“No, no,” Sunny says, before I can kick her a third time. “We’ll feel better by then, I’m sure.”
Great. Way to buy us more time, Sun.
“Okay. Well, you let me know,” Mom says, sounding relieved. “Call me at work if you take a turn for the worse and would rather just lay low.”
So she goes to work and now Sunny and I are home alone. Sunny rinses our breakfast plates and I run up to my room for my secret stash of strawberry Pop-Tarts. After toasting, we rendezvous in the living room, me on the couch, Sunny on the lounger.
“So what are we going to do?” my sister asks, mouth full of Pop-Tart. “He’s coming over tonight. That doesn’t give us much time.”
“Right.” I break my pastry in half, licking the strawberry filling. “What about calling Magnus? Certainly he could recognize a fellow vamp.”
“Yeah, but it’s daytime. He won’t be up and about ’til well after dinner.”
“Oh, yeah. Duh.” I smack myself on the forehead. That was stupid.
“What about you?” Sunny asks. “Aren’t you the knower of all things vamp? The proud graduate of Vampire School? Won’t you be able to tell on sight whether the guy sleeps in a coffin or not?”
I shrug. “Not necessarily. A vampire can cast what’s called a ‘glamour’ on themselves to make them look human if they need to. That’s how they can walk among us and no one’s the wiser. And I doubt the guy’s going to show up to dinner sporting his fangs.”
“Great.” Sunny sighs. “What are we going to do then?”
“What about that movie you were talking about again? The Lost Boys?”
“Yeah. We could rent that. . . .”
“No time. Netflix takes at least a day to deliver.”
Sunny laughs. “You ever hear of a video store, Rayne?”
D’oh. “Oh. Right. Forgot about those.” Stores that you can go into and rent DVDs instead of having them mailed to your door. How cute and retro. “Do they still exist?”
“I think there’s a Blockbuster downtown.”
“Okay, cool.” I pull my feet out from under me. “So you go run to the Blockbuster and rent every vampire movie you can find. I’ll go on the Internet and research what I can from here.”
“It’s a plan.”
It wasn’t exactly a plan, but it was a start. Operation Date with Dracula was on.
POSTED BY RAYNE McDONALD @ 12 P.M.
THREE COMMENTS:
CTU-in-TrainingGrrl says . . .
Wait—you mean Jack Bauer was in movies before he became a CTU agent? Vampire movies? Whoa. I’ve got to update my Netflix queue ASAP!!
StarrMoonUnit says . . .
Can you post the recipe for hippie hash? That sounds de-lish! I mean, I’ve had hippie brownies before and mmmmm. . . .
Rayne says . . .
Hey, CTU girl, you are aware that 24 is just a TV show, right? I mean, it’s not even a reality one. It’s got, like, a script. Jack Bauer is some dude named Kiefer Sutherland and evidently he’s been in a billion movies and even dated Julia Roberts back in the day. Sorry to disappoint.
And P.S., StarrMoonUnit? Hate to disappoint you as well, but there’s actually no hash in the hippie hash. . . .
14
TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 10 P.M.
The Not-So-Lost Girls
The doorbell rings at six o’clock and Sunny and I are ready. In fact, if Dracula himself were to bust through the door, I think we’d actually have a chance of defeating the guy.
First up, we’re both wearing necklaces made out of garlic under our hoodies. We’ve got holy water (which we snuck in and “borrowed” from St. Patrick’s Church down the road)in from St. Patrick’s Church down the road) locked and loaded into our Super Soaker Triple Shot water guns. I’m wearing rosary beads and Sunny’s got on her cross necklace. In short, together we’re every vampire’s worst nightmare.
“Can you get the door?” Mom asks from the kitchen. While we’ve been preparing, she’s been running around trying to get the meal together. I felt bad not helping her, but we had too much to do on our end. I did agree to stir the vegan marinade (not sure why tofu needs to be marinated, but whatever) while Mom went upstairs to change. That gave me a chance to add a few cloves of garlic to the mix.
“Girls?”
“I’ll get it, Mom.” Sunny jumps up, ready to oblige with the door opening.
“Wait!” I cry. “Didn’t The Lost Boys teach you anything?” According to the movie, the boys’ plan to determine whether their mom’s BF was a vamp was foiled because they invited him into the house. Evidently if you let a vampire in, you’re powerless against him. “We must learn from the lessons the bad eighties movies teach us.”
“Uh, right,” Sunny says, sitting back down. The doorbell rings again. She picks up the DVD case and skims the back. “Though did you really think it was that bad? I thought it held up kind of well, considering it was made, like, twenty years ago.”
“Sunny! Rayne! Answer the door!” Hm. Mom’s not sounding as sweet and patient anymore.
Sunny sets down the case. “Anyway, what if Mom lets him in? Does that mean the house is still safe for him? That anything we do won’t work?”
I scratch my head. “I don’t know. The movie never addressed that possibility. Maybe we should go to the door and refuse him entrance. Just to make sure. Then if Mom lets him in, she’ll be the only one rendered powerless.”