Who knew farm boys could be so charming? In fact, I was surprised to realize that we had been in the coffee shop for over an hour and not one of these humans was boring me. We’d encountered plenty of not-boring humans over the decades, but it was strange to discover them here in Nowhere. Or maybe it was just the fact that I was actually able to focus on what they were saying now that I was unburdened of the desire to drink their blood.

“But why Hope High?” Reg asked at one point. “I thought high schools were usually named for the town.”

“Would you want to go to Nowhere High?” Sydney asked.

“It was named by the guy who paid for it,” Dexter said. “Some alum who got out and hit it big and wanted kids in his hometown to have a little hope.”

“That big brick box is supposed to give us hope?” I asked.

Dexter held his hands up in a “beats me” gesture.

“I just can’t believe the town actually built something new,” Poe said. “The school is only a few years old. Before that, the last time anyone in this place tried to open something new, it went up in smoke. Literally!”

He pointed out the coffee shop window, and I followed the angle of his finger to a set of boarded-up windows, across the street and a few doors down. Above the windows, an empty marquee jutted out, bare and dark.

“A theater?” I asked.

“Shortest business ever to operate in Nowhere at less than twenty-four hours,” Poe said.

“What happened?”

“A fire. Opening night. Gutted the whole place, and it never reopened.”

“Perhaps it still will,” Reg said. “How long ago was the fire?”

Poe locked eyes with Reg. “When our grandparents were our age.”

“Oh.”

“My grandad was there,” Dex said. “He and his buddies almost didn’t make it out.”

“Why didn’t they rebuild?” I asked.

Poe shrugged. “Apparently the owner’s insurance wouldn’t cover it for some reason. So he abandoned the place and sold it to some development company that never did anything with it. My mom says it happens all the time.”

“Poe’s mom is on the town chamber,” Dex said. “He thinks it makes him a big deal. But it mostly just means he knows a bunch of boring information nobody cares about.”

“Knowledge is power, my friend,” Poe retorted.

“If we’re going to have anything new, I’m glad it’s a high school,” Sophia said. “Kids used to have to bus out to a school an hour away, and they treated anyone from out here like hicks.”

Sydney added, “Now that school begs for away games so they can play on our fancy football field or shoot hoops in our gigantic gym.”