Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) (14 page)

"That is completely beside the—"

"Feeling a little guilty, huh?"

I scowled right back at him. "Look. I know I can't keep you away from him. This is a free country—more or less. But I just want you to know that I'm on to you."

"Fine. You're on to me." He smirked at me. I'm normally a very nonviolent person, but I suddenly wanted to punch him in the face.

At that moment, however, I saw that Kevin had a black eye. I hadn't noticed it before because of the dim morning light. Somebody had already punched him in the face. Did it have something to do with his coming out?

"What?" said Kevin, a little defensively. He sensed that I'd noticed his black eye, and turned his head to one side.

"Nothing," I said, but I suddenly felt a little guilty. Had I been too hard on him? Even if his coming out was just part of a big scheme to get Russel back, and even if the school did now have openly queer kids, that didn't mean it had been easy.

I nodded to his car. "By the way. You left your headlights on."

*   *   *

Makeup and wardrobe turned me into a cheerleader again. They also gave my face a yellow tint, which I hoped just meant that we students had somehow started turning into zombies, and not that the makeup artist was horribly racist.

Back at the hospitality suite, I saw that Leah had also been dressed like a cheerleader. In fact, she was sitting with a couple of the other "cheerleaders" again. I didn't ignore her—I waved and sort of smiled—but I joined Russel, Gunnar, and Em, not her. I sensed Leah watching me from that other table, but she didn't come over. Clearly, she got the message I was transmitting.

A production assistant informed us they were dividing the extras into two groups.

"That'll be first and second unit," said Gunnar to Russel, Em, and me.

"What?" I said. Gunnar was back to making no sense.

He explained how half of us would be working with the director and stars, and the other half would be shooting backgrounds and exteriors with an assistant director.

I didn't care which group I ended up in—I just didn't want to be in the same one as Leah. It was awkward enough seeing her; I didn't want to have to actually
talk
to her too.

The production assistant split us into the two groups. Gunnar and I were in one group; Russel, Kevin, Em, and Leah were in the other one. I was genuinely surprised by how relieved I felt. It was almost like I was
afraid
to spend time next to Leah.

"All right!" said the production assistant. "Let's move out!"

Suddenly Russel stepped up next to me.

"Do you mind if we switch groups?" he asked.

"What?" I said. "
Why
?" This was terrible! It meant I'd have to be with Leah after all.

Russel leaned closer. "I'm trying to avoid Kevin."

I confess that at that moment, I was very, very annoyed with Russel.

"I don't think that's okay with the producers," I said. "Switching, I mean." The production assistant had said something about how important it was to stay in our groups.

Russel shook his head. "No, it's okay. I just asked."

"But—"

"What?"

I desperately tried to think of some reason to turn Russel down, but nothing came to mind. He didn't even know about Leah yet, and it was far too complicated to explain now. Besides, it was my fault that Kevin was there in the first place, so it made sense that I should be the one to make the sacrifice.

"Well, then," I said. "Okay."

"Thanks, Min," he said.

I forced out a smile and soldiered my way over to join Leah in the other group. It's impossible to avoid someone when you've been assigned to be in the same group—but that doesn't mean I didn't try. As the production assistants led us to where we were supposed to go, I did my best to stay on the other side of the cluster of extras. Em was in my group too, also dressed like a cheerleader.

"What's up?" she asked me.

"Huh?" I said. "Oh, not much."

"I think we're turning into zombies."

"What?"

Em pointed to her face. "The yellow makeup? I think the transformation has begun."

Only now did I realize that the faces of all us teenage extras had been given a yellow tint, not just mine. I'd been too distracted before by Leah to notice.

"Oh, right," I said. "That makes sense."

A few minutes later, we reached the school gymnasium. It was an old-style gym, with dingy paint and a bruised and battered hardwood floor. It smelled like an antique shop, a mix of moisture and crusty old varnish. The camera had already been set up, and once again it looked like a typical gymnasium in front of the camera, and a hi-tech catastrophe behind it. A swarm of assistants buzzed around the director, which told me that I'd been chosen for the first unit, the one with the actual actors.

"You," said a production assistant to Leah. "Get together with the other cheerleaders."

Of course he wanted Leah to stand next to Em and me. Leah hesitated, but I knew she had no choice but to do what the assistant had said.

"Hi," she said, not looking me in the eye.

"Hi," I said. Since she wasn't looking me in the eye, I saw no reason to keep looking her in the eye. In a minute, I knew they'd start rolling, so maybe I wouldn't have to talk to her after all. If this scene was like all the others, however, I knew there'd be lots of waiting around between takes.

A production assistant pointed out our "marks," which was where we extras were supposed to stand during the filming. A group of jocks in gym shorts, one of whom was Kevin, was pretending to play basketball.

"Okay," said the production assistant to us three cheerleaders. "Just act like you're practicing a cheer."

"Practicing a
cheer
?" I said dubiously.

The production assistant must have heard the note of panic in my voice, because she said, "It's okay if it looks awkward. You're turning into zombies, remember?" She demonstrated what she wanted us to do—clearly the very simplest of cheerleading moves. "Just like this," she said. "Over and over again. You can make sounds, but it'll all be rerecorded later anyway."

"Well," I said. "Okay."

"All right!" called the director, "let's try a rehearsal! Rolling! And
action
!"

Leah and I stood on our marks with Em. Pom-poms in hand, I tried to act the way the production assistant had showed us.

"No, no!" said the director. "You there!"

He was pointing right at me.

"Huh?" I said.

"Not
that
out of synch!" he said. "You're not a zombie yet!"

I buried my face in my pom-poms. "Oh, my God, I'm so bad I don't even make a good zombie-cheerleader," I moaned.

Leah heard me. "You'll be fine," she said gently. "Here, do it like this."

I looked up, and she demonstrated the cheerleader move again, very slowly.

"Wow," I said, forgetting to be uncomfortable around her. "You're good at this."

I tried my best to imitate her, and I guess I did okay, because at least the director didn't single me out for utter humiliation again.

Soon the real actors materialized on the set, and we began filming. The actors had some dialogue about their classmates, how worried they were about whatever was happening to us, zombie-wise.

There's a funny thing about acting, however: if you act a certain way, you start to
feel
a certain way. By acting like a cheerleader, even a part-zombie-cheerleader, I couldn't help feeling happy. Feeling happy, meanwhile, reminded me how I had felt around Leah that first night out.

After a couple of takes, the director had to talk with the actors, so we extras had some time to ourselves.

Leah stepped in close to me. Between her pom-poms and my pom-poms, it felt like we were all alone somewhere in a thicket of bushes.

"Look," she said quietly. "I've been thinking about what we talked about at that movie. About coming out? I think I sounded a little casual. Believe me, this isn't casual to me. I have thought about coming out. A lot."

"You have?" I said.

"Yeah. It's just... complicated. Up until now, I thought I'd made the right decision. But I can see it's bothering you, and I want you to know that I don't know what's going to be right for me a few months from now."

"Really?"

"Really," said Leah. "But for the time being, I just want to wait and see."

"That makes sense," I said. "I wouldn't want you to come out for my sake anyway. It's got to be because you want to do it."

I hadn't been expecting Leah to bring up what we'd talked about on Wednesday. Still, I appreciated her attempt to clear the air. Moreover, what she had said really did make sense.

"Places, everyone!" called the director, interrupting us. "Let's do another take!"

*   *   *

That afternoon, we shot some scenes in the school hallway. First the camera just zoomed in on the door of the principal's office while we yellow-skinned extras walked awkwardly back and forth in front of it. I think it was supposed to be ominous.

Next we did the same thing to the door of the nurse's office and the janitor's storeroom.

They hadn't told us much about the actual plot of
Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies
. Most of what I knew was what I'd been able to deduce from the scenes where I'd been in the background as an extra. It starts when a teenager named Brad moves to a new town. On the first day at his new high school, he sees all the other students clustered in tight little cliques, viciously attacking anyone new or different. On that first day, he also meets Christy, who is drop-dead gorgeous, but who the other students reject because she wears her hair in a ponytail. The point here, I'm sure, was to suggest that most of the teenagers in town were already mindless zombies of some sort. Leah may not have liked that the movie had a point, but at least it was one that I could wholeheartedly agree with.

As the days go by, Brad and Christy quickly discern that the other students in their school are turning more zombielike every day—stumbling around stiffly, becoming decreasingly verbal. It's almost as if something is sucking out their very souls. The question is, who is sucking the souls out, how, and why? The suspects are apparently the fat, bald principal, the buxom
Playboy
-centerfold-turned-school-nurse, and the macho school janitor.

Despite knowing all this, however, I was no closer to learning what a "brain zombie" is.

"Hey," said Leah to me between takes, "you want to get dinner again tonight after the shoot?"

"Dinner?" I said.

"Yeah, we can talk some more about, well, what we were talking about before. Besides, you owe me."

I narrowed my eyes. "For what?"

"For teaching you how to not look like an idiot with the pom-poms!"

I couldn't deny it. The truth is, I felt much better about Leah now. It was what she had said before, about how meeting me had started her pondering about coming out.

"Okay," I said. "Let's get some dinner."

Point of fact: if Russel hadn't wanted to switch units with me, I might not have been forced to talk to Leah, and we might not have made up. As I was thinking about this, I realized that the first time we'd talked was also because of Russel—because he'd gotten his plastic number mixed up with mine.

In short, I had him to thank for this new relationship of mine, and he didn't even know it.

We went back to that Ethiopian restaurant on McKenzie Street. We had said we were going to talk more about her decision to come out, or not, but it didn't come up. I guess we both concluded that, for the time being, there wasn't anything more to be said.

Dinner was good, but not like it was the first time around. It's possible that what was different wasn't the restaurant, but Leah, or at least the fact that my feelings toward her were a little more wary now.

After dinner, we decided to meander along McKenzie Street again. Thanksgiving was the following Thursday, and the street and the shops that lined the sidewalk had now been decorated for Christmas. So much had changed in just a week; it was like a completely different street. Fairy lights twinkled in the bare branches of the trees along the sidewalk, and the air smelled of peppermint hot chocolate and wet cardboard. Everywhere we looked, stars glittered, mangers glowed, and in the windows of all the shops, distorted reflections of Leah and me undulated on the surface of a hundred colored Christmas balls.

"So," said Leah. "The movie. Who do you think is turning the school into zombies? The principal, the nurse, or the janitor?"

"That's a good question," I said. "I think it's the nurse. There's like three female speaking roles in the whole movie, so it would just figure that one of them turns out to be the villain. It's either the nurse, or someone completely off the radar. One of the other students maybe? The captain of the football team?"

"I think it's the janitor," said Leah.

"Really? No. That's too obvious. It's
always
the janitor. That's a cliche."

"Maybe so, but I still think it's him."

"I think you're wrong."

We walked on in silence. Somewhere in the distance, a Christmas ornament shattered. Was all this a sign? Was something about Leah and me fundamentally wrong?

We passed the shop with the cardboard cutout of Princess Leia in the metal bikini. A lot had changed since last week, but not everything.

Leah stopped suddenly.

"What?" I said.

She had spied something farther down the sidewalk. "Nothing. Just some friends of mine. From school."

"Really? Let's say hi." The truth is, I was exceedingly curious about these "friends" of hers.

"Oh." Leah shrugged. "I don't know."

"What? Ashamed of me?"

"No!" said Leah. I had meant it as a joke, but Leah had responded so quickly I wondered if maybe she really was ashamed of me. "I mean," she went on, "you can meet them if you want."

"Okay."

Leah treaded lightly down that sidewalk, as if she were walking on crossbeams in the attic and was worried that she might step through the ceiling.

I didn't see her friends anywhere. The only other high school students on McKenzie Street right then were three cheerleaders on the corner. They had donned jackets, with sweatpants under their skirts, as if they'd been outside for a while. They'd transformed a plastic garbage can into a big, hollow papier-mache turkey and were using it to solicit donations for a local food bank.

I turned to Leah. "Wait.
Those
aren't your friends, are they?"

Right then, one of the cheerleaders-in-sweats noticed us.

"Leah?" she said. "Is that
you
?"

"Yeah," said Leah. "Hi, Dade, hi, Savannah, hi, Alexis."

We walked the rest of the way to the corner. Having been on the movie set all day, I was used to seeing people dressed up like cheerleaders. These three, however, weren't just dressed like cheerleaders; they really
were
cheerleaders. The differences were subtle but profound. Diamond stud earrings, for example—practical given all the jumping required, but clearly expensive. The hair was different too: styled, not cut; swept, not curled.

"What is that you're
wearing
?" one of the other girls—Savannah—said to Leah. She meant the navy Union jacket with the epaulets, which Leah had on again today.

"This?" said Leah. "I just thought it looked fun. Dade, Alexis, Savannah," she quickly went on, "this is Min. She's one of the extras from that movie I was telling you about."

"Oh," said Dade, blinking at me. "Hi."

"Nice to meet you," said Savannah.

"Great turkey," I said. "Really clever."

I couldn't help but think that Leah's friends were staring at my purple hair. Or maybe it was the fact that I'm Asian. I wasn't sure what they were looking at, but I definitely had that on-display feeling. I also detected a foul smell wafting over us from somewhere nearby—a tipped garbage can maybe.

"So," said Leah. "What are you guys up to?"

Dade sighed. "What does it look like? It's so not fair. Crystal, Cyndee, and Veronica got to go to the mall—this part of town totally gives me the creeps. And what is with that
smell
? I think there's a dead body in that alley back there!"

Alexis leaned toward Leah and me. "Total college boy-babe at twelve o'clock."

Leah made a perfunctory glance over her shoulder. "Oh, yeah, very cute. Listen," she said to her friends. "Min has to get home, so I'll see you around, okay?"

"Okay," said Savannah. "Bye!"

"Bye, Min!" said Dade. She made the "phone" sign with her thumb and little finger and waggled in the general vicinity of her ear. "Leah,
call me
!"

*   *   *

"
Cheerleaders
?" I said to Leah a few minutes later, once we'd left her friends back around the corner. "Your friends are cheerleaders?"

"What?" said Leah defensively. "What's wrong with cheerleaders?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

"That's just pure prejudice, you know that? You're just relying on stereotypes."

"Is that right?" I said. "'Crystal, Cyndee, and Veronica got to go to the mall—this part of town totally gives me the creeps'! 'Total college boy-babe at twelve o'clock'!"

Leah held up her hands. "Okay, okay! They're stupid and superficial! I told you that already, remember?"

"You did, but what you didn't say is
why
they're your friends!"

"They just are, okay? Why is that any of your business? I've known them a long time. They've got good qualities too, you know."

"And what was that they were saying about your clothes?"

Leah tried to shrug it off. "This just isn't what I usually wear, okay?"

"Well, what do you usually—" Suddenly, however, I knew the answer. "Oh my God! You're a cheerleader too! Aren't you? That's why you made such a good cheerleader back at the shoot. Because you
are
one!" Why hadn't this occurred to me before?

This made Leah angry. "No, I'm not! I told you I wasn't, and I don't appreciate your accusing me of lying. I was a cheerleader in the seventh grade. But I hurt my knee, and I had to drop out."

"You hurt your knee? You didn't mention that before!"

"What difference does
that
make?"

"The difference," I said like I was hurling a thunderbolt, "is that if you hadn't injured your knee, I bet you'd
still
be a cheerleader!"

"Maybe! So what? How is that a lie?"

"It's like you changed everything about yourself!" I gestured at her. "Like this is all an act."

"I
did
change everything!" said Leah, exasperated. "Because I wanted to meet some new friends! I told you that too. Yeah, maybe I even wanted to find a girlfriend. So yeah, I changed my hair a little, took off some of my makeup, and got some new clothes. So? That was the whole point. I wanted to meet
new
friends.
Different
friends. If I'd dressed the way I usually dress, I just would have ended up with the same old friends."

I turned away. "It just seems... dishonest." Like everything about her, I thought. I acknowledge, however, that technically she hadn't lied about any of this.

Leah faced me and took my hands in hers, even though her friends were still just one block over. "Look," she said. "I'm sure this must be very weird for you. But that person that I am when I'm with my other friends? That's the act. The person I am with you? This is the real me."

I looked up at her. "Really?"

"Really."

I tried to take all this in. "Okay. I'm sorry I overreacted."

"It's okay," she said with a smile. I couldn't help but notice, however, that the second I had apologized, she released both my hands.

*   *   *

That Monday during after-school tea with my mother, I filled her in on everything that had happened with Leah so far.

"That's not good," said my mom, unwrapping her Ding Dong.

If you had told me six months earlier that I'd be sitting having tea with my mother taking about girl problems, I would
not
have believed you. However, had you told me that she'd be wearing a horrible denim jumpsuit at the time, which she was, that I definitely would have believed.

"So what do I do?" I asked. "I really like her. But those friends of hers! They're terrible. I can't imagine what she sees in them."

"You're not dating her friends," said my mom. "You're dating her."

"But they
are
her friends. They make me question what I see in Leah. First, it was her attitude about coming out. Now this."

My mom sipped her tea. Her placid demeanor was beyond annoying. When she wanted to, she could still play the quiet Chinese wife.

"
What
?" I asked. "You can say what you really think."

"My mother used to tell me this little story," said my mom. "It's a fable. There was a priest who lived in a cave in the mountains above a village. He was a very virtuous man, and when he came to town to teach, the whole village would stop and listen to him. In exchange for the wisdom of his teachings, the villages would give him the food and other things he needed to live."

"Wait," I said. "You're actually telling me a fable to make a point? Do people really
do
that?"

"Just hush," said my mom. "Anyway, the priest liked that the village thought so highly of him. He thought very highly of himself, for he knew that he was the wisest, most virtuous person in the whole countryside."

"And how exactly does this story relate to me?" I said. "You think I'm sanctimonious?"

"A little," said my mom.

"
What
?" I said, but it was mostly false outrage. Like me, my mom could be pretty blunt, but that was part of what I liked about her.

"You're not hushing. Just eat your Ding Dong and listen, okay? Anyway, one day the priest thought, Why should I travel all the way down to the village to teach? I am the one with the wisdom. The villagers should be the ones to come up
here
. And so he waited. Down in the village, the villagers wondered what had happened to the priest. They hiked up to his cave, where the priest explained that if they still wanted to hear his teachings, from now on they would have to come to him."

"Did they come?" I asked. I was still offended that my mom had called me sanctimonious, but I was intrigued by the story.

My mom nodded. "They did indeed. The priest would have the villagers gather in a big cavern in the middle of his cave, and he would teach. And did he teach! He dazzled them with his great wisdom. It got so he never even needed to leave his cave at all."

"But?" I said.

"But what?" said my mom, taking a bite of her own Ding Dong.

"Oh, please. He was a jerk to the villagers. These things always have a way of backfiring."

My mom smiled. "Well, one day he woke, and it seemed as if his body had magically grown bigger overnight. At first he thought it was all in his imagination. But the next day, he had grown bigger still. After a few days, even the villagers started to notice it. When they asked him about his sudden growth, he said, 'Well, as you all know, I am so much wiser and more pure than most people. And now that my soul has grown so big, my body had no choice but to grow bigger too, to keep up with it!'"

"Uh-huh," I said. "What did I say? Karmic revenge."

"As the days and weeks went by, the priest kept growing larger still, until he was a giant. Which is only fitting! thought the priest. I have always been a giant among men. Now I am an
actual
giant! In all this time, however, the priest had not left the cave. But one day he decided he wanted to see the sunrise over the mountains. And when he went to leave the cave—"

"He found he had grown too large to get out," I said.

"Exactly," said my mother. "Well, the priest thought, so I can't leave the cave. The villagers will still come to me, to hear my great wisdom. But then one day, a new teacher came to the village, one who had new teachings, things they had not heard before. Soon the fickle villagers had forgotten all about the priest in the cave."