"This is an important school. It's an experiment. The nation is watching. Did you know, for instance, that President Johnson himself will be coming for the dedication of the vocational wing. This is a high school created to help in furthering the American Dream...

"I have a duty here. To do my job, I must be in charge. I must have that power. It must not be in doubt. It is not an easy job, but I relish my role in the happiness of everyone. And who is happier than a good follower. What you represent, in your clothing, and in your attitude may seem to you to be individuality, hmm?"

"I guess," I said.

"But to others it represents deviation from the flow that creates happiness for everyone. It represents not self accomplishment but selfish anarchy. Anarchy may feel good to you. But anarchy is a disease in a healthy system."

"As you've seen, I've taken history and political science, sir," I protested. "And I'm no anarchist!"

"Good! I'm happy to hear that. In that case, let me give you some advice. Use your intelligence and abilities to find out what works in a system. I have done that. You will be happy. And you will help others be happy."

He got up. He seemed somehow even taller and more imposing here, like a bear rearing up in his own den. He lumbered forward, went around to the other side of the desk - and leaned over me, hands on hips. I reared back.

Then, Principal Canthorpe leaned back and sat on the edge of his desk, beaming benignly.

"You have a lot of promise, Rebecca. I'd like to help you with your promise. Now do help me. I would truly, truly appreciate it if you'd.... " He shrugged. "Just wear more normal clothing and try and get along with the other students."

One moment he was a scowling bear, the next a big friendly puppy dog.

I asked, "That's all?"

"That's all. Some more color. And some black? Sure, but why don't you accessorize. You know, colored pins, whatever. Teen fashion magazines will help, I dare say."

"Okay," I found myself saying.

He reached out and took my hand in his. "Thank you so much. This is not an easy job. I need the help of all my truly gifted students. And really, you should think about the debate club. I help out there a bit myself you know, and it would be such a pleasure to help you."

He smiled even more warmly.

"And please, if you need any help, remember our guidance councilors are here for everyone. But to students like you, my office is always open. Thank you for coming."

"Oh. Sure."

I got up and started to leave.

"Oh. And Rebecca.?

I turned around. He was still smiling, but there was a bit of the old fire in his eye. "I'm going to be making sure you get the most out of your Crossland High years."

His voice sounded like a rumble from the depths of the woods.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

I WAS STILL pondering my strange visit to Dr. Canthorpe's office as I stood by the bulletin board with the Drama Club members. We were waiting for Mr. Mr. Crawley's assistant to put up the cast list for the Crossland High School production of Dracula.

"All I can say," Harold said, finally breaking his silence. "Is that I definitely see some madras shirts in my future!"

"Madras shirts!" I said. "Madras shirts?"

Madras shirts were kind of a uniform there at Crossland in 1968, in the way that Ban Lon shirts were for many of the vocational students then. They were the uniform of the category of students generally known then as "collegiate". You'd think that this meant that these were the honor roll students, already accepted at prestigious universities like Princeton or Harvard or Yale. In fact, it was just a fashion statement for students with parents who had money. "Madras" was a sort of linen from India, a rainbow of bright colors. These shirts were neatly tailored and then pressed, and looked quite spiffy on guys above khaki slacks, penny loafers and a narrow leather belt.

Needless to say, Harry did not wear Madras shirts.

"Sounds like a good way to stay out of the way of Principal Canthorpe," said Harry. "I've just been musing on your story."

I said, "It was just weird. Wear what you want, Harold. Madras won't go well with your complexion."

Harry nodded. Harry pretty much wore scruffy stuff, sometimes wrinkled. Lately,, under my influence, his garb tended toward grey and yes, black. In any case, both the "collegiate" and the "block" (which was the Ban Lon style favored by the vocational students, often above greasy slicked back hair) required one thing of which Harry seemed incapable.

Neatness.

"He's very threatening," said Harry.

"Well, he's intimidating," I said. "But when you think about it, a lot of it is just bluster that works well."

"I've got to say that you'd look really nice in a dress."

"Well, you can be sure I'll be wearing dresses if I get this part."

"What if you get the part of Mina?"

I glared at Harry. I pulled down the ncck section of my black turtleneck sweater. "With this neck? Is this a Lucy neck....or what?"

My neck has been called swanlike lately as I've grown taller, making me feel much less like the proverbial ugly duckling.

"Oh, it's a Lucy neck."

Only a few Drama Club students seemed to be milling around in the hall outside the teacher's office. Although the final bell has long since rung, after my visit to the Principal's office, I was a bit worried that's we'd get detention hall for loitering. Crossland seemed less like a high school and more like a concentration camp.

However, Peter Harrigan was not amongst us, the milling.

Not that I'd expected him, really. I didn't think he'd doubt he'd get the role of Dracula, so why hover? Not his style. Not his style at all.

The day had been weird. After my odd visit to Principal Canthorpe, it was too late to go back to my biology class. I spent most of lunch and much of my library period with my head buried in a Victoria Holt novel.

I was honestly half-tempted to get on the bus after the last class, go home and just park myself in front of today's Dark Shadows and whatever soaps, game shows or cartoons that came across our crappy black and white Sylvania TV set.

I was of course shaken by my office interview. I'd been intimidated and scolded and whatever. These were things that although de rigueur for a high school before the sixties, were now frowned upon. I would have confided all this to my parents, but all they would have heard was "I had to go to the principal's office," and therefore responded with alarm.

How could I have described Canthorpe's behavior and speech? I wasn't sure I could even take it in myself, much less tell anyone about it. He acted like some kind of great ape, pounding his chest and screaming orders for a young female to stay in line or get kicked into the quicksand.

But as I got over my shock, I also started to get angry.

I felt rebellious. I felt as though Canthorpe had tried to snuff out as best he could my individuality and identity. Sure, he suggested that I was better than the "masses". But he'd also tacitly suggested that he was better than me, in charge, and there was a right way in life. His way.

I also half-felt like suggesting to Harry that we go to his house and listen to some of his rock LPs. Usually I liked the Beatles, but now somehow the Rolling Stones seemed in order. I was kinda getting to like their Satanic Majesty's Request.

Finally, the suspense started rising up again through simple curiosity. And with the suspense came the flashes of anticipation of that cloak descending over me, that handsome face near my neck. And the laughs we'd share after the show.

I was certain I'd get the part after I auditioned for it. Now, though, after that interview, I wasn't sure of anything.

I had to know.

Someone cried, "Hey - here comes someone!"

A smiling lady in a gray skirt, blue blouse and glasses with bead holders clicked out in her pumps, smiling at us and wiggling a sheet of paper with a list on it.

"Yes, yes, I think this is what you're waiting for! It's going to be a good show."

She found two black thumb tacks and with far too much attention to the neatness of her work, affixed the paper to a blank part of the board, perfectly square and proportionate to the other notices there. She stood back a bit to examine her handiwork, nodded, and then let it be.

"Congratulations!" she said, and clicked back into the office, her curly hairdo quivering a bit atop her head.

The crowd surged in to look at the list.

My trained 20-20 vision instantly spotted my name: LUCY - Rebecca Williams "You got it, you got it!" said Harry.

But then, my eyes traveled up the list.

Yes, there was the name, his glorious name near the top.

Peter Harrigan.

But I caught my breath.

It read like this: PROFESSOR VAN HELSING - Peter Harrigan "Van Helsing!" I said. "But who..."

And my eyes leapt down to name Dracula and the name after the dashes which followed.

I gasped.

"Oh. My. God."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE it. I just can't believe it!"

I was slumped on the couch in Harry's basement rec room. I was morose. I shook my head mournfully.

"I just can't believe it!" I repeated for what seemed like the thousandth time. "I just can't believe it!" Thousand and first.

"Look," said Harry. "I know you wanted to get close. I mean really close to him, as in physically. But really maybe this is better."

"Better? How can it possibly be better, Harold? We're not going to get with yards of each other. That was the point! Don't you see? He was going to get hooked on me! And if not... Well, at least I'd have like....well....whatever you want to call it? A dramatic fling?"

Harry said, "You're not thinking straight. You're still going to be hanging around him. In rehearsals, in productions. Plenty of time to talk to him."

I rolled my eyes. I knew that Harry was right, and that was annoying. What vexed me, though, most was that I was so close, so very close. to quick and easy clinches on the guy. How much easier it would be for Peter, during the cast party in the dimness, to put his arm around me while we're sitting on the couch and just kiss me. I mean, he'd already buried his mouth in my neck hundreds of times. I'm simply wasn't the kind of person who found it easy to throw myself at a guy. Now, what with all the girls around him, how would he even notice me?

So went my worst case thinking, anyway.

I knew that Harry was right, that getting to be around Peter more was a victory. But it seemed only a Phyrric victory. It was frustrating.

Worse, I'd gotten the role of Lucy and my neck was still going to be bitten, plenty.

But by who?.

Who had gotten the role of Dracula. Who was Igoing to work with? Whose hot breath would be caressing my long swanlike neck.

That was the question that had zoomed around my head as I had searched for the truth, down that surprising list And oh Lord, what a shock.

Now as though to underscore my thoughts and continuing shock a mournful blues line played on the rock song from the record player.

Harold was a record fiend. His father was a jazz nut who collected records, so it was natural that he would encourage his son to get records himself, and supply money toward that end. So Harold had a good record collection of recent pop and rock and soul records well beyond the range of top forty radio. We'd listened to some Cream already and now Harold had the first Jimi Hendrix album on, Are You Experienced?

Jimi Hendrix is still famous, of course, but back then he hadn't quite reached the heights, despite his hit song "Purple Haze". He was kind of like Prince before that other famous purple, Purple Rain.

Now Hendrix's psychedelic guitar work squealed around the room like an angry, frustrated hornet. But its blues-based feel was good for me. Harry's basement had that upholstered, safe feel of comfortable, carpeted gloom that suburban basements get. A single lamp glowed at on the other side of a worn leather couch. Dusk was already lapping at the windows. There was a faint not unpleasant musky smell behind the smell of furniture wax and the scent of the popcorn. I munched a handful, and followed it up with iced RC cola. It made me feel a little bit better. Sometimes I felt as though I suffered Harry so I could hang out in this cool basement. Beside the stereo and radio, there was also a 21 inch Color RCA TV set with which Harry accosted me with Star Trek every Thursday night. There was a definite bunker feel to the place. We could pull in the door mats, batten down the hatches and "Make the world go away" as the Eddy Arnold song goes. I'd gotten to be such a fixture here, that I'd have meals with Harry and his parents sometimes, and I had a key to the house.

Was I experienced? Jimi asked on the stereo.

Not really, but I wanted to be, but only Peter Harrigan.

What was in store for me with the guy who was Dracula in the school play, was certainly not what I was hoping for at all.

I closed my eyes and the image swam through my memory. The image of the cast roster.

DRACULA - Emory Clarke "Emory Clarke!" I said, eyes popping open. "Emory Clarke! I didn't even know he was an actor."

"Who's an actor at high school?" said Harry. "It's like a starting point. Looks like Emory just got the bug."

"But he wasn't at the audition!"

Harry munched on some popcorn, musing on that a bit. He washed the mouthful with his Coke. Ice clinked as he set the plastic tumbler back down on the wicker mat coaster on the coffee table.

"You know what, Rebecca?"