Vamped by Lucienne Diver Page A

underclassmen.
    No one seemed inclined to talk as I passed by in my quest for a Cosmo or a People magazine that wasn’t six months out of date. Not only had I totally skimmed all those issues already, but even if I wanted to go back and actually read , all the pictures of hotties, male and female, had been ripped out so that people could decorate the spaces around their cots. There wasn’t a single story left intact.
    I hadn’t been assigned to either one of their stupid teams, so I couldn’t get out for some exercise or just some fresh air—which would have been nice, because all those guys in one place trying to impress all those girls … well, you could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Only about half the time were the bathrooms used for their intended purpose. And they didn’t lock. I’d already been scarred for life when I walked in on a couple of underclassmen playing topless tonsil hockey. There just wasn’t enough mental floss to wipe out that image.
    Whatever Melli was up to had to be big, for her to feed and house so many kids—a vamp army, as Rick had put it. If I didn’t want to get left in the dust, I needed to gather some intel. I was pretty pleased with the super-spy sound of that, I must say. I could totally get into the glam international-woman-of-mystery wardrobe. I wondered if spy work came with a clothing allowance.
    The first step in gathering intel had to be to get someone to talk to me. Marcy’d been avoiding me like I had the fashion flu, but I noticed a girl tucked away on a cot in the corner reading a book, completely oblivious to everything going on around her. She’d never see me coming. I stalked across the room like a lioness after prey. The girl didn’t look up, even when my shadow fell across her book.
    I reached down and plucked it away from her, at which she squeaked.
    “Hi!” I said disarmingly.
    Her eyes widened at the sight of me.
    “Hi,” she answered back, so tentatively it made me laugh.
    “Hey, I don’t bite … well, I do . But then, so do you.”
    Her lips twisted in what might have been a smile. She had baby-fine blond hair held back by two kid barrettes with duckies on them, one pink and one purple. I tried not to stare.
    “Can I have my book back?” she asked.
    “In a sec,” I agreed. “But I have a few questions first.”
    “Uh, okay.”
    I plunked myself down on the edge of her bed. “Why is everyone afraid of me?”
    She looked at me in confusion. “Are they?” She glanced around, and half a dozen kids suddenly took extreme interest in the ceiling tiles. “Well, you did cause kind of a stir,” she admitted.
    “So?”
    “So?” She looked longingly at her book, as if she might find the words she wanted within it. “Well, for some of us, getting vamped was the best thing that could have happened. I mean, sure, the biting bit was kind of a shock, and then the waking up dead … but aside from that.”
    I gave her the same look of horror I might give ruffles and spandex. “Ooh-kay. Let me get this straight—Melli sends her minions out to maul and murder and you’re all grateful to her?”
    The blond bookworm gave me a pitying look. “You make it sound so … ug. It’s not like we’re dead-dead. Anyway, you’re not one of hers, so you can’t possibly understand. She chose us.”
    “Each of you—personally?”
    “We’re all direct descendants. Her children, in a way. Some of us she saved from sucky situations at home or from lack of prospects after graduation.”
    “What about you?” I asked.
    She looked away, and for a minute I thought she wouldn’t answer. “You have no idea”—I was beginning to get a little steamed with her slights to my imagination—“what it’s like to struggle for breath every day of your life and suddenly wake up to find it’s no longer an issue.”
    “So you’re … ?”
    “Asthmatic. Severely. In and out of hospitals since I was a baby, two kinds of inhalers on me at all times.