Adventures of a Middle School Zombie (9 page)

I waited just a moment to time it right. I stood and walked up the aisle, right behind Anna.

“Hey.”

She turned her head. “Hey.”

Anna sat up near the front, so I never got to talk to her in Biology, especially since Mr. Landrum loved to send “vocal offenders” to detention.

“How’s everything?” I said. There were undead butterflies in my chest.

“Good, you?”

“Yeah, good.”

Anna took the tray and returned to her seat. I slipped off cloud nine, took the tray that had been beneath hers, and swam upstream through the rest of those getting their frogs. I nearly dropped the tray when a stray elbow knocked it, but I recovered in time and realized what was wrong.

The frog moved.

Not just because I juggled the tray. No, he tensed up when it happened (I was guessing it was a he, anyway). His muscles bunched under his green skin, standing out like cords.

I put the frog in front of Dustin. Others were just beginning to return to their stations, holding their frogs.

“Dustin,” I said. “It’s alive.”

“No, it’s like this,” he said. “It’s aalllliive. See, much creepier.”

“Dude, it’s really alive. Like, still living. Like, breathing and stuff.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s impossible since being dead implies you aren’t alive.” Dustin looked from the frog to me. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“Sure. But I’m telling you that this frog is still with us.”

Mr. Landrum cleared his throat.

“If I may have everyone’s attention, please, before I hand out the scalpels. Some of you may have noticed these particular frogs are still alive.”

A chorus of “Eww”s rolled across the room.

I nudged Dustin. “Told you.”

We looked closer. The frog’s chest fluttered as if he was breathing really fast. Or maybe it was his heart beating. Guess we were about to find out.

“Each one of these frogs has been carefully pithed,” Mr. Landrum said. “What that means is a needle was inserted into their brains and rotated, effectively scrambling it.”

I thought about my dad’s inside-the-egg scrambler, which had a small plastic rod the size of a toothpick jutting up from a motor. He shoved the egg down on the rod and hit the “On” button, causing the needle to spin. After about ten seconds, he flipped it off and cracked the egg to reveal a milky, yellow substance that poured easily into the skillet.

Now all I could imagine was a milky, gray substance.

“In effect,” Mr. Landrum went on, “these frogs are alive, but they feel nothing. No pain, no sense of their surroundings. Just an emptiness. And what this allows us to do is peek inside and see how everything works, just like opening the hood of a car with the engine running. Though the frogs are alive, they are actually dead when it comes to our definitions.”

“Weird,” Luke said. “Not the living dead, but the dead living. Creepy.”

That’s exactly what they were. The dead living. Heart beating, lungs breathing, blood moving through them. But they couldn’t feel a thing. And we were just going to cut them open, probe around as their lungs continued to breathe and hearts continued to pump.

My hand shot up.

“Mr. Landrum, I don’t think I can do this,” I said, without waiting on him to call on me. I stood up. “I’m going with the others.”

“Jed, just a minute, you can’t arbitrarily decide to—” but I was out the door and in the empty hallway. If I’d needed to breathe, my lungs would be heaving right now. What had been done to those frogs, the way their life—real life, not biological life—had been taken away … And for science. I really wasn’t a big fan of science.

Memories flashed quickly. Needles, scalpels, probes, scopes … more lab visits, always with the doctors promising that this would be the last time, they just want to check one more thing, maybe they can make it all better.

As if something was wrong with me.

I leaned against the wall, a little dizzy. It struck me how quiet the halls could be when empty, as opposed to between classes, when the shouts and constant buzz of conversation filled them.

School officials frown on kids who leave class for no reason. I scanned for security, hoping to get to kill some time before my next class without being caught. If I could just find an empty room and sit until the bell rang, I might avoid earning detention.

My next class was across the quad, so I headed toward the double doors, walking in an exaggerated heel-to-toe to make as little noise as possible on the linoleum floors.

But first, a stop in the boys’ room. A little water on my face to straighten me out.

As soon as the door opened, a thick cloud of smoke enveloped me. Through it, I saw Robbie’s glare.

Had I been a breather, the scent of tobacco would have alerted me to stay far away from this particular boys’ room. Too late now.

I turned, placing my palm flat on the still-open door, took a step—

“Where do you think you’re going, Zom-boy?” A hand gripped my shoulder. Where had that come from?

The hand pulled, spinning me around. There was Ben, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a wisp of blue smoke floating from its ashen tip.

“Zombiessaywhat?” Ben mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Zombiessaywhat?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were supposed to say—oh, never mind,” he said, stepping aside. “C’mon in. Party’s just getting started. Now.”

Robbie leaned against the sinks, his legs crossed at the ankles, hands braced on the beige counter. A cigarette, apparently freshly lit, was stuck between the first and middle finger of his right hand. He pushed himself away and beckoned to me with the cigarette hand. Joe stood against the opposite wall, blowing a plume of smoke above him.

“DJ, so good to see you,” Robbie said. “What, didn’t have the heart to dissect a poor little frog? Must be a dead thing, right? Having that in common and all.”

I backed up, realizing only then that Ben had slipped behind me.

“Where ya going, Zom-boy,” Joe said. “You just got here. Enjoy.”

Robbie pushed off the counter, reaching into the pocket of his black jacket.

“You know, DJ, you’ve been very good to me,” Robbie said. “My GPA is up to, what is it now, Bennie?”

“I think around two-point-seven,” Ben said.

“Are you so stupid that you can’t even keep track of your own GPA? Really?” I really wanted to say that. But didn’t. They couldn’t kill me, but they were capable of just about anything else.

“Damn, two-point-seven, DJ, did you hear that?” Robbie said. “From what I understand, that’s solid C territory. That’s passing. It’s brand-new territory for me. And I have you to thank.”

“(That’s OK),” I said, barely.

“Sorry, didn’t quite pick that up,” Robbie said. “What’d you say?”

“I said it’s OK.”

“That’s quite neighborly of ya, DJ, it really is. I think maybe if I were you, I’d be put out by our little arrangement. I mean you give and you give.”

“(Sure).”

“What?”

“Sure.”

“But really, sometimes you give too much. Like you did in the locker room. Have to tell you, Deadeye Jedi, that was going beyond the call.”

“(Sorry).”

“What?”

“I’m sorry about that, it’s nothing I can control.”

Robbie stepped closer, and I could feel Ooze on my forehead. If I just leaned forward I could probably get some on his chin, and we could end this thing right now.

He took a quick step back and stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It bobbed as he spoke.

“Not again, ooze-meister,” he said, pulling on a pair of what looked like garden gloves covered with, uh, were those daisies? “Yeah, these are my mom’s. Any glove in a storm, I always say. You have a problem? Something to say?”

I shook my head.

“I know about stuff that’s uncontrollable. Anger, for example. Can’t seem to get a handle on it. Joe,” Robbie said, his eyes never leaving mine, “what can’t you control?”

“My mom’s drinking,” Joe said.

“Yeah.” Robbie smiled. “Bennie, what about you?”

“What?” Ben asked.

“Have you not been listening?”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s that I’m trying to listen for security so—”

Robbie’s left hand shot out so fast that, had he been aiming for me, I would have ducked about a second too late. Instead it flew over my shoulder, and I heard the sound of garden glove on flesh, followed by Ben’s yelp.

I looked over my shoulder. Ben cupped his nose with both hands, blood slipping between his fingers, cigarette still in his mouth.

“Jeezus, Robbie, what the hell,” Ben said. “My nose, oh my God, you broke it, damn, dude.”

“See what I mean about stuff you can’t control?” Robbie said. He took a long drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it out against a stall, all the while keeping eye contact.

“Ben, quit whining and grab some toilet paper.”

Ben stepped out from behind me toward the nearest stall, kicking open the door and disappearing inside. I heard the clattering of a metal roller as it spun in the toilet-paper housing.

My eyes went to the left, quickly, hoping to size up where I was in relation to the exit. That was enough to tip off Robbie, who grabbed my right arm.

“Not so fast, my boy,” he said. “What you and I need to do is come to some sort of understanding. Bygones and all that.”

He pulled me over to the sink. Joe stepped forward and grabbed my other arm.

“Hold him,” Robbie said as he released me, his hand going back into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“What we need to do is shake hands and smoke on it,” he said, lighting up another cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled in my face.

He shook another from the pack, placed it next to the one in his mouth, and produced a lighter, flicking it inches from my nose.

“I wonder,” he said, “do zombies burn fast or slow?”

The flame was an inch from my left eye. I didn’t so much feel the heat as sense it. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Now, now, what was I thinking, this is about friendship,” Robbie said. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

The heat, the light, I didn’t sense either. When I opened my eyes, both cigarettes were lit. Robbie plucked the fresh one from his mouth and held it out.

“For you,” he said.

“No … thanks,” I said.

“You don’t understand. I’m not asking. Right, Bennie?”

“Yeah.” Ben said from the stall. His voice was flat.

“We need to do this. Get everything out in the open.”

He turned the cigarette so the filter was toward me, used the tip to wedge open my lips. When he took his hand away, it no longer held the cigarette. I saw my reflection in the mirror, cigarette dangling between my lips.

“Take a deep breath,” Robbie said. “I’m real curious to see if you leak at all. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Smoke coming from your eyes? Out the top of your skull? Who knows how you’re put together?”

I took a breath, noticed the ember burning bright from the cigarette in the mouth of the kid in the mirror. Then a plume of smoke pushed through my lips.

That’s when the cigarette fell from the mirror kid’s mouth, tumbling end over end in slow motion.

The rest just happened at once.

Robbie bent to pick up the cig, and the mirror kid yanked his arm away from Joe, turned, and bolted for the door, but didn’t even get a step before he was jerked off his feet.

Suddenly I was on the floor, I couldn’t see the mirror kid anymore. Instead, I saw Robbie standing over me. He had a hold of my arm.

But I was on the floor. No way my arm would reach.

Then Joe— “Robbie, we gotta get outta here, drop that thing and let’s go.”

Ben— “Holy crap what happened, let’s go now now now. We gotta go.”

Robbie— “Yeah, one second.”

He turned, I couldn’t see. Looked at my right arm. No, had to look
for
my right arm. Robbie, keep watching Robbie, he had it last.

Footsteps, a slamming door.

Looked around. No one around. But my arm, they took my arm.

A squeak, another. The door opening.

“What happened, kid? Hey, you all right?”

“What’s going on?” A different voice. “Are the culprits still here?”

“No, Mr. Buckley, but, well, you just have to see.”

Footsteps. Two people standing over me. Robbie? No, adults.

“Not as bad as it looks, Bob. This happens to be our resident zombie boy; you’ve probably heard about him.”

“Yeah, but, Mr. Buckley, his arm.”

That was Mr. Stanzer, the one teacher who’d always been pretty decent to me. After the shower incident, he started letting me leave PE a little early so I could shower in peace. When Luke and I hit the court after lunch, he made sure to give us the only basketball that wasn’t lopsided.

“Yes, I know.” The voice was Principal Buckley’s. That was when I just knew I was going to be in trouble. “Please help him to his feet and let’s take care of this situation before the bell rings.”

Two hands under my shoulders, lifting me. Principal Buckley was bent over in front of the mirror. He picked something up.

“I do believe we’ve found the source of all the smoking that has been reported,” he said.

He held my arm out in front of me. Between the first and middle fingers, a cigarette smoldered.

“Not mine,” I said.

“Your arm, your hand—your cigarette,” Principal Buckley said. “Possession is, after all, nine-tenths of the law. Bob, let’s escort him to the nurse’s office. She’ll know what to do. Then Jed and I will discuss the consequences.”

Which, as it turned out, boiled down to a week of detention. But at least I knew where I stood with Principal Buckley.

I was just happy Mr. Stanzer was on security that day. When I got back to school, at lunch Mr. Stanzer handed me a brand-new basketball. “You’re a tough kid, hang in there,” he said. If the price for having a friend on the faculty was a temporarily severed arm, it was a small price to pay.

But Robbie was right with one thing. Some things are uncontrollable.

The need for revenge, for example.