I open my mouth to argue, but then I give up. He’s right. More often than not. More often than me.
“Okay, so you feel like Val is here?”
He nods.
“So we have to be careful,” I add. “Extra careful. Which is pretty much why we haven’t left this house in three days.”
He gets to his knees and crawls to me. He seems a little faster now.
“What are you doing, Stamp?”
He sits next to me, facing out of the kitchen toward the living room and the foyer. “Being more careful.”
I chuckle. He always was a sly one. “Gotcha. Right.”
“Can you hug me?”
I inch away to get a better look at his face. “How is that being more careful?”
He smiles. “It’s not. Sometimes you just need a hug at night. Your dad would give them to me sometimes, when Val wasn’t around or even if she was and he knew I extra needed one.”
“He would?” Sweet as he is, for the life of me I can’t picture Dad hugging Stamp.
Stamp shrugs. “Yeah, he was a good hugger.”
I snort. “Yes, yes, he was.” Then I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve had a hug from Dad. “Okay, come here.”
He leans in, head on my shoulder, and I have to put my arms around him while his arms stay at his side. Has he forgotten how to hug? Or is he just afraid of what might happen if he does?
Chapter 19
Stranger Danger
Whatcha doing?”
My fingers fly to the Eliminator in my front pocket. I’m creeping out of the back gate, looking left when a voice comes from the right.
I turn and find a short Asian girl standing casually just outside the door. I’d jump back inside if I could move that fast.
I shut the fence door behind me just the same, the plastic Stop N Go bag full of empty grape soda bottles and cat food tins dangling in my free hand. “Nothing. Just taking out the trash.” I try to sound defensive.
She puts her hands up and takes a step back. “Okay, yeah, I see that now.”
She is pretty, in a tomboyish sort of way. Short and stocky, straight black hair clipped severely across her forehead, very little makeup but a soft, clear complexion. She has on long black jogging shorts with white stripes down the side and a Spider-Man T-shirt. Her black-and-white basketball shoes are untied, and her white socks go up to her knees, which is about where the hems of her shorts end.
“You must have moved in when I wasn’t looking,” she says cryptically, nodding toward the back gate as if wanting to be let in. “I’ve been waiting forever for some other kids to move onto this street.”
I wasn’t expecting to see anyone so soon and don’t really have a cover story down yet, but she’s kind of just given me one. I add to it quickly: “Uh, yeah, my brother and I didn’t get here until just a few days ago. We were supposed to be here last week, but the bus broke down in Tallahassee, so . . . here we are.”
“You moved . . . by bus?”
Um, yeah, she’s right. That was kind of stupid. Well, hell, they never covered being Vanished in my Keeper training. I keep it going: “Well, not exactly. My parents won’t be here until next week, but they wanted my brother and I to get checked into school early, so we came ahead so we wouldn’t miss much more of the school year.”
That goes down a little better.
She looks at the house, up and down and then up again. I wonder if Stamp is back upstairs, studying her through the blinds. I try to follow her gaze and see nothing but closed shutters and pulled drapes and a normal Florida suburban house.
“So, cool, like, you have the whole house to yourself all week? Party time!” She pumps a fist.
But I don’t join her, for obvious reasons. “Yeah, no, it’s not really like that.”
She takes another step back. “Cool, okay, you’re straitlaced; I get it. Me too. I mean, I’m not really the party type, you know. I just thought, if you were, well . . . I didn’t want to make a bad first impression.”
I lean on the fence, trying to be casual but wanting to run. But I’ve come this far, and she hasn’t bolted away screaming Zombie yet, so maybe it’ll work.
Maybe.
“So where’s your brother?”
Man, this chick. If I can pass with her and her wannabe crime scene investigative skills, we may get out of this re-alive after all.
“Still sleeping. Have you ever tried sleeping on a bus?” I yawn for effect.
Her curious eyes tell me I’m overdoing it more than just a little. Then she stands at attention and juts out a hand. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we haven’t even introduced ourselves this whole time. I’m Lucy Toh.”
I pull my hand from where I’ve been warming it against the back of my sweatpants and take her hand. I haven’t had much time, so I hope the temperature isn’t too bad. She doesn’t say anything, so maybe I did all right.
But then she pulls her hand back. “You sick or something?” She reaches into one of the pockets of her shorts and pulls out a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer, something pink and cherry scented, splotzing it all over her hands and sliming them together.
“A little,” I say, taking the bait. “Like I said, two days on a bus, you catch a lot of germs.”
Her hands now dry and clean, she taps a foot.
“What?” I say.
“I showed you mine; you show me yours.”
I blink a couple of times.
“Name. You never told me your name.”
“Maddy,” I say on instinct, as I did a thousand times in Orlando without thinking twice. “Maddy Swift.”
She smiles and looks more girly that way. “I like that. Sounds kind of like a superhero name.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, you don’t think so?”
I shrug. “I’ve never really thought about it before.”
She looks at me—specifically, at what I’m wearing. Black sweatpants, too-tight sneakers, gray pullover with a zipper collar. “So you’re not going to school here yet?”
“Not yet. Like I said . . .”
“Your parents, yeah, got it. So, well, when do you start?”
“I dunno. I guess when my parents get here and bring my paperwork and stuff.”
She seems busy all of a sudden. Restless, as if I’m keeping her, when she was the one stalking me. “Okay, well, maybe I’ll come over later. After school, I mean.”
My eyes get big. “Oh well, really, I mean, the place is a mess and the furniture isn’t here or anything, so . . .”
But she’s already running on her stumpy legs to the house next door, up the steps and stopping on the front porch, hand on the doorknob. “Cool. It’s a date. See you then.”
I watch her walk inside, cursing myself while smiling, waving like an idiot. A big, Vanished, zombie idiot. The door shuts behind her, and a light goes on inside.
I’m about to turn around when I notice the divot in her front yard. I inch a little closer, not wanting to be seen but needing a better look.
I fiddle with the trash can, like maybe I’m throwing something away, and steal a glance. Sure enough, I see fresh grass, kind of a different color, on a square divot of lawn. It’s a little lower than the rest. Fresher too.
I creep inside the gate, pretty sure there was a For Sale sign in front of that house just the other day.
Chapter 20
Street Cred
The doorbell rings later that afternoon, right on time. I curse as Stamp peeks out the dining room blinds while I crouch behind the front door, Eliminator close at hand to decapitate any and all comers: traveling Bible salesmen, Zerkers, SWAT teams, whatever. Bring it.
He makes his crumple face. “Did you order Chinese?”
Jesus. It must be Lucy. “Don’t say that, Stamp!”
He lets the blind down, face blank and hurt. “Why? What’d I say?”
“Not all Asian people deliver Chinese food . . . I mean Asian food, Stamp.”
His eyes get wide, l
ike this is big news to him. “No, I know that, but this Asian person has Chinese Asian food. She’s waving at me. I think it’s for us.”
Holy God. Have I screwed up that badly? Already? Four days in town, and I’ve already blown our cover?
I open the door and, indeed, Lucy Toh has come bearing Chinese food. “It’s from my parents’ place,” she says as I slip the door shut right behind her. “They own Lop Sing’s in the Breezeway Strip Mall. Right by the Family Value Mart?”
She says it so casually, as if she thinks I should know where it is, and I think I do. Wasn’t the thrift shop where I stole the clothes I’m wearing right now in the Breezeway Strip Mall?
Or was it in the Sailfish Shopping Center?
The Grouper Galleria?
“It smells so good,” I say, standing in the doorway so she’ll see she’s not really welcome. “Thank you so much, but our parents don’t really want us to have people over while they’re not . . .”
Forget it. Too late. She’s already breezing in.
She’s in a gingham skirt now and high knee socks and shiny black shoes and a maroon blazer with a school crest on the outside of the left lapel. She must go to a private school.
“When did you say your parents were coming, again?” she asks, walking right into the kitchen, where she puts the food on the counter.
Stamp follows her like a puppy.
I think she kind of likes it.
“Next week,” I say, trying to remember what I said just this morning. Ack, I’m no good at this being Vanished stuff! I’m going to get us nabbed before I ever have a chance to find out where ZED is and, more importantly, how Dad is.
“So what are you going to do until then?” She’s busy taking out the food, lining it up precisely.
Stamp lurks, sniffing over her shoulder, glancing at me with a look on his face that says, Is it okay?
I shake my head. Half Zerker or no, he knows we can’t eat Normal food. A little meat, maybe, but very little and cooked rarely. Then again, who knows what Zerkers can and can’t do? I should have asked Dad more about them while I had the time.
He ate that Twinkie all up on my birthday and didn’t keel over, right? Could Chinese food be much different?
“Thanks for all this Asian food, Lucy,” I stumble. “But we—”
She smirks, looking at Stamp. “Asian food?” She looks back at me. “It’s Chinese food . . . It’s okay. You can say it. Chinese. Food.” She chuckles.
Stamp chuckles too, but I know from the glazed look in his eyes he’s just being nice to whoever brought him food.
“Oh, okay, well, I never know what I should call it. I mean you . . . I mean . . . Oh, man . . .” I bury my face in my hands, hoping when I look up Lucy and her food will be long gone.
No such luck. She turns to me with a half-skeptical, half-disappointed, half-superior look (yes, I’m aware that’s too many halves). “You must not hang around a lot of minorities.”
I give her the same look back and cluck. Honey, if Val gets her way, I think, the human race is about to become one giant minority.
She arches a smooth eyebrow.
Out loud I say, “Sorry. It’s just, where I come from, everybody’s pretty much the same.”
And it’s true. White, black, red, or brown, we all turn up the same shade of freshly poured concrete, gray after a week or two of being undead. Shoot, the Council of Elders could be the original Temptations, for all I know.
She leans against the counter, studying me more carefully. “I guess you were just trying to be polite.”
I don’t say anything more.
She looks up at Stamp, who stands next to her like a giant lap dog begging for scraps. “What’s up with this guy?”
“That’s Stamp,” I say, because what else can I call him? I’m me and he’s him—and if Lucy keeps pushing, I don’t know what will happen.
Obviously I’m not going to decapitate her like a CPR dummy.
I’m no Zerker, but it will mean gagging her with her own prep school tie and going out to the backyard for a bunch of garden hose to tie her hands while Stamp and I make our way out of Seagull Shores for good.
“Hi, Stamp,” she says, sticking out a hand.
I gasp.
Even though Dane and I taught Stamp the whole sit-on-your-hands trick back in Orlando, I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten it by now.
Sure enough, on reflex, he just holds out his hand.
Lucy takes it almost greedily. Her eyes get big, and she looks at me, not Stamp. “My, how cold your hands are.”
“He’s been sick,” I state flatly, because suddenly this witch is on my last nerve. “So if he can’t eat any of your food, just forgive him.”
“Oh, he can at least eat the meat, right, Stamp?”
Stamp looks at me, but I look at her. “He can have a little.”
She pulls out white boxes with red dragons on the sides and little aluminum tins with white lids. “This is moo shu pork,” she says, opening one and filling the kitchen with wafting steam clouds of hot, Normal goodness. “Lots of meat for you.”
“Not lots,” I interject, leaning against the counter so I can keep one hand close to the Exterminator. “But maybe just a little.”
Stamp nods, and a part of me is happy to see she hasn’t completely lured him away with the promise of hot animal flesh. She undoes a Baggie and hands him a plastic fork.
“Okay?” she says to him.
He kind of nods and digs in.
While he’s busy, an awkward silence grows between me and Lucy. She breaks it first.
“So, look,” she says, gazing past me. “Let me just put this out there: I know who you guys are.”
As I blink rapidly, she finally looks at me. “Or, should I say, what you are.”
Chapter 21
Brain Busted
She slides two sheets of paper out of a red-and-black plaid messenger bag covered with sew-on pink-and-black skull patches. She sets the pages facedown on the kitchen counter.
It’s pretty hard to hyperventilate when you can’t breathe.
Hard but apparently not impossible.
“That’s not us,” I spit, tapping the counter but not touching the papers. “It can’t be us.”
She cocks her head, straight hair leaning with it. “I never said it was you. She turns the sheets over, and I can tell right away from the big, bold letters on the first one: they are Missing posters.
I look at Stamp, but he’s still digging for strips of meat in the moo shu pork.
Idly, not even really conscious while I’m doing it, I warn him, “Not too much.”
He nods at me just as robotically, as if to say, “Stuff it, lady. I’ll eat as much as I want.”
Meanwhile I’m transported back to Barracuda Bay where, in every shop window, taped to the side of every mailbox, stapled to every tree, the same kind of Missing posters littered our beach town during my last few weeks as a living, breathing human.
Three girls had gone missing from my own Home Ec class before I became one of the living dead and learned they weren’t missing at all but dead, their brains food for the Zerkers.
I slide these new posters toward me.
Lucy watches me carefully, Stamp munching indiscriminately.
The first poster is for a boy, slim and handsome in his yearbook photo. They always use a yearbook photo for these things. His name is Armand Suit, and he was captain of the swim team up until three days ago when he went for an early morning jog and never came back.
The second poster is for a girl. She’s blonde and sun-kissed in her yearbook photo, the kind of girl you see all over Florida beach towns, slim and pretty in a bikini or short shorts, hair pulled back, zinc on her nose, always on the way to or from the beach.
Her name is Cecile Brigham, and she’s an honor student, captain of the volleyball team. She, too, went missing the other morning while running with . . . Armand Suit.
I look up at Lucy, narrowing my gaze. It’s my new thing.
It’s kind of like a laser beam squint, but it doesn’t seem to faze Lucy much. “I thought you had to wait at least a few days before reporting someone missing,” I say. “This could be some senior skip day prank or ‘Let’s run off to Make-out Point and make out all day.’”
She nods. “You’re probably right, except Cecile’s dad is the sheriff, and she hasn’t missed a school day since second grade. She’s been gunning for the perfect attendance award since the first day of freshman year and, as lame as that sounds, if you knew her, you’d realize that if she’s not at school twenty minutes early on a weekday, then she’s missing.”
I slide the posters back. “You said you know what we are. What does this have to do with us?”
She eyes me coolly. “Nothing, or you’d be locked up by now.”
I lean a hand on the counter, peaceful, cold, and pale. The other is about two millimeters from my Eliminator. “Quit playing around, Lucy. Spit it out or hit the road and take your food with you. Stop now, Stamp. That’s enough!”
They both flinch.
While I’ve got his attention, I wrench the tin out of his grip. Half of it is gone. “Stamp?”
He shrugs and uses a sleeve to wipe the oily brown moo shu juice off his lips.
When I look back at Lucy, she’s pulling something out of her messenger bag. I swear I almost click the button on my Eliminator and shove the ice pick through her wrist just for kicks, but I give her a second.
Out comes a book. Well worn, dog-eared, as if she’s been studying it for quite some time. Weeks, at least. The title leaps out at me in those cheesy blood-dripping letters, like the ones in those bad late-night horror movie titles: The Living Dead for Losers.
She flashes those superior eyes at me. “I’m not stupid, you know. You show up in the middle of the night, in a foreclosed home, wearing bloody hospital scrubs, and—don’t look at me like that, Maddy Swift. I’m a light sleeper, heard the back gate slam the other night and couldn’t sleep. You couldn’t either, I guess. Walking around in the house all night, eating—what was it—grape juice and cat food by candlelight?”
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