She smiled at everybody she saw for the rest of the afternoon, right up to when she grinned goofily at Ivy at the beginning of science.
“How are you?” Ivy asked in a low voice. “Great!” Olivia said brightly. “It’s like you’re a lobster!”
Ivy clearly didn’t get it, but she didn’t press. “Are you still up for the planning meeting this afternoon?” she whispered.
“For sure,” Olivia said. “I can totally handle the vamp—” Ivy’s eyes widened. Olivia coughed and lowered her voice. “The meeting,” she said instead.
At the end of class, Olivia followed her sister into the girls’ bathroom.
After they’d switched clothes, Ivy stood looking in the mirror. “Now I wish I didn’t have a reflection,” she said, pulling Olivia’s pink gym shirt away from her chest. Then she leaned forward with an eyeliner pencil to do Olivia’s eyes. “Remember what you said about cherry punch at the meeting?”
“Uh-huh?” Olivia said.
“Myth,” Ivy said simply. “Vampires don’t just eat meat and drink blood. You can eat the crackers or chips or whatever’s there.”
“Okay,” said Olivia, feeling just a little less nervous.
“Is there anything else you need to know?” Ivy asked.
Questions raced to the front of Olivia’s mind and raised their hands eagerly. Finally, she picked one. “Are all Goths vampires?”
“In Franklin Grove? Not all but most,” Ivy told her.
“What about everybody else?”
“Bunnies, like you,” Ivy answered matter-offactly.
“Are you immortal?” Olivia asked.
“That’s a tough one.” Ivy put Olivia’s bag down. “Not really. But I might get to see the day people live on Mars.”
“What can kill you?” Olivia wanted to know.
“What can kill you?” Ivy countered. “Listen, Olivia, vampires are people, too.”
Olivia nodded. “I know. Like you’re a lobster and I’m a crab,” she said automatically. “But we’re both crustaceans.”
“No,” Ivy said. “I didn’t say we were seafood.I said we were people. With hearts and souls and everything. We’re into life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just like everyone else. We don’t even talk about it among ourselves that much. It’s like you being a vegetarian. That’s not such an enormous deal, right?”
“Right,” Olivia admitted. Totally. No biggie. “Thanks, Ivy.” Olivia scrunched up her nose. “I guess this vampire thing does take some getting used to.”
Ivy assumed a vacant look. “Really?” she squealed in her cheerleader voice.
Even though she knew she had nothing to fear, the hair on the back of Olivia’s neck stood on end the moment she and Sophia came in sight of the towering FoodMart sign. Sophia was talking excitedly about the ball as they walked, but Ivy’s words were the only ones Olivia could hear: “I go to BloodMart like everyone else. There’s one in the basement of FoodMart.”
Olivia imagined a huge, dim underground crypt, filled with enormous vats of swirling red liquid. Spigots dripped gruesomely, and bloodsoaked napkins littered the floor. Before she knew it, she and Sophia were walking through the store doors and it was too late to flee.
As they walked down aisle nine, questions flooded Olivia’s mind. How much blood would be needed to satisfy every vampire in Franklin Grove? How many vampires were there in Franklin Grove, anyway? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
She and Sophia came upon the same noseringed stock boy with the midnight stubble.
Maybe that wasn’t cranberry juice he was stacking after all! Olivia thought. Her heart raced. He must be a vampire since he opens the door.What if he can smell my fear? She put her hand to her neck and started hyperventilating.
Sophia gave her a weird look. “You’re breathing like a horse,” she said. Then she turned to the stock boy and said, “Pumpernickel.” He obediently unlocked the staff door, and Olivia scurried past him, trying to avoid eye contact.
The dark staircase creaked with every step. Olivia thought she heard laughter, then creatures scurrying in the walls, then the sound of liquid running ominously in pipes. She was scared of tripping and tumbling down the stairs, but she was even more scared of placing a hand on the wall to steady herself. What if it was damp? At last they reached the narrow hallway at the bottom. Olivia trailed farther and farther behind, terror making Ivy’s boots feel even heavier than usual. She passed the first mysterious unmarked door. It was huge and made of dark, brushed metal. It also had a slot to look through so that those inside could see who was outside wanting to come in. The shutter over the slot was closed, but Olivia could hear talking and laughing from a crowd inside.
BloodMart! Olivia thought. On the other side of that door, vampires are thirstily drinking BLOOD! She lurched forward, feeling sick. She put her hands on her knees. Ivy’s black fishnet stockings crawled like spiders beneath her fingers.
“Will you come on?” Sophia called from up ahead.
Olivia thought if she tried to stand up again right now she’d puke.
Sophia’s footsteps came closer. “Ivy, relax,” she said. “I know you have cold feet about being head of decorations, but it’s just a meeting. Besides, you’re already doing a killer job.”
Then she grabbed Olivia’s hand and dragged her to the door at the end of the hall.
The vampires were waiting within: Vera, with her startling shock of white hair, Raymond, with his fiendishly bald head, Anise, as gaunt and hollow eyed as an ex-lover of Count Vira. The Beasts, looking more bloodthirsty and beastly than ever.
Melissa, with her officious manner and disarmingly chunky glasses, offered Olivia some punch. Olivia declined. “Oatmeal raisin cookie?” Melissa tried. Olivia shook her head like a zombie.
Now all the vampires were taking their places around the sacrificial slab of a table.
“May the Secret be cloaked in darkness,” Melissa intoned solemnly.
“And never see light of day,” came the response. Olivia collapsed into her seat.
“Okay, people,” Melissa began, flipping through her notes. “First item on the agenda is decorations. Ivy?”
Olivia couldn’t speak. All the vampires were looking at her with their contact-lens-covered eyes.