The girl ignores the Bandits and football and turns toward me.
The Plaids and I never settled things from that night at Mykel’s chopography exhibit. Cam hasn’t looked at me even once since I returned to school—none of them do anymore—not that I’m complaining. I know they talk about me behind my back. I’ve heard the things they say, some of it true, most of it not. Nothing true ever stays a secret in these halls and even the truth has a way of sounding like a lie. Either way you’re fucked here and not in the good way, as Jackson would say. But they don’t see that. The Plaids don’t see me—not when I’m right there in front of them. They see only what they can step on and kick, what’s unapologetically in their way, and it’s like I’m not part of that world anymore.
I would have thought a kid whose dad cut off his hand would have been Plaid-target #1. But that just isn’t fucking so. It’s like there’s this fog that’s settled between us, and the closest they’re willing to get is a couple of half-hearted catcalls directed at the girl walking toward me along the field’s edge.
Aimee.
She’s layered in a peacoat with a matching knit hat and scarf—her scarf tied the French way around her neck, doubled over with the open ends pulled through the loop. Her nose is red from the cold and she climbs the metal benches with care. She drove like a professional wheelman that night. When we got to the hospital, she stuck by me until the cops made her call her parents and they took her away. The Whites had to leave behind their blood-spattered SUV, which the police impounded as evidence. We haven’t seen each other outside of school since that night. Partially, the Webers. Partially, her parents, who are still waiting for their SUV. Everyone is trying to put as much distance between us and that night as possible. The collective solution is forgetfulness.
I see Aimee every day after school.
She climbs up and Father Vincent goes down.
A question in those final pages of Notes: Which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
She and I sit quiet on the bleachers and listen to the young men fighting below us. This is our reality. We do not kiss, but instead wait for things to change—for the beautiful monsters that I know will someday come.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has long been a troubled and disturbed project of mine. The following people not only believed in my deranged ideas and fictive reality, but worked miracles to make sure both me and this book came out on the right side of crazy.
My loving parents, Rick and Ann Angelella, and sister, Gina Angelella. Thanks for never mentioning that my five year plan to write and publish a novel actually took ten. This book, I’m certain, is proof that my plan was (mostly) never a lie.
My amazing uncle and kindred spirit, Michael Angelella, for introducing me to the sadistic art of writing and numbing me at an early age to the searing pain of a red-lined manuscript.
My cousins: Dominic Angelella, for keeping me musically current and reminding me what it means to be fearless; and Hallie Angelella, a fellow starving artist in Brooklyn and Ithaca College Bomber.
To my late-night writing partner and resident soothsayer, Jess Ashley, for giving important, poignant and perceptive feedback on my teenage landscape and for teaching me what girls actually wear.
To my teachers: Fred A. Wilcox, for daring me to write out my demons; Patricia Volk, for convincing me to resurrect this novel after I had left it for dead; Amy Hempel, for teaching me how to write a sentence and break a story; Askold Melnyczuk, for diagnosing my obsessive personality and rightly prescribing Fyodor Dostoevsky; and Bret Anthony Johnston, who challenged me to make Jeremy walk off the damn page.
To my friends at Bennington College, notably Joe Stracci, Hugh Ryan, Alka Roy, and Ian Williams, for reading early drafts of this novel and challenging me to write better and continue to create outside of the proverbial box.
For their kind correspondence, advice, and encouragement over the years, I am deeply indebted to Donald Ray Pollack, Richard Lange, Chuck Palahniuk and Will Christopher Baer.
To my editors at Hunger Mountain: Bethany Hegedus, for publishing an early excerpt from Zombie (formerly Alpha House); and Kekla Magoon, for her keen line-edits and tough questions.
Everyone at Random House who poured their valuable time, energy, and enthusiasm into this book. For their thoughtful, direct, and heartfelt feedback, I especially would like to thank Marcia Baumann, Brad Andrews and Lane Jantzen.
To Seth Fishman, who literally pulled my manuscript from the slush pile and forced others to read it.
My Herculean agent, Douglas Stewart, for loving Jeremy as much as I love Jeremy. For never giving up on the book, no matter the state of the draft. For never giving up on me, no matter the level of crisis. And, most importantly, for blindly believing in my work, no matter the cost.
To the artistic team behind the cover: Kapo Ng for a killer design; and Jad Fair for his brilliant paper-cuttings used as the cover art.
Everyone at Soho Press for their wild and undead support, especially Bronwen Hruska, Ailen Lujo, Juliet Grames, Dan Ehrenhaft, Michelle Rafferty, Scott Cain, Janine Agro, and my phenomenal editor, Mark Doten, who believed in this book from day one and pushed me (quite literally at times) to the very limits of my creative sanity, never settling for good enough.
My dear friend (and personal Tom Hagan), Tod Goldberg, for being the best wartime consigliere a writer could ask for.
To my beautiful wife, Kate, for being my first reader and editor, agent and shrink, fanatic and critic, heckler and cheerleader. For always being in my foxhole and endlessly leaving negativity to the fools.
Finally, to the kid dug deep into his/her troubled trench: believe me when I say that surviving is the most important step towards happiness, and survive it you will!
READING GROUP GUIDE:
1. What is the importance of Jeremy’s Top Ten Favorite Zombie Movies of All-Time? Why are zombie films so important to him?
2. What does the epigraph by Michel de Montaigne mean? What does this quote say about Jeremy? What other monsters and/or miracles exist in Zombie? If so, how does the epigraph relate them?
3. Zombie opens with Jeremy quoting his father, Ballentine, on three different types of neck tie knots. What is the significance of Jeremy beginning his story with a quote from his father?
4. What role do necktie knots play in Zombie? According to Jeremy, what do the knots—Windsor, Half-Windsor, and Limp Dick—say about the men that wear them?
5. When we meet Jeremy, he has already developed his top five Zombie Survival Codes. What do you think (or know) fueled the creation of this list? How affective are his codes? Do they always keep him safe? Do you think he successfully survives his own “zombie apocalypse,” or do his codes ultimately fail him? How so?
6. What role do the Plaids play in Jeremy’s daily life? How is his life affected by them? Is it important that he stands up to them; or an unnecessary action?
7. Many of the people in Jeremy’s life retain special skills and interests that on one level define them as people, however it is these very traits that cause conflict with their own identity and in how the world views them. This is something Jeremy, too, struggles with. What are their interests or special skills, and how do they affect not only their own lives, but by extension Jeremy’s life as well—Zink, Aimee, Mykel, Franny, Sherman, Super Shy Kid, Dirtbag Boy, Tricia?
8. How does Jeremy perceive the adults in his life? How do you think adults view Jeremy?
9. Why does Jeremy collect women’s magazines? What is his endgame?
10. Do you think that Jeremy barker is a reliable narrator? Explain.
11. Jeremy is a wallflower, an active observer, and while not entirely passive, he still tends to err on the side of invisibility to get by on a daily basis. That being said, he also has a very active imagination. When he is not killing zombies in creative ways, what other important moments does Jeremy engage with the external world around him? What propels him to engage
and why does he decide to do so?
12. Why is Mykel’s chopography important to the story? How does it relate to the overall narrative of zombies, surgery and adolescence?
13. How do you feel about Father Gibbs’ belief that “no matter how far gone you believe a person to be, there’s always the possibility of a miracle to bring them back to life.”
14. It’s fair to say that the Barker family is not the ideal picture of the healthy and happy American family. What do Ballentine, Corrine, Jackson and Jeremy do (or don’t do) in Zombie to reconnect and mend broken relationships within the family?
15. There are two coaches that Jeremy has frequent interactions with throughout Zombie—Coach O’Bannon and Mr.Vo. How are these men the same? In what ways are they different?
16. Human interaction (or lack thereof) and physicality are described in great detail and to varying effects throughout the book. How do surgery and body parts fit into the landscape of this novel overall?
17. Mr. Rembrandt often quotes from Fydor Dostoevsky’s novel Notes From Underground. Even Ballentine uses a plot line form the book as a lie to give to Jeremy about where he has been disappearing to at night. How does Mr. Rembrandt use the text to influence those around him? How does Notes influence the novel Zombie on a structural or ideological level?
18. Beyond the obvious reasons, what psychological reasons do you think the people at Tiller Drive have for congregating? What is their goal? What do they hope to accomplish or achieve? How does this activity pertain to Jeremy?
19. How do you see Ballentine and his action at the end of the book? Do you feel it is a desperate and deranged attempt to find peace? Or the act of a crazy man? Or do you think he is brainwashed?
20. The Tiller Drive sequence ends in a stark and jarring way. “Everything stops … A freeze-frame. Still picture. Ending to 28 Days Later. A cosmic pause on heartbeats and airways and circulation.” What literally happens here? Is it a literal break? Or an emotional one? Psychological? Why do you think this freeze-frame technique is used?
21. Given the title of the book, Zombie is a mash-up of genres. Do you see this as a classic zombie story, or more of a coming-of-age narrative? Horror or mystery? Explain. Do you agree that there are actual zombies in this book? Or only those that exist in the movies and Jeremy’s imagination?
22. What are your favorite zombie movies of all-time? What is it about them that you like? What are your least favorite zombie movies?
23. Survival scenario! You are alone in the house and asleep upstairs in your bedroom when the zombie apocalypse happens. Fast-moving goo babies crash through the front door and living room windows. What is your weapon of choice? What is your escape plan?
Zombie Page 28
