Extraordinary Means

Although I only knew it was a thing because I’d seen pictures of my classmates who had gone without me.

“That’s awesome,” Sadie said. “So, tonight is Dapper Day.”

“It can’t be day if it’s night,” Nick pointed out.

Sadie stuck out her tongue at him.

“A day is twenty-four hours, so yes it can,” she said. “Now shut up. We’re doing it.”

AFTER LUNCH, CHARLIE insisted on holing up in his room, and when Nick and I tried to make him come out and do something, he said he was working on his music.

“He gets like that sometimes,” Nick told me. “He’ll snap out of it in a day or two and won’t stop bothering us to listen to whatever new song he’s written.”

So Nick and I went up to his room and played this vampire-killing game that I, uh, sucked at. I suggested we play something else, but Nick insisted I just had to get the hang of it.

“Are you really getting dressed up for the thing tonight?” he asked as his avatar loaded a crossbow.

“If we’re all doing it,” I said with a shrug.

“You just go along with everything Sadie wants, don’t you?” Nick challenged.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

On the screen, his guy killed three vamps at once. I had a theory there was some extra button he pressed to do that, but I didn’t want to ask.

“You could have your pick of girls at Latham, you know,” Nick said angrily.

“Whatever,” I said, because he couldn’t be serious. But apparently he was.

“Come on. Any one of those girls in our French class would let you butter their croissant.”

“‘Butter their croissant’?” I repeated.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Nick said. “Any of them would be interested. Except you’re only interested in Sadie. It’s fucking unfair.”

I was about to say, Unfair to whom? and then I got it. Maybe Sadie was just friends with Nick, but the feeling wasn’t mutual.

“I thought you two were just friends,” I said.

Nick killed another vampire before answering.

“For now. That’s how it always starts out with me. It’s a long con.”

Except we both knew it wasn’t.

“Do what you want,” Nick said. “I’m just saying, there are other options, and probably more likely ones, if you want to get laid.”

“But none of them are Sadie,” I said.

“No, none of them are Sadie,” Nick said.

And then one of the vampires got to me, and my avatar fell to the ground, twitching, as Nick smirked.

I DIDN’T KNOW why my mom had packed a tie and dress shirt, but she had, and thankfully, it wasn’t too wrinkled. Despite his complaining, Nick put on a tweed vest with a watch chain, and I found him in the hall bathroom frantically combing pomade into his hair and muttering. Even Charlie got into it, wearing a blazer and a scarf and eyeliner, which Nick called “a sad tribute to David Bowie.”

“You can David Blow Me,” Charlie retorted. “At least I’m not cosplaying as Professor Slughorn.”

I tried not to laugh. We were on the porch with pillows under our arms and blankets shoved into our backpacks, waiting for the girls.

“Who’s cosplaying?” Marina asked, waving.

“Well, if it isn’t Audrey Hepburn,” Charlie said, and Marina struck a pose.

She was wearing this black dress and long white gloves, and she looked fantastic. But then I spotted Sadie, and I almost forgot how to breathe.

She had on this green dress that was like something from an old photo, and her hair was curled, and she was wearing heels. She looked like one of the models from those pictures she scrolled through on the internet, girls too perfect to be real.

Except she was real. And she was walking toward me. She stared at me, this wonderful smile rising to her lips, and I don’t know that I’d ever seen someone so beautiful.

“Wow,” I said.

And then she whacked me with the pillow she was holding. I went to hit her back with mine, but she squealed and ducked away, begging me not to ruin her hair. While we walked over to the gym, I kept jokingly raising my pillow, and she kept saying, “Don’t do it!” And I kept teasing, “I’m go

I’d never been in the gym before. It was your average high school gymnasium. The bleachers had been pushed back, and everyone was in their pajamas and sweats, with blankets and pillows spread on the floor.

A bunch of people gave us odd looks about our clothes, but Sadie just laughed.

“They wish they thought of it,” she whispered to me.

And I wished I was wearing a T-shirt instead of a tie, but I didn’t say that.

We spread our things in the very back, making a patchwork out of our blankets and pillows. A nurse I didn’t recognize came by and smiled at us.

“Don’t you all look darling,” she said, and then she gave us packs of organic fruit snacks and chocolate milk cartons, like we were five.

I stared down at the fruit snacks in dismay.

“No popcorn?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t be able to hear the movie over all the coughing,” Marina said. “Although check out the water bottles.”

She was right. There were a lot of suspicious-looking Nalgene bottles being passed around.

“Speaking of,” Nick said, unzipping his backpack and pulling out a bunch of apple juice boxes. It was one of the a

The juice box Nick passed me had been tampered with; there was a piece of tape over the hole. I stared at him questioningly, and he rolled his eyes like it was obvious.

“I modified them,” he said.

I poked my straw in and cautiously took a sip of what turned out to be vodka apple juice. Very strong vodka apple juice. I coughed, not expecting it.

“You’ll get used to it,” Charlie told me, laughing.

I took another sip, and now that I was prepared, it wasn’t half-bad.

“Stop moving, you’re ruining it.” Sadie pouted at Nick.

She’d brought her camera, and she kept taking pictures of us, then giggling and showing them to Marina. She told me to come over to where she was sitting, so I did.

“Smile,” she said, putting her face next to mine. And then she held the camera at arm’s length, snapping a selfie. She turned the camera around so I could see.

It was a perfect close-up of the two of us, Sadie smiling wide in her fancy dress, and me in a shirt and tie, my hair on point for once. In the background, you could just make out the wall of the old gym, with its faded pe

“This is great,” I said.

“I thought you could put it on Facebook. To document your new life after being evicted from your old one.”

“It’s perfect,” I said. And it was. The joke of putting it online was too good, of it looking like something it wasn’t. Of us looking like something I wanted us to be. Or, I guess, a lot of things I wanted us to be.

“That’s why I had everyone dress up,” she said, except she gri

A nurse I didn’t recognize finished setting up the projector, and the lights dimmed and the movie started. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It was a good movie, and I’d seen it before, so I didn’t have to pay attention too closely.

We all snuck sips from our juice boxes. I’d had a few beers at some of the Model UN overnights, but never hard alcohol. I hadn’t exactly pictured my first time drinking vodka to be at a pajama party, out of a juice box, while wearing a shirt and tie, but I guessed it was a good story. I didn’t have a lot of stories, but ever since I’d arrived at Latham, it seemed I was collecting them.