"Did you hear that the bass player for Grave Mistake died?" she said. "Heart attack after overdosing on heroin."
"Oh?" Phoebe said, wiping her eye. "You think he'll come back?"
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Margi shook her head. "I think he's too old, like twenty-two or twenty-three."
"That's unfortunate," Phoebe said. "I guess we'll know in a couple days."
Tommy Williams was the last one on the bus. There were plenty of open seats.
Tommy stopped at Colette's seat. He looked at her, and then he sat down beside her.
That's weird, Phoebe thought. She was going to say so to Margi, but Margi was intent on her iPod and trying furiously not to notice anything about their dead friend.
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***
CHAPTER TWO
P ETE MARTINSBURG ENJOYED the subtle hush that settled in the locker room when he and TC Stavis walked in. He liked the way Denny McKenzie, their pretty boy senior quarterback, stepped aside to let Pete pass when he approached. He liked the way the newer kids cut their eyes from him when he looked their way.
As the reigning Alpha, he knew that there was no better place to reassert that position than in the locker room before football practice.
"Lame Man," Pete said, making a big show of clapping his hand on Adam's back as Adam sat lacing up his cleats. Adam was the biggest kid on the team, with a few inches and a lot more muscle mass than even Stavis, so a display of force with him was a good way of showing everyone what the social hierarchy of the team was. "What's the good word?"
He felt the larger boy's shoulders tense as Adam
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shrugged. "Same old same old, Pete. How about you?"
"Same here, horny as hell," Pete said. "You gonna set me up with that freaky chick you hang out with, or what? Morticia Scarypants?"
"No."
Pete laughed. "One night with me and she'll be wearing bright colors again."
"You wouldn't get along."
"Oh, so you're actually admitting you're friends, now?"
Adam didn't reply, and Pete enjoyed the flush that came to the big guy's ears and neck. It was all about finding the weak spots.
"Who's Morticia Scarypants?" Stavis asked. "Are you talking about the new art teacher?"
"No, you moron. Phoebe something, one of those goth chicks. Our boy Lame Man likes them pale and scary."
Stavis frowned, which Pete knew meant he was concentrating. "Is she the skinny one with the long black hair, kind of like a Chinese girl's, or the short one with the knockers and too much jewelry?"
"The first one," Pete said, enjoying that the conversation was making Adam look like he'd just bitten into a jalapeno sandwich. "Why? You interested?"
"Sure I'm interested. I got a thing for boots, and she wears those heeled ones all the time. And dresses. Hell, throw in the short one, too. A twofer."
The look Adam gave Stavis would have silenced anyone else in the room, but Stavis was too dumb and too big to notice or care.
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Pete socked Adam in the shoulder. "Easy, big man," he said.
"You guys are pretty funny," Adam said. "A riot."
Pete smiled. "Don't you think that the whole gothic thing doesn't really make a lot of sense today? I mean, why would you walk around pretending you're dead when you could actually be dead and walk around?"
"It's more than that," Adam said.
"Yeah? Like what?"
"I don't know. Music. The look, whatever."
"The look, huh?" Pete said. "The look sucks. She ought to get some color in her cheeks and start wearing normal chick clothes. She looks like a freakin' worm burger, you know? One of those zombies."
"Then I guess you shouldn't waste your time on her," Adam said.
"Just the opposite, man. I want to convert her before it's too late. Besides," he said, smiling down at Adam, "you know and I know she's a virgin."
Pete laughed and sat down beside him, and from the corner of his vision saw that runt Thornton Harrowwood looking over at them. The kid hadn't played freshman or sophomore year.
"Can I help you?" Pete said to him, sounding anything but helpful. The kid gave a frightened shake of his shaggy head and looked away. Pete chuckled to himself and turned back to Adam.
"You work out this summer, Lame Man?" Pete knew that
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something had changed over the summer with him and Lame Man, but he had no idea what it was. He, Lame Man, and TC had been the three amigos, the Pain Crew, all through high school, and now they'd barely had a whole conversation since they'd started football practice again. "Little bit. I took a karate class."
"It shows, it shows. Looks like you dropped a few pounds and got a little more cut."
Adam nodded. "Thanks. You want to sleep with me?"
Pete laughed and peeled off his own tight shirt. He'd worked on his body over the summer as well, and the results showed in the definition across his chest and abdomen, and the lines were deepened by the rich tan he'd cultivated. He made the tight muscles along his arms ripple in case any of the wannabees were looking.
"I would, but I'm still sore from the summer."
He folded his shirt and then folded it a second time when the first fold didn't look right.
"Don't you want to hear what I did?"
"Sure," Adam said, sighing. "What did you do this summer? Go visit your dad again?"
"Yeah. I was in Cali all summer, nailing college girls at the beach."
"Sounds great," Adam said, yawning.
"Yeah, it was," Pete said, trying to ignore his disinterest. "It was like an endless supply, man. Drinking, partying, and sex, sex, sex. Talk about an endless summer."
"Wow."
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Adam didn't see his frown, because apparently his sneakers were more interesting than Pete's stories. That hacked Pete off, because this time the stories were true. Partially true, at least. College girls had been populous and friendly to him this summer. But Pete left one key detail out of his oft-told tales; most of the college-age girls he'd hung around were friends of his Dad's newest girlfriend, Cammy--herself a college-age girl. Whatever. Adam's silence was beginning to frustrate him. It took him three tries to fold his T-shirt the way he wanted it.
"Is it just me," Pete said to the room, "or is this stinking hellhole overrun with dead kids this year?"
"Not just you," Stavis said. "There's like fifteen of them this year. I counted."
"Good for you," Pete said, punching Stavis in the meaty part of his shoulder. "Keep up the good work and maybe you'll pass math this year."
TC's grin was a lopsided slash on his round, doughy face.
"There are more dead kids this year," Adam said, without looking up from his laces. "There was an article in the newspaper that said this was a good school for the living impaired. Some of them are bussed over from Winford."
"Just what we need," Pete said, "a bunch of corpsicles shuffling around. Maybe this place really is hell."
"Hell on earth," TC said, shoving his sneakers and pants into his locker. The kid was hopeless, Pete thought. An overweight slob whose flesh hung from his barrel-shaped frame.
"Dead kids are getting up all over the country," a sophomore running back named Harris Morgan added.
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Not all of them, Pete thought, giving him a sidelong look. Julie never came back.
Harris caught his look and panicked. Harris had been sniffing around Pete and TC since they'd started practicing in late August, and Pete figured he was looking to join the Pain Crew. He decided to favor the kid with a snicker and a quick nod of the head. With Lame Man acting like a wuss, it wouldn't hurt to round out the ranks.
"Did you see that one dead chick?" TC said, his wide belly hanging over the front and sides of his briefs. "The one in the skirt?"
"Yeah, I saw her," Pete replied. "And I think I could bring her back to life, if you catch my meaning." TC and Harris barked out forced laughter. "If the dead didn't disgust me so much."
His audience, on cue, fell silent.
"Hey, Adam," Pete said, leaning in close so that only Adam could hear, "did you hear who's trying to join the team this year?"
"Thorny? The kid you just terrified?"
"Naw," Pete said. He saw that he was going to have to work on Adam a bit this year. Adam just wasn't picking up on the backfield signals like he used to. "Somebody else."
Adam looked at him, waiting. That was something, too. Adam used to be a nervous sort of kid, awkward and gawky, uncomfortable in his own skin, and now he had a self-confidence and poise uncommon in most guys his age. Pete thought that Adam was becoming more like him. He gave Adam his best conspiratorial smile, hoping to rekindle the early days,
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back when Adam gave him unwavering loyalty instead of grief.
"Somebody dead."
"Oh," Adam said. He flexed his ankle and decided he didn't like how the lace on his left cleat was tied.
"Oh?" Pete said. "Oh?" He looked over at Stavis and made the universal "I'm dealing with a moron" face. Stavis grinned and shook his head. "That all you've got to say?"
"What am I supposed to say, Pete?"
Pete frowned, because there it was again, that attitude .
"You don't care that a dead kid is joining the team?"
"I don't have feelings about it either way."
Pete had a temper, but he was good at riding it, turning it into something useful. He wanted to smack the kid, giant or no. Time was, Pete could have slapped him around and Adam would have taken it. But back then Adam didn't have that muscle tone, and Pete wasn't sure this was the right time to test how solid Adam had become.
"Well, Coach has feelings about it. Big time. I heard him arguing with the Kimchi over it." Kimchi was his name for Ms. Kim, the much beloved principal of Oakvale High.
"Really?"
"Yeah. He tried just about everything. Not fair to the other kids, practice season already started, blah blah blah. She wasn't having it."
"Well then," Adam said, getting up, "I guess he plays." Pete rose with him. "Well, I guess we get some say in that."
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Adam waited him out again.
Pete flexed his hand. "Coach wants us to take this dead kid off the board." "He say that?"
"Not in so many words," Pete said, "but his meaning was pretty clear."
Adam nodded. "I'm going to play," he said. "I'm not going in for any assassinations."
"Oh?" Pete said, a wide smile on his face. "Not like last year?
Adam stared back at him, a look of fury burning through his passive mask.
Pete showed his teeth. "Not like with Gino Manetti?"
Adam didn't reply. He gave each lace a final tug and seemed satisfied with the results.
"I don't think we can hang out this year, Pete," he said.
"Just like that, huh?"
"Just like that."
"Did I say something? Are you pissed because I was talking about Scarypants?"
"It isn't so much the things you say, Pete," Adam told him, "it has more to do with what you are."
Pete looked at him and felt the rage constrict his hands into fists.
"What I am," he repeated. "You want to explain that?" Adam picked his helmet off the bench and shouldered past Pete.
Pete called Adam an asshole under his breath, but he
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said it loud enough for just about everyone to hear.
Gino Manetti had been an all-star running back for the Winford Academy Warriors. In a game in which Manetti had already scored three touchdowns on the Badgers, Adam put an end to his season--and his career--with a late and illegal hit to the knee.
Coach Konrathy had ordered the hit.
Not in so many words, Pete thought, shucking his jeans off. But the meaning was clear. He and Stavis had put the hurt on kids before at Konrathy's request; they didn't call themselves the Pain Crew for nothing. But neither had taken somebody out in such a permanent way before.
Pete thought about that kid from Tech he'd knocked unconscious late last season. He'd laughed out loud when he read about the game in the paper the next day and found out the kid had a broken clavicle. The news had him pumped up for days.
Not Adam, though. Adam was never the same person again after hitting that Manetti kid.
"Get back in there, Layman," Coach said, pushing Adam back into the locker room. Pete noticed that if Adam hadn't allowed himself to be moved, Konrathy wouldn't have been able to budge him. Adam had changed.
"I've got an announcement I have to make, and I want the whole team to hear it," Coach said.
"This about the dead kid, Coach?" Stavis said.
"Yes, it's about the dead kid," Coach said, his tone laden with a level of sarcasm he reserved for only the most boneheaded
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of players. "But you are never, ever to call him a dead kid if he's within earshot, understand? We are required to refer to them as the living impaired , okay? Not dead kid. Not zombie , or worm buffet , or accursed hellspawn , either. Living impaired. Repeat after me. Living impaired ."
Pete watched the other boys in the locker room repeat the term.
"I want you to know that the decision to include this kid--" He took off his Badgers ball cap and ran his hand through his thick, close-cropped hair. "--this living impaired kid--has nothing to do with me. I have been ordered to let him on the team. So there it is. He'll be at practice tomorrow. Now hurry up and get your asses on the field."
Pete watched him turn on heel and start back up the stairs.
He didn't want any dirty dead kid in the locker room with him. He didn't want dead kids around him anywhere-- not in school, not in his classes, and not on his football field. He wanted all the dead kids in their graves, where they belonged.
Like Julie.
Maybe if Julie had come back, he thought. Maybe if she'd come back he'd feel differently, and he'd learn to stand them despite their blank staring eyes and their slow, croaking voices. But she didn't come back anywhere except in his dreams. And now, ever since the dead began to rise, when she returned even to that secret place, she came back changed. She wasn't the girl he'd held hands with at the lake, she wasn't the first girl he'd
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kissed on the edge of the pine woods. She wasn't his first and only love.
She was a monster. She was a monster much like the one that was about to put on pads and a helmet and take the field with him.
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***
CHAPTER THREE
T HE STD PUSHED THE PHONE into Adam's chest with the hand that wasn't holding the beer.
"It's some girl," he said.
Adam breathed through his nose, catching the phone before it fell to the floor. There were oil stains on his new T-shirt from where the STD's knuckles pressed against him. Adam watched him walk back into the living room, where Adam's mom sat with one of his stepbrothers, watching sitcoms on Fox. The breathing helped.
"Hello."
"Hi, Adam," Phoebe said, "how was practice?"
Adam kept focusing on his breathing when he heard the STD tell his mom to get him some chips. The chips in the kitchen he'd just left with his second beer. God bless America.
"Adam?"
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"Hey, Pheeble," he said, "sorry. I was just having a domestic moment with the STD." "Oh, I'm sorry."
"Me too. What's up? Practice was grueling. Just got home. I was getting sweaty and sore on a muddy field playing for a man who might have been separated at birth from the STD himself. What are you up to?" His mother walked past him, smiled and patted his shoulder.
"Just listening to music, doing some homework. You know."
"Let me guess: the song playing right now has one of the three following words in its title: sorrowful, rain, or death."
Phoebe laughed, and the sound of her laughter relaxed him enough to stop using Master Griffin's breathing technique. Pete, Gino Manetti, the STD's constant harassment. Her laugh ble
w it all out the door.
"'The Empty Chambers of My Heart,' by Endless Sorrow, actually."
"I was close," he said.
"Death is always one of your three words, I've noticed."
"I've been right most often with it." Adam liked a lot of the music that Pheeble and Daffy listened to, the faster, more guitar-driven stuff, anyhow. The really heavy goth stuff didn't do much for him other than get him thinking about things he didn't want to think about.
"That's probably true," she said. "Hey, did Tommy Williams practice today?"
"Williams? That's the dead kid, right?"
"Yes, Adam. That's the dead kid."
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"Oh. No. Coach says he's starting tomorrow. He isn't too pleased with the idea."
"Margi said she heard him arguing with Principal Kim about it."
"I've heard that too," Adam said. His stepbrother John's car roared into the driveway. "From Pete."
"Ah, yes. Pete. He's a big fan of the idea, I'm sure?" "Why do you say that?"
"Maybe because I've watched your buddy Pete bully and mock just about everyone outside of you and his little band of cronies ever since he moved here."
"Pete has issues," Adam said. "I don't think we'll be hanging out much this year."
He heard her sigh through the phone, or at least he thought he did. Phoebe seemed awfully interested in this dead kid all of a sudden. Johnny walked in and punched him on the shoulder his mother had just patted. Adam caught him with a slap to the back of the head as he went to join the rest of the not-Laymans watching television.
"Really? Why not?"
"Pete and I are on divergent paths."
"I'm so glad you took karate, Adam." He could hear the smile in her voice.
"Really? Why is that?"
"You're different. Not different, really. But more of who you've always been. I can't explain it."
He thought she'd explained it just right, but didn't say so. "That's good, right?"
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"I think it's great. Maybe now you'll actually be able to acknowledge me in the hallways if you're with one of your little cheerleader snips."
"Don't count on it," he said. "My cheerleader snips have got pretty high standards."
"Except in men," she said, and they laughed. "So, can you drive me tomorrow?"
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