Generation Dead (30 page)

Turf as she sprinted across the field.

"They had some good points, though," she said, her breathing labored. "I hadn't even thought that maybe some people would get all crazy about me going with him."

"Segregation redux," he said. "They're right; I'd keep it quiet if I were you."

"Did you just say
redux
?"

"I've been studying up," he said. "I heard chicks were into big vocabularies, and I don't have a date for the dance yet." "What about Whatsername?"

"What about her?" he said. "So, are you ever going to tell me if you are serious about the dead kid, or what?"

"Please," she replied, snagging one of his loopy hook throws, "don't go down that road again. I'll let you know as soon as I do, okay?"

"Okay."

"We're friends," she said. "I really admire him. He's working hard to help other differently biotic people, you know?"

Adam did. When Tommy spoke in the DB studies class he transformed into this sort of undead charismatic leader. And the students, living and not living, hung on his every word. It was hard not to admire him.

"You think I'm a freak, don't you?" Phoebe asked.

"Naw," he said, wondering how much his answer meant to her. The Frisbee bounced off his palm, a rare miss. "Truth is, if I had any real guts, I'd be asking Karen."

He couldn't see her expression in the shadow of her hood, but he hoped it made her happy and relieved.

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"She's pretty hot," he said.

Phoebe laughed and offered to buy them some milk shakes at the Honeybee Dairy, which seemed oddly perfect on such a chilly night. They passed a pair of police cars speeding the other way toward the Heights, lights flashing and sirens blasting--a sight that was rare in their quiet town.

Adam figured it probably didn't mean anything good, but for the moment he was just glad that he could be with Phoebe and pretend that their time together was something more than it really was.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

P
HOEBE HAD TIME FOR INTRO-spection on the bus ride to school the next morning. With

Adam taking the truck, Margi wedged all the way in the backseat of the bus with her eyes closed and her headphones on, and Tommy sitting with Colette instead of her, she was alone.

She put on her own headphones and cued up an older album by the Gathering, wondering why Tommy seemed to be ignoring her. Was he regretting inviting her to homecoming?

There were other kids on the bus, but they tended to avoid Margi and her as much as they avoided their differently biotic classmates. Pockets of students toward the back, freshmen for the most part, were hacking around and cracking zombie jokes.

"What do you call a zombie in a hot tub?" she heard one say.

Phoebe watched a paper airplane sail toward the front of the bus, banking past the seat where Tommy and Colette sat.

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Tommy turned around, his normally blank expression transformed into a mask of hate. Phoebe sat up in her seat, and the hecklers fell silent, remaining that way until the bus rolled up to the curb outside Oakvale High. No one moved from their seats until Colette and Tommy exited the bus.

She watched them walking toward the school. Tommy was very close to Colette, hovering almost, as they made their way up the steps. She saw him knock the smirks off more than a few kids with his glare.

She hurried off the bus and into the school, trying to catch up. She saw that he'd taken Colette by the arm, and she followed him down the hall as he escorted her to her homeroom. Phoebe knew that Colette's lower degree of functionality meant she'd been placed in remedial classes, even though when she was alive, Colette had been at the top of her classes. But Colette's parents had abandoned her, and Phoebe guessed that no one at St. Jude's Mission really knew how sharp Colette was, or had been.

Phoebe willed herself to turn invisible as Tommy reentered the hall after seeing Colette into her room. She hid behind a bank of lockers and waited for him to walk past. He didn't even notice her as he continued down the hall, and she saw that his hands were balled into fists.

She followed him, an easy thing to do, as other students took great pains to avoid close contact with the zombie. He went to his locker, and it sprung open after three steady turns of his wrist. Her poem was the only ornamentation.

She hugged her books to her as she approached him.

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"Tommy?" she said. He didn't turn and went about withdrawing his books from his backpack and stacking them in a neat pile on the top shelf of the locker.

"Tommy, are you mad at me?" she said.

He turned toward her, his expression unreadable.

"I'm confused by the way you're acting, Tommy. Did I do something wrong?"

He stopped to look at her but did not answer.

"What is it, Tommy? Is it about the dance?"

His features seemed to soften.

"They ...murdered ...Evan," he said. He slammed his locker shut with a force that echoed throughout the hallways.

She didn't understand at first, but when what he was saying registered, a cold ripple passed through her body.

"Oh, Tommy," she said, and she laid her hand against his cheek, ignoring the snickers of students passing by, making rude comments about the goth girl and her dead boyfriend.

The only thing she could think about at that moment was Tommy, and right then she didn't care who knew.

The casket was closed at Evan Talbot's second funeral. Phoebe stood with Adam, Tommy, and Karen, and stared at the black box in the moments before it was lowered into the earth. She was leaning against Adam, clutching his arm and trying to draw strength from him, the tears running freely down her face.

She half expected the lid to slowly open and for Evan to call for help, his high, sardonic voice echoing in the satin-lined prison. She imagined him popping right out of the coffin the

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way he had popped out from under the tarp that rainy night they had all gone to hang out at the Haunted House, his orange hair askew and clownish above his grinning face. But these things did not happen.

She looked over at the Talbots as they clung together at the front of the small crowd that had gathered to pay their respects. Angela and her father, both in well-tailored clothing of the purest black, stood beside them, Alish leaning heavily on his mahogany cane. He was wearing a long, trailing, gray scarf that protected his scrawny neck against the chill wind.

Phoebe tried to imagine the pain that the Talbots were feeling. To lose their only child,
again
--how could they bear it? Right then, Mrs. Talbot looked over her shoulder at where Phoebe stood with her friends. She turned back and slouched against her husband, who held her tight and tried to stop her from shaking. He was not successful.

"The mysteries of death have grown deeper in recent years," the priest said. Father Fitzpatrick was a young, solid-built man who Phoebe had learned was responsible for the St. Jude's Mission. She watched him look each member of the cortege in the eyes before gazing heavenward.

"No one, save the Lord, knows why Evan Talbot was taken from his parents ...not once but twice."

Phoebe heard herself sob, from a distance. It was as if she had floated out of her body and was now staring down onto the tops of the heads of the mourners and the lacquered surface of the coffin. She saw Principal Kim standing near the back in a reserved gray suit, dabbing at her eyes with

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some wadded tissue. Father Fitzpatrick resumed his eulogy.

"But I would like to think that Evan Talbot helped to play some small part in God's divine purpose, the purpose that He, in his boundless wisdom and endless love, has set for each and every one of us. I would like to think that He would not wish us to dwell on the fact of this boy's second death, but instead reflect upon his second life, which his parents--perhaps touched by that wisdom and that love--chose to take as the gift that it was.

"We can debate whether or not Evan was truly alive after returning to us. Contrary to the opinions of many, I think that is actually a spiritual question and not one for the scientists."

He paused. Phoebe thought she could see her own reflection in the glossy finish of the coffin, and she thought of Margi, who had broken down in hysterics by her locker when Phoebe suggested that they attend the funeral together. Reverend Mathers would be quick to agree with Father Fitzpatrick on the idea of the undead being a spiritual question; although, unlike Fitzpatrick, he would be unlikely to find anything positive to say regarding that question. There were plenty of religious leaders within the Catholic Church who would agree with Mathers as well; in performing the funerary right, Fitzpatrick was risking criticism and perhaps even censure.

Fitzpatrick slapped a knobby fist into his palm, and the sound of the slap brought Phoebe back into her body.

"One thing cannot be denied. Evan Talbot chose to take his own return as a blessing. Evan Talbot used his second--call it

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chance, call it life, call it what you will--to try to bring the world a little understanding. He used his return to try to educate those of us who cannot understand what he and those like him are going through. And he tried to be a positive example to those of us who understood all too well. He did this through his humor. His joy. His happy-go-lucky personality.

"Buoyed by the selfless love of his family and friends, especially that of his parents, Evan tried to make a difference," he said, punctuating each word with another press of his fist into his palm. "And by making a difference, I am certain that Evan Talbot fulfilled God's purpose for him here on earth."

Phoebe looked at her friends through her tears, searching for some sign that they could believe as Fitzpatrick did. She was having trouble imagining a God that would require such a purpose--dying, rising, and dying again--from a fourteen-year-old boy. Karen and Tommy were like statues, Karen's eyes shrouded behind a gauzy black veil. Tommy's tearless eyes stared blankly ahead at nothing at all, it seemed. Did he also wonder what it was like to be in there in darkness, the smell of wood and satin and rot filling his nostrils?

Or did he not have to wonder because all he had to do was
remember
?

Adam just looked angry, and he would turn occasionally, as though taking in the rows of headstones spreading out across Winford Cemetery.

"Let us pray," Father Fitzpatrick said.

Phoebe turned her head and saw a single tear trickle out from beneath the hem of Karen's veil.

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For a second time, Phoebe felt as if she were leaving her own body. This time her knees buckled, and she fainted dead away.

Adam took her to school the next day, and when she climbed into the truck she tucked her long black skirt under her, thinking that she would never be short of clothing that was appropriate to wear to a funeral. She laughed, a bitter sound that echoed in the stale air of the cab.

"Are you okay?" he asked. When she didn't reply, he turned on the radio. She turned it off.

"No, I'm not," she whispered. "I'm terrified."

Adam nodded.

"It's weird," she said. "All these things you don't think of until you have to. What it all means."

"I was scared when you fainted," Adam said.

She laughed again, and this time without the harshness. "I didn't even fall, thanks to you. You could toss me over the goalposts if you wanted to, couldn't you?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm pretty damn powerful."

He let his words hang a moment, hoping they would make her laugh. They didn't. He wasn't just scared when she fainted. Lately the idea of Phoebe being hurt--it filled him with a vague ache, a frustration that no number of push-ups or reps on the exercise racks were going to take away.

He sighed. "But I get scared, too. I thought you might like to know."

"You're a good friend, Adam," she said. "Even if you

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refuse to be seen talking to me at school."

He chucked her shoulder--lightly, so as not to launch her bodily through the car door.
You're a good friend, Adam
--that was the line that made him want to cry, nearly as much as Evan's funeral had.

"The best. And it isn't you I avoid; it's Daffy."

Phoebe looked away.

"Aw, hell," he said. "And I was doing so well, too. Open mouth, insert size fourteen foot."

"I'm really worried about her. She can't deal with any of this--Evan, Colette, Tommy--I don't know what to do or to say to her. There aren't any scripts written for this sort of thing."

"I hear you."

She slapped the dashboard, a decidedly un-Phoebelike move.

"Who could have killed him?" she asked. "The description in the newspaper was awful, just awful. What kind of monster would do that? Never mind what sort of monster would write that article. They wouldn't have written it that way if he hadn't been a zombie. They didn't even run an obituary."

"I know," Adam said. The steering wheel squeaked with the force of his grip as his hands tensed.

"I think I know exactly who killed Evan," he said.

As she looked at him, realization dawned in her face, and Adam wished he hadn't said anything at all.

Phoebe set her tray down and slid onto the seat next to Margi,