Gary: There's one thing I don't get about all these stories with vampires in high schools.
Lissa: Only one thing?
Gary: Okay, so hundreds of things, but the one thing that really bugs me is why does anyone think a vampire would want to go back to high school?
Lissa: I don't know. To catch up on calculus?
Gary: Oh. I hadn't thought of that.
Lissa: I was joking.
Gary: But that makes sense. If you didn't understand calculus before you became a vampire, anyway. School had a pretty simple approach. A vampire might have a chance of actually learning that.
Lissa: I'm sure that's the first regret a new vampire has, that they never learned calculus.
Gary: It would bother me.
Lissa: You'd go back to high school for calculus?
Gary: I don't need to. I was great at calculus. Maths was always my strong point. I was terrible at social studies and sport.
Lissa: Me too. I got straight As in English though.
Gary: Did you keep a diary?
Lissa: Of course I did. I was a teenage girl. I angsted about everything in purple pen and with occasional diagrams. Did you?
Gary: I kept a notebook. I wrote ideas in it and drew stuff. Cars and bridges and things.
Lissa: Aww. That's lovely.
Gary: <puzzled look>
Lissa: My brother Paul used to do that kind of stuff. Only he drew jet planes and ... things...
Gary:... are you all right?
Lissa: Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Gary: You look kind of sad.
Lissa: Yeah. Never mind.
Gary: <dubiously> Okay. Well. Another thing about this show. Stefan looks like Xander from Buffy.
Lissa: But he acts like Angel on one of his more brooding, I'm-such-a-bad-person days.
Gary: He does, too. I suppose that makes Damon more like Spike.
Lissa: Most vampire shows have vampires that are one or the other, these days.
Gary: Neither of them are like any vampires I know.
Lissa: You don't know any vampires who have gone back to school to study calculus.
Gary: That's true. And high school looks a lot more complicated than it was in my day.
Lissa: That's an American high school. But you have a point.
Gary: Was your school that melodramatic?
Lissa: Probably. I spent most of it in the library, though, so I missed most of the sex and violence.
Gary: We had a bit of violence in my day, too. I got beaten up after school a bit.
Lissa: <scowling> Little bastards...
Gary: Oh, they're long grown up and got bald, Lissa.
Lissa: Ha! That's the spirit.
Gary:There must have been some sex back then too, now I think of it. Olivia MacPherson put on a lot of weight before she went to live with relatives in Adelaide half way through fifth form. That probably had nothing to do with a glandular condition, like my mum said.
Lissa: No, probably not.
Gary: I'm glad I'm not in high school any more.
Lissa: Amen to that.

*For newcomers, the GaryView is a review of books/films/TV/entertainment carried out as a conversation between Lissa Wilson (librarian) and Gary Hooper (vampire) , characters from my book 'The Opposite of Life'. Visit my website for more information.