The Biotechnology Board of Canada and Other Bloodsuckers (1.4)

We’re not superheroes. We’re not Northshield. We’re not the local cops scouring the school grounds for something small and vicious and bloodsucking. The others tell me all that crap, but I win in the end.

You know what we are? Outliers. That’s what gets them. Nobody’s going to look twice at us—unless we catch a monster. And if we don’t, what’s the harm? Nobody’s going to look twice at us. I had a hunch, but that’s how I know I’m right. Give these people who all say they’d rather be nobody a chance to do something important, a chance to help out, and they all jump at it. They start brainstorming places the monster might be, looking in the newspapers for reports of similar attacks. Shay even sets up a group chat.

And you say you’re an introvert, Shay.

I’m learning a lot. About all of them. We text way into the night. Antoine sends memes and keeps spirits up and comes up with all the best ideas. Jimin is dead quiet until we stop talking, and then he raises the chat from the dead with a wall of text that gets everyone back into it. Touches on everyone’s points. Proves he’s been listening. He loves being part of something. Maybe he’s never opened up like he did to us. Not to anyone, not until throwing up all that goo forced him to. Maybe he’s even more desperate than I am.

Shay isn’t desperate. They spend most of the time playing video games. There’s something different about them. They always seem to know what to say when we talk in person, like magic, and here they are just thumbs-up reacting to everything Antoine says. Like they don’t want to rock the boat. Like they think the whole plan is stupid—and yet here they are anyway. You do a lot of things you say are stupid, don’t you? You don’t want to be anybody’s hero, you want to be the aloof class clown you act like—but you can’t help yourself, can you?

My name’s Sylvia Sieczkowska, and I psychoanalyze people for fun. It’s weird. I know.

Jet’s the only real mystery. I’m gonna be honest, he’s not in any of my classes and Antoine never invites us to the same events—or if he does, I don’t go—and so I don’t know the kid. He’s not a jock, though. Not really. To me, a jock doesn’t have a plan. They just want to play sports ‘till they tear a hamstring. With Jet, it’s like… he hasn’t found what he really wants yet. He’s coasting, but soon, he’s going to do something big. I saw it in that look he gave us all, the one that would’ve made me blush if it didn’t make me scared. I don’t know what to do with that energy of his. I don’t know what to do with mine, either.

I guess every sixteen-year-old has at least a little of it, that pent-up frustration with just being a kid, but you’re not supposed to actually do anything with it. You’re supposed to smoke weed and get in arguments with your parents and talk about how cool it would be to be someone, like everyone else. You’re not supposed to become an amateur monster hunter overnight because one of your friend’s friends’ friends turned out to be a mutant, and it woke something up in you. Things aren’t supposed to actually happen to people like us.

But they are. Apparently, some kind of Moroccan death bug might be the culprit. Thirty minutes later, it’s ruled out for being too vicious. Maddy Jackson would be dead. It takes us all the way into the night before I finally work it out in my head. She doesn’t remember anything about the attack, apparently. One of her friends told one of Antoine’s friends, who told him. That’s the clue. No head trauma, nothing, but she doesn’t remember.

Anyone who doesn’t remember didn’t almost get murdered. Anyone who doesn’t remember either got blackmailed, or did someone a favour. And those bite marks?

By the time we all go to sleep, we’re calling the Class A who attacked her the Montreal Vampire. And I think we have a lead.