After Me (4 page)

Wait, what?

I sat up and slapped myself on both cheeks. “Stop it! You do
not
have the hots for Captain Chess Champ.”

My e-mail notification rescued me from any more self-abuse, but when I sat in front of the computer to read Flo’s message, with each sentence I wanted to throw myself out the window more and more, even though it wouldn’t have done me any good.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: RE: What the [redacted]?

Dear Miss Gayle:

Apparently, an addendum to your termination agreement was inadvertently left out of your paperwork, and the new objectives were just uploaded today. In addition to your prime directive of finding the man who killed you, you must also learn to handle normal human emotions, since you did not experience them while you were alive. This explains your feelings for the young man you mentioned. Don’t be surprised if you also feel a strong desire to befriend another girl your own age. These things are not negotiable. So, in the vernacular of yourself and your peers, you need to “deal.”

Don’t forget to change your e-mail address.

Regards,

Florence

Chapter Seven

I
decided to wait until after dinner before replying to Flo’s bombshell, hoping I would cool off by then so I wouldn’t say something to get myself sentenced to working in the Heavenly DMV. I tried to hide my bad mood from everybody while we ate, but I guess it showed.

“Karen tells me you made some new friends at school today,” Brad said as he shook hot sauce onto his fajita. “Think you’re gonna like it there?”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. Some of the kids are all right and some are jerks. Same as any school I guess.”

Brad set down his glass of tea and frowned. “Did somebody give you a hard time about being new?”

His defensiveness about me was touching, just like Karen’s offer to be my friend. Another emotion I wasn’t used to and didn’t know how to handle.

“Not really,” I said. “Some guy named Matt didn’t like it when I wasn’t wowed by his football jersey, so he made a few smartass… I mean, smartaleck comments about how I was a foster kid. No big deal.”

“How did he know you’re a foster kid?” Karen was frowning as much as Brad.

“One of his minions in the office told him,” I said. “It’s okay. My chemistry partner shut him up pretty quick.” I hurried to take a bite of my fajita so they wouldn’t see the goofy smile I knew was about to spread across my whole face at the memory of how Lew had taken up for me. What a total dork I was turning into.

“Oh, really?” Brad said. “Who’s your chemistry partner?”

“His name’s Lew Stanton.” I couldn’t suppress a dreamy sigh after I said his name. “He’s the captain of the chess team, and he’s really smart.” When I saw the amazed look that passed between Karen and Brad, I knew my face must look just as stupid as I sounded. Before either of them could say anything, Nathan chimed in and added another level to my personal Hell.

“Oh, man, he’s
awesome
. Remember, Mom? Last month you drove me and the guys on the math team to watch one of Bay Harbor’s chess tournaments. He was the blond guy who won the whole thing.”

“Oh, yes.” Karen still looked amazed. “And you… like this boy, Gwen?”

This time I knew for sure my face was as red as the peppers in my fajita, and it felt like it was being remote controlled by some whacked-out puppeteer. I looked around the table at all of them and knew it wouldn’t do me any good to fight it or deny it.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “He couldn’t stand me at first because he thought I wanted to copy his homework or something, but I think he knows different now.” I took another bite of my cardboard-flavored fajita.

“Well, he sounds like a very nice boy,” Karen said. “Maybe you could invite him over for supper one night.”

“Oh, man!” Nathan said. “That would be so cool. Maybe he could show me
en passant
.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, my phantom heart racing at the thought of Lew coming over. “I might even get you to teach me how to play, Nateman.”

Karen and Brad exchanged another amazed look, and I stuffed the rest of my fajita in my mouth to shut myself up.

Back in my room, I made a new e-mail account before replying to Flo’s message.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Redact this!

This seriously bites, Flo. I’d try to sue or something, but I’m sure it wouldn’t do me any good and all the lawyers are probably in hell anyway. I also think your department should have to pay a penalty for a screw-up like this. I hope your computers get a virus that replaces all your records with knock-knock jokes and bad puns.

Jada

I sent the message then decided to check FaceSpace again. Maybe I’d get lucky and find the perv who killed me before I geeked out completely and started a chess club pep squad or something equally pathetic.

Five more friend requests—four from guys whose profile pictures were bare torsos or flexed biceps, and one from a girl wearing a bikini made out of beads. I accepted them all and noticed something while checking out their walls: they all belonged to some of the same groups for “meeting other people looking to have some fun.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I typed
sugar daddy
in the search box, and seven groups came up. After I joined them all, I was able to look at the member list for each one. None of them used real pictures—at least not face shots—but I could look at their info pages and see if any of them listed the same obviously bogus stuff that BOSSMAN had put in his profile on the Sugar Daddy chat forum where I’d met him. Like how he enjoyed sailing his yachts and hand buffing his Ferrari collection. Yeah, he probably did some hand buffing all right, but not on any cars.

I found a couple of possibilities and sent them all friend requests. Once they started sending me private messages like I knew they would, I felt sure I’d recognize the lines BOSSMAN had used to hook up with me on the Sugar Daddy forum.

Before I logged off, I got another idea and typed Lew’s name into the search box. The first four that came up weren’t him, but the fifth one was
Lewis Mackenzie Stanton,
and the profile picture was a marble chess piece. Sidney, Leonard and Justin were all on his list of friends.

Since I obviously couldn’t send him a friend request from Cherry Licious, I made another account in Gwen’s name and sent the request along with a note that took me a ridiculous amount of time to compose and ended up saying nothing but
Hey from your chemistry partner.
I also sent requests to Sidney and the rest of the guys so it wouldn’t look like I was singling Lew out.

Within seconds, I got notifications that the nerd battalion had accepted my friend requests, but nothing from Lew. I left FaceSpace open in case I got another notification, making sure I was offline for chat so Sidney and the guys wouldn’t start sending me IMs.

Since the transdead weren’t immune to accumulated grime, I still had to shower and wash my hair like everyone else, so I got my pajamas and went into the bathroom. While I was standing under the pulsating stream from the massaging showerhead, I realized I missed little things like how good it felt for a hot shower to pound away the tension in sore muscles. I could feel the water hitting me, but I couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold. Apparently, the neurons and synapses of the transdead didn’t continue to transmit the way they did in the living.

Wait, what?

How the crap did I know anything about neurons or synapses? And not only that, I realized I suddenly understood how the whole nervous system operated. Great, my transformation into nerd girl obviously involved more than just crushing on chess players. I was turning into some kind of freaking brainiac myself. The super zombie strength had been cool, but this had to be the lamest superpower ever.

* * *

W
hen I got on the school bus the next morning, the guy from the day before stuck his foot out in the aisle in front of me. “Better watch your back, bitch.”

I smiled at him. “How’d you get that lump on your head, Tree Boy? Unless you want some foot pain to go along with that headache, you better move that smelly cross trainer outta my way.”

One of his hands wandered up to the back of his head. He muttered something about how I’d be getting mine, but he took his foot out of the aisle and didn’t meet any of the curious looks from the people around him.

“Yeah, I thought so,” I said before walking away and sitting in the first empty seat I came to. I’d always been able to deliver verbal punches to anybody who messed with me, but I liked knowing I could back it up with some brawn now if I needed to. I might’ve been a stuck-up, callous bitch in my former life, but I’d always hated bullies like this guy and the way Matt Winston treated Sid and his friends. Maybe I could add my own addendum to my assignment and let Jada the Pervert Slayer teach them not to pick on my friends.

I was still snickering to myself when I noticed the girl across the aisle—a mousy little thing wearing clothes that had to have been through at least two previous owners—looking at me curiously. I opened my mouth to ask her what the hell she was looking at, then I changed my mind and smiled at her instead. She looked startled for a second before smiling back at me.

I tilted my head in Tree Boy’s direction. “Hope that guy’s not a friend of yours.”

“Dougie? No way.” She frowned at the back of his head, then she leaned toward me and whispered, “You should’ve stomped on his foot.”

I laughed and stood up. “Hey, is it okay if I sit with you?”

“Sure.” She slid over to make room. “My name’s Annalee. What’s yours?”

“Gwen Stewart. I just transferred in yesterday.”

“Welcome to Bay Harbor, state champions in football, softball, and worst cafeteria food.”

I laughed again. “Yeah, it definitely tastes like cardboard to me. So why do you hate Tree Boy? What’d you say his name is—Dougie?”

She nodded. “Dougie Shaw, and he’s been a jerk since kindergarten. He used to break all the girls’ favorite crayons and laugh at us for crying. What’d he do to you?”

I shrugged. “He heard I was a foster kid and tried to give me a hard time about it.”

“Why do you call him Tree Boy?”

“Oh…” I scrambled to think of a believable story. “When he wouldn’t leave me alone, I sorta tripped him and made him crack his head on a tree.”

“God, I wish I could’ve seen that.” Annalee laughed loud enough to draw Dougie’s attention and make him glare at both of us. “I know a lot of people he’s been picking on for years who’ll be happy to start calling him by his new nickname.”

“Glad I could help.” I gave Dougie a little wave using just my middle finger, and Annalee giggled behind the book in her hands. I tapped it and said, “What’re you reading?”

She held up the paperback. “
The Grapes of Wrath
.”

I winced. “English assignment?”

“No, I’m working my way through a list of classics I got from the circulation manager at the library. He’s been trying to get me to come to his book discussion group, but I haven’t gotten up the nerve yet.”

“You’re reading classics because you
want
to?”

She looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m kinda weird like that. Most of them are a lot better than I expected, like this one. The only one I haven’t liked so far is
On The Road
.”

“What’s that?” I said. “Willie Nelson’s autobiography?”

She looked at me funny until she realized I was kidding, then she laughed. “I probably would’ve liked that better.”

I opened my mouth to make some smartass comment about how I’d rather have my eyelids stapled shut than have to read a book, but that’s not what came out.

“Hey, you think you could get me a copy of your list and mark the ones you like? Maybe I’ll give ‘em a look.”

Wait, what?

“You like to read?” She looked even more surprised to hear it than I was.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Mostly just popular stuff like Stephen King and Harry Potter, but maybe I’ll try something different.”

The lie came out so smoothly that I had to admire my deceptive skills even though I couldn’t believe how far I’d sunk into nerdhood. And the weirdest thing was that I knew I wasn’t doing it because I thought it might impress Lew or anything like that. No, I was pretending to be a bookworm because I really,
really
wanted Annalee to like me. Flo’s prediction about finding a friend had come true, and I could just imagine her smug look.

And wouldn’t you just know that the girl I wanted so much for Gwen’s BFF would be somebody so completely different from anyone I would’ve picked when I was Jada? But it could’ve been worse. At least Annalee wasn’t one of those perky cheerleader types who never stopped smiling and went around hugging everybody all the time.

She still looked like she thought I was pranking her about wanting the book list, but she said, “Okay, I’ll get a copy made at the library and give it to you in the morning. Unless you want to go there with me after school today.”

“Sure. Sounds great.” The words popped out of my mouth before I had time to clamp my hand over the traitorous orifice. “What time are you going?”

“Right after school. It’s close enough to walk from my bus stop.”

“Okay, I’ll get off at your stop and go with you.”

“Great.” She gave me another smile, and I resisted a sudden urge to hug her like one of the girls I’d been mocking a few seconds earlier.

Oh, yeah. Me and my new bestie chilling at the library. Maybe we could cruise by the reference section before we left to check out all the hot guys.

My sarcastic thoughts lost all their effect when I realized how much I was hoping Lew might be there and just how much my idea of a hot guy had changed since my untimely death.