Dawn of the Jed (10 page)

I had forgotten all about that. Funny the things that slip your mind when someone rips your arm out of the socket. I slammed the locker again, denting my left knuckles. The locker was fine.

This was not the way I wanted to start the new semester.

“You’re right,” I said, calming down. “We need to get on top of that before it gets out of control.”

Anna slung off her backpack, unzipped the top, dug into it, and took out a small notebook with a pen tucked into its spiral binding. Putting her backpack on the ground, she slipped the pen from the notebook, gave it a click, and said, “List of suspects.”

“Robbie,” we said at the same time. She wrote it in near-perfect letters on the top of the sheet.

That was a no-brainer, even for the allegedly brain-dead zombie.

“But there’s one thing that bothers me,” I said.

“Besides the fact our number one suspect is the guy who hates you more than a vegetarian hates the Burger Bucket?”

“That’s just it. He already makes my life miserable and takes great joy in it. Why would he want me gone? On the TV of life, I’m his favorite channel.”

Anna chewed on the pen. Took it out of her mouth. Circled Robbie’s name.

“Maybe. But he is exactly the kind of guy who would cut off his nose to spite his face.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not sure, but my dad says it all the time when he talks about the stupid things people do just to get back at others.”

“What’s your point?”

“We leave Robbie on the list, No. 1 Prime Suspect,” Anna said. “Trust me.”

We added a handful of other names, mostly because I insisted. Ben and Joe, because “begrudging respect” did not mean they liked me enough to back off. Dwight, a good friend of Robbie’s and one of the leaders of the Eighth Grade football team. Ray, whom I punched last semester in one of the few times I fought back, even though Ray was one of the few kids smaller than me.

“Ray?” Anna said. “Ray Knowles?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Because he’s picked on almost as much as you are. Based on that alone, you guys should be friends.”

“Probably, except for the day I punched him.”

“You punched Ray Knowles? Geez, Jed, that’s like kicking the crutch of a one-legged man.” Anna paused, perhaps remembering how easily it was for me to lose a leg. “No offense.”

“None taken. Let’s move on.”

We rattled off another dozen names, but they either didn’t know me very well or didn’t have the motive to want to rid the school of its token zombie.

“What if it’s someone you don’t know?” Anna asked. “What if it’s some kid hung up on horror movies? Maybe he’s seen one too many zombie movies?”

“More like a hundred too many zombie movies.” Something about Anna’s suggestion sounded right. What if it was someone carried away by Hollywood, a person convinced I’m a slow-moving, flesh-eating, undead maniac?

The scariest thing was that any person who put that much faith in movies, and was willing to act on it, was a far bigger threat than a zombie.

But I had one more thought.

“What if,” I said, “it wasn’t a student at all?”

“Someone not from here? Or a parent?”

“Worse. A teacher. Or, more specifically, an administrator.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “Principal Buckley? No way. He’s paid to fix this kind of stuff. If he’s behind it, you’re … ”

“Totally screwed.”

“Right.”

We stood there, quiet as the hallway began to buzz with conversations. The bell was just a few minutes away, students were on their way to class, and I still needed my arm. If it were my left, I could probably go without it for a day.

But I needed my right arm.

The bell rang, and the hall quickly emptied.

“Anna, you better head to class, I got this.”

“I don’t mind, I can miss a few minutes—”

“Only one of us needs to be tardy. And I have a way better excuse.”

“True,” Anna said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll see you at lunch. Hope you have your arm first.”

“Me too.”

Anna pushed through the doors and into the sunlight. I was alone now. Waiting. Five minutes. Ten. My first class was Woodshop, and Mr. Anderson was not going to be happy, even though there was no way I could operate machinery with one arm locked in a locker.

A shaft of sunlight burst into the hall. A figure was coming toward me, casting a shadow, but I couldn’t make it out.

“Jed, trouble as usual?”

Principal Buckley. In my mind I heard threatening musical chords—
Da da da daaahhhhh.

“I’ve been informed by various witnesses that you—ah, I see they were not exaggerating. You do seem to be missing a limb. Not the first time, is it, Jed?”

“No, sir.”

“Where might you be keeping this particular limb, Jed? Normally I would excuse a student due to spontaneous amputation, but we know you are a special case.”

I spun the dial of locker 249. “In here.”

“If I am not mistaken, this locker does not belong to you.”

“No, sir.”

“How is it the missing limb wound up here?”

I had two very good reasons for not sharing the truth. First, Robbie would rip off the other arm when he found out. And secondly, what if Principal Buckley were part of this thing? What if Robbie was his henchman, and this was all part of their plot to ditch the zombie?

Wow, that was crazy. Still, I wasn’t going to tell him what happened.

“Not sure, sir,” I said. “I lost it, then heard it might be in here.”

Principal Buckley reached into the inside pocket of his dark blue blazer and withdrew a notebook, one that looked a lot like Anna’s.

“Let’s see here,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Yes, this is it. Excuse me, Jed.”

I stepped aside as Principal Buckley worked the dial. In a few seconds, he lifted the handle and opened the locker. There was my arm, fingers curled except for the middle one, which pointed up.

“Hmmph,” he said, turning to look at me. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“No Principal Buckley, I had nothing to do—”

“I will make this simple for you. You are suspended for the day, and in detention for the rest of the week. I will not tolerate pranks, Jed. Particularly ones involving such extreme lengths. Shall I summon security, or can I trust you to find your own way out?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

I grabbed my arm and resisted an overwhelming impulse to beat Principal Buckley over the head with it.

“Seriously, though, your arm flipping off Principal Buckley … that’s pretty awesome. Wish I could’ve seen it.”

“Maybe if I saw you more often, you could’ve been there. But it all happened a week ago. Old news.”

“I know, and I’m sorry about not coming by earlier,” Luke said. “Time gets away. To be honest, I never even heard about your detention until yesterday. I wanted to drop by to see what the heck happened, since I was pretty sure what I was hearing wasn’t true.”

“And what have you been hearing?” I asked.

Until Luke dropped by, it had been a quiet Saturday morning. I got up early, took Tread for a walk while the streets were still empty, and then washed the ManVan—now with wall-to-wall shag carpeting, from a rug Dad recently pulled from a Dumpster. Now the van smelled as bad as it looked. If Detroit knew about this, it would beg Dad to scrap it, putting the van out of its ever increasing misery.

I was just about to call Anna when the doorbell rang.

Cool, she’s reading my mind
, I thought, opening the door.

But it was Luke, holding his skateboard.

“Hey, Jed, I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”

“You’re always in the neighborhood,” I said. “You live next door.”

“Pretty convenient, huh?”

I didn’t smile. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Busy times. So, can I come in?”

“Whatever.” I had no idea why Luke decided to suddenly drop by, but I sure was curious what was on his mind. Because something was definitely on his mind.

I turned and headed up the stairs, hearing the front door close, and Luke’s steps right behind mine. Tread waited for me at the top of the stairs, and I slipped past him and into my room.

“Jed, a favor please?” Luke called from the stairs. “Call your dog?”

I went back and Tread was still in the same place, but Luke stopped about halfway up, staring at the dog.

“Come on, Luke, he’s harmless,” I said. “Go around.”

“I don’t think so. Can you just call him? Or put him outside? Please?”

“Are you kidding? Even if he did bite you, you wouldn’t feel it because his jaw would snap out of place. Trust me. That’s why you don’t see any chew toys lying around.”

That was true. In the battle of Tread vs. rubber bones, the bones always won. And I had to snap his jaw back into place. He’d curl up on his dog bed each time as if in shame. It wasn’t easy being an undead dog.

“Please. Just this once.”

I put Tread outside, making sure he had plenty of water. I also put out his favorite treat, beefy Jell-O (made with plain Jell-O and beef broth, which I would have marketed if the world had more than one zombie dog).

I returned to find Luke sitting at my desk. I stretched out on my bed, waiting.

“How are things?” he asked.

“Really, I haven’t seen you in almost a month and that’s it?” I said. “What things, exactly? The thrown-into-trash things? The anti-zombie-campaign things? The getting-my-arm-yanked-off-and-detention-at-the-same-time things?”

“Maybe I’ll just move on,” he said, standing up. “Doesn’t seem like the best time.”

“It isn’t the best time, but it’s not the worst time, either. Sit down.”

Even though Luke disappeared after the Tread thing, he was still my best friend. I knew seeing a dead dog going undead was unnerving. Luke was used to my zombieness—owning detachable limbs, ignoring vaccination requirements, having a relative inability to tan—but he never saw me raise the dead until Tread.

Dang, I raised the dead. I never thought about it like that. Now
I
was a little freaked out.

“Luke, I have no idea what happened with Tread, I swear. I was as shocked as you when, you know.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about it. Not right now.

“Seeing that, man, it was pretty scary,” Luke said. “And after that I, uh, there was this …”

He trailed off, but he was about to tell me something important. It was in his eyes, the way they couldn’t meet mine.

Then it was gone.

“Hey, remember when we were nine? When we decided to be blood brothers?”

“You accused me of cheating because after I cut my finger, it didn’t bleed,” I said.

“Exactly. You kept squeezing and squeezing your finger, but all you got was that Ooze stuff. But we put our fingers together anyway. And I was just fine.”

“You did lurch a little bit when you stood up.”

“My foot was asleep,” Luke said. “I told you that.”

“Whatever you say.”

We shared a smile.

“I heard about your detention,” Luke said. “What’s up with that? Last time you had to stay after school, it was to search through Lost and Found looking for the foot you swore you had that morning.”

“That only happened once. And this wasn’t my fault.”

I filled Luke in—getting to school early, seeing Robbie, having Principal Buckley show up, my arm found to be communicating an obscene symbol.

When Luke said it was awesome, I had to agree with him, even though I wasn’t quite ready to let him off the hook for his vanishing act.

“If it was just your arm, why did the rest of you have to serve detention?” Luke said. “The punishment should have been directed at the offending limb.”

Luke filled me in on the detention-related story going around school: Showing up early to surprise Robbie, I snuck up on him, removed my right arm, and proceeded to beat him with it. Principal Buckley arrived just in time to witness the cowardly attack, and he gave chase. He caught up just as I closed the locker, my arm nowhere to be found. Ordering me to stay right where I was, he retrieved from his office the master list of locker combinations, and opened the locker in question to find my arm with middle finger extended.

“Where did that story come from, I wonder,” I said.

“You know, just heard it. Like all the stories that go around.”

There it was again. He wasn’t telling me the whole truth.

“You believe me, right?” I asked, not caring if he did.

“Of course. If zombies suck at something more than breathing, it’s sneaking up on people.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You know, one other thing is bothering me. Why was Robbie there so early?”

For an instant, I saw this look of recognition cross Luke’s face, as if he were about to say, “Everyone knows Robbie was there to—”

Then the look was gone, replaced by—confusion? No. Concealment.

“That was pretty weird, Robbie actually coming to school early,” Luke said. “Who knows?”

“Yeah, who knows.”

I was happy Luke came over. He was still one of the few people who accepted me as I was. On the other hand, Luke was holding something back.

Maybe several things.