A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  “B-b-but that’s just it.” I grab my pad from her. “I didn’t piss anybody off. I was just sitting here doing a grave rubbing, minding my own business, when those two showed up.”

  Chloe looks over at Dane, who’s hovering around Missy Cunningham’s grave. “I suggest you take up another hobby then, Maddy. I don’t think the graveyard’s …safe …for you anymore.”

  4

  A (Way!) Decent Proposal

  OOOOMPH,” I SAY for the second time that day, dashing out of the graveyard with my satchel clutched in both hands, looking behind me to see if any of the creeps from the cemetery are lurking behind. They’re not.

  A deep, sultry voice oozes, “We’ve got to stop bumping into each other like this.”

  I look up, exasperated, and say, “Stamp?” It’s half question, a third statement, a fourth shock, a fifth shame, and a sixth frustration. (And a seventh va-va-voom!) He takes it all in stride and looks dazzling doing it with a cockeyed grin and that little Superman curl dangling just-so.

  He helps me up off the curb where I’ve landed, sprawled amidst my crumpled sketch pad and assorted grave rubbing tools. He flips through a few of my previous rubbings. “That’s quite a sunny little hobby you’ve got there, Maddy.”

  I snort and snatch things away like he’s the one I’m pissed at instead of Bones and Dahlia. (Or is it Dane and Chloe? So many creeps, so little time.)

  “Do you always go around running into girls after school?”

  “Not always,” he says, still bemused as we stand there awkwardly across from the cemetery gates.

  I’m still waiting for four pale goons to come out and stalk me all the way up the hill home, but they never do. At least, not where I can see them.

  “But I do like to take a good run after practice,” he says. “And, by the way, you were the one who ran into me—again.”

  I take a breath and look him up and down. He’s in clingy sweatpants and a white V-neck T-shirt, also cling-a-licious. “Hold up.” I sigh. “You’re running? After football practice? On purpose?”

  “Yeah, it’s a little something we athletes like to do. It’s called ‘staying in shape.’ You should try it sometime; you might like it.”

  “Yeah, I run.” I want to flex my (some have called) shapely calves or something to prove it. “Just not in the middle of the day when you could run into any old person standing innocently on the street.”

  “You weren’t standing.” He corrects me (adorably), that half smile plastered on his pale face with those apple cheeks. “You were basically sprinting out of that graveyard. I have to say, for someone who does grave rubbings, you sure seem to hate graveyards.”

  I edge farther and farther away from the cemetery gates and start stomping up the hill, if only to distance myself from the graveyard creeps.

  He follows me, step for step, as we walk shoulder-to-shoulder up Pompano Lane.

  “Sorry,” I say, more quietly this time, less frantically. “I’m normally not such a klutz.”

  “Me either. You must have that effect on me.”

  Then he stops short, and I do the same, like we both know he said something too goofy, too sweet, too soon. Then we start walking again, stride for stride, as if it never happened. Although, of course, now the whole time, I’m thinking, Did he just say what I think he said? That I had an …effect …on him? On him? The hottest new guy to enter school since Dane Fields, the last new hot guy to enter school? And is he still walking beside me? And am I still having some kind of an effect on him? And what kind of effect, exactly?

  The hill isn’t very steep, or long for that matter, but it seems to take us forever to climb it—in a good way.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asks as we approach Hazel’s house a little farther up the hill. “I mean, not to brag or anything, but I pretty much sent you flying halfway across the street down there.”

  “I’m fine, and besides, I leapt part of the way just to protect your manhood.”

  “How kind.”

  I try to avoid looking at Hazel, who’s waving frantically out the window of her den-slash-home-gym, where she’s still astride her mechanical stair-climber.

  “I don’t want to get overconfident the next time I bump into a girl sprinting out of the graveyard and she only goes six feet instead of twelve.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I say, if only to change the subject and keep his mind off of Hazel and her spazztastic performance in the window directly behind me. “You go to school all day, go to football practice right after school, and then …run …some more?”

  He looks down earnestly and says quietly, as if suddenly he’s entered a confessional, “It’s a new school, Maddy. I’m the new kicker. I just want to make sure I’m good enough.”

  I snort and say authoritatively, as if I keep track of such things, “We were, like, ten and two last year, Stamp. I think you’ll do just fine.”

  He laughs and corrects me, “That means ten wins and two losses, Maddy; that’s practically undefeated.”

  I stand in front of my dad’s county-issued station wagon, looking twice as stupid as I feel. “Oh, I thought it was losses first, wins second. So that’s …good …then?”

  He nods emphatically, a drop of sweat landing at our feet. “That’s, like, really good.”

  There’s an awkward silence as I sneak a peek inside our house to see Dad puttering around in the kitchen. He’s got a frying pan on the stovetop and an open loaf of white bread. My stomach almost rumbles as I think, Sweet. Grilled cheese night.

  As Stamp regards the drop of sweat at his feet, through the window I watch Hazel surprise Dad as she slips in the back door and practically jumps him in the kitchen. That little minx. She must have been so curious about why Stamp was walking me home from the graveyard that she literally leapt off her stair-climber, snuck through six of the neighbors’ backyards (three of which have pretty big dogs and one of which I think has an electric fence), and let herself into our house just to get the scoop.

  “Maddy?” Stamp is saying as I watch Hazel make shushing motions to Dad while they both peer, rather obviously, out the side of the bay window overlooking the lawn. Stamp sounds kind of impatient, like maybe he’s been talking and I haven’t been listening.

  “Hmmmmm?” I say absently, moving directly in front of him so he can’t see the two clowns in my kitchen currently playing the world’s most obvious game of I spy.

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  I frown and bite my lower lip. “No, I’m sorry. Did you …say …something?”

  Looking exasperated, he says, “Yeah, actually, I said a lot of things. Like …that Aaron Franks is having a huge party tonight. And that, you know, if you weren’t doing anything, that maybe you could show up and that way, you know, we’d both be there at the same time.” Now it’s his turn to frown and bite his lip.

  “Wow, you really said all that? Just now? I can’t believe I didn’t hear any of that. Not a single word. And I’m usually a pretty good listener.”

  He nods and says something halfway between sure and yeah that sounds a lot like “Shhh-yeah.”

  Suddenly I zero in on one word and ask, “Tonight?” Because I’m already wondering if Dad will have a late shift and how I’m going to get there and what color panties I’m going to wear (you know, just in case), and before I’ve resolved all those issues I see Stamp’s sweaty, glistening bicep poking out of his T-shirt and think how nice that would be around my shoulders in less than six hours. And so I blurt, “Sure, why not?”

  He looks way too relieved and like maybe he’s about to say something terribly sweet, but then he must all of a sudden remember he’s a guy, so all he says is “Cool.” And, just like that, he simply turns around, waves over his shoulder, and chugs off down the hill. Like maybe we’re best buds and I just told a fart joke and he realized he was late for something, and so that’s that: gotta bolt.

  I watch him go—well, a certain part of him go, anyway—until I can’t see tha
t perfectly shaped derriere anymore, and then I turn to find Dad and Hazel standing in the doorway, looking at me like I’ve sprouted horns and a bright red nose and it’s Christmas Eve. “What? Can’t a girl talk to the hottest guy in school and not get hassled for it?”

  The hassling commences shortly, inside the door. Hazel and I take seats across from each other in the breakfast nook while Dad’s finishing the grilled cheese sandwiches he started before Hazel snuck in a few minutes ago.

  “Tell me how you just happen to bump into the new kid—the hot new kid—twice in one day,” Hazel says, eyes wide like it’s some kind of once-in-a-lifetime event on par with Halley’s Comet or a solar eclipse.

  “You mean you already bumped into this fellow once before, Maddy?” asks Dad, holding up his greasy plastic spatula like a reporter’s notebook.

  I shrug. “Yeah, I mean—”

  “The first time was right after Home Ec,” Hazel answers for me. While I’m kicking myself for telling her about the first Stamp collision, she says, “That one I can write off to coincidence. But twice? In one day? That requires a smidge more explanation.”

  “I can’t explain it, Hazel; that’s the thing. I was just strolling out of the graveyard after finishing a grave rubbing, and he was running home from football practice and—bam—we bumped into each other.”

  “He doesn’t sound very coordinated, dear,” Dad says as he flips the grilled cheese. “Are you sure this is someone you should really consider boyfriend material? I mean, what if he asks you to the Fall Formal and trips while you’re making your grand entrance? You only get one of those, you know.”

  Dad’s thick, black bifocals are slipping down his nose as the grease sizzles from the pan. He’s faintly smiling, like maybe he’s playing with me. When I open my mouth to defend Stamp, he merely winks and returns to making dinner.

  The minute it’s ready, Dad eats with gusto; he does everything with gusto. I watch in amazement as he makes quick work of his own sandwich before eyeing ours hungrily. Hazel, who avoids cheese at all costs (and eggs, apparently), is only nibbling her first half to be polite. (To me, she can say—and do—anything. To Dad, she’s the picture of Miss Manners.)

  When she catches him looking at her sandwich, she lies. “Mom’s making meat loaf tonight, and I’d feel bad if I filled up over here. Would you like mine, Mr. Swift?”

  “Oh,” he says, nose crinkling with delight, “only if you insist.”

  She slides it over and eyes me suspiciously as I make short work of dinner.

  Upstairs, after I do the dishes—and Dad’s god-awful greasy pan—Hazel interrogates me some more as we linger in my bedroom. “You’re sure he didn’t ask you out?” She sits cross-legged on my bed, toying with the tassels of an aqua blue throw pillow. “It looked like he asked you out. I mean, I can kind of read lips, and he definitely said the words ‘you’ and ‘out’ in the same sentence.”

  I laugh. “No, he didn’t ask me out and, no, there’s nothing to tell.”

  Now, I suppose I should feel bad for not squealing to Hazel about everything the minute it happens, because we’re best friends, right? But we’re not that kind of best friends. We’re not frenemies or anything like that. It’s just that, well, Hazel’s used to being the pretty one, the popular one, the one with a boyfriend, the one who tramps off to Fall Formal every year while I take the pictures in the yard, eat a pizza in my sweats, and wait by the phone until she gets home so I can hear how much fun she had.

  She doesn’t do well when the spotlight shines on me, which it rarely does, but …still. Like when Mr. Humphries, our History teacher and the guy who runs the school elections every year, misunderstood us sophomore year and printed my name on the ballot for class secretary instead of Hazel’s.

  Now, a true best friend would have laughed it off and cheered me on because it’s not like we were running for secretary of state or something, right? But not Hazel; she flat-out demanded Mr. Humphries print all new ballots and threatened to write a letter to the editor of the local paper called “Voter Fraud Dampens Barracuda Bay Class Elections” if he didn’t.

  He did, I bowed out, and …that was pretty much that.

  So ever since then, the small things in life that do happen to go my way—an A+ on a term paper (especially when Hazel gets a B), a free video at Mega Movies, an extra $20 in my birthday card from Aunt Maggie in Texas, the hottest boy asking me out to a party Hazel doesn’t even know about—I tend to keep all to myself. Hazel has enough good things in her own life; she doesn’t need to horn in on mine.

  And this party tonight? If Hazel heard about it? Please. She’d be there with bells on, making a scene, taking things over, bending Stamp’s ear, and then it would no longer be my little thing but Hazel’s Big Show—and we’d all be the audience. No, thanks; not this time; not tonight. Not this one night.

  I mean, you don’t understand; things like this don’t happen. Not. To. Me. I’m the girl hot new guys jump over to bump into other girls on their first day of school. I’m the girl guys ask to a party just so I’ll bring Hazel along. I’m the girl who misses bumping into the hot new guy a second time by a millisecond and then watches, helplessly, as the girl he did bump into becomes his hot new girlfriend for the rest of junior year.

  But for some reason, today of all days, I was the one who got to bump into him; not once, but twice. I was the one who got to walk up the hill with him, flirt a little, and get asked to a party.

  Soon enough he’ll realize I’m not the kind of girl he should date, that I’m not hot enough or popular enough or easy enough or sexy enough. But for now, for this one night, for this moment, Stamp just doesn’t know that yet.

  For whatever reason—the peach scarf belt, the sparkling conversation, the bending of time to make this my lucky day—he thinks good old Maddy Swift is good enough to invite to a party, and if that’s all I’ve got before he finds out differently, well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the time turning it into the Hazel Hour.

  Several thousand questions later, she shakes her head, disbelieving, as I follow her down the stairs. Dad is puttering around the kitchen, eating from an open pint of ice cream with a clean spoon, as we enter the foyer. He smiles, caught.

  “What’d I tell you about that after-dinner snacking, Mr. Swift?” Hazel says, patting his tiny potbelly.

  He says, in his own defense, “But it’s reduced fat, dear.”

  She frowns teasingly, hijacks the scoop, and eats the bite of ice cream. (Hey, as a strict vegetarian, she’s definitely got ice cream on her list.)

  He pats her on the shoulder, steals his spoon back, and resumes snacking, fat and Hazel be damned.

  We leave Dad to his dessert and I shoo Hazel out the front door. She waves over her shoulder, her thick red pigtails bouncing as she walks down the hill toward her house. It’s a nearly nightly event, but who’s complaining?

  I slip back inside and see Dad’s made us two bowls of ice cream. I have a few bites but am already wondering how I’m going to fit into that pleather skirt I’m planning to wear to Aaron’s party, so I shove my serving over his way. He scoops it up greedily in three big bites and says, “So, Maddy, should I be as worried as Hazel is about your new beau?”

  I blush. “Dad, seriously, he’s not my boyfriend. We were just …talking …that’s all.”

  “You know,” he says, peering over his bifocals at me with those insightful green eyes, “having a boyfriend is one thing, but I’ve never seen you so giddy before. You know I love Hazel; she’s one of the family. But if she were in my family, I might not be as forgiving.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “It’s just, Maddy, you’re a good girl. You’ve always been a good girl. Hazel is a different animal altogether. I know her parents run a little looser ship over there, and I don’t often remind you of it, dear, but when you turned sixteen, I only gave you three house rules, remember?”

  Oh God, Dad’s three house rules. How could I forget? He reminds me ever
y other day or so. “Rule Number 1: no dating unless you’ve been formally introduced to the boy.” I add, “Or girl, whatever,” just to keep him on his toes.

  He smiles, but only begrudgingly.

  “Rule Number 2: my curfew is now and forever shall be 11 p.m. And Rule Number 3?” I sigh. “No sneaking out. Ever.”

  Dad smiles but adds forebodingly, “I love you, Maddy. That’s why I want to protect you. If you were a coroner, if you saw the way the world treats people—so cruelly, day after day—you’d want these rules for your daughter, too. They’re simple, really. And, of course, no need for me to remind you that the penalty for breaking any of these house rules is no talking to Hazel for 72 hours and no driving for a week.”

  I nod grimly. He’s only caught me once, but it was brutal. Not the no-driving part so much, although when he says a week he means a full 7-day, 168-hour week. Not 6 days because I’ve learned my lesson or 167.5 hours because he’s feeling generous, but one entire week. What was worse, believe it or not, was the no-talking-to-Hazel punishment. That was the longest 72 hours of my life.

  I gulp a little, thinking ahead to breaking all three house rules in one single night. “Any particular reason you’re reminding me of these rules tonight, Dad?”

  He chuckles. “No, dear, other than the fact that you haven’t heard a word I’ve said all night.”

  5

  Raindrops Keep Falling on My Dead

  DAD’S LAST-MINUTE warning echoes in my mind long after he’s finally fallen asleep and I’m slipping into that snug little skirt that’s been hanging in the back of my closet since, well, forever. Sure, I heard everything he said, and yet I’m still breaking all his rules.

  Well, what would you do? (Yeah, that’s what I thought.)

  Even though I’m practically palpitating at the thought of Stamp at the party, I take it nice and slow, not wanting to get caught and lose my car or contact with Hazel for any extended period of time. I creep downstairs, hovering around Dad’s bedroom door to make sure he’s snoring. I’m so careful about this that even though he is snoring, and loudly, in a way that is almost un-fake-able, I tiptoe away and then sneak right back, just in case he’s faking. He isn’t.