Vampire Boys Of Summer (Completed!)

Episode 25: Luhan

Angela snatched the note out of my hand. “Oh crap,“ she said after seeing what it was. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and Amanda won’t be back until after school ends.”

“Damn it,“ I muttered. “I hope she doesn’t have to take summer school.”

I worked the combination on my lock and threw the door open. Angela squealed, and I jumped back in alarm. There was a boy inside my locker. At first, I thought it was a little kid. He was only about four foot tall, though he looked even shorter squeezed into my locker. His curly blond hair was half in his eyes, which were a bright baby blue, and he was so thin I thought even a strong breeze would bowl him over. He reminded me of a leprechaun when he jumped out of the locker and danced around us.

“It’s about time you got here,“ he cried. “I thought I was going to suffocate in there.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “And what the heck are you doing in my locker?”

“Well, I was waiting outside of it, but I saw some ugly girls coming so I hid inside. I think they stuck something to the door.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“But hey, I’m Luhan. Luhan Kai.”

He held out his hand. I must have looked at it funny. After all, who shook hands in greeting anymore? And in high school? The guy looked young enough to know this. He also looked too young for high school, but his eyes and attitude said he was old enough. And the fact he was Asian gave me enough pause to consider the fact that Chelsea Valley’s Asian community was growing in leaps and bounds.

“So what were you doing outside my locker?”

“My sister told me to wait here for her. Locker number SS501.”

Angela spoke up. “Well, that’s her locker, not your sisters, so why don’t you get lost?”

“I’m tired of being lost,“ he replied. “Oh, what am I going to do?”

The boy began to cry and I gave Angela a stern look. Then I looked back to the kid. “Hey, don’t cry. We’ll help you find your sister. What’s her name?”

He looked at me and sniffled. “Chinatsu.”

Angela and I led Luhan down the hall, each of us holding a hand so he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd. Because he was so young and short, we didn’t feel high school hallways was the proper place for him to be wandering. He was definitely a weird kid. His hair was so curly it looked like something you’d find on an old porcelain doll, skin so flawless he was either too young for acne or he had the most perfect skin tone ever. And if that wasn’t enough, when I took hold of his hand, to which he looked up at me and smiled, I noticed his fingernails were painted a light violet.

Chinatsu wasn’t very hard to find. A girl like that can’t hide very well in the crowd; she tends to attract onlookers. Word had spread about her, so girls looked to her in awe, and the boys stood by with mouths hanging open as if transfixed by Venus herself. I found this kind of strange, because in my experience the super pretty girls were always bitches. Chi seemed to be likable, friendly, and didn’t carry herself like she was the Belle of the ball, to coin a phrase of my dad’s. We came across her outside the cafeteria where it seemed she was holding court with her new fans.

“Chi!“ I yelled, trying to be heard over the crowd. She had excellent hearing, for her head turned in my direction. She flashed a smile that if I had been a boy, or gay as the Facebook rumors suggested, you would have been looking for smelling salts to revive me. She pushed her way past her admirers, which brought out more than several exclamations of disappointment.

“Nora,“ she happily called. “Angela! Luhan!” She stopped, looked at Luhan, and then at the both of us. “Forgive me for asking, but why are you girls holding hands with Luhan?”

“We didn’t want him to get lost,“ I explained. “This isn’t a place for little kids.”

She laughed. “Lost? You couldn’t lose Luhan if you tried. He’s like a heat seeking missile. Literally. Especially with girls.”

Angela and I looked at Luhan, and then back at each other.

“And also,“ Chi added with a mirthful grin, “Luhan isn’t exactly what I would call a little kid. He has five children of his own.”

We both jerked our hands away from him. “Gross!” Angela exclaimed, and for me the feeling was mutual. I gave Luhan a stern look, but he just shrugged with a mischievous smile.

“Sorry, one has to use his size and looks to his advantage with high school girls.”

Chi was still grinning over his ruse. “Don’t worry about him ladies; he’s harmless. Flirty as hell maybe, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Killed my first this morning,“ he joked.

“Well, Luhan, you found your sister,“ I said. “But we have to get to class.”

“Aww, and I was going to try and entice you to skip classes with me..” He gave me a wink, and I thought, Oh my god , I’m being hit on by a fourth grader. The last week of school had gone mad…

After school, I stood waiting for my bus. Angela had already boarded hers and was on her way out of the parking lot. I declined to ride home with her because I thought maybe Haru would show up to walk me home again. I don’t know why I thought this; he had only walked me once, and now here I was expecting it of him. But I was on my own. Ryo didn’t seem like the walking-the-girls-home type, Luhan couldn’t drive because he couldn’t reach the pedals, and I hadn’t seen Chi since lunchtime. My bus pulled up and I got on.

Our bus driver was an older man in his fifties called Mr. Ed. Someone had told us that Mr. Ed had been a talking horse on an old black and white television show, but our Mr. Ed was no horse, and he wasn’t much on making conversation. He talked to you if you were disrupting his driving, but other than that he just nodded or shook his head at you. I think everyone respected him because they didn’t know his deal. Was he a mild mannered bus driver ready to snap, or was he already plotting out ways to wreck the bus? With thoughts like these running through my head, no wonder I chose to walk home half the time.