Zombie Blondes (2 page)
Authors: Brian James
My dad tells me to keep an eye out for street signs. Says we’re looking for Walnut Cove. I spot it right away. “It’s up there,” I tell him, glad it’s on the left so that I don’t have to embarrass myself right away by being the car’s turn signal.
Ours is the fifth house we come to. There’s nothing special about it. It’s small and brown on the outside. Some trees in the yard and the lawn is grown over, wild with weeds. Looks like it hasn’t been cut in months and the leaves need raking. Another in a long line of houses we’ve lived in. Its windows as blank as the eyes of strangers and most likely will feel the same to me on the day we pull out.
The gas light in the car goes on as we ease into the driveway. My dad looks at the dashboard and smiles. “It’s a sign,” he says. “We’re home.”
“It’s a sign that we’re broke,” I say, gripping the handle and kicking the door open. I take a quick look around. An empty house across the street. Another one two doors down. The mountains in the background like a wall fencing us into this crappy town. I take a deep breath and get myself ready to start all over again.
As I reach into the backseat to get my bag out, my dad comes around and puts his arms around me. “It won’t be so
bad,” he says. And though I want to pretend like he’s being selfish, I know he’s not. I can hear it in his voice. I always hear it. I know how sorry he is for putting me through this and that’s why I try my best not to take it out on him.
“I know,” I say, spinning around and giving him a halfhearted smile. I can sense the words forming in his mind and I put my hand up to his mouth to keep them in. “Just don’t promise me anything this time, okay?” I say. He nods and lets go of me. I can tell it hurts his feelings, but I just can’t stand to hear him say it again.
I grab the bag that holds most everything I own. The pink one with the flower patches sewn on, and I let them drag along the ground as I drag the bag to the front door. My dad comes up behind me with the key in his hand. “We still a team?” he asks.
“Sure, Dad. We’re still a team,” I say and do my best to try and not look miserable.
ONE
I can usually pick out the popular kids soon after setting
foot into a new school. The girls, anyway. They wear popularity like a uniform for everyone to see. From their hair-styles to their expensive shoes. Everything about them is torn from the glossy pages of the latest teen fashion magazines. Everything about them is perfect. At least on the outside, anyway.
The boys are a little trickier.
Their looks have only a small part to play in deciding their place in the social order of things. What they’re into is just as important as how they look. Depends on what kind of school it is, too. There are as many different kinds of high schools as there are different kinds of cliques in each one. There’s the artsy sort of schools where the skinny, mysterious boys are the ones who get all the attention. Then there’s the college-prep kind of schools where class rank and GPA
go hand in hand with a boy’s cute looks to determine where he stands with the girls. At thug schools and drug schools, the more damaged or dangerous a boy is makes all the difference. Last, but not least, there’re jock schools like Maplecrest where all that really counts is how good a guy is at sports. Even if he’s zit faced and moronic, a boy can be popular here, so it could take some time to figure it all out.
But with girls it doesn’t matter so much what kind of school it is. It’s always the thinnest, prettiest ones wearing the least amount of clothing that the dress code allows who rule the hallways. Because boys’ tastes don’t change much just because they like painting more than sports. So it’s always the girls pretty enough to put on a postcard that get to be one of the Perfect People. The social elite. The clique that runs the school. The ones who get away with everything by batting their eyelashes and pretending not to know any better. They get to decide which of the other girls are okay to talk to and which should be teased into having an eating disorder.
Different schools but always the same thing.
Those are the girls I need to impress if I want to be popular, or keep from pissing off if I just wish to fit in. That makes figuring out who they are pretty important. Highest priority if I wish to avoid making a mistake that will get me on the wrong list unintentionally. A dirty look is all it takes. It’s the way it’s been at every school I’ve passed through in the last couple of years, so I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out who they are. My social well-being depends on it.
Maplecrest might be the easiest school yet.
I know who the most popular girl is the second I see her.
One look is all it takes. Her long blond curls like a halo when the sunlight shines on her just right. Perfect smile and perfect skin like an angel made of porcelain. Sparkling blue eyes with soft pink eyelids to match the strawberry pout of her upper lip. The slender curve of her shoulder and fragile shape of her knees peeking out from the bottom of her short skirt. She’s delicate like a bird as she glides through the cafeteria. Every pair of eyes following her as she soars to the table crowded with other pretty girls who just look like lesser clones once she joins them.
I don’t need to know her name or anything about her to know she’s the It Girl in school. It’s written all over the faces of her friends as they wait their turn for her to say hi to them. Each and every one trying so hard to look exactly like she does. Each of them pretty, too. Each of them wearing the same bleached hair and bleached skin but with a little less twinkling in their eyes, making them a little less perfect.
And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t do it this time, I start comparing myself with them, the Perfect People. I can’t help it. I have to know where I stand. Crummy town or not, I care what people think of me. It’s a bad habit. My dad calls it teenage-girl sickness and says there’s a cure for it. I tell him I know there is, but that I don’t really want to end up being a crazy cat lady when I get older.
I twist my hair around my finger and stare at the split ends. Mine doesn’t have the same shine and it’s not nearly as blond. Mine’s more like dirty straw than a golden halo. And my eyes are muddy, too, and look nothing like the sky the way the popular-table girls’ do. All of them so blond and
beautiful, like little figurines too precious to let children play with.
I push my tray away. I’m not hungry anymore.
It’s not that I think I’m ugly or anything. I know I’m cute enough. And I don’t want to be the prettiest girl in school or anything like that. It’s just that I don’t even come close. Not to their leader or even to her tagalongs. I thought in a small, time-forgotten town like this that I’d at least have a shot. It’s not really that important to me, it’s just that it’s easier being new in a school if you’re one of the prettiest girls. I hoped maybe this time I’d get lucky. But that dream vanished the instant I saw her.
“Her name’s Maggie Turner,” a voice says in my ear as if reading my thoughts. Not startling me enough to scream, but just enough to squeak like a little mouse.
I turn my head to see a scrawny-looking boy with shaggy straw hair dressed in shabby clothes. I recognize him from one of my classes. Takes me a second to place him. Geometry, third period. The kid a few rows over who kept looking at me so much that I just stopped checking after a while. He’s not so bad looking, but he’s not exactly my type, either. Long and lanky and a little on the creepy side. And before I can make up my mind whether I want to tell him to get lost or not, he pulls up the empty chair and sits down next to me.
“Maggie Turner,” he says again. “You’re wondering what her name is, aren’t you?” I’m not sure what to say. I wasn’t really expecting company. First day in a new school mostly equals isolation, especially in the lunchroom. It’s one of the symptoms of the new-kid disease. Everybody wants to talk about you, but nobody wants to talk to you. Not at first
anyway and his surprise visit catches me off guard. Not to mention the fact that he knew what I was thinking about.
“I was just . . . ,” I start to say but never finish.
“You were just staring at Maggie Turner like everyone else,” he says and I can feel my face turning red.
It’s not that I mind getting caught or that I’m embarrassed about being fascinated with the popular girls. I just don’t know if I want to share it with some skinny, weird kid who wanders the lunchroom searching for girls he doesn’t know to sit next to. But whatever the reason, my cheeks start to blush and he begins to notice.
“It’s okay,” he says. “She’s an attention magnet. Everyone likes to stare at her.” He puts his hands behind his head and leans back. Tilts the chair until it’s resting against the wall and settles in like we’re long-lost pals.
“Look, what do you want?” I ask in a snotty tone because at this point all I really want is for him to go away. I’d rather be lonely than sit with him. He sort of gives me the creeps. I even slide my chair a few inches away. Too bad he can’t take a hint, though. He’s either a little dense or else he has the beginnings of a crush on me. With my luck, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’m never a magnet for attention so much as I’m a magnet for weirdos.
He puts his hands back on the table and lets the chair ease back down to the floor. Then he hunches over and leans closer to me like he’s going to tell me a secret or something.
“Today’s your first day, right?” he asks.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything but I nod my head anyway.
“Well, I’m just trying to help you out, that’s all,” he says.
“Help me how?” I ask. I don’t see him helping me out at all. The only thing he’s doing is keeping any normal people from talking to me.
“I can tell you want to be friends with her,” he says. I feel like arguing that I don’t even know her and that he doesn’t even know me, so how can he make that assumption. But deep down I know he’s kind of right, so I don’t bother. Besides, he knows he’s right the same way I knew about Maggie being the It Girl in the first place. He can spot people like me just like I can spot the popular.
“So what if I do?” I ask him. “Is that a crime or something?”
“No,” he says. “I just thought I’d try to save you from Maggie Turner’s clutches before it’s too late.”
I can’t help but smile a little, because I’ve seen this trick before. Get close to the new girl and scare her with tales of the evil clique. It’s always the outsiders like him that try it. The malcontents. But that’s all it is. A trick. Try to claim me for their own and poison me to the rest of the school. Still, though, he is sort of cute and he is the only person to talk to me all day, so I decide to humor him, anyway.
“Yeah, why’s that?” I ask.
“Because Maggie isn’t like the rest of us,” he says in a whisper. Really getting into the part and looking around as if he’s checking to make sure no one is listening. “She’s not like real people, she’s better. She was born on Christmas. Her favorite color is pink. Baby pink, not porno pink. And it doesn’t matter how cold it is outside, she always wears short skirts and short tops and no one has ever once seen her shiver. She never eats anything but carrots, at least not in
public. And though she doesn’t have any proven superpowers, all her friends follow her like they’re in some kind of cult. Plus, she just happens to be the captain of the cheerleading squad and is one evil bitch on top of that.”
I fold my arms across the table and rest my head. Open my eyes wide and give him all my attention like a little kid at story time. “You seem to know a lot about her for not liking her,” I say with a little smile but I think the sarcasm escapes him.
“Everyone does, she makes sure of it,” he says. No longer whispering and no longer playful like before. A little angry even as he taps the edge of the table with his knuckles.
“Let me guess,” I say because it’s my turn to play a little game with him. “Every boy has the hots for her, including you.”
“Not me,” he says without hesitating. Says it like a fact, never taking his eyes off her. Says it the way I can tell it’s not just a denial. Says it so I know he doesn’t just not like her, he despises her.
“But you did at one point,” I say because I can tell that, too. “And she didn’t like you, so now you hate her.” Nobody gives the kind of look he does to someone like Maggie Turner unless they’re jealous or scorned. I can’t see him being the kind of boy jealous of popularity, but he certainly looks like the emotional type who gets his feelings hurt.
I may have hurt them some, too, because he pushes his chair away from the table and half stands up. He’s about to walk away but stops. Turns to me and opens his mouth and starts to stutter like he’s not sure if he should say what he wants to. Then finally deciding to go ahead and say it, but
refusing to take his eyes off the floor when he does. “It’s just . . . you’re kind of pretty . . . and she might try to turn you into one of them . . . one of her clones,” he says. “I don’t want to see that happen to you, that’s all.”
I tuck my lip under my top teeth.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “Just a warning.”
I stare at him in silence and he stares back. Stares into my eyes for the first time since coming over to me. Something blank in his expression that doesn’t make sense to me. He’s either the most socially challenged boy I’ve ever met, or one of the cleverest. Whichever it is, he’s by far the most interesting thing about this town so far.
He takes a step away before stopping. Makes a gesture like he forgot something and comes back. “My name’s Lukas, by the way,” he says.
“You know, you’re really supposed to do that before you start pestering strange girls,” I say.
“Yeah? Well, this is Maplecrest,” he says.