Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) (17 page)

Finally, I understood what Kevin was doing. He wasn't just telling Russel that it was over between the two of them, as I had suggested. He was going one step further: he was trying to make Russel hate him. He was telling lies so that Russel would never want to have anything to do with him again. The result would be far more effective than what I had had in mind. If Kevin succeeded, Russel wouldn't even love him anymore. The question was, would Russel truly believe it?

"So it was all lies?" Russel was saying. "When you said you still loved me? You were just messing around?"

"Hey, I'm an athlete," said Kevin superciliously. "It's a game. And this was one game I wanted to win. I lost the first time around, so I wanted a rematch. I wanted to prove I could win. And I did. I got you to pick me over Otto. But that's all it was. Just a game."

This is what I had accused Kevin of. He had said it to Russel like it was the truth, even though I now knew it wasn't. If there had been any doubt in my mind before about whether he really loved Russel, there wasn't anymore. He loved Russel so much he was pretending to hate him, just so Russel could have a real chance with some new guy. What kind of person made a sacrifice like this? Who was really that selfless? Maybe Xena, Warrior Princess, but she is a TV character, not a real person.

I'd been completely wrong about Kevin. He wasn't a selfish weasel. If he ever had been, he had somehow changed in the last eight months. Otto was still right for Russel, and they deserved a chance to see if the relationship could work. Kevin, meanwhile, had once done a very bad thing to Russel, and it was a past mistake that he definitely had to atone for. Still, by stepping aside to make way for Otto, Kevin was making amends, and more. I, meanwhile, was the only one to witness it.

Would Russel see through his ruse? In order for Kevin's impossible sacrifice to work, Russel could never know the truth. He had to believe Kevin's words completely. If he ever learned what Kevin had done for him, Russel would just love him even more.

I was dying to hear what Russel would say, how he would react. Meanwhile, somewhere overhead, the tree-tops rustled quietly, like the sound of sand slipping down through an hourglass.

*   *   *

I, of course, had my own problems. Even after the episode in the park was over, I wasn't ready to go home, so I went for a walk. Somehow I found myself back on McKenzie Street, the same place where Leah and I had come twice before. It wasn't yet nine, so college students still ambled along the sidewalks, Christmas shopping and stopping into the cafes for late bites to eat.

I was so confused. I liked Leah a lot; I had thought that maybe I could even love her. That said, there are certain lines in life that are firm, that shouldn't ever be crossed, and tolerating bigotry crosses one of those lines. What did it say about me that I would even consider dating a person who asked me to violate my principles? Next she would be asking me to stop dyeing my hair, or to slip out the back door when her friends stopped by. That would mean I was right back to where I had been with my first girlfriend, Terese, with a relationship in hiding. That was not a place that I was ever willing to go to again.

As I neared the end of the street, I saw that Leah's friends Dade, Savannah, and Alexis were back out soliciting donations for their papier-mache turkey.

This was very stupid on my part. Why hadn't it occurred to me that her friends would be here again? I was all set to spin away in disgust. At the last second, however, something about them caught my eye. I decided to watch them for a moment. I wasn't worried about them recognizing me; I was a good twenty feet away, and they didn't seem like the type who paid too much attention to faces.

They were dancing to the sound of a tinny Christmas carol emanating from one of the storefronts. As the three of them swayed and twirled, the guys passing by on the sidewalk definitely took notice.

How, I wondered, could these possibly be Leah's friends? What was next, letting frat boys stuff donations into their G-strings?

Dade lifted a tiny pink plastic wand and started gently puffing out glimmering soap bubbles. Savannah and Alexis dipped their wands into the container of soap and blew some bubbles of their own. They fluttered out at the passers-by. Dade laughed, motioning people toward the papier-mache turkey bin. Savannah flirted with a college professor type; he blushed at the attention but dug into his wallet for a contribution.

Okay, so maybe their dancing wasn't overtly sexual. Maybe they were just flirting and having fun, trying to drum up some donations.

They
were
having fun. A lot of it. Good, innocent fun, all in the name of a legitimate cause.

Suddenly something occurred to me. This scene—the bubbles, the laughing, the twirling to late-night Christmas carols—was exactly what I was asking Leah to give up. If she came out as a lesbian, it was a good bet that she wouldn't be standing on a sidewalk next Thanksgiving, laughing and blowing bubbles at the frat boys with her high school cheerleader-friends. Moreover, this was only one of the many moments that she would have to forfeit. Sure, she'd have her own fun with her new lesbian and lesbian-tolerant friends, but she'd definitely be sacrificing something.

Suddenly Dade looked over at me.

"Min?" she said.

"Oh," I said. I hadn't expected to be recognized. "Yes."

There was no point in trying to evade them now, so I toddled closer.

"Hi, Dade," I said tentatively. "Hi Savannah, hi Alexis. I didn't quite recognize you guys."

"We recognized you!" said Savannah. "How could we not? God, you're all Leah talks about these days."

This surprised me. "Leah talks about me?"

'Yeah," said Dade. "She really likes you. She wants us to like you too." She blew another shimmering chain of bubbles. "She doesn't have to worry about that. Any friend of Leah's is a friend of ours." She held her plastic wand out toward me. "Hey, you wanna blow some bubbles?"

"No," I said. "That's okay. But thanks."

Leah talked about me with her friends, and she wanted me to be friends with them?

I confess, now I was
really
confused.

The next day, Saturday, I had another early morning makeup call. Leah didn't show up at the movie set, which was fine with me, because I didn't know what I would say to her if she did. Russel and Otto weren't there either, but I'd expected this, since today was the day when Otto was flying home. I was dying to hear Russel's version of what had happened the night before. Kevin was another no-show.

Makeup and wardrobe dressed me as a zombie again, but for the first time, they didn't transform me into a cheerleader. Today, I became a zombie-goth, with a coat of smeared black makeup underneath my zombie makeup. It was pretty funny when you thought about it: the idea of some high school student who worshipped death turning into a zombie. I had been stripped of my pom-poms, but at least I got to keep my purple hair at last.

The first scene was back in the computer lab. Brad and Christy, the two movie leads, discover exactly how someone is turning the whole school into zombies. It's an online computer game so mesmerizing that you can't help but play it; but the more you play, the more it drains your soul, until, finally, you turn into a zombie. In other words, Russel had been right about why the students were transforming into zombies, even if I still didn't know exactly who was responsible.

They weren't shooting close-ups, and the whole computer sequence was a special effect that was going to be added later, so I had no idea if the computer game actually looked mesmerizing or not.

The zombie extras, including Gunnar and myself, just had to sit in the back of the computer lab, mindlessly punching at the keyboard. The joke, of course, was that certain kids are so geeky that they're still online even after being turned into zombies.

"They won't let me see the rushes," said Gunnar glumly as we waited for them to get the cameras ready.

"What?" I said.

"The daily rushes. That's the footage that is shot on a movie in any given day. They show them every night in the school auditorium. I heard one of the production assistants talking about it, and I asked if I could sit in. But they said no. They said only the 'name' actors can see the rush prints."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "Can we talk for a sec?"

He looked up from his blank computer screen. "Definitely."

I elucidated everything that had happened since we'd last spoken.

"I think I understand Leah's point of view," I said. "She's not a bad person. She just doesn't want to have to choose between her friends and being a lesbian. And she has been honest with me, more or less. But I just wonder if someone like her and someone like me are a good match. We're in such different places. So I can't decide if we should even be together."

Gunnar stroked his chin, looking uncommonly self-conscious. "That reminds me of this story," he said.

Great, I thought. Suddenly everyone felt the need to tell me a story.

"Every summer my family goes to Echo Lake for vacation," he said. "It's way out in the middle of nowhere."

"Yes, I know," I said. "So?"

"So a few years ago, I decided to go for a walk in the woods. I walked all afternoon, way up into the mountains. I could tell the trail wasn't used very often, but I kept walking anyway. Finally, I decided to turn around. But as I was hiking back to the lake, I came to this fork in the trail. I didn't remember a fork in the trail! I started to panic. Which way had I come? How did I get home? I knew I had to choose, but both trails looked exactly the same to me."

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"I knew I had the answer somewhere inside me. I
had
come this way before, right? So I relaxed my brain and centered myself, and I tried to cast my mind backward. I stared at both trails until I thought I knew which one was right. Finally, I looked at the trail on the right and thought, That's the one. So that's the one I went down."

"And it was the right one," I said. "Gunnar, I'm not sure—"

"No!" said Gunnar. "I'd picked the
wrong
trail! Before I knew it, I'd walked right into this patch of nettles. And that's not all! I ended up all covered in ticks. And later, I got sick, and I was certain that I'd contracted Lyme disease."

I stared at him. "What are you saying? You picked the wrong trail?"

"Did I?" said Gunnar cryptically. "
Did
I pick the wrong trail? I'm here, aren't I?"

I glowered at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I obviously made it home, right? I lived, right?"

"But what about the nettles and ticks and Lyme disease?"

"Oh, sure," said Gunnar. "I wish I'd picked that other path first. But at least I picked one. Because if I hadn't, I'd still be standing up in those woods."

I finally saw Gunnar's point. Making a choice, any choice, is better than standing around dithering forever. I had to either give it a try with Leah, or not. If I did choose Leah, I had to give it my all. In the end, I'd either learn she was right for me, or I'd end up covered in ticks and nettle stings.

I was now completely convinced that Gunnar evinced no signs of Asperger's syndrome whatsoever.

"That's a good story," I admitted.

"It better be," said Gunnar. "It's the second time in two days that I've told it."

*   *   *

According to Gunnar, I just needed to make a decision. That, however, was easier said than done.
Did
I want to give it a try with Leah? That was the real question. Did I want to see if being with her led to ticks and nettles, or did I want to just walk away now with my integrity intact?

The very next scene was another one in a school hallway. This time, all I had to do was lurch disjointedly around while two zombie-cheerleaders pantomimed some mocking of my goth wardrobe; nearby, a zombie-jock was thrashing on a zombie-nerd. In the foreground, meanwhile, Brad and Christy had some dialogue together. I wasn't really listening. I was still thinking about what to do with Leah.

"There's only one person who had access to those computer labs after-hours!" said the actor playing Brad.

"Who?" said the actress playing Christy.

Suddenly the actor playing the janitor stepped into the scene behind Brad and Christy.

"So you finally figured it out, did you?" said the janitor.

"
You
?" said Christy. "You're the one who's been turning the whole school into zombies? But why?"

I looked directly over at the actors, even though we weren't supposed to do that while the cameras were rolling. I couldn't help myself, and could only hope that I was off camera at the time. I just couldn't believe that the
janitor
was the culprit. How was that possible? It was a total cliché! I had been
certain
it was the nurse or the captain of the football team—anyone but the janitor.

Could I have been wrong about a few other things as well?

*   *   *

After the shoot, I drove straight to Leah's house. I was still wearing my zombie-goth makeup, but I didn't care. Her mother opened the door.

"Hi," I said. "Is Leah here?"

"Oh," she said. "You're from the zombie movie, right?"

"How'd you know?"

"Just a guess. She's up in her room."

Upstairs, I knocked on Leah's door. She told me to come in, and I entered and closed the door firmly behind me.

She was sitting at her computer. When she saw my makeup, she laughed.

"A zombie-goth!" she said. "That's
hilarious
!"

I didn't even smile.

"I think I might love you," I said evenly.

She stopped laughing. "Yeah," she said. "I think I might love you too."

"I want to give this a try."

Leah crossed and sat on the bed. "Me too."

"I can understand how you don't want to just throw your old life away," I said. "I wouldn't either. And I won't make you. It's okay with me if you don't want to come out, and I won't tell your friends that I'm bi, or that we're a couple."

"Thanks, Min. I really appreciate that."

"But," I said, "I have a couple of conditions for you too."

"Okay. That's only fair."

"One, no more homophobic comments or jokes, ever. If your friends make them, we speak up. I don't care if it looks suspicious. I won't be around that, and I won't tolerate it. It makes me feel too horrible. Same goes for racism or any other kind of prejudice."

Leah nodded. I think she knew I had a point.

"Two," I said. "I won't disappear or go into hiding. If I'm going to be a part of your life, I want to be a part of your life. That includes spending time with your friends. If you like them, somehow I'll learn to like them. But I won't do the whole relationship-in-hiding thing. I'm not going to disappear into the shadows, not for you, not for anyone, ever again. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

I thought for a second, but realized that I'd said everything I'd come to say.

"Well, then," I said at last. "I think we've effectively completed our negotiations." I tapped my foot. "Now if only we had some way to seal this agreement. Some way to consummate the arrangement."

A smile tugged at Leah's lips. "Yeah, some symbolic gesture."

I flitted closer to the bed. "We could sign some kind of document."

"Too formal," said Leah. "Besides, I don't have any clean paper."

I sat down next to her on the bed. It squeaked. "We could shake hands."

"That's an idea," she said. "I like that it's physical. But I still don't think that's quite right."

"Hmmm." I turned to face her on the bed; the mattress sagged, so we were being drawn together. "Well, what else could we do? How else do people seal these things?" I leaned closer still, until my lips were almost touching hers.

Then they touched.

We kissed.

Before we could get too far, however, Leah suddenly stiffened.

"What?" I said.

"I just realized! Dade, Alexis, and Savannah are on their way over here right now!"

In other words, the terms of our agreement were about to be put to their first test.