Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) (18 page)

Dade, Savannah, and Alexis descended upon Leah's bedroom like a herd of elephants—well, bulimic elephants wearing $150 perfumes. Leah's room was once again reminiscent of a crowded elevator, one I suddenly wished I'd never set foot in.

"Hey, Min," said Savannah. By this time, I'd washed off my zombie-goth makeup.

"Hey, guys," I said. Leah's friends made me nervous, but I confess I wasn't getting any weirdness from them now, about my purple hair or being Asian or anything.

"What are you guys up to?" asked Leah.

"It's a Saturday night," said Dade. "What else? Pore strips!"

"Pardon me?" I said.

Dade held up a plastic bag from a nearby drugstore. "Pore strips! You know, those little sticky strips that you put on your face, let dry, and rip 'em off, so they suck out your blackheads?"

Leah looked chagrined. "It's kind of a tradition with us."

"Yeah," said Alexis, "and afterward, we tell ghost stories and eat cookie dough ice cream and braid each other's hair."

"Either that or go out and get stoned," said Savannah.

Everyone laughed. I did too. I concede that Leah's friends could sometimes be funny.

Dade hauled out four boxes of pore strips. The directions called for washing our faces prior to application, so that's what we did. Then everyone peeled the backs off and stuck the strips to their cheeks, noses, and foreheads. They smelled clean, like alcohol and paste.

"Now what?" I said.

"Now we wait for them to dry," said Dade.

"And talk," said Savannah. "Usually we play Truth or Dare. Min, you're first."

"Savannah!" said Dade. "Don't be a bitch." To me, she said, "Savannah's just kidding. Well, about the Truth or Dare part, not about the talking part."

I laughed. "It's fine. You can ask whatever you want." It was fine. Leah and I had an agreement. I was determined to be part of her life with her friends, and I wasn't going to tolerate their homophobia. Before this evening was over, I was going to find out if Leah could really accept that.

"I heard that Declan McDonnell is starring in that movie you guys are working on," said Dade. "Is that true?" This was the actor playing Brad. Russel had mentioned that he'd once been on some television show, but I had no idea that anyone else actually knew who he was.

"Oh," I said. "Yes, it is."

"God!" said Alexis. "He's so hot!"

Savannah smacked Leah on the arm. "Why didn't you tell us! I would have done it if I'd known he was in it. Have you seen him?"

"Oh, sure," said Leah. "He's in most of the scenes. But we're not supposed to talk to him."

"What's he like?" asked Savannah.

"I have no idea," I admitted. "I haven't really paid any attention."

"You
haven't
?" said Savannah. "Why not?"

"I don't know," I said lamely. "I guess he's not really my type."

"Like I said," said Leah, trying to bail me out, "we're not really supposed to talk to the stars."

This was not going well. How was I supposed to spend time with Leah's friends if I couldn't find any common ground?

"What is your type?" Dade asked me.

"Huh?" I said.

"Guys. What kind of guys do you like?"

Leah looked at me. I think she wondered how I was going to answer this particular question. Still, I am bi; I could answer it more or less truthfully.

"Oh, you know," I said with a shrug. "Just guys. Are these supposed to itch?" I meant the strips plastered all over my face.

"Yeah," said Leah. "When it dries, the skin gets all tight. That means it's working."

"No, seriously," said Dade to me. "Sensitive guys? Nah, you'd so scare 'em off. I bet you're into bad boys, right? God, I
love
bad boys!"

What was I supposed to say to that? I hated macho jerks and the vapid teenage girls who made them popular. That said, if I started hyperventilating about sexism, Leah's friends were certain to think I was a total freak. If I kept that up, it wouldn't be long until they started asking questions about Leah too.

Right then I realized that there was a big contradiction inherent in my agreement with Leah: I'd said I wouldn't out myself or Leah, but that I wanted to spend time with her and her friends. However, if I did spend time with them, it was only a matter of time before I more or less outed myself.

If I was completely honest about things, that is.

I glanced at Leah. She looked genuinely scared, like she'd fallen down a deep well into ice-cold water, and no one except me knew she was there. Would I abandon her at this crucial time?

Wait, I thought: Leah's friends' stopping by was supposed to be a test of Leah, not me. This was ironic.

Finally, I said to Dade, "Well, yes. I like a good bad boy now and then."

"Yeah, I bet," mewed Savannah.

I sighed dreamily—or as dreamily as I know how. "I like it when a guy just, you know, takes
charge
," I said. "Makes
decisions
. I can't stand those wimpy guys that are always staring at you with puppy dog eyes, waiting to see what it is you want."

"Oh, God yeah!" said Savannah. "So milquetoast."

What was I doing? What I was saying went against everything I believed about guys
and
girls. This was like the end of that movie
The Graduate
and a million other movies, only in reverse. Rather than stand up and boldly proclaim my love for Leah, damn the consequences, I was doing the exact opposite. I was pretending to be a different person completely. This, however, was more or less what I had promised Leah.

"I like a guy with dirty fingernails," I said. "And a light sheen of sweat on his back. All these women who complain about razor burn? I like razor burn! It means a guy's got testosterone. And I like boxers, not briefs, and don't even get me started on bikini briefs. And no hair gel! What is that about? Hair gel is for girls, not guys."

"Amen, sister!" said Dade. "Down with metrosexuals."

Leah looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. She knew exactly what I was doing—that in a way I was proclaiming my love for her, just as boldly as the end of
The Graduate
and all those other movies. No, I wasn't sacrificing everything to do the right thing, like Xena, Warrior Princess. Then again, I didn't have an evil past to atone for. Even so, I was still making a serious compromise. Leah, meanwhile, was the only person who knew exactly what sacrifice I was making, which is exactly the way it should have been.

"Lousy penmanship!" howled Alexis. "That's a sign that a man is a real
animal
. I mean, how many gorillas are out there writing novellas?"

"I like a guy with a rumbly voice," said Savannah. "I feel like I can feel it all the way down in my gut."

As her friends fanned the flames that I had lit, I sat down on the bed next to Leah. Because of the saggy springs, our thighs touched again. She didn't look at me, and I didn't look at her, but we both knew what each other was thinking.

It's funny how complicated life can be. The only way to stick to my principles was to not stick to my principles? I never would have predicted this.

"Okay!" Dade announced at last. "It's time for the pore strip stripping."

"It's going to hurt, isn't it?" I said.

"A little," said Savannah. "But it's like a Band-Aid. The faster you do it, the less it hurts."

"Ready?" said Dade. "Nose strip first!"

"Ready," we all said.

"Pull!"

We pulled.

It only hurt a little.

"Compare!" commanded Dade.

"Compare?" I said.

"Blackheads," said Leah, nodding down to her own strip. Little black and brown spikes, like thorns, poked up from the surface of the white plastic.

"Oh my God, you can
see
them!" I had never used these pore strips before—had never even
considered
using them—so I'd had no idea how they worked.

Everyone laughed—not at me, but with me, at my obviously sincere amazement.

"
Compare
!" Dade repeated.

We compared. Savannah "won" with the thickest, darkest blackheads.

"Oooooooo!" said Dade.

"That is so disgusting," said Alexis.

"I can't believe that all came off of my nose!" wailed Savannah.

"Oh, Savannah, you
always
say that," said Leah.

"Ready forehead strips," announced Dade.

"Now here's where Savannah gets her revenge," said Leah to me. "Alexis always loses the forehead strip."

I pulled, but at the same time I was thinking about all of this. I was engaged in a pore-strip competition with a bunch of cheerleading airheads. Never in a million years would I have expected this either. Was life strange or what?

The even weirder part is, I was actually having fun.

*   *   *

Afterward, Dade, Savannah, and Alexis wanted to go to a party. Leah and I, however, bowed out. We lied and told them we were going to rendezvous with some boys from
Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies
.

We went for a drive and ended up on McKenzie Street. It was after nine now, and all the shops had closed.

"That was a very interesting evening," I said to Leah.

"Thanks again," she said.

"Hey, a promise is a promise."

When we reached the end of the stretch of shops and cafes on McKenzie Street, Leah pointed down a side road.

"Off into uncharted territory?" she said.

"How appropriate," I said.

In a couple of blocks, we wandered onto the college campus. Most of the lights were off. As we walked through the grounds, I looked around at the darkness. I remembered the night before, when I'd walked through that park to get to Kevin, and how the darkness had reminded me of a black-and-white movie. It still did, but in this light, I suddenly saw shades and textures that I hadn't noticed the night before. The stones in the pavement were almost white. The shadows under the rhododendrons were a deep, dark black. However, everywhere else I looked—the flat expanses of grass, the trunks of the trees, the ivy-covered brick buildings—I saw a thousand shades of gray.

I reached out and slipped my hand into Leah's. Her hand was big and warm, covering mine like a glove. We passed students in the dark, mostly in the distance, but Leah didn't pull away. Of course I was still wearing Leah's jacket, so people may have thought we were a girl and a short guy in an overcoat. I didn't mind. In a way, it somehow seemed like a good compromise.

"Do you think college is really that different from high school?" asked Leah.

"I do," I said. "I think it's completely different." I wasn't sure if this was true, but it felt true at the time.

Eventually, we reached the end of the official campus, but we forged on until we came to the football stadium. This late at night, it was deserted, but there was trash all around, programs and Styrofoam cups, making me think there had been a game there earlier in the evening. Someone had left the front gate unlocked.

"Let's go inside," I said.

"Okay," said Leah.

Inside, the lights were all turned off, and the stands were empty. The air smelled of popcorn and moldy paint and frost. The chalk lines on the field glowed a pale white in the moonlight. It was strange to be in such a vast open space and have there be no movement and no sound. Still, I could somehow sense the lingering presence of the people who had been here earlier, afterimages in the cinema of time.

We walked to the very middle of the field. I stepped in front of Leah. Her face glowed too, a second moon to light the dark. Her lips were the softest gray I had ever seen, and her eyes were as deep and endless as the starlit sky.

Here at last we could finally say what we couldn't say in front of Dade and the others.

"I love you," Leah whispered.

"I love you too," I whispered back.

We met in the kiss to end all kisses.

Up in the stands, the roar of a thousand invisible spectators cheered us on.

The next morning, my mom was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table.

"You were out late last night," she said. "Have fun?"

"Yes," I said. I grabbed a banana from the fruit basket. "I left my cave. Apparently my head isn't so big yet that I can't still fit through the exit."

She perked up. "Really?"

"Really." It was all I could do not to point out that her ridiculous headband made her hair look like she was wearing a shower cap.

"So," asked my mom. "How was it on the outside?"

"Nice," I said thoughtfully. "Airy."

"Well, good for you! But now I have to tell you the other story my mother used to tell me, about a fellow who wandered around aimlessly and refused to take a stand on anything."

"No, thanks, Mom," I said, withdrawing to my room to eat my banana and text Leah.

*   *   *

That night, I visited Russel. It was time to finally come clean about everything that had been going on with Leah.

"So," I said.

"So," he said sheepishly, his eyes downcast. "There's been a lot going on in my life lately."

"Really?" I said. "Like what?" I liked that he thought he'd been keeping secrets from me.

He told me everything that had been going on with him and Kevin and Otto, and finally filled me in on that night in the park with Kevin. I just pursed my face, and laughed, and scowled, and acted like I was hearing everything for the very first time.

"You've had a busy couple of weeks," I said when Russel was finished.

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry I haven't kept you up-to-date."

"Well, I haven't exactly kept you up-to-date either."

"You haven't?"

I shook my head, and started to tell him about Leah.

"I had no idea!" he said. Unlike Russel, I really had been keeping secrets.

I recounted all the times that he had inadvertently helped get the two of us together.

"Ha!" he said. "I'm a matchmaker, and I didn't even know it."

I told him the rest of the story, including the part about what had happened with Leah's friends the night before.

He stared at me for a second.

"What?" I said, embarrassed.

He shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all." Still, I knew what he was thinking. I'd surprised him. That was okay: I'd surprised myself too.

"Just one question about all this," I said.

"Yeah?" said Russel.

"What the hell is a brain zombie?"

"You didn't—?"

"Nope. I did learn it was the janitor who was turning the kids into zombies."

"See! Told you so."

I deliberately ignored him. "But I never heard exactly what a brain zombie is."

"Maybe it means a zombie of the mind. Someone who becomes a zombie, or not, because of the people around him."

"Maybe so," I said, because it seemed as good an answer as any.

*   *   *

That Monday at school, Russel, Gunnar, and I were strolling down the hallway, and we stumbled upon that poster, the one calling for extras on
Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies.

"Damn," said Russel. "Something just occurred to me." He turned to me. "I owe you ten bucks."

"What?" I said.

"Don't you remember? When we first saw this poster? You bet that if we did the movie, we'd all have completely different experiences?"

"Yeah," muttered Gunnar. "
Someone
was in a bad mood that day."

"The fact is," said Russel to me, "you were right." He thought for a second. "
Boy
, were you right! Talk about completely different experiences!" He laughed and started digging for his wallet.

I thought about everything that had happened over the last few weeks—the part that Russel knew about, and the part that he didn't.

I placed my hand on his wrist. "It's okay. I didn't win that bet."

He looked up at me.

"Sure, different things happened to each of us." I said. "But we were together too, in more ways than one. Even when we weren't together, we were together, you know?"

"Oh." Russel thought again. "Well, in that case, you can pay
me
!"

I laughed.

"No," said Russel. "Seriously! Pay up!"

Only now did he finally laugh.

"So what's next?" said Gunnar.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Oh, you know us. Seems like we're always in the middle of something. So what's next?"

This was a very good question. I was quite looking forward to the answer. It would mean, of course, another beginning. Before you can introduce a new beginning, however, you must first finish what you were already doing, and that means you must clearly and definitively have…

THE END

(For real this time)