My Rotten Life

by David Lubar

  I thought about my whole body getting flooded with the same sort of pain I’d felt in my thumb. “Will the cure hurt?”

  “Probably not. Look—stop worrying and trust me. Okay?”

  “I’ll try.” I had no choice. I had to trust her. But the rest of the day went by in a blur. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I just kept picturing what my life would be like if I didn’t get cured. I don’t think Mr. Lomux would be very impressed with my athletic abilities if my hand went flying off when I served a volleyball or I lost a leg on the pommel horse.

  I guess Mookie knew what I was thinking. At the end of the day, he said, “Cheer up. Maybe you didn’t like my other ideas, but I thought of something even cooler. You could go around the country giving chin-up demonstrations. Hey—I’ll bet that’s what people mean when they say, ‘Keep your chin up.’ ”

  My head slumped, chin and all.

  I did like one of Mookie’s ideas, and it was still working for me. I had no trouble at dinner as I pushed pieces of roast beef under my mashed potatoes. But later that evening, I noticed Mom kept watching me every time I walked through the living room.

  I sneaked a glance at my reflection in the window. There was nothing about me that was obviously screaming Zombie!

  “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I feel great. Why?”

  “Usually, you go to the bathroom either right after school or about an hour and a half after dinner.”

  “Mom!” I couldn’t believe she paid that much attention to the personal details of my life.

  “It’s a mother’s job to notice this sort of thing. I’m pretty sure you haven’t been going to the bathroom the last couple days. Are you constipated?”

  “No! I’m at school most of the day,” I said. “They have lots of bathrooms there. I’m fine. Honest. Can we drop the subject?”

  “Just tell me if you need help. There are some very gentle laxatives.”

  “I will.” I got out of the living room as fast as I could. But I made sure to go into the bathroom half an hour later.

  “It’s a good thing I’m getting cured tomorrow,” I muttered as I sat and waited for enough time to pass. When I came out, Mom smiled at me like I’d just brought home straight A’s.

  That night, I beat four different online games before 3 A.M. I decided to look for something different to do. Some of the kids in school talked a lot about these multiplayer games, where you went into a whole world filled with people and monsters. You could have adventures, but you could also chat with other players. I found a free one, downloaded it, and signed up.

  That kept me busy until it was time to sneak off to bed and pretend to be asleep. I remembered the lesson from last night. When Mom woke me, I dashed right for the bathroom. It wasn’t hard for me to leap out of bed like I was in a rush. I didn’t need to go to the bathroom, but I was really eager to get to school. This was the day I’d finally come back to life.

  14

  On Second Thought

  Instead of meeting up with Mookie on Friday morning, I ran past the school, all the way to Abigail’s house, and banged on the door.

  “Why, you’re Abigail’s little friend,” her mom said. “Come in. Abigail will be right down.”

  I stepped inside. It wasn’t easy. The entryway was lined with boxes and stacks of newspapers. The hall past Mrs. Goldberg was filled with more boxes, magazines, and small appliances.

  “Nathan?” Abigail jogged down the stairs.

  “I wanted to talk about our science project,” I said.

  “Of course.” Abigail nodded, got a kiss from her mom, and slipped outside.

  “The cure?” I asked as we walked off the porch.

  “We’re in great shape,” she said. “I know the last ingredient. We need alexandrite.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a rare gem. It’s purple.”

  “A gem?” I felt like I was playing a high-stakes game of animal, vegetable, or mineral. “Where are we going to find that?”

  “Shawna has one. She wears this charm bracelet sometimes. I saw it on her wrist last week. There’s a tiny chip of alexandrite on one of the charms.”

  I stopped to let all of this sink in. “So you’re telling me I have to steal a bracelet?”

  Abigail shook her head. “No, we don’t have to steal it. Just borrow it for a minute. It will help speed up the reaction between the fish scales and the mushroom. But it won’t be ruined or anything. It’s called a catalyst.”

  “There’s no way she’s going to let us borrow it.”

  “I know. But we don’t have to ask her. All you have to do is get us into Shawna’s house.”

  “Us?”

  “You’ll need Mookie and me to help. We might have to create a distraction. We’ve already seen how good he is at that.”

  “I guess I’d better find out if I can still get invited.” I think there was a part of me that wanted to hang out with the cool kids. Of course, there was also only a very small part of me that was still alive.

  We headed for school. Abigail scurried to catch up with me. “I never walked to school with anyone before,” she said.

  “It’s not as exciting as it sounds.”

  As we walked, I wiggled my left little finger, which was feeling a bit loose. At least my thumb seemed to be holding on solidly. I’d started carrying a small bottle of the special glue mixture with me, just in case I needed to stick some other body part back on.

  As we were crossing the street, Abigail said, “Go ahead. You’re dying to ask.”

  “About what?”

  “The boxes. The clutter. You must be curious.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “But you’re curious, right?”

  “Right.” I had to admit I wondered what was going on.

  “Mom’s always collected stuff. But it got a lot worse after Dad died.” As she reached the end of that sentence, Abigail gulped like she’d swallowed something too large for her throat.

  After Dad died.

  The words seemed to wrap around her like a heavy cloth. I didn’t look at her while I waited for her to go on. We were almost at the school when she spoke again.

  “He could always talk her into getting rid of some of it. We were renting a place back then. After he was gone, the apartment got so full of Mom’s stuff, they asked us to leave. That was fine. It was good for us to get away from there. Dad had left us enough money to buy a house.”

  I thought about my room. And Mookie’s room. “I’ve seen worse,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  The silence came back. I had to say something. “That must be really hard, losing your dad.” I wondered whether it was especially painful for her to be around someone who was dead but still walking.

  “Yeah. It’s been tough. But I guess it feels good to talk about it. I’ve been sort of keeping it to myself.”

  I think I finally understood why Abigail wanted to come up with a formula to erase hurt feelings. She’d been carrying around this big hurt, and she’d never had any real friends to share it with. Too bad the formula hadn’t worked out.

  When we reached the school, I saw Shawna and her friends near the flagpole. “Wish me luck.” I jogged toward them, trying to look like a track star.

  “Nathan, wait,” Abigail called after me.

  “Hang on. I’ll be right back,” I shouted over my shoulder. I wanted to get this over with. I got ready to beg Shawna to let me go to her party.

  “Hi, Nathan,” she said. “Are you sure you can’t come to my party?”

  “I’ll come!” I hadn’t meant to shout. I hoped the next part would be just as easy. “Is it okay if I bring a couple friends?”

  “That would be great. I’m sure your friends are just as cool as you are.” She flashed me one of her dazzling smiles, and for a billionth of a second, I almost believed I was a cool guy with cool friends.

  “Thanks.” I rushed off to tell Abigail the news. By
the time I got there, Mookie had joined her.

  “We’re going,” I said. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Her gaze flickered over toward Shawna, and then back to me. “It’s not important.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Forget about it.” She turned toward Mookie. “Ready for a party?”

  “You bet,” Mookie said. “I’m a total party animal.”

  “So, what’s our plan?” I asked.

  “We’ll find out where she keeps the bracelet,” Abigail said. “If necessary, Mookie will cause an initial distraction.”

  “I can stick my face in the chocolate fountain and blow bubbles,” he said.

  “That might be a bit extreme,” Abigail said. “Either way, once she’s distracted, I’ll sneak off, get the bracelet, and use the stone as the catalyst.”

  “I hope this works,” I said.

  “It will,” Abigail said. “I guarantee it will.”

  I looked across the school yard and noticed that Rodney was glaring at me again.

  “You go ahead,” I told Mookie and Abigail. “I’ll be there in a minute.” I wasn’t going to spend the whole day trying to avoid Rodney. I waited for him to walk over.

  He poked me in the chest. “If you go to Shawna’s party, I’m going to hurt you.”

  I was sick of his bullying. I curled my hands into fists. “You can’t hurt me.” True. But then I looked down and saw my left little finger dangling. I might not feel pain, and I might be able to hurt Rodney, but I didn’t want him pounding on my face hard enough to knock pieces off, even if I did have my glue with me. I stared at him, hoping he’d decided not to start a fight on school property.

  He stared back for a moment. “Now you’re really asking for it. If you go to the party, you’re leaving in pieces.” He gave me a hard shove, then walked away.

  That was close. I really didn’t want to have to glue my jaw back on. But I’d stood up to him. And that felt good. I thought about all the bad stuff I’d gone through last week—the party, gym class, the video game. I realized there was something I had to do before Abigail brought me back to life. At lunchtime, I walked over to Caleb at the nerd table. “Hi, vidiot,” he said. But he added, “Nice job on field day.”

  “Thanks.” I pointed to the game. “I’ve got one more thing I need to win.”

  “You really don’t want to do that,” he said.

  “Yeah, I really do.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Caleb said.

  As he was handing me the game, I said, “Set it at the hardest level.”

  I watched as he cycled past EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, and KILLER all the way to UNBEATABLE.

  “This won’t take long,” he said.

  “No. It won’t.”

  His smirk faded as my first guy blasted through wave after wave of zombies. I felt kids crowding around me. It brought back a bad memory of the other day in art class. But memories had no effect on my steadiness. I blew through the whole first level in record time. Then I handed the game back to Caleb. “Here. That’s enough. You can finish it for me.”

  He took the game, but didn’t manage to say anything. I moved through the parting crowd of staring eyes and open mouths. Maybe for the moment, I wasn’t the closest thing to a zombie in the room.

  The rest of the school day passed without making much of an impression on me. I guess this must be what it’s like for the class gerbil. Or maybe gerbils had deep thoughts. I sure didn’t.

  I killed time in my room by reading until it was late enough to head out for the party. I still needed a costume. Halloween was actually tomorrow. I guess Shawna had her party on Friday so everyone could go out for candy on Saturday. I liked going out, but I never made a big deal about dressing up. I usually just threw something together at the last minute.

  I really didn’t care all that much what I looked like. I wasn’t going there to make friends. I was going there to steal—okay, borrow—jewelry and escape from my existence as one of the walking dead. A pirate costume seemed about right for that. I got a large bandanna from Mom and tied it on my head. I also got a large round clip-on earring. Arrrgghhh.

  Before I left, I grabbed a pin and checked my legs. At first, when I couldn’t find any feeling, I started to panic. The tops and sides of my feet were dead. The only life left was in small circles on the bottoms of my feet.

  I met Mookie and Abigail at the corner FoodMart a couple blocks from Shawna’s house. Abigail was wearing a rumpled white shirt, along with a white wig and a white mustache.

  “I’m Albert Einstein,” she said before I could ask. “I’m the schmartest theoretical physicist in the universe.”

  Mookie’s face was covered with hair.

  “I’m a werewolf,” he said.

  “That’s a weird mask,” I told him.

  “It’s not a mask,” he said. “I got some hair and glued it on. It took all afternoon. I used really strong glue, so it will still be on tomorrow night when we go out for trick or treat.”

  I looked closer and realized the hairs were all sorts of different colors. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Behind the barbershop,” he said. “They throw out tons of hair, if you ever need any.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I turned to little Einstein. “Do you have the ingredients with you so you can use the gem?”

  “Right here.” Abigail lifted her purse. “How are you doing with the deadline?”

  I touched my index finger to my thumb, making a small circle. “Just the bottom of my foot.”

  “That’s all we need. As long as there’s even a tiny patch of living body, the cure will work. By the way, my mom had to go out, but she said you guys could come over. She made some of her famous Crock-Pot chili. We can all go to my house after the party and celebrate your ability to eat again. I suspect you’ll be starving.”

  “Chili!” Mookie said. “I love chili. It gives me gas, but I don’t care.”

  “Everything gives you gas,” I said.

  As we got closer to Shawna’s house, I could hear music blasting. “This will be great,” Mookie said.

  “It will be fascinating to observe,” Abigail said. “I’ve always wondered what happens at a party.”

  “You’ve never been to one?” Mookie asked.

  “I’ve never wanted to go to one,” she said. “I had lots of chances. I was just never interested.”

  I knocked on the door. Shawna answered it, wearing a princess costume. For a fraction of a second, I almost felt my heart beat. To say she looked pretty would be sort of like saying the Eiffel Tower looked tall.

  “Hi, Nathan!” Shawna smiled at me. I blinked my eyes to keep them from popping out. Then her expression changed. She pointed at Abigail and Mookie. “What are those two losers doing here?”

  15

  Disinvited

  Mookie’s face flushed. His eyes and mouth widened into perfect circles, making him look like a hairy bowling ball. Abigail shuddered like she’d been smacked between the shoulder blades with a telephone pole. I froze. I didn’t have a clue what to do.

  “But you told me . . .” I searched for a way to get them inside.

  Then Abigail sprang into action. She slapped herself in the forehead. Then she grabbed Mookie’s arm, and said, “Oops. This is the wrong house. My mistake. Come on.”

  She dragged Mookie down the steps. When I caught her eye, she made a shooing motion with the back of her hand, like she wanted me to go in by myself. Then she pointed to the sidewalk. I guess she and Mookie were going to wait for me out there. It was up to me to get the bracelet.

  The good news was, I already knew where to find the bracelet. The bad news was that it was on Shawna’s wrist. Oh boy.

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in,” Shawna said. She looked toward the sidewalk and muttered, “Stupid losers.”

  I wanted to shout at her and stomp away. If anything else had been at stake, I would have told her that she was the loser, and didn’t deserve to have
kids as cool as Mookie and Abigail at her party. But my whole future was at stake. I stole another glance at my friends, then followed Shawna inside.

  So there I was, surrounded by everything that was on the invitation. A DJ was playing music in one corner. The chocolate fountain, surrounded by cut fruit, bubbled and flowed in another corner. Between the DJ and the fountain, two six-foot sandwiches, one of which was now about a yard short, sat on a table along the wall, next to another table full of cups, soda bottles, and pitchers of punch.

  “Hey, Nathan.” Mort, dressed as a mummy, pointed one of his crutches at me. The Decker twins waved at me from the snack table and shouted, “Aaarrrghhh!” They were both wearing Captain Hook costumes. I guess this was the year for pirates. And I guess neither of them wanted to be Peter Pan.

  I was surrounded by the cool kids. A couple were dancing. Most were just sitting around, talking. It was nice. But I wasn’t there for partying. I was there for alexandrite. The charm bracelet dangled from Shawna’s wrist. One of the charms definitely had a tiny gem on it. Maybe it will fall off, I thought.

  Yeah, and maybe I’d learn to fly by flapping my ears. The only way I was going to get what I needed was to take it myself. I might not have much time. Rodney was there, dressed like a zombie in torn clothes and badly done makeup. Someone who’s that ugly when he’s alive really shouldn’t try to look dead. He was carrying a bloody rubber hand. I watched as he walked up to Lexi and thrust it in her face.

  She shrieked and jumped back, then giggled. Rodney growled, limped toward Cydnie, and thrust the hand at her with pretty much the same results. Then he chewed on it. It looked like he was working up the nerve to approach Shawna. But as he staggered toward Bekkah, Shawna dashed over, grabbed the hand from him, and threw it across the room. “Stop that,” she said. “It’s not very funny.”

  Rodney let out a weak growl. I guess he was trying to be cute. It didn’t work. Shawna turned away from him. That’s when he caught sight of me. He shot me a glare and pounded his fist into his palm. I was getting sick of his threats. But he wasn’t my biggest problem. Right now, I needed to figure out how to get the alexandrite.