“No one’s comfortable with knowing what’s going on inside your head.” I snorted. “I didn’t mean to invade your mental privacy. Really. I’m sorry. But why’d you lie to me, Zeb? I’m glad you’re going out with someone. Seriously. Is she nice? What’s her name? Where’s she from? What’s she like? Are you going to answer my questions, or do I have to whack you with a stick until delicious candy surprises fall out?”
Zeb sighed, rubbing his temples. “I don’t want this to be weird.”
“I can’t make any guarantees, but let’s give it a shot.”
“Janie, I’ve been going to meetings, and they’ve been really helpful.”
“All right, then.” That was out of left field. Beyond the occasional overindulgence in wine coolers, Zeb had never had what I would see as a drinking problem. And after seeing what running a backyard meth lab did to his cousins, he never touched drugs.
“Do you mean, like, therapy?”
“It’s more of a support group for people who are dealing with alternative lifestyles.”
“Oh.” I thought for about a second before it struck me. “Ohhhh.”
How could I have been so blind? I’d been friends with Zeb for twenty years. Why hadn’t I noticed the lifelong lack of a serious girlfriend? His conflicted feelings about his father? His strange obsession with Russell Crowe? He was the only person in the state of Kentucky who actually saw A Good Year.
I threw my arms around Zeb and hugged him tight. It was the first time I’d touched him since turning that he hadn’t stiffened his spine and gotten all awkward. “Oh, Zeb, why didn’t you tell me?”
Weird pause amid the hugging. “I just did.”
“You could have told me years ago. I would have accepted you, not matter what. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I love you.”
Weirder pause. “Accepted what?”
“You being, you know—” I said, trying to find the most sensitive way to handle this life change without hanging umpteen million crosses around my neck and stabbing him. I tried to learn from our mistakes. “But what about the redhead? Wait, is she a he? Because, if so, she’s pretty convincing.”
Zeb made a sound somewhere along the lines of “Wrok!” Then, “What? No.”
Well, now I was confused. “You mean, you’re not gay?”
“No! Why would you think that?” he cried.
“You said alternative lifestyles.”
“No, your alternative lifestyle, you tool,” he grunted, waving in the general direction of my head, which I guess meant my fangs. Or maybe my brain; sometimes it interfered with the way I was supposed to live my life. “Jane, I’ve joined a group called Friends and Family of the Undead. It’s a support group for people whose loved ones have been turned into vampires. We meet every week and talk about how to deal with our feelings about your new lives. You know, being unsure of our safety around you.
Making you feel welcome in our lives and our homes. Stuff like that.”
I stared at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“I didn’t want you to feel like I was so upset about your change I had to seek psychological help, even though, well, I did,”
he said. “But it’s been great. There aren’t a lot of people who understand what going through this is like. It helps to talk about it. I think you should come with me sometime. It might help you talk to your parents.”
“Umm, I don’t know if I’m ready for something that public.”
“It’s anonymous,” he insisted. “It’s a lot like AA, without the drinking. One of the rules is that you can ’t talk about what’s said at the meetings or who’s there.”
“This is the Hollow, Zeb. Twelve steps of confidentiality mean nothing. Remember that time Flossie Beecher started a Sex Addicts Anonymous group and ended up having to change her phone number?”
“No one will know you’re there because you’re a vampire,” he said. “You could just be there because someone you know has been turned into a vampire.”
“If I come to one of these meetings, can I meet the mysterious redhead?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, that’s where I met the mysterious redhead,” he said, grinning. “She belongs to the group. Her name’s Jolene.”
There was a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard before—fondness, pride. Zeb was talking like a man in love. This did not bode well. Women do not usually respond favorably to their boyfriends having female best friends. Pretty soon, Zeb would break our movie nights to hang out with Jolene and their other “couple friends.” Our code of inside jokes would be broken by a woman who insisted on knowing what the hell we were talking about. I would slowly be phased out until I was that girl Zeb used to hang out with before he “grew up.”
I smiled brightly. “Well, now I guess I have to go.”
12
Trying to blend groups of friends from the living and undead worlds can be difficult. It’s better if social events involving both the living and the nonliving do not center around food. Some more comfortable themes include poker games, bowling nights, and historical reenactments.
—From The Guide for the Newly Undead
From the outside, Greenfield Studios looked like a respectable family photography business in one of the newer buildings of the Hollow’s riverfront business district. I didn’t know anyone who’d had their pictures done there, but the company had only set up shop a few months before, and it was difficult to get Hollow residents out of the Sears Christmas-card-photos habit.
I’d parked Big Bertha almost two blocks away and around a corner, trying to give myself some “pep talk and walk” time. If I’d needed to breathe, I probably would have been hyperventilating with my head against the steering wheel. I hadn’t been on a job interview since just after college. And if the head of the library board hadn’t been one of my favorite high-school English teachers, Mrs. Stubblefield probably would have launched me out of the room with some sort of spring-loaded chair.
I reread the want ad. Greenfield was advertising for an appointment secretary with a pleasant phone voice, good communication skills, and a “people-pleasing personality.” Having two out of three wasn’t bad.
One. One out of three wasn’t bad.
This was the first ad I’d come across that actually sounded somewhat appealing. I could handle an office job. I could handle pleasing people, to a certain extent, as long as it didn’t inconvenience me too much. It seemed sort of odd for a photography studio to be open all night, but the supervisor, Sandy, who was supposed to interview me said clients made their photo appointments after they got home from work.
I climbed out of Big Bertha and straightened what I hoped was an appropriately secretarial outfit —a red cardigan and a black pencil skirt that Andrea had helped me pick out. I had also accepted her ridiculously high black heels with the ankle straps because she said they made me look sophisticated yet sensible. On the walk to the office, I felt well dressed yet nauseated.
I rang the bell outside the brick front entrance and nervously fingered the manila envelope that contained my résumé. Sandy turned out to be a tiny, birdlike woman in her sixties. She reeked of Virginia Slims and had a voice like scraping the bottom of a whiskey barrel, but she looked like the poster woman for clean senior living, with fluffed curls of pure white and a face that was carefully made up. She was wearing a rose-colored track suit, a white golf visor, and a rhinestone pin shaped like a kitten at her shoulder.
“Come in, come in!” she said, smiling as she led me to an all-beige reception area. The lobby was clean, newly painted, and quiet as a church. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
Sandy gestured for me to sit, and I handed her my résumé. She crossed her leg primly as she sat in the overstuffed armchair to my left. She looked over my qualifications while I filled out the surprisingly scant job application. Greenfield Studios didn’t seem to want to know much about me beyond my name and social security number. However, one of the boxes asked for my “life status,” and I was supposed to check whether I was living or undead. While it was illegal to ask an applicant about race, age, or marital status, it was still perfectly legal to ask whether he or she was a vampire. Congressional lobbyists fighting against undead rights claimed it was a public -safety issue, saying that employers had the right to protect their workplaces from “dangerous predators.” I left the space blank and hoped Sandy wouldn’t notice until after I’d gauged the office’s general attitude toward vampires.
I handed her the application, and she smiled brightly. “Well, it seems that you are more than qualified. You have a solid employment history, which is always nice to see in someone your age. Could you do me a favor, honey, and read this out loud for me?”
Sandy handed me a badly copied sheet of paper with several paragraphs in all caps: HELLO, MY NAME IS (BLANK), AND I’M CALLING THIS EVENING ON BEHALF OF GREENFIELD
STUDIOS. OUR RECORDS SHOW THAT YOU HAVE INDICATED AN INTEREST IN HAVING YOUR FAMILY
PORTRAIT TAKEN WITH GREENFIELD. I’M CALLING TO HELP YOU SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT AND TO
TELL YOU ABOUT AN EXCITING NEW PRODUCT—
“That’s very nice,” she said, pulling the script from my hand. “So, when would you like to start?”
This seemed rather quick. Why wasn’t she asking me more questions? Why wasn’t she asking me to tell her about myself?
Why was my potential supervisor wearing a track suit? And why exactly did the script appear to have me calling people at home to schedule appointments instead of the other way around? And what was the exciting new product?
“Um, the ad said you were looking for a receptionist?”
“An appointment secretary,” she said, nodding. “You would call people who have willingly and legally given us their contact information and book appointments for them to have their family portraits taken.”