Zombies Don’t Read:
Five FREE Stories of the Living Dead
By Rusty Fischer, author of Zombies Don’t Cry
Copyright © 2011 by Rusty Fischer All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: Steve Woods – Fotolia
Author’s Note
The following is a collection of FREE living dead short stories. Any errors, typos, grammar or spelling issues are completely the fault of the zombies.
(They’re not very patient with the editorial process!) Anyway, I hope you can overlook any minor errors you may find; enjoy!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Story # 1: Zombies Don’t Kiss & Tell Story # 2: Zombies Don’t Sleep Story # 3: Zombies Don’t Study Story # 4: Zombies Don’t Swim Story # 5: Zombies Don’t Carve About the Author: Rusty Fischer
Introduction
I hope you like zombie stories (and you probably do if you’re reading this), because this book contains five of them.
In our first story, Zombies Don’t Kiss & Tell, one lonely young man
discovers that his blind date is… a zombie. What’s more, he finds out he’s totally into it!
In Story # 2, Zombies Don’t Sleep, a high school senior with insomnia discovers that there’s a zombie hanging out at her local Laundromat. She also finds out that he’s way cooler than the mere mortals at her school.
Our third story, Zombies Don’t Study, finds one young nerd surrounded by three comely hotties; zombie hotties, that is. What happens in study hall stays in study hall!
Zombies Don’t Swim, our fourth story, tells the curious tale of what
happens when zombies are allowed to do manual labor around the houses of mere mortals. Particularly, what happens when they clean the pools of certain hotties who have nothing better to do over spring break than watch them do it!
And last but not least, our fifth story, Zombies Don’t Carve, is a Christmas story about what happens when a human girl brings her zombie boyfriend to meet the parents for dinner.
I hope you enjoy these five FREE zombie stories and that they don’t keep you up at night! But even if they do, you’ll have plenty of company because, after all… Zombies Don’t Sleep!!!
Story # 1:
Zombies Don’t Kiss & Tell
My blind date is a zombie.
Wow; just… awesome.
Okay, no, I mean… that’s fine.
No biggie.
I’ll just make sure to ask for a corner booth, blow out the candle the minute we get there and order her steak (really, really) rare; we’re cool.
I’ve been quiet too long, standing just outside the cozy little café where in his maniacal, laughing voice Cosgrove told me to meet “the woman of my dreams.”
Now I can see why he couldn’t stop that insane giggle of his when we spoke on the phone earlier that day.
She’s looking at the yellow carnation wedged between the letter on my jacket and my three varsity pins that surround it, so it’s a little too late to back out now.
“Hi,” I say, putting out an eager hand. “I’m Jordy. Are you… Tia?”
She doesn’t look like a Tia.
Don’t get me wrong, even though it’s obvious she’s a zombie she’s not…
ugly.
Far from it.
In fact, she’s pretty darn cute; just not exotic-sounding like I’d pictured when Cosgrove told me her name.
Tia smiles quickly, raising a hand to cover her yellow teeth but not stopping to shake mine, either.
I’m good with that; some girls just don’t do handshakes.
I get it.
“Good,” I say. “Are you… hungry?”
She looks around, maybe wondering if anyone is listening and growls in a mock B-movie zombie voice, “I’m always hungry.”
Then she snorts.
Not, like a “Feed me BBBBRRAAAAIIINNNNSSS!” kind of snort but a goofy girl snort, like girls will when they’re sitting in the library among friends and forget that a few jocks are sitting a few feet away in the magazine section looking at the swimsuit issue of Sports for Sports.
I smile and wonder if maybe it’s just gas.
I’ve heard zombies have a problem controlling that kind of thing, so I give her the benefit of the doubt.
Actually, she smells pretty good.
The downtown curb is bustling this time of night, the Saturday evening crowd in downtown Ambrosia, Alabama milling about and everybody
waiting for a table, so we’re bunched kind of close there near the front door to the Gouda Café.
She smells like lilacs, maybe; some kind of flower, anyway.
She’s wearing black heels, not too high, black tights, black fingernails and a silver hoodie in this kind of shimmery, metallic material.
The top is pulled up, covering what used to be red hair but is now a kind of wispy, faded orange.
She has on those sexy rectangular glasses and I wonder if, being dead, her eyesight has suffered any.
She looks like any other fun, funky teenage girl on a Saturday night, except for the ghostly pallor and waxy white fingers.
I dunno, it’s not like the zombies are required to wear identification or anything, you just… know… when you see one.
And it’s not just me, either; I can already see folks moving away from her, whispering about her, curling up their noses and rolling their eyes.
She doesn’t seem to notice or, if she notices, care; I wonder if that’s just because she’s so used to it by now.
I open the door for her, even though it was partially wedged wide from the crowd standing in front of the hostess stand.
She catches my eye and winks, waving me forward.
“Hey Melanie,” I say.
The head cheerleader for Ambrosia High leers at me and says, “You know this crowd is going to hate me when I give you a table before any of them, right?”
“It’s okay,” says Tia quietly, in a new voice I haven’t heard before.
I notice her pulling her hood over her head a little tighter as the crowd around us grows and swells and grumbles as we push forward. “We can wait.”
“Forget that,” I say. “Melanie’s got the hookup. Right, Mel?”
Melanie rolls her eyes and I add, “Hey, I didn’t ask you to go out with my best lineman. But since you are… it’s time for me to cash in some chips!”
More eye rolls from Melanie as she grabs up one menu and one roll of silver and sashays in front of us through the busy restaurant.
Tia keeps her head down, following closely.
I’m racing ahead because that’s just how I walk, but Tia moves so slowly I kind of have to keep reminding myself to hang back.
She gives me a little half-smile, as if she’s noticed.
We keep walking and walking, past all the good seats.
I mean, I know I wanted something out of the way so nobody from school would see us together but… this is craziness.
Finally Melanie stands next to a tiny little table just off the kitchen.
I see what she’s doing; so does Tia.
The table isn’t just out of the way, it’s practically… hidden.
I see a cozy booth for two just a little ways away and tug the closest sleeve of Tia’s shiny silver jacket; we sit there instead.
“That’s reserved,” says Melanie with a fake smile on her face.
I lean toward her and say, “I have some very revealing photos of you and Cosgrove that say differently, Mel.”
She blushes slightly and says, “Fine; whatever. Roy will be your waiter.
Enjoy your… date.”
Melanie makes a big show of handing me the silver and giving me the menu and totally snubbing Tia as she huffs on by.
Tia kind of looks down at the white cloth covering the table.
When Melanie’s gone, I slide over the menu and the silver.
“I don’t really need it,” she says quietly, but I see her eyeing it carefully.
“They’re supposed to treat you equally,” I say, quietly.
She does that little snort thing again and says, “They let me in, didn’t they?
According to the Living with the Living Dead Treaty of 2017, that’s all they have to do.”
I hear a little fire in her voice and see a flicker of emotion behind her glasses.
“What color are your eyes?” I ask, partly to make small talk but, mostly, to diffuse the situation. “It’s hard to see back here.”
She snickers and says, “You mean, what color were my eyes?”
“They change?”
She kind of forms a sneer across her lower lip, which is thin and gray beneath maroon lip gloss, until she sees I’m generally interested in her answer.
Then she says, “Yeah, after about six months they drain of color. Mine were… hazel… I think?”
“You think?” I chuckle, reaching for a breadstick from a heaping basket in the middle of the table.
She shrugs and says, “My mom always called them green; my Dad brown.
I settled for hazel, but… it’s been awhile since I’ve seen.”
“How… awhile?” I ask, offering her the woven stick of bread covered in a light toss of olive oil and toasted with sesame seeds.
She snorts again – I have to say, I’m kinda digging the snort – and asks,
“What, you want to know if you’re on a blind date with a 98-year-old or something?”
“Yeah, actually,” I bluff.
(Secretly, I’ve always been attracted to older women. That’s kind of the reason I let stupid Cosgrove set me up on a blind date in the first place.)
“Would it matter?” she says, kinda dragging the joke down. “I mean, it’s not like anything’s gonna happen anyway.”
“Ouch.”
“Not on your part, anyway. I mean, why would you want to with… a girl like… me? See… I knew I shouldn’t have come on this stupid thing—”
She starts to get up, flustered, but it’s a good thing zombies move so slow because I can reach out and touch her sleeve before she’s even in the half- crouch position.
“Please,” I say, despite the curious eyes of the other diners as they look a little more closely at the striking figure in the shimmering hoodie. “We’re already here, so… we might as well have dinner, right?”
She sits back, but I think that’s mostly just because she was closer to still sitting than leaving anyway.
I get the feeling moving takes a lot out of her.
She pouts a little and I say, “So, what was it like growing up without electricity? Did you scare the horses with that scowl of yours?”
I wait for the snort – there it is – and she admits, “I’m not that old, jerk; I just had my fifth re-birthday, if you must know.”
“Re-birthday?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like you get a big do-over when you catch the Z Disease.
You know, like resetting the game when your guy dies on the first level.”
“So, and don’t take this the wrong way Tia but… you’re only five years old?”
She leans over a little, waits ‘til I do the same and whispers, “Yeah, so… I guess we shouldn’t try to order that bottle of sangria, huh?”
Just then a waiter approaches and says, to me, “Welcome to Gouda’s Café, sir. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Ladies first?” I say, nudging him gently toward Tia’s side of the table.
“But of course,” he says, not even moving. “What will ‘she’ have?”
“I don’t know,” I growl, wanting to launch out my size-12 sneaker and kick him in the shin. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He does this major eye roll-slash-heavy sigh thing and turns to Tia and groans, “Miss?”
“I’ll take a coke and a bowl of sugar, please,” she says, sweet as can be.
“Sugar’s 50 cents extra,” he says. “We’ve had to start charging now that there are some many of… your… kind coming in.”
“I got it covered,” she says, slapping two quarters on the clean white linen.
He turns to me and before he can do the whole eye roll wheeze thing I slap down two quarters of my own and say, “Make that a double.”
He walks away without reading us the specials, which is fine because suddenly a soda with lots and lots of sugar in it sounds about right.
Tia looks around the room, eyes kind of low since most tables are already looking back.
I watch her for a few minutes, noticing the scar on the outside of her wrist when she stretches just a bit and her sleeve flutters up, if only for a second;
it looks several years old, and still has some black thread inside, like maybe the stitches never came out.
She looks about my age; 17.
But… older… too.
She’s wearing makeup, but not a lot of it.
Her hoodie is zipped up tight, but another scar creeps over the zipper on the left side of her neck.
Her eyes look sad behind the sexy glasses, and I don’t think it’s just because everyone’s staring at her.
When she’s done watching the room, she fixes her eyes on me; and smiles.
“What?” I ask, twirling another breadstick in my hand nervously.
“Why are you still here?” she asks.
I kind of open my mouth and close it.
“Didn’t you hear?” I crack. “We just ordered my favorite; cokes and sugar!”
“No, I mean… really. Why are you still sitting here once you found out…
what… I am?”
“You mean… a sugar fiend?”
She snorts despite herself and then shakes her head.
“You know what I mean, Jordy.”
I shrug. “It’s Saturday night in Ambrosia, Tia. Where else am I going to go?”
She starts to say something else but our waiter comes with two sodas and two white ceramic containers overflowing with sugar packets; one for each of us.
“Will there be anything else?” he asks, setting them all down on my side of the table.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning forward and hearing the leather of my letterman’s jacket sleeves creaking. “You can put the lady’s soda and sugar on her side of the table.”
“I’m required to bring them to the table, sir, not serve them to the…
zombie.”
“Jordy, really,” Tia says. “It’s fine…”
“Listen to your friend, sir. She understands—”
“She’s not my ‘friend,’ friend; she’s my date. And if you don’t put that soda and that sugar on her side of the table, I’ll explain to your manager why we’re going to get up and walk without paying for them.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, ripping open three sugar packets at once after the waiter leaves. “I’m a big girl.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a big jerk and if I don’t release a little testosterone every few hours, then I turn into a big jerk and I want to have a nice evening, so…”
I catch a smile and pour one sugar into my soda.
“So, you have to tell me Tia: how does a nice girl like you know a creep like Cosgrove?”
“I was just going to ask you the same question, Jordy!”
“You first.”
She sips her soda and pours in two more packs of sugar, stirring it with her finger.
“He found me on the Z List,” she confesses, avoiding my eyes.
“What’s that, like… a site for hot zombies or something?”
“Very funny,” she says over the lip of her soda. “No, it’s a site where people can hire zombies for all sorts of things. Odd jobs, heavy lifting, dog walking, even—”
“Hold up, hold up; he hired you?”
She shrugs, knocking back half of her soda in two chugs. “No, the Living Dead Employee Pact of 2014 made it illegal to pay zombies. It’s all
voluntary.”
“So, hold up; you volunteered to go on a blind date with me?”
“Well, I didn’t know it was you, now, did I?”
“No, I guess not…”
I push the soda away and sit back, the soda far too sweet for my taste.
“You gonna finish that?” she asks, already reaching.
I slide it over and she meets me halfway, our fingers grazing; she flinches, I try not to.
Her hands are so cold, and it’s not just because she’s been gripping her soda glass, either.
“But, why go out on a blind date in the first place?” I ask.
She shrugs and looks at me across the cozy café table.
“Do you have any idea how boring it gets as a… a… you know?”
“More boring than a high school junior on a Saturday night in Ambrosia?”
“Yeah,” she says. “At least you get to go to school. On Z Street, we room alphabetically. Most of the geezers in my building are in their 80s or more.
So when your buddy wrote me, even though he sounded like a creep via email, I figured I’d at least get to hang with someone my own age.”
I grin and say, “Well, that explains how you got hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“But not how YOU hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“By force,” I admit.
“Pardon?” she asks, polishing off my soda and sliding it back toward me so the waiter won’t think she’s a zombie and a pig.
I tug on the collar of my jacket and say, “We’ve only been playing football together for the last six years. And baseball, and soccer and basketball…”
“Yeah, but… do you like him?”
“Not really,” I admit. “But then, nobody does. Did you ever talk to him, I mean personally?”
She wrinkles her nose in distaste and says, “We didn’t really talk much; he mostly… cackled. Does he do that… often?”
Uggh; just thinking about Cosgrove’s telltale cackle makes me shiver just to think about it.
“Try every day; all day.”
She nods, and we lapse into a few moments of comfortable silence.
Restless, or bored, or both, she reaches over to my side of the table.
I think for a second she’s reaching for my hand, and I’m not sure how to react when she grabs my sugar packet instead.
And, yeah, okay; I’m a little disappointed.
“What’s with the sugar?” I ask, watching her fold my packet carefully.
She says, “Other than the dried brains the government gives us once a week – don’t look at me like that – we don’t really need to eat anything else. We can’t really even digest anything else, which is why I said ‘no’ to your breadstick even though I’d love one. But the soda, and the sugar, it
goes right into the bloodstream so we don’t have to digest. Anyway, it’s kind of like a treat between servings of brains.”
“Gross,” I say.
“You’re gross,” she shoots back, and we both snort.
The waiter comes, ignores her, I say we’re not ready yet, he comes again a few minutes later, I say we’re still not ready and finally Tia looks up at him and says, “Can we get the check?”
“With pleasure,” he says, slapping it down in front of me.
I reach for my wallet but she slaps a five down over the bill.
“Do you mind?” she asks, already sliding from the booth.
I grab a breadstick to go and shake my head.
I see Melanie on her cell phone as we approach the hostess stand, which is odd because there are still, like, 4,000 people waiting for a table and she’s only been “Employee of the Month” at his place, like, 17 times so I figured she’d be a more conscientious worker than that.
She sees me, covers the phone, says a few things more and quickly hangs up.
“How was your date?” she asks, voice full of irony, not even looking at Tia.
“I don’t know yet,” I say, grabbing Tia’s hand. “It’s not over yet.”
Melanie’s face goes paler than usual, which is really saying something, as she watches us walk out.
Tia’s hand slides from my own as we hit the street, which has calmed considerably since we’ve been inside.
“Hey,” I say.
“You don’t have to be nice anymore,” she says a little coolly, tugging on her hoodie as we walk down the sidewalk in front of Gouda’s. “And you don’t have to finish our blind date, either.”
My car is in the overflow parking lot two blocks down. The café is behind us now, the twinkling lights in the bushes out front seeming father even than that. Here the light is dim, the buildings deserted, the storefronts cold and dark.
“But I want to,” I say. “I’m having fun. Aren’t you?”
We’re both standing there at the nearest crosswalk, she clutching her hood down tight, her face a gray mask with purple lips and black eyes.
“Maybe,” she says. “I just mean, well, no one’s looking anymore, Jordy.
You can go and it won’t hurt my feelings. No one told you you’d be having a blind date with a zombie. I know your buddy Cosgrove was having a go at you. You were nice and didn’t hurt my feelings. But I’ll understand, really, if you—”
“Tia?” I ask, wondering why she’s left off in mid-sentence like that when she was just getting all fired up. “Everything… okay?”
She shushes me, inching close, shoving me tight to the wall at my back.
Her eyes are everywhere, all at once; up, down, sideways.
“Did you hear that?” she asks, voice barely a whisper; breath smelling like raw sugar.
I shake my head, straining my ears; then I do hear it.
That telltale squeak of sneakers on pavement; one pair, two, maybe three.
Maybe even four or five pairs.
Okay, so it’s downtown Ambrosia on a Saturday night.
What could possibly happen?
It’s probably just some kids out past curfew, looking for some—
Then I hear cackling, a particularly high-pitched cackling.
Tia and I look at each other at the same time and mouth, “Cosgrove.”
I try to move but she shoves me back some more, and is surprisingly…
strong.
And I’m no wimp, if I may be so bold.
220-pounds, 6’2”, and she’s tossing me around like I’m some… some…
café hostess or something.
The sneakers round the corner at the same time; three pairs behind me, two out in front.
It’s not just Cosgrove, it’s half the frickin’ defensive line!
I see Chalmers, all 300-pounds of him, and Philips at 275!
And Cosgrove’s no chump either; about my height, a little taller, a little heavier – all of it tightly-coiled muscle.
“How’s your date going?” he asks, voice slimy as ever, to match his slicked back black hair.
His eyes are glassy and watery, his words a little slurry; like he gets when he’s drunk, or high, or both.
“F-f-fine,” I say cautiously, watching Tia watch me. “Great, actually.”
“Ah,” slurs Cosgrove, slapping his giant pal Brody on the shoulder. “Isn’t that nice? The jock and the zombie, sittin’ in a tree.”
“It’s not like that, Cosgrove,” I blurt through gritted teeth, fists clenched.
“Whatever game you’re playing at, leave off. I don’t know why you suddenly have a bug up your butt about zombies, dude but… she’s cool, it’s fine.”
“It’s NOT fine,” he shouts, white nostrils flaring as he clenches his giant fists. “Your date is one of them, dude; a meat-sicle, a dead head, a brain- muncher, man. How can you stand there, holding her hand?”
I look down and see I’ve grabbed her hand.
She tries to let go, to pull free, but not even Tia is that strong.
Murmurs of “gross” and “rude” and tons of other stuff not fit for print ooze out of the guys’ mouths, and suddenly I’m thinking: It’s no accident, they’re here. It’s no prank, Cosgrove setting me up with a zombie; on purpose.
He wanted it this way; knew I was the only one on the team who’d sit there with the undead all night while he and his buds drank beer in the car
waiting for us to come out of Gouda’s.
How could I have been so stupid?
And what are we going to do now?
I mean, me and Cosgrove in a straight up fight; that’s one thing.
I maybe could take him, I maybe couldn’t but either way at least I could buy Tia enough time to get away and hide.
“Gig’s up, girl,” says Cosgrove, inching forward on uncertain but massive legs. “There’s no going back to Z Street for you tonight.”
“Shut up, Cosgrove,” I blurt, getting a whack upside the head from his buddy Brody that draws blood. “You can’t do anything to her; it’s against the Immortal Peace Treaty of 2016.”
Another whack from Brody and I’m on my knees, wiping my busted nose with the sleeve of my jacket.
Brody yanks Tia away from me in a weak moment, and when I stumble to get up two of the jocks hold me back.
“Treaty my ass,” sneers Cosgrove, circling Tia like a shark with one of those cute baby seals everyone’s always clubbing on TV. “You see any Sentinels around here, guys?”
“Leave her alone,” I spit, the coppery taste of blood on my tongue.
Brody slaps me again, hard, until I can hear my jaw ringing.
It hurts so bad I have to hold myself up with the palms of my hands flat against the pavement; it’s hard and cold beneath my skin.
I’m thinking, “Great, five on one, so how am I going to save Tia now?”
Then I hear screaming, and look up; Brody is on all fours, trying to avoid another rib being cracked by… Tia’s foot!
She’s whipped back her hoodie top, revealing a mane of carrot orange hair tightly woven into braids that run alongside her head and are tied together in the back.
Cosgrove is getting up from the ground, rubbing his jaw.
Where was I when she slapped him around?
That, I would have paid good money for!
Another of the goons, a senior I’ve never liked named Chalmers, creeps up on Tia while she’s caving in Brody’s lungs and she turns, whip-fast, and punches his throat.
I hear a crack and then air hiss out the gash on the left side of his windpipe.
When his pal Philips goes to help him, Tia kicks him so hard in the shin I literally watch his leg explode from the knee down.
He lands with a thud, but not for long; his screaming rouses the neighborhood, lights coming on in the floors above the street.
“Come on,” Tia barks, dragging me along the deserted streets.
I tug her back and she growls – growls! – at me but I huff, “My car’s back here!”
She doesn’t say anything, just nods, and follows.
We get in and drive away, the sound of sirens clamoring a few blocks back as I ask, “Uh, what just happened?”
She’s calmer now, the rage has left her; she smiles and says, “I just saved your butt, is what happened!”
“But… how? You just put down about 2 tons of fun back there, Tia!”
She shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “It’s the muscles. When fat dies, it turns to muscle; lots and lots of muscle.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“Stick around,” she threatens. “There’s a lot I can teach you about zombies.”
“Promise?”
She looks at me funny as we put some distance between ourselves and the sirens.
Then she says: “Okay, here’s your first lesson: zombies don’t sleep.”
“At all?”
“Nope, never; not even a smidge. We don’t need to, you know… anymore.”
“So what do you do all night then?”
“Mostly watch TV, but… tonight?”
“Yeah?” I prod when she doesn’t finish her sentence right away.
“Well, tonight, I have a feeling anything might happen…”
I drive, past the Gouda Café, past downtown, past my street, past Z Street;
she doesn’t look back.
It’s Saturday night in Ambrosia, I’ve got a badass zombie chick riding shotgun and the night is young.
I ask you, what else could go wrong?
Story # 2:
Zombies Don’t Sleep
I steer my little brother’s bike through the silent streets of downtown, splashing through orange pools cast by the flickering streetlights of tiny Mystic, North Carolina.
My brother is 11, by the way, so the bike is a rusty neon green mongoose, completely lame, but… what else was I going to do?
I couldn’t very well start up my own car in the driveway at 1 a.m. and not alert the entire house to my ongoing insomnia (two weeks and counting, folks), so… it was either take the lame-oid bike or walk.
I pedal furiously, because that’s the only way to ride a mongoose, and my knobby knees nearly keep hitting my nose with every turn of the bike chain.
There is a chill in the air and the early birds already have smatterings of carved pumpkins on their porches, even though Halloween is still nearly three weeks away.
There is one of those canned iced coffees in the bike’s basket, wedged next to a few items of clothing that aren’t really dirty but… if I didn’t bring something to wash, then what excuse would I have for showing up at the Suds ‘N Spuds Laundromat for the third time this week?
I feel my heart beating the closer and closer I get to Sycamore Street and 5th, and it’s not because I’m pedaling all that fast or anything.
In fact, now that I’m almost there, I’m taking it kind of… slow.
Not because I can’t wait to see him, but because the longer I take, the less predictable I seem.
Soon the brightly lit shopping center is in view as I trundle over Mystic’s sidewalks and curbs.
I see his big white van out front, thumping my heart into overdrive, and steer my bike next to the concrete bench between the Laundromat and the sub shop next door.
I can feel his eyes on me through the plate glass window, soft and dark, but take my time locking up my bike just the same.
I even force myself to whistle; you know, to cap off that whole, fake casual, fake accidental “Oh, fancy meeting you here again” effect I’m going for.
The place smells like soap suds and soda pop as I walk in, the bright lights hurting my eyes after the 20-minute bike ride from our house on Culver Lane.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he croaks, leaning rakishly on a tumbling washing machine.
He’s in his usual; faded blue jeans, white T-shirt, battered sneakers, cocky grin.
“Yeah,” I mutter because… dude just stole my line.
Under the lights his skin is pavement gray, his black hair cut short and close to his skull.
“Don’t you have school in the morning?” he asks as I walk to the washing machine next to his and dump in four new pairs of socks and a baby doll T- shirt I outgrew three years ago (but he doesn’t need to know that).
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah, but then… I’m not failing AP History, either.”
“I’m not failing, Scar; I’m just… not passing.”
Scar shakes his head, scratching behind his ear; you know, where the scar starts.
The one that travels down the side of his neck and into the top of his snuggly white T-shirt.
“Do you have change?” I ask, holding out three crumpled ones.
“Again?”
“I can’t sneak out of the house if I’ve got quarters jingling all in my pockets,”
I explain.
“You only need two for the washer and dryer,” he points out.
“Yeah, but I skipped dinner and am jonesing for some chips right about now.”
“You’re lucky I got extra,” he says, handing over twelve quarters from his snug jeans pocket. “Just in case.”
“Just in case… what?” I flirt, though I’m not really very good at it.
He shrugs and avoids my eyes.
“You know…” he kind of mumbles, eyeing his shoes.
I nod because, yeah; I kind of do.
I slide four quarters in to get the washing machine going, then saunter away to the back wall, which is covered with eight separate vending machines, each one featuring just about every known variety of potato chips on the planet.
That’s it; just… chips.
No candy or gum or mints or nuts or even trail mix; just row after row of chips, glorious chips.
(Hey, the dude didn’t name it Suds ‘N Spuds for nothing!)
I buy two bags, per usual, hoping tonight Scar will finally take one; he doesn’t.
“Are you on some kind of special diet or something?” I ask.
“Why?”
“I never see you eat; here, at school, at the mall, whatever. Most guys I know eat like pigs 24/7.”
He holds up a can of Sunshine Soda and says, “This is all I need at this time of night.”
“Speaking of this time of night… why are you still up and… doing laundry?”
“You first,” he smirks.
“Me? That’s easy; I haven’t been able to sleep for the last two weeks.
What’s your excuse?”
“My excuse is I work the graveyard shift at the Traffic Town Convenience store on 18th and Main, and I’m too wired after work to go home and sleep.”
“So… you do laundry?”
“Hey,” he grins. “Look who’s talking!”
“Okay, okay, so we’re not exactly the coolest cats at Mystic High.”
“Speak for yourself,” he grunts, switching over his laundry just as mine starts spinning.
“Sorry,” I grin. “I guess your hundreds of friends just left.”
“As a matter of fact,” he smiles. “They just did.”
“Yeah, right.”
I watch him move while he shoves his clothes in the dryer; his arms aren’t big but they’re all muscle.
Muscle and sinew and veins squirming beneath his marble pale skin.
His shirt is short and lifts up in the back, revealing the same gravestone pallor and fat free skin.
He turns too quickly for me to look up fast enough and asks, “See anything you like?”
Luckily, he’s as clumsy as he is hot.
“You dropped a sock,” I manage to bluff.
He looks down, thinking I’m joking.
“Oh,” he grumbles, mildly embarrassed. “I guess I did.”
The night stretches on as we fluff and fold, joke and laugh, flirt and blush.
Well, I blush; in two years at Mystic High I’ve never seen the dude blush, sweat or bleed – three things most guys do 12 times a day.
“Why can’t you sleep?” he asks as he folds his clothes and I run mine through the last cycle in the dryer.
“I dunno,” I say. “I just… can’t.”
“Have you ever had this problem before?”
“No. I’ve always slept like a rock until last Tuesday night.”
“Anything special happen Tuesday day?”
“No, and I’ve racked my brain, too. I’m not stressing about school, I don’t have any guy troubles, I’m not cheering this year so I can eat what I want…
life is good. Except, you know, for the whole ‘not sleeping’ part.”
“Yeah, you’re looking pretty draggy in Home Ec lately.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Just saying, sleep isn’t a lifestyle choice, Cleo; you actually need it.”
“The doctor said I’ll get sleepy when I get sleepy.”
“Okay,” he harrumphs, the last of his laundry folded and stowed away in his wicker hamper. “Sounds about right.”
“The weird thing is, it feels like the middle of the day, you know?”
He nods knowingly; almost… sadly.
“Yeah, actually; I do.”
“Like, I could run three miles and still not be sleepy. Like I could watch six monster movies and not be sleepy.”
“Depends on the monster movie, I suppose.”
“Yeah, you’re right!” I say, hiding my mouth as I do that laugh-snort thing everybody makes fun of; he barely seems to notice.
He stands next to his hamper, in no rush; it’s like that every night.
“It’s okay,” I say, quietly, as if maybe he won’t hear. “I’ll be all right if you have somewhere to go.”
“I’m not leaving you in this Laundromat alone, Cleo. It’s not the greatest neighborhood, in case you haven’t noticed.”
I nod and in a few minutes the dryer dings and I fold my fake clothes; it takes less than two minutes, and that’s really, really stretching things.
When I’m ready, when my chip bags are thrown away and he’s tossed his empty soda can in the trash and I’ve got my pitiful excuse for a trip to the Laundromat under one arm, he picks up his wicker hamper and follows me outside.
It’s chillier now, and I zip up my pink camouflage hoodie just a smidge.
And still, as the night races on, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.
I look up, at the sky, and see a half-full moon covered in spotty clouds.
I expect to hear his driver’s side door slam, his engine race, like every other night.
When I look up, he’s just standing there, moon-kissed and smirking.
“So,” he asks, leaning casually against the broad side of his van. “How long have you known?”
“Known… what?” I hem, because I was hoping to play this game for at least another few nights before letting him know, you know, that… I know.
“About me, Cleo? About… what I am?”
I sigh; guess the cat’s out of the bag.
Not that I can blame him for figuring it out.
I mean… obvious, much?
“Since that first night last week,” I confess, looking down at my shoes, afraid he’s about to crack open my skull and swallow my brain – whole.
When he doesn’t, I brave a quick look at his face; he’s… smiling.
“How?” he asks simply; not mad, not scared, just… curious.
I bite my lip before confessing, “Well, when I got home that night, I still couldn’t sleep, so I started an internet search for scars and boys with scars and… well… cute guys with scars.”
“Cute guys with scars?” he mocks, leering at me with those dark, penetrating eyes. “There’s a category for that?”
“You’d be surprised,” I admit, still blushing.
“But why?” he presses, still leaning. “Why search for that stuff in the first place?”
“I dunno,” I sigh; and it’s the truth. “I was still restless, and bored I guess, and you’re so… mysterious… at school. You just show up out of nowhere last year, in the middle of the semester, no history, no baggage, no friends, nobody knows anything about you, you don’t date anybody, aren’t in any clubs. I guess, I dunno, I just wanted to know more about you, I guess.”
He’s just leaning there, smiling; I can’t tell if he believes me or not.
“Anywhatever, your picture came up; three times, in three different yearbooks.”
He rolls his eyes and says, “Is that all, Cleo? I told you my Dad moves us around a lot, so…”
“Does he move you through time, too Scar? One of the yearbooks was from 1967!”
“You… saw… that?” he gulps.
“Yeah, and the one from 1978 and another from 1994. It was you, Scar; in every one. Not your twin brother, not your doppelganger, not some look- alike, not some optical illusion. Then it all clicked for me; the gray skin, the never sleeping, never eating human food, only drinking those sugary
drinks... it all fits.”
I look around and whisper, “You’re a zombie, Scar!”
(Wow, I can’t believe I just said that out loud!)
“What if I am?” he smirks. “What does that make you?”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“You, Cleo. You coming around here every night, riding your little brother’s bike so your folks won’t hear your engine start up in the driveway, coming clear across town to wash brand new socks and T-shirts you probably haven’t worn in years, bumming quarters from me and noshing on stale potato chips? What does that make you? Some kind of… of… zombie groupie?”
“Just curious!” I snort. “I mean, flip the script; if you knew I was a zombie, wouldn’t you be curious and stalk me for awhile until you found out.”
“Only if you… looked like… you,” he stammers, avoiding my eyes.
“I don’t even know what that means, Scar.”
“It means I’d stalk you anyway, is what it means. Zombie, human, cheerleader, brainiac, whatever.”
Then, a beat later, he adds: “What now?”
“What… what now? Waddya mean?”
“I mean, you know my secret; you found it out. So… what now, Cleo?”
I stomp one foot and look around. “Oh, well… I dunno. I mean, I haven’t really thought it out that far.”
“They never do,” he grumbles.
“They?”
He sighs and looks me up and down. “Do you think you’re the first girl to figure it out, Cleo?”
“Yeah, actually,” I bluff, because, actually – yeah, I kind of did.
“Well, you’re not.”
“So, what? You’re saying you’re some kind of zombie stud or something?”
This, he laughs at.
“No, not by a long shot. It’s just that, some girls have a… thing… for the undead, is all.”
“Gross.”
“I’m gross, now? That’s why you’ve been up here every night this week?
And all last week?”
“No, Scar, you’re not gross; that’s… gross.”
He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, then says it anyway: “You mean, you’re not a zombie groupie?”
“How can I be a groupie?” I ask. “You’re the first zombie I’ve ever met!”
“Then, what is this all about?”
“Are you that stupid?”
He looks befuddled and I inch closer, eager to feel what those cold, full lips might taste like.
“I don’t get it, Cleo.”
“I’m here for you, dummy; just… you.”
He cocks his head slightly to the left, casting a dark shadow across his gaunt, right cheek. “Just… me? You don’t want to know voodoo or George Romero’s address or what brains taste like?”
“Uh uh,” I say, licking my lips. “I just want to know what… this… tastes like.”
And I kiss him, just like that; inching up on my sneakers, putting my hands on his cold chest, pressing my warm lips against his cold ones; feeling a shiver, but not like when you step outside on the first day of winter.
More like when you see a really good scene in a really good movie.
He opens his lips, but just slightly; the way I like it.
I mean, I’m no expert or anything but two of the three guys I’ve kissed did it that way.
Maybe I’m just spoiled, I dunno.
And he stops, just in time, pushing me away, but only to look at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“N-n-nothing,” he says and, for once, he’s not smirking. “It’ just, well, no one’s ever stalked me just… for me... before.”
For some reason, that sounds funny; I laugh.
He laughs, too; and I know, that’s when I know – Scar was worth stalking, all the while.
“You want a ride home?” he asks, opening up the back of the van and showing me there’s room enough for my little brother’s mongoose.
“Not really,” I say, unlocking my bike. “Now I’m all restless again. I think the ride might do me good.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he suggests, shutting the door and pocket his keys.
“But… how will you get back? Back here, I mean?”
“I’ll walk back,” he explains simply as I climb on the bike.
“It’s nearly 3 a.m., Scar. What if you get sleepy on your way back?”
“Cleo,” he chuckles, matching me step for step as I pedal, slowly, into the darkness behind the Suds ‘N Spuds. “Don’t you know? Zombies never sleep.”
I look up at him, face pale in the moonlight.
“No, I didn’t know that.”
He nods, bending down to pick up a branch and swiping it in the air like a sword for a little while before dropping it again.
“Doesn’t that get really boring?”
He looks down at me and grins. “Not anymore.”
Story # 3:
Zombies Don’t Study
“I-I-I don’t understand,” I stammer, wedged into my seat and surrounded by three Hotties of the Living Dead. “How have you been able to get away with it for so long?”
Clarissa, the tallest of the zombie hotties, hangs a finger over her shoulder at the framed black and white picture of class valedictorian-to-be Angela Prescott; the one with the black armband across it that reads “RIP.”
“Angela used to do all our homework for us,” Clarissa explains, twirling a cool ginger curl around her pale white finger.
Then she casts major shade at volleyball star Hunter Jag and says, “Until someone got a little too hungry one night last week and ate our star tutor.”
“How long are you going to beat that dead horse anyway?” asks Hunter, sneering from beneath her straight black bangs. “I dare any of you to resist the temptation of her great, giant, HUGE brain. I’m not kidding you; it was GINORMOUS.”
“You should know,” quips the third and final member of the undead, Rena Strong, whipping her blond hair back away from her radiant, if pale, face.
“Since you ate it.”
“Uh, guys,” I groan, suddenly feeling six shades of queasy. “You’re in mixed company, remember?”
The three girls surrounding my desk give each other major “can you believe this guy” face before turning back to me.
“So what’s it going to be, Egghead?” asks Clarissa as the other two kind of drift back to their desks. “Help us… or join us?”
“What, those are my only two options?”
I peer across the room at the front door, mentally gauging how close I could get to it before these three zombies rip my skull open and share my brain.
“Pretty much, Miles. Now that you know, we can’t let you leave this room alive unless you agree to help us.”
I shake my head and stare out at the otherwise empty study hall lounge;
the alternating white and green tiles on the floor, the motivational 1972 cat hanging from a tree limb “Hang in There” poster, the wall calendar from the cafeteria and the three blackboards on each wall.
“But you guys told me,” I whine, heart pounding in a way these girls will never feel again. “It wasn’t like I, you know, suspected or anything.”
“We had to tell you,” argues Clarissa. “Before you found out.”
“No, you didn’t,” I argue. “I wouldn’t have found out, I wouldn’t have
bothered to check because I don’t really care. The only reason I’m in stupid study hall in the first place is because Dean Winters told me I’d get 30 extra credit points in my Civics class, and that’s the only class I have less than an A in at the moment.”
“Everybody cares, Miles,” grins Hunter from under the Map of the World.
“Don’t you care just a little?”
“No,” I spit. “No, I really don’t!”
“Then you’d be the first,” Hunter declares.
I look down on the lab style table in front of me; they’ve carefully laid out three assignments they need done by the end of the week: Clarissa needs a book report done on Great Expectations, Hunter needs to cobble together 12 facts about World War II for AP History (how did she ever get in????) and Rena has an essay question due for Chorus: “Who is your favorite jazz singer before 1970?”
“I can’t do all this by Friday and my own homework.”
“So don’t do your homework,” says Clarissa, frost on her tongue.
“Or stay up later,” adds Hunter (not) helpfully.
“Or get up earlier,” smirks Rena. “We don’t care how you get it done, Miles, we just need you to get it done.”
I watch as they beautify themselves, Rena carefully applying her makeup (again), Hunter doing her nails, Clarissa effortlessly sliding a maroon lip gloss stick across her thin lips.
“So… did you make the same offer to Derek?” I ask, pointing to the row of framed black and white portraits next to poor, departed Angela’s; each with a somber “RIP” ribbon stretched across it. “And Clive and Marsha and Carmen?”
“Each and every one,” Clarissa sighs, barely looking my way. “Why do you think we’re slumming and using you?”
The other two zombies chortle; yes, chortle.
I stare down at the homework, then back at Clarissa, and start to fume.
I don’t get mad often, but… zombies?
Really?
And it’s not even the fact that there are zombies – real, honest to goodness zombies – that irks me so much as the fact that just because they’re
zombies they think I should do their homework for them.
“What if I don’t do it?” I ask.
Clarissa snorts mercilessly, as if this isn’t even an option.
“You will do it.”
“Yeah, but… what if I don’t?”
“You will do it, Miles, because if you don’t then we will bite you, and you will die, and be reborn and then you won’t be able to read so hot, either. And then you’ll be in here with us anyway, trying to strong arm someone else into doing your homework.”
See, that’s the thing; the zombies wouldn’t need me if they weren’t reading at a, say, third grade level.
“I just don’t understand how this can go on,” I say, the thought of doing their homework for the rest of senior year making me more nauseous than
hearing Hunter recount how delicious – and BIG – Angela Prescott’s brain was! “You know Dean Winters will be in here any minute, and all I have to do is—what? What’s so funny?”
“Who do you think suggested Dean Winters invite you to study hall this period, Miles?” snarks Hunter when she’s finally stopped giggling.
“Okay, you guys, but… so what? Maybe he’s just a dirty old man who digs hot chicks and—”
“Maybe we chose the wrong honor student,” Rena points out, standing up on her long, cheerleader legs. “I mean, guys, this one doesn’t seem very smart.”
I watch her as she walks toward me, all legs and arms, bare waist and shoulders.
She’s like a panther on the prowl; even her eyes are vaguely… yellow.
The other two watch her as warily as I do.
“Careful there,” cautions Hunter, on the edge of her seat now. “We need this one, Rena; we’re running out of honor students.”
“Yeah,” reminds Clarissa softly. “How many of Orchard Park’s smartest kids can go missing before their probably equally smart parents start putting two and two together, Rena?”
“Relax,” she almost hisses, closing in on me as I begin to notice all those things I’d overlooked before: the not just pale skin but almost granite,
leathery look of it up close, the almost ice cold waft of air that’s followed her across the room and those dead, yellow eyes. “I just want to do a little
more… convincing… since words obviously aren’t working.”
I gulp and look away as she slides onto the lab table in front of me and inches dangerously close.
“Have you ever broken a bone, Miles?” she asks simply, causing a wave of fear to ripple through my body.
Before I can reply she reaches for my hand.
I figure she’s a girl, I can just yank it back if I want, but her grip isn’t just ice cold, it’s steel strong.
“N-n-n-o,” I say, pushing my glasses up on my nose with my free hand.
“Too bad,” she purrs, looking anything but. “I was hoping this wouldn’t be your first time.”
With that, and just the slightest pressure, she bends my pinky in two.
It snaps quietly, like when you break a cookie in two; the pain blossoms in my hand like I’ve just exploded a firework inside my closed fist.
When I scream, and I do scream, she covers my mouth, even my nose, with her hand; it muffles the sound – and my ability to breathe – quite effectively.
I struggle and squirm, the pain in my hand falling away to the panic in my lungs; I can’t breathe!
Her yellow eyes smile as she takes her second hand and wraps it, almost gently, around the back of my head.
Now she applies even more pressure, her grip tightening from the front and the back simultaneously, her skin ice cold, almost like freezing metal cold, against my own.
I squirm in my seat and try to kick away from the floor with my legs, but I can’t; she’s so strong, so incredibly strong and fierce, all I can do is stay still and hold my breath.
It doesn’t take long.
I hyperventilate, quaking under her hand, sweating, bucking, shaking; her grip never weakens.
In fact, the more I panic, the tighter it gets.
I hear voices behind me, then beside me, the other two begging her off, warning her of consequences, but soon the voices seem far away and distant; and then I can’t hear them anymore.
Then I can’t hear anything anymore.
The room grows dim and I give in; then it goes black and I give out.
I wake with a start, head pounding, pinky numb, bright light in my eyes.
I sit up, feeling lightheaded, only to find myself propped against the nearest wall like some useless prop in the Drama department.
I look down to find my pinky wrapped in some kind of white funny papery material.
I say something like “Whazzithumpriffleboss?” and the girls chuckle, apparently relieved.
“Phew,” says Clarissa, kneeling over me protectively, her heaving chest flush with my face; too bad my eyesight is too blurry to full appreciate it – them – whatever. “We thought we’d lost you there for a minute.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“The shock from your finger must have—”
“It wasn’t shock,” I spit, harshly, interrupting Hunter as I turn to face Rena, who is pacing nervously near the front door. “She broke my pinky then…
then… choked me out.”
I notice Clarissa and Hunter, still kneeling over me, sharing a look.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing, Miles,” says Clarissa, sounding… different; sounding… loud.
“We’re just, worried, that’s all.”
“Why are you shouting at me?” I ask, still ticked off and trying to back away from these shrieking shrews. “I’m the one who should be mad at you.”
My head is pounding.
“I’m… not… shouting,” Clarissa says, more quietly this time, standing up and throwing shade at Rena as the pacing zombie in the doorway avoids her BFF’s eyes.
I try to stand, but it’s hard; I’m still dizzy.
The girls help me up and into my seat.
I ask, “How do you two keep your hands so warm? I thought they’d be…
colder… somehow. They were before, I mean…”
They share another look, then Hunter slinks over to Rena and they confer in the corner by the door.
“How long was I out for?” I ask Clarissa, who no longer wraps a red strand of hair around her finger or looks quite so cocky.
She avoids my eyes but I quickly look at the clock. “It’s 5? How is it 5 already? How… how… will I get home? I mean, I’ve missed my bus.”
Clarissa doesn’t need to consult with the other two to answer, “I’ll drive you home, Miles; no worries.”
I shake my head, looking down, and that’s when I see it; blood.
On my sneaker; a smeared… we… smear of blood.
I almost say something, because I hate blood, but if all Rena did was break my pinky, why is there… blood?
“What is this thing?” I ask, carefully unrolling the fuzzy white strip from around my pink.
“It’s… a panty liner,” Rena says from the doorway, snorting. “Why, haven’t you ever seen one before?”
I don’t answer, too busy staring at my bloodless pinky.
My mind reels, my pinky is bent, and slightly blue, but it doesn’t hurt.
Not at all.
And it should, right?
I mean, I’m no expert in broken bones but I’ve always heard they hurt and, it sure did before Rena choked me out.
And the light is too bright in here, and when the girls whisper I can hear them, hear them even as Clarissa inches toward the other two and hisses,
“What did you do, Rena?”
“Nothing,” Rena lies.
“That’s crap,” hisses Hunter, quietly, looking over her shoulder to see if I’m listening; I pretend to stare at my crooked pinky finger and ignore them.
“When we were out, buying that panty liner in the girls’ room, you did…
something… to Miles?”
I let them squabble, watching the clock carefully now; 5:01.
5:02.
I sit at my desk quietly, watching them – and the clock; 5:03.
I take my good hand and, whenever they’re not peering over their beautiful shoulders at me, feel around my neck, my shoulders – 5:04 – my back, my hip, my hand, my arm – 5:05.
I find it on my ankle, just below where my sock covers up my Achilles heel;
a small gash, the blood already crusty – except for the smudge Rena forgot to wipe off my shoe.
No, no, not a gash; the fresh wound has two parts – and upper and a lower.
Like… teeth.
Like… bite marks.
5:06.
I remove my fingers from my sock slowly, and watch the clock until it reads 5:07.
Then I sit back in my chair and smile; I haven’t taken a breath in seven minutes.
My favorite pen sits on the corner of the lab table; Rena had moved it to sit down before she broke my finger.
My Mom gave it to me just before freshman year; just before she moved in with her new husband.
It’s one of those fancy pens, metal outside and in.
It looks like it should be able to write upside down, underwater, on the moon, but it probably can’t; it is heavy, solid and supposed to be completely, absolutely, 100% guaranteed unbreakable.
I reach for it quietly just as Clarissa barks, “How could you?”
Then she softens her tone, looks back at me and whispers, “He could be fully reanimated already, Rena.”
Reanimated?
Suddenly, I like the sound of that; a whole heckuva lot.
I look at the pen in my hand, close my eyes, then close my hand.
I hear a slight snapping sound; the girls flinch, but I keep my hand closed and although they inspect me up and down from across the room, there’s nothing much to see but a four-eyed geek in his Chess Club T-shirt and Boy Scout pants with the jingly zippers.
When they’ve looked away again, I open my hand; the pen has broken in two.
I see a little scrape in my palm, more like a tear, but… no blood.
This is it, then; it’s really happened.
And Rena did it; turned me.
Turned me into… one of them.
There’s no other explanation; for the bright lights, the loud whispers, their warm skin, my cold skin, the dried gash on my ankle, the blood on my shoe, the superhuman strength, the broken, supposedly “unbreakable,”
pen.
I sit them out; I wait them out.
They finally finish berating Rena and I try to look suitably miserable as they saunter back, looking slightly less confident than they had been at the beginning of 7th Period Study Hall.
“You ready for that ride home now, Miles?” Clarissa asks innocently, dull eyes wide and voice loud and full of fake confidence.
“Yeah, almost.”
“Almost?” asks Hunter, the slightest hint of irritation creeping back into her voice.
“Yeah, I just… wanted to hang back and ask Rena something?”
“Me?” asks Rena, yellow eyes wide. “I already apologized for your finger, dude.”
“No,” points out Clarissa, purse over her shoulder, already heading for the door with a smile of smug satisfaction. “You didn’t, Rena; you owe him at least that much.”
“Yeah,” purrs Hunter, inching over and giving me a goodbye kiss. “You owe him an apology, Rena; that, and so much more…”
Then she joins Clarissa in the doorway as the three share knowing looks under the American flag at the front of the room
I grin, cluelessly, like I’m still their victim, and keep my hands behind my back.
The three girls whisper something, look at me knowingly, and then two saunter out.
When the door closes, only Rena remains.
She walks over, saunters again, that panther in motion move she has down so well.
I kind of look away like the old, bashful me and wait until she’s close enough to touch.
“Don’t you want to give me a goodbye kiss, too?” I ask.
“Goodbye?” she asks, taken slightly aback.
“I’m not stupid,” I whisper, looking closely at her ear. “I know what you did to me; and I know that they told you to do to me… again. I heard it all, Rena; every last word. So… don’t I deserve a goodbye kiss?”
She rolls her eyes, sighs and leans in.
I never get my goodbye kiss.
I walk away from her, hands not even trembling anymore, and open the classroom door very, very slowly.
“I can’t believe you did that, Rena,” says Hunter as the door creeks open.
“Yeah,” whines Clarissa, her back to the door. “Where are we going to find another honors geek to do our work now?”
“I don’t know,” I croak, throat suddenly dry as I survey the empty commons area. “But you better work fast. My mid-term’s coming up in less than two weeks.”
“Miles?” Clarissa asks as Hunter leans into the classroom.
Clarissa follows and, eventually, I do too.
I mean, why not?
There, on the floor, eyes eternally shut, lies Rena; half of the pen sunk deep in each ear.
Hunter runs to her friend but Clarissa stays behind, eyeing me with close, curious scrutiny.
“Miles?” she asks, a half-smile on her round, porcelain face.
“You better call Dean Winters and whoever else knows about you three to come clean this up,” I croak.
“We usually clean up our own mess,” Clarissa explains, but there’s a hesitance in her voice I’ve never heard before.
“Not today you don’t,” I say, tugging her aside as Hunter whips out her cell, calls somebody on speed dial and starts shouting orders in that
presumptuous tone of hers. “You promised me a ride, remember?”
“Okay, Miles, sure,” she agrees, still hesitant, but running out of choices now. “Where are we headed?”
“You guys must know a good butcher, huh?” I ask, stomach rumbling.
“Butcher?” she asks as I sling wide the double doors to the student parking lot, not bothering to hold them open for her.
“Yeah,” I grin into the bright afternoon sunlight of another beautiful day in Orchard Park. “Suddenly, I’m starved for something bloody and… raw!”
Story # 4:
Zombies Don’t Swim
“Ugghh,” says Lavinia, shuddering as if it was 58-Degrees out and not 85.
She crawls out of the shallow end dramatically, dripping clear water all over our brand new pool deck from her long, volleyball limbs. “I hate it when they bump into you, you know? It’s so… creepy. Gawd, why does your Dad insist on hiring those clowns anyway, Viv? It’s so… retro.”
“Somebody has to hire them,” I point out neutrally, not sharing Lavinia’s massive distaste for the undead. “Dad likes to give back to the community, you know? Besides, it’s not like they don’t do a good job.”
“Anyone can do a good job, Viv; it’s pool cleaning, not... rocket science.”
She makes her “you’re so dull face,” which looks a lot like her “I’m trying not to pass gas in front of this cute guy in class” face.
“Besides, what’s the good of having a pool boy if you can’t ogle him while having cocktails with your BFF over spring break? I told you we should have used my pool.”
I avoid her eyes and confess, “Well, I’m waiting for Scott to call and I knew if he knew I was hanging with you, he wouldn’t.”
“Please,” she says, waving a fat-free arm dismissively, her dangling butterfly bracelet slinking up and down her bony wrist. I gave it to her for Christmas last year; I don’t think she’s taken it off since. “Get over that clown, will you already? He’s already gotten over you, trust me.”
“I want to,” I sigh, looking away. “I know I should after what he did with Sheila after the game last week, but… I can’t.”
“Please,” she reminds for about the 1,000th time this spring break. “You can’t take him back now, Viv. What kind of message would that send?”
“I’m not interested in sending a message,” I whine. “I just want him back.”
“Uggh,” she says, that patented look of distaste smeared across her otherwise flawless face. “There’s nothing worse than the tragic story of a good girl getting dumped by a bad boy. Oh, wait, here’s one: the good girl’s best friend who can’t abide the sight of a zombie cleaning her best friend’s pool. I take it back; that story IS more tragic.”
I grin just to shut her up, and try to see if my cell phone is chirping without her noticing.
Into an awkward silence she says, “Besides, you wouldn’t have to actually tell Scott you were at my casa; you could always lie, Viv, you know? Like the rest of the world?”
“Even if I did lie, Lavinia, you’re always blaring your music top-shelf and he knows I’m not into that speed metal crap, so… it was just easier to come here, no? Besides, I wanted you to see the new pool deck. Isn’t it sweet?”
She nods, admiring the cascading waterfall, the bubbling Jacuzzi, the potted palms and the brand new pavers Dad had put in the minute word came back that he’d finally gotten his new promotion.
“The deck I’m in love with,” she sighs. “The dead white guy at the bottom of the pool? Not so much.”
I put down my half-iced tea, half-lemonade and snort, “Well, why don’t you just wait until he’s through to take a dip? I’m sure he doesn’t want you rubbing up on him anymore than you want him rubbing up on you.”
“And why wouldn’t he?” preens my best friend, positively statuesque and stunning in her tiny bikini, the kind that doesn’t match with the barely there pink bottom and the almost there blue top. “Stupid zombies need to come when nobody’s using the pool anyway. I mean, it’s not like they sleep or anything, right?”
I knew it was a mistake to invite Lavinia over when the dude from Past Life Pools was scheduled for his weekly cleaning.
It had just completely skipped my mind that Thursday was pool day and, with spring break almost over, I figured Lavinia could overlook the marble heavy hunk scrubbing the bottom of our pool in order to catch some quick spring rays; guess not.
“I don’t know what your big deal is anyway,” I sigh, craning my neck to see if I can spot Zombie Pool Boy flexing his muscles by the pool drain; no luck.
I’d need to sit up a little higher to peep that and I’m too comfortable for that kind of abdominal gymnastics at the moment, thank you very much.
“You know if he was mortal you’d be all over that in a hot minute,” I tease.
She makes her frowny face and finishes drying off her hair, not just sliding down into the thick deck chair next to me but practically melting into one of the new khaki cushions Mom picked out to match the new deck.
Her limbs are honey brown from the early spring sun, her stomach empty and concave from her since-February diet.
“I dunno,” she hems, pouring a little more of the spiked lemonade from the cooler between us into her melted ice tea. “I’ve never been one for the strong, silent types, you know?”
She offers me some of the lemonade and I hold out my glass with one hand, using the other to make that pinched-off, thumb and forefinger “just a
smidge” motion; she ignores me and does the whole glug-glug all over again.
I can’t yank it back because then she’ll spend the rest of the weekend
telling everyone at school how I committed a “major beverage foul” so I just let her, figuring I’ll pour some in the planter when she’s not looking; which is usually.
She gets comfortable on the deck chair, all 6-feet-something of her, the late afternoon sun dappling off her still damp skin.
I sip at my spiked tea and lemonade, careful to pace myself.
It’s the first day with my parents out of town on Dad’s self-congratulatory “I finally got that damn promotion” weekend, and if I get too twisted too soon, well, there’s no telling what trouble I can get into.
Lavinia starts texting on her sleek, silver cell phone; nothing new there.
I drift in and out of wakefulness, the hot sun and cold drink lulling me the same way the sound of Lavinia’s fingers quietly clacking out some kind of romance novel next to me soothe my frazzled nerves.
“Jackpot!” she says a few minutes later, creaking up in her chair and slipping quickly into her tiny black yoga pants.
“What’s that mean?”
