But still, I am wondering when it is going to make its move.

I am almost more worried when I don't see it there.

Then it could be anywhere.

Jerk is worried about me. I can see it in his eyes. He's no longer just hurt when I ignore him and walk an alternate route so that I won't have to speak to him. He thinks I wouldn't do that normally.

I hope I wouldn't, but I feel so sleepy during the day - because I can't sleep at night - that I don't want to waste my energy. Of course, talking to Jerk is not a waste of energy, especially if you would like to hear an imitation of late night comedy show reruns, but I don't see what there's to gain from it.

I do feel bad that Tom has abandoned him, too. Tom doesn't have an excuse. I guess the three of us are just growing apart. Tom is hanging out more and more with the cooler crowd.

It isn't difficult to be a cooler crowd than Jerk. All you have to do is not sniff your own underarms at lunchtime.

Without me, Tom just doesn't want to be around Jerk anymore.

Sometimes Jerk will see that Tom is talking to the other kids in that group he's with, and Jerk will drift beside them. He'll stand right there on the edge, behind everyone else, resting his hand nervously on one of the chair backs, and his eyes will flip from speaker to speaker, hoping one will say something he can add to. When they all start making jokes, he'll make a quick one, too; he repeats his jokes four or five times, just to make sure everyone's heard it. He punctuates them with "yeah!"; for example, "And then he falls and breaks his leg, yeah! Like, then he falls and breaks his leg, yeah! And then, like, he falls and breaks his leg."

They are polite people, so they don't tell him to go away.

I want to be one of them. They are good looking. They know secrets about one another's dating lives. They laugh together in public s.p.a.ces.

Plus, Rebecca Schwartz is one of them. I wish Tom would draw me over to talk with her. He knows I have this crush on her.

But Tom doesn't want to be seen with me either. I still am sure he knows something, but the question is how much. He keeps saying that I haven't been normal lately, that I've been completely weird. He says I need some sleep and that I'm always, like, a complete downer nowadays.

He is right. Tom is right on these points.

I am staring at my clock.

It flashes. It says 3:52.

3:52.

3:52.

That is no time to be awake. It is the rawest hour of the earthly day. There is no one to help you at 3:52. Many people don't even exist at 3:52.

A crow caws somewhere.

My braces hurt. The ache is dull and continuous.

I push back my covers. I'm getting too hot.

I can't sleep, and I'm so thirsty. I'm tired of those words, "I'm so thirsty." They are dull, dull, dull. I don't know what to do. That's what I keep thinking. I don't know whether to trust Chet. He could be a double agent. I don't know what he's doing if he is a double agent. I lie there wondering what he could be doing. Why would he ask me to place the Arm of Moriator, a device for the Forces of Light, in Tch'muchgar's world if he is a servant of Darkness? Unless the Arm of Moriator is not what he said it was, and it is some dire magical engine with a dark purpose. Could be! I do not want to think about that. I writhe around in bed. I try not to think about it. Not to think about it at all.

The s.p.a.ce between my teeth and my cheeks is dry. I pull up saliva from under my tongue. It shoots back down the channels on either side of my jaw.

My braces ache dully.

The flaps on the inside of my cheeks are still dry. I suck up more saliva to wet them. It's as sluggish as a putty shake.

I am getting angry now. I sit up. The walls are too close around me. Somewhere there is a cool, wet, open expanse and I want to be there. I am irate at my saliva.

I stand up. I walk over to my window and slide it open. I breathe in the night air.

Hopeless. Thin as nothing.

I want to pound on something and make it bleed for me. I want to tear into something. I want to tear away these walls.

I need to go to the bathroom. There's water there.

The pain from my braces shoots through the bone of my jaw. My teeth are moving.

I reach out for my door handle.

Then I hold up my arm, close to my eyes.

My pajama sleeve has been pressed into a slinkie of ringlets at the elbow. My forearm is bare before it.

At the sight of my smooth white skin, fine as cream, I start to salivate. I trace the little blue veins from the wrist up to the plumper muscle.

I lower my mouth. My open lips just nuzzle my forearm.

The points of my canines touch the bare skin. My canines seem larger than usual. My saliva is thick.

Helplessly, I pierce the skin; and helplessly, I start drawing and sucking as ferociously as I can, yanking blood up into my mouth. The pain jolts my elbow up and down, while I feel the blessed blood murmuring over my lips, my chin, down - in the most tantalizing trickle - my throat, a few drops, a spot, more; and I tear at my arm and slash downward with the teeth, rutting up little tracks of meat while the thick, sour tang of my own gore sweetly fills my mouth and cheeks, puffing them out. It hurts like the devil, and I'm moaning, lost in pain and wonder, but now I hack a little more at my arm with the same pleasure I'd peel a scab, so the pain is bigger, harder, cleaner, more burning, more scathing, more cleansing.

Lost in pleasure and pain, I almost howl, slurping, licking, and my arm is red and slick and I chase every, every, every last drop.

A half hour later, I am lying drowsily on the floor.

My braces are just one big loopy tangle. My pajamas are twisted all around me. There are wide swaths of blood sc.r.a.ped across my striped arms and chest. The wounds in my left arm have clotted and started to heal. Very quickly, I notice. Unnaturally quickly. My fangs have slid back into my gums.

I curl up like a kitten.

For the first time in weeks I sleep, satiated.

My teeth ground me for a week. My teeth are fine, but my braces were yanked completely off my canines. I told people it was a night-time skateboarding accident. My orthodontist says this is unlikely. He has taken the braces off entirely. My mother says she is grounding me for a week or until I tell her what really happened. She thinks I got in a fight with a gang.

"Yes, Mom," I say. "Luckily, I fended them off single-handedly."

She says, "You have got an att.i.tude problem."

My orthodontist took her aside and spoke to her. That I know. I do not know what he said. She says it was serious.

They are starting to suspect me, I can tell. Not of the right things - my father keeps leaning close to me to casually smell my breath - but they suspect me none the less.

I want Chet to come back.

I have a feeling he is not coming.

The lawns are starting to smell syrupy sweet. In the next week or so, many of the blossoms on the trees change to leaves, however that works.

The leaves are so fragile, an infant green, they look almost frightened when they first cl.u.s.ter at the joints and elbows of the trees in the yard.

All I seem to see on the news are stories about people killing inhumans. I've never noticed it so much before. There are still all the same stories about starvation, and fighting in the Middle East, and senators talking about the national debt - but now I notice more than I ever did before those other stories about the mobs, the lynchings, all over America.

I see the deaths of vampires, as much as can be shown; and I watch the televised burning of witches. I see the chasing of warlocks through main streets in Iowa. And then there are the Abominations of Slanterville, a town in Florida that is found to be filled with worshippers of an alligator-G.o.d named Slundge. Federal agents were lowered in on bungee cords from helicopters and they captured the townspeople, who had bred with beasts of the swamp to produce squalling children with mongrel patches of scale and horn. The people of Slanterville, down to the rat-tailed babies, were sent to prison, and their town was burned in the night.

"I don't know why the Feds didn't just kill those Abominations," says my mother idly as she pa.s.ses in front of the TV, feeding herself Cheetos. "It's not like they could ever lead normal lives."

In prison, away from the swamps, the Abominations started to weaken and get sick. A fight broke out. I guess some human inmates claimed that the Abominations of Slanterville hogged the showers. The fight turned into a riot, and within fifteen minutes all the Abominations in the male ward had been beaten to death. The riot spread. More people were killed. In a prison riot, the first to die are the inhumans. The Abominations, the trolls, the changelings, the demon-possessed.

I can't believe I'm one of a hated race, too. It doesn't matter that I'm a half-vampire and they're Abominations. We are all hated. We are brethren in being hated. I watch the human inmates brandishing b.l.o.o.d.y instruments, waving them in triumph, and I can't understand why they hate me so much. I have done nothing. It is like they are saying, "We're coming for you next, boy. We know your zip code; we're on our way. We'll kill you all."

But then I think, I am not inhuman yet. I am not inhuman yet.

I will not be a killer; I will not give them reason to hate me.

I feel people's eyes on me all the time. "Why are you watching that gruesome footage?" my mother asks. "You want your brain to turn to mush?"

And when I keep watching I notice her lingering by the door, looking at me as if she's worried about me. She's worried about why I have to keep staring at these scenes. I can't pay attention to the screen when she looks at me that way because I'm too busy being looked at. I just sit there, not looking back, hoping she'll go away, and I wonder: What is the difference between the look of a parent who is concerned and the look of a parent who is suspicious?

She doesn't look concerned or suspicious when my brother watches riot footage, because he talks constantly about the media and the splicing techniques.

She almost glares at me, though, as if she knows, maybe somewhere deep within her, that what I'm watching is myself being killed on screen. I'm staring at it because I need to know what might happen to me. I need to understand why I am hated.

I keep telling myself that it will not happen, that soon this will all be a memory.

But I do not know when Chet is coming; or why he would come; or if he is coming at all.

Peeper frogs are starting to chirp in the woods. The sunlight is bright through the leaves of the oaks. My brother is out there, in the back yard, filming slugs.

He has a big biology project to do. He decided to do a science doc.u.mentary on the life cycle of the slug. That way he can work with video equipment and lots of gastropods.

I am lying upstairs on my bed, trying to get some sleep. Through my open window, I can hear my brother's voice. "Establishing shot. The lawn," he says. "A fearsome jungle for the average garden slug."

Somewhere downstairs, my mother is talking on the phone, comparing her antidepressant brand with her friends'.

It has been some time since I've slept. I hate the sunlight, now. It makes me weary.

I am trying to fall asleep, but I can still feel the dull thirst sucking at my upper palate. Everything bothers me. The glint of light from my posters. The hiccupping, nervous chirp of the peepers. The distant rumble of a lawn mower.

Something shifts over near my desk.

I turn the other way and jam my wrist in my ear. I close my eyes. My arm is uncomfortable, twisted so my wrist will fit in my ear. I turn the other way.

Something scuffs the rug.

I open my eyes. A man is in my room, staring down at me.

I sit up, yelping. It is the Thing with the One-Piece Hair. It approaches me. Its hands are spread outward, ten fingers raised in a fan. It has no expression on its face.

"No! s.h.i.t! Get out!" I scream, scrabbling with my sleeve to reveal Chet's symbol.

The Thing keeps walking toward me.

"What's your problem?" calls Paul. "Can you shut up?"

"Christopher," says the Thing with the One-Piece Hair in its voice like many speaking. "Do not be alarmed or attempt to flee. I am a servant of the Forces of Light."

I babble, "No, you're not! You broke in! Get out! You're . . . This is illegal!"

"I am a servant of the Forces of Light, and I have been instructed to approach you."

"No, you're not!" I scream, holding out the sigil on my arm. "Get out! You can't do this! This - this is breaking and entering."

It gazes at me. "As I am a five-dimensional construct, the concept of 'entering' has no useful application in this scenario." It walks toward my bed. Its knees are by the edge of the bed. It bends down over me so its dead eyes are close to my face. I can smell its steely breath as it speaks.

"Get out!" I scream. "Help! Help!"

The door slams open against the wall. My mother storms into the room. "Chris!" she says. "Good G.o.d, what's wrong?"

"Help me! It!" I say, inarticulately.

"What?"

"Hey, what's the matter?" yells Paul from the lawn. "You okay in there?"

"He's fine," my mother calls. "A nightmare or something."

"As you may observe, calling for help was ill advised and futile," the Thing points out, straightening up.

"Chris, what's the matter?" my mother asks, concerned.

The Thing is prattling obliviously, "I have come to make inquiries of the whereabouts of the Arm of Moriator, which was taken illegally from our a.r.s.enal twenty-eight days ago."

"The Arm . . . it was taken illegally?" I stutter. "I-I mean . . ."

"Who are you talking to?" my mother asks. "h.e.l.lo? Earth to Chris."

"Never mind," I say to her. "I'm fine now."

"You're fine now. Great. Why is this family so crazy? Why, and I ask why, is this family so crazy?"

"You have seen the Arm of Moriator?" asks the Thing.

I nod.