by Scott Craven
“Nah, I’ll stick with the large.”
“That’ll be … wait, what’s that?”
The clerk pointed to Tread, who stood patiently next to me behind Luke.
Luke stepped aside and said to me, “You want to take this?”
“Sure,” I said, looking at the clerk who was still staring at Tread. “This is Tread, my service dog.”
“That’s a dog? Dude, that is like no dog I’ve ever seen. That’s, that’s … that goat sucking thing, what’s it called?”
“Chupacabra?”
“That’s it,” the clerk said. “Dude, you can’t bring a chupacabra in here. Heck, you can’t even bring a dog in here. But you especially can’t bring a chupacabra in here. You know they eat souls, right? I like my soul.”
“If you like your soul, what are you doing at the Burger Bucket?” I said. “Your job is more soul-sucking than my dog. And it is a dog. A service dog.”
“You stay there, I’m going to get Dennis, our manager. He’ll tell you all about our ‘No chupacabra’ policy. Just, just … don’t move.”
This was exactly the kind of scene I did not want. I didn’t have to turn around to know every eye in the place was on Tread. But I turned around anyway.
Yup, I was right. About twenty people had stopped in the middle of their buckets to tune into the rest of the drama.
“Are you the kid with the chupacabra?”
A voice behind me. A little deeper. Somewhat more adult.
I swiveled around and there, behind the counter, was a guy wearing a black Burger Bucket shirt, rather than the standard-issue yellow Burger Bucket polo shirt. His blond hair was stuffed under a black Burger Bucket beret. He stood as an ultimate sign of Burger Bucket administrative power.
“It’s not a chupacabra,” I muttered.
“What? Speak up, son.”
Son? Dennis was maybe twenty-three, and not much taller than me.
“This is Tread, he’s my service dog,” I said. “He’s not a chupacabra.”
I turned toward Luke, who now was fifteen feet away and seemed to be heading slowly to the exit. “Luke, can you clear this up please?”
Dennis spoke to Luke. “He with you?”
Luke hesitated. My best friend in the whole world had to think about it.
“Yeah,” Luke said.
“The chupacabra, too?”
“No, that’s his. Jed’s. Kid holding the leash.”
“I gathered that,” Dennis said, turning back to me. “Maybe you aren’t aware of our very strict ‘No Chupacabra’ policy. They’re messy and they eat souls.”
“Tread’s a service—”
“A service dog, right, I heard you the first time. So I assume if someone brings in their seeing-eye Bigfoot, we have to allow that. Or a therapy werewolf. Where do we draw the line, son? Where do we draw—”
“IT’S NOT A FREAKING CHUPACABRA, DAMN IT!”
For the next ten seconds, the only sound was the bubbling oil in the fryer. Dennis stood with his mouth open. The kid who summoned Dennis stared at me. Luke stood rooted in his spot.
Tread? He lay on the floor and rolled over on his back.
Which is where he was when Dennis finally spoke up.
“I will admit to never seeing a chupacabra flip over for a tummy rub,” he said.
“Admit it, you’ve never seen a chupacabra, period,” I said. “And you’re not seeing a chupacabra now. This is Tread. My service dog.”
Dennis moved out from behind the counter to deal with the situation personally, and more quietly.
“I’m Dennis, Afternoon Shift Co-Managing Associate Supervisor, Assistant Class,” he said, sticking out his hand. “And you are?”
“Jed, uh, customer,” I said, returning his grip. “Or at least trying to be.”
Dennis kneeled next to Tread, moving his eyes up and down Tread’s thin frame, hesitating at the duct tape attached to Tread’s tail joint.
“Injury?” he asked.
“You could say that. Nothing serious. Just a flesh wound.”
“I love dogs,” he said, placing his palm on Tread’s stomach and rubbing gently. The tail wagged so hard I prayed for it not to come off. “Service dog, you say?”
“Absolutely.”
“How so? Save for your pallor, and complete lack of knowledge of all things chupacabra, you seem to be in no need of a service dog.”
Finally, the moment I’d been waiting for.
“You would think that, yes,” I said in a Dennis-like voice, thinking it might get me the respect I needed to pull this off. “But Tread has been meticulously trained to respond to a very special need. A need that perhaps only I exhibit. Observe.”
Grasping my left hand with my right, I gave it a twist one way, then another. My tendons and ligaments gave way, pulling my hand off my wrist. Before Dennis could say a word, I tossed it over a row of booths.
“Tread.” The dog flipped to his feet and stood at attention. “Fetch.”
This was the one trick Tread could reliably do. At first, all he’d ever fetch was his tail. He had no interest in tennis balls or other toys. Then one day while Dad and I were playing catch in the backyard, I hurled a fastball. Too fast. My hand went with the baseball. Tread zipped after it, returning it to me. It was as if he’d been bred to do it. Perhaps it was genetically encoded in the Ooze.
Tread ran around the booths, his claws skidding on the linoleum. A crash, a scream. Across the room, where I’d thrown my hand, a couple jumped from their seats and raced outside.
Seconds later Tread was back, with my hand in his mouth.
“Still working the bugs out,” I told Dennis, taking the hand Tread dropped at my feet.
A clap came from the back of the dining area, slow and rhythmic. Another joined in, and another. Soon everyone in the place was applauding.
Even Luke.
“Now I recognize you,” Dennis said, again offering to shake my hand. “Jed, the little undead boy I’ve heard so much about. A pleasure. And who is this again?”
“Tread.”
“Tread does perform a valuable service, I see that,” Dennis said. “But unless he’s properly certified, I can’t allow him in the Burger Bucket. I’m sure you understand.”
“I guess, yeah.” I proved my point. And that Tread was a pretty awesome dog, even if he looked like a chupacabra. Which he did not.
“May I make a request?” Dennis asked. He took out his cell phone, swiped the screen a few times, and tapped. “I’d love to record you for an ad I’m trying to convince upper management to create. Would you say, ‘It’s all about the fryin’, if I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.’ Please?”
“No. But thanks for asking.”
“Certainly. You and Tread have a marvelous rest of the day.”
Luke and I headed out. This time he walked next to me, and halfway home, he asked to take the leash. A nice gesture, and Tread behaved well for him.
“I’m still kinda freaked out about how Tread came to be,” Luke said. “But he seems OK. Just promise me one thing.”
“No more making zombie dogs?”
“Yes. Or chupacabras.”
“Deal.”
We weren’t done. I’d answered all of Luke’s questions, now he had to answer one of mine.
“Luke, you know Ray Knowles, right?”
“The Tech Club geek, right? Yeah, sort of. Why?”
“It didn’t seem like you ‘sort of’ knew him when you were hanging at the overachievers table, as if you’d just gotten into Yale or something.”
“What are you talking about?”
I stopped. Luke and Tread kept going. I walked quickly to catch up to them.
“I kind of thought that when I stopped, you’d stop, too.” I said. “Pretty universal thing to do. It was a signal that I wanted to talk about something really important.”
Luke stopped, and Tread sat. I was way more impressed with Tread than L
uke.
“If it’s the day you’re thinking about, and it must be because I can’t remember sitting with the overachievers another time, I needed some help,” Luke said. “With a project. For school. You know, classes and all.”
“Why Ray? Of all people, I’d think he’d be the last guy you’d go to.”
“You’re the one who hit him, not me. He’s fine when he’s not full of himself. And he’s better when you’re doing this project for social studies that requires you to build a computer slide show. Thanks to Ray, I know how to do that now. What’s the big deal?”
Luke started walking again.
Yeah, what was the big deal? I was reading way too much into it. Wasn’t I?
Chapter Fifteen
There were six words a good student never wanted to hear from a teacher: “Can I see you after class?”
That six-word combination was even worse than “You just have to hold it” and “This goes on your permanent record.”
Students who weren’t doing well almost expected the invitation from Mr. Landrum. With five minutes left in Biology, Mr. Landrum walked up and down the aisles as we worked on papers about cell division. Robbie sat to my left, having flunked the first semester of eighth grade Biology. Or, as Mr. Landrum put it when he introduced Robbie on the first day of the semester: “He has been unable to maintain what was considered to be reasonable progress and thus joins us for reinforcement learning.”
Translation: Robbie was barely getting by eighth grade Biology. Which was odd because I was pretty sure he was studying one-celled creatures, so he should be doing well because he could identify with them so well.
I looked over to see him sketching fighter jets gunning down hordes of innocent stick people who either had spiky Afros or were on fire (I was going with “on fire”). Robbie’s artistic talents left much to be desired, but he sure was good at cramming lots of violence into small spaces. He was making quite the show of goofing off, as if trying to draw the attention of the teacher.
Sure enough, Mr. Landrum stood between us when he cleared his throat. “Can I see—”
Robbie was already up, smiling and nodding. While the rest of us would feel the dread that came with such an invitation (as well as an order to see the principal), Robbie treated it as a hall pass allowing him to be tardy for his next class. Knowing he could show up at least twenty minutes late, he probably allowed five minutes for the discussion with Mr. Landrum, leaving him with fifteen minutes to kill. Plenty of time to super-glue seven lockers (ten if he worked fast), or grab a smoke in the boy’s room hoping for a stray student to wander in. Robbie called those his “free-range victims.”
Mr. Landrum cleared his throat again.
“No, Robbie,” Mr. Landrum said. “I am as surprised as you at these turn of events, but this time I’m speaking with Jed. Can I see you after class?”
It took a while for everything to register. Mr. Landrum asked to see Robbie after class. Then my name was mentioned. By Robbie? Did Robbie want to see me after class? Was he finally going to make good on his threat to play “zombie wishbone,” with the winner being whoever got the biggest piece of me?
None of this was making sense.
“Jed? Please?”
I looked up. It wasn’t Robbie who was speaking. Mr. Landrum repeated the question. Staring into my eyes.
“Can I see you after class?”
“Yes. Sure. Sir,” I mumbled.
“What? Speak up please, more lively.”
Now teachers were taking digs with zombie wordplay. No one was immune to pun-dead humor.
Hearing it from Mr. Landrum was odd. He’d never gone out of his way to help me, but he seemed to accept me. He never resorted to anti-zombie slurs. Last semester he even cut me a break when I asked to be excused from frog dissection. The frog was brain dead but still alive, bringing up some uncomfortable feelings.
“Yes, sir,” I said, too loudly.
“Fine,” Mr. Landrum said. “Rest of the class, you may start to pack up. Remember, papers are due next Friday.”
I folded my paper, put it in my biology text as a bookmark, and shoved the book into my backpack. All I thought about for those three minutes was why Mr. Landrum would want to speak to me alone.
That meant bad news. You don’t ask a kid to stay after class to tell him something like, “Nice job on the last test, you were the only A in the class.” Unless he knew such praise would make me a target. Maybe that was it. He was sparing me the attention that came with being an overachiever.
Life (well, undeadness) was far from perfect over the last few weeks since Luke and I tried to patch things up at the Burger Bucket.
The Ray situation kept nibbling at the back of my brain, flipping the zombie food-chain on its head. After I told Anna about lunching with Luke, she reminded me to keep an eye on the Ray-Luke relationship, but not to let it prey on my mind. Her little pep talks helped, not so much her words but the way she held my hands while speaking. Did you know zombies get the tingles? True story.
But what helped the most was running into Javon just a few days after the Luke lunch. Javon was one of those rare eighth graders who saw sevvies as human, even capable of contributing to society. While many eighth graders were kind enough to remain neutral while witnessing sevvies being shoved into lockers, Javon was the rare breed who would intervene. That made him a saint among sevvies.
He secured that spot when he refused to play for the eighth graders in the annual football game, taking a stand against the inherent unfairness caused by more than age difference. When Pine Hollow authorities kicked me off the seventh-grade team, Javon did more than defend me. He coached the sevvies to victory.
He turned up again when I needed him most. The lunch bell had just sounded as a warning (it was the dreaded Wad of Meat Wednesday, according to rumors) when someone shoved me sideways. I banged off the lockers and saw Ray walking away, his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder and sneered, which in any other case would lead to a short trip into a tall trash can. But this time I simply looked down, not up for the challenge.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes you just have to let things slide.”
I recognized Javon’s voice and turned around. I knew he meant well with that sympathetic look, but it only made me feel worse. Defeated, almost.
He dug into his back pocket and took out a sheet of paper I recognized immediately. That stupid NZN newsletter.
“I assume your mood has a lot to do with this,” he said, shoving it back in his pocket. “But you can’t let these creeps get under your skin.”
“I happen to have skin that is really easy to get under,” I replied, absent-mindedly peeling a narrow strip from my forearm, feeling Ooze tingle as soon as I did it. “But everybody knows that. What they don’t know is how I am so tired of it.”
“So since you’re tired, you’re just going to stop standing up for yourself?” Javon said. “That’s exactly what they want you to do. They want you to fade into the background, be just another sevvie who toes the line. You know why some people pick on you?”
“Duh. I’m a zombie. Easy target.”
“That’s a small part of it. It’s mostly because you’re different. People like Robbie—heck, even people like Ray—fear anyone who’s different. It upsets their world when people don’t fit in like they’re supposed to.”
“Why should it?”
“Because Robbie and Ray fit in so well. If they weren’t bullying those who were different, they’d be the ones fading into the background. They’d disappear. Poof, just another face in the crowd. They lose meaning. And that scares the hell out of them.”
“If I stop fighting, wouldn’t that give them a reason to just leave me alone? Let us all fade away?”
Javon shook his head. “Dude, they’d just find someone else to humiliate because that’s their survival instinct. I don’t care about them. I care about you. That skin you said is so easy to get under?”
“Yeah?”
“You need to be comfortable in it. The better it fits, the harder it will be to get under it. Trust me. I’ve run across a ton of people trying to get under this skin.”
Javon pinched himself inside his elbow, the brownish flesh popping right back when he released it.
“Fits like a glove,” he said. “You can’t get under it unless I let you. Which I’ve done with a couple of girls, but that’s another story.”
Javon’s words stuck with me, so even when I noticed Luke mingling every now and then with the Tech Club, I reminded myself that it could bug me only if I let it. It still bugged me, but not nearly as much.
Now Mr. Landrum wanted to see me. I was hoping halfway-decent grades would keep the teachers’ attention off me. As with any average student, I went into stealth mode every time I stepped into the classroom. Each successful journey ended with going unnoticed.
When the bell rang, I stayed seated as students streamed out of class, talking and laughing in ways I found really bothersome. Robbie was the last one out, stopping at the door and looking back at Mr. Landrum, who sat behind his desk.
“Are you sure it wasn’t me you wanted to see?” he asked. “Because I’d be happy to address any concerns—”
“Quite, Robbie, but thank you for your consideration,” Mr. Landrum said as he pulled open his middle drawer. “No doubt next time, based on the usual odds. And please close the door behind you.”
“Sure thing.”
Robbie caught my eye and gave me a smirk. Then raised his most often used finger.
“We know your IQ, Robbie, but thank you for the reminder just the same,” Mr. Landrum said without lifting his eyes from the drawer. Note to self: Mr. Landrum’s peripheral vision bordered on superhuman.
“Now, Jed, a word,” he said, pulling a sheet of paper and placing it in front of him.
I didn’t move.
“At my desk, please.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and counted the steps. It was either focus on walking or throw up.
I almost did both.
“Jed, you look a little pale,” Mr. Landrum said. “I mean, more than usual, which I wasn’t sure was possible. Please, have a seat.”
