I shook my head. “You did what you thought was right. There is nothing to forgive.”
Lester—who was still smiling from Darlene’s kiss—punched me in the shoulder, which kind of hurt a little bit. But it was a good punch.
“Welcome back,” he said.
“It’s time for dodgeball, the Field Day Grand Finale!” hollered Coach Hank. “Arnold and Evan, choose up sides! You’re captains!”
Evan and I both blinked. “Seriously?” I asked.
“Yes, seriously!” Coach Hank blew the whistle. “I’m never not serious!”
“Coach,” Ross said. “His name’s actually Norbus.”
“Norbus Clacknozzle,” Brett said.
They both shook their heads like it was the strangest name they’d ever heard. Which I suppose it was.
“I don’t care what his name is!” Coach Hank barked. “As long as he’s a winner!”
Evan and I stood in front of the other kids, staring at each other.
“You go first,” Evan said.
“Okay.” I pointed. “I’ll take Joel.”
Joel, a tiny red-haired kid who was the quietest kid in school, stared at me in disbelief. Then he came running over and held his hand out in a fist. I stared up at it.
“Fist bump, dude,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
“Oh, right.” I fist-bumped him.
We kept picking until everyone was taken. The game began, and I’d barely picked my ball up when I felt a sharp SMACK! in my ribs.
“NAILED YA!” Ross hollered. “Take a seat, loser!”
I took a seat. I was the first one out on my team, and the whole left side of my body looked like it had been practically caved in by the ball.
It felt great.
That night at dinner, the four of us held hands and bowed our heads before eating. Not to pray, but to hope—for a world where people are nicer to one another. And nicer to zombies, and animals, and aliens, and any other non-human who doesn’t mean them harm.
“Okay, let’s eat!” announced Jenny. I mean, Mom.
“Dinner’s delicious, old man,” said Lester. Bill—I mean, Dad—cooked on Sundays. He only knew how to make one thing—fried chicken—but they all LOVED it.
“Mmmmmm” was the only word anyone said for five minutes.
I looked at them and started wishing. I wished I could eat fried chicken. I wished I could drink orange juice, and jump high without a trampoline, and feel warm. I wished I could sleep.
“What are you thinking about?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just—I wish things could be a little different, I guess. A little easier.”
“Wishing things won’t make them so,” said Dad. “And it’s better to be glad for the things you do have than to wish for the things you don’t.”
I nodded. Parents were really smart, even if they couldn’t read War and Peace in an hour.
I dug into my jelly beans. They tasted sweeter than usual. I closed my eyes.
“Now what are you thinking about?” Lester asked me.
I opened my eyes, looked at each one of them, and smiled.
What was I thinking about?
Some are against you, but most are not.
“How happy I am to be home,” I said.
Afterlife humans don’t just arrive fully formed. You need a lot of people to create a single zombie.
So I’d love to thank my fellow creators: Anna Bloom, Brianne Johnson, Allie Levick, Nancy Mercado, Dave Bardin, Yaffa Jaskoll, Robin Hoffman, all my pals at Scholastic Book Fairs, and Charlie Greenwald.
Finally, a special shout-out goes to Coco Aysseh, whose bravery and poetic soul are an inspiration to everyone who knows her.
You all deserve a big bag of jelly beans—my treat!
TOMMY GREENWALD is the author of many books for children, including the CrimeBiters! series, the Charlie Joe Jackson series, and the football novel Game Changer. This is his first book for zombies.
PROJECT Z CONTINUES!
THE ZOMBIE SECRET IS OUT!
Well, sort of. Now scientists at the lab Arnold escaped from claim they’ve changed their tune. Instead of creating zombie enemies, they just want humans and zombies to be friends.
Too good to be true? Probably!
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK …
There’s a phrase that used to run through my head all the time back when I first escaped from the lab.
Humans are the enemy. Humans are dangerous. Humans are the enemy. Humans are dangerous.
Jenny Kinder—who is now, unofficially, my mom—said the scientists at the lab programmed those thoughts into my brain so that I would be aggressive toward people.
She would know, since she was one of the scientists.
But guess what? It didn’t work. Probably because it’s not true.
If they wanted to be accurate, they would have programmed this:
When I entered the fifth grade at Bernard J. Frumpstein Elementary School, most people treated me like a total outsider—probably because I was a total outsider. But there were two people who were nice to me: Evan Brantley, who got on my nerves by flicking the back of my neck on my very first bus ride, but quickly became my best pal; and Kiki Ambrose, the most popular kid in the whole school, who decided for some incredibly lucky reason to find me interesting.
At first, all the other kids made fun of me; then, when they saw me temporarily paralyze Ross Klepsaw with the Zombie Zing (it was his fault, I swear), they all got scared of me; and finally, when everyone found out I was a zombie but that I was more interested in being their friend than eating their brains, they accepted me as (almost) one of them.
Which is where the whole tutoring thing comes in.
One day during lunch, a boy named Jimmy Edwards came up to me. I’d barely said five words to him before then, but he slapped me on the back like were old pals.
“Arnold, buddy boy!” he exclaimed. “How goes it?”
I looked up at him. “It goes it pretty well, how goes it with you?”
“Great, great.” Jimmy pulled up a chair next to me. “So yeah, Arnold, I got a little problem, to be honest with you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m failing English.”
“Oh. Gosh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Kiki, who was sitting on one side of me, rolled her eyes. “Get to the point, Jimmy.”
“Right.” Jimmy glared at Kiki, then turned back to me. “So anyway, Arnold, I was wondering, since you’re so smart and everything, maybe you could, like, help me get my grade up?”
I was confused, since the whole process of school had seemed pretty easy to follow so far. “Help you how? If you do the work the class requires, then surely you will succeed.”
Jimmy cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, uh, I guess I haven’t exactly done the work required.”
“Oh. I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t.
Evan, who was sitting on the other side of me, saw the confusion on my face. “Here’s the thing, Arnold. Not all kids are the same. Some kids do their homework, others don’t. Some kids pay attention in class, some kids don’t. Some kids like to read, others don’t.”
“Nobody likes to read,” corrected Jimmy.
“That’s not true,” insisted Evan. “I do, for example.”
Jimmy snickered. “No normal people.”
“Enough, you two,” said Kiki. “I love to read, but that doesn’t make me any better than kids who don’t. We’re just different, that’s all.” She fiddled with the bun in her hair. “The point is, Arnold, that you’re like, the smartest kid in the whole school, and Jack needs some help. Will you help him?”
“Of course I will.”
That day after school, I taught Jimmy the difference between “its” and “it’s,” made sure he knew the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and showed him how to use “sluggish” in a sentence. (Eating four ice cream sandwiches at lunch made Timmy sluggish at soccer practice.) Then, for the next week, I helped
him with a whole bunch of other stuff.
When Jimmy got an 81 on the test, he ran over to me. “Yo, dude, we did it!”
“You did it,” I told him.
“Nah, we!” He lifted me up in the air, which wasn’t hard for him to do, since he’s very strong and I’m very skinny. “Hey everyone! Arnold here saved my butt! He’s like, a genius!”
And that’s basically how I became the unofficial tutor for the entire fifth grade class at Bernard J. Frumpstein Elementary School.
“How much are you making for all this tutoring?” Evan asked me one day, while we were jumping on his trampoline.
I did a triple somersault, which is easy for me because my legs are like rubber bands. Extremely pale rubber bands. “Making? What do you mean, making?”
“I mean, how much are you charging for your work?”
“I’m not charging anything,” I told him. “I’m doing it because they need my help.”
Evan’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding me right now? You need be getting paid! Makin’ the MOAN-NAY!”
Apparently, there was still a lot I needed to learn about the ways of the humans.
Copyright © 2019 by Tommy Greenwald
Illustrations by Dave Bardin, © 2019 Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First printing, May 2019
Photos © Shutterstock: page i and thoughout: burst (KannaA), page v and thoughout: emojis (Ink Drop), page xii and throughout: stamp (ducu59us), page 21: paper (schab), page 225 and throughout: paper (Forgem).
Cover art by Dave Bardin, © 2019 Scholastic Inc.
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-1-338-30594-4
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A Zombie Ate My Homework Page 12
