The Usual Werewolves (sample)
By ninth grade everyone knew that Marshall Baldwin was a vampire, and that was no problem at all; the undead had walked the halls of Holmwood High on and off since mid-Generation X, and the current crop of students had grown up in a tolerant time. He was not bullied, nor threatened, nor despised. Instead, he was viewed as a tortured outsider, hair and wardrobe on loan from James Dean, clutching at his own black jacket and looking for all the world (which he found so wearying) like original poetry was due at any moment. He was so alienated, and so hungry, and so hurt, that young girls all but flung themselves into his aura, convinced that they could free him of his curse. Guys would clap him on the shoulder to establish credibility and let their girlfriends know that they could do that deep shit, too. He was the schoolyard’s troubled bad boy, marble skin, angular features, sensual lips and gray eyes full of ancient and beautiful secrets. When he spoke, women sighed; when he ate, they ignored the stench of blood on his breath. In short, Marshall Baldwin was the coolest Goddamned kid in Holmwood High. It was all complete crap, and of course Serena fell for it.
Serena Stoker was not related to any particular Irish novelist and thankfully very few people thought to ask. She had only come to Holmwood in mid-sophomore year, making her the last to learn about Marshall’s condition. Upon hearing that vampires actually walked among these people and no one found it weird, she’d declared her classmates mental, which had not helped her fit in. Serena’s problem since birth had been a total inability to go with the flow. (“Since literally birth,” she would stress to prospective friends, who never quite took to the bond. “They had to cut my mom open. I wouldn’t come out.”) So in school, she hung back. She observed. By the spring of her sophomore year she had overcome her prejudice and learned that Marshall was no cobweb-counting, bat-befriending Transylvanian type. By Memorial Day she’d realized he was sensitive and strong, with an arctic, patrician beauty and a mystery beyond his sixteen years. By summer she was totally in love with him. All through break as she part-time hostessed at McMonkeyshines’ Family Restaurant she fantasized that come September he’d fix his hypnotic gaze upon her, that he’d look past her glasses and her boring black hair or maybe she wouldn’t have those any more (she’d have hair, just, good hair, and her boobs would just rock), and he’d touch her and hold her and they’d grope and make out and do things that people who went on dates did, and in general create a love story that would capture the minds and pubescent passions of millions. The universe had other plans, thus sparing literary critics nationwide.
Serena and Marshall shared three classes junior year. On the twenty-third of September he acknowledged her existence, with respect to a point she’d just made about “The Raven”. Two days later he acknowledged her again, while leaving Spanish, sharing muffled regret for having trod upon her shoelace. She blushed and assured him that it was okay, then waited until he was gone before fleeing to the bathroom to do her Doc Martens back up and hyperventilate. “Go with the flow,” she reminded her reflection. “Go with the flow, go with the flow.” She chanted it so many times that she half-expected the specter of a hippie chick to emerge from the mirror and plunge the Evergreen State into ghastly mellow horrors. She was two minutes late for European civ and Marshall didn’t notice because he did not care. It was then that Serena realized that things were not going to get any better. Her missteps with Marshall Baldwin, of course, were neither the be-all nor end-all of her failures in muddling along, merely symptoms in a pattern of dysfunction. In her old school in Flagstaff she had been a friendless freak; here in Holmwood she had started things off with a bang by taking way too long to conform, and the highlight of her sophomore year had been settling down into a nice quiet life of being utterly forgotten. She was nothing. The girl who still dressed like her seventh grade picture. The girl best known for bleating out “I have a question” before actually telling the teacher her question. The girl who mumbled “Good” every night over dinner, when her parents asked how school was, but could never back the statement up with why. For the rest of the day she wished she could stand out a little more—in a good way, this time—and considered cultivating an endearing klutziness. It never got past the planning stages. Even in matters like succumbing to gravity, Serena could not go with the flow.
October came around and she found herself teamed up with a werewolf. Mr. Gutierrez chose the pairs for the frog dissection. This relieved Serena, who was squeamish about picking partners. She hoped to be paired with a boy, on the grounds that said gender might more readily take to the assignment. (She did not consider it regressive or anti-feminist to not be that psyched to cut open a frog.) “Don’t feel too bad for the little froggies, kids,” said Mr. Gutierrez. “They don’t last too long in the wild. They get eaten by birds and occasional snakes. You might say it’s a frog’s life.” He made the same joke every year. With his round face and drooping mustache, Mr. Gutierrez was often described as avuncular by students who’d gotten that far with their SAT vocab. He made some of the pairings deliberate, keeping troublemaking boys far away from each other, sticking chatty girls up against serious-minded young scholars, and Serena simply prayed that she would not be called into service as a steadying influence on someone. She ended up with Zack Tamson. The first thing she noticed was that he was scratching a lot. She didn’t really know him; Holmwood High was just large enough for people to disappear on one another, as she knew. He was cute enough in a scruffy way, with a flustered intensity about him, as if perpetually halfway through his time on a Jeopardy! question. “All right, what’s up, Serena,” he said, in a husky mumble, dragging his desk up to hers. “All right,” he said again. “Zack,” was her opening comment. “With an H or a K?” “The second one,” he said, and she wrote his name down on the worksheet, and he casually scratched at his neck. “We both wear glasses,” she observed, just to break some ice. “That means we’re good at science-ing.” He smiled, closed-mouthed, and adjusted his specs. Thick black rims, like hers. “Geniuses at work,” he said, and rubbed his wrist up against a five-o’clock shadow coming in six hours early. “Geniuses, genii. Something like that.” She smiled too, but she didn’t know why. Then Mr. Gutierrez came round with the frogs, and the sting of formaldehyde cut the chitchat short. “Oh my God,” groaned Zack, wrinkling his nose. “Well, let’s do this.” She let him do the hard part. He was businesslike and painfully shy, eschewing shady pranks and gallows humor. He pinned the frog and took the forceps up without complaint, and let her tell him what to do and didn’t fight. Indeed, he barely looked at her, and sometimes she ducked down a little to make her head level with his, to try and peer into his downward-cast eyes. “Weird,” he said. “What’s weird?” she asked. “Specifically, I mean. There’s a lot of weird things, in the world.” “Everything inside him’s so little,” Zack said. It was the closest that his commentary came to the macabre. When some time had gone by Mr. Gutierrez reminded the students to share. “Don’t just have one person doing the dissection and another on the worksheet. Take turns!” he sang out, between sips from a mug conferring on him the title of #1 Science Teacher. “Oh, I’m sorry, Serena,” Zack mumbled. “Do you wanna find the heart?” Their hands did not touch when he passed her the tools, not directly, but the contact through rubber gloves boosted her pulse. “Thanks,” she whispered.
This concludes the free sample, but you can buy the full story at this link! . . . |