Zombie (8 page)

Each box—void of game contents.

Each box—filled with women’s magazines.

I didn’t always do this.

When Mom left, she had her mail forwarded to her new address where she was living with her boyfriend, Zeke. Mom left and her magazines kept coming to the house. I found them stacked high in the recycling bin when I dragged it to the curb on trash day. There was nothing more important to me in that moment than preserving them.
Bon Appétite. House & Garden. Oprah. Body & Soul. Marie Claire
. When I finished reading them cover-to-cover, I found inserts offering discounts and deals on other magazines and sent in subscriptions under Corrine Barker. Soon all kinds of chick mags came to the house.
Good Housekeeping. Allure. Parents. Cosmopolitan
. They’d come in the mail and I’d grab them before Dad found them, or if he got home early, I’d save them from recycling. This continued for some time until creditors began calling to collect the subscription fees and Dad swore it was Corrine playing a trick on him and canceled the magazines. Now I steal them wherever I can find them and keep them in my closet, hidden away and out of sight.

Barefoot and back at my window, I search for Tricia. Her blinds are closed, but I wait. My toes curl into the carpet. I picture her walking across her room in a bra and panties. I picture her in nothing but a T-shirt. I picture her lifting her hand holding an imaginary phone, lifting it to her ear and mouth and asking me to call her.

When Mom remodeled our house two years ago, she ordered carpet for my room. She picked out a forest green because it was my favorite color back then, but when the carpet guys arrived to install it, they had brought an industrial gray. Mom and Dad argued. They argued about everything. After the men finished installing the gray carpet and left the house and with the furniture moved back into my room, Mom took me out for ice cream. She let me order a triple scoop, hot fudge brownie sundae with all the toppings, the one I always asked for and was never allowed to get. We ate in the
car—Mom with her tiny cup of orange sherbet. When we got home, Dad had disappeared. Mom let me stay up that night and watch the late night talk shows. She took pills and we slept in my room—me in my bed and Mom curled up on the new gray carpet with my green fleece blanket wrapped around her.

The carpet is thin and the same industrial gray as when it was installed.

I look for Tricia. I have to have the image of her—smooth skin, soft and sweet—except her blinds are still closed, so I take it into my own hands.

I sit on my bed and picture her here in my bedroom. She tells me that I’m not ready. She tells me that I am confused about things. Tricia stands in front of me wrapped in a red kimono pushed off her shoulders. And as my belt comes undone and my pants drop, she says, “Jeremy, let me show you what I learned over summer vacation.”

T
oday is unlike any other day because today I stopped taking my pill.

Dad hunts me down in the house every day and drops the pill in my palm and says to take the
goddamn thing
. I knock it back without water, without a fight. But today Dad left my room and I spit the
goddamn thing
out.

My parents have me on Ritalin. Mom says it calms my hyper-excitability and helps me to be the boy she wants me to be. I like the sound of being hyperexcitable. My mom, the pillhead, says it’s just a pill to help me get through the day.

Am I not the boy she wants me to be? And if so, how not? And if so, why not?

Dad says I’m normal now. Mom says I’m her little man. I say I’m something else altogether, because today is unlike any other day because today I’m Ritalin-free and completely hyperexcitable.

Dad disappeared again last night and didn’t come home until this morning. He blew through the front door, disheveled and reeking of chemicals, and administered me my morning pill, before locking himself away in his bathroom. Last night he definitely broke pattern. He didn’t eat dinner with me and watch a zombie movie and wait for me to fall asleep. Instead, he left as soon as I stopped banging on his office door and retreated to my bedroom.

I can’t imagine riding in a car with him this morning and engaging in bullshit conversation all the way to school, so I pull a
page out of the Ballentine Barker Handbook and I, too, disappear without a note or goodbye or explanation of any kind.

I take the 55 back to school and embrace this new hyperexcitability, firing away inside me.

T
he school bell rings, signaling the end of class and five minutes until the start of the next. I close my locker and navigate through the riptide of students in the hallway as shoulders and arms and elbows toss me about like a buoy in choppy speedboat waves. I have English next and need to be on time since Mr. Rembrandt missed class yesterday. I pass the front office, a room full of cubicles where Christian Brothers and secretaries poke about, answering ringing phones, filing away papers into metal cabinets, feeding stacks of paper through a fax machine, tapping away madly at keyboards. I wonder which one of them called Dad when I missed Algebra yesterday.

I exit through the front doors of Byron Hall, leaving the main building, and cut around the corner, passing the teachers’ parking lot, and reach the sidewalk that parallels the even hallway; similar to the one on the other side of the building that parallels the odd hallway. A freshly spray-painted football field and tennis courts wrapped in a chain-link fence border the faculty parking lot. The field and courts are empty. Old compact cars the color of coal and sand junk up the teachers’ lot.

I run my hand along the fence, smelling a toxic mix of the newly painted football field and freshly cut grass, when I see a man up ahead, walking toward me in long strides. He’s not a Brother, balding with brown hair in a crown around his head and blue-rimmed glasses and a long tan raincoat draped over his arm. The moment I see him, something shifts. I don’t know, something just shifts inside from bad to worse, tectonic plates. Stop touching the
fence. Hands in pockets. Head down. Focus. Pick up my pace. Move faster. I don’t say shit to him—rule number two, yes, keep quiet, yes, shut the fuck up. Instead, I smile the kind of smile I give to cashiers after they give me my change. He does the opposite, sort of. No, he doesn’t smile, but he does wave at me in a funny kind of way. More like a salute. He raises his hand to his forehead, showcasing a deformed hand—stiff thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers, but missing his little finger, the pinky, altogether. Gone. My eyes drop to his other hand by his side and see the same deformity—the four normals and one invisible. He chops his salute at me, lowers his hand, and moves on in the other direction.

For reasons I don’t understand—maybe because of that tectonic shift—I just can’t help myself. I follow. There’s something about him. Something wrong, other than his fucked hands. I move to an enormous nearby tree and press my back up against it. I’m a sneaky, badass private detective. I slide down the tree to its base and pivot, peering out at him. 8-Fingers sorts through keys with his sad, remaining digits, and walks to the back of his car. He pops the trunk and leans in. He rearranges whatever is inside—spare tire, ice scraper, gym bag, books, windshield wiper fluid, flares, a dead body, his missing fingers. Who the fuck knows?

At the entrance to the school by the Byron Hall sign, a familiar-looking car signals a turn, waiting for a few cars to pass, then accelerates into the teachers’ lot. The car’s engine runs smooth and quiet. Sunlight glints off of the windshield, creating a phenomenal glare. It stops behind the bald man, and the window goes down.

This car belongs to my father and he is right behind the wheel. The great Ballentine Barker shakes 8-Fingers’ hand in that acceptable way men exchange hand hugs. Who the fuck is this guy and how does Dad know him?

8-Fingers hands Dad a thin book and a plastic case, a DVD or CD. Dad tosses them into the passenger seat. Dad salutes, his hand at his forehead, chopping it down, and 8-Fingers returns the salute with his fucked-up hand. Dad rolls up the window, slips the car into reverse, and backs out of the faculty parking lot. 8-Fingers
watches my father disappear into traffic. Sickness returns to my body, a scourge of hot and cold panic sets in.

I breathe. An uneven lightness lifts my head. Tiny, white circles spiral and pop, clouding my vision. A headache roars up behind my eyes. My skin breaks out into a cold sweat. I haven’t taken that
goddamn thing
, my Ritalin, today and my body is ringing me up to say hello, to inform me that I am a sick young man and need to be back on medication to regulate myself. I focus on my breathing. The spots clear away. The lightness is still there. The roar fades to an echo of a freight train churning down a distant track.

I run.

I blast through the bushes to the sidewalk.

Brother Lee. Like some kind of mini-ninja. An Asian Christian Brother assassin. His hand grips my collar, like the scruff of a cat, and eases me into the chain-link fence of the tennis courts

“Mr. Barker,” Brother Lee says. “We not met yet. I’m Brother Lee. Why you not in class, Mr. Barker?”

B
rother Lee pushes me through the odd hallway by my elbow and aims me toward a closed classroom door. “Knock, Mr. Barker.”

I make a fist and place it below the vertical window in the door. I want to knock, if only to rid myself of Brother Lee, but I cannot move my fist. It remains still against the door in a peaceful state of possibility.

“Knock, Mr. Barker,” Brother Lee says. Brother Lee bangs on the door himself with an open hand of fury until the door swings open.

“Brother Lee.” 8-Fingers adjusts his blue-rimmed frames and leans against the doorframe crossing his arms at his chest. “To what do I owe this honor?”

I see my classmates behind 8-Fingers. They look excited to witness this embarrassment.

“Mr. Rembrandt, are you missing anything?” Brother Lee asks.

“Thank you for finding him, Brother. High school can be disorienting for some freshmen. They have a tendency to disappear.”

“He was very lost.”

“Where did this young man think we were having class today?”

“Tennis courts.”

“Really,” Mr. Rembrandt says, smiling. “Tennis courts.” Mr. Rembrandt wears a bright blue necktie with white polka dots tied in a Limp Dick knot. “What’s your name, son?”

“Jeremy,” I say.

“Jeremy. Jeremy. Jeremy.” He repeats my name. “Does Jeremy have a last name like everyone else in the world?”

“Barker,” Brother Lee says.

“My name is Jeremy Barker,” I say.

Mr. Rembrandt points to a seat in the back next to a big, black kid and closes the door. Dirtbag Boy and Super Shy Kid are seated on the opposite side of the room, neither looking at me the way every other student is doing.

When I’m seated, Mr. Rembrandt surveys the class, looking at each student. “Now,” he says. He combs wisps of thin, brown hair over his bald spot. He adjusts his glasses and continues. “Roll call. Attendance. Who is present and who is not.” Mr. Rembrandt begins. “Jeremy Barker,” he says, my name the first alphabetically in the class.

I raise my hand.

“Yes?” Mr. Rembrandt asks.

I keep my hand in the air.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“Here,” I say, but would much prefer to say
fuck you
.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Barker.” He looks back to his class list. “Welcome,” he says, then salutes me, and continues to call out names. After, he stalks through the desks. “Oh, freshmen, welcome to English Literature,” Mr. Rembrandt says. “Two things I want to touch on before we begin.” He claps his hands in succession, startling some of us. He stops clapping, poking his thumbs into his chest. “One—I am your leader,” he says. He sits on his desk at the front of the classroom. “And two,” he says, lifting two fingers, “this room is the room where the real torture begins.” He extends his arms out, like Jesus on the Cross. “I know that we have some ground to make up since I was unable to grace you with my presence yesterday. Gentlemen, as I’m sure you’ve already been taught, we will say the prayer that’ll begin and end every class for the next four years.”

Mr. Rembrandt, making the Sign of the Cross, says, “St. John Baptist De La Salle.”

As a class, also making the sign, we respond, “Pray for us.”

Mr. Rembrandt says, “Live Jesus in our hearts.”

And we say, “Forever.”

A
fter last period, I check my phone and wait at the circle for Dad, who doesn’t come.

After most of the kids disappear, I call Mom’s cell, but she doesn’t answer.

I call Dad’s cell again, but this time it goes right to his voicemail.

Then I try Jackson, but his goddamn voice mailbox is full.

The teachers’ parking lot is almost empty.

Mr. Rembrandt stands at his car.

He sees me and salutes.

Chopping air.

Bus.

A
car full of girls—windows down, music thumping—speeds into the front circle of school. The girls are dressed in the same short plaid skirts like the girls yesterday and the same tight, white blouses. They all look the same except for one, a girl who I know, which is surprising—the girl who refused to smile or wave back at me. She looks different from the rest.

Sister Prudence High School girls.

I pretend not to see them. We, the poor bastards at the bus stop, the collective, we pretend not to see them. We pretend not to see their smooth, long legs. We pretend not to almost smell their sweet, sweet scents. (Lip gloss? Lollipops?) We pretend not to wish to GOD to have x-ray vision and see through those white blouses. We pretend all the same damn things. We pretend these things, while flipping pages of a book, or checking our watches. That’s what we do. We pretend, and then we fantasize. We fantasize a glimpse of their underwear—a thong under that skirt. We just know it. We imagine what we have never known. We imagine how it must smell and how it must feel and how everything must fit together. These are the things we imagine.