Seven Minutes to Midnight

14

Veronica didn't come over the next morning. She didn't call. I didn't care, because I was still racing to the bathroom every hour, between drinking the flat soda and nibbling the saltines my mother gave me before she went to bed at six a.m.

All day I watched my favorite vampire movies (Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned) and a few other favorites (Donnie Darko, The Corpse Bride) and a few hours of crap like Jerry Springer and Cheaters, until it was finally evening and I felt better. Better enough to realize I hadn't heard from Veronica.

Yes, my phone was still charged (no messages), and my email box didn't have anything from her or Frank. I dialed Veronica's number—the phone went straight to voicemail. So I texted her a message:

What happened last nite???

And then I sent her an email with approximately the same message. After checking my phone several more times, I took a hot shower and crawled into bed. I tried to tell myself that the queasy feeling in my stomach was a result of my illness rather than worry.

I didn't see Veronica at all during the next week. Frank was in school, but spent his days moping around like the stereotypical lovelorn teenager. When I asked him what had happened on Friday night, he told me that, as usual, Lane had started making out with Veronica, then they had gone off into the darkness for "the ritual." After half an hour had passed, and they hadn't returned, Frank left the cemetery. He hadn't heard from either Lane or Veronica either.

I supposed that since Frank hadn't heard any screaming that my fears were completely unfounded. I still had this image of Lane as some kind of sicko serial killer rapist, and imagined that the "ritual" was probably sex. Veronica would have gone along with that willingly enough. Lane must have been cocky about his own prowess, thinking he'd have her screaming with pleasure. Disgusting.

It was easy, when I wasn't in Lane's presence, to be disgusted with him.

Where Frank had met Lane still weighed on my mind, but every time I tried asking him he changed the subject. I also wondered how Frank got in contact with Lane—he certainly hadn't given me a phone number, or an email, or even a general indication of where he lived. If he was indeed still a teenager, he probably didn't live in Middlebury unless he was homeschooled, because he would be in school with us. So he either lived in a nearby town, or else he was a little older than he looked—nineteen, maybe, or in his early twenties. I refused to believe that he was a six hundred year old vampire.

Without Veronica to distract me in the hallways and in art class, and Frank all moody and silent, I started noticing other things happening in our little school. The junior and senior proms were swiftly approaching—neither Veronica nor Frank had expressed any interest in attending, surprise, surprise. The school's spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors, was that weekend, and I even considered going. I had knit a boa that looked like a vine with leaves and flowers for a Halloween costume a couple of years ago.

I began noticing "Save the Wolves" posters all over the hallways, graced with a better-than-decent drawing of a wolf. One day when I stopped to study the poster, a girl rushed up beside me. "Are you interested in animal rights?" she asked me in breathless excitement.

I regarded her coolly. "Sure," I said.

"Then you should join the Animal Rights Club," the girl continued. "I'm Mara, and I'm vice president. We're doing a big campaign this year to save a pack of wolves that have moved into our area. Farmers have been hunting them, but the gray wolf is an endangered species, and we've been working really hard to raise awareness. They're actually quite rare in this area, being found more in the Southwest, Midwest, and Alaska, but—"

I cut her off with, "Thanks, I'll think about it," and walked away. I was pretty sure that in a few moments she would launch into some tirade about veganism that I didn't want to hear.

"We meet on Wednesday afternoons in Room 38!" she called after me.