Never Bite a Boy on the First Date Read online

  Me? I went for green.

  Not bright, crazy, Kermit green or anything. I have pretty dark hair usually, although I used to get highlights every other month that kept my hair a light, shiny brown. But once I realized Mom couldn’t stop me anymore, I let it grow out dark, so with the hair dye it ends up being this kind of a dark forest green. You can’t spot the green right away in most lights, but in the sunshine suddenly you’re like, Poof, emerald!

  Well, I think it’s cool.

  My mom would have had a heart attack. We used to have enormous fights because I wanted a belly button ring (which I now have, thanks very much). Olympia just wrinkled her nose at my dark green hair, then shrugged and said, I’ve seen worse.”

  That pretty much sums up the difference in their parenting styles.

  After breakfast, Crystal carefully applied eyeliner and mascara and lipstick to my face. I had to be very stern with her when she pulled out the bright green eye shadow, though. She loves bright colors (I know, it’s not very vampire-y of her) and she insisted it would look perfect with my eyes. Crystal has told me a few times that my eyes are greener than they used to be, in sort of an iridescent way. I’d really like to check this out myself, but of course that’s impossible. However, I can still be pretty sure that bright green eye shadow is not the way to go.

  “Oh, fine,” Crystal huffed. “I suppose you look very pretty anyway.”

  She helped me pick out a jean miniskirt, knee-high black boots and black tights, and a green fitted tee with a grumpy-looking anime panda on it. I added a black hoodie, since it was early October and starting to get colder outside. You know how vampires in the old movies wore big cloaks with the collars turned up, all sinister-like? Wilhelm says he used to wear those all the time, because it was a great way to hide your face if a mirror popped up. Hooded sweatshirts are the same way, like the modern-day version of those cloaks, stylish and updated for hip teenage vampires of the twenty-first century.

  “So cute,” Crystal proclaimed.

  “Really?” I said, turning around and trying to figure out what I looked like. “So cute that you’d spill your deepest, darkest secrets to me? Like, for instance, that you threw a guy out a window a couple days ago?”

  Crystal tilted her head the other way. “Maybe not that cute,” she said.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “But if you had some green eye shadow—” she added hopefully.

  “Come on, Kira!” Zach yelled from downstairs as I ducked away from Crystal and grabbed my book bag. “We don’t want to miss the big mourning assembly!”

  Oh, man. The school had had one of these assemblies on the first day, so that everyone could get together and grieve about some ancient French teacher who’d died over the summer. It was wicked boring when you didn’t know the person being mourned. On the other hand, if my Ann Arbor school had had one of these for me, that’d be okay. I’d have to ask Olympia if they did; she was the one who filled me in about my funeral and everything, which I missed, what with how busy I was being really dead and all. It takes a couple days of being a corpse before a vampire rises.

  Zach and I were early to school, as usual, so I lurked around the gym doors while everyone else filed in and found seats on the bleachers. I was watching for any of my suspects. I knew I should start by talking to Rowan—you couldn’t get more suspicious than what he’d said to his dad yesterday—but part of me was hoping that smiley guy would walk in first. Or, you know, Daniel…that’d be okay, too.

  I poked around inside my book bag as if I was looking for something while everyone went by. It was a lot quieter than our normal assemblies; I heard a few muffled sobs and a lot of shocked and curious whispering. The football team is usually the noisiest group, pounding on bleachers as they go by and whooping to each other across the gym. But today they were subdued, shuffling along with their heads down. I’m no fan of jocks, but even I felt sorry, seeing them like that. Tex had been a doofus, but from everything I’d heard about him, he’d been a well-liked, good-natured doofus. Not the kind of obnoxious guy with lots of enemies who usually gets murdered, at least on TV.

  A few minutes before the bell rang, I finally spotted Rowan’s big combat boots stomping through the doors. The hood of his black sweatshirt was up and his shoulders were hunched. He didn’t look at anyone as he slouched into the gym and climbed the bleachers, taking two at a time with his long, skinny legs. He reached the top and sat down, way back from the gym floor—far from most of the football players and cheerleaders, who were sitting in the front two rows, sniffling and consoling each other.

  I already knew that my one new friend in town, Vivi, wasn’t coming to the assembly. She’d emailed me last night that she was “too overcome” and “shattered” by the whole murder thing (even though I was pretty sure she didn’t really know Tex). Her parents were letting her stay home for the rest of the week. There was no sign of Daniel or Smiley Guy either. So I took a deep breath, scrambled up the bleachers, and casually plunked myself down next to Rowan.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked.

  His long red-brown bangs hung over his face as he leaned his elbows on his knees. He pushed his hood back a little to give me a nod. I saw him notice my legs first, and then his gaze traveled up to my face.

  Now, I’m not drop-dead gorgeous like Vivi is, but I think—given my tasteful emerald nose stud and my half-Japanese features and my striking, dark green hair—that I’m not exactly the most horrifying teenage girl on the face of the planet.

  But when Rowan met my eyes, he gave me a look that said exactly that. In fact, he looked so spooked that for a moment I thought he was either going to scream and dive off the bleachers or have a heart attack and literally die right there in front of me. Which would make it much harder to get him to confess to a murder, don’t you think?

  “Who…what…?” he stammered. He actually started to get to his feet like he was going to run away.

  “Whoa, what’s wrong?” I asked, touching his shoulder. “Are you okay?” I’ve found, in my limited experience, that touching a guy lightly in a nonthreatening, quasi-flirty manner is a good way to get him to stay put. It totally worked this time, too. Then again, the principal was tapping his microphone at that same moment, so possibly Rowan just wanted to avoid making a scene. But let’s assume it was me.

  He sat down again, putting one hand on his narrow chest and taking a couple of deep breaths. Maybe he was just startled to find a girl talking to him. He seemed like someone who kept to himself; hot girls probably didn’t talk to him very often. Or even semi-cute girls like me. Maybe that was what had scared him.

  His skin was really pale, even paler than Vivi’s, and she’s a natural redhead who looks as though she’s made of porcelain. Rowan’s eyes were an interesting dark blue, like the evening sky just before the stars come out. If I dyed my hair blue instead of green, it’d probably end up being that color. And his eyelashes were really startlingly long. I kind of wanted to touch them to see if they were real, but of course I didn’t do that. He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes flicking from my hair to my multiple earrings to my shimmery green nail polish.

  “Do I know you?” he finally asked in his soft, mossy voice.

  That surprised me. “I don’t think so,” I said. Uh-oh. Maybe his vampire radar was a lot better than mine. Could he tell there was something inhuman about me? Was he afraid I was here to expose him? Or what if we’d attended the same summer camp as kids or something? I didn’t recognize him, but he might have known me when I was Phoebe Tanaka.

  Quickly I said, “I’m Kira. Kira November.” We pick new names as vampires, obviously, or else someone from our past would be liable to find us someday while surfing the Internet or something. Zach, for instance, used to be Cash. We were stuck with the last name November (Olympia’s choice several decades ago), but I chose Kira.

  “Kira,” Rowan echoed, looking confused. “You look familiar.”

  “You’ve probably seen me around school
,” I said. “Or maybe it’s ’cause I look like the actress from Samurai Girl. I get that a lot.” Sure, in wishful-thinking world. But I didn’t want him to connect the dots if he did sense my vampireness.

  “I don’t—” he began, but then the principal started to speak, and I went, “Shhhh,” hoping he’d forget all about it by the time the assembly was over.

  Principal Lovato went on for a long time about what a stand-up guy Tex was and what a treasure he was to the school and how much everyone liked him and how his smile lit up the halls. It actually sounded like he knew who he was talking about, instead of making up stuff about some student he couldn’t remember. I guess being star quarterback nets you some decent eulogies. Several cheerleaders in the front row were sobbing, their mascara streaking their faces.

  I snuck a notebook out of my bag, opened it to a blank page, and scribbled, Did you know Tex? at the top, then handed it to Rowan.

  He looked at my notebook for a long moment, like it was a spider that had just landed in his lap. But finally he took my pen and wrote, No.

  All right, Mr. Chatty.

  I took the pen back, letting my fingers lightly brush his, and wrote, Me neither. We just moved here a month ago from Florida. Olympia makes up backstories for us (and produces supporting documents like magic) every time we move. Usually they’re not too far off from our real story, so they’re easier to remember.

  After another long pause, he took the pen again and wrote, Same. Two years ago. From California.

  California! I wrote. I’d never been there. So there’s no way he could’ve known Phoebe-me. Cool. What part?

  Excruciatingly long pause. San Francisco.

  Oh, I wrote. Hilly. Right?

  This time he just shrugged.

  Well. This was going swimmingly. I could tell that deep, dark secrets were going to come pouring out of him any second.

  I realized that he hadn’t introduced himself yet. What’s your name? I wrote. He couldn’t answer that with a shrug.

  Rowan.

  All right. Now I knew almost exactly as much as I had when I’d sat down. Maybe it was time to try a more direct approach.

  Poor Tex, I tried. I was so shocked when we got to school yesterday. Did you see the body?

  He touched the page with his long fingers, staring at my handwriting. After a moment, I nudged the pen into his hand and he wrote, What body?

  Um. Okaaaaaay.

  Tex’s body, I wrote.

  No, he wrote quickly. Yes. Not really.

  Pause. I wrestled the pen away from him.

  Lots of blood, huh? I watched his face closely as he read that, checking for an expression that might say, “Yeah, ew,” or “Mmm, hungry” or “Yeeessss, I did that.”

  But his expression told me nothing quite that clear. He just gazed at the page like he was looking right through it.

  I’d never seen a dead body before, I tried.

  Almost immediately he seized the pen from my fingers and scribbled, I wrote a poem about it.

  So he really was Poet Guy. Look at me, all insightful. I’d have this case cracked in no time.

  Can I see your poem? I wrote.

  Not yet. Not finished.

  What’s it called?

  In spiky capital letters, he wrote one word: BLOOD.

  Chapter 7

  Well, my job here is done, I thought. I was about ready to grab his wrist and confirm that he had no pulse, when the assembly suddenly ended. Rowan bolted to his feet right away, but he couldn’t get out without stepping on a lot of other people, so he was stuck there for a moment.

  “Awesome to meet you, Rowan,” I said, standing up and putting away my notebook. I tried to look cute and flirty and not at all creeped out. “Maybe we can eat lunch together sometime.”

  Now I finally got my first real boy reaction from him: He blushed and shoved his hands in his pockets awkwardly.

  “Really?” he said. “You wanna eat with me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe you can show me your poetry or something.”

  “Yeah, all right,” he said. “If you really want to see it. It’s not very good. My photography is better.”

  “Oh, I love photography,” I said, giving him my most winning smile.

  You know how in movies (at least, in Jake Gyllenhaal movies, which are all I would watch if I had a choice) there’s always that moment when you see the hero gazing at the heroine with this intense, yearning, deeply meaningful look in his eyes?

  In real life it kind of knocks your socks off. I completely forgot that there were students clomping and thumping on the bleachers all around us. It was like Rowan and I were the only real, three-dimensional things against a flat background. He must have felt it, too, because his awkwardness seemed to melt away. He reached out and trailed his fingers lightly down my cheek to my chin.

  “Maybe I could photograph you,” he said softly.

  Was I being mesmerized? Was he pulling vampire tricks on me? Was it even possible for a vampire to mesmerize another vampire? I had no idea. Perhaps he was just a strangely compelling, regular guy with really cool eyes. Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast, and that’s why I was feeling light-headed….

  Someone jumped down the bleachers and jostled into Rowan, and he dropped his hand quickly. “See you,” he mumbled, ducking his head. Hunching his shoulders again, he hurried away into the crowd.

  Well.

  Solving this mystery wasn’t such a bad assignment after all. Apart from the fact that one of these totally cute boys was also a murderer, of course. Rowan’s clue sheet might say “Cool eyes” and “Potentially sensitive soul” but it also had to say “Poetry about blood…creepy? YES.”

  I was still in a daze when I got to my history classroom, but everyone was freaked out by the assembly, so Mr. Wright just gave us a chapter to read and then sat at the front of the room watching us faux-sympathetically with a phony Talk to me if you need to expression.

  And then, five minutes later, Daniel walked in.

  He was even better-looking in the light, although today he was wearing a long-sleeved dove-gray shirt that hid his abs, which I didn’t approve of. He handed a note to the teacher, scanned the classroom, and spotted me. He smiled in that slow, charming way and gave me a wink. I saw a couple of the cheerleaders twist around to check who he was winking at. Apparently mourning for Tex wasn’t going to stop them from keeping an eye on the new hot boy and any potential gossip.

  I was sitting in the back row, mainly because it was out of the path of the sunlight coming through the windows. It so happened that there was an empty desk next to mine. If he sat there, would it be because of me? Or would he just be avoiding the sun, too?

  “Class,” the teacher said, “let me introduce our new student, Daniel Marvel. It’s a tough day to be starting out here, so I hope you’ll all be welcoming to him.”

  Yes, please, I thought. I’d like to be very welcoming to him.

  “It’s so odd,” said Mr. Wright, handing the slip of paper back to Daniel. “Normally we have a little warning about new students. I had no idea you were coming.”

  Daniel shrugged. “That’s what the principal said,” he said innocently, “but my parents cleared my transfer to the school a month ago.”

  Oh, did they? I wondered. Or did someone, ahem, sneak into the school last night and put you in there? Was that really why he’d been here in the middle of the night? But if he’d killed Tex, why would he be sticking around afterward? Surely most vampires don’t have to keep going to high school once they’re, you know, like, a hundred years old. I don’t care if I still look sixteen; one diploma is all I intend to get.

  “Huh,” said Mr. Wright. “All right, take a seat.”

  Daniel sauntered down the aisle and slipped right into that seat beside me. Blond heads in the front row swiveled and craned to get a look at him. Did I mention how hot he is?

  “Hey, there,” he said to me.

  “Hey, there yourself,” I said. “You m
issed the assembly this morning.”

  “Forms,” he said, spreading his hands. “There seemed to be an awful lot of them. I think a certain guidance counselor didn’t want my first experience of the school to involve funeral services.”

  “Count yourself lucky,” I said. “It was long and tragic. Can I see your schedule?”

  “Shhh,” said Mr. Wright, but sort of halfheartedly.

  Daniel slid a piece of paper out of his notebook and passed it to me. All of his movements were graceful, like those of a cat or a panther or a really well-trained dancer.

  I ran my eyes down his schedule.

  He was in every single one of my classes.

  I shot a glance at him. He had his eyes on his history book, leaning back calmly in his chair as if this were the most natural place in the world for him to be.

  Was it a coincidence? Or had he done that on purpose? Maybe I was reading too much into it. At least one of the cheerleaders and a couple of band guys from the woodwinds section were in all my classes, too. Surely that happened all the time.

  And Daniel couldn’t have changed his schedule last night after meeting me, because we’d left the school together.

  Right?

  We kept quiet for the rest of class, but when the bell rang, I leaned over and said, “Want to hear something freaky? We have the exact same schedule.”

  He gave me that wry little smile. “That sounds very fortuitous. Does that mean you can lead me to”—he glanced down at his schedule—“physics?”

  “Sadly for you, yes,” I said. We gathered our books as I told him about our scatterbrained physics teacher. When we walked down the hall together, he stayed close beside me, and a few times his arm brushed mine as we swerved around the rampaging hordes.

  It felt so normal, you could almost forget the whole meeting-in-a-dark-hall-at-a-murder-scene thing.

  Speaking of which, I still had one suspect to check off my dance card, and I didn’t even know his name yet. Part of me thought, Aren’t two dreamy, mysterious guys enough for you to investigate? But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to know more about the guy with the cute smile. Not because of the cute smile, mind you. No, no, no. I was interested in the way he’d looked at the murder scene. Surely that warranted further investigation.