Adventures of a Middle School Zombie (2 page)

“Thanks, Jed,” Mr. Stanzer said, the basketball still bouncing around. “And good job in PE today. Bet you would’ve made that last lift if, you know, your arm … ”

“I know. Thanks, Mr. Stanzer. And no, it didn’t hurt much,” I said. A little slippage, some sliding around in the socket. As long as I took care, everything would be fine by tomorrow.

Luke waited for me at the entrance to the courtyard and tossed me my backpack, which I slung over my shoulder. We walked into the courtyard, where hundreds of kids were heading to one of the halls that ringed the quad. Luke and I had fifth period together—Social Studies—on the opposite side.

“How are you doing on that map?” Luke asked as we walked across the courtyard to our fifth-period class. We were in the middle of our world-map project, and I had Eastern Europe. Had I known that part of the world had mostly countries whose names were impossible to spell, I would have chosen a different area.

“Doing OK, but having a hard time fitting some names in,” I said. “Any idea how you might abbreviate Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan?”

“No clue,” Luke said. “I’m just glad I was able to talk Ms. Renzi into letting me have Antarctica. I almost feel like I’m cheating.”

“You are—”

Another voice had interrupted from behind.

“Deeee J-aaaayyyy. Deeee Jaaaayyyy. Yeah, talking to you, deadhead.”

I turned, knowing who I would see. Robbie Zambrano stood, arms crossed in front of his thick chest, with his usual wingmen, Joe Caldecott and Ben Easley (better known as Joe C. and Ben E., though behind their backs we referred to them as Josie and the Pussycat—as sidekicks, they did not deserve the respect or fear Robbie inspired).

“DJ, you know where you are?”

God, ‘DJ’. How I hated being called that. And there was nothing I could do about it.

“Where I am? You mean at school?” That’s what I wanted to say. But instead I choked out, “Huh?”

“You deaf as well as brain-dead? Where … ARE … you?”

I looked around. And then down.

“Uh, the Eighth-Grade Lawn.”

“Really? And what grade are you in, DJ?”

“You know—”

Robbie’s lips curled into a sneer.

“I’m in seventh grade.”

“Remind me, Joe, who’s allowed on the Eighth-Grade Lawn?”

“Eighth graders,” Ben said. Ben often answered for Joe and vice versa. They were like that.

“So, are sevvies allowed on the Eighth-Grade Lawn?”

“No,” Joe said, “sevvies are never allowed on the Eighth-Grade Lawn.”

At Pine Hollow, there was a time-honored territorial tradition. Any patch of turf in the quad currently occupied by an eighth grader was the Eighth-Grade Lawn. Which meant seventh graders were never to tread on grass.

“And what happens—” Robbie continued with his lesson “—to sevvies who are found to be in violation?”

“Canning!” Joe and Ben said together. That happened a lot, too.

Luke looked at me and, making sure his sneakers were not violating Eighth-Grade Lawn space, leaned and whispered, “You didn’t let him copy in History, did you?”

I shook my head. Robbie and I had an understanding. He sat near me in the classes we had together, and, since he refused to take notes or read a book, I had to make sure he had a clear view of my paper during tests. It was a pleasant symbiotic relationship (meaning both sides benefit, as we—or at least I—learned in Biology). His benefit was passing grades. Mine was being allowed to remain somewhat intact. For the most part, it worked well.

But not today.

“Remember what happened to my arm in PE?” I said. “I couldn’t adjust it quite right, and, well, it kinda blocked my paper.”

“Shut up, sevvie! No speaking unless spoken to,” Robbie said. “Well, I think it’s on to the punishment phase of your infraction. Joe, Ben, you know what to do.”

Ben hooked his arm under my right leg, Joe took my left leg, as if I’d been injured in a football game and they were taking me off the field. But they carried me to the trash can closest to the cafeteria, where I knew a soft landing was ahead. Soft, and very messy.

I remained there until a minute or so after the final bell. I kicked my legs and pushed up with my remaining arm, then felt the can tip enough for me to back out.

“Thanks, Luke,” I said as he righted the can.

“Sorry, man, I had to wait until Robbie left.” Luke grabbed my left hand and pulled me to my feet. “Oh crap, Jed, where’s your arm?”

I leaned over the top of the can, searching amid the wrappers, plates, and discarded food. There, between a drink pouch and a ketchup-smeared paper plate, was my hand. I grasped it and yanked.

“I gotta go get this back on,” I said. “I’ll see you in class in a bit.”

I walked across the empty courtyard toward the nurse’s office, since she knew by now how to take care of this without calling the paramedics. After a few days, it would be back to normal.

“Normal” sounds pretty weird coming from a zombie. After all, “He doesn’t have a leg to stand on” isn’t just a saying for me. It’s actually happened.

But there are certain advantages to being undead. And by the end of the semester, Robbie was going to find out. For now, let’s start at the beginning.

That would be my first day in seventh grade.

“Jed, get down here, you are
not
going to be late on your first day of school!”

I finished brushing my teeth and took a last big spit, turning on the water to clear away the red foam at the bottom of the sink. I looked at myself and smiled, checking to see if I had left any pancake bits in my teeth, and shook my head.

Chunks of my gums were missing on the top and bottom. I’d brushed too hard again, not thinking.
OK, just remember not to smile too big today
.

I tossed the toothbrush back into the yellow
Zombieland
promo cup Luke and I got at the movies over the summer. Luke and I were the only ones rooting for the zombies, even though I knew they didn’t have a chance despite outnumbering the humans, like, 5,000 to 1.

“Jed, now!”

“Mom, just a second, be right there.”

I flipped the top from the can of Tag, sprayed the air, and walked through the mist, just like Dad showed me. You want just enough, but not too much. “For you, son, you want to edge on the too-much side, just, you know.”

Yeah, I knew. I sprayed a second time, walked through it, and added a quick slash-spray across my T-shirt. Just in case.

“Jed, you ready yet?” A deeper voice. Luke was here. I am still so ticked his voice dropped before mine. I sound like a little kid, he sounds like a teen. He even said his pubes have started to come in. I have nothing to show yet, and I was already thinking of how I could take a towel into the shower room after gym and make it look natural. Nonchalant. If I had it wrapped around me then slung it over the—

“Jed, maybe sometime today, c’mon, we need to be a little early to figure out where our classes are.”

“OK, on my way!”

I opened the bathroom door, took one last look in the mirror in the hallway (what the well-dressed boy zombie of today is wearing—straight jeans, skate shoes, skate shirt, all topped with a black ball cap that looks fashionable and hides thinning hair), and went downstairs.

“Dude, about time,” Luke said. “Let’s head out.”

“Honey, do you have your schedule?” Mom said. “That map of the school they gave us at the meeting? And remember you guys are getting your ID photos taken today and … oh, Jed, you brushed too hard again, didn’t you? Too late for the dental putty, just make sure you do that smirky smile, show no teeth, everything will be fine.”

Thank God there was only one first day of middle school.

I grabbed my backpack off the kitchen chair and slung it over my back, happy it weighed almost nothing. Because by the afternoon, its bearable lightness of being would be gone, erased by textbooks.

Luke and I were both nervous, what with starting at a new school. But I was even more nervous. Being undead can do that to a kid.

At my old school, the whole zombie thing was just not a big deal ever since Gemma’s eighth birthday party, when a piece of me wound up in the frosting.

We reached the part where the birthday kid blows out the candles. In the long-standing kid birthday tradition of “Me too,” we all blew.

I focused on a candle flickering just out of reach. I propped myself on my elbows and blew.

Hard.

You have to know one thing about Zs (or, as I prefer to be called since learning the term in fourth-grade Biology, the Cardiovascularly Challenged). Oxygen isn’t really necessary. I don’t breathe unless I have to talk, but my lungs work perfectly fine.

At that point in my life, I was still adjusting to the “blowing out” part.

I put my lips together and let it fly.

I should say, “Let
them
fly,” because when the frosting splattered, hitting a few kids on either side of the cake, I knew something very wrong had happened.

My lips were tingling, and I was looking around for a mirror as I felt near my mouth to figure out what was going on.

That’s when I realized my lips couldn’t be tingling because they weren’t there. Which explained why the birthday girl was screaming and pointing.

I looked where her trembling index finger was leading everyone’s eyes. There was a little circle of hamburger meat lodged in the
B
in “Happy Birthday.”

Looking more closely, I put two (missing lips) and two (lips in the cake) together.

Luke tapped me on the shoulder.

“Uh, Jed, your mouth,” he said. “It’s bleeding. And I think you lost, well, I’m not sure. But it’s pretty awesome.”

I grabbed a napkin from the table and plucked my lips from the cake, because I was pretty sure I was going to need them later (I was right).

“Jed, that was pretty cool,” Luke said. “What else can you do? Wait, blow your nose really hard.”

Luke was pretty weird that way.

That was the day everyone knew I was different. Their reactions were less than ideal, involving a lot of vomit (deep blue, thanks to the punch everyone had been chugging). Mom spent the next week going around the neighborhood explaining my medical condition.

“Clinically, he’s dead,” she said on one porch after another, me by her side with a big smile on my face. “But that’s just a technical term. He’s very nice, and he loves to read.”

As soon as she said, “He loves to read,” every single grown-up said, “Oh, what a sweet boy.”

I’m surprised that’s not a legal defense. “He robbed twelve banks, but he loves to read.”

“How sweet. Not guilty!”

But at Pine Hollow, there were going to be kids from a million other elementary schools. And every one of them was only going to know about someone like me from
Night of the Living Dead
or, more recently and way more cool,
World War Z
.

I glanced at my reflection on the toaster, which still had the scent of raspberry Pop Tarts (the official breakfast food of zombies, as far as I was concerned). I brushed my hair over my forehead, frowning when a small clump floated to the counter. Great, a gap, but if I just mess it up a little this way—

“Jed, you’re beautiful, let’s do this,” Luke said.

“He’s right, time to board the ManVan,” Dad said as we walked out.

Oh no. I’d forgotten all about the ManVan. Dad had dropped me off at elementary school every day, and, after a couple of years, kids finally stopped teasing me about it. Mom and Dad bought the van when Mom was pregnant, since they were about to be a family and needed “suitable transportation, something that will fit a car seat.” Which meant Dad had to sell his ’72 yellow Camaro with the black racing stripe down the middle of the hood and roof (which I know about because Dad has a photo album titled “My Man Days” that has about a hundred photos of “Jenny,” the car he bought in 1980 and spent another three years restoring; oh, and there’s one photo of Mom—“The only time she was allowed in the driver’s seat,” Dad says, and I’m not sure he’s joking). And one day after the Camaro sold—December 7, 1998, “My own Pearl Harbor Day,” Dad says—they bought the minivan.

Which Dad slowly turned into the ManVan.

Luke and I stepped off the porch, and there, in the driveway, was the ManVan. Mom called it the SVU (So Very Ugly) SUV. Luke and I referred to it as the MucusMobile with PhlegmMatic Transmission.

Dad had transferred the paint scheme from the Camaro to the van, from the bright yellow down to the racing stripe along its length—only he did it himself, so the stripe is more like a billowy ribbon. And he painted reddish and orange circles above the taillights, but didn’t bother to stay within the lines.

“Thrusters, baby,” he explained. “And those are the flames coming out.”

According to family legend, when Dad unveiled the repainted van, Mom said, “And I thought Jed was the brain-dead one.”

We have come to accept the ManVan, of course, but …

“Dad, can we take the Focus today?” I said. “It might be a little easier to park because I bet the school is going to be really crowded on the first day.”

“Nonsense,” Dad said. “I’m just going to do what I usually do, pull up to the front and drop you guys off. Don’t worry about it.”