Zomburbia (24 page)

I knew it wasn't his fault; I could have told Sherri no when she said she wanted to go with me to Buddha's. I knew it was a world-class bad idea. But I just let her ride over me and went along with it. Now I had tears in my eyes.

“Jesus,” I said as I swiped them away with my sleeve, “it's like she's giving us a guilt trip from beyond the grave. Listen, you can let yourself off the hook. I'm more to blame than you are. I need to figure out a way to make it better, okay?”

“What does that mean?”

“How the hell should I know?” I asked. “Despite my grade point average, I'm starting to figure out that I'm not all that bright.”

He chuckled and then so did I. I almost laughed but stopped myself. I wondered if I'd ever laugh again.

“You'd better go,” Brandon said. “Your dad is watching us from the front porch.”

And there he was. I suddenly felt a huge surge of love for my dad. There he stood with his pot belly, his shorts with sandals and black socks, and his worried eyes, and I loved him.

“Yeah,” I said, “I'd better.”

“Can I call you later?” Brandon asked.

“If you called me later, I'd answer the phone.”

I climbed out and quickly got into my yard and closed the gate. I went and stood beside Dad while we watched Brandon drive away.

“He seemed nice,” Dad said.

“If you like that sort of thing.”

“You seem to like that sort of thing. You almost looked happy.”

He wore that same sad smile that he'd shown me in the hospital.

“I'm happy,” I said. “Usually. Just not lately.”

“You want to go inside and rest?”

“I got plenty of rest being tied to my bed for a day and a half.”

“Maybe we should go get something to drink and you can tell me everything that happened to you.”

I grimaced. I said that sounded like a good idea.

 

The whole story took more than one soda to tell. After our second can, Dad ran and got some takeaway chicken and I kept going. With some judicious editing, of course. I wanted to tell my dad everything that was going on, but I hadn't decided how to frame it yet.

After I was done and we were wiping grease from our mouths and fingers with lemon-scented moist Towelettes, my dad sat back and rubbed his noticeably larger belly.

“That's quite a story, Courtney,” he said. “There's one thing I still don't understand.”

“What's that?” I'll admit that chicken thighs and mashed potatoes had lulled me into a false sense of security.

“How did Vitamin Z get into your system?”

And all of that delicious fried food plummeted to the pit of my stomach like so much concrete. A million lies ran through my brain. I could deny it and try to say the hospital had been wrong. To be honest, it just felt like too much effort.

“They told you about that, huh?”

“It's their legal responsibility to tell me.”

I drew a deep breath, unsure how to go on.

“Courtney, did you get it out of my dresser?”

I had to think long and hard about what he'd just said. I opened my mouth a couple of times. I couldn't make my voice work.

“I know you were in my dresser,” my dad went on after I didn't say anything. “Isn't that right?”

I nodded.

“And I assume you saw the packet I had in there?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you take some of it?”

I shook my head.

“Then where?” he asked.

I realized too late that I could have totally said I got it from him and all of this would have passed. I'd still be in trouble, but that would have been offset by Dad's guilt in giving drugs to his little girl. I dimly remembered that the day before yesterday I'd wanted to come clean with my dad and tell him everything about my selling drugs. But the thought of how much trouble I faced suddenly put all of my intentions into doubt. I swallowed my guilt.

“Courtney?”

“Well, Sherri—”

“Oh,
Sherri,
” my dad said as if just invoking her name explained every bad thing I might have ever done. I suddenly felt flush with anger.

“What does that mean?”

“You got the drugs from Sherri, right?”

I sat there and seethed, hurt by my dad's dislike and distrust of my best friend. My dead best friend.

Not that it would hurt her feelings if I played along. Would it?

“Courtney?”

“That's right,” I said. I couldn't look him in the eyes as I spoke. It felt like I was killing Sherri all over again.

Dad just sighed and nodded his head, as if all of his worst suspicions about Sherri had just been confirmed. I sat across from him feeling like the smallest piece of crap in the world.

I was so awash in guilt that I'd almost forgot to bring up something that had been bothering me for days.

“So, can I ask where the, um, the drugs in your room came from?”

Dad hefted a huge, Charlie Brown–worthy sigh. He stared at his hands for a little while before looking up and answering.

“I should start by telling you that I'm not seeing Beverly anymore,” he said.

That subject change nearly gave me whiplash. “Okay,” I said. “What does that have to do with the Vitamin Z?”

“Well, Beverly brought it here.”

“
She
did?” I asked. I know I couldn't keep the disbelief out of my voice. “Why would she do that?”

“She
said
that she found it on a student she had caught doing something or other.” I could tell that he didn't believe that story. “She said that she wanted us to try it. She had done it—only a couple of times, she said—with her ex-boyfriend and had really liked
doing stuff
while she was high.”

“Doing stuff?”

“Sex,” Dad said.

Ugh
. I should have stuck with the euphemism.

“I told her I was uncomfortable with it and wanted time to think about it. I convinced her to leave it here with me while I thought about it.” He gave me that same sad smile. “I didn't have to think long about it. I broke up with her on Saturday and I flushed it down the toilet.”

“What did Bev say?”

“Let's just say she wasn't very happy with me.” He gave me a more genuine smile. “But what was she going to do? Report me to the police?”

I agreed and then Dad's smile evaporated. He put his hand on mine. “Courtney, I have to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For bringing someone into the house and into our lives who would have anything to do with drugs like that.”

My face burned. “But, I . . .”

“That's different, I think. I'm concerned and, I have to say it, disappointed. However, I feel like you were led astray, and I'm assuming it was an experiment. One that you won't repeat after seeing the horrible results.”

I nodded.

“But Beverly was an adult who'd clearly made a decision to let drugs be a part of her life. There's no way I could continue to see her under those circumstances. I hope she gets help, I told her as much. Until she does, though, I'll have nothing to do with her.”

“You wouldn't have anything to do with anyone who,” I hesitated, “had anything to do with drugs?”

“No, I wouldn't,” Dad answered flatly. “And neither should you.”

I felt sick to my stomach. If my dad knew what I'd been doing for the last year, he'd hate me. He'd probably throw me out of the house.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” I whispered.

He hugged me as well as he could while sitting. I felt his warmth and smelled his scent, a smell so familiar I could pick him out if I was blindfolded, and I started to cry. I cried because it felt like I'd just lost something that I couldn't ever replace. The worst part was that I'd lost it because of my own stupidity.

“It's okay, Pumpkin,” Dad said as he stroked my hair. “Like I said, I know you were experimenting. It's scary to me and I know you won't do it again. I'm just glad nothing happened to
you
.”

Meaning he was okay with something bad happening to Sherri?

He held me for a long time until I got over my crying jag. After that we talked about what we were going to do about my mistake. How we'd make sure it didn't happen again. We never talked about punishment in my house; we always talked about correcting behavior. My dad wanted me to talk to the school's counselor about what had happened. He was going to try to keep a better eye on me and my whereabouts until I'd shown I could be trusted, and I was expected to come home directly from school at least for the next week. I didn't point out that this wouldn't be a problem since both my friends with cars were now dead. When all was said and done, I felt like I got off lighter than I deserved. Of course, I didn't ask for more punishment.

It was late by that time and he asked if he could go to bed, or if I wanted him to stay up and talk some more. I said I should be getting to bed, too, and we both headed off in that direction. I stopped to wash my face. It seemed like I was doing an awful lot of crying before bedtime lately. I decided then and there that I was going to cowboy up and stop crying all the damned time. Then I did my nightly routine and went into my room.

I should have just climbed into my bed, but I decided to do one last thing. I started up my computer. It had been days and days since I'd checked on news from New York. The last few days had been so wretched that I knew—just
knew—
that there had to be some good news about the Army reclaiming Manhattan. It was like the universe owed me one.

I brought up my favorite news website, and sure enough, there was something: G
OVERNMENT
I
NDEFINITELY
S
USPENDS
P
LANS
T
O
R
ECLAIM
NYC. I stared at the headline for an eternity and it just refused to make sense. Why had I been selling Vitamin Z? Why had I been planning to get out of this horrible goddamned town? New York and the Mailman School both felt like stupid pipe dreams. Maybe Brandon had been right about that. I'd been going along like I deserved all these great things to happen to me, and now . . . The universe was telling me I deserved something, all right.

I powered down the computer and crawled into bed.

So much for my promise to not cry so much.

I
thought my dad was going to ask me if I wanted to stay home from school that day considering, you know, that I'd just been through some unspeakable trauma. That would give me the option of either saying no, I didn't want to go and having a day off, or I could be stoic and brave and fight through the tears and go. But all he did was call me to breakfast and tell me I had to hurry if I wanted a ride with him. Was this tough love because I was a reforming drug addict? If it was, I didn't like it.

I threw on my skinny jeans, black tee, and Dr. Martens. I decided to skip breakfast in favor of putting on my makeup. I was applying the last of my eyeliner when Dad said we had to go. He frowned at me as I walked out of the bathroom, but he didn't say anything. Maybe he had meant to cover new hygiene and appearance guidelines at our little confab last night.

We didn't talk much on the way, and when he dropped me off he reminded me to either arrange for a ride home—directly after school—or call him and he could come get me.

“I love you,
too,
Dad. I'll
miss
you.”

“Don't be a smart-ass,” he said. “I love you, we just need to establish some rules is all.”

“Rules good. Girl bad.”

He threw me a courtesy laugh. “The girl's not bad, and we want to keep it that way.”

He drove away and left me at the mercy of my classmates.

All of whom were pretty awful. No one even attempted to hide the fact that they were staring at me. I felt like a walking freak show. I'd survived a zombie attack from my former best friend. I'd been carted off tied to a stretcher—at gunpoint! Jesus, I might as well be wearing mourning weeds and rending my hair.

And people didn't whisper so much as
stage whisper.
I heard lots of speculation about how Sherri got turned into a zombie. Or what she had been doing right before being attacked. It ran from not-far-off-the-mark—“I heard she was on some drug-fueled rampage and just ran straight at a group of zombies,” a wide-eyed freshman reported to her friends—to the completely ridiculous—a senior football player told his teammates that he had been the last boy to be with her before the accident. They all nodded appreciatively because they'd cracked his code and had figured out what “been with” meant in this situation.

I did my best to keep my head down and pretend I didn't hear anything. If high school had declared majors, ignoring hurtful comments would have been mine.

Brandon and I ate lunch together in the cafeteria. He left his table full of cronies, which was actually really nice of him. They all craned their necks to watch him walk over and sit down next to me. I wondered about the loss of social standing hit points he took every time he was with me. I reasoned that he had plenty to spare and shouldn't worry too much.

He bumped my shoulder as he sat. “How are you?”

Dealing with a ton of guilt and remorse would have been the correct answer, but sometimes honesty has no place in normal conversation. Instead, I shrugged as eloquently as I could.

“Yeah, I guessed,” he said. “I've been hearing all kinds of stupid rumors today about you and Sherri. There wasn't much of that while you were gone.”

“I guess people were saving it up for me personally,” I said. “They're all so considerate.”

“Ignore them. People have to talk about someone, it just happens to be your turn today.” He looked extremely sage for someone with a zit on his chin.

“It's been my turn a lot lately,” I said. “Has it ever been your turn?”

He thought about it for way too long.

“Forget it,” I said.

“No, wait, I've got it!” He looked super-excited to have come up with something. “Once in third grade—”

“Seriously? Third grade?”

“Once in third grade, I fell off the jungle gym and broke my arm. It hurt so bad that I peed my pants. For years—
years—
afterward, people would talk about the time I peed myself. I'd remind them why and they'd all sort of go, ‘Oh, yeah, that was awful,' and then go back to laughing about my pee-pee pants.”

I was smiling even though a story about him breaking his arm shouldn't have been funny.

“That really happened?” I asked.

“Ask any number of people on the playground at Englewood Elementary that day.”

“I don't think I can date a boy who pissed himself.”

He got a sly look on his face and grinned. “Are we dating?”

I took an involuntary deep breath. “Was it a little bit of pee, or was it a gusher? Like did you get anyone else wet?”

“You're not going to answer my question?”

“Well—”

I became aware of people snickering at the next table over. Tracy Magaw and her ilk were sneaking glances at us—at me, then turning to confer and laugh. Suddenly my lunch tasted like cardboard.

“Why don't we go outside where there's fewer . . .” Brandon spread his hands to take in all of humanity.

“Sure,” I said. We picked up our trays and left the cafeteria.

I laughed when we got outside. Brandon looked at me like I was deranged.

“Well, at least now they're fixing that damned fence!”

A crew worked out at the broken section of fence installing a new run. A new
double
run. A squad of shotgun-toting guards watched the tree line while the crew did their thing.

“Whatever it takes, I guess,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Brandon as we sat down at one of the tables. “The rumor going around is that the school is super-nervous because they left that fence unfinished for so long. I think they worry that your dad is going to sue. You know, my dad has a great lawyer, maybe your dad should call him.”

“Jesus, if that isn't romantic, I don't know what is,” I said.

“Yeah.” Brandon gave that a halfhearted laugh. “Hey, I'm really sorry about everyone staring back there. People can suck sometimes.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I mean, yes, people do suck. I guess I'll have to accept that for a little while. At least until summer. Then I'll have three months where I never have to see these d-bags and maybe they'll all forget about it.”

Brandon sat up—I think the accurate term would be he “perked” up—and he started talking excitedly. Unfortunately, he had just taken a bite of his sandwich and I got covered in a fine mist of half-chewed tuna.

“Sorry. Sorry,” he said, and picked bits of lunch off me. “You saying about the end of year reminded me. I'm going to have an end-of-the-year party.”

“When?”

“Well, seeing as next week is the end of the year, I thought that would be a good time to do it.”

“Smart-ass.”

He grinned and generally looked really satisfied with himself. I'd have to watch that. I couldn't let his ego grow out of control. Generally, I think that tending a boy's ego is a lot like growing a bonsai tree. You're constantly pruning and cutting and making sure it's exactly the size and shape you want. Bear in mind I'd never had a boyfriend. It's just what I'd picked up in the school yard.

“And about the party,” I told him, “I'm not sure. I'll have to ask my dad and he may not be all that keen on letting me out of his sight.”

“What's up with your dad?”

I told him about the blood tests the hospital ran and what they found swimming around in mine. The hospital had informed my dad of my extracurricular activities, of course. His eyes went wide at that point and I assured him that his name had never come up during any of the talks between me and my dad. He relaxed at that. I went on to explain how my dad had me on a short leash for the time being, so the party might be a tall order.

“Maybe if you asked him?” Brandon prodded.

I shrugged. I didn't know how I felt about a party. I leaned toward “not.” The last time there'd been anything like partying, I'd gotten drugged out of my head—literally—and then Sherri—I cut off the thought.

“Is it going to be at your place?” I asked.

“It's going to be at my dad's cabin.”

I stopped.
No way
. He couldn't be that dumb, could he?

“Is this the cabin by the reservoir?” I asked. He nodded rather than talk around another mouthful of food. “The same cabin where we, you know, got attacked by a bunch of zombies, right?”

“It was only three,” he said.

“Three too many, Brandon! How do you know it won't happen again?”

“It won't,” he said emphatically. “It so won't. The sheriff up there did a sweep of the area after . . . you know, what happened. They cleaned out a bunch of shufflers.”

Cleaned out
. That's a nice euphemism for killed. I wondered if zombies had their own euphemisms. Maybe eating someone's brain was “going off my diet.”

Brandon put his hand on mine. I'm sure he meant it to be reassuring. “It'll be totally safe up there, Courtney.”

I extricated my hand from his. I felt a pang when the smile fell away from his face.

“Well, whatever, I'll have to ask my dad before I can make any plans.” Now I was banking on the fact that my dad was still in Great Santini mode and wouldn't let me out of the house. Which was fine with me. I really didn't want to go to a party in monster-infested woods, and this way Dad would be the bad guy.

“Yeah, ask him,” Brandon said. “It's, like, a week and a half away. He can't stay mad at you that long, right?”

“Mad at me” was an interesting way to describe being concerned about the fact that his daughter might be a junkie. Anyway, I sort of hoped he could stay mad that long. I didn't say that, obviously.

My answer at least made Brandon happy. He remained Mr. Smiley through the rest of our lunch. After we were done and had gathered up our stuff, we walked back to the building. We separated in the main hall and I was just about to leave when he stopped me.

“Did you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“Did you notice that I didn't press you to answer the question I asked at the start of lunch?”

I had to think back. What had he asked me? Oh, shit, he'd asked if we were dating. It took an effort not to slap my forehead.

“I did notice, and it's great,” I said. “Could you keep being great and not press me for an answer?”

“Sure,” he said, and his smile only slipped a little bit. “I'm not a complete jerk, you know.”

“I never thought you were a
complete
jerk, Brandon,” I said.

“Right. Well, I'll see you in last period.”

“It's a date,” I said. I made my fingers into imaginary pistols and shot at him. Then I quickly turned and wondered what the hell I had just done. I walked away as quickly as I could. Maybe I was lucky and he thought it was some kind of Tourette's outburst.

 

Later that day, I got to Journalism class before Brandon. I sat down next to an empty chair and put my bag there so he'd be able to sit with me.

As I unpacked my bag, Phil walked over to me. He stood there, silent, until I acknowledged him.

“Hi, Phil.”

“Hey,” he said. He held out a folded piece of paper to me. I took it and set it on my desk. “I was sorry to hear about Sherri. I don't think she was all bad even though she was kind of mean to me.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, and the question took me by surprise. Except for Dad and Brandon, no one had asked that.

“I'm doing okay, Phil. Thanks for asking.” It barely felt like a lie.

He looked at me for a second like he didn't believe me, then he pointed to the paper he gave me.

“That's for you,” he said. “I hope you like it.”

He turned and went back to his seat at the back of the class.

I unfolded the heavy paper, almost like construction paper except that it was bright white and it felt really smooth to the touch. I gasped a little when I saw what was on it. Phil had drawn a really beautiful pen-and-ink portrait of Sherri. I'd seen a bunch of Phil's comic strips and this was nothing like those. The style he used on those was scratchy, lots of pen lines, and (I realized) intentionally dirty. This was so clean and there were no extra lines. It reminded me of Hergé, the artist who drew
Tintin
. Phil made Sherri look really sweet, except for this curl on her lip that made her smirk. It completely captured what she'd been like in real life.

Tears welled up in my eyes. Who would have thought that Phil, the ogre we banished to the back of the Bully Burger every chance we got, would do something this expressive and vulnerable—let alone that he would give it to me?

“Are you okay? What's that?” Brandon moved my bag and sat next to me. He turned in his seat and glared back at Phil. “Did he say something to you?”

I wiped my eyes and handed over the drawing. “No, he asked if I was okay, and he gave me this.” Brandon took the drawing and looked at it—glanced at it, really—and then handed it back.

“That's cool,” he said.

Cool?
What the hell was that? I glared at him. He wasn't looking, so it was wasted. I turned back and caught Phil's eye. I mouthed “thank you,” and he gave me a curt nod.

I turned back around and tried my best to concentrate on class. Instead, I found myself staring down at Phil's drawing again and again.

 

Brandon gave me a ride home after school. We didn't speak much. I mostly sat as far from him as possible and sulked. He looked confused about why I was giving him the silent treatment, which may have been unfair but it suited me just fine.

When we pulled up to the sidewalk outside my house, Brandon asked me, “So, you'll ask your dad about the party next week?”

“I
said
I would, okay?”