She wasn’t a vampire, she wasn’t a werewolf-she wasn’t even a witch. She was just human. Nothing special. She wasn’t even popular like Becky Randall or smart like Liz O’Brien. She just got through life as best as she could-she battled with biology homework like everyone else and loved watching a girly movie or two with a couple of friends and a huge bowl of popcorn.
Her life was what you’d probably call pretty average and she liked it that way-she never knew why everyone at her school wanted to be a vampire or a werewolf or whichever else creature of the night. Why couldn’t they just be happy being normal? That was becoming a rarity these days. She also believed in doing what she thought was right-or more often, what made sense to her. Following crazes didn’t make sense to her-neither did wasting her time on hair and make-up, so she didn’t do either. For that, they called her weird-she preferred to think of it as individual.
So naturally, she wasn’t looking forward to the up-coming dress-up day; the idea was to dress up as the species you wanted to be-in other words the whole school was going to turn into a bunch of witches, vampires, shapeshifters and god-knows-what-else on Friday. She heard frantic, yet excited whispers from all around her about ‘what to wear’ and ‘who I’m gonna come as’ even as World History professor Mr. McNarly droned on; she was seriously considering boycotting the whole thing.
In fact, that gave her an excellent idea. She would boycott-she just wouldn’t call it that. She would come as a human-the posters did say ‘what species you wanted to be’ so she would just say she chose to be human. And apparently, there was a prize for most unique outfit..........
When the lunch bell rang Kat-ever faithful best friend bolted to her side, ‘So, Lil, what’re you gonna come as for Friday? I know you don’t like supernatural stuff but it does say what species you would want to be-I’m guessing they mean other than human. The others certainly think so-anyway, what d’you say you’re coming as?’ Kat had always been the talker among the two of them
‘I didn’t. And I just had a great idea about what to come as. Ok, before you ask again-I am not telling you.’ –she’d decided to play it mysterious for once, and it seemed to be working.
‘Aww, please, Lil?’ she begged, and tried the puppy-eyes she knew never worked on Lil.
‘No is no. Anyway, enough about me-what about you? You got any good ideas?’
‘Well, I’m thinking I could come as a witch-it’s probably the easiest to do and I think I have this flared black dress from Halloween’-that was disappointing, she expected better of Kat. But then Kat went with the crowd and had never shared her confusion at the supernatural mania.





***
She woke up on Friday and, looking outside the window, decided she needed to dress warm. After her usual hot shower and a quick brush of her teeth, she put on a well-worn gray sweatshirt and some dark jeans. Then spent about five minutes of making her hair look presentable and checked the time. She also hated being late. 8:30. Yeah, she was well on schedule-‘Good luck trying to do vampire make-up, and tame your hair, and finish off that bio homework, and get to school on time’ she thought, smiling to herself about all the girls who would be slathering on the foundation and pumping their mascara wand till they looked like raccoons.
Grabbing her backpack, and that fated bio homework that was still lying forlornly on her desk, she ran downstairs-her little daydream had made her late despite the lack of time spend on the hair and make-up department. Finding toast and marmalade on the breakfast counter she hurriedly spread the marmalade on and wolfed down one slice while she spread marmalade on the other. I mean, she was late, but seriously-she was not one of those girls who thought it was cool not to eat. But that didn’t mean she wanted to be late either.
Still eating toast, she locked up and looked to the driveway to check if the car was gone and yes-mom must have taken it to work that morning. She jogged all the way to school and glance at the clock on her way in. Good. She’d made it with time to spare.
In her confusion and hurry she hadn’t noticed that she seemed to have stepped into a different world-it was just as she’d predicted and I mean, hey-if she went to a school for creatures of the night why couldn’t prophecies exist? All around her, girls in artfully torn and ragged dresses played witches , others powdered head to toe posed as vampires-the list could go on, people had been pretty creative. She had even seen a guy this morning dressed as a zombie. Evidently, the craziness never ended.




***

It was assembly in the school hall, which also served as basketball courts or a dance floor and when need. This was what most of the students had been waiting-the announcement of who’d won most unique outfit. Most people seemed to think the zombie guy she’d seen that morning would win-I mean, no-one else had thought of that had they? But when she heard the name called out, she could not believe her ears. ‘Lillis Jameson’ the principal had said. That was her. Slowly, she stood up from her place in the audience, and made her way to the front where the principal was standing with the silly, but coveted sash that proclaimed her winner of ‘the Most Unique Outfit’.
Apparently, being human was in again.