Okay, this was the freakiest day ever. First off, gym class, which always sucks, but today they were starting an archery unit, so she'd figured, at least I won't sweat and have to actually shower in the girls' locker room like I was in some prison movie, and then redo my hair completely and be late for World History again. But then when Coach Olsen handed her the bow and the arrows she felt this weird hum in her bones, and her ears were full of a big crashy wave noise so she couldn't even hear him, probably he was going on and on about how to put the arrows on the bow but she did it just perfectly anyway. And somewhere in her head she could hear another girl's voice saying, "nocking, it's called nocking," and when she raised the bow everything felt right and perfect, and she put all three in the bullseye whoosh whoosh whoosh. And she had this ridiculous feeling that if he'd just give her some more arrows she could totally do that Kevin Costner thing, split one right down the middle, and then she realized that she had grabbed Coach Olsen by his nasty double-polyester shirt and was yelling, "Give me more arrows!" in his face, and she looked down and his feet were dangling off the ground.

Then Shaundra and Trisha looked at her like she was grade-a number-one freakazoid, and she tried to explain that it was just one of those one-in-a-million things, it probably happens all the time.

But she felt weird and shaky the whole rest of the day, and then after school that creepy-ass homeless-looking guy had to pick her to come up to and start talking about VAMPIRES. Which, no. He stopped with the vampire thing after she yelled loud enough to get campus security over and then he was all, "just speaking with the young lady, um, proselytizing for my church," which she guessed was the Church of Wrinkled Smelly Tweed, who wears tweed in L.A.? But when they were hauling him off he looked at her and put his hands up to his mouth and made fangs, which looked like the Monty Python guys talking about that killer rabbit and would have been pretty funny, actually, if she wasn't so weirded out already.

So it was no wonder that she couldn't go straight home after school, that she had to hit the mall with Shaundra and Trisha for a little retail therapy and to make sure they weren't still looking at her funny. And then she got them to drop her off a couple of blocks from home so she'd have time to think up an excuse, and she's pretty much decided she's gonna say it was a study date she forgot to mention, because with her current grades her dad isn't gonna object to that.

She creeps around the side of the house and into the back yard—-she'll stuff her shopping bags into her old playhouse and bring them in later, when the coast is clear. And it's getting pretty dark back there, shit, she didn't realize it was that late, and she's hoping she can manage to recite a few random facts about the Renaissance to convince Dad when something grabs her from behind, she starts to scream but there's a hand on her mouth and then there are teeth in her neck, Jesus, teeth? Her playhouse spins around her and she tries to kick whoever's doing this, tries to swing blindly backward but her legs and arms are going cold and heavy and numb, things are getting way dark and the last thing she thinks is this isn't fair, this can't be right, I haven't even got my license yet.