A Taste for Red Read online

  Fumio Chen was the last student to leave. "Ms. Larch, can I ask you—"

  "Tomorrow, Fumio," Larch insisted, setting the remaining chocolates aside. She propelled him out the door with a shove, pulling the door closed with a click. "Svetlana." She whirled, crossing her arms and drumming her red nails over her pale skin. "Have a chocolate." She picked up the plate, pushing it toward me.

  The sweet cocoa smell mixed with her meaty odor turned my stomach. I stepped away, fighting the urge to gag. "No, thank you! My dad's waiting."

  "Well, of course he is—it being your first day at school. I've only recently moved to Sunny Hill myself." She lowered the plate of chocolates and reached into her jacket pocket. "It's so nice to have another new face around. I sense something very special about you, Svetlana. Do you feel it? You don't seem at all excited by the chocolates, though."

  A tingling of alarm tickled the tiny hairs on my arms and neck. Ms. Larch stepped closer. Her overripe, rotting odor filled my nose. I backed away until the chalkboard pressed at my back. Panic coursed the length of me, rippling from head to toe. I met her glassy green stare, and the panic subsided. Her eyes narrowed like a cat's into twin slivers of green moon.

  Sweet Svetlana, I know who you are. The teacher's silken words whispered inside my mind, but her lips never moved! Her thoughts uncoiled behind my eyes like an invading serpent. She was inside my head! I bet you'd rather have an apple, wouldn't you? One that's nice and ... red.

  I tore my stare from her laughing eyes, dropping my gaze to the glistening red apple she'd drawn from her jacket pocket. Raw fear splashed through my insides like water from a ruptured balloon. I rushed for the door, flinging it open with a bang. I bolted down the empty hallway. My footfalls reverberated loudly, echoing all around as Larch's eerie thoughts chased after me, whispering inside my head: Sleep tight, Svetlana.

  Three

  I haven't always been a vampire—or at least I don't think so. It was only after we moved to Sunny Hill that I first began to realize it, that I began to change. Do you prefer to sleep under your bed? You might be a vampire, too.

  I've read that vampires sleep in coffins. Do you think it's true? Are you a fool? Have you ever seen a coffin? They are extremely narrow—with a lid that closes down right over your face! Ridiculous! Do you like to roll over in your sleep? Well, so do I. The last thing I want is to wake up in the middle of the night and find that I can't roll over because I'm stuck in a silly coffin. What if I got a cramp? And not only that, anyone who saw the coffin would instantly know that I was a vampire—so how smart would that be? And can you imagine how freaked out my parents would be if I had a coffin in my room?

  It's ludicrous.

  I've already addressed the blood-drinking myth—ridiculous ad infinitum—which is Latin for "to the max."

  Daylight? That's not a problem. Of course, I need to protect my eyes from harmful UV rays, same as everyone else, and I do use sunscreen, especially with my fair skin. The night, however, is when I am most powerful. My senses are perfectly attuned to the hours after the sun has fled. I see better in the dark than any cat. I can hear the slightest sounds. I can sense the tap-tap-tapping of cockroach legs creeping and the wiggle of worms burrowing deep beneath the ground. I can detect the flutter of a bat's wings high in the night sky and the scratching of tiny toe-nails as mice scurry across the cellar floor. In the black of night, I am supreme.

  And with my first dreadful day at Sunny Hill Middle School behind me, the night couldn't come fast enough.

  At the dinner table, I feasted on red peppers, red potatoes, tomato slices, and wild salmon (pink is red enough). When finished, I was eager to seek solace high in the branches of the Oak of Doom.

  "May I be excused, please?"

  "Don't you want some Jell-O before you run outside?" Dad asked.

  "Is it red?"

  "C'mon, Steph—I mean, Svetlana. A little green isn't going to kill you."

  "Leave her alone," Mom said, coming to my defense. "She eats healthier than you or I do."

  Dad hadn't entirely come to grips yet with my new diet. He dismissed my taste for red foods as attention-seeking behavior brought about by the family move from Texas to California. It was an interesting theory, but my taste buds weren't buying it.

  "Is there any more of the red velvet cake left?" I wondered. My mother's red velvet cake is the best.

  Unfortunately, her face relayed the bad news before her mouth ever moved. "I'm sorry." She shook her head, frowning, rolling her eyes toward my father. "Someone had the last piece already. And then that same someone had the nerve to make green Jell-O."

  "Good job, Dad," I said, swallowing the sad fact that it would probably be weeks before Mom made my favorite dessert again. I'm usually reluctant to turn my vampiric powers on my parents, but I took a moment to plant the notion of strawberries and sponge cake into my mother's head for this coming weekend.

  Dad widened his eyes in theatrical glee, guiding another jiggling spoonful of green Jell-O toward his mouth. "Mmm ... delicious—it's so much better than red. You know, it wasn't that long ago that you thought green Jell-O was just fine, sweetie."

  But not anymore, I thought. "Can I be excused?"

  "You haven't said anything about how your classes went today," Mom observed, propping her chin onto her folded fingers and assuming her "tell me everything" pose.

  "When I picked her up from school, she seemed awfully eager to leave," Dad noted.

  Which was the understatement of the century. I couldn't get away from school fast enough. I shuddered, remembering the icy intrusion of Ms. Larch boring into my brain. How dare she! Also ... how could she? Only my formidable vampire skills had enabled me to break away and escape. What had she been probing my mind for? Did she know that I was a vampire? And most unsettling of all, what could I do about it? I had to go to school tomorrow—there was no way around that. Mom and Dad were both working now, and home-schooling was no longer an option. Could I somehow get out of going to Larch's science class? Or maybe attend an entirely different school altogether?

  "What did you think, honey?" Mom asked. "Was school fun?"

  "Fun is a word," I offered, tapping my knife impatiently against my empty plate.

  "You're going to have to give it time, Stephanie," Dad advised, continuing to spoon wobbles of green jelly into his bowl.

  "Svetlana!" I corrected. Was it so hard? Sss-vet-LAH-nah. Was it too much to ask?

  His face reddened. "Svetlana—I'm sorry. And you know there's nothing wrong with the name Stephanie. It was perfectly fine for your grandmother. Before you know it, you're going to make all kinds of friends at school. You'll be in all sorts of clubs, and you can play sports or—" He verbally backpedaled away from my look of disgust. "Well, maybe not sports. But you can write for the school newspaper or join band or—"

  "Just don't hate school right away," Mom suggested, reaching and stilling the clinking of my knife against the plate.

  "Fine. I'll hate it next week." If I lasted until next week.

  "Take it one day at a time," Dad suggested, brimming with unoriginality.

  "Can I go, please?"

  I dropped my dirty plate into the sink and laced up my black tennis shoes. Razor bolted between my legs as I opened the door, and we both rushed outside. In the far corner of the front yard, I climbed the ladder of boards up the Oak of Doom.

  I wouldn't describe myself as an outdoors type, but when we first arrived in Sunny Hill, I insisted that Dad build me a private hangout in the largest tree in our front yard. He wasn't eager to do it, but a slight psychic push got the job done. I figured it was the least he could do since we'd left a perfectly wonderful life back in Texas just so he could make more money. I even tried to get my parents to allow me to sleep in my hangout overnight, but that was a definite no-go, at least for the time being. I didn't press it—you've got to pick your battles. That's Sun Tzu talking. He wrote the book on strategy, espionage, and war. Dad ended up not building my hangout as hi
gh up as I wanted, but it was high enough that I could easily see over the six-foot fence surrounding Morgloom Woods, which was basically our front and back yard.

  Outside a window, I heard laughter and screaming coming from farther down Cherry Street. I spied through my binoculars and found Sandy Cross and her two minions, Marsha and Madison, bouncing like dodos on the trampoline in the front yard of the house on the corner. A smile crept across my face as I imagined one of them somersaulting off and splatting on the sidewalk. Am I bad? Please. My cousin in Texas has a trampoline. As I recall, the thrill lasted about two minutes. Why would anyone ever get on a trampoline twice? In my opinion, a trampoline is basically a Darwinian device for thinning the herd.

  "Hey! What are you looking at?" a voice called from below.

  I swung my binoculars down to the sidewalk beyond the fence and centered on Dwight Foote's round face staring up at me. I took the binoculars away and found Fumio Chen standing next to him.

  "You spying on Sandy?" Foote asked.

  "Of course not!" I lied, pointing vaguely into the air. "A kingfisher owl ... just flew off thataway. You two must've spooked him—good job. It was the most magnificent specimen I've ever seen."

  Foote shielded his thick glasses, looking around doubtfully. "I didn't see it."

  "Hey, let us come up there!" Fumio shouted. The sun glinted brightly off his braces.

  Come up here? Into my secret lair! What did Tweedledee and Tweedledum want? Nobody came up here—of course, I hadn't met anyone around here until today. But then, they weren't waiting for my permission, anyway. Fumio had unlatched the gate, and he and Foote were coming through. Razor rocketed across the yard, snapping and barking. He ran vicious circles around their feet, his black hotdog-shaped body racing like a cyclone.

  Fumio bent down, grinning and wiggling his sausage fingers, then jerked back as Razor snapped. "Whoa, doggie!"

  "Don't move," I warned, dropping through the hole in the floor and scrambling down the ladder. I scooped Razor up off the ground. The yipping dachshund squirmed in my arms, barking fiercely. "Don't you have enough sense not to come barging through someone's gate? Doesn't 'Beware of Dog' mean anything to you?"

  "Hey, chill out, Svetlana," Fumio suggested, jerking away as Razor unleashed a fresh barrage of barking.

  "Get up the ladder, 'cause he's going back on the ground," I warned.

  Razor growled and snapped around the bottom of the tree. I climbed after Fumio and Foote as they disappeared through the trapdoor.

  "Cool," Foote said, rummaging around the tiny room. He picked up the slingshot I used for target shooting. I took it from him and placed it inside my trunk, closing the lid.

  "Pretty lame books, though," Fumio said, lifting an Agatha Christie off the crate and tossing it aside.

  "You boneheads obviously aren't familiar with Miss Manners," I observed.

  "It's a cool tree house," Foote conceded, glancing admiringly around the room.

  The hangout was pretty small; a single room with a window cut out of each side for a view in every direction. I'd tricked the space out with a trunk that I could padlock, shelves for books, and an overturned crate that functioned as a table. An old kitchen chair that my parents didn't use anymore was pushed against the wall, and Mom had stitched black curtains for the windows. I thought of the hangout more as an apartment than as a tree house, but I wasn't going to wrestle with Foote's limited experience.

  Fumio stood at one of the windows, scanning Cherry Street with my binoculars. "You're definitely a spy, Svetlana." He focused on Sandy and her friends bouncing in the yard on the corner. "How come you never leave your yard?"

  "Of course I leave the yard," I huffed, as if it was any of his business. I'd been out plenty—and all around the neighborhood. I'd ridden my bicycle to the mall and over to City Park. I'd taken the bus by myself to the downtown library. I'd been to the zoo and the museum. I knew the name on every mailbox as far as three streets over. I even knew where Fumio Chen lived. "If I don't leave the yard, then how do I know you live over on Stallings Street in the house with the silver gazing ball in the yard? Which, by the way, is extremely tacky."

  "'Cause you're a spy," he said, proving his point.

  Clever. "Sun Tzu prescribes knowing one's enemy," I countered, grabbing my binoculars from him and setting them down on the table. "Now, what do you boys want?"

  "Sun who?" Foote scratched his big head.

  "He wrote The Art of War," Fumio explained.

  I was impressed but not swayed.

  "So what do you do up here in this place anyway—besides spy?" Foote wondered. He slid against the wall down to the floor and sat with his legs crossed Indian-style.

  "Make yourself comfortable," I said, dripping sarcasm.

  Fumio said, "All right, ice queen, we get it—you're tough. But just try relaxing and being a bit friendly—just so you can say you did it once. I'm sure being nice won't agree with you, but at least you'll have had the experience." He finished his amateur assessment, planting his butt in my chair.

  I gave him the thumb. "Out, brace-face."

  "Very original. You're like a genius." But he got up and slid down to the floor beside Foote.

  I pushed my chair away and sat.

  "What do you two do around here?" I asked, turning the table on their interrogation.

  "Lots," Fumio said. "For one, I'm a reporter for the school paper, the Sunny Hill Bee" He knelt up and pulled a notebook from the back pocket of his jeans. "And Dwight takes photos."

  Foote slid a digital camera from a holster on his belt. "It's got seven megapixels and a 5X zoom, and I can record videos with sound." He clicked a button on the camera, and it whirred to life.

  "Don't—" I started, but the flash went off in my face. I rubbed at the stars dancing before my eyes. "Jerk. If you want that camera thrown out the window, just take another picture."

  "Check it out." Foote shoved the camera in my face so I could view an image of myself lifting my hands up to block the shot.

  What? You thought a vampire couldn't be photographed? That a vampire can't cast a reflection? Wrong. Vampires are subject to the same physical laws that rule every creature. The things that make a vampire a vampire are the brain and the heart. A vampire brain is vastly superior to an ordinary individual's brain. That's why my senses are so keenly developed. And a vampire heart can never be defeated.

  I pushed aside the camera and told Foote to get out of my face.

  "I've got an idea," Fumio said. He tapped a pen against his notebook. "I think your tree house might make an interesting story for the paper—kind of a 'get to know the new girl in school' piece. Dwight can take some shots of you standing at the window, and I'll write up a little—"

  "No way," I protested, experiencing a surge of panic as extreme as the one Ms. Larch had brought on at the end of science class. "You do that and you're both dead. And I'm completely serious."

  "Whoa, Svetlana, most kids would kill to be in the school paper—not to stay out of it. What's the big deal?" Fumio sensed my distress, enjoying it. He planted a fat smile across his face.

  Not a smart move.

  I pulled him roughly from the floor. Before he could react, I had him pushed halfway out the nearest window. The smile fled from his face, and he hollered in panic. He grasped desperately for the window frame. I gripped his shirt collar and heaved. He grabbed at my wrists and then at the fluttering curtains. I bent him farther backward across the windowsill.

  "Whoa! Whoa! Pull me back!"

  He swatted at my face, flailing his arms. I shook him at the end of my bunched fists. Put me in the school paper, would he? I'd drop him on his head. "You write one little word, or put one little picture of me in your loser Bee, and I'll bury you." I clenched my teeth, gritting over his terrified face.

  Foote tapped gently on my shoulder. "We could do a fluff piece about Principal Talbot's cat instead," he offered.

  I dragged Fumio back inside.

  He straightened his
wrinkled collar, coughing, his eyes watering as he smoothed his shirtfront. "You—you could have dropped me!"

  Foote patted him on the back and told him that maybe they should pass on the tree house story. I realized Dwight Foote might have more going on inside that big head of his than I'd given him credit for.

  "No story," I said.

  "No story. Geez..." Fumio twisted his neck from side to side. "You could've messed up my vertebrates, man."

  I suddenly had an idea of my own. "If you want to do a story on somebody, why not write an exposé about Ms. Larch—she's new, right?" I figured that this might be an opportunity for me to learn more about the creepy science teacher who wanted to cram an apple down my throat.

  Foote shook his head and said, "We already did a story on her in last month's edition."

  "Yeah," Fumio croaked. "Right after she took over Mr. Boyd's class."

  "Mr. Boyd was the science teacher who disappeared, right?"

  "That's right," Foote said. "There's a rumor he skipped town to escape the FBI."

  "For bank robbery," Fumio added. "He was a sharp dresser and drove a fast car—a canary-yellow Corvette—which is a little more car than most of the lame teachers at Sunny Hill Middle can handle."

  "So where did Ms. Larch come from?"

  "She moved here from England," Fumio answered, scrunching up his face in thought. He counted off on his fingers. "She has a dog named Sparky, her favorite food is pizza, she hates violence on TV, and she loves jazz"

  "You're quite the muckraker," I said, tapping the tip of my finger to the end of my nose. "No husband or children?"

  "Nope."

  "Have you noticed anything at all strange about her? Or heard anyone saying anything weird about her?"

  "Well, er, no.... Like what?" Fumio looked from Foote to me, wondering what I was getting at.

  "Nothing," I said. I needed to find out more about Ms. Larch, but what I really wanted to know wasn't going to be in the pages of the Sunny Hill Bee.

  "Do you know the Bone Lady next door?" Foote asked. He'd picked up my binoculars from the table and was aiming them out the window.