Page 36 of The Good Boy

“What the heck is that?” he demands. “Why did you not warn me it would taste sweet, sweet, sweet, EVIL, EVIL, EVIL?”

“Oh, I should have warned you about the lemon,” I say.

Rory’s face screws up into a ball of distaste.

“I need some grass—yes, that’s what I need. Grass and a good vomit.”

“Or...” Miles offers him a bottle of water he must have had in his rucksack. “You could have this instead.”

“Gahhhp,” Rory says, taking the water and gulping it all down in one go. “Must run really fast! Get away from the taste! Escape the taste!”

Miles and I watch as Rory races at speed down the grassy lanes between the ancient gravestones, yelling at the top of his voice, taking sharp turns here and there, and at full pelt. I’ve seen Rory do zoomies a hundred times, but nothing prepares you for the human version. Vampires stop and stare as a garishly dressed man races around, his arms flailing.

“Should we try and catch him?” Miles asks.

“I’m not sure we can,” I say as Rory vaults over a headstone. “Do you have any food in your backpack?”

Miles hands me his bag, and, peering in, I see an eighties Sony Walkman, Miles’s mum’s Walkman, from when she was a kid. He showed it to me once. I never knew he carried it with him. I also see something in bright green shiny satin, covered with leopard print. Is that something that belongs to Claudia-from-work? He is carrying her stuff around?

I find a Mars bar and take it out, and wonder about asking him about the shiny material. Probably best not.

“May I?” I show him the Mars bar.

Miles seems a little sad about his chocolate, but he nods.

“Go for it.”

“Rory!” I yell at the blur of Hawaiian-clad Rory that races past. “Want some chocolate?”

“Oh yes, please,” Rory says, stopping at once and strolling back to us. “I think I’ve escaped the lemon now. Shall we go and look at all the vampires?”

“Yes,” Miles says, standing up decisively. “Let’s find Kel, and take a look at this world record attempt. I can’t miss out on a vampire rally.”

“Are you sure?” I ask him. “That is a lot of nerds.”

“About to be joined by four more,” he says, flashing a smile at me. When Miles smiles hearts skip beats. Well, mine does, anyway.

“Told you,” Rory says, trotting along at my side. I scowl at him. He smiles at me.

“Well, anyway,” I say, changing the subject. “Nan is not hopeful about an anti-wish, so I think our best bet is Miles’s list and trying to teach you how to be human, Rory. How hard can it possibly be?”

“Squirrel!” Rory yells and runs right into a tree.

Chapter Thirteen

“Do you want to come in for dinner?” I ask Miles as we get to the front door. I surprise myself with the invitation. We hang out a lot, usually on the doorstep or over the fence. Today I find that I don’t want to say goodbye to him just yet.

Before he can even think about it, though, a gray elderly ghost appears at the window of his front room, her yellow eyes boring into us with unremitting fury. Very slowly Rory crouches down behind me so that he is not in her line of sight at all.

“I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that I should probably pay attention to Matilda,” Miles says, pressing his forefinger to the windowpane, which she softly bumps with her head, “but thank you for the invitation. I’d like to, another time?” He pauses as he puts his key in the door. “I was thinking—there’s the housewarming for the new people over the road...”

He nods at number 27, one of the two dozen identical little terraced cottages that our two are part of.

“I wasn’t going to go because...”

“Couldn’t think of anything worse,” I finish for him.

“Exactly, but for Rory it would be a good chance to practice his small-talk skills. So why don’t we go together? All of us, together.”

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