Zombie Blondes

by Brian James

  ZOMBIE

  BLONDES

  BRIAN JAMES

  To my mother

  An Imprint of Macmillan

  zombie blondes. Copyright © 2008 by Brian James. All rights reserved.

  Printed in April 2009 in the United States of America by RR Donnelley,

  Harrisonburg, Virginia. For information, address Square Fish,

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and

  are used by Feiwel and Friends under license from Macmillan.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  James, Brian,

  Zombie blondes / by Brian James.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Each time fifteen-year-old Hannah and her out-of-work father move she

  has some fears about making friends, but a classmate warns her that Maplecrest,

  Vermont’s cheerleaders really are monsters.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-57375-1

  [1. Moving, Household—Fiction. 2. Fathers and daughters—Fiction.

  3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Cheerleading—Fiction.

  6. Cliques (Sociology)—Fiction. 7. Popularity—Fiction. 8. Zombies—Fiction.

  9. Vermont—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J153585Zom 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007050869

  Originally published in the United States by Feiwel and Friends

  Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosta

  First Square Fish Edition: 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.squarefishbooks.com

  There aren’t any rules to running away from your problems. No checklist of things to cross off. No instructions. Eeny, meeny, pick a path and go. That’s how my dad does it anyway because apparently there’s no age limit to running away, either. He wakes up one day, packs the car with everything we own, and we hit the road. Watch all the pretty colors go by until he finds a town harmless enough to hide in. But his problems always find us. Sometimes quicker than others. Sometimes one month and sometimes six. There’s no rule when it comes to that, either. Not about how long it takes for the problems to catch up with us. Just that they will—that much is a given. And then it’s time to run again to a new town, a new home, and a new school for me.

  But if there aren’t any rules, I wonder why it feels the same every time. Feels like I leave behind a little bit of who I was in each house we’ve left empty. Scattering pieces of me in towns all over the place. A trail of crumbs dotting the map from everywhere we’ve left to everywhere we go. And they don’t make any pictures when I connect dots. They are random like the stars littering the sky at night.

  “You’re gonna like this place . . . you really are,” my dad says over the song that goes in and out of static on the radio. Taking his eyes off the road for a second to give me the goofy smile he saves for when he’s trying to cheer me up. A soft tap of his hand on my knee until I stop staring out the car window and look at him.

  “I liked the last place . . . and the place before that one, too,” I snap, pouting at him out of the corner of my eye. It’s the look I save for when I want him to leave me alone. I’m not in the mood for cheering up. I’m sick of moving. I’m sick of being the new girl all the time. And I’m sick of my dad trying to make it sound like some exciting adventure every time we run out of money to pay rent and have to cut out of town like criminals.

  I sink down in my seat and press my forehead against the window. The leaves have all changed and the orange ones seem to mix with the brown and yellow ones like the tail of a comet in some cartoon as we speed by. The branches dance in the wind and wave the leaves about. Waving good-bye as the mile markers flash past and then we’re gone. Another minute closer to the middle of nowhere. Another mile closer to Maplecrest, the town my dad swears I’m going to like.

  “Are you looking at the mountains? Aren’t they beautiful?” he asks, his eyes beaming as he looks from peak to peak rising in front of the windshield.

  I don’t answer because I’m not speaking to him.

  It’s my new approach since he doesn’t seem to listen to me. Maybe if I don’t say anything, he’ll get the message that I’m mad. I’m not even sure why. I mean it’s never bothered me so much before. The moving-around thing. We’ve been doing it ever since my dad stopped working regularly. Or ever since they said he wasn’t able to work, I should say. Since I was ten years old. So almost six years now. Long enough that I should be used to it. And I am, it’s just that I really did like the last place. I made friends for the first time in a long time. And he promised me when we went there that it would be the last time I’d have to start over.

  It was my fault for believing him, I guess.

  He’s told me that promise before. “It’s gonna be different this time, you’ll see.” He’s said it so often that I think he almost believes it. He always says it as we’re pulling into our new driveway. I always roll my eyes and tell him, “Sure thing,” because I know nothing will change. Nothing ever does. It’s not that he doesn’t try. He does. He’ll take a job he hates because he can’t do the one he likes. He can’t be a cop again, not after what happened in the city when he used to be one. He says the memories are too painful. That’s why we ran in the first place, ran from the city to out here in the middle of nothing. And I don’t have the heart to tell him that it hasn’t helped. Six years and we’re still running and he’s still taking jobs that make him miserable. He’ll take another one once we get to Maplecrest. Then he’ll get fired because he can’t stand it. We’ll eat noodles and rice for a few weeks and then one day I’ll come home from school and the car will be packed up with everything we own and it will start all over again.

  That’s why I’ve changed my mind about there not being any rules. Because there is one rule to running away from your problems. The one that says it will repeat itself over and over again like the seasons or the sunset or the chains of fast-food restaurants that we pass, going from one place to the next. It always comes back to the same thing. I always find myself sitting in the passenger seat of our car, biting my nails and wondering if my new high school will be better or worse than the last.

  “Looks like this is our stop,” my dad says as we pass a sign directing us to turn off the highway. It’s his way of telling me to roll down my window and stick my arm out to let the cars behind us know we’re turning since our blinkers don’t work.

  The wind rushes in the open glass and I lazily put out my hand and point. My dad tells me I’m the best copilot ever to navigate the winding roads of Vermont. He’s trying to be cute and so I try even harder to be sour as I look at him with a sulky expression.

  “Come on, Hannah, don’t be like that,” he says, nudging me in the side.

  “How do you want me to be? My hand is freezing and your jokes aren’t funny,” I say as the car slows down and he turns the steering wheel. I pull my hand back in and roll up the window and instantly miss the noise of the wind rushing in because the return of quiet means he’s going to say something else and I’ve been trying my best not to speak to him.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” he says in a tone of voice he uses to tell me I’m being unfair.

  “Dramatic is moving your daughter to the middle of nowhere every few months,” I correct him, giving him the smug smile he hates so much in order to let him know that I’ve only just begun to be unfair.

  But I guess even I can’t spoil his mood because he doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t argue with me. In fact, he actually laughs! It makes me so mad that I want to scream, but he seems so happy that I can’t even work up the energy to stay angry enough to get anything out. It’s impossible to yell at him when he has that silly smile on his face and pats me on the sho
ulder. I’ve never been able to stay mad at him for longer than a few hours at a time before, and I feel myself caving. God, sometimes I hate him for being so hard to hate!

  I turn back to the window.

  It’s easier being miserable if I don’t look at him.

  I watch as our new hometown rolls past.

  “Maplecrest,” I mutter to myself, reading the name off the sign as we turn onto the street that splits the town in half. It even sounds boring. And as we drive through, it’s just as I pictured—a lot of nothing. One pharmacy. One diner. A bank and my school and that’s about it. It’d be a miracle if anything exciting ever happens in this place.

  “Isn’t this great!” my dad says, taking it all in. It’s just the kind of time-warp town he loves. Nothing’s changed in it since the time when he was a kid. Or even before that. Looks like a town from a movie that’s too boring to even sit through long enough to figure out what the story is about.

  Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that, either, because there are FOR SALE signs up all over the place. Every third or fourth lawn at least. No wonder we’re able to live here. Even we aren’t poor enough to be chased from a ghost town.

  “Yeah, Dad, you were right. I love it already,” I say sarcastically. The only good thing about this place is that I’m sure we won’t be staying long. With this many people moved out, that means there’s no jobs. Empty houses equals no work. It’s the one economics lesson I’ve learned from being shuf-fled about my whole life. We’ll be gone before Thanksgiving, I guarantee it. So long, Maplecrest, I hardly knew you!

  My dad tells me to keep an eye out for street signs. Says we’re looking for Walnut Cove. I spot it right away. “It’s up there,” I tell him, glad it’s on the left so that I don’t have to embarrass myself right away by being the car’s turn signal.

  Ours is the fifth house we come to. There’s nothing special about it. It’s small and brown on the outside. Some trees in the yard and the lawn is grown over, wild with weeds. Looks like it hasn’t been cut in months and the leaves need raking. Another in a long line of houses we’ve lived in. Its windows as blank as the eyes of strangers and most likely will feel the same to me on the day we pull out.

  The gas light in the car goes on as we ease into the driveway. My dad looks at the dashboard and smiles. “It’s a sign,” he says. “We’re home.”

  “It’s a sign that we’re broke,” I say, gripping the handle and kicking the door open. I take a quick look around. An empty house across the street. Another one two doors down. The mountains in the background like a wall fencing us into this crappy town. I take a deep breath and get myself ready to start all over again.

  As I reach into the backseat to get my bag out, my dad comes around and puts his arms around me. “It won’t be so bad,” he says. And though I want to pretend like he’s being selfish, I know he’s not. I can hear it in his voice. I always hear it. I know how sorry he is for putting me through this and that’s why I try my best not to take it out on him.

  “I know,” I say, spinning around and giving him a halfhearted smile. I can sense the words forming in his mind and I put my hand up to his mouth to keep them in. “Just don’t promise me anything this time, okay?” I say. He nods and lets go of me. I can tell it hurts his feelings, but I just can’t stand to hear him say it again.

  I grab the bag that holds most everything I own. The pink one with the flower patches sewn on, and I let them drag along the ground as I drag the bag to the front door. My dad comes up behind me with the key in his hand. “We still a team?” he asks.

  “Sure, Dad. We’re still a team,” I say and do my best to try and not look miserable.

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  ONE

  I can usually pick out the popular kids soon after setting foot into a new school. The girls, anyway. They wear popularity like a uniform for everyone to see. From their hair-styles to their expensive shoes. Everything about them is torn from the glossy pages of the latest teen fashion magazines. Everything about them is perfect. At least on the outside, anyway.

  The boys are a little trickier.

  Their looks have only a small part to play in deciding their place in the social order of things. What they’re into is just as important as how they look. Depends on what kind of school it is, too. There are as many different kinds of high schools as there are different kinds of cliques in each one. There’s the artsy sort of schools where the skinny, mysterious boys are the ones who get all the attention. Then there’s the college-prep kind of schools where class rank and GPA go hand in hand with a boy’s cute looks to determine where he stands with the girls. At thug schools and drug schools, the more damaged or dangerous a boy is makes all the difference. Last, but not least, there’re jock schools like Maplecrest where all that really counts is how good a guy is at sports. Even if he’s zit faced and moronic, a boy can be popular here, so it could take some time to figure it all out.

  But with girls it doesn’t matter so much what kind of school it is. It’s always the thinnest, prettiest ones wearing the least amount of clothing that the dress code allows who rule the hallways. Because boys’ tastes don’t change much just because they like painting more than sports. So it’s always the girls pretty enough to put on a postcard that get to be one of the Perfect People. The social elite. The clique that runs the school. The ones who get away with everything by batting their eyelashes and pretending not to know any better. They get to decide which of the other girls are okay to talk to and which should be teased into having an eating disorder.

  Different schools but always the same thing.

  Those are the girls I need to impress if I want to be popular, or keep from pissing off if I just wish to fit in. That makes figuring out who they are pretty important. Highest priority if I wish to avoid making a mistake that will get me on the wrong list unintentionally. A dirty look is all it takes. It’s the way it’s been at every school I’ve passed through in the last couple of years, so I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out who they are. My social well-being depends on it.

  Maplecrest might be the easiest school yet.

  I know who the most popular girl is the second I see her.

  One look is all it takes. Her long blond curls like a halo when the sunlight shines on her just right. Perfect smile and perfect skin like an angel made of porcelain. Sparkling blue eyes with soft pink eyelids to match the strawberry pout of her upper lip. The slender curve of her shoulder and fragile shape of her knees peeking out from the bottom of her short skirt. She’s delicate like a bird as she glides through the cafeteria. Every pair of eyes following her as she soars to the table crowded with other pretty girls who just look like lesser clones once she joins them.

  I don’t need to know her name or anything about her to know she’s the It Girl in school. It’s written all over the faces of her friends as they wait their turn for her to say hi to them. Each and every one trying so hard to look exactly like she does. Each of them pretty, too. Each of them wearing the same bleached hair and bleached skin but with a little less twinkling in their eyes, making them a little less perfect.

  And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t do it this time, I start comparing myself with them, the Perfect People. I can’t help it. I have to know where I stand. Crummy town or not, I care what people think of me. It’s a bad habit. My dad calls it teenage-girl sickness and says there’s a cure for it. I tell him I know there is, but that I don’t really want to end up being a crazy cat lady when I get older.

  I twist my hair around my finger and stare at the split ends. Mine doesn’t have the same shine and it�
�s not nearly as blond. Mine’s more like dirty straw than a golden halo. And my eyes are muddy, too, and look nothing like the sky the way the popular-table girls’ do. All of them so blond and beautiful, like little figurines too precious to let children play with.

  I push my tray away. I’m not hungry anymore.

  It’s not that I think I’m ugly or anything. I know I’m cute enough. And I don’t want to be the prettiest girl in school or anything like that. It’s just that I don’t even come close. Not to their leader or even to her tagalongs. I thought in a small, time-forgotten town like this that I’d at least have a shot. It’s not really that important to me, it’s just that it’s easier being new in a school if you’re one of the prettiest girls. I hoped maybe this time I’d get lucky. But that dream vanished the instant I saw her.

  “Her name’s Maggie Turner,” a voice says in my ear as if reading my thoughts. Not startling me enough to scream, but just enough to squeak like a little mouse.

  I turn my head to see a scrawny-looking boy with shaggy straw hair dressed in shabby clothes. I recognize him from one of my classes. Takes me a second to place him. Geometry, third period. The kid a few rows over who kept looking at me so much that I just stopped checking after a while. He’s not so bad looking, but he’s not exactly my type, either. Long and lanky and a little on the creepy side. And before I can make up my mind whether I want to tell him to get lost or not, he pulls up the empty chair and sits down next to me.

  “Maggie Turner,” he says again. “You’re wondering what her name is, aren’t you?” I’m not sure what to say. I wasn’t really expecting company. First day in a new school mostly equals isolation, especially in the lunchroom. It’s one of the symptoms of the new-kid disease. Everybody wants to talk about you, but nobody wants to talk to you. Not at first anyway and his surprise visit catches me off guard. Not to mention the fact that he knew what I was thinking about.

  “I was just . . . ,” I start to say but never finish.