He gets movie posters free from the Mom and Pop video store two blocks over, and hangs them up to cover the holes he’s punched in his walls when he gets really frustrated at losing a new game.
They’re all zombie movies – Zombie Bride 3, The Cheerleader Who Wouldn’t Die, Date with the Living Dead; his little inside joke that no one really gets but Dana and I (and isn’t all that funny to begin with).
The other residents of the Home come and go, literally.
Most don’t stay long and, if they do approach us (something we don’t generally encourage), don’t hang out regularly.
It’s not that we’re unfriendly, just not overly so.
Plus, unlike the kids at Barracuda Bay who don’t pay us much mind, at the Home there’s nothing for the other kids to do BUT check us out, and the closer we get to people, the more likely they are to discover our pesky little secret.
So today, like most days, like most nights, like most mornings, like most seasons and weekdays and holidays and weekends, it’s just the three of us.
Not that I mind, exactly.
Dana hasn’t been around long – only a couple of semesters – but we clicked right away.
She showed up about halfway through sophomore year, and I knew the minute I saw the words on her ironic black T-shirt under her purple paisley vest over her maroon skirt and black fishnet stalking – “My eyes are up there” – we’d be fast friends; and we were.
I mean, we are.
Although she is sexier than me, more feminine than me, taller than me, curvier than me, we still share makeup tips, graphic novels, funny YouTube videos and accessories just like human best friends; sisters, even.
Unlike most zombies, her eyes still have a little green left over the deep black they will eventually become.
Her skin is grayish, like mine, like Ethan’s, but somehow… not quite like ours, either.
There is still a lifelike quality to her, as if her body hasn’t quite gotten the message that she’s long since dead.
Her limbs don’t seem quite so stiff, her skin not quite so gray, her eyes not quite so dull.
As a result it’s a lot easier for her to “pass” at school, which is just as well because according to Law # 5 of The 8 Absolutely Unthinkable, Unbreakable Zombie Laws (i.e. “Thou Shalt Not Associate With Other Zombies Unless Absolutely, Positively Necessary”) Dana, Ethan and I aren’t technically supposed to hang out at school together.
That’s fine with me.
I was a loner as a human, so it wasn’t such a big transition to the Afterlife, but Dana has pictures of her old self in her room and they are so night and day from who she is now it’s not even funny.
(Well, it actually is funny so, scratch that.)
I mean, to look at this hardcore, tough-talking, sassy-walking, bully-punching chick now you’d think she’d always been a toughie but, in fact, in her past life she was a real doll; bowties in her pigtails and khaki slacks and pastel blouses and braces!
Braces!
It helps that she’s made a few human friends at school; nothing special, nobody she’d ever bring around the Home, that’s for sure, but at least she hasn’t had to cut humans off cold turkey like I have.
And Ethan?
Ethan is Ethan; like no zombie you’ve ever seen, alive or dead.
He keeps his dirty blond hair cut close to his skull, sometimes closer than others on account of he does it himself with a pair of electric clippers he bought for $2 at the pawn shop around the corner from the Home and they only work about half the time; and the rest they work twice as well, so he never can tell just how close a shave it’s going to be until he’s done and looks in the mirror.
It could be long or short, his hair, because you never see it anyway thanks to his perpetual hoodie.
And this guy wears a hood like nobody’s business.
I mean, it’s like Ethan was born to wear a hood, like Obi Wan Kenobi or Darth Vader, you know?
And he likes the wide kind, too, the kind that puddle on his shoulders and cast his face in shadows and come way down over the top of his head so only his shiny aviator shades, blunt nose and thin lips stick out when he cruises silently through the halls at school like a shark slicing through a school of fish.
He is bad without being too terribly bad and good without being too terribly good.
He showed up a few semesters before Dana (the Elders don’t like to “clump” zombies by having them all show up at the same school together on the same day because, well, obvious much?) and we kind of started hanging out at the Home just because we were the only ones still awake after the official “lights out” at 11.
One of the great things about being a zombie is you can see in the dark; I mean, there IS no dark, not for zombies.
So when I say I threw out my lamp, it wasn’t because I’m an anti-hoarder and can’t stand clutter, it’s because, really, why would I keep something around I didn’t need?
And zombies don’t need lamps.
The minute the sun goes down, the sky takes on this, well, it’s hard to describe but it’s this yellow sheen, like when Ethan switches to night vision goggles in one of his video games – not that I sit around watching Ethan play video games all day – but I’ve seen him do it once or twice and that’s what it’s like just the same.
And all night long, it’s like it’s still daytime out; at least for us.
So even when I’m pacing around my little empty hotel room at night, with no lamp and the light in the bathroom turned off, it’s still light.
Not like noonday bright, but bright enough; like mid-morning or late afternoon.
Even if I’m in the graveyard doing Reanimation Patrol, it’s like it’s the middle of the day.
But now it is the middle of the day, and the mood inside my cramped little room is anything but “light.”
“I don’t know, Lucy,” Dana is saying, her left foot fidgeting on the bare linoleum floor.
(Oh, I didn’t tell you? I ripped up the carpets, too. Sorry, Mrs. Hellman; you can keep my security deposit!)
“That was a pretty amateurish move, trying to use the hand dryer like that.”
Huh, shows how much Dana uses the C-wing girls’ room.
“It’s not a hand dryer, Dana; it’s a hand towel dispenser.”
“Same difference,” Dana snorts, but it’s not an “I’m so mad at you I could snort” snort, it’s more like a “How could you be so stupid?” snort.
(Which I’ve just decided is a lot worse.)
“The point is,” she sneers, “it’s like coming to school without three coats of makeup on or something.”
I make a kind of clicking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and let out an anguished, “Don’t you think I know that, you guys? I’m ticked off enough at myself already.”
“Maybe so,” adds Ethan, “and we’re not trying to kick you when you’re down but, what were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking, Ethan, that’s just the point. I’ve used that bathroom 8,000 times and never thought twice about it. How should I know they went and changed the dispensers overnight?”
“Well,” Dana points out, playing with one of the jeweled coasters she gave me for Christmas last year, “it’s kind of your job – our job – to pay attention to those kinds of details.”
“Yeah, I know that, Dana; I get that. I just, I slipped up, guys, I’m sorry.”
“What if the Council finds out, Lucy?” Ethan asks pointedly, his dark eyes judgmental. “I mean, they could split us up, they could send you to Afterlife Academy; they could send all of us to Afterlife Academy. I’m just saying, it’s not just you anymore; you have other… people… to care about.”
I shoot Ethan a look, because he normally doesn’t talk like that.
I mean, for Ethan, that’s about as sentimental as he gets.
I kind of gasp, look at them both and say, “I would never want anything to happen to you guys, ever.
You know that, right?”
Dana looks from Ethan then back to me and rolls her eyes.
She knows I’ve been crushing hard on Ethan for years now, knows he’s made a few comments along the way that indicated he might, maybe, could, possibly, sorta, probably feel the same way, and she gets a big kick out of the occasional moments of not-so-sexual tension that crop up from time to time.
“What Ethan’s saying, Lucy, is that we have to look out for each other, that’s all. We can’t afford to get… lazy. Ever.”
I groan, leaning back against the wall.
“I’m sorry, really I am. I’ll make it up to you guys, I promise.”
“How?” Dana asks, cutting me a dark look; few chicks can cut a dark look like Dana Latherow.
“How… what?” I ask, looking from one to the other and back again.
I mean, what do they want me to do, turn myself into the Council of Elders because some stupid chick got a bee in her bonnet about my cold skin?
Ethan sighs, looks at Dana, who sighs, and he looks back at me and asks, with a rough edge to his voice that I don’t hear often, “What she means, Lucy, is… what are you going to DO about it?”
“Do about it?” I ask. “What’s there to do about it? The vampires are getting me a doctor’s note,” I can’t believe I just said that out loud, “and by tomorrow Fiona will have forgotten all about it.”
Well, one out of two ain’t bad…
* * * * *
Chapter 8
I won’t say I’m “up” early the next morning because, let’s face it, I never sleep in the first place so there’s nothing to get “up” from.
What I guess I mean to say is, I’m “out” early the next morning.
It’s dark out for humans at 5 something-something a.m., but to me it might as well be sunrise already.
The pool is probably pretty cold this time of year, mid-October, but to my cold skin it’s practically like a sauna.
I can feel every ounce of its warmth seep into my pores, into my skin, into my bones and despite the grim, somewhat hardscrabble surroundings of the Home, it’s nothing short of luxurious.
I’m in a black and white pair of Ethan’s old baggies and a black long-sleeve T-shirt Dana quit wearing because it had a tear in it (the horror!), way around the back but, as she said before I rescued it from the trash heap, it simply “wasn’t up to her standards.”
Ethan calls the getup a “man-kini,” Dana calls it a “trunk-ini,” but I just call it functional; the baggies are big enough to move around in and the T-shirt’s not quite see-through.
So if somebody does happen to see me – not that anyone ever has, ever – this early in the a.m., say the pool guy or the paperboy or the milkman (do they still have those?) I’ll look like just another early bird getting her workout on.
The deep end is hardly that, and that’s where I take up residence just around this time each morning for my “exercises.”
It’s not exercising so much, but more like keeping limber.
As the muscles of the Undead age they also stiffen, to the point where even our withered veins and creaky tendons are like muscles and bones themselves.
It can feel a lot like getting metal bars shoved down each arm and each leg, so that if you’re not careful to limber up every freakin’ day you might as well forget about bending your arms at the elbow and your legs at the knees; they pretty much get useless.
Hollywood gets just about nothing right when they make those zombie movies Ethan loves so much, but the one thing they do seem to “get” is how stiff we are – IF we don’t keep limber, that is.
So here I am, predawn, stretching my stiff legs and waving my stiff arms around in circles like the old folks at some high-rise condo doing water aerobics to keep fit.
Yes, I look stupid; sure I look like a dork.
Why do you think I’m out here at five in the morning instead of prime time, when the rest of the world could see me acting the waterlogged fool?
I try to keep my arms and legs beneath the water so they won’t make splashing noises and wake up the rest of the kids, at least the Normals anyway.
Ethan is probably deep into another early morning session of online gaming and Dana’s probably blogging, her new passion, so the early morning is pretty much “Lucy time,” and that’s exactly how I like it.
Above the surface the pool looks like a wave machine what with all the stretching and spinning and un-stiffening going on below, but in just 25 minutes every morning you, too, can be a more natural-looking zombie!
Hey, I may never look as loose and languid as Dana on a bad day, but at least I can—
I smell the vampire before I see her, and stiff or not I’m up on the deck and approaching the rusty pool fence in two seconds flat – I told you zombies can move with the quickness when they want to – when Piper suddenly appears from behind the shack size pool house where they keep the grindy old pump and cleaning supplies.
In the pre-dawn darkness she is even more hideous than usual, her violent yellow eyes more violent and yellow, her veiny skin a disgusting atlas of thick black lines that pulse and throb as all roads lead to her black, twisted heart and then right back out again, like a never-ending conveyer belt of just.
Plain.
Nasty.
And yet stepping back and looking at her objectively, as a “Normal” would (i.e. a living, breathing human being), I know that in real life – whatever that is anymore – she is considered strikingly beautiful.
I kind of get that.
Vampires don’t “age” like zombies do; since they require constant nourishment from live victims and have actual blood (as black and gross as that blood may be) running through their veins 24/7, their bodies are eternally limber and lifelike.
Indeed, Piper is almost glowing, with or without my zombie super-vision; her skin is an almost radiant granite color, so plush and warm I can almost see the heat waves shimmering off of it.
Her lips, perhaps assisted by the double sets of fangs hiding in her upper and lower jaws – yes, vampires have two sets of fangs, try to keep up – are thick and plump but don’t have that “fake” look.
Her body is lean and lithe under her designer jeans, belly-riding crop top and suede jacket, her hair clean and thick and tucked, just so, behind her ears with the white beret tipped just so.
Yes, I said “beret.”
A quick note about Piper: she’s about 387-years-old, give or take a decade or two, and she’s been through so many fashion fads and fallacies, do’s and don’ts that it’s like she just doesn’t care what people think anymore.
And, of course, by not caring she in turn is by far the most fashionable girl at school.
(Even though I can’t see it, I mean… a beret? A white beret? In October? Please, even my trunk-ini is cooler than that.)
Although if it wasn’t for the Truce of the Undead I’d like to rip her head off and try bowling with it in heavy traffic, I have to love the way she seriously screws with the Normal girls’ heads, particularly when it comes to fashion.
Wanna know why vampires are always the coolest kids at school?
Because the first thing they do when they get to a new school is kill all the cooler kids.
I am absolutely serious about this; it is a proven strategy among the vampire race.
One by one, over the course of, say, several months so it’s not some overnight thing where they’ll draw a lot of attention, they will very dedicatedly go about dispatching the two most beloved, feared, respected and admired teenagers on campus, which we all know are a.) the head cheerleader and b.) the captain of the football team.
That’s it; that’s all it takes.
It’s like wiping out the president and the VP in one swoop and, bam, suddenly the whole country is in anarchy mode.
Two popular teenagers gone and, Shazam; the school doesn’t know where to look.
It’s all very strategic and, you know, aside from the wh
ole two teenagers being dead thing, you kind of have to hand it to them; it works like a charm, every time.
And it’s not just about fashion; it’s about dominance.
For the vampires to exist, to hunt, to “pass” in a new town, they must be above reproach.
No one can question them, and who does no one dare question?
That’s right; the coolest kids at school.
So it’s a matter of self-survival; if the vampires kill off the old cool kids, by default they become the new cool kids.
Hence, no one messes with them.
Is Piper particularly cool?
I mean, on her own, if you were to put her under a microscope and dissect her cool-ability?
No; not really.
* * * * *
Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! A YA Paranormal Novel Page 5
