Vampire High Sophomore Year

6



By the end of the day, the Rustle had gotten louder.

The new one. The cousin. She and Gregor are fighting. She was rude to him. Rude to our princess.

It was around me in gym, where we played half-court basketball, and I thought I heard it in the squeaks and whispers of the sneakers. It was in the scrape of Mr. Gibbon’s chalk on the blackboard during history. And by the time I walked into my last class, it was almost loud enough to actually hear. In fact, I did hear it. It was silence. Absolute and perfect silence.

“Welcome, Master Cody,” said the teacher, Ms. Magyar. “Or should I say—” And she rattled off some syllables that sounded like water running over stones. A greeting in high jenti that meant “Come before me bringing the joy of your presence.” It was one of about six high jenti phrases I knew. High jenti was so elaborate and formal that almost nobody spoke it anymore. Jenti kids in New Sodom spoke a lingo of jenti, English, and a few other languages. There were no rules, and it was always changing. But I knew one jenti girl who did know the old language, because she had to. And I was going to learn it for her. It was a surprise. I hadn’t told Ileana or anyone I was taking this class. And no other gadje ever had.

Anyway, I said the same thing back to Ms. Magyar, and the room cracked up. I mean, cracked up jenti style. All of the heads that had been turned my way looked down at their desks, and seven pairs of shoulders went up like they were trying to flap.

“The proper response is—” Ms. Magyar said, and made some sounds like gears grinding. “The approximate translation in English would be ‘I fly toward the bright moon of your splendor.’”

“Thank you,” I said in one of the other high jenti things I knew. It really meant, “Your gift is beyond the deserving, O radiant friend.”

But Ms. Magyar giggled. “That was creditable, Master Cody. But as you spoke the words, they meant, ‘Your gift is beyond the nothing, O radiant horse.’”

The shoulder blades were twitching like mad.

By the time class was over, I knew that in high jenti there were twenty-seven words for groups of men, and twenty-nine for groups of women. Nouns inflected, whatever that was, to fourteen cases, whatever they were. There were three alternative conjugations for most verbs, and a thing could be male, female, or neuter depending on which of the conjugations you were using.

It was going to be lots of fun.

But not as much fun as my fourth-period class had been. English class. One thousand pages of outside reading per semester, and of course Some Further Glories of English Literature by Norman P. Shadwell. Apart from that, just the odd essay, sonnet cycle, or novella.

The last gong chimed through the halls. Feeling slightly as though I’d been run over by a truck, I went down to Ileana’s chorus class.

They must have been running late. The door was still closed. Through it came a sad old song sung in high jenti. Even though I didn’t understand a word, I felt the sorrow. And the singer, whoever he was, was fantastic. It was a powerful voice, kind of deep, and rich. Some of the singers in the old movies my parents liked to watch were like that. Not my kind of thing, but I knew it was good.

The song stopped.

The door opened.

I looked in.

Gregor was standing next to Mrs. Warrener’s piano, looking over her shoulder at some sheet music.

“Thank you, Gregor,” she said. She said it in that old New England way that means a lot more than the words.

Wow. Gregor. I’d have sooner expected him to have a hidden talent for being nice.

The jenti were impressed, too. You could tell. Their eyes were shining.

He looked my way and I wanted to say something, and I wanted it to be special. So I said, “Your gift is beyond the deserving, O radiant friend.”

The whole class turned their eyes on me.

Rustle, Rustle. The gadje friend is learning high jenti. What a good friend he is. Rustle.

So I had snitched Gregor’s moment of glory. Swell.

He didn’t say anything, just got his stuff and went past me.

“All I wanted to do was be nice,” I said to Ileana.

“You were. You are. Some people are hard to be nice to,” Ileana said.

And up came the other person I knew who fit that description, right on cue.

“I haven’t been this bored since the last time Mom got married,” Turk said. “I thought a school full of vampires would be exciting. This place is about as interesting as a cemetery.”

I didn’t say anything. I just wished the French Foreign Legion took girls.

“Shall we visit the student center?” Ileana smiled. “Perhaps you would like that.”

“Whatever,” Turk said.

The center was the way it always was after school: quiet and elegant and full of whispering jenti.

Turk looked around at the oak-paneled walls and the oil paintings that hung on them and said, “You could get a really great headbanger concert going in here. Anybody ever done it?”

“Sure,” I said. “The same day we had the pig fights. It was real popular.”

Turk just shook her head. “I can’t handle this place. I need some grunge.”

And she left.

“Perhaps we should go with her,” Ileana said. “She does not know New Sodom well. She might become lost.”

“I was sort of hoping,” I said.

“She is your family, Cody,” Ileana said. “You must help her. She is in great pain.”

“She is a great pain,” I said.

“Stop it,” Ileana said, and led me out of the center.

We caught up to Turk in the parking lot.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said, and drove off. Her little black car sounded like it was cursing us.

“Do I still have to be nice to her?” I said.

“Yes,” Ileana said. “And so do I. But we do not have to like it.”

Getting home was no problem. There were stretch limos for anybody who wanted them, or Ileana could call for her own car and have it there in minutes.

But she said, “Let us walk home today. To my house. You will get a ride from there.”

The way to Ileana’s house led down quiet streets shaded by fine old trees whose leaves were just beginning to turn gold at their tips.

I took Ileana’s hand.

“It will all be well,” she said.

“You really think so?” I said.

“Yes,” Ileana said. “Turk is vain and silly, but she is not stupid. She will find something hard to do, and she will do it, and then she will think less about herself and more about whatever that thing is. She has a large soul, and she needs to feed it.”

She looked up at me and smiled a wicked little smile.

“She is rather a lot like you, you know.”

“No way,” I said. “I’m not that bad.”

“Not now,” she said. “But when you came, you were very full of the act you were putting on. But then you found your big thing. You decided to challenge us to admit that you could be as good as we thought we were. And you did, and you are.”

I looked at Ileana and thought about how smart she was. No, not smart. Wise. Wise in a very special way that I would probably never really understand.

Then I did something very brave. I said what I said next. Which was “I found something bigger than that. I found you.”

And I kissed her under the trees.

I don’t know how long we stood there. A week or two, maybe. But when we broke, she said, “This was why I wanted to walk home.”

“We’ll never make it at this rate,” I said.

And we kissed again.

Eventually, we made it up the long hill to Ileana’s house. And Ileana had her limo take me home.

“All will be well,” she said again, as the car pulled away from the curb.

I wished right then that I were old enough to drive. It was a comedown to walk my girlfriend home kissing her and then be hauled away by somebody else, like a little kid. But overall, I thought, things were pretty good just then.