The Awesome (19 page)

“Sure. That sounds good.”

“Cool.” I rolled off the bed and opened my door, leading him down to the living room. The television blazed, and I took Ian’s hand, giving him a reassuring squeeze as we approached. Mom cuddled on the couch with Jeff, still looking like a Mommy Murder Machine. A petty part of me wished Jeff would accidentally piss her off and she’d stake him through the forehead.

Once we’d hit the foot of the stairs, Mom glanced up. I felt my spine go stiff when she looked at me, and I waited for her to say something that’d make me want to flush my head in the toilet. I didn’t know if it was her crappy mood or the desperate expression on my face, but she kept her mouth closed, her attention drifting to Ian. She forced a smile for his sake and sat up straighter.

“Drive safe, and maybe next time I see you it’ll be under better circumstances. G’night, kiddo.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Ian said, though I wasn’t sure what he thanked her for. It’s not like she’d done anything normal since he’d met her. “See you soon.”

“Good night,” Jeff said, and Ian was polite enough—or scared enough—to wave goodbye to him.

I led him to the driveway before anything could go wrong; I didn’t have a lot of faith in life staying normal. Ian opened the driver’s side door and pulled me into another hug, his lips brushing over the top of my ear. “It was okay?” he asked, and though he tried to play it cool, I could tell he needed reassurance that no, he hadn’t turned me off from men forever, and no, I didn’t want to hose myself down while screaming “Unclean!”

I gave him a gentle squeeze, my nose nuzzling at where the 58 was tattooed into his shoulder. “It was awesome. Ten stars out of ten. Would highly recommend.” He laughed, and I pulled back to smile at him. “Thanks for putting up with all my crazy crap. Seriously.”

“Nah, it’s cool.” He gave me another kiss, and when I felt my head spinning from lack of oxygen, I pulled away so he could climb into his car.

“Call me this week. I’m always around after nine,” he said.

“’Kay.”

I watched his rear lights disappear down the street. I wasn’t tired thanks to the ghouling, but I wanted to get back into bed anyway, to rest and veg and not have to think about anything other than the good parts of my night. Tomorrow was soon enough to figure out my Janice problems. I headed inside, feeling Mom’s eyes on me as I scampered through the living room and towards the stairs. I went fast enough to leave fire tracks in my wake, but she didn’t point it out, nor did she ask any embarrassing questions. It was like, for once, she understood I needed to be left alone. It was like, for once, she got me.

Her timing had never been better.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
STAYED IN
my room the rest of the night, napping when boredom got the better of me. I didn’t want to go downstairs and answer embarrassing questions about my sparkly new sex life, nor did I want to deal with Jeff-The-Magic-Vampire, so I holed up in my dungeon. When I ran out of weapons to clean, I picked up my floor, managing to stuff half of the crap in trash bags. Ian had a far better chance of survival next visit thanks to my labors.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when my mother rode the vacuum around the house like the Wicked Witch of Massachusetts, I bothered to surface. I opened my door, and was greeted by Mom in a pair of polka dotted underwear, an AC/DC tee shirt, and a pale green bandana wrapped over her hair.

“Hey. Did I wake you?” she shouted over the vacuum.

“I don’t sleep. Ghoul, remember?”

I expected a smirk or a smart-ass reply, but she looked down, focusing on sucking up a dust bunny the size of an elephant. The hunting gig meant we were usually too busy for housekeeping, so we were behind on the whole tidiness thing. I couldn’t blame Mom for straightening up; it’d be pretty embarrassing for the scientist coming from the DoPR to think we were scrubs. And who knew, maybe they’d take Lauren into protective custody for forcing her to live in a zombie ghetto, like the inch of dust on the baseboards meant we were awful foster-hunters and should hang our heads in shame.

I was about to ask what I could do to help around the house, but Lauren appeared at the foot of the stairs holding the recycling bin. She was dressed in the nicest of the Walmart outfits we’d bought, a white shirt and a pair of skinny jeans, and with her hair done up into a ponytail she looked startlingly alive. I couldn’t smell grave stank wafting off of her anymore. There was a slight tang of chemical, but the sweet, meaty rot from before was all but gone. I didn’t know what she’d done, maybe hosed herself down with Clorox or slept in the dishwasher, but it helped a ton.

“Do you put this on the curb, Janice?”

Mom shut off the vacuum and jiggled the cord to get it out of the electrical socket at the end of the hall. “Yeah. The garbage bins are by the porch if you want to pull them down to the end of the driveway. They do trash pick-up at noon.”

“Okay.”

Lauren took off. I could hear her making her way through the house towards the porch. For a skinny girl, she sure managed to sound like Godzilla tromping all over Tokyo. All we needed was a giant moth for her to battle in the front yard and we’d be set.

As soon as the side door slammed, Mom stopped what she was doing to look at me. “So how was it?”

“Huh?”

“With Ian. You okay?”

“Oh. That.” My face went hot, like a mini version of last night’s holy water burns. She knew what we’d done, there was no way she couldn’t. If she hadn’t guessed on her own by my clothes change, Jeff probably filled her in that ‘Oh, by the way, I don’t want to maul your flesh and blood for a virgin snack anymore.’ Stupid vampire boyfriend with his stupid vampire senses. “Yeah. It was good.”

She clapped me on the shoulder, a smile blooming on her mouth. “Welcome to the club of women who get to spend the next sixty years putting up with men’s shit. There’s no tee shirt, and the membership benefits are touch and go, but at least the sex is sometimes good and you get a journeyman license. As your mother I’m obligated to tell you to always wear a condom. And don’t get crabs or gonoherpasyphilAIDS, or make me a grandmother before I’m fifty.”

“Gono-what?”

“You know, gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, and AIDS, but all mixed together into one huge STD.”

“Gee, Mom. I don’t plan on it. And yeah, we used a condom.”

She patted my hair like I was seven. “Good kid. I knew I taught you something.”

I was about to head downstairs to see if I could make heads or tails of the disaster area that was the kitchen (actually I wanted to escape the conversation about crotch disease) but Mom stopped me by tugging on the back of my tank top. She wrapped me in a fierce, rib-crushing hug, her face pressing against my shoulder. “I’m sorry about the ghouling. I should have known better than to try the Plasma thing. I fucked up and I’m sorry.”

It was weird to go from joking about crabs to this, but life with Janice was always a roller coaster ride, and she pulled one-eighties far too often for me to be surprised by them anymore. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have pushed and... I am okay. I am.”

“No, you’re not. Well you are, but you’re not, and it sucks. I’ll find them. I promise. I’ll find them and ram it up their asses so hard they’ll wish they’d never been un-deaded.”

“NO.” It was so loud, so emphatic she went stiff. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to explain my gut-punch reaction. But I couldn’t, and she knew it and I knew it, and so we were stuck with this loud, fierce denial that hung heavy on the air.

“I... right.” She pulled away from me to wind the vacuum cord around her arm, her brow covered in worry lines. She tried so hard not to stress about it, yet it was written all over her face. I wanted to make it better, but I didn’t have the faintest idea how.

Mom motioned at the steps. “Dr. Dempsey is going to be here in an hour and a half and we look like shit. Got to get the living room done and dust the dining room and take a shower and...”

“I’ve got the kitchen.”

“Okay, good. Have Lauren help you with the dishes.” She headed downstairs with the vacuum in tow. I called for her as she rounded the corner, and she paused on the landing.

I pointed at her butt. “You might want to put on pants before the doctor gets here.”

The worry lines gave way to her lopsided smirk. “Nah. It’s bribery. Impetus for him to see things my way.”

“Or see your ass,” I said. “’Cause I can when you bend over. You’ve got full plumber’s crack going on.”

She stooped to plug the vacuum into the wall, granting me an eyeful of said crack. I made a squick noise, but she ignored me, instead sizing up the dust bunnies on the floor like they were a sprite infestation. And much like a sprite infestation, those dust bunnies were going down. Mom was a hunter on a mission. “My way, my ass. Whatever.” She grunted and turned on the vacuum. “Lately it’s been the same thing anyway.”

D
R.
D
EMPSEY WAS
a handsome man in his mid-fifties with a trim gray goatee and glasses. He looked like a black Mr. Rogers, with rich dark skin, an inviting smile, and a sweater-vest. I guess I expected some kind of
Duke Nukem
bad-ass with an Uzi ready to vanquish the zombie scum. What I got was a guy with a medical bag, a laptop, and a quiet voice. He sat in the living room with Lauren, checking her vitals—or lack thereof—conducting an interview, and typing things into his computer. Mom and I had been allowed in for the early stages of the visit, relaying what we saw in the park and Lauren’s general demeanor since we’d housed her. But once that part was over, Dr. Dempsey wanted her alone. Mom and I made ourselves as scarce as our not-huge house allowed, but every once in a while we caught snippets of conversation. Sometimes it was about how Lauren felt, sometimes it was her instincts, sometimes it was, “What you remember from your death?”

None of it sounded particularly dour, but that didn’t mean we were in the clear, and waiting for Dr. Dempsey’s verdict was nerve wracking. I wasn’t Lauren’s closest friend or anything, but I thought she had a compelling case, and—in the vast scheme of the cosmos—she’d been handed a raw deal. Mom must have agreed. The half pack of Nicorette gone in under an hour was a bad sign.

“So what do you think?” I asked, watching Dr. Dempsey run Lauren through some drills to test her motor skills. He had her stand up, sit down, spin in circles, and touch her toes, all of which Lauren did perfectly well. She reacted like any normal person would.

“Don’t know. He’s not what I expected, but then the DoPR never is,” Mom said. That was about as far as we got in our conversation, because Dr. Dempsey shook Lauren’s hand and sent her out our way before calling for my mom. Mom took a deep breath and marched in, brushing elbows with Lauren as she passed. Lauren sat at the table across from me, immediately slumping into her seat and burying her face in her hands.

Crap. She was upset, which meant I’d have to do that empathy thing.

“Hey, uhh. How... are you?”

Lauren lifted her face to blink at me. “Dead and confused. He seems nice, but he said there wasn’t any guarantee I wouldn’t regress into a brain-chomping problem. I hope not, but...” She swallowed hard. “At least he has a theory on how it happened so maybe they can prevent it from happening to other people.”

“Oh?”

“The radiation from my chemotherapy, the drugs I was on, magic in the area, and trace gamma something. I don’t know. Something about the power plant. I don’t understand the science, but basically my cells didn’t die like they were supposed to.” She forced a smile and reached for one of Mom’s cookies. It was the first time I’d seen her eat something that hadn’t formerly been alive. Apparently sugary, crappy food helped comfort zombies, too. “He said I was like the Incredible Hulk, just less green.”

“Oh, wow. Well, maybe that’d explain your strength thing.”

She snorted. “Maybe, though I don’t think it’s that literal.”

Awkward silence shrouded the kitchen. Incredible Hulk jokes were easy but inappropriate, and “Aww it’ll be okay” was inaccurate since none of us knew what Dr. Dempsey would decide. I looked over at the cookies, wishing I was hungry so I could commiserate with her over baked goods, but thanks to the ghouling I’d rather not eat at all. The only thing that truly interested me for food was meat.

“It’s okay. Like, you don’t have to try so hard with me,” she said out of the blue. I cringed and looked up, hoping I didn’t look as uncomfortable as I felt. I’d never developed a very good poker face in awkward situations.

“It’s that obvious, huh?”

“Yeah. You look gassy whenever we talk.”

A bubble of laughter escaped before I could think to squash it. Lauren smiled at me, popping her cookie into her mouth and glancing towards the living room. Mom and the doctor talked in hushed tones on the couch. Mom nodded a lot, but she didn’t appear bummed. That was a good sign.

“I’m not good when people are upset,” I said. “I feel like I’m bad at being sympathetic. I mean, I don’t know how to... okay. What you’re going through? I’ve got nothing that could compare, so it’s hard to talk about it. This whole ghouling thing doesn’t hold a candle.”