Kane shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "It's just a myth."
"Don't worry about him," I said. "Come on, let's go outside."
I didn't want to be like my brother; all brains and no friends. I led Sheryl out to the garden, where we sat on a wooden bench and discussed our plans for Halloween.
"What shall I dress up as?" I asked, looking to her for guidance.
Sheryl was always leader. I was the follower; shy, a geek. My chief achievement to date was teaching myself how to read and walk at the same time (ninety percent of the eyes on the page, ten percent of vision scanning the sidewalk for approaching humans, dogs, lamp posts). I walked to and from school each day reading, trying to pretend I didn't really exist. I hated school. I was myopic but refused to wear my glasses, choosing to linger in my own blurred dimension. I had something to hide, but never really knew what it was. I just had the feeling I harboured some terrible, unspecified secret, and, if the other kids found out what it was, they would crucify me.
"You can be a vampire," said Sheryl. "The unquiet dead. Roaming the land, slaking your thirst."
It sounded good to me. We stole some plastic fangs and fake blood from her younger brother. Sheryl decided to go as Casper the Friendly Ghost; we'd seen the movie together that summer. She donned a white sheet into which we sliced a couple of eye holes. We rehearsed our routine, a sort of good ghoul, bad ghoul thing. She would wave her sheet about a bit and ask 'trick or treat?' as politely as she could and, if our chosen victim seemed hesitant, I would start in with the fangs and the snarling.
