“In you go, i’m not going to be late because of you”

Fai felt Zoie give him a solid push through the door.  He rolled his eyes as he started walking towards his chosen spot that would provide him the least amount of interaction with other students when he felt another tug on his arm as Zoie redirected him down the second row. Then another push planted him smack in the middle of the second row of seats.  Right in the middle of all the students.

“What are you…” Fai snapped off before Zoie held up a finger to her lips.

“I’m making sure you don’t bail out the window or something.  Trust me, you really do need a make-over and Asher won’t steer you wrong.  If you are going to hang out with Asher, then it means i’m going to be seen in public with you.  Right now this is charity work that i’m talking to you.  Tomorrow we are telling everyone that you missed the first day and that you don’t know anything about a nerd who has the same name as you.”

Biting back a sarcastic remark Fai spun back around in his seat and flipped open his book.  “Whatever.”

“What are you reading anyway?”

“Anita Blake”

“I’ve heard of it but never read it.  Any good?”

Fai spun back around to look at Zoie.  On one hand she might be just trying to make small talk, but on the other hand, the way she pitched her voice showed a hint of actual curiosity.  “No, its horrible.  The author has no clue what she is talking about, and even worse, has no clue how to write a proper story.  It’s like she just makes it up as she goes along and when she writes herself into a corner, she just hands her characters more power so they can succeed.”

“Hum, well why read it?”

“I don’t know,” Fai shrugged and pondered for a moment.  No one had ever asked him before.  “I suppose I have this fascination with vampires as they are portrayed in media.  So many different variants, so many different myths.  I’m always curious what people perceive vampires to be like and how the myth has evolved over time.”

“hummm, and?”

“There is a mix.  The oldest stories are heavily slanted towards vampires being akin to demons.  Clearly church propaganda.  The newer stories have vampires still being demons but on the side of good.  I find it quite interesting.” Assuming the conversation had come to an end, Fai turned back around.

“So what would you do if you ever met a vampire.”

“Hum.  Perhaps ask it if it had ever read any of the novels, and see what it thought of them.  What about you…” Fai asked without turning around.  “Any thing you would want to do if you met a vampire?”…

“No, saying i like you better implies that i like either of you to begin with.”

“HAHAHA!  See thats why Fai is cool. He just doesn’t know it yet.  Like maybe thats how the cool people were at his old school or something.”

“Uhhh, thats not how my school was.”  Zoie glanced back and saw her friends getting ready to head back to school.  “Anyway, don’t be late for your next class, you used up all your being late by missing the first two periods of the day.  Oh, and try to keep an eye on Asher for me, Fai.  I’ve already gotta go find Ashley and make sure she hasn’t added to her social meltdown.”

Fai looked up as Zoie gently drummed her nails against the back of his book with a smirk on her face.  Without a doubt Zoie was someone who managed to draw even more attention than Asher… and somehow they were both friends.  He watched her make a quick gesture to draw her groups attention before the entire group left, leaving Sonic significantly quieter.

“Well i need snacks…”

Another knock, clearly Asher this time, against his book signaled it was time to head out.  While Fai was loathe to leave with Asher, if he didn’t he would be late for his next class.

“Slurpee.  Dam, i hope the next teacher is cool about having slurpee’s in class.  And cupcakes.  And maybe…”

“Why didn’t you just eat more at lunch?”

“Eh?  Hay, you put your book away.  I was wondering if you could see through your book or something.  Hum, you know, your hair’s pretty long.  I bet we could do something cool with it.”

“Don’t touch my hair”

“Nah, like this…” Asher pushed Fai’s hair around a little, holding it in place with his hands.

“Don’t touch me…”

“Its cool man, Zoie’s into stuff like this.”

Fai looked up as they walked into 7-11, “what are you trying to say?”

“Maybe wear something different tomorrow.  And stop tucking in your shirt.  and contacts,  you got contacts, right?   Maybe some skate shoes…”

Rolling his eyes Fai dragged Asher out of 7-11 before he could buy to many things, limiting him to a handful of hostest cupcakes, and the biggest slurpee cup he could find.  “If it will shut you up then I’ll think about it.  But if you make me late, I’m going to kill you.”

“And an MP3 player, you got one of those right?  Go with the DJ look, some headphones… What kinda music are you into.  Dude, you gotta check out this one band.  Gimmie your email, i’ll send you the MP3’s tonight…”

————-

Fai’s left eye twitched slightly.  Try as he might, Asher’s voice continued to break through his mental barrier.  Perhaps the frequency of his voice was just right to allow it to slip through and not be ignored.

perhaps an mp3 player is a good idea… that way i can just make the music louder to tune you out

Flipping open his schedule, a quick comparison with Asher (at asher’s request of course) showed that the remainder of his day would be a mix of peaceful quiet, and… well… asher

Fai held the book up over his face as he took another long drink of his pineapple shake.  His eyes practically rolled into the back of his head as he savored the tangy sweet taste as it filled his mouth, the chill as it went down his throat, the…

“OH DUDE, You never told me your name!”

If Asher’s voice wasn’t what cut through his daydream, him knocking on his book like it was a door did.

“That’s just like you Asher, I’m Zoie nice to meet you, it’s good to see Asher can make friends.”

Fai focused his eyes for a moment to get rid of any sign of a glazed over look before tilting his book just far enough to look only at the new voice.  Not that the voice was new, he couldn’t help but over hear this girls voice since they had sat down for lunch, and much like Asher, was impossible to simply ‘tune out’

A quick scan of the area showed the rest of her friends juggling their attention between Zoie and some other girl, both watching with great interest as the two girls talked to boys one grade above them.  While Zoie was doing fine, it seemed that her friend was having a moment of failure.   Thankfully failure is always more entertaining than success and the loud yelp and clattering of tray’s brought a smile to Fai’s face.

Zoie tilted her head into Fai’s line of sight, cutting off his view of the tater tot disaster behind her bringing her back into the center of his attention.

“mmmm so she’s that type of girl… and friends with Asher.  perhaps she will lose interest if asher is dead… two birds… one stone”

“My name is Fai, this is my first year here.  It is nice to meet you.”

“AWWWW CHECK OUT FAI!”  Asher jumped up pushing his book down to the table, startling him for a moment and knocking his glasses off slightly.  “Thats more words than you even spoke to me… well… ” Asher counted on his fingers for a moment.  “No wait, i’m still ahead.  He likes me better.  Still, pretty smooth.  We’ll make something out of you yet!”

Sighing softly, Fai closed his book and took off his glasses.  He flicked his eyes up for a moment, letting his bright blue eyes lock on to Zoie’s violet eyes and quickly realized that she was studying him a little to intently.  not good… Fai quickly slipped back on his glasses and flicked the book open to the page he left off on.  Muttering into the pages of the book, Fai rolled his eyes and took another long drink.  “No, saying i like you better implies that i like either of you to begin with.”

“Dude, thanks for saving me there, whats your name? Where you going for lunch? I woke up late so I didn’t pack anything, so I figure Sonic is pretty close. We should go they have 1/2 priced drinks today!”

“Not interested…”

Fai kept walking.  He hadn’t really thought about what he was going to do during the lunch period.  Most likely just wander the halls until…

“Awww, come on.  It’s not like you aren’t going to eat anyway.  Did you bring lunch from home or something…”

Fai glanced up for a moment to see the confused look on Asher’s face.  He was instantly aware of the passing glances of other students as they crossed paths walking down the hallway.  He even over heard one girl asking her friend if she had ever brought lunch from home before.  The reply giggle was all that was needed to answer what they thought of that idea.  Glancing back at Asher, he realized that he was still talking… and getting louder and louder the more he ignored him.

“I don’t know how it worked in the school you came from, but unless you are POOR or are bringing something awesome for lunch… like some gourmet stuff, then you should just buy lunch.  There’s lots of places around to eat anyway.  Wait, what did you bring from home.  Did you pack candy with your lunch or something?  Because thats the one good thing you can bring from home.  I totally forgot to grab something to snack on.  Hay, after we get food lets go stop at a 7-11, i wanna pick up some snacks for the second break later and since we are going to Sonic there’s one right on the way so it all works out.  Look man, if you are broke and stuff its cool, its like a dollar for a burger and 50 cents for a drink or something, we can find that kinda change on the ground on the way there…”

Fai’s face flushed as people went from polite glances to full on stares at the two of them.   “I”M NOT POOR”  Making sure to say it just loud enough for everyone who was looking at them to hear, “And i didn’t bring lunch from home, I just wasn’t…”

“Aww sweet then.  Ok, Sonic it is for lunch.”

The worst part of this entire thing was that as soon as Asher said that, he could feel everyone’s eyes lose interest and go back to what they were doing.

With a sigh, Fai silently resigned himself to dreading the lunch break also.

The ability to get people to leave you alone was almost an art. For example, if you sat to far in the back, then all of the slackers would try to talk to you because they had ADD and paying attention to the teacher was never on the list of things they paid attention to. You can’t sit in front though, because teachers expect and other students expect you to be smart… and of course let them copy your work.

So second row, closest to the window, furthest away from the teacher. If he was lucky that would only give one person sitting behind him, and one person to his right. Unless the classroom was full…

His desk clattered as a student dumped himself in the chair.

“Hay! What’d ya do that for?”

‘who is this making all this noise’

Baseball caps are against the rules, I”ll be confiscating this. What is your name?”

“Asher.”

’so his name is Asher.’

“Asher you’ll be trouble, i can tell. Stay after class and we’ll go over the rules togeather.”

A resounding chorus of ooOOoo’s only prompted a rolling of his eyes as this Asher was directing far to much attention in his general direction.

He watched the boy infront of him dump his head ungracefully on his desk seemingly in depression, however in a few minutes the soft snoring sound of sleep crept to his ears.

‘moron, if he brings the teacher in my direction again i’m going to kill him, regardless of how much attention it brings me’

A solid kick to the chair in front of him jolted Asher awake just in time for the teacher to look over in their direction. Asher waved innocently before turning around to face him as the teacher went back to the board.

“Hay, thanks, i’m Asher…”

“Shut up, i don’t want the teacher over here nor do i want you. Just stay awake”

“Yeah, yeah. Awake… thanks again…”

A few seconds later the soft sounds of sleep reached him… The urge to reach over the desk and strangle the boy into silence was tempered by the thoughts of the resulting questions that would be asked of him after he was dead. Instead he resigned himself to dreading third period for the rest of the year…

Fai had come to realize that nothing ever happened as it did in novels. He had already read over 40 novels on the subject, and not a single one had any passing resemblance to anything remotely believable. Ann Rice for example; while her portrayal of Louis had some basis in reality, it seems like she had completely lost it when creating the character Armand. While it made perfect sense that as one would age they would grow in ability and hence power, but his psyche was all wrong. For start, as one grows older they would quickly begin to realize that the happenings of the world around him begin to affect them less and less. Also a single younger vampire would never pose a threat as both would age at a consistent level making it impossible for a younger vampire to rival an older one in power.

As a result, the simple fact that Armand gave two shakes of a rats ass about Lestat, Louis or that they created a little girl vampire was absurd. Even as a vampire, both Louis and Claudia would have been so far beneath his notice as to only be worth noting because they were taking up space. Lestat of course deserved attention, but only because of his somewhat vague grasp of reality… something Anne Rice did get right.

However, it was nothing compared to this Anita Blake nonsense.

Ducking under a Frisbee that flew to close he didn’t even bother to look up from his book to see who had thrown it. It was probably some upper level students from his new school, and he had learned that the less he talked to others, the better off he was. At 5′6″ he wasn’t the tallest, nor was he built very large. His forgettable face, combined with the large glasses that covered up most of it screamed nerd making all the jocks avoid him. On the other hand his C grade average meant that the nerds could care less about him also. Finally the only trait of his that anyone remembered was that he was always reading books, but since he only read books with Vampire characters in them, most of the literary clubs wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

As for the occult club? He didn’t want to talk to those freaks anyway.

The bells chimed as a sign that class was about to start. Fai hopped up the stairs 3 at a time as he hurried to his first class of the day.

Just another boring year…. exactly how he wanted it.