You Are So Undead to Me

by Stacey Jay

  Besides, everyone knew Monica didn't experience fear; she instilled it.

  But the weirdest part of the whole thing was: Why had the RC- who'd bitten her on the leg before Ethan made it up the hill-seemed to chill once it had Monica's blood in its mouth? I mean, Ethan had worked the reverto spell only a few seconds later, but I didn't think I'd imagined the way the zombie's face had already slackened, as if it was losing its black-magic charge.

  Every Settler knew a Reanimated Corpse would go back to its grave once it had a taste of its Maker's blood. Could Monica have been that Maker and tried to kill her own homecoming date and staged the attack simply to cover her ass when she learned the Shane clones hadn't killed me?

  Or was I just letting jealousy cloud my perception? There was no denying the way my stomach had dropped when Ethan pulled Monica into his arms after the zombies were gone. He'd looked just as upset as when he'd learned I'd been in danger and just as close to doing more than picking up the bawling Monica and carrying her down the hill to his car.

  If I hadn't been following right behind them, would he have been playing tonsil hockey with Monica too? Maybe that was Ethan's response to seeing a girl cry. Maybe our kiss had meant nothing; maybe-

  No. I wasn't going to go there. I did my best to banish all angst-ridden thoughts as I headed into the girls' restroom to see if I could do something with my hair before lunch.

  I'd let it air dry this morning and it was now a mass of frizzy, 1980s-perm-gone-awry waves. Yikes. Maybe I should have skipped the extra sleep and opted for some blow-drying time instead, no matter how wiped I was after being up until two.

  "Nice look, Megan." This evil pronouncement was accompanied by a snort that made it clear my look was anything but nice.

  "Thanks, Monica," I said in my sweetest voice as I twisted my hair up into a bun and jabbed a couple of number two pencils through it to hold it in place.

  Evidently the fact that we'd both been "attacked" last night didn't mean we were going to be new BFFs. Fine with me. Her getting bit by an RC didn't make me like her any more than I did yesterday.

  In fact, I would have gone ahead and accused her of being the one behind all this… if a part of me wasn't scared to death of her. Not only was she the Monicster, she was a very powerful Settler, two years older than me and completely out of her gourd if she'd been raising zombies with black magic. I had to tread carefully and only play my hand when I had irrefutable proof-and hopefully several large, scary Protocol officers for backup.

  "I was so beat I didn't have time to fix it. I'm so glad you still think it looks okay."

  "Whatever." She rolled her eyes, making it clear how frustrating she found people who didn't get her sarcasm. Ha! Disarmed by my niceness. Now to see if I could get any information to solidify my case.

  "Sorry to hear about Mark. Bad for the team and for you."

  "It's not like we were going to beat Danderville anyway," she said, showing a decided lack of school spirit for someone who was cocaptain of the pom squad as she stalked across the bathroom, peeking under the doors of the stalls.

  "You're probably right. Still, I-"

  "What the hell are you trying to do? Make sure I get relocated too?" Monica turned back to me with a hiss. "There could have been someone in here."

  "Sorry. I didn't say anything about the graveyard or-"

  "Damn right you didn't, and you're not going to say anything now." She closed the distance between us, getting close enough I would have backed away if the sink weren't right behind me. "You might be fooling the Elders, but I'm not buying the innocent act, Megan."

  "Innocent act?" I asked, totally dumbfounded. "What are you talking about?"

  "Really, it's pathetic," she said, smiling as she backed away, giving me a slow, assessing up-and-down look, making clear just how pitiable I was. "I mean, are you that desperate for Ethan's attention? That you have to keep staging attacks on yourself?"

  What?! "That's ridiculous, Monica, and you know it." You're the attack stager, I wanted to add, but didn't. She was close enough to claw my eyes out, and those nails looked very, very sharp.

  "All I know is that you're going for a review this afternoon and I'm not."

  "So what? That's because I used a third-stage command, not-"

  "Right, sure you did. And you've been back on Settler duty for how long?" She laughed and stepped up to the mirror next to mine, checking her black-like-her-soul eyeliner. "You should just understand one thing. Whether you show up at school tomorrow or not, there's no way you'll have a chance to sic any of your little friends on me again."

  I tried to laugh but couldn't. This just wasn't funny. "Strange you call them my friends, Monica. I was pretty sure that RC at the cemetery last night was some tiling you cooked up."

  I could at least accuse her of that, though I'd have loved to accuse her of a lot more.

  "I don't need to do things like that to get attention." She whipped a lipstick from her purse and applied a smooth coat of gloss. "The Elders know it, and so does Ethan. He told me last night he'll be making sure I'm safe from now on."

  "Of course he will. He's with Protocol and-"

  "It's a little more… personal than that." Monica smiled and turned to face me, the triumph in her expression making me want to wring her neck. "You're going to need to find another date to the dance, assuming you're not in SA custody before then. Ethan will be taking me."

  She wasn't lying-I could tell from the smug smile curling her evil lips. "Fine, so he'll be your fake boyfriend instead of mine. I couldn't care less." I shrugged, hoping I had done a decent job of concealing my surprise… not to mention my hurt.

  How could Ethan have let me find this out from the Monicster? Didn't he think he should tell me he'd been reassigned himself?

  "Fake boyfriend?" She laughed again. "There was nothing fake about what happened when he took me home last night. It was just like old times."

  My mouth dropped open. I couldn't help myself, even though I regretted showing my shock the second Monica's eyes lit up in victory. That was what had been niggling at my brain in the locker room the other day. Five years ago, after Monica helped me banish the zombies, I'd tried to thank her. But she'd told me to thank her boyfriend. She said if they hadn't stayed behind to make out in the woods before the second-stage ceremony, they never would have heard me scream.

  Her boyfriend's name? Ethan.

  God! How could I have been so stupid?

  Before I could think of a way to salvage what was left of my pride, she was heading toward the door, throwing her parting shot over her shoulder. "And remember-don't count your pompoms before those names go up on the gym wall Saturday morning."

  Oh. My. God. She didn't just act like I wasn't a shoo-in for the team. Even distracted by murdering zombies, my crush on Ethan, and a dozen other things, I'd still learned the routines yesterday faster than anyone. And I'd danced them as well as, if not better than, the seniors running the clinic. So if Monica was insinuating I might not make the squad, she had to be planning something sneaky and underhanded.

  Now I just had to find out if it was average senior-girl sneaky and underhanded or if she really was the one who'd tried to kill me. And if she'd have the guts to try again while a Protocol officer was tailing her every move.

  My life was just getting more and more complicated, not to mention dangerous. And now it looked like I didn't even have a bodyguard anymore. If I hadn't been so upset, I would have tried to call Ethan during lunch to get his version of the story. But I didn't. I figured I'd find out the truth this afternoon.

  If I went outside after pom clinic and he was still waiting to give me a ride to SA headquarters for my review, I'd know Monica was lying. If not… I'd deal with it. I bad to deal with it and stay focused on exposing Monica or whoever else was raising murderous corpses. My life could depend on it.

  ***

  "Thank God you're finally here! Where were you?" Jess pulled me inside the house without even saying hi. Despite
the fact that she hadn't even raised her voice, I knew she was pissed.

  "I'm so sorry. I had to run by Del's to drop off her homework."

  "You were at Del's all this time?" Jess asked, shooting me a strange look.

  "No, I just stopped by really quickly." Long enough to see that Del was clearly sick and not up for raising zombies, I mentally added. "Then I got stuck at my mom's work. She said she had to go get this one little thing, and that turned into two things, then three," I said as I bent over to take off my shoes, finding it easier to lie when I wasn't looking Jess in the face. "We just got home ten minutes ago, and I grabbed my stuff and came right over."

  "Don't take off your shoes. We should practice in what we're going to wear for tryouts."

  "But won't Clara have a meltdown?" I asked in a whisper, just in case her stepmom was nearby.

  Clara was actually very cool about most things, but she was a total neat freak. She'd burst into tears one time when Jess and I spilled a bag of Doritos on the couch in the living room and hadn't stopped even after we'd picked them all up and vacuumed the area twice. Jess had said she was still crying an hour and a half later when her dad got home from work. I mean, I understand cleanliness is a virtue and all that, but Clara definitely had issues.

  "No, I promised her I'd pay for the carpet cleaners to come do my room next month out of my allowance." Jess rolled her eyes and tugged me up the stairs, obviously not in the mood to talk about her stepmom.

  Clara was the one person in the world who could get under Jess's skin. It was a shame she was forced to live with the woman until she was eighteen. Jess's bio mom had run off when she was still a little kid, a fact I knew had really messed her up for a while, even though she refused to talk about it. When we were in middle school, she'd cry every time we watched a movie that had anything to do with moms and daughters. Even Dumbo would make her totally lose it. And that wasn't even about people.

  "So did you get a copy of the tryout CD they made?" Jess asked as soon as we were safely ensconced in her room, which was kind of like being inside our own giant loft apartment.

  Jess's dad, Mr. Thompson, was a psychotically rich investor type and had specially designed this room for his Little Princess when she was ten and started getting really serious about dance. One corner of the massive space was totally devoted to her passion, with full-length mirrors on the wall and a dance bar and everything. Her sound system made the one we used at the Dance Zone seem positively ghetto.

  "Yeah, I did, but when I put it in my mom's car, it was blank." I plopped down on the thick carpet to stretch. "Monica is totally trying to keep me off the squad."

  And probably trying to kill me.

  The list of things I couldn't tell my best friend was getting way too long for my personal comfort.

  "That witch! I hate her," Jess said, and for once I really believed she hated someone. Of course, pom squad was the one thing that Jess was super-serious about and had been since we were tiny. It was natural that anything or anyone getting in the way of our dream would drive her crazy. It would have been driving me crazy too… if I didn't have so many other things on my mind.

  The review hadn't gone as badly as I'd anticipated, but it hadn't gone really well either. The Elders hadn't reprimanded me for using a third-stage command. In fact, they'd been positively thrilled about how powerfully I was manifesting, certain I was going to be something really special in the Settler world.

  I, of course, wasn't so thrilled. Especially when I heard about some of their plans for me, plans that involved special training camps in the summer that would put me on the fast track to an Enforcement career straight out of high school. Enforcement was so not my idea of the world's most perfect job. If Protocol were the police of the Settler world, Enforcement were the FBI. It was a scary, difficult, dangerous career, and I wasn't into any of those things.

  Considering SA had shelled out the cash to resod our lawn and fix our garage door in the middle of the night so none of our neighbors would see the results of the fire, however, I wasn't in a position to argue with the Elders at the moment.

  Even if I hadn't caused a major cover-up situation, they actually believed I was to blame for the clones. They thought my overabundance of power had negatively interacted with the energy of a murder victim or something lame like that. No matter how many times I told them about the threatening phone call, they seemed unimpressed.

  They believed someone at my school had been raising corpses through black magic, but they were convinced the clone situation was unrelated because no teenager could complete such a complicated voodoo spell. Ethan had helped confirm this theory because he'd drawn an Unsettled during the day when we were training together. Even close contact with my power was enough to up his power, something SA had never heard of.

  The Elders thought this was really cool… and really dangerous. Nothing had been decided yet, but there had been talk of security.

  Like, big-time security, not a junior Protocol officer like Ethan.

  My mom and I had been followed by one large, intimidating Enforcer guy all afternoon, and there was talk of adding two or three more to Megan detail. Like the one guy wasn't bad enough. Barker was freaky, and it gave me the creeps to even sit in the same car with him.

  He was the one who had dropped me off a block from Jess's house and who would be waiting to escort me back home-where he would also be staying-after we were finished practicing for tryouts. Until SA decided what to do with me, tall, dark, and scary would be living with us.

  The situation sucked. Especially because I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like if it was Ethan in our guest room instead of the Enforcer thug.

  "Hey, I got the music from London, so we're good to go. It's okay-don't look so sad," Jess said, laying a hand on my leg as she leaned deeper into her stretch.

  "Thanks. Good thinking." I tried to smile, but it was so hard. All I could seem to think about was Ethan. How he'd testified about his daytime Unsettled without even looking at me. How he'd rushed from headquarters without saying hi and jumped into Monica's car, looking positively thrilled with his new assignment. I'd been upgraded to Enforcer thug bodyguard, so Monica had my Ethan as her bodyguard.

  Not your Ethan. He made that clear.

  Even if Monica was lying about whatever had happened on her porch, Ethan was obviously not into me. If he were, he would have called, text-messaged or… something to let me know that the thing with the Monicster was just an assignment and that the kiss last night had been more than a reaction to a stressful situation.

  But he hadn't. And he wouldn't and I'd probably never kiss him ever again.

  "Megan, are you crying?" Jess asked, grabbing my hand.

  "No, no, I'm just… stressed." I sniffed, forcing myself to swallow past the lump in my throat. I would not let Ethan make me cry. I had to hold it together. "Mrs. Pierce was giving me a hard time today, and Monica's being a jerk, and… other stuff."

  "What other stuff?" Jess waited a few seconds while I tried to figure out what I could tell her that wouldn't break Settler secrecy. "Come on, Meg, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

  "I… " No, I couldn't tell her anything! I wished I could, but I couldn't. "I swear, it's nothing. I'm overreacting."

  "Okay," Jess said, sounding like she didn't believe me. "Well, let's get started. I told Kyle I'd call him after we were done, so we've only got about an hour. Otherwise Clara will crack down with her phone curfew and I won't be able to call until tomorrow."

  "She's so weird with the phone stuff. I mean, you're almost sixteen years old-you should be able to talk on the phone after nine o'clock. The way she checks the cell phone records to make sure you're not calling after phone curfew is just weird."

  "I know! She's such a freak." Jess went off on a tirade, like I'd known she would, saving me from any further best-friend prodding about my fragile emotional state.

  Still, I felt awful the entire time we were practicing. Jess had been a great f
riend to me for, like, forever. If I couldn't tell her about the Settler stuff, who could I tell? Maybe once all this craziness was over, I'd find a way to break the news-after swearing her to secrecy, of course. It would be so nice to have someone normal to talk to about all the weird undead drama.

  "So what do you think? You ready for tomorrow?" Jess asked, still breathing hard after our third time through our final routine.

  "As ready as I'll ever be. If we practice any more, I'll be dead." I collapsed on the floor with a sigh, the room spinning around me. All the late nights were catching up with me. I'd never felt so wiped at the end of a dance practice.

  Jess laughed and flopped down next to me. "Make sure you get some rest tonight. Don't stay up until midnight talking to your man or whatever you've been doing that's making you fall asleep in English."

  "Right. About that," I said, squeezing my eyes closed as I realized I had to break the news about my lack of homecoming date to Jess. I'd totally forgotten I'd said we'd double with her and Kyle! "It turns out I won't be going to the dance tomorrow night."

  "What?" she asked, eyes round. "Why?"

  "Ethan and I broke up." Crap. The words hurt so much it was like they were true.

  "Oh no! God, Megan, I'm so sorry." She leaned over and enveloped me in a fierce hug, her obvious empathy only making me feel worse. "That's awful. What a jerk! The day before homecoming, too!"

  "Yeah, pretty jerky." I sighed, knowing I was the real jerk.

  "Listen, I'll cancel with Kyle and we'll stay home and veg as planned," she said, proving she was the best friend ever. But I couldn't let her make that sacrifice.

  "No way. You've got to go-to report on Ethan for me if nothing else. He's going to take Monica to the dance instead of me."

  "What!" Jess screeched, practically shattering something in my inner ear with her outrage. "Ethan dumped you for Monica? What the hell is wrong with him?"