Night of the Zombie Chickens

by Julie Mata

  It’s funny, but I’m not in the mood to laugh. Alyssa grabs an ear of corn and copies Lydia exactly, and this I find hugely annoying.

  “Zombies don’t bite people’s heads off,” I mutter, but they’re already running away, screaming and ripping up corn. I can hear cornstalks crunching and trails of breathless laughter. A part of me wants to grab an ear of corn, run after them, and forget about the movie. But I’m the director. They’re supposed to be doing what I tell them to do. And the shots of the pickup looked great, so I don’t want the day to be a bust.

  I trail after them with my camera. The corn is so tall and thick I can only see a couple of feet in front of me.

  “I’m lost!” Lydia screams off to my left somewhere. “Alyssa, where are you?”

  “I’m here!” Alyssa yells, somewhere off to my right.

  “I’m here,” I call, trying to get into the spirit of things.

  “Marco!” Lydia bawls at the top of her lungs.

  “Polo!” Alyssa shrieks back.

  “Marco!”

  “Polo!”

  I call Polo, too, but it’s clear they’re only trying to find each other. I’ve become the third wheel, the pain-in-the-butt director they have to run away from. Resentment simmers inside me. I didn’t expect much from Lydia, but Alyssa’s behavior feels like treachery. They finally find each other, and I manage to find them.

  “That was so scary,” Lydia says, although she’s clearly not afraid at all.

  “We could get lost and die out here!” Alyssa squeals. “They wouldn’t find our bones until next year!”

  I roll my eyes. “The farmers harvest their corn in October. You’d barely be decomposed by then.”

  Alyssa shrugs. “Whatever.”

  I smile and try to take control of the situation. “Okay, let’s shoot it once more. I just need you guys to run by the camera a few times, only do it in frame this time.”

  Lydia glances at Alyssa, and, just like that, I can tell neither of them wants to work on my movie anymore. Lydia groans. “I am so tired. Is there anything to drink? I did way too much running.”

  “Too bad I don’t have any of it on camera,” I mutter.

  Lydia stares up at the sky. “Where, exactly, is your house?”

  I glance around, but the corn towers over us—acres and acres of corn. We’ve done so much running I’ve lost all sense of direction. I jump up and down, and then we’re all jumping up and down, but it doesn’t do any good.

  We grin at one another because it’s kind of funny that we’re actually lost in a cornfield. It will make a great story at school on Monday morning. Who knows? After Lydia gets done telling it, maybe the whole seventh-grade class will want to be zombies in my movie. I feel cheered.

  “I know,” I say. “You two get on your hands and knees, and I’ll climb on your backs and see if I can see anything.”

  “You’re the shortest,” Lydia says.

  “I’ll be the lightest,” I explain.

  Lydia sticks out her lower lip. “Are you calling me fat?”

  Now, Lydia never means what she says. It’s all about getting laughs. If I were smart, I’d say something like, Yeah, fatty, and she would probably snicker. But I’m still a little nervous and resentful, so I say, “Uh, no, you’re not fat,” which is pathetic and not funny at all.

  “Well, I’m tallest,” she says, “so you two get down and I’ll look.”

  She and Alyssa are the same height, but Alyssa hits the ground like a dropped brick, so I get down, too. Lydia climbs on, and she’s a lot heavier than she looks. She can’t just look and hop off; she has to do a little jig up there like she’s losing her balance, digging her heel into my spine. And she didn’t bother to take her boots off, so now I’ve got dirty footprints on my back.

  “See anything?” I call.

  “Nada. Corn’s too tall.”

  Well, Mr. Edgarton did say it was a bumper crop this year. A last dig in the spine and Lydia jumps down. She snaps her fingers. “I know. You ladies give me a leg up and I’ll stand on your shoulders. That should work.”

  “I’m the lightest,” I point out. “I should climb up.”

  Lydia rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

  There’s so much giggling and protesting that it takes me ten minutes to wriggle onto their shoulders. I didn’t want to leave my camera on the ground, where they might step on it, so I’m still holding it in one hand. It bangs against their heads as I climb up and they think I’m doing it on purpose, but I’m not. Not really.

  “Are you taking a siesta up there, or what?” Lydia bellows, because I’m still crouching on their shoulders, hanging on to their heads. I don’t really want to stand up, because I already feel pretty wobbly. I make them grab on to my legs, and then I finally raise myself up. Sure enough, I see our house and it’s farther away than I thought.

  “I see it,” I call, pointing in the distance. “It’s over there....”

  I hear muted giggling, then all of a sudden Lydia and Alyssa start staggering as if I’m too heavy.

  “Aaaagh!” Lydia shouts. “You’re mutilating my shoulder!”

  “We can’t hold you up!” Alyssa calls. “Jump!”

  There’s no way I’m jumping down from that height. I try to crouch, but Lydia lets go of my leg and then Alyssa stumbles like she tripped. I go flying off their shoulders and land hard on the ground, and the corn really doesn’t cushion my fall at all.

  “I think we killed her,” Lydia says. They both come over and lift the hair off my face, trying not to giggle, but I slap their hands away and roll over, groaning.

  “Are you okay?” Alyssa’s voice drips with fake concern. “I tripped,” she proclaims in her worst actor’s voice.

  “You did not,” I say. “You did it on purpose.”

  “Ooooh, someone’s mad,” Lydia says. “Don’t get mad, Kate. Get even.”

  It takes all my self-control not to tell her to buzz off. I manage a smile and say, “Oh, I will,” in a passably evil voice, but somehow it’s not funny. This only makes me feel worse.

  “I’m going to die if I don’t have something to drink, like, immediately,” Lydia declares. “Last one to the house is a freakin’ zombie.”

  She takes off running and Alyssa starts after her, then pauses to glance back at me.

  “You okay?”

  I nod, pulling twigs out of my hair.

  “Come on, then!”

  She bolts after Lydia. I sit up and clean off my camera, which fell in the dirt. It took me a long time to earn enough money to buy my camera. I spent an entire summer baby­sitting the neighbors’ kids and cleaning out the chicken coop, plus I had to use birthday and Christmas money. It’s like my baby. I clean it and fuss over it, and I probably have way too many photos of me posing with it. Alyssa knows all this. I’m always reminding her that electronics break easily and we need to be careful with it, but she still let it drop on the ground without a second thought. This bothers me more than my own tumble.

  I slowly stand up and brush myself off. No broken bones, anyway. I limp back toward the house, wondering if any famous directors ever let loose with a few tears when they had a really bad day on the set, but somehow it’s hard to imagine Steven Spielberg crying.

  Lydia ends up getting a ride home with Alyssa at the end of the day, so I don’t get a chance to ask Alyssa about her strange behavior.

  After they leave, my dad finds me in the kitchen. “How did it go?”

  I don’t feel like explaining how the day was a major disaster, so I just mumble, “Fine.”

  “You have footprints on your back.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Okay, then. As long as you know.” My father drums his fingers on the counter, looking distracted. “Uh, where’s your mother?”

  “I think she’s in the chicken coop.�
��

  He peers outside. “Well, I’ve got some work to do. I’ll be in the den.”

  My mother made chocolate chip cookies while we were outside shooting. Alyssa and Lydia each had three before they left. I ate three, too, but I decide one more won’t hurt. There’s nothing like warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies melting in your mouth to make you feel better.

  As I head for my bedroom, I pass the den. It’s a small room with old wooden floors that my dad took over as his home office. He usually closes the door when he’s working, but today it’s open. I glance inside and see why. Wilma is curled up on a chair, snoozing. She has a talent for pushing open doors that aren’t quite latched and making herself comfortable. My dad is sitting with his back to me at his desk, on the phone as usual. The way he’s talking sounds funny, though. Not businesslike.

  “It’s getting hard to keep this a secret.” His voice is low, almost a murmur. “It’s all getting very complicated.” He chuckles. “I know. Me, too. Have I told you lately how much I—”

  Wilma picks this moment to notice me. She jumps off the chair, knocking over a stack of papers. My dad twists in his seat and spots me, frozen, in the doorway.

  It’s too late to flee, so I push open the door and march in, like I was planning on visiting him all along. I draw near his desk. How can I find out who he’s talking to? I’m pretty sure it isn’t his boss. “Uh, Dad, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  It sounds suitably vague. My brain is cranking hard, trying to figure out what he can help me with. It doesn’t matter, because my dad frowns like the answer is no.

  “Not now, Kate! Haven’t I told you to knock first before you come in?”

  He looks flustered, then tries to smile, not quite meeting my gaze. “Ask me a little later, okay? I’m kind of busy right now.”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  He’s holding the phone, waiting for me to leave. I trudge out and hear the door firmly click shut behind me.

  “It’s the weekend,” I mutter to Wilma as I scratch her ears. “Why is he working on a Saturday? And what is he keeping secret?”

  If this were a movie, Wilma would be a talking dog and tell me everything she heard while my dad was on the phone. It’s not, though, so she just licks my hand.

  As I think about his strange behavior, it hits me with a nasty jolt that my dad has been holing up in the den and talking on the phone a lot lately. And he’s called my mother from the office several times and told her he has to work late. I never gave it a second thought. Now I wonder. What is he really doing, and who is he talking to?

  I don’t want to think about why he’s acting this way. My dad would never do that, I tell myself, but I can’t bring myself to say what that is.

  I watch him at dinner that night as he talks to Derek about baseball. He catches my eye and smiles at me.

  “What do you think, Kate? Will the Cubs go all the way next year?”

  “Nah,” I answer. “Not a chance.”

  “Yes they will!” Derek bellows. He’s a big Chicago Cubs fan.

  “You say that every year,” I point out.

  My dad laughs and smiles at my mother. Somehow, I feel relieved. He couldn’t act so normal with us if he was doing something wrong. Those few sentences I heard could have been about anything.

  Plus, I have plenty of other things to worry about, like Alyssa. She calls my cell phone later that night.

  “Sorry about today,” she says right away. “I know we were acting like idiots.”

  “Yeah, you kind of were,” I say, trying to keep it light.

  “It’s just, I sort of feel sorry for Lydia. When we were in the park the other night, she was talking about her parents’ divorce. I guess her dad had a midlife crisis or something. Now her mom is always saying nasty things about him and how he’s a lowlife.” Alyssa pauses. “And I guess he kind of is because he had a girlfriend—that’s why they divorced. Lydia can’t stand her. And now her sister, Shannon, is in high school, and I guess she’s crawling out her window and running around every night drinking with her friends.”

  My jaw drops open. “She told you all that?”

  “Yeah, everybody left to go shoot hoops, but we stayed and talked. Can you believe that? I never thought of Lydia Merritt having problems.”

  “Yeah, she always seems so...loud, like everything’s great.”

  “Anyway, I wanted to make sure she had fun, you know?”

  I nod, then I realize she can’t see me. “You should have told me.”

  “Well, she asked me not to say anything, so you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “You know I won’t.” My head is spinning from so much information. It all makes sense now. I’m hugely relieved, but I’m also a little jealous. Alyssa probably told Lydia about her parents’ divorce, too. It’s like she and Lydia share a bond now. Still, I feel sorry for Lydia. It seems like every year more and more kids end up with divorced parents.

  I feel another twinge of anxiety as I think of my own parents. What, exactly, does a midlife crisis look like? My dad’s phone conversation replays in my head. What is getting too complicated in his life? Could my parents’ marriage be crumbling in front of me and I don’t even realize it?

  “Was Lydia surprised about the divorce?” I ask casually. “I mean, did she know they had problems?”

  “It was a total shock. She said everything seemed fine. Her dad acted completely normal. And then one day, guess what, kids? We’re getting divorced.”

  “That’s tough.”

  “Yeah.” Alyssa’s voice is subdued.

  Is my dad’s strange behavior a warning sign? I suddenly remember other things, too, like the way he swears under his breath after he steps in chicken poop. And the way he rolls his eyes at some of my mom’s organic food when he thinks no one is looking. Is he sorry we moved to the country? Is he feeling trapped? My mom always used to look so pretty in her high heels and lipstick. Now she looks like a frumpy farmer’s wife.

  And what about my mother? Is her crazy chicken farm idea just a midlife crisis? Does she ever wish she had married a big, strapping outdoors type instead of a business manager with glasses and thinning hair? She’s always running down the road to talk to Mr. Cunningham. He has a real farm with cows and chickens and horses. He’s big and strong and still has lots of hair. Maybe my mom is the one who feels trapped.

  I feel dizzy just thinking about it.

  “Well, I’ll see you Monday at school,” Alyssa says.

  “Yeah, thanks for calling.”

  As I hang up, a nervous flutter starts in my stomach. I never gave my parents’ marriage a second thought before today. What if it’s a slow freight train about to head off a cliff? And what about Lydia and Alyssa? If we still lived in town, I would have been at the park that night, too. I could have listened to Lydia and been sympathetic. It would have been the three of us having fun together today instead of me running around clueless in the corn.

  I start getting mad just thinking about it. My mother ripped up our family by the roots and transplanted us to the middle of nowhere, just because she got some crazy idea into her head about raising chickens. She never thought about how it might affect me, Dad, and Derek. When I was young, she was always telling me to share and not be selfish, and to think of others. It seems like maybe she forgot her own advice.

  Alyssa is especially nice at school on Monday. Near the end of the day, when we’re at our lockers, she gives me a photo of a hen with glowing red eyes. Her dad is a graphic designer, so I’m guessing he Photoshopped it on his computer.

  “It’s perfect,” I tell her. “I wish I could get their eyes to do that in my movie.”

  I hang it up in my locker as Lizzy Chang and Mimi Reynolds hurry over.

  “Did you hear?” Mimi asks. “Mr. Cantrell says the winter musical is going to be Annie. All
the girls in choir say they’re trying out.”

  “And Mr. Cantrell says he’s already ordered a red wig from New York for the star to wear,” Lizzy chimes in.

  Singing is definitely not one of my talents. I’m only allowed in choir class because it doesn’t require an audition. “Are you guys trying out?” I ask them.

  “No way!” They squeal so loudly that I know they’ll be trying out for sure.

  Both Mimi and Lizzy have been zombies in my movie. Mimi has a soft voice and her zombie moaning sounded more like someone with a toothache, but she had a great death scene (the infamous riding mower). Lizzy hid under a bed and Mallory killed her by using an extralong sword and plunging it right through the mattress. Derek charged me five dollars to rent his collapsible sword, but it was worth it. When Alyssa plunged the sword into the bed, the tip popped a thin plastic bag full of blood hidden under the blanket. The white sheet turned bloodred. It was amazing. Lizzy pointed out that blood wouldn’t seep upward (everybody’s an expert), but I explained to her that zombie blood does.

  “Are you going to try out for Annie?” Lizzy asks Alyssa. She knows better than to ask if I’m trying out for a singing part.

  “You should,” I encourage Alyssa. “You’d be awesome.” She’s a little pitchy when she sings, but hey, she’s a lot better than me.

  “Mrs. Director, I’m ready for my close-up!”

  Lydia waltzes up, surrounded by her usual group of hangers-on. I’m flattered that she’s singled me out. Sara Gonzalez and Emily Foster stare at me like they’re trying to decide if I’m suddenly part of their gang. I can’t think of a single witty comeback, so I just smile and say, “Hey, Lydia.”

  I know, lame.

  Alyssa does better. “Heya, zombie,” she says in a carefully careless voice. “Eaten any corn lately?”

  We all laugh, and then Lydia turns to her fan club. “Did I tell you guys I was in a zombie movie this weekend? No lie. You should have seen me.”

  And just that fast, Alyssa whips out her cell phone and shows them a photo of Lydia, which I didn’t even know she’d taken. Sara and Emily grab the phone from each other and scream. Other girls are already edging toward our circle, wanting to be part of the action.