by Ash Parsons
But it’s so stinking cute when her students see her, like if we’re in a restaurant or a store, their eyes go wide like they’ve seen a celebrity, and they’ll run up calling “Mrs. Blue! Mrs. Blue!” with these high little voices, and she’ll lean down to hug them, and I don’t know why but sometimes it makes me want to cry.
My dad likes scary movies okay, he likes mystery more than horror, but they overlap a bunch so we can sit and watch those together. Dad is the director of our public library, so he’s definitely more cool and up on trends and stuff than my mom. Last week he even brought home an old library DVD of the first zombie movie I ever saw, the one I watched on TV all those years ago.
Fight the Dead. Changed. My. Life. It’s about a zombie outbreak happening and a group of people holing up in a gas station trying to survive the night. Even though it was in black-and-white, it was terrifying! And thrilling! And I felt like it was telling me something deep and true when I saw it, even though zombies aren’t real, because of how that group of people acted once they were in the gas station.
My favorite was the scared girl, who everyone kept discounting and who just kept surviving, impossibly, until the very end.
Weirdly, I really like the idea of them: zombies—these horrible, terrifying, inexorable things, animated corpses that want to devour you. Seriously scary, primal stuff.
But more than that, I like that zombies are clean. Not physically, because ew. But, like . . . emotionally.
They only want to eat you. They don’t want to hurt you, or torture you. Pain is just a by-product of how they want your meat. They’re not sadistic. They’re just hungry.
Zombies are basically human sharks.
If the sharks were also dead. And if a shark bit you and you then were destined to become a shark.
Okay, so not really like sharks.
“Have you heard from Siggy?” I ask as we get in line.
“She’s still got plenty of time.” Imani glances at her phone again.
I love her, but our other beffie, Signe Larsen, has absolutely no sense of time. She doesn’t get how long it takes to get somewhere, how long she needs to get ready, how long she needs to do anything, hell, how long she needs to watch a minute go by.
But the thing is, when Siggy finally arrives anywhere, she’s so cute and funny and so apologetic it’s hard to stay mad at her.
Hard, but not impossible.
Imani slides her phone back into her tunic pocket. “Siggy’s going to be late but not late-late. She loves the show as much as we do.”
We’re all mega fans of Human Wasteland. It’s the best show on television, and I am completely obsessed with it. It’s why ZombieCon! even exists.
Me and my three, well, two, best friends have watched literally every episode of it together, live when they air. It’s our thing. We write and read fanfic, we tweet at the show writers and actors and costume designers and just about everyone involved with the show. And of course the other fans, which is so much fun because you get this feeling in your heart, as you watch with countless other fans, this expanding, growing, glowy feeling. This feeling that there’s so much more out there, there’s a whole world of people, and they’re so into the same thing you are, and that makes you feel . . . loved, somehow. Like you belong. A really buzzy, shared, beautiful feeling.
Have you ever discovered something that made you feel . . . understood? Somehow called to something in you, and made you long to be a part of it, even if that was absurd and impossible, but even so it just . . . resonated with you, somehow?
That’s how Human Wasteland made me feel the first time I watched it, and every time after.
Part of why I love it so much is because it doesn’t try to pretend that bad things don’t happen. And yet it also highlights hope, love, and a community of chosen kinship as ideals. This big found-family of survivors who have their differences and yet in the end have to get along. The show asks big questions about what kind of world we want, and what kind of people the survivors have to be, how they’ve had to change over the course of the zombie apocalypse.
Like my favorite character, Clay Clarke, the army ranger’s surrogate son. Clay is played by Hunter Sterling, an actor only a year older than me.
Which I know, because I looked it up. Like I said, I’m a mega-fan.
I have a full-size poster of Hunter as Clay hanging on the back of my bedroom door. Which is how I know exactly what pose I’ll strike when we have our group photo op with him at the end of the day. I took a bunch of selfies with the poster, trying different poses, expressions, and outfits. By the end of it, I was just being funny, because I was holding different props, and cracking myself up.
Which, let’s face it, was infinitely more fun than studying for the SAT. Which is what I was supposed to be doing at the time.
My favorite selfie, which is now my lock screen, was the one where I put on my dress from the junior prom (what a disaster that was—do not ask). I held on to a bunch of silk flowers I swiped from the dining room table, holding up my other hand like a beauty queen waving, with her dirty and intense date glowering behind her.
I amuse myself. But if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?
We’re still not moving, but it’s only going to be a few more minutes before the convention center doors open officially.
I text Siggy again, then crane my neck around, looking for her white-blonde head.
“She should have spent the night with us.” Imani says what I’m thinking.
“I tried, but she was with Mark.”
“I know. I should have insisted, I’m sorry.” Imani is the benevolent ruler of our trio. If Imani wants something, she usually gets it. All she has to do is turn the full power of her smile on you, and yeah. Goner.
“I mean, that would have worked,” I say. “Swear to God, Imani, I don’t know why you don’t use your powers of persuasion more.”
I place a hand over my heart in a solemn vow. “If I had your skills, I would talk Mrs. Casey into passing me.”
“That’s wrong, June!” Imani is laughing, but this is it: the taproot of who she is. Imani is Principled. She believes in making a better world, in making fairer rules, and she believes in the supreme power of hard work above everything.
Me? I believe in the supreme power of accepting your limitations, and adjusting your target accordingly.
Imani’s an older sister, too, so that’s in there. She’s always been the responsible one, especially compared to her kid sister, Tishala, who is in the eighth grade. Tishala is impulsive, hilarious, and a total pest.
Obviously, Imani loves her lots. Even when Tishala breaks into Imani’s makeup. Right now, Tishala is completely into doing these epic fantasy and sci-fi photo shoots, most often with herself as the model, although she’s used Imani and even me sometimes. And she’s into special effects makeup (as long as it’s beautiful. She’s not into zombies or gore, which is why she didn’t pester us to come to the con, thank goodness).
My older sister, Summer, went to college last year, and my parents’ single-minded focus on me ever since has been . . . well, it’s been a lot.
Tishala’s gonna have a big adjustment next year when Imani goes to college, let me tell you. I don’t know if she realizes how much Imani does for her.
“You can’t just talk someone into passing you,” Imani says as we take a step forward.
“It would be for the greater good!” I argue. “Trust me, Mrs. Casey is as sick of explaining quadratic equations as I am of never understanding them.”
This is my second time in Mrs. Casey’s class. It’s exhausting having a learning disability and trying to make everyone see that I’m never going to “get it” no matter how “close” it looks like I am.
Or that it doesn’t matter how many times I take the SAT. I’m just going to psych myself out; clench up; get that old famili
ar feeling; hello, anxiety, my old friend; and just . . .
Whiff. Spectacularly. And extra time to take the test won’t fix that. No accomodations can.
I glance at my phone again. The doors will open in just a few minutes.
Imani notices my glance at the time.
“Siggy’ll be here,” she says. “Any minute now. Mark will probably drop her off at the circle, right when we get there.”
Annoying Mark. Annoying Mark Carson. Annoying Mark Annoying Carson.
He’s okay, if you have to deal with boyfriends, I guess.
“If I’m being honest, I wanted to have you to myself,” Imani says, with that sly side-smile that makes it feel like the sun is rising in my heart.
“I liked that, too,” I say, and there it is, my doofiest smile, the one where I tip my chin unconsciously, giving myself jowls and creepy eyes. This is not a smile I ever intend to unleash, which is why I generally only know I’ve done it when I see the picture afterward.
Also this smile is another reason why I practiced for the photo op with Hunter’s cutout.
Imani says I look great in every picture, that I always look “cute” or “so adorable,” and I’m like, sure, Imani, sure, because best friends are supposed to say those things.
But Imani hates lies, too, so maybe she means it? Still, I don’t want to make that face in my picture with Hunter.
“Let me try calling her,” Imani says. She holds her phone to her ear.
We start moving forward. Either the doors are open or the people in line in front of us can see activity behind the glass doors and we’re all pressing forward like Black Friday shoppers.
“She’s not answering,” Imani says, lowering her phone.
“Aaaaaaaarrrrghhh, Imani!” I groan, grabbing at my chest. “The doors are getting ready to open, the time is now, the moment’s arrived or it’s about to arrive, the train’s leaving the station, the boarding gate is closing, Elvis is at the fire doors . . .”
“Deep breaths, June,” Imani says, and she quirks that smile at me again. “It’s a good thing Siggy hasn’t answered. It means she’s almost here.”
“What?”
“You know, she feels bad so she doesn’t want to pick up the phone. I bet she’s almost here.”
The doors are definitely open now. We take six steps forward.
“This is supposed to be our big day.” I can’t stop the worrying once it starts. It just keeps getting bigger. “It’s already been screwed up ’cause we were late, and we’ll be even later to the opening session—”
Imani gives me the look, but I don’t stop.
“How are we supposed to make Special Memories without Siggy?”
Special Memories is what we call any big shared event, a joke from the yearbook pages that read Special Memories and are always a collage of pictures: friends sitting together at lunch, a teacher pretending to strangle a student, groups clustering together for a friendshot, the band in formation on the football field, various team members flexing or high-fiving or holding up number-one fingers.
I’d sold this whole day to the group on that big bonding premise: Let’s Make Special Memories. That this is our senior year, and we’ve been friends since elementary school, and now we’re just supposed to leave each other after graduation? How do you just do that?
I remember meeting Imani and Blair in kindergarten. Imani is still my best friend, even if Blair isn’t.
But I remember meeting Imani over those little multicolor plastic bears. Green and yellow and red and blue, you were supposed to use them for counting, but I gave them all names and arranged them in groups and Imani loved that.
I remember she looked at me, eyes wide, and she said, “You’re making them families?” like it was the best idea and no one had ever had it before.
She can still make me feel that rush of embarrassed pride, because I’m not that clever, but she likes the way I think sometimes, I guess.
How are you supposed to let go of Imani?
And how are you supposed to let go of Siggy, who we met in third grade when she moved to our school, who makes us laugh so hard, who is such an outrageous flirt, or was before she met Annoying Mark.
It makes my shoulders tight to think about graduation. To think about next fall when we’re all separated, to think about moving on, moving out, what if I can’t hack it? What if no one else likes me? Just these girls I met in elementary school, and the rest of the world doesn’t care. Or worse.
What if I’m fundamentally unlikeable, and I drive everyone away with questions like this?
How do you stop asking questions?
Okay, so even if I do let go, or if they go anyway, which they will, no matter if I’m ready or not, how am I supposed to start over without them?
It doesn’t matter if Siggy makes me so annoyed sometimes with her boyfriend and her occasional insensitivity. It doesn’t matter if Imani can be frustrating with her grown-up seriousness, and it doesn’t even matter that Blair—
A knife twists in my heart at the name.
Okay, so it still does matter about Blair, duh, don’t be foolish, June.
I’m not going to let her ruin this for me. For us.
“June, I feel like you’re getting caught in it,” Imani says gently, and her hand touches my arm.
Sometimes I get too worked up. My mom calls it anxiety, Imani calls it “getting caught,” and I call it being a normal, rational person who can see all the ways everything can go wrong.
“She’s on the way,” Imani says. “Deep breaths.”
I gulp down air, take deep breaths, and nod at Imani.
“It’s not just Siggy. What is it?” Imani asks.
She’s got Spidey-level insight with me. And I do with her, too. We can always see when something is bothering the other, or when the other is upset about the thing underneath the thing.
I wave my hand at the world.
“It’s everything,” I say. “Blair and Scott. And graduation and stuff.”
Imani nods and pulls me into a hug, giving me a big squeeze.
It calms me down, and I squeeze her back to say thanks.
And I really do feel better. Just like that.
The line moves forward, and we step around the edge of the building. I can see the doors and the large ZombieCon! banner designed like a biohazard warning. Above it is a massive promotional sign for Human Wasteland, as big as a billboard, unrolled from the top of the three-story convention center. The main cast stares out at us from the sign, worry lines furrowing their brows, sweat staining their very close-fitting and/or strategically ripped clothes, their eyes intense with everything they’ve seen.
Oh my God, I love this show!
A separate banner hangs below it, the tagline for this season, written in letters three feet tall: WILL YOU SURVIVE . . .
It can be a question, but they write it like an unfinished sentence because it has more impact that way, sounds like an imperative statement, use your will, choose to fight, because one of the themes of the show is what will it take to survive?
Will you survive . . .
A jolt of happy adrenaline dumps into my veins, and I turn and grab Imani’s arms. And something I love about her (and Siggy, too, if she was here, dammit, I’m going to throttle her) is we know each other’s thoughts almost instantly, and even though I was just worrying, Imani is with me immediately right now, a jolt of pure excitement, as we scream at each other.
“ZOMBIECON!”
We’re here, it’s our senior year, graduation is seven months away, and we will be friends forever, no matter what. This day is going to be one of those Special Memories we always think about, think back to, and we’ll have the photo op with Hunter Sterling at the end of the day to prove it was the best day ever. Nothing’s going to stop us. It’ll be the perfect day, maybe the best day o
f our entire senior year.
Forget prom.
Forget graduation.
We’re at ZombieCon!
3
After taking and posting multiple selfies with the banners behind us, Imani and I start rehashing our plans for the day: listing who we’re going to pay for their autograph, who we might pay for a selfie at their tables, what we might buy for souvenirs. We strike up a conversation with the people in front of us, two girls and a guy, sharing the latest fandom gossip about the current showrunner, who is doing a great job with the show but seems to be a bit of a jerk at cons, and talking about the newest characters on the show.
“Man, it’s too bad our friend Siggy isn’t here, Linus and Annie are her absolute favorites,” Imani tells them.
As we get closer to the doors, the energy of the crowd picks up; you can feel it building like a wave. It’s good-natured, excitement and eagerness, but nobody’s pushing or shoving. It’s that elevated, amped-up feeling from our community of fans. Everyone here loves the same thing.
Pop music blares from the radio station van parked on the side of the convention center. The local reporter stands interviewing people in the line. She pulls over a rowdy group who roar just like football fans in a stadium when the camera sweeps over them.
Now I can see the doors and more importantly the security checkpoint in front of them that’s slowing everyone down. A bag check area, a metal detector, and a pat-down station. Beyond them is the main entrance to the convention center: a three-story, semicircular glass wall arcing out toward the street, with five sets of double doors set at regular intervals along its round edge.
“We could just go in and meet up with Siggy inside,” Imani says, twisting her ZombieCon! badge on the shoestring-style lanyard around her neck.