Adventures of a Middle School Zombie (6 page)

“He put you in detention for trying to help me?”

“No. For what I said to him right after he said ‘zombie mess.’”

“What did you say?”

“Let’s just say, the words I used? You’re not going to find them in our school’s dictionary.”

I was feeling better already. I’d been avoiding Luke the past few days, and he knew it. I was surprised when he sat next to me, until I realized this was his way of apologizing without actually saying, “I’m sorry.”

I pushed his food back to him. Gave him the universal “We’re cool” look that all guys know.

“So what were you saying?” I said. “Something about talking to a girl?”

That’s when Luke told me about Anna, who told her friend Beth, who then mentioned it to Dallas, who sent it in a note in English class to Brenna, who then told her lab partner Luke, who then told me.

Jesus, people, Facebook was created for a reason—to avoid stuff like this.

According to Luke, Anna had said she thought I was cute, and would say “Yes” if I asked her to the Fall Dance.

“She is totally into you,” Luke said. “Trust me.”

“Luke, you heard that, like, fifteenth-hand,” I said. “And if she wanted to tell me that, why didn’t she just post it on her wall?”

Luke stuffed the rest of his burger into his mouth, reminding me that post-taco leftovers fell on a burger day in the cafetorium. Life just really sucks sometimes.

“O ffn jeeafm rrdnmok,” Luke said.

“Swallow.”

Luke gulped and opened his mouth wide, treating me to a view of mushy bun, bits of meat, chunks of pickle, and swirls of ketchup. A rainbow of muck.

“I have no idea,” Luke said. “Sometimes the old-fashioned way works best, I guess.”

“Or she didn’t want anyone else to know,” I said. “Probably one of those things you don’t want to broad-cast.”

“Or maybe she thought it would be cooler if she told you in person. Well, person to person to person.”

“I get it.”

Luke and I happened to be sitting in a quadrant with a pretty good view of the room. On the opposite side, closest to the food line, the jocks and cheerleaders ruled over the prime real estate, just a few steps from plastic utensils, ketchup and mustard packets, salt and pepper, and napkins. Robbie and his wingmen were in the thick of things. Amazing what being held back a year or two will do for refining your athletic skills.

Across the aisle and No. 2 on your scorecard were the smokers, consisting largely of students too cool to care about school, grades, or just about anything. Anyone getting a B was ridiculed on Tumblr, but was still allowed to hang with them. Earning an A was discouraged because it signified effort.

The smokers proved to be a solid buffer between the jocks and the goths, dressed in their black hoodies and black shirts and black pants (or black skirts with torn black tights or fishnets). The goths only cared about not fitting in, never getting the irony of looking alike. The other trait they shared was an intense dislike of the jocks—a feeling similar to the smokers, if the smokers cared enough to dislike anyone.

Skater boys came next, dressed in graphic T-shirts and plaid shorts, which they wore no matter the weather. Most of them had their boards with them, toting them under their arms between classes like some sort of badge of honor. Which it was, I guess. “We can balance and we’re proud of it.”

Next came the overachievers, a group of polo shirts and khakis. They joined clubs and ran for office and, as far as I knew, spent lunch filling out college applications. They had enough money and looks to separate them from the geeks, who also joined clubs and ran for office but did not have the money or appearance to make up for their general uncoolness.

Finally there was Luke, me, and the rest of the kids who were the stragglers, those who had done nothing special enough to earn a label, taking up three out-of-the-way tables. We didn’t really fit in anywhere, so we fit in by not fitting in. Which is not to be confused with trying hard not to fit in (goths, I’m talking about you).

That all makes sense, right?

So this whole thing with Anna posed a problem. She was a goth, I was a straggler. As far as I knew, a match between the two had never been attempted, let alone successful.

There were two possibilities: Anna wanted to shake up the status quo, or she was in some strange way attracted to me.

As unlikely as it was, I had to go with the second, because the first was unheard of in middle school.

Through the forest of stragglers, overachievers, skater boys, and such, I caught glimpses of Anna (when I dared look). She was hunched over in that typical goth way, and didn’t seem to be saying much. You know, goth-like.

I’d seen her before around school. She was shorter than me (good) with dark eyes and a button nose, and straight black hair that swept across her forehead. For a goth, she was pretty cute.

We’d shared a few classes but never said anything more than “hi.”

But she kinda liked me. I kinda liked that she kinda liked me.

“Luke, what would you do?”

“Grab more ketchup if the jocks weren’t all standing around the condiment table.”

“No, I mean the Anna thing.”

“I know, just messing with you. Honestly? I’d ask her to the dance. I mean, this is pretty solid intel. She’s definitely interested.”

The dance was still weeks away, so that was comforting. I had plenty of time to figure this out. No hurry. Because first I needed to figure Anna out.

“And what if it’s just to humiliate me?” I said. “What if she wants to get me to the dance for a Carrie moment?” Last week a bunch of us went to Luke’s house to watch the old horror movie
Carrie
, in which the main character had supernatural powers but still got a bucket of blood dumped on her at the prom.

Luke, a French fry halfway to his mouth, stopped and looked at me.

“That … would … be … AWESOME!”

Yeah, being named the King of the Dance (though I was pretty sure there was no such thing), then having pig’s blood poured all over you as you stood in the spotlight. That could be just the thing to make you go all flesh-eating on their butts.

“You are not serious, I hope. Because, really, that could be what she has in mind.”

Luke shook his head. “No way, dude. She’s a goth. They’re dark, but it’s pretend dark. And they’re probably more honest with themselves than the jocks or smokers or overachievers. I think they’re up there with the geeks.”

“You really think so?”

“Seriously. And Brenna said that Dallas is pretty honest, and I’ve heard that Beth doesn’t pass on stuff unless it’s mostly true.”

“It would be nice to go to the dance. A pretty normal thing to do.”

“Totally. And I’ll go, too. And you’d get out and show others that you aren’t going to let some kind of one-in-six billion disability get in your way. Right?”

He stuffed a few fries in his mouth, waiting for my reply. But I didn’t have one.

I stood and walked toward the goth table, excusing myself around the skater boys and geeks. You know how in those prison movies, you see the guy going down death row to the electric chair, and the camera pans across the faces of inmates who know they’re looking at a guy whose future is very short, yet he stands straight, his eyes looking dead ahead the whole time?

That’s how I felt. Undead man walking.

“Hey, um, Anna,” I said from over her left shoulder.

She turned and looked up. She was cute, once you saw more of her face and less of her hoodie. Not wearing nearly as much makeup as other goths.

“Jed, hi.”

The entire time walking here, subconsciously stepping over soda spills, exploded ketchup packets, and the foot of the overachiever who tried to trip me, I was thinking of how to put it. Should I be witty, or engage in small talk, or maybe sit first and tell her how I heard—

Then I heard myself say, “Wannagotothedance?”

“Sure.”

“Cool.” And I was back with Luke. Did one of the overachievers really try to trip me?

“How’d it go?”

“We’re going to the dance together. I think. Yeah. We’re going. Together.”

“Awesome, dude, what time are you picking her up? Is your dad or mom driving?”

“Really? The dance isn’t for a while. I’m not even sure how I go about talking to her between then and now.” I wadded up my taco leavings, having not really touched them. “Right now I just want to feel good about having a date … Because for right now, that’s enough. OK?”

“You bet. And are you really not going to eat your lunch?”

It was one of those days when I actually felt pretty good about going to school. Mostly because I had a date to the dance with a girl who was way too cute for me. I was definitely dating up. And over the past couple of weeks, I did nothing to jeopardize the date. Like talk to her. She said she’d go, and I was happy to leave it at that until I picked her up.

All that came crashing down pretty quickly, thanks to the disappointment that comes with being stuffed into a display case, the school’s trophy case, to be exact. I felt like an idiot. Not just because I was a zombie under glass. Also because I should have known things could always get worse.

I took stock of my situation. Thankfully the bell had rung about five minutes before, and the hallway was clear. But I was wedged in pretty tight and couldn’t quite reach the edge of the sliding glass pane, which was a few inches past my shoe. And there was no way I could bend over far enough to reach it. I could scream, but everyone would hear me. So I figured I had to wait until a teacher noticed me, or maybe a passing Good Samaritan.

If there was such a thing at this school. There sure wasn’t among the dozens of kids who watched me being placed into this display case. Even worse, my head rubbed against the biggest trophy in the case, awarded to the winning team of the annual Seventh vs. Eighth Grade Football Game. And the winning team was always the eighth grade, the captain’s name engraved on the large plaque near the base.

I’d had a few uneventful weeks. Robbie and I had reached an uneasy truce, because (as I heard later) he had spent two hours in the nurse’s office after our minor collision in the locker room. He refused to leave until she gave him something for the Ooze.

I got some of the story from Nurse Rankin, who called me in the next day to try to figure out just what the heck Ooze was (she didn’t have any better idea than the army of doctors that had poked and scraped me the first five years of my life had).

Turns out there had been a bit on his shirt. Nurse Rankin didn’t see it at first, but Robbie insisted it was there. She finally noticed a tiny glistening spot, thanks to a magnifying glass and penlight.

She needed a larger Ooze sample, but I had nothing to give. Yet.

“You could pull my finger,” I said.

“Jed, those games should have ended back in third grade,” Nurse Rankin said.

“No, I mean pull it off. Ooze comes when I lose a body part.”

“You are familiar with the term
nurse
, right? We tend to heal people. Not take them apart.”

She paused, a funny look coming over her.

“Would it hurt?” she said. “You know, just taking it like that?”

“As long as it’s from the first knuckle it would be fine,” I said. “Any more than that would flip on my Zombie Anger, and I would go on a brain-eating spree.”

“Oh, no … I … I … sorry, I wouldn’t dare—”

“I’m just kidding.” Man, some people take this whole zombie thing way too seriously.

When she got her color back, Nurse Rankin scraped a small bit of ooze from my forehead, which came out when I thought she was going to faint or something.

After she took the sample, she told me what she could about Robbie’s visit.

A shirtless Robbie lurched in (her word,
lurch
, is part of a popular zombie slur, but I took no offense), saying something about becoming zombified.

“At first he was scratching at his chest to see if any skin would come off,” Nurse Rankin said. “So I couldn’t tell him if all the redness was caused by your, uh, ‘Ooze,’ because it was just a small drop, or if it was because he kept picking at it.”

His chest had a sheen to it, but it was probably just nervous sweat. She offered him a Wet-Nap. “And once he wiped himself off, seems everything was just fine.” At first, anyway. She said Robbie kept picking at his chest, swearing that it tingled. And that he could feel something crawling through his pores. So, at his insistence, she took a closer look with a magnifying glass. “Usually I use it to search for lice,” she said. “This time, I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for.”

She told Robbie to lie back to get the most of the fluorescent light. She held the glass about an inch from his chest, slowly scanning. Then she noticed something … peculiar.

“There were small flecks of gray,” Nurse Rankin told me. “Like bits of ash. You could only notice them with the magnifying glass. And, Jed, I’m not telling you anything new when I say you are a bit, you know … ”

“Gray?”

“Yes, but not an unhealthy gray. Apparently. But it’s not the usual color of skin.”

“No kidding,” I snapped, “like you’re the first one who’s noticed.”