Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) by Adrianne Ambrose Page B

said from my muffled position. “I was just…” I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse. “Just being stupid. I’ll get it cleaned up right away.”
    “Well, get it cleaned up right away,” Grandma ordered, lending legitimacy to my theory that she only bothered to listen to me half the time. Either that or her hearing was going. It was hard to tell.
    In the middle of the night , I had decided that scarves and pencils weren’t enough of a defense against the undead. I decided to block entry to all our doorways and windows by stringing up garlic. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any garlic, so I had to make garlic powder suffice. Yeah, okay, it sounded pretty stupid in the harsh light of day, but what can I say? I was freaked.
    I got up and immediately got busy vacuuming. Grandma would probably be willing to let the whole powder thing slide as long as A) I cleaned it up immediately and B) she didn’t realize I had used up all her garlic powder. All I had to do was replace the bottle with the exact same brand sometime before she started cooking dinner. And I would empty a little bit of it out before I slipped the replacement bottle in the spice rack. Finding a brand new, unopened bottle would definitely ignite her suspicions, and I really didn’t want to have to explain my behavior. As long as she didn’t discover the missing garlic bottle first, she would probably chalk up the whole smelly-powder-sprinkled-around-the-house thing to run-of-the-mill teenage stupidity. Like I said, she wanted to raise me to be a nice young man, but otherwise, didn’t want to know too much about the messy details of teenagedom.
    Luckily, there was a greengrocer only a couple of blocks from our house, and they carried a lot of spices. I was able to match the bottle, no problem. While I was there, I also picked up a dozen garlic cloves, just to be on the safe side. The longer I was awake, the more I became convinced that we had been the victims of some type of elaborate prank. It was possible that someone had slipped us something. But we weren’t drinking, so that didn’t make any sense. Whatever the truth was, I was pretty sure Violet Girl had something to do with it. Otherwise, why would she have knocked my phone into the fake slime? She wanted me to discover the faux water and follow the tunnel. At least, I thought she did. Or maybe she was just a bitch. Sometimes it was hard to tell with girls.
    When I got back from the store, I put the garlic in a freezer bag and shoved it in my closet. I felt kind of foolish wasting good money on vampire protection, but I did NOT want another night like the one I’d just had. If ten bucks worth of garlic would give me peace of mind so I could sleep, then it wasn’t too high of a price to pay.
    Grandma had left the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the kitchen table folded to display an article reporting that the bodies of a young couple had been found on the shores of Lake Erie. It must have been some type of suicide pact because they had both slit their wrists. I studied the school photos of the two that they’d included with the article. The girl had been pretty. I wondered why the guy had thought killing himself was a good idea when he had such a super-cute girlfriend. The article went on to say that in the last eleven months, fourteen teenagers had killed themselves, all using razor blades. The whole idea made my wrists tingle and my stomach clench, so I threw the paper in the recycling. If Grandma didn’t want me to “follow the trend” of killing myself, then it really didn’t make sense that she kept pointing out how popular suicide had become lately.
    When Grandma headed outside to continue her ongoing war with the snails over her tomatoes, I bo oted up my computer. I couldn’t be the only one that was feeling confused about our discovery. But no one was online, and I had no messages waiting. I sat there staring at the screen, considering whether I should enter the words vampire, bridge,