences about how she sprouted.
When I arrived in Hipsterville, I wasn't shocked to find that Alexander wasn't waiting for me, but I was surprised my aunt wasn't. I hope she isn't this late for her curtain calls, I thought, as I waited at the bus stop in the hot sun beside my suitcase. Finally I spotted her beat-up vintage yellow Beetle sputtering into the lot.
"You're so grown up!" she exclaimed, getting out of her car and giving me a huge hug. "But you dress the same. I was counting on that."