Adventures of a Middle School Zombie

by Scott Craven

  Mr. Landrum, who looked about fifty or sixty with his gray hair, glasses, and big bald spot, turned to the whiteboard, wrote his name, and circled it. “Landrum, first-period Biology, are we all in the right place? Yes? Good. As I take attendance and you hear your name, please say ‘Here,’ not ‘Present’ or ‘Yes’ or ‘You betcha, that’s me,’ or you’ll be starting five points in the hole, no exceptions, not even on the first day. Are we clear?”

  “You betcha.”

  “Who said that?”

  Each of us looked around, and within seconds, nearly everyone’s eyes had settled on Robbie, including Mr. Landrum’s.

  “Ah, Mr. Zambrano. Yet another encore, I see.”

  “Good to be here, Mr. Landrum.” Robbie sneered as if to remind everyone he was mayor of Bullyville, and no one had better run against him.

  Sometimes it was as if I were in a movie, the way some characters just came through so clearly. This was like that movie Three O’Clock High, where the good guy/weakling (that’d be me) has a run-in with a bully in the morning, then spends the rest of the day worrying the bully (hello, Robbie) will meet him in the parking lot after school to even things out. Sorry, not going to let that happen. I quickly looked back to the front of the room, dead set on never setting eyes on Robbie for at least the next fifty minutes. I just needed to blend in.

  The loudspeaker just above the door crackled. “Good morning students, and welcome to a great, big, wonderful new school year. I’m Principal Buckley, and I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to my fifteenth year here, and I just know that, well, many, uh … totally awesome … days are ahead.”

  Mr. Landrum rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Each and every one of you Pine Hollow Bucking Broncos will no doubt work with me to make this one of the best years ever,” Principal Buckley continued. “As long as everyone tries as hard as he or she can, and we all follow the rules, I am positive it is just going to … that it’s all going to be off the hook!”

  Now Mr. Landrum seemed to be groaning.

  “And I would like to take this time to make you aware … hmm, what?” There was a scratching sound followed by muffled voices. I thought I could make out, “Oh, right,” and, “Point taken,” and a woman’s voice. But since the PA system seemed about as old as the shows my parents liked to watch on TV Land (Leave it to Beaver, really?), it was hard to tell what was going on until Principal Buckley came back on. “No, we want to welcome, yes, welcome a very special student to our ranks this year.”

  Please no.

  “He arrives with—(muffled) yes, Ms. Flowers, I’m well aware—as I was saying, this very special student comes with unique attributes, and we don’t want you to be fri— I mean, he should be welcomed with open arms.”

  A hole opened in the pit of my stomach. I was desperately hoping for a way to fall into it and disappear.

  “Many of you know Jed Rivers from his previous school and have gotten to be comfortable with him, if not his friend, from what I understand. And I want to make it exceptionally clear that we expect the same to happen here, because here at Pine Hollow, we pride ourselves on overlooking—(muffled) what’s that again, Ms. Flowers?”

  The loudspeaker went dead. So did I.

  Wait, I already was. Mostly.

  I turned my head slowly, expecting to see all eyes on me. But all were on Mr. Landrum, who remained behind his desk flipping pages in a textbook.

  The PA crackled to life again. “What I mean to say is, Jed is that one-of-a-kind boy who happens to be just like you and me, except that he’s—Ms. Flowers, is this right? (muffled) Oh, his choice, fine—Jed is what you call Cardiovascularly Challenged. His body has a unique ability to maintain itself without the benefit of standard life signs, heartbeat, brain waves, and such. Other than that, he is just like everyone else, and I expect him to be treated as such. Now, have a spectacular first day, and be rad out there!”

  Click.

  “Hey, you, skate-shirt boy.”

  The whisper came from behind me. And I knew from who. I turned.

  “You’re that kid, right? The zombie boy.”

  I said nothing.

  “OK, Jed. Dead Jed. Yeah, Dead Jed. DJ. Welcome to Pine Hollow, DJ.”

  He reached toward my face.

  “By the way,” Robbie said, clamping his fingers, “got your nose.”

  He did. My nose was poking between the knuckles of his index and middle finger. I could only imagine the gap in my face.

  Suddenly, he threw my nose across the room and wiped his hand on his shirt.

  “What the hell is this stuff, huh?” he said. “Oh my God, is this you? Is this part of you? Is this what makes you a zombie? This is gross, dude. Sick!”

  I looked at the shiny stuff now streaked across the front of his T-shirt.

  That was Ooze. That’s what I called it, anyway. I really don’t know exactly what it is, but it always seeps out when I lose a limb. Or, in this case, a nose. I’m pretty sure Ooze is a good thing, at least for me. It keeps me together somehow.

  But Robbie was going crazy.

  Good to know.

  I heard Mr. Landrum’s voice. “Mr. Rivers, could you please come to the front of the class to retrieve your nose? There, on the whiteboard. Blocking the last page of today’s reading assignment.”

  I got out of my seat, knowing every eye was on me. I could feel a bit of flesh slide off my knee.

  I shed when I’m nervous.

  Chapter Five

  For the first two weeks it was pretty easy to avoid Robbie. He was working his way through the Tech Club. They say he makes a list in the summer. He starts with the nerdiest clubs, and goes through the members alphabetically. Two things about that were surprising. First, that he was so organized about terrorizing kids, and second, that he knew how to alphabetize. If he spent half as much time on homework as he did on bullying, he’d be a sophomore by now.

  I found out new kids threw him off. Robbie didn’t get to them until the second month, earlier the more different they were, since different, to Robbie, meant, “needing to be beaten into conformity.”

  That should have meant I was safe for a couple more weeks, but I was nervous, pretty sure my level of different would boost me up the list.

  Funnily enough, that was not the thing I was most worried about. A far more terrible thing was about to happen.

  Group showering.

  For the first two weeks of school, Mr. Stanzer taught us about muscles and proteins and nutrition. “The only way we keep PE mandatory is to actually teach you something,” he said. “And yes, I’m going to test you on it, as long as I can remember everything myself. After that, we’ll dress out and have some fun.”

  I was having fun learning about muscles, despite all the looks I got when Mr. Stanzer spent an hour on the heart, passing around a stethoscope so we could listen to ours. I said it was OK when Mr. Stanzer asked if a couple of kids could listen to mine, even if there was nothing to listen to.

  But as we left PE on Friday, Mr. Stanzer reminded us to have our gym clothes when we came in Monday, when we’d start conditioning “to work the muscles we’ve been talking about all this time.”

  “And yes, everyone will shower, no exceptions,” he said. “I know you’re all so self-conscious at your age; I’ve been there myself. But trust me, after the first time, it’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious,” Robbie said, looking at me (he was in five of my classes, how did that happen?). “Some of us are ‘no big deals’ more than others.”

  A handful of kids laughed until Mr. Stanzer glared at them. “This is a good time to start growing up,” he said.

  Now Monday was just a day away. And I was modeling towels in my bedroom. I swear.

  “What about a large towel?” Luke said.

  “What, like I haven’t thought of that? I’m brain-dead, not stupid.”

  “But it could work.”

  “Maybe, if we weren’t forced to use t
he towels they provide.”

  I don’t trust any kid so confident in his body that he shows it off to a bunch of strangers who try to pretend they aren’t checking out how they compare to everyone else.

  It’s so messed up.

  And I’m coming into it with a body I know is different from everyone else’s. It’s kinda gray, it peels just about everywhere (even when I’m not nervous), and—what I hate most of all—the only hair I have is on my head.

  I know Luke has sprouted hair down there. Because he told me, that’s why. It’s the kind of things friends share, as long as they are positive no one is listening.

  I held a blue hand towel at my belly button so it draped well over my parts, ending just above my knees. “What if I had it like this?” I asked.

  “Sure, but then everyone is going to have a good look at your ass,” Luke said.

  “And your point is?”

  “Guess it’s better than the alternative. You know, I think the towels are bigger than that.”

  “Doubt it. I swear the person who designed middle-school gym towels must have had a traumatic shower experience, and now he’s paying everyone back.”

  “Absolutely. Every decision ever made for anything, there’s someone going, ‘How can we totally screw with Jed? Hey, I know. Tiny gym towels!’”

  We both laughed. OK, I thought, how bad could it be?

  I hate it when I’m suckered in by my own optimism.

  ***

  My athletic gear was in a nylon bag tucked into my backpack. In it were shoes, shorts, socks, underwear, deodorant, and a white T-shirt with my last name written in black marker across the chest (following every rule in the handout Mr. Stanzer had given us on Friday). When I shoved it into my gym locker before school, I saw other kids doing the same thing, some of them even smaller than me (and almost as pale).

  If they could do it, so could I.

  When PE rolled around, I rushed into the locker room to be among the first to change, keeping my (pretty large) shirt on as I stripped off my pants; the shirt’s tail was plenty long to cover everything I wanted to cover. Once my gym shorts were on, I took off my shirt and pulled on my T-shirt, feeling something wet on my back.

  Great, I was shedding. I tucked in my shirt so I wouldn’t trail any skin, since that was just the kind of thing I knew would get people treating me like a zombie.

  I turned to leave and ran into Robbie. Not as in, “Hey Robbie, how you doing?” but as in, bounced off his chest like a ping-pong ball.

  He panicked, stepping back so quickly he slammed into the lockers. He looked down at his shirt, probably checking for Ooze. Seeing it was clean, or looked to be, he stepped forward and poked me in the chest.

  “Dude, you get so much as one drop of zombie on me, and I will remove the ‘un’ from your undead status,” he said. “You got me?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “That’s what I thought.” He paused. “And what is in this zombie juice, anyway?”

  I thought for a moment. “It’s a serum that can penetrate cell walls through osmosis, allowing my body to maintain stasis despite a lack of normal bodily functions.”

  I was totally winging this. God, I was good.

  “What does that mean in English?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s what makes me a zombie.”

  “I knew it,” Robbie said. “So what does it come out of? Because I don’t see it on you now.”

  “It sort of appears when I hurt myself. And if I get hurt. Like when my nose is pulled off. Or when I get really really nervous.”

  “Here’s the thing, DJ. Next time you lose a body part, stay far away from me.” An evil smile crept across his face. “Or … I’ll just remember to wear gloves next time.”

  Why didn’t I tell him Ooze was like acid, eating through the thickest gloves and clothing? Or that I sweat the stuff, so I was coated in Ooze all the time?

  Had I just lost the only advantage I had? Unless there was another way to use Ooze to my advantage.

  “If this were any other time, you’d be stuffed inside the nearest locker and buried in recently worn jockstraps,” Robbie said. “But for once, I am just not in the mood. Make sure you know that while letting me copy off you has won you certain freedoms, you are to stay away from me unless I need something to punch.”

  Since the second day in school, Robbie had made it clear he was determined not to spend another year at Pine Hollow, and that meant one thing—finding the right kid to cheat off of. On the third day, he was already asking around for, as he put it, “straight-A geeklings.”

  As with his bullying list, he put a lot more effort into his copy list than his schoolwork. He gathered facts, then cross-referenced names against the classes he shared with each of them. The result was a sophisticated chart of whose work to copy when.

  Since Robbie had been held back so often, I shared five classes with him. That meant I was his main (as he put it) “grade bitch.” Which did win me certain freedoms. I kept my lunch money most days, I could take a tight turn on the sidewalk and let my feet break the plane of the lawn (but would still suffer the consequences if I actually touched green), and was allowed to walk un-hassled to the bus. I thought it was a pretty good deal, even if he had a new wisecrack every day: “Hey Dead Jed, you think it might brain today?” or “DJ, how’s my main shambling man?” or “On that test, you were dead on; or should I just say dead?” They were creative, even if falling short of sensibly witty.

  Touching him, however, was still way out of bounds, as he reminded me in the locker room that day.

  “One more thing,” Robbie said, stripping off his shirt. “I don’t see any of that Ooze crap on it, but I’m not taking any chances. See me at my locker after school, because you owe me twenty-five dollars for a new shirt. And you’re doing my Biology homework.”

  Robbie turned and started to walk out, holding his shirt in his right hand.

  “Dude, where you going?” Ben and Joe said at just about the same time.

  “Home. Getting a new shirt. Thanks to Zom-boy.”

  “Zom-boy, that’s a good one,” Ben or Joe said.

  “Shut up!”

  Ben and Joe looked at me. I ducked out and onto the field for some very welcome conditioning.

  ***

  OK, I can do this, I told myself. I mean, I can do this without looking like a geekling.

  I didn’t understand why I had to take a shower. I really wasn’t sweating all that much. Well, until it was time to strip down, anyway.

  I looked up, very quickly, just to see what others were doing, then focused back on my locker. OK, what did I see? Some naked butts. Yeah, some guys just didn’t care. But mostly I saw kids doing the same thing I was, staring at their lockers, wearing only shorts.

  When I’d practiced with the towel, I’d had no idea my plan had a fatal flaw—the towel cage. Rather than grab a towel from a rack, you had to line up at the towel cage and get it from the towel guy.

  And that meant, according to my estimate, a roughly fifty-foot walk without the benefit of anything to cover myself, save my hands.

  I took another look and saw some kids had already started their naked march to the cage. The hiss of showers also echoed in the locker room, reminding me of the water torture ahead.

  I could wait it out. Stay here another ten minutes, even if it meant I was late to the next period. Let things empty out a bit, and avoid the humiliation of the two-handed cup-cover that some kids were using. That’d work, just making sure I was last. I should’ve thought of that before—

  “Jed, drop ’em and get into the shower.” Mr. Stanzer walked up the concrete aisle in shorts with a whistle dangling from his neck. He continued herding stragglers. “Percy, Trevor, you too. C’mon guys, we need to clear out for the next class.”

  Now or never. Slipping my thumbs into the elastic waistbands, I tugged down my shorts and underwear in one move and stepped out of them. No time to grab the clothes and put them in my locker; I
’d do that when I got back. I left them pooled on the floor, turned, and headed toward the towel cage.

  But now it was much farther away. Maybe a football field. Maybe more.

  My hands went instinctively to my private area. Oh no, it was the two-handed cup of the geekling. I took a few steps, a few more. My hands remained where they were as if glued there. Tried to move them, but it was hopeless. Can’t … instill … self-confidence.

  Other kids filtered in from other aisles. Jeremy and Albert, just ahead, walked hunched forward, arms in the cover position. It looked like Dallas was just ahead of them, upright, arms swinging at his side. No doubt a beneficiary of puberty.

  The towel cage was just ahead now. Yes, five kids in front. Four, three. Two. Almost my turn.

  “Hey Zom-boy, we were looking for you,” came a voice on my right.

  Ben (where was Joe?) stood dripping wet, towel slung over his shoulder. I turned back to the towel cage as if I didn’t see him, he didn’t exist. When you are standing with a bunch of other naked kids for the very first time in your life, cupping yourself, reality just doesn’t seem to exist.

  I stepped up to the metal cage. Eyes straight ahead, focused on the towel guy.

  “Hey Jed.” It was Josh. I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends at this point, but over the past two weeks, he’d nodded at me between classes and never expressed an interest to throw me in a trash can. When it came to eighth graders, that made him my friend.

  “Josh, hi.” I held out my hand for a towel, and Josh reached behind him.

  “Hang on, I’ve got better towels back here, a little larger, more absorbent,” he said. He leaned closer. “Thicker. Which you’re going to need. Keep it in front, down low. Don’t worry about protecting your butt.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “You will,” he said, handing it to me. “Just remember what I said.”

  I took the towel (it was soft and thick—terrycloth?) and turned to find that, yes, Ben still existed. The very patient Ben, blocking my way to the shower room.