Adventures of a Middle School Zombie

by Scott Craven

  “Excuse me,” I said, looking down to avoid eye contact. I stepped to the right, and so did he. Then stepped to the left, and back to the right. And so did he.

  It was the Dance of the Doomed.

  “Hey, eyes up here, Zom-boy,” Ben said. “Or are you checking out my junk? Really? Is that what you’re doing? Hey, seems like Zom-boy has a little secret. Maybe being dead also makes you gay.”

  A small crowd had gathered around us, some wearing towels, others still pulling on their street clothes.

  “Is that it, Zom-boy, you’re just a little homo? And you think since you’re dead no one is going to notice?”

  “Please move.” Did I say something? I could barely hear myself.

  “Excuse me, did you say something, homo-boy?” A ripple of laughter. “Hmm, Zom-boy and homo-boy. Does that make you a zomo-boy?”

  “Please move.” A little louder this time. “I just want to shower, that’s all.”

  “Sure, sure, no problem. Let’s make room for zomo-boy to take a shower so he can really get his rocks off. That is, if he has any.”

  Ben moved to the side, and I passed, took two steps, and discovered where Joe had been all along. Ben closed in behind me, taking the towel from his shoulder and twirling it in his hands. Joe was doing the same with his towel.

  Now I knew what Josh was talking about.

  “You know Zom-boy, maybe it’s not such a good idea you came to this school,” Joe said. “I gotta say, finding clumps of your skin in the bathroom really isn’t all that pleasant. And then you had to go and try to turn Robbie into a zombie. I have to say, things just aren’t working out.”

  Turn Robbie into a zombie? What was he talking about? All I did was get a little …

  Wait a minute. I knew Ben and Joe’s views on life were pretty narrow, coming from the low rungs on the evolutionary ladder. But could they really believe Ooze causes zombie?

  Yes. Yes they could. And I could probably convince them Ooze wasn’t the only weapon in my bodily fluid arsenal. If they thought I was not just a zombie, but a walking, talking zombie factory, maybe they’d stay away from me. They might think I was cruising for a bruising, but they could be cruising for an Oozing.

  For the time being, other things were on my mind. Like those towels dangling from Ben and Joe’s hands, cottony fluffiness about to turn into torture devices.

  Joe flicked the towel toward me. Anticipating, I hopped to the left and felt the tip brush my thigh before there was a loud snap. More laughter, followed by a few “ooohs.”

  Another snap, and pain flared for an instant on my butt. I could feel a chunk of skin start to slide down the back of my leg.

  “Holy Christ, what the hell!” It was Ben, reacting to what surely must have looked like a gaping, life-threatening wound on my backside (and it would have been life-threatening had I been alive). “Joe, you have to check this out.”

  I turned to inspect the damage. Ah, a little chunk of flesh missing, no big deal. It would grow in. Or I could smooth out the skin above it, stretching it to cover the mark. I did that all the time.

  If they knew that, Ben and Joe probably wouldn’t be happy with just a pound of flesh. Like all middle schoolers, I knew when it was time to get dramatic.

  “Oh man, geez, that really hurt,” I said. “Stop, please.” I threw in a wince for good measure. Not Oscar-worthy, but surely an Emmy.

  Couldn’t tell from the crowd. It went undeathly silent.

  “Turn around.” Joe motioned with his fingers.

  “I just want to take a shower,” I said, gripping my towel tightly in front of me.

  “Yeah, you will. First, turn around.”

  I turned, noticing the others who just stood there watching. Not smiling. Not anything. Their faces were just—empty. I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye someone putting his hand up to his mouth, then he wasn’t there.

  “Oh, dude.” Joe’s voice behind me. I stared at my feet. “Looks like that’s gonna leave a mark. Oh, wait. It already did.”

  Thwack! Another burst of pain that quickly faded. And then the all-too-familiar wet, jellylike feeling down my leg.

  “What are you made of, cheese?” Joe said. “When you jerk off, is that what really happens, you jerk it off?” I braced for more laughter, but it was just Ben and Joe giggling.

  Not that anyone was stepping in to stop them, though.

  I looked out at the faces. Did I see sympathy? Or just fear?

  Then I noticed Luke. At the back, his face peeking out over a couple of bare shoulders. I shot him a “Dude, I could really use a little backup here” look. Then his face was gone.

  “Sucks to be dead, doesn’t it?” Ben, maybe Joe, said.

  I set myself for another towel slap, but none came. Maybe they were scared they could actually kill a dead guy with a wet towel. But more likely, they just got bored.

  “Let’s go see if Robbie is back,” Ben said, walking away with Joe.

  The rest of the crowd dispersed, and I stood there, towel still covering me. But then I just dropped it and walked back to my locker, got dressed, and went home, walking defiantly across the lawn as I crossed the quad.

  Of course, everyone was already in class.

  Chapter Six

  I stared at my lunch of beans, beef, and other random taco bits mixed together in an aluminum-foil boat (I love taco night, but the leftovers not so much). I dug in with the plastic fork I swiped from the lunch line and swirled things around a bit until I had a round mound of brown on it. And yeah, it tasted about as good as it looked.

  First thing when I got home would be to try and convince Mom—again—that taco night leftovers should just go to the dog. Though first we’d need to get a dog. And I’d walk him and feed him and pick up after him. Man, I really wanted a dog. But that was a story for another time.

  “She’s looking at you now, no, she’s talking to her friends … laughing … she’s looking up and pointing … now she’s looking over here again. See, I told you.”

  I studied my lunch, trying to focus on how cool it would be to have a dog. He could sleep with me on my bed, unless I was allergic, but so far I’ve never been allergic to anything, probably something to do with being undead.

  “Dude, you aren’t even paying attention,” Luke continued. “I’m telling you, it’s true, and at some point I really think you need to do something about it. Or at least just talk to her.”

  “I’m not even sure I want to be talking to you,” I said. If I got a dog, would he bury my arm in the backyard? Or play fetch with my femur?

  “You still on that?” Luke said. “That was, like, weeks ago. Pull on your big zombie pants.”

  “It was three days ago. But I remember it like it was yesterday. Two big guys armed with towels, threatening one fairly naked undead guy. Undead guy’s friend disappears like a ghost. Spooky, you know?”

  Luke pushed away his burger, which was odd because he never pushes away food. If the Competitive Eating Association had a minor league, Luke would be its MVP since he seems to train every day.

  “Do you want to know what really happened?” Luke said. “Or do you just want to keep giving me crap about it?”

  “You were there. You ran away. What’s left to tell?”

  “Whatever. I wasn’t going to tell you because it would only make you feel worse. But fine, you win. For the record, I did not run away.”

  “You sure weren’t in the locker room, either.”

  “I left. To get help. I’m sorry, but even if I had jumped in, those odds were against us. You only saw Ben and Joe. But they had plenty of help just waiting to jump in.”

  I hated to admit it, but Luke was right. My problems went beyond Ben, Joe, and Robbie. The other kids may not have wanted a piece of me, but they were hardly stepping up to defend me, either. “I didn’t want to be a snitch, but I knew if I didn’t find someone who could intervene, you were gonna go Humpty Dumpty in a few minutes. I wasn’t even sure there would be enough pieces lef
t to put back together. So I went to … he was the only … if there was anyone else—”

  “Principal Buckley,” I said. I remembered his welcoming speech over the PA, telling everyone to welcome me, but making sure it also sounded like a warning. “Luke, that guy’s a tool.”

  “I know. But what choice did I have?”

  “Anyone else. Anyone. Heck, the lunch lady would have been more help.”

  “I found that out,” Luke said, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said in a few minutes, he’d send over the janitor with a mop and bucket, to clean up, and I quote, ‘Whatever zombie mess your friend got into.’ And then he put me in detention.”

  “He put you in detention for trying to help me?”

  “No. For what I said to him right after he said ‘zombie mess.’”

  “What did you say?”

  “Let’s just say, the words I used? You’re not going to find them in our school’s dictionary.”

  I was feeling better already. I’d been avoiding Luke the past few days, and he knew it. I was surprised when he sat next to me, until I realized this was his way of apologizing without actually saying, “I’m sorry.”

  I pushed his food back to him. Gave him the universal “We’re cool” look that all guys know.

  “So what were you saying?” I said. “Something about talking to a girl?”

  That’s when Luke told me about Anna, who told her friend Beth, who then mentioned it to Dallas, who sent it in a note in English class to Brenna, who then told her lab partner Luke, who then told me.

  Jesus, people, Facebook was created for a reason—to avoid stuff like this.

  According to Luke, Anna had said she thought I was cute, and would say “Yes” if I asked her to the Fall Dance.

  “She is totally into you,” Luke said. “Trust me.”

  “Luke, you heard that, like, fifteenth-hand,” I said. “And if she wanted to tell me that, why didn’t she just post it on her wall?”

  Luke stuffed the rest of his burger into his mouth, reminding me that post-taco leftovers fell on a burger day in the cafetorium. Life just really sucks sometimes.

  “O ffn jeeafm rrdnmok,” Luke said.

  “Swallow.”

  Luke gulped and opened his mouth wide, treating me to a view of mushy bun, bits of meat, chunks of pickle, and swirls of ketchup. A rainbow of muck.

  “I have no idea,” Luke said. “Sometimes the old-fashioned way works best, I guess.”

  “Or she didn’t want anyone else to know,” I said. “Probably one of those things you don’t want to broad-cast.”

  “Or maybe she thought it would be cooler if she told you in person. Well, person to person to person.”

  “I get it.”

  Luke and I happened to be sitting in a quadrant with a pretty good view of the room. On the opposite side, closest to the food line, the jocks and cheerleaders ruled over the prime real estate, just a few steps from plastic utensils, ketchup and mustard packets, salt and pepper, and napkins. Robbie and his wingmen were in the thick of things. Amazing what being held back a year or two will do for refining your athletic skills.

  Across the aisle and No. 2 on your scorecard were the smokers, consisting largely of students too cool to care about school, grades, or just about anything. Anyone getting a B was ridiculed on Tumblr, but was still allowed to hang with them. Earning an A was discouraged because it signified effort.

  The smokers proved to be a solid buffer between the jocks and the goths, dressed in their black hoodies and black shirts and black pants (or black skirts with torn black tights or fishnets). The goths only cared about not fitting in, never getting the irony of looking alike. The other trait they shared was an intense dislike of the jocks—a feeling similar to the smokers, if the smokers cared enough to dislike anyone.

  Skater boys came next, dressed in graphic T-shirts and plaid shorts, which they wore no matter the weather. Most of them had their boards with them, toting them under their arms between classes like some sort of badge of honor. Which it was, I guess. “We can balance and we’re proud of it.”

  Next came the overachievers, a group of polo shirts and khakis. They joined clubs and ran for office and, as far as I knew, spent lunch filling out college applications. They had enough money and looks to separate them from the geeks, who also joined clubs and ran for office but did not have the money or appearance to make up for their general uncoolness.

  Finally there was Luke, me, and the rest of the kids who were the stragglers, those who had done nothing special enough to earn a label, taking up three out-of-the-way tables. We didn’t really fit in anywhere, so we fit in by not fitting in. Which is not to be confused with trying hard not to fit in (goths, I’m talking about you).

  That all makes sense, right?

  So this whole thing with Anna posed a problem. She was a goth, I was a straggler. As far as I knew, a match between the two had never been attempted, let alone successful.

  There were two possibilities: Anna wanted to shake up the status quo, or she was in some strange way attracted to me.

  As unlikely as it was, I had to go with the second, because the first was unheard of in middle school.

  Through the forest of stragglers, overachievers, skater boys, and such, I caught glimpses of Anna (when I dared look). She was hunched over in that typical goth way, and didn’t seem to be saying much. You know, goth-like.

  I’d seen her before around school. She was shorter than me (good) with dark eyes and a button nose, and straight black hair that swept across her forehead. For a goth, she was pretty cute.

  We’d shared a few classes but never said anything more than “hi.”

  But she kinda liked me. I kinda liked that she kinda liked me.

  “Luke, what would you do?”

  “Grab more ketchup if the jocks weren’t all standing around the condiment table.”

  “No, I mean the Anna thing.”

  “I know, just messing with you. Honestly? I’d ask her to the dance. I mean, this is pretty solid intel. She’s definitely interested.”

  The dance was still weeks away, so that was comforting. I had plenty of time to figure this out. No hurry. Because first I needed to figure Anna out.

  “And what if it’s just to humiliate me?” I said. “What if she wants to get me to the dance for a Carrie moment?” Last week a bunch of us went to Luke’s house to watch the old horror movie Carrie, in which the main character had supernatural powers but still got a bucket of blood dumped on her at the prom.

  Luke, a French fry halfway to his mouth, stopped and looked at me.

  “That … would … be … AWESOME!”

  Yeah, being named the King of the Dance (though I was pretty sure there was no such thing), then having pig’s blood poured all over you as you stood in the spotlight. That could be just the thing to make you go all flesh-eating on their butts.

  “You are not serious, I hope. Because, really, that could be what she has in mind.”

  Luke shook his head. “No way, dude. She’s a goth. They’re dark, but it’s pretend dark. And they’re probably more honest with themselves than the jocks or smokers or overachievers. I think they’re up there with the geeks.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Seriously. And Brenna said that Dallas is pretty honest, and I’ve heard that Beth doesn’t pass on stuff unless it’s mostly true.”

  “It would be nice to go to the dance. A pretty normal thing to do.”

  “Totally. And I’ll go, too. And you’d get out and show others that you aren’t going to let some kind of one-in-six billion disability get in your way. Right?”

  He stuffed a few fries in his mouth, waiting for my reply. But I didn’t have one.

  I stood and walked toward the goth table, excusing myself around the skater boys and geeks. You know how in those prison movies, you see the guy going down death row to the electric chair, and the camera pans across the faces of inmates who
know they’re looking at a guy whose future is very short, yet he stands straight, his eyes looking dead ahead the whole time?

  That’s how I felt. Undead man walking.

  “Hey, um, Anna,” I said from over her left shoulder.

  She turned and looked up. She was cute, once you saw more of her face and less of her hoodie. Not wearing nearly as much makeup as other goths.

  “Jed, hi.”

  The entire time walking here, subconsciously stepping over soda spills, exploded ketchup packets, and the foot of the overachiever who tried to trip me, I was thinking of how to put it. Should I be witty, or engage in small talk, or maybe sit first and tell her how I heard—

  Then I heard myself say, “Wannagotothedance?”

  “Sure.”

  “Cool.” And I was back with Luke. Did one of the overachievers really try to trip me?

  “How’d it go?”

  “We’re going to the dance together. I think. Yeah. We’re going. Together.”

  “Awesome, dude, what time are you picking her up? Is your dad or mom driving?”

  “Really? The dance isn’t for a while. I’m not even sure how I go about talking to her between then and now.” I wadded up my taco leavings, having not really touched them. “Right now I just want to feel good about having a date … Because for right now, that’s enough. OK?”

  “You bet. And are you really not going to eat your lunch?”

  Chapter Seven

  It was one of those days when I actually felt pretty good about going to school. Mostly because I had a date to the dance with a girl who was way too cute for me. I was definitely dating up. And over the past couple of weeks, I did nothing to jeopardize the date. Like talk to her. She said she’d go, and I was happy to leave it at that until I picked her up.

  All that came crashing down pretty quickly, thanks to the disappointment that comes with being stuffed into a display case, the school’s trophy case, to be exact. I felt like an idiot. Not just because I was a zombie under glass. Also because I should have known things could always get worse.