Adventures of a Middle School Zombie (17 page)

Anna lifted her eyes and looked at me. “That’s a cool story.”

“Yeah, I never thought of it like that before,” I said. “But it reminds me there was a time when everyone thought I was just like them. We used to play games and have wars with our G.I. Joes and set up really cool tracks with our Hot Wheels. But as time went on, people noticed I was different even though I was the same.”

“But what’s wrong with being different?” Anna said. “I got tired of being like everyone else, and everyone telling me to dress like this and act like that. I didn’t want to be ‘them.’ I wanted to be me.”

“Is that why you went goth?”

“Part of it, yeah. I knew the goth girls really stood out, but when I got to know them, I really liked what they stood for. They just didn’t care what everybody thought. There was a kind of freedom about that, just being who you wanted to be.”

“But that’s just it. You chose to be different. That’s cool, but I never got that choice.”

An arm slid in from the side, placing a bucket of salad in front of Anna.

“Salad for the lady,” the guy who took our order said, “and a bucket of burgers for my friend on the other side … you know, of the table. Can I get you anything else?”

“No, that’s great, thanks,” I said.

Anna looked up and nodded.

“Smells good,” I said. “Burgers are one of my favorite foods. That and brains, of course.”

Anna giggled. Sort of. It was a cross between a hiccup and a laugh, but was definitely way more laugh. And she was smiling.

“I get it,” she said. “I’ve seen my share of, you know … ”

“Movies with zombies. Go ahead, you can say it. Zomm-beees.”

“Zombies.”

“See? Not so hard.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

It’s the same question everyone asks. I usually don’t answer, but usually I’m not on a date at the Burger Bucket. I’m waiting for a bus. Or in the checkout lane at the supermarket. Or in front of the tiger enclosure at the zoo.

And usually I’d say, “You want to know what it’s like to be a zombie. I’ll just say this: at least I know my life is a dead end.” And then I’d walk away, either to (dead) silence or a muttered curse. And I’d try my best to forget about it, chalk it up to people’s ignorance. If I was really on a roll, before I turned away I’d give the whole spiel: “Would you walk up to a blind guy and ask him what it’s like not to see? Or a woman in a wheelchair and ask her what it’s like be paralyzed?”

But this time, I didn’t say any of that.

“You want to know what it’s like to be a zombie,” I said, disappointment in my voice.

“No,” Anna said. “I wanted to know if you really thought that shirt went with those pants.”

“Wow, that is a personal question.”

She laughed again. A real laugh, no hint of a hiccup.

“I’m guessing bad fashion sense comes with being undead.”

“Apparently so. But to tell you the truth, my mom picked these out.”

“Oh my God, that’s even worse!” We both laughed. “Tell your mom that even though you’re a … ”

“Zombie.”

“ … zombie, she doesn’t have to dress you as if you were brain-dead.”

“Good point,” I said, looking at my still-untouched bucket of burgers. “But, did you really want to ask me a question?”

“Yeah,” Anna said, picking at her salad. “But I think I’d like to wait and see the answer myself if, you know, you want to hang out again.”

“Really? Because that would be—”

“Oh my God, Anna, you said you would, but I really didn’t think you’d go through with it.” The shrill voice came from two tables over, where three girls pushed their chairs back and stood, each carrying a tray piled with wrappers and paper cups.

Anna’s friends. I didn’t know their names, but I called them (not to their faces) the Twilight Triplets: Bella, Della, and Stella. They were dressed in all black, as usual, with two in pants and the third—Bella, their leader—in a long shirt, short skirt, and torn black leggings.

My eyes followed them as they marched single file to the trash can, Bella in front. Bella opened the flap and tossed in everything, tray included, then Della and Stella followed suit with their trays.

“Jed, I’m sorry, I had no idea they’d be here,” Anna said in just above a whisper. “This really isn’t their kind of place.”

“No need to apologize,” I said. “They’re your friends, I understand.”

“No, you don’t—look, let’s grab our food and—”

“Fancy running into you guys, this is just too much.” Bella, Della, and Stella now stood over us. The scent of grease mixed with a harsh odor of incense. Had to be their perfume, probably whatever was on sale in the “Holy Crap This Stuff Is Strong” aisle at Hot Topic.

“You’re Jed, the zombie boy,” Bella said. “You are so famous—like, can I have your autograph? Here, write on this.”

Bella snatched one of my napkins and held it toward me, so I grabbed it before she could shove it in my face.

“Look at him, he thought I was serious,” she said, taking the napkin out of my hand, putting it between her lips and scrunching them together. She returned the napkin, now with a perfect red lip print. “Something to remember me by.”

Anna shot up out of her seat. “Jed, c’mon, let’s go.”

“Hey, hey, not so fast, we just wanted to say hi and be on our way,” Bella said. “Relax, Anna.”

Bella faced me, reaching into my carton of fries and slowly, very slowly, pulling one out. Stella and Della giggled as Bella put it in her mouth, where it disappeared just as slowly between bites.

“So Anna, what did the zombie say?” Bella said, her eyes never leaving me. “Is he OK with it?”

I looked back at Anna. “Am I OK with what?”

“Nothing,” she snapped, swiveling to Bella. “And Christine, you shut up.”

Christine? Never would have guessed.

Anna lifted her tray, holding a barely touched salad. “Jed, c’mon, I’m not in the mood for this.”

“Anna, do we really need the drama?” Bella—Christine—said. “We were just curious if Jed was going to help you out.”

“Help with what?” I said to Anna, who stood frozen. Only, did she shake her head just a little?

“Nothing. Christine gets these weird ideas,” Anna said. “Who knows what she’s talking about.”

“Oh my God, you haven’t said a word to him about it, have you?” Christine said. She turned to me. “Do you know why she agreed to go out with you, the school freak? Anna says I get weird ideas, but this one never occurred to me.”

“I … you … she did because I … ” I stammered. I had to admit, I had wondered why Anna would go out with, as Bella put it, the “school freak.” You spend any time with me, you open yourself up to a lot of crap from people. But I’d told myself Anna didn’t care. The way she looked, the way she acted—it didn’t matter what others thought. It’s almost the definition of goth.

But going out with me went far beyond wearing black clothes, chain belts, and heavy mascara. It put her even further into “weird” territory. It looked like she even had the goths making fun of her, which was only one step up from being a braces-wearing, Rubik’s-Cube-solving, gifted-class-attending kid (which was still a step above a dead kid).

“Anna,” I said. “Why
did
you go out with me?”

She cleared her throat and started to move her lips. Then she dropped her tray and had just about gotten out the door by the time the last of her Coke burbled out of the cup on the floor.

I’d started after her when Bella said, “Don’t you want to know the truth?”

No, I didn’t. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. But my feet wouldn’t move. I was a deer centered in the glare of headlights.

“You know that everybody heard about what happened in the locker room between you and Robbie, and that Ooze stuff we’ve all read about on the Internet. So of course Robbie came back fine and all, but talking about how weird he felt when all your stuff got on him. And Anna says, ‘I wonder what would happen if you kissed him, or … ’ and we’re like, ‘God, Anna, gross.’ No offense of course, but you know … Anyway, Anna says ‘Maybe it’s like AIDS, and you can catch it.’ And so we started talking about what life would be like if you were a zombie. How you can do stuff like take off your own limbs and put them back on. And the way your joints went all crazy at the dance. We thought it was wicked cool different.

“We went from fantasizing about it to wondering if it could actually happen. Like catching something from you. But Anna, she was the only one who came up with the idea of going right to the source. So, you gonna do it?”

“What?” I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.

“You gonna do a little zombie magic and turn our girl into one of you? Is it a blood-exchange thing, like a vampire? Or a bite, maybe, kind of a werewolf thing? Or is there another way?”

I shook my head slowly and stood up. Was it possible? Was this whole thing just a sick, twisted plot? Could Anna really believe I had the power to turn people into zombies?

And did I?

“No way,” I said. “She never said anything like that, Bella.”

“Bella? Huh? Who the heck is Bella?”

It made no sense. Anna wanting to be a zombie? No way. She was there for me. She cared about me. I thought that pretty soon she might even be more than a friend. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Gaunt, gray, and now dripping ooze from my temples. Who would want to be seen with
that
thing? Unless they had a reason. A very good reason.

“Hey, where you going?” Bella called after me. “You didn’t clean your area, or is that just a zombie thing?”

The last thing I heard was the cackling of the three witches as the Burger Bucket’s door closed behind me. I ran to Dad’s car, jumping into the front seat. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Whoa, son, where’s Anna?”

“I don’t know, she took off.”

“What? We can’t leave without her; she’s my responsibility.”

“What about me? Aren’t I your responsibility? After all, you created me. The dead boy. A perfectly wonderful zombie, the precious child you prayed for. Right? So how’s that working for you so far?”

“Jed, you need to calm down and tell me what happened, tell me where Anna went—”

“Just go!”

“Son, that is not going to happen. You need to pull yourself together—”

“Great choice of words, Dad. Because Zom-boy just falls apart, arms and legs that just come off with a tug. Why would anyone want to go out with a guy like that?”

“I’m not going to waste time right now trying to build your self-esteem, not when there’s a thirteen-year-old girl out there roaming around and probably even more upset than you are.”

As we pulled out, he called Anna’s parents and found out they were already on their way to get her.

What stuck with me was looking back at the Burger Bucket window, where Bella, Stella, and Della stared out the window, with Bella raising her hand and waving.

Luke and I lined up like we always had at lunchtime, ready for the daily humiliation that was the picking of the football teams. Sure, I was still last, but at least Luke had climbed a few notches over the past few weeks, since it turned out he had a pretty good arm.

But that day, things went off the tracks.

It started with Javon, and all it took was one word.

“Robbie.”

Everyone, including Robbie, just stood there. Dwight, who always chose Robbie first, shook his head. Javon always picked Kenny, his favorite receiver, first.

Javon picking Robbie? That was like a Kardashian not picking another Kardashian first.

“Robbie, you, come on,” Javon repeated.

Robbie looked back at Ben and Joe, and Ben and Joe looked at Robbie. It was as if Robbie were going to war and they were promising to remain faithful until he returned.

“Dude, you want to give them a goodbye kiss too?” Javon asked Robbie. Javon was one of the few kids who could get away with something like that, but I knew Robbie was making a mental note (I could actually hear his little-used brain cells firing up in an effort to do some work).

If his first selection was a surprise, Javon’s next one was a shock-twist ending—he pointed to me. “Jed, over here.”

For once I actually lurched like a zombie. I was that surprised.

I gave Javon a “you can’t be serious” look. But the selections continued, and soon the two sides were ready to square off.

“Dude, that is one seriously screwed-up team,” Dwight told Javon. “That’s what you get for messing with too many chemicals in Biology Lab.”

“No, we’re just fine,” Javon said. “We’ll even kick off.”

Once again I took my spot on the line, and, as was clear from the moment I stumbled over to Javon’s team, I wasn’t the only thing that was dead. So were any chances of our team winning.

With Dwight’s team stocked with the four best players (all we had was Javon, and the killing instincts of Robbie, whose lack of brain nearly negated his brawn), by the time the bell was close to ringing, we were down five touchdowns.

We had just received the kickoff when Javon said in the huddle before our first play, “Jed, you ready to take the ball?”

“No.” For a dead guy, my survival instincts were real good.

“Good. You’re on my right, snap on two, I’ll toss it to you, and everyone go right.”