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.”“I need to keep my cover,” Foo said.“For tax purposes.”That was partially true.He did need to keep up his cover, because, like Abby, he hadn’t actually told his parents that he’d moved out.They were so used to him being at school, in the lab, or at work, that they hadn’t really noticed that he hadn’t been sleeping at home.It helped that he had four younger brothers and sisters, who were all carrying insane work and course loads.His parents were all about toil.As long as you were toiling, you were okay.They could smell toil from miles away, or the lack of it.He might be able to get away with living in his own loft with his spooky-sexy girlfriend, and doing bizarre genetic experiments on the undead, but if he quit his job they’d sense it in a second.It took Foo and Jared twenty minutes to get all the rats up the steps and lined up around the living room.“We’re not going to hurt them, are we?” said Jared, holding up one of the plastic cages so he was eye to eye with its occupants.“We’re going to turn them into vampires.”“Oh, cool.Now?”“No, not now.For now, you’re going to need to feed them and make sure there’s a water bottle in each of their cages,” Foo said.“Then what?” Jared asked, tossing his hair out of his eyes.“Then you can go home,” said Foo.“You don’t need to observe them full-time until the experiment starts.”“I can’t go home.I told my parents I was staying over at Abby’s.”Foo was suddenly horrified at the thought of having to spend the night in the loft with a hundred rats, two bronzed vampires, and Jared.Especially Jared.Maybe he’d go home and leave Jared to watch the rats—make an appearance at home for the parents, so as to throw them off the trail of his non-toiling, loft-living, Anglo-girlfriend lifestyle.“You can stay here, then,” Foo said.“I’ll be back in the morning.”“What about them?” Jared nodded toward the bronzed figures of Jody and Tommy.“What about them?”“Can I talk to them? I didn’t get to finish telling Jody my novel.” Jared had spent a very long night telling Jody the first part of the novel he was going to write, an erotic horror story that starred himself and his pet rat, Lucifer 2.“Okay,” said Foo.He didn’t really like thinking about the two people, well, vampires, but they seemed a lot like people, that he’d helped imprison in a bronze shell.It sort of gave him the willies, and that was highly unscientific.“But no touching,” he added.Jared pouted and sat down on the futon, about the only spot in the entire living-room-kitchen area not covered with plastic rat cages.“Okay, but will you help me get these boots off before you go?”Foo shuddered.It had been less than an hour since the cops led Abby away and already he missed her like a severed limb.It was embarrassing.How could hormones and hydrostatic pressure make you feel like this? Love was very unscientific.“Sorry,” Foo said.“Gotta jet.” A true hero, the kind Abby accused him of being, he knew, would have helped Jared.JAREDAbby Normal had once offered to pay for a tattoo for Jared that read: Danger.Do not administer caffeine without adult supervision.Jared asked, “Can it be in red? Does it have to be on the forehead? Maybe on the side so I can grow my hair over it if I don’t like it.Am I being emo? Do you want to play Blood-feast on Xbox? They have green fur iPod cases at Urban Outfitters.I love white chocolate mochas.Marilyn Manson needs to be dragged to death behind a clown car.Oh fuck, I’m so allergic to this eyeliner I could cry.”Abby said, “Oh my God, you’re like Obnoxious and Annoying had an ass baby!”“What are you trying to say?” asked Jared.What she had been trying to say, although she didn’t know it at the time, was that under no circumstances should Jared be left alone in an apartment with an abundance of time and espresso, which is what Foo had just done
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