The Biotechnology Board of Canada and Other Bloodsuckers (1.9)

Everyone looks at me to find something so socially repulsive that only our vampire would show up to a club meeting about it. They’re missing the point. People like me because I don’t know how to do that. At worst, like with band, or this stupid detective gang, the things I like are full of talented misfits. Every subculture on Earth is full of talented misfits! Sylvia keeps saying shit like ‘anime’ and ‘you know those minis that you paint and then make them fight?’ and we keep having to tell her that no, those are massive nerd hobbies. Eventually she starts pouting and staring at the wall like she’s a TV detective. No help there. Jimin’s been here for like, months, he doesn’t know what is and isn’t popular.

“Hey, what about bonsai gardening?” Shay says.

Oh my god. Even Jimin laughs. We have a semester and a half left in eleventh grade and it’s almost winter. Bonsai trees!? We’ll graduate before the damn things do anything.

“So, the Watch Paint Dry club.” Jet quips.

“Yeah. I bet some people will show up for the first meeting anyway, but I’ll get rid of ‘em.” Shay says, smiling the evilest smile I’ve ever seen from them. I shudder. This can’t be good.

Time for the busywork. We all tell everyone we talk to that this weird kid is making a weird club where they grow saplings into tiny trees. No, not like, quickly—it takes just as long to grow as a normal tree does. Yeah, seriously. I know, right? Jet manages to get half the track team to show up as a joke, and the rest of us spread the word enough that we’re pretty sure everyone in the school knows about it. Now, we wait for Shay’s magic.

God, it’s a horror show. Their Latino ass couldn’t pronounce Japanese worse if they were trying. It’s obvious from ‘konichiwa’ that this whole thing was a terrible mistake. The saplings look pathetic—Shay just took weeds from the park by their apartment—and half the room has already cleared out by the time they utter their fourth absolutely butchered proverb about mindfulness. I feel like apologizing to people who actually do this shit as a hobby. It looks so cool and elegant and here Shay is turning it into a circus show. I didn’t know they had it in them to look like such a goddamn fool. Maybe they care more than they’re letting on. Wouldn’t be friends with them if they didn’t have it in them, right? At least, I’d like to hope so.

Our prediction, laughing and high-fiving about it over burgers afterwards? Zero percent attendance rating at next week’s club meeting. Except the Montreal Vampire, there to punch a hole in Shay and drink ‘em like a Capri Sun. All we have to do is talk Mrs. Yeats into letting us run another one of these stupid things and we’ll be golden.

It’ll be great. Someone is going to try to drink our friend’s blood, and we’ll have to tackle them and talk them into… we haven’t gotten that far yet. Something else. Without anyone noticing. Yeah, Antoine, this is your smartest idea yet. I wish I had normal friends who get drunk and hurt themselves goofing off at house parties instead of… tempting fate. All the stories about people like this, people who find the worst thing they can and waltz right into it with smiles on their faces, all of them end badly.

I know all that. And still… so what? What else is there? I meant it. It’s this crazy bullshit, or in thirty years, sometimes we wake up at night and remember that some kid at our school got gunned down by a federal agent because we were too scared to help them. It’s things like that that make holes in your life. Make you a little emptier inside. Like missing out on Shay finding out who they are, or Jet getting over himself and turning into an all-star. Not again. Never again. You only live once. I only live once. This is what I need to do with that.

I wish my parents hadn’t raised me right. It looks a lot easier not to give a damn about anyone.