I look toward James's house, wondering how the vampires are doing. Every day I sit here doing nothing is another day that Vlad chips away at my real life; I've worked too hard to let him ruin my chance at editor in chief or give me some sort of bizarro reputation. I can't miss the tennis match tomorrow if Friday's my last chance to impress Mr. Amado. I'll just keep my head down and avoid him the best I can - after all, what harm can one day do?

"Yes," I tell Lindsay, "just try to keep me away."

Chapter Seventeen

By the time I drag my feet through Thomas Jeff's heavy glass doors the next morning, I am running on one hour of sleep, bus fumes, and the three bites of cereal I managed to take before Caroline's over-the-breakfast-table scowl put the fear of sisterly retribution in me. She didn't say anything, but I knew she was mad by the way she ate three bowls of Fruity Pebbles, finishing off the box before I could go for seconds. Caroline doesn't ingest that many carbs unless she's getting back at someone. At least now I know the reason.

It only takes a few steps into the crowded lobby for me to realize that there's no possibility of getting through today unnoticed. For the first time in my life, whispers dog me through the hallways, all of which involve the words "Vlad" and "party" and "engaged." When I round the corner and see Danny Baumann bending over one of the school's anemic water fountains, I realize that this is the perfect chance to start the rumor-squashing process. I just have to get up the nerve to talk to him.

His light blond hair curls at the neck, and he is wearing the shorts that entranced me so long ago in World Geography, but I am not here to ogle. Much like the hungry lion approaches the gentle, mega-attractive antelope, I move slowly, stealthily. I catch him as he turns around.

"Hey there. I have a favor to ask you," I say, fully expecting him to ask who I am and why I am talking to him. But he just leans against the wall and wipes his mouth with his shirt, relaxed as casual Friday. When we get married, I'm going to buy him a napkin.

"Yo, Sophs," he says. "What's up?"

"You know my name."

"Sure. You told me the difference between Uganda and Uruguay. South America, man. Crazy."

I am aflutter that he remembers our special moment, but all I tell him is that I'm not dating or engaged to or involved in any other sort of relationship with Vlad. "And I was kind of hoping you could spread the word," I finish.

"That's not what he says. Dude is, like, madly in love with you."

"But I'm saying that it is not true. And I thought maybe you could correct people if they mention it?" I give him a hopeful smile. "Okay?"

"I dunno. I don't want to get in the middle or anything. Guy kind of weirds me out."

That gives me pause; last week Vlad was still topping the charts. But by the time I think to ask for more detail, he's already ambling away to do whatever Danny Baumanns do all day.

The next few hallways are better, and I start to think that maybe things aren't as bad as the lobby made them out to be. But when I turn the final corner to my locker, the hope dies. A large cluster of people stands before it; I see sports jerseys and cheerleader costumes, but also a few pairs of ripped tights and dark band T-shirts. Morgan Michaels, my locker neighbor, flutters around the edge in a long crepe skirt.

"I'm going to be late," she accuses when I reach the edge. "This is the fourth day."

"Did someone write 'French sucks' on my locker again?" I ask just as the circle shifts to reveal a wall of bloodred roses where my dented, magic-marker-smudged door should be. There are dozens. Hundreds.

"Do you like it?" a smooth voice asks from behind me. When I turn around, Vlad is leaning against the opposite wall, smiling with sly expectation. Sauntering forward, he taps his cheek. "You may show your thanks as you see fit."

Well, if he insists. Turning to the locker, I rip off the rose that's looped through the handle and throw it at his crotch, smiling when it elicits an undignified gasp. "Thank you," I say sweetly, "for making me late to math class."

There are a few snickers as I open my locker and bat away the roses that rain down. Keeping my head firmly buried in the jumble of old newsletters and orphaned pen caps, I concentrate on digging out my math book. I am pulling it out from underneath Mangez avec moi, our porny-sounding French textbook, when the tips of Vlad's boots appear beneath the locker door. I stand up and meet his eyes, matching his scowl and raising him a glare before I remember that, while he probably can't force anything here, at some point I will either have to seduce the night crew or go home. Self-preservation kicks in; perhaps I should not provoke a hallway showdown.

"Excuse me," I say with frigid politeness and try to ease past him.

He grabs my elbow. "I thought you would like them."

"I'm allergic."

"Your eyes are not red."

"I'm sneezing on the inside."

At a loss, Vlad turns to study our circle of onlookers. When I first arrived, their faces held only curiosity. But now I'm encouraged by their obvious unease. One girl with a nose ring and Manic-Panicked hair is texting rapidly and pausing every few seconds to look up warily. I hear a few scattered "weirds."

"You all want to go to class," he booms, and while this causes a few people to hitch up their books and shuffle away, the majority stay put. He begins to look nervous, changes tactics. "Sophochka is still feeling a little out of sorts due to her recent illness," he says. "It has affected her judgment."

Oh, vomit.

"My judgment is fine," I say. "Your judgment is the one that's out of whack."

I can't tell what enrages him more; my words or the fact that there are witnesses. He grabs my free hand in a way that, to an onlooker, might appear to be a romantic gesture, but I can feel his thumb pressing down on the pulse of my wrist. I try to pull away, but he still has the advantage in the strength department. "You are embarrassing me," he hisses into my ear. "I would suggest refraining from that in the future."

"I have to go to class," I say loudly and catch the eyes of as many people as I can.

"Hey man, let her go," says a short and stocky guy near the front, while the girl who was texting earlier says that she's going to go get Ms. Kate. The murmuring increases, and for a moment Vlad simply looks betrayed.

"Very well," he says loudly for their benefit, and lets me go. He scoops up an errant rose and places it on top of my binder with a flourish. "We will continue this conversation later."

I knock it off and brush past him, but curiosity makes me look back before I round the corner. I immediately regret it. I have been on the receiving end of many heated looks in my day, but nothing compared to the one Vlad is giving me now. His back is to the crowd, his head angled down so that only I can see the way his eyes follow me from beneath his drooping bangs. They are full of such raw desire, such menace, and such hatred that my body revolts. As soon as he realizes that I am watching, he scrambles to realign them into something more benign, but it is too late. I've already seen what a mistake it was to come today.

He follows me everywhere. I come out of math, he is standing by the water fountain; I leave chemistry, and he is waiting at the corner with a cool offer to carry my books. I was crazy to think that I could avoid him for an entire day - I can hardly escape him for a minute. After a clever shortcut through the band hallway, I manage to make it to the cafeteria without a tail. Lindsay waves at me from her seat at the round table near the back. She scoots over when I approach, clearing away the papers and pens that are scattered all over the table.

"You made it!" she says. "We're using lunchtime to work on the upcoming push to get recycled napkins in the cafeteria." She points to the rest of the Green Team. Most of them are either college-prep junkies or band guys who have crushes on Lindsay. And then there's Mark Echolls, who frowns at me from beneath his shaggy brown bangs. I can't tell if the pizza sauce clinging to the corners of his lips makes him look more or less threatening.

"Thanks for covering for me on Monday," I say, but he just slides to the side. I take a seat, doing my best to arrange myself so that the cement column acts as a shield between me and the rest of the cafeteria.

Lindsay reaches over to push a few glitter pens toward me. "Do you want to outline 'Napkin' in blue? Elise is doing 'Change' in green."

I am grateful for the distraction, even if it involves glitter pens. I have just made it to the fifth letter when the sound of a familiar voice causes me to over-squeeze the tube in my hand and dot my "L."

"Sophie McGee," Vlad says. "Have you seen her? No doubt she will be sitting in a corner somewhere."

I spot the back of his pale head several tables away. If I can see him, that means he can see me. I slide closer to Mark to conceal myself, but he pushes me away. When Lindsay notices our tussle, she follows my gaze to Vlad and then gives me a worried look.

"Don't let him see me," I say just he starts to turn around. Panicked, I duck beneath the table, holding my breath as his boots approach. When he asks if anyone at the table has seen me, Lindsay starts to tell him that I went home sick, but Mark interrupts.

"She's under the table," he says with obvious glee, but it's followed by a smacking sound that I'm pretty sure is courtesy of Lindsay. "Ow!" Mark says. "What? She is."

And that's how nemeses are made.

When I creep out, Vlad is watching me with barely controlled rage. "Sophochka does like her games."

Before I can figure out how to handle this situation, I hear the clatter of a tray being dropped. Caroline is standing behind us, trembling like someone just punched her in the stomach.

"Liar," she says. "You are such a liar."

"Caroline - ," I start, but she is already running toward the door.

I don't catch up with her until she's outside the auditorium, and I have to step in front of her to stop her from moving. The tear tracks running down her cheeks stop me cold.

"Caroline, none of what people are saying is true."

"Then why did everyone see you having a lovers' tuft in the hallway this morning?"

"A lovers' tuft?"

"Yeah."

Correcting her right now would be mean . . . and would probably result in my immediate incineration from the sister death ray. "That was not a lover's tuft. That was a 'stop stalking me' tuft."

"Vlad? Stalking you?" she scoffs, and runs her eyes over my outfit, which I admit happens to be a little mismatched due to my impending forced vampire marriage. "Please," she says coldly.

Her dismissal stings. We have always had differing opinions on the amount of time and effort that should be put into designing an outfit, but she has never been outright rude. She knows it, too - for a second her disdain wavers, but then anger swamps it once again.

"You lied to me," she says. "I asked you what happened at the party, and you lied. I asked you if Vlad was at our house, and you lied. It was his Hummer. You've been dating him the whole time."

I grab her arms to try to get her to focus on me. "Caroline, he's a crazy person. Nothing he could do would ever make me date him. Ever. I am doing everything I can to get him to stay away from me for good," I say, but she slaps me off and starts to run down the hallway. I whirl around to call after her, and then freeze.

Vlad is standing at the end of the hallway, and from the way he is looking at me, I would say that he overheard everything. As Caroline runs by him, he makes a show of watching her disappear around the corner. When he turns back to me, he gives me a mean smile that I understand all too well.

Caroline makes it to her last two classes. I know because I check, earning a nice start to my tardy-slip collection. My plan is to find her at the end of the day, explain things as best I can, and whisk her away to the safety of home, where I will convince my father to start building a bomb shelter made entirely of garlic and sunlight. When the final bell rings, I try to rush out of study hall and intercept her at her locker, but Mr. Hanfield stops me.

"You can't leave the book rack like that," he says, pushing up his glasses and crossing his arms. "It's a mess."

The book rack is always a mess. Most of them don't have covers, and all of them have at least one drawing of a penis in the margins. But I can't get into an argument, not now. "I will do it next time, I promise."

"No, I'm tired of you students treating things like they are yours to destroy." He points to the books that hang over the edges of the rack, their pages mangled. "Do it now."

I stack them up and jab them into the open spots. "There. Done."

"That's not finished," he says.

"I don't care!"

He screws up his face in disbelief. "Would you like detention, young lady?" he asks, grabbing his pad of conduct slips and starting to scribble something down.

I look to the hallway, now full of catcalls and laughs and meeting times. If I'm going to get detention anyway, might as well make it something worthwhile. While Mr. Hanfield's head is still bowed, I slip out into the mass of exiting students and head straight for Caroline's locker, which happens to be on the other side of the school.

She's not there. I tell myself to be calm. Caroline is a popular girl of habit. After school, she and her friends can normally be found in the front hallway, perched on the empty ledge that used to contain photos of National Merit finalists until the year we didn't have any. Now they are too embarrassed to fill it with anything else, and Caroline and company have moved in.