VINNIE, THE VAMPIRE
Volume I
By Jordan Pearce
Text copyright 2010 by Jill Jordan
Are you buying this book? Congratulations!
You’ve not only taken a huge step towards understanding the world of vampires, but you are also supporting a good cause!
Proceeds from Vinny’s book sales support several charities, including the Decatur Education Foundation.
https://decatureducationfoundation.org
Chapter One
Do you have vampires in your neighborhood? Are you sure? Meet Vinny, a vampire living in Atlanta, Georgia. Vinny is 8 years old and is in the 3rd grade.
Vinny’s dad’s name is Vincent and he is a security guard at a computer factory, where people build computers.
Vincent works at the security desk where he greets people visiting the building, and he walks around a lot to make sure that everything is working properly in each section of the factory. Since the factory is so big, Vincent spends most of his time checking the different sections of the building, being on the lookout for any trouble.
Vinny’s mom is a nurse who works at Eastside Hospital, and her name is Valerie. Valerie works the night shift, which means she works at night taking care of patients in the hospital and comes home just when the kids are waking up in the morning for school. She usually has time to take Vinny and Vanessa to school before she goes to bed to get some sleep.
In the afternoon Valerie wakes up, picks up the kids from school, and the family has dinner as soon as Vincent gets home from work. After dinner, the kids go to bed and Mom goes to work at the hospital all night long.
Vinny has an older brother and a younger sister. His brother’s name is Victor and his little sister’s name is Vanessa. His sister Vanessa is five years old, and sometimes Vinny thinks Vanessa is his best friend, and sometimes he wishes she wasn’t his sister at all, he wishes she would just run away and live with the zombies.
In Vinny’s mind, the problem with Vanessa is that she is of course younger and smaller than him, and adults were always calling her cutie, or darling, or sweetie. So most people think she couldn’t do anything mean or get into trouble. They all think that she is a little angel.
Well, Vinny knew that this was not the case at all. Vanessa might look sweet, and sometimes she could even act very sweet, but she was a tricky one. You never know when she is going to pull something on you because she looks so innocent.
Victor on the other hand, is just plain mean most of the time. He is 14 years old, and seems to hate everyone. He is usually grumpy unless he’s riding his skateboard or reading in his room with his iPod turned up full blast. Every now and then Victor plays basketball with Vinny, but most of the time Vinny just tries to stay out of Victor’s way.
Vinny’s family also has a pet bat named Vasser and a cat named Velly. Vasser the bat is 3 years old. One of his favorite games is to sit up on a tree limb in the backyard and try to dive bomb the cat.
Chapter Two
Many people are still afraid of vampires. They’ve probably watched movies and they have heard that vampires drink blood and fly around at night scaring everyone. Well, may have been true a long time ago. Nowadays vampires don’t need to drink blood any longer in order to survive. Scientists have developed a very special berry called the bloodberry.
The interesting thing about bloodberries is that they will only grow in the shade. The bloodberry plant has to be fertilized with a little vampire blood several times a year so that the plant produces healthy berries.
You might think that putting blood on the plant would be very painful, but a vampire can usually save some blood when they get a scrape or cut, and then drip some of it on their plant. Do you ever go to the doctor and they stick your finger for a blood test? Of course that hurts, but when vampires go to the doctor and get that test, they ask the doctor to save a little blood for them to take home and fertilize their bloodberry plants.
Most vampires grow bloodberry plants in gardens at their homes, but the berries can also be purchased in the produce section of the grocery store.
When bloodberry plants are grown in large farms, the farmers buy the vampire blood from blood banks, which store both human and vampire blood. Did you know that blood banks save blood for people to use in the hospital and when they have emergency accidents where they need extra blood?
Well, for vampire blood, farmers can actually buy the blood from the banks and spray their plants with it three times a year.
Vampires who do not mind getting stuck with a needle (like a shot) can make money by going to the blood bank and selling their blood.
At the blood bank, a nurse uses a needle to take blood from the vampire’s arm and then the bank stores it in a vial, not only for emergencies, when vampires have to go to the hospital, but also to sell it to the farmers that raise bloodberries.
Vampires can eat bloodberries or make bloodberry smoothies or other treats with them. A vampire needs to have a bloodberry at least once a day to make sure they stay strong and healthy.
Vampires also eat a few other things that regular people might not like too much, but you will learn about that later.
Chapter Three
Of course there are other things that people believe about vampires that are still true these days. Even though vampires don’t use their big teeth, called fangs, to drink people’s blood any more, all vampires have fangs.
Some vampires file down their sharp teeth with a fingernail file because they want to look more normal and fit in with regular humans. But some vampires (like Victor) like to look scary, so they try to grow their fangs to be very long and sharp.
One problem vampires still deal with today is that they are allergic to sunlight. Back in the old days, many years ago, if vampires went out in the daytime, they would dry up and turn to dust. In modern times though, vampires can buy a special powerful sun block, called VampBlock that they put on their skin during the day time.
The VampBlock protects the vampire’s skin and allows them to go outside like everyone else. Victor calls this sun block ‘rot cream’, and he hates to wear it. Vinny and Vanessa don’t like the VampBlock either, but it is something they all have to use.
Too much sun will make a vampire’s skin turn an ugly green color and get blisters all over it….then they really do look like monsters! If a vampire gets a sun burn it has to stay inside away from any sun for two days to let their skin heal. If the sunburn is really bad a vampire will have to go to the hospital for treatment.
As you might guess, if they could, vampires would actually prefer to come out at only at night, since, like Victor they hate to wear so much VampBlock. For kid vampires that is tough, because not many schools operate at night. So young vampires get used to wearing the sunscreen every day whether they like it or not.
And another thing about vampires…. a lot of people have always thought that vampires could not see themselves in a mirror, because in the past vampires were considered to be ‘undead’. When someone is undead, they still walk and talk but are very stiff and very pale, almost green. Their body moves but their brain doesn’t work well and they seem pretty stupid. You may have seen movies about zombies, these creatures are considered undead.
Nowadays, since vampires don’t have to rely on drinking real blood anymore, they are like regular living people and can definitely see themselves in a mirror. Just a heads up though, beware of the zombies, most of these creatures are truly mean and if you get too close to one, they will probably try to rip your eyes out and eat your brain.
Now that you know something about vampires, let’s check in with Vinny and his family….
Chapter Four
It
’s Monday morning, after a nice weekend, but now it’s time for the kids to go back to school. Mom and Dad have to go back to work as well, so everyone is grumpy.
Vinny gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom. He washes his hands and sees Velly, the cat, watching him from the window sill. Vinny loves to pet Velly so he reaches out to her as she is sitting there in the window. However, Velly is not in the mood to be held, REOWWWWWWWW, she says to Vinny and scratches him on the arm, leaving a big claw mark. Vinny’s arm starts to bleed immediately.
(The strange thing about a vampire’s blood is that it is green, kind of like the color of broccoli. Scientists think that the vampires’ green blood actually helps the bloodberries grow and become healthy fruits for vampires to eat.)
Vinny’s mom hears the cat first, then she hears Vinny start screaming. She grabs a jar, squeezes his arm a little and collects some blood. OWWWW Vinny screams again. “COOL!” says Mom, we have our bloodberry fertilizer now!”
Then Mom looks at Vinny, “Oh Vinny, are you OK? You know better than to grab Velly in the morning, she is as grumpy as you are!” Vinny’s mom wipes the rest of the green blood from Vinny’s arm and gets a bandage.
By this time, all of the commotion has woken Victor, not a good thing. Victor forgot his VampBlock when he went to the baseball game over the weekend. He has to stay at home for two days, and is very grouchy about it… “BE QUIET you little whiner”, Victor yells to Vinny, as he peeks out of his bedroom door.
Vinny sees Victor’s face, it is all green with big nasty blisters on his nose. “ Victor, you look like a big green booty!” Vinny hisses back.
Victor throws a tennis ball at Vinny and misses, then he slams his door shut as he yells “you little creep!”. Vinny dreams of shutting Victor’s nose in the door…. “if only Mom had heard Victor”…he thinks to himself, “he’d be busted”.
Vinny’s still mad at the cat and his grumpy brother. He walks into the kitchen …. and… guess what’s for breakfast – cinnamon honey spiders, his favorite! “Things just got better” Vinny smiles and sits down.
Just as Vinny is about to eat his first spider, Vanessa comes walking up behind him and grabs a handful of Vinny’s spiders and pops them into her mouth.
“YOU LITTLE BRAT!!! Vinny yells…Vanessa takes off running, Vinny chases her and pushes her to the floor.
Now whiny Vanessa starts screaming and crying and here comes Mom. “Vinny, go to your room”, she says.
“But Mom, she took” Vinny starts to say, “Hush your mouth and go to your room” says Mom. Vinny walks to his room, he is so mad he can barely see his door and he bumps into it. “OWWWWWW!”
In a minute or two Mom brings Vanessa in to see Vinny, who is sitting on the bed in his room.
“I’m sorry for taking your spiders Vinny” she says, and she sniffles, so Vinny can tell she has been crying, Mom must have chewed her out.
Vinny mutters “that’s still not OK”.
Mom says, “Vinny, your sister has apologized, please accept it”. Vinny rolls his eyes at Vanessa and says “OK, but you better not do it again or you’ll pay big time!”. “OK”, Vanessa says as she sniffles. Vinny is amazed at how good of an actress Vanessa can be.
They all leave Vinny’s room and head back to the breakfast table. Mom brings more spiders for each of them and they also eat a banana. Vinny and Vanessa love to eat bananas. They have a game that they play when Mom isn’t watching. They each sink their fangs into their banana and see who can walk around the longest without their banana dropping to the floor. Whoever’s banana drops first has to eat the dirty banana and the winner eats the one that hasn’t fallen.
Since he’s older and his fangs are longer, Vinny usually wins, but this time his banana drops from his fangs and hits the floor.. ‘plop’. Vanessa starts laughing and accidentally drops her banana too, so they both have to eat dirty bananas (Vinny picks a few cat hairs off of his before he takes a bite). He munches his banana and tastes something crunchy, maybe an extra bug or two on there? “YUMMY!” he thinks.
Chapter Five
“Let’s head out” says Mom from the hallway, so Vinny and Vanessa run to brush their teeth. Since vampires have those long fangs, they have to take extra care to brush them and keep them shiny white. Have you ever seen a vampire with cavities in their fangs? Probably not, they are very proud of their clean white teeth.
While Vinny is brushing his teeth, he tries to decide if his day is going to get any better. So far, this morning has been really cruddy, will it get worse through the rest of the day?
At dinner every night with his family, before Mom goes to work at the hospital, they all talk about how each day went. It sounds corny, but when he takes time to remember, Vinny is reminded of lots of good things that happened during the day. Vinny’s parents always tell him to be thankful for each day and consider it a blessing.
“Well that is hard to do when your brother is throwing things at you and your sister is stealing your food”, Vinny mutters to himself.
Mom’s voice brings Vinny back from his thoughts. “Vinny, don’t forget to feed Vasser before you let him out” Mom calls out.
Vinny runs over to Vasser’s cage and drops in a few pieces of peaches, Vasser’s favorite fruit. Vasser eats the peaches in like 3 seconds. Vinny lets him out and he flies around the room excitedly.
As Vinny walks back to his room to get his cape, he decides that he is tired of wearing his small, kid-sized cape. So, while his dad is in the bathroom getting ready for work and putting on his VampBlock, Vinny puts on his dad’s cape. He ties it up around his waist so his mom won’t notice how long it is, and then he hangs his own cape in Dad’s closet.
Just a note about the capes…. Yes, vampires still wear those capes. Young vampires wear them just for fun or to keep warm, but grownup vampires can use them to disappear and reappear somewhere else. You may have seen that in the movies.
When Vinny’s dad is late for work, he uses his cape to disappear from the house, and reappear at the computer factory. Usually though, vampires try to be normal like everyone else, so Vinny’s dad drives his car or takes the train. Vinny knows that Dad is not running late today, so there is no chance he’ll notice the cape missing!
A little bit more about capes. Some people think that during the time that the vampire disappears with the cape, it travels through another world, like a black hole in the universe. Dad has not mentioned anything about that, but Vinny is going to ask him when he can remember to bring it up.
Vinny leaves his parents’ room to get Vasser, who is still flying around the kitchen looking for Velly. Vasser lands on Vinny’s shoulder, then Vinny joins Vanessa and Mom in the living room as they get ready to walk out of the front door.
Mom mentions that since it is such a nice morning they will ride their bikes to school. She always puts Vanessa on the back of her tandem bike and Vinny rides his own bike.
Vinny likes his bike. He has a basket on the front, and he has decorated the basket with cool pictures of his favorite baseball team, the Atlanta Braves.
He puts Vasser in the basket. Vasser loves to ride in the bike and spread out his wings while Vinny pedals fast. When Vinny pedals fast enough, his cape flies out behind the bike, making him feel like batman or superman.
One problem with wearing his cape on the bike is that if Vinny doesn’t pedal fast enough or tie the cape up around his waist, it gets caught in the wheels of the bike and can cause a wipe out.
Last year Vinny was riding his bike down a huge hill, racing his friend John, when his cape got caught in the back wheel. The bike went sideways, Vinny went straight ahead, and Vasser flew up into a tree. Vinny landed on the pavement and scraped his leg in three places, and almost knocked his right fang out.
Now Vinny always looks out for his cape when he’s on the bike. He especially had to do that today, or Mom would notice how long the cape was and realize that he was wearing Dad’s cape, and that would not be a good thing.
/> Vinny checks the cape and re-ties it in a double loop around his waist. It still flutters pretty good when he pedals fast, so Mom doesn’t notice anything different.
Chapter Six
After they make it to school, Vinny parks his bike out front and Mom puts Vasser in her bike basket and heads off to take Vanessa to kindergarten just down the street.
Vasser doesn’t get to come into the school. Vinny brought Vasser inside the school once and he dive bombed Mrs. Calloway, Vinny’s teacher, and pulled some of her hair out. That was not a good scene, so Vinny keeps Vasser away from trouble.
Although Vinny is different from the other kids in his class, most of them treat him like any other kid. Vinny’s classmates have learned that he may look different on the outside, but on the inside he is just like them. For example, some kids, especially Mark, like to talk a lot, while some kids, like Kelly, are quiet. Some kids are taller, some are shorter. Some kids have lighter skin, some kids have darker skin. Some kids are vampires, some are not. That is how Vinny likes to look at it.
Every now and then one of the kids from 4th grade will start to pick on Vinny, because sometimes, when he gets excited, it’s hard to understand everything he says because his fangs get in the way. When this happens on the playground, his friends from 3rd grade always help him out, especially John, his best friend. They watch out for each other.
Now Vinny walks into his classroom, and spots John. They give each other their top secret handshake and start to plan what they will do at recess. Mrs. Calloway, asks them to get quiet and sit down so that the Spanish teacher, Mr. Cordova, could start Spanish lessons. “Buenos dias!” he says to the class. Vinny has learned that the Spanish word for vampire is ‘vampiro’. COOL.