Zombie Blondes

by Brian James

  I nod slowly to all the faces staring at me with a seriousness that they usually save for practice. “I get it,” I say. I get that it’s important to all of them and that should be enough for it to be important to me, too. “I’ll pick one,” the syllables scratching the back of my dry throat as I say it.

  Maggie smiles at me. She puts her hand on top of mine and says she knows it might feel strange, but promises me that I’ll get used to it. I’m not so sure about that, but I tell her I think she’s right, anyway.

  I go back to eating my lunch and the conversations that had been cut off start up again without missing a beat. I see Greg coming over from his table and I wave. All my concerns about changing names go away and I’m beginning to think I can get used to anything as long as I have him.

  I let my hand slide slowly down the side of Greg’s cheek after our mouths give each other space to breathe.

  “See you tomorrow,” I say.

  “Yeah. Tomorrow,” Greg says. His face switching from pink to pale as the diner sign flickers on and off above his head. Some of his friends are still inside and I can see them in their varsity jackets, shuffling from table to table like children playing musical chairs.

  Our fingertips linger together for a second before slipping apart. I start to walk away, still facing him. I take careful, backward steps until I’m in front of the building next to the diner. I wave one last time and he waves back and I already miss his closeness.

  The town is deserted as I move through it like a shadow. The stores have all closed for the night and the lights have been turned off behind their large shop windows. The wind picks up as I walk. I look once over my shoulder and see Greg is still there, watching me as I turn the corner. The thought of him will keep me warm as I make my way home. It’s a little scary sometimes the way he can make me feel. So nervous and safe at the same time. So completely his, like a stuffed animal that loves being loved. I don’t know what it is exactly. I only know that I like it. That I like being around him.

  The days have dwindled down to nothing with the approach of winter. The purple sky of evening is fading quickly and I know it won’t last me the whole way home. Even as I hurry my steps, night is already moving in to take over. The streetlights glow brighter. The space between growing blacker. The creaking of the tree trunks swaying in the wind getting louder. The loneliness of the world around me makes it easy to drift away.

  I count silently in my head. Counting out the rhythm of the routines I’m supposed to do tomorrow at the pep rally. It’ll be my first time in front of a crowd and I’m starting to get nervous that I’m going to screw up. I’ve nailed each of them in practice the last few days, but it’s different when there are people watching. I know most of them will be watching me, too. Fixed on me, waiting to see if I belong. The rest of the girls will be, too, to an extent. They might not say it in so many words, but I know tomorrow is going to be my final test.

  I go through the steps in my head as I walk. Tapping my feet and keeping my eyes rolled back as my mouth moves, “One. Two. Three. And one . . .” Starting over each time I forget a movement here or a gesture there. I’m so distracted by it that I don’t notice the figure lurking by the bushes near my house until I’m too close to run away.

  A small scream escapes me like the sound of a dog yelping as shadow arms and legs move out from behind the cover of shrubs. A scream that I cut short and swallow back down once I notice it’s only Lukas.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask once my heart stops racing from the shock. I catch my breath and smile. I don’t care so much that he startled me, I’m just glad to see him.

  He doesn’t say anything at first. He stands there silently in my driveway, his sneakers trampling the oil stain that has faded in the last ten days. Tilts his head to the side to shake away the loose strands of hair hanging in front of his eyes so he can get a better look at me. I realize then that it’s the first time he’s seen me in my cheerleader uniform and it kind of freaks him out a little.

  I pull the ends of my coat together to hide.

  Lukas shakes his head and gives me a disgusted laugh. It’s the last straw and I push past him. I don’t need him to come by here and judge me. Who does he think he is, anyway?

  “Hannah, wait,” he says, trying to sound nice.

  “Screw you!” I shout and keep marching toward the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Just wait a minute . . . let me talk to you.”

  “Why should I?” I ask. “I’ve tried to talk to you for a week and you treat me like I’m a disease.” I fumble through my pocket for my house key. I take it out, slip it in the lock, and the door clicks open.

  “I know,” he says. There’s something sad in his voice that makes me pause. “I’ve been kind of a jerk.” Then he looks at me with the same gentle eyes he looked at me the night my dad pulled away. I think about how he stayed with me for hours in the cold that night so that I wouldn’t have to be alone. The least I can do is stand out here for a few minutes and listen to what he has to say.

  I pull the door closed again and put my keys back in my pocket. Sitting down on the steps, I fold my hands in my lap. He comes closer to me, leans against the pole but won’t sit down. Takes a deep breath and I can almost see him trying to put the words together in his head before he speaks.

  “You have to quit.”

  He says it as simple as that. Without any explanation. Without a reason. Without even considering how I might respond.

  My response is to spring back to my feet and open the door again.

  “Wait, listen to me,” he begs.

  “I’ve listened to it all before, I’m not going to listen to it again.”

  “Here! Look,” he shouts. He slips his arms through the straps of his backpack and lets it slide off his shoulders. He searches in the dark, rummaging through the papers like an animal digging in a trash bin for something worth eating before he pulls out a photograph with torn edges and creases running down the middle. He smooths it over with his palm, uncurls the corners, and flattens it out on his leg before handing it to me.

  “What’s this?” I ask, not making any attempt to take the picture.

  He doesn’t answer me, just shoves the photograph into my hand.

  It’s hard to see anything at all so I reach inside and switch on the porch light. The image of two people comes into focus in the glare of electricity. I can tell right away that the one figure is Lukas. He looks a little different. Younger, but still long and thin and the same crooked smile that I’m used to. The person next to him is a girl that I’ve never seen before. He has his arm around her and she’s smiling, too. They are standing on the street that runs behind our school but it takes me a minute to recognize it because the houses in the background are brightly painted and I’m used to seeing them empty and gray with boards in the windows. I can’t imagine Maplecrest ever looking that alive.

  I hand the picture back to him, holding my arms out to my sides to ask him what the point was of showing it to me.

  “That’s me and Alison two years ago,” Lukas says.

  I don’t believe him at first. The girl didn’t look anything like Morgan. She had brown hair and her eyes didn’t melt through the paper like blue flames the way I would expect them to. Besides, Meredith told me that was all a lie. That Lukas had made the whole thing up for some reason.

  I bring the picture back up in the light and take another look. A faint resemblance starts to show this time, but in a strange way. It’s almost like I can see Morgan trapped underneath the surface. I get the feeling if I took an eraser and ran it over the face in the photograph and blew away the dust, I’d see Morgan staring back at me. One layer below this face and one layer above the skeleton.

  Lukas can read the surprise in my expression.

  “The same thing’s going to happen to you,” he says.

  “I doubt it,” I say. Trying to convince myself more than him. Trying to tell myself that the shivering fit that runs from my
hips down to my ankles is only from the cold gust of air getting under my skirt and that it has nothing to do with the bone-thin image of myself that floats behind my eyelids.

  The long branches of the pine trees shake and rustle as the wind blows over the hills behind my house. The beams that hold up the ceiling creak as the roof moans under the strain. It’s like a song of death that shatters my words and leaves them like so many pieces of broken glass to be blown down the abandoned street.

  Lukas’s face takes on the features of the night as he stares at me like a messenger transformed into the bad news he’s come to bring me. “I know you don’t want to believe me . . . but there’s something really messed up that’s happening here,” he says. “People go missing and no one seems to notice. People change overnight and have no memory of who they were and everyone else just goes on acting like nothing’s wrong!”

  I cover my face with my hands to ignore him. Press my fingers into my eye sockets until purple and green circles appear. I use them to block out the memory of hypnotized eyes in the crowd at the football game. Pushing away the broken furniture in Diana’s house and remembering how no one missed her, almost like they knew it was going to happen. And floating behind everything that races through my mind are the mirrored glasses of the sheriff that keep anyone from seeing his soul.

  “Think about it, Hannah . . . you know I’m right,” Lukas says.

  “No . . . no . . . you’re just imagining it,” I say, shaking my head.

  “No . . . I’m not,” he says as calmly as the waitress at the diner might when taking an order for coffee. Not arguing. Not questioning. Simply telling me a fact that he has come to know. “I know you have your new friends and all . . . a boyfriend and everything . . . I didn’t really expect you to listen to me.”

  “Then why did you come here?” I ask.

  He hands me the photograph again and makes me take it. “I wanted to give you that,” he says. “If there’s anything left of you when they’re done, I figure this might help you remember me. Once you’re one of them, they’re going to get rid of me. Once there’s no chance of you caring.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I kept my mouth shut after Alison, just like everyone else does, but this time I didn’t and they’re going to make sure I don’t spoil their plans for anyone else,” he says.

  The way he says it is like saying good-bye forever. I try to tell him how crazy all this is, but he won’t listen. Tells me again that he knows he’s the next one who will go missing. Says as soon as I’m one of them, they’ll come after him.

  He turns the collar of his coat up to the wind and steps off the porch. I don’t know if I want to stop him and make him come inside with me, or if I want to run after him and shove him to the ground until he tumbles down the driveway.

  I’m so confused about everything that I just stand there with the tattered picture between my fingers as Lukas starts around the side of my house to cut through the woods. I see him illuminated and clear for a second as a pair of high beams crisscross the yard just as he disappears into the cover of trees.

  I turn away just in time to see a pair of static blue eyes watching me through the window as the police car slowly cruises to the end of my street and turns toward town.

  My hands are numb from the cold. My knees are shaking, too, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the wind. Part of me wants to take off in the direction of town and find Greg, throw my arms around him, and make him hold me until I’m sure everything is okay. Until I know nothing is any different from how it appears.

  The phone stops me, though. Its ringing is like an alarm clock that wakes me out of a dream and I rush into the house, bolting the door behind me. My hand’s still shaking when I answer the phone and I’m afraid my voice gives it away.

  My dad asks if everything’s okay.

  “Just hurry home,” I tell him.

  FOURTEEN

  “Okay . . . Madison it is, then,” Maggie says after I’ve told her which of the selected names I prefer. She smiles like a kid wanting to show off a trophy she’s just won, her teeth glowing like bleached bones in the fluorescent lights of the school hallways. “Madison,” she repeats to herself, considering it carefully one last time before draping it over me like a necklace that can never be taken off.

  I close my locker and wish I could feel even a fraction of the enthusiasm she has about my new name. It feels like a pair of jeans that will never fit me. The whole idea of it makes me restless. It’s like the photograph of Morgan, like the first layer has just been erased and it won’t take long until I’m exactly the same.

  I try to tell myself it’s just my nerves as we start walking toward the gym. We have to get changed into our uniforms before the pep rally begins and I’m terrified that I’m going to mess up. Even so, I know it’s more than that. I’d gotten so caught up with fitting in that I hadn’t really stopped to think how it was changing me. Being called by a different name has a way of putting it all into perspective pretty quickly.

  I’ve been ignoring things on purpose.

  I’ve been refusing to see how different events are connected. I should’ve known better. There are no coincidences in small towns. Things are always connected. That’s what Lukas was trying to make me realize in his own insane way. But what things are connected to which? That’s what I need to figure out now. Like figuring out if Diana’s going missing has anything to do with the sheriff keeping an eye on my house? Or maybe he keeps driving by because of my dad, getting ready to harass us like other small-town cops we’ve met. And more important, does any of that have anything to do with me being a cheerleader at Maplecrest High with a new name?

  I’m not even sure I want to know. Being ignorant of things can be nice sometimes. But I know the photograph of Alison tucked away in my bedroom will haunt me if I don’t try to find out. I don’t want Madison to kill Hannah the way Morgan killed Alison. So I take a deep breath through my nose and get my courage up. “Maggie . . . there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you,” I say as the kids move out of our way to let us pass through the center of the hall.

  “Sure, Madison, what is it?” Maggie says.

  It surprises me how quickly she’s adopted my new name. It sounds so natural, like she’s never called me by anything else. So matter of fact that it throws me off and I forget the words I was going to say.

  “Well?” she asks impatiently as we turn the corner.

  I put my hands near my mouth, fighting off the urge to chew my nails in order to avoid a lecture from Maggie about my bad habits. “I . . . um,” I stutter, not sure if I should let it go and just concentrate on the routines. The whole thing is stupid, anyway. It’s from being alone for ten days. I start to make up things and go a little crazy. I just need to push it out of my mind. I nearly convince myself, but then she looks at me with those deep blue eyes like the ones that cut through the darkness last night and I know I need to ask.

  “Your dad . . . I saw him last night driving by my house.” The way I say it is like an accusation. Lets her know that I think there’s something weird about it. And Maggie just looks at me like I’m a little kid, tells me that he is the sheriff, and that is his job. Then she gives me the look I’ve seen her give a thousand times whenever someone messes up at practice or says the wrong thing in the lunchroom. One raised eyebrow and her mouth slightly open. The look that makes whoever she’s looking at feel like the dumbest person on earth.

  “But there was another time, too,” I tell her, referring to the time he happened to be there to throw Lukas to the ground. And I think there’s been more than just one other time. I think it was his headlights and not anyone looking for my dad that kept me up the first few nights after my dad left. “I was just wondering . . . I mean, has he said anything about it?”

  I feel Maggie’s fingers wrap around my wrist, gripping me tightly like an angry bird of prey. I turn to look at her, wondering what I did that was so wrong, that made her snap. But he
r expression doesn’t match the viciousness of her fingernails making little marks in my skin. She’s smiling and friendly and it doesn’t fit. Like when the soundtrack to a movie is off and the lips don’t match up with the dialogue. I keep looking back and forth from her hand squeezing my arm to her face. She must realize how strange it seems, too, because she lets go, pulling her hand back like someone letting go of a power line after getting a shock.

  She takes a deep breath and breathes it out slowly, like getting herself ready to spill a secret she didn’t want to tell me. Leans in closer and whispers out of the hearing of those around us in the crowded hallway. “We know your dad’s out of town,” she confesses.

  My eyes grow wider than my face has room for, giving away the lie I’m telling by shaking my head. My mouth makes up the same lies, saying how my dad just works strange hours because I know what it means if Maggie’s dad finds out. A long line of court appointments and weekend stays at foster care until things get sorted out.

  “It’s okay,” Maggie assures me. She puts one hand on each shoulder to get me to relax. “My dad’s not going to get you into any trouble or anything. He was just checking up on you to make sure you were safe . . . you know, because of that freak kid who attacked you and everything.”

  I tuck my lower lip under my teeth.

  It should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. Makes me feel like I’m being watched. Studied. The same way Meredith watches me to make sure I lose all my old habits. Maggie can tell, too. She can always tell. She sees that it hasn’t relaxed me at all, so she locks her elbow with mine and playfully nudges me in the side. “Hey, you still in there?” she says and I nod, not really in the mood. But then she makes her voice serious again, telling me that it’s only because they care about me. “You don’t have to be alone ever again,” she says.