The first time around the house, I think about how I played right into the vampires' hands. I ask myself how Chet could possibly use the Arm for evil. I do not come up with an answer.

The second time around the house (as I pa.s.s through the kitchen, where my mother is adding soap powder in the dishwasher), I think about how Chet would have come back and really helped me by now if he cared. If he were good, he wouldn't have abandoned me.

The third time around, I realize that I am all alone. I have probably played into the hands and claws of evil, and now I am all alone.

And my revolutions get quicker and quicker as I think: d.a.m.n Chet, d.a.m.n him because now I can't speak to anyone, can't tell anyone; and the thing I want to tell them most, the thing I need to say to them, is just that: that I can't speak, and that I'm all alone; and how can you tell people you're all alone when you're all alone? d.a.m.n Chet, d.a.m.n him because now I can't speak to anyone, can't tell anyone; and the thing I want to tell them most, the thing I need to say to them, is just that: that I can't speak, and that I'm all alone; and how can you tell people you're all alone when you're all alone?

How?

Silence is there, stifling me like a dirty sock.

The afternoon rain drools down the gutters, and the birdseed washes around on the feeder dish. Rain m.u.f.fles the house and drowns the yard.

My mother is sitting at the table, with her hands spread wide on the blond wood. The gray wet light of the rain has seeped into her hair and it is turning gray, too.

She looks up at me. She tilts her head to the side and moves it up so she is looking into my eyes. I stop my rotations. For a while, I stand there with my hand resting on the lintel of the kitchen door, looking into her eyes.

She looks very old and very human.

"Mom," I say tentatively. "Do you have a second?"

"I'm sorry about the fight," she says, blinking down, carefully slanting her fingers to match the grain of the wood. "Your father and I . . . can argue."

The rain is soft against the gra.s.s. "Do you . . . ?" I ask and hesitate. It is a dumb question. "Do you believe in angels? Not faeries or anything, but, you know, celestial beings sent to guide us?"

She looks at me longer. Then she looks down at her hands, which have pulled away from the wood of the table and curled fondly around each other. Then she stands and half sits on the table, with one heel resting against the bottom rung of a chair. She says to me, "I do. I guess I do." She frowns.

I move toward her. It is just about three steps. I am standing at the edge of the table nearest to her. Only a few inches away.

"In what way?" I say. "I mean, in that adult 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus' way?"

She curls her lower lip uneasily beneath her upper teeth and shakes her head. "No," she says softly. "I think they are real."

"And that they intervene in human life?"

She raises her head and looks at me warily. "What do you mean?" she asks.

I stand there, my shoulders sloping, my hands at my sides. "I don't know," I admit.

With one hand she strokes the tabletop three times, and then she says, "I saw one once. I had . . . When I had . . . You were saved by one once." I wait for her to go on.

Finally, I say softly, so as not to disturb her, "How?"

The eaves are dripping. "When you were born," she says, "you were choking to death. That was . . . You were a breech birth, and somehow you got tangled up in the umbilical cord. We thought that . . . so - that it was all over."

The rain has let up a little. The dishwasher growls. I can hear Paul stomping upstairs. "Your face was blue. Really . . . I mean, blue. It . . ." She looks like she's about to cry. "A nurse came. She said, 'I'll take him. Just for a minute.' You were dead. You . . . She went into the next room."

Paul's radio goes on.

"Suddenly we heard this crying. It was you. She brought you in. She'd brought you back to life. It was . . . I mean, she was . . . It was a miracle. She brought you back." She has moved closer to me. And softly, urgently, she says, "And you're so wonderful, both you and Paul. We never could have imagined . . . I asked around, but no one knew who that nurse was. The room was full of people, but no one saw her come or go except your father and me." Her eyes are wet. "So, yes, I believe in angels.

"Chris, you're so special, and your father and I are so concerned about you. We might fight, but you don't know how much we love you. Please, Chris," she says, shaking her head and p.r.o.nouncing my name again and again as if each time she were caressing my hair. "Chris, Chris, Chris . . ."

She is so close, and I can tell she wants to take me in her arms like that baby she saw saved. Her upper body leans toward mine, and her hands have lifted off the table by several inches. Her face is pleading.

And I am standing so near to her, thinking of that small smiling family when I was saved from death, years before, and how they couldn't know what would happen, and how we all just want to be happy. I look at her, and I think we are both looking at each other and almost pleading for something with our eyes.

We stand there like that for a minute, sizing each other up to see who will embrace the other and show affection first, like sumo wrestlers crouching before the clinch.

And then suddenly I see it all - the other room, tangy with disinfectants, the nurse there in the dark, whatever they do to make you one - quickly chanting, or sprinkling me, or biting softly some hidden fold, some pudgy leg beneath the wrap - feeling my little dead toy heart quiver, thump with new life, thump again - how she smiled in the shadows, went out to greet the happy couple - cigars all around - "Chris?" my mother says, leaning toward me. "Chris, I love you," she says, sagging toward me, her face exhausted and in baboon folds. I twitch backward.

Quickly I say, "Yeah, well, I don't believe in them. I mean, I'm not sure. You never know."

Then I walk toward the door to the back hall where the washer and dryer, old welcome mat, and trash cans are. To my back she says, "Chris . . . ," and she says it so sadly that suddenly I feel like she is the child, a little girl; it hurts me to keep walking away. But I do.

And now she yells, "Chris. Christopher!"

As I go into the den, I hear her call, "Oh, fine! If you keep pacing, Christopher, if you pace one more G.o.dd.a.m.n time around this house, I swear I'm going to beat you until you can't sit down for a week."

So when I reach the front hall, I make a detour up the stairs to my room.

I lie on my bed with my head like a bat's.

The rain gets halfhearted as the evening falls. The evening is long and empty.

The yard is choked with water.

"h.e.l.lo, Clayton police." Officer Melnikowski answers the phone. He came to our school to demonstrate school bus safety.

I say, "Hi. I'd like to report a vampire G.o.d trying to enter this world."

There's a silence on the other end of the phone.

"At the Sad Festival. I'm reporting that vampires are going to try to interrupt the spells to keep Tch'muchgar locked in another world."

Silence.

"He's going to try to break back into this world. And he'll wreak havoc and scatter destruction around him."

"Okay," says the policeman.

"They're meeting at an old abandoned church. You have to help me. I'm turning into a vampire, too. I can't give you my name yet."

"Slow down, slow down," he says. "This sounds serious."

"It is. You have to listen to me."

"Okay, okay. Calm. Right, I gotta ask you a couple questions."

"Go ahead," I say.

"First," he says. "Could you tell me: Is your refrigerator running?"

"This isn't a prank," I say.

"Second: Is this Mr. or Mrs. Wall? Well, if there aren't any walls there, how does the roof stay up?" I can hear laughing in the background. Those boys in blue.

"I am not kidding," I say angrily.

"No, and neither am I, kid. You call with this kinda sh - garbage again, I'll come over there and give you something to think about."

Then there's a dial tone.

I hang up angrily. It's a pay phone at school, because I don't want the police to trace the call back to me. I thought they might give me the benefit of the doubt. Obviously no help there.

"Hey," says Jerk, sauntering up. "Who you talking to?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Hey, okay, no problem." He puts his hands in his pockets and flexes his feet so he moves up and down. "You've been looking, like, really down recently."

"I'm sorry," I say, honestly sorry. "It's nothing to do with you."

"Would you like to come over after school and we'll, I don't know, play Kaverns of Kismet III or something?"

The idea stuns me with its worthlessness. I feel like I'm a million miles from Jerk.

So I apologize no, I'm going to the movies with my aunt. Jerk asks me which movie, sounding really interested, and I say I don't think we've picked one yet.

But even as I stand there lying to him, and as he realizes more and more that I'm lying, and gets quieter and sad around his mouth, I hate myself for saying these things. I make a silent pledge to be nicer to him, because even though he is a million miles from me, he wishes he weren't. Because there was a time when everything was simpler, and my friends were my friends.

Last year I got really excited about the lunchroom's Cajun sloppy joes. You would think that Cajun sloppy joes were not much to get excited about, but we live in a small town and not much happens some months.

Now I can't even eat our cook's Cajun sloppy joes. I'm sitting at the table, gagging just looking at one. Human food. Grease is rolling off the bun, and chunks of meat are quietly flopping down the sides and landing splayed in sauce, like ants dying of fumigation.

I can't put that thing in my mouth. It will be so pasty. But I'm so hungry.

I hate to feel my body out of control like this, to know that there's no way to just eat a normal thing and to be healthy. My body is changing - its sickness I don't understand, and its health is unhealthy - and I am constantly afraid because I don't know what will happen to me next.

Nearby, Tom is sitting with his crowd. I am sitting as close to them as I dare. As soon as I sit down, I realize how stupid it is. Rebecca is sitting a few seats away from me, but I feel like everything is falling apart, and I don't even know how I can think about stupid things like trying to impress her with witty lunch repartee when everything is sliding like it is.

She looks even more beautiful now that I know I'm falling apart. She's talking about the Cabala, an ancient book of mystical power she's studying with her uncle. Her friends are a little bit bored by her and keep poking their dessert squares. I love her for it. I could listen to her talk about the Cabala forever. If there were a CD called Rebecca Schwartz Tells You About the Cabala, Rebecca Schwartz Tells You About the Cabala, for $14.99, I'd have three copies. for $14.99, I'd have three copies.

I am so swept up by Rebecca talking about the Cabala that I hardly even notice when I pick up the Cajun sloppy joe and take a big bite out of it like I would have done two months before. I hardly notice until the food is in my mouth, churning, sucking at my teeth as I gum it around.

Then I panic. It's sitting there on my tongue, evilly sitting on my tongue, like a fairy-tale toad on a lily pad. Lumpy. I can't breathe past it. My breath won't fit.

The room is suddenly very hot and crowded. My mouth is too full. There are people pushing and trays clacking, and an apple is flying through the air. My napkin is stained with red grease like blood.

My chair squeals backward and I run for the bathroom.

I push someone over. I say, "Sorry," but when I do, it all comes out: The lump of Cajun joe splats on the floor - and behind it, my breakfast. I'm heaving, and it's all there: orange juice, b.u.t.ter, home-style waffle.

Everyone is muttering and sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Completely disgusted.

I'm supporting myself on one weak arm resting on a tabletop. I raise up my head. Tom is looking at me like he's a total stranger who's just seen a murderer. I turn to the side because someone is running over with a mop and I realize that an umbilical cord of quivering spit still trails down to my pukey discharge.

I reach up grimly and, with a single finger, snap it.

I stand straight and tall and head for the men's room. My face is so hot it feels like my eyes must be red. I think it's embarra.s.sment.

The janitor is arriving with the mop. I really want to offer to clean it up, but I can't. I don't even apologize to him. I just run for the bathrooms.

"Chris, wait up," I hear Jerk saying, back in the crowd. And then he says to someone else, "Man, I feel bad for him. He must be wicked sick."

The bathroom is white. That in itself is good. It feels as cool as a glacier. I splash cold water on my face. That's a mistake because I involuntarily snarl and start snapping at the water like a dog with a hose. Then I realize there's someone in one of the stalls, so I stop. Whoever he is, he pulls up his feet when he hears me growling.

I'm not in the mirror. I look, transfixed, at the tiles through my head.

I can't stay in here. No safety. Not with this bank of mirrors hollering out my vampirism like a Klaxon.

Got to get out of the building - that's all there is to it - until I can calm down.

I charge out of the bathroom and almost run into Rebecca Schwartz, who's waiting by the bathroom door.

"Chris," she says. "I just came to see how you're doing."

"Fine," I say. "Fine."

"You looked really sick."

"I was," I say, backing up slightly. "I don't believe you came to see how I was doing! That's so nice. I've got to go."

"Hey," she says, reaching out to touch my elbow. "What's the problem? Everyone's wondering what happened."

I yank away from her touch. We're standing against lockers, gray metal lockers, on which I have no reflection. I keep my eyes glued to her face. She can't look down. Can't look at those lockers. I have to get away.

"I have to go," I say.

"You going home?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, shrugging. "I'll be back as soon as I've changed my name and grown a beard."

She laughs. "You just got sick," she says, "and yakked all over the floor." And then, more concerned, "Look, Chris, I, like, don't want to be a pain, but is everything okay? You've seemed really, you know, depressed and things recently. Throwing up can be a sign of nervousness. It was with my sister. She went through this whole depressed thing."

"No," I say. "I'm fine."

"Okay," she says. "It's just, I mean . . . Really, I don't want you to think I'm being nosy or anything. But if you ever want to call someone and talk about it, you know you can call me. I mean, we had to deal with my sister and all."