Synopsis: Garlic Breath

13 year old Julie loves garlic bread, pasta with garlic sauce, and even her eccentric father's garlic ice cream, but after a friend pulls a lunchtime prank she swears off her mother's cooking completely -- and discovers garlic breath is the very least of her problems.

After nearly destroying her school, Julie's parents come clean: they're vampires, and so is she. A garlic-centric diet lets them digest normal food, protects their skin from the burning sun, and curbs their appetite for blood. And they are not alone: Julie's best friend Kate avoids sleepovers and meekly obeys curfew not because she's a coward but because her lycanthropy turns her into a ravening wolf almost every night.

Even lycanthropy is a cakewalk compared to what afflicts Peter LaVoie, a boy Julie's never seen in school because he can't attend, not with a gargoyle's stone skin, curling horns, and pointed tail.

But if Julie has it so easy, why does her diet of garlic suddenly frustrate her so? Why does keeping quiet about it -- at first, her most desperate wish-- suddenly seem like such a cop-out?