“Is this your boy?” I asked, even though there was no one else who could have fathered the kid.
“My youngest,” Chacho said. “Say ‘hi,’ Anthony.”
“Hi,” the boy said, and I nearly wet my pants from cuteness overload.
I kept wanting to stare at Chacho. The reality of the situation was a function my brain refused to compute. Running into him out in the real world was like seeing one of your teachers outside of school, but times one million because I’d never seen any of my teachers wearing riot gear and smashing in zombie skulls.
“What are you up to tonight?” Chacho asked.
“Just hanging out,” I said. “Wasting my youth, stuff like that.”
“Good for you,” he said. “Waste it while you got it.” He raised his hands to indicate the cart and all its contents and, by implication, all the responsibilities of adulthood. It was a very eloquent gesture.
“Well, I gotta go,” he said. “Gotta get this one to bed.” Anthony started shaking his head. “Yes,” Chacho said to him in mock seriousness, “it’s bedtime when we get home.” The kid giggled like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”
“Sure,” Chacho said. “Oh, that reminds me. I’m having a barbeque next Saturday. You should come. Bring your little boyfriend.”
My little boyfriend. “Um, maybe, sure.”
“You still have the same number as when you worked at the Bully?”
“I do,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll text you the address,” he said. “I’m gonna grill up a tri-tip. My wife is making potato salad, a pot of beans. We’ll start fattening you up.”
I touched my belly. I didn’t know if I liked the sound of that.
“Have a good one, Courtney,” he said as he pushed the cart away. “Don’t get into too much trouble tonight.”
“I already tried and it didn’t take,” I said. “See you later.”
Phil and Cody walked up, Cody slurping on his soda. Phil watched Chacho walking away.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“That was Chacho,” I said.
Phil did a double-take that made my whole night.
“That’s not Chacho,” he said. “That guy’s wearing flip-flops. Chacho would never wear flip-flops!” He sounded offended at the thought.
“And yet,” I said.
“Who’s Chacho?” Cody asked.
“He’s like the Terminator’s cool older brother,” I said.
“Which variety?” Cody asked skeptically.
“T-100,” Phil said, “obviously.”
Cody seemed suitably impressed, and we went to the ten-items-or-less—which really needs to be the ten-items-or-fewer—line to pay for our stuff. My treat, since I suddenly found myself in a much higher income bracket than anyone else I knew.
After we made our purchases, we headed for the exit.
“You guys ready for this?” I asked the boys.
“Sure,” Phil said. “Why not?”
“Ready like Freddy,” Cody said.
“If you say anything else that dumb when we’re with those people,” I said, “I will make you wait for us in the car.”
He had the gall to look hurt.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
Crystal whooped when she saw us emerge from the store, and she ran toward us as we got close. I thought she was just super-excited about the Doritos I’d bought her, but she actually threw her arms around me and gave me a huge bear hug. Or the closest thing to it she was able—a cub hug? That close, I smelled her breath. She’d been drinking. That explained a lot.
“It’s so great to see you,” she said as she tore herself away. “Come say hi to everyone!”
“Everyone” turned out to be a bunch of people I vaguely knew from school. There were a few folks I knew going all the way back to grade school. To those people, I said hi. Everyone else got the standard chin nod by way of greeting.
“This is my friend Phil,” I said, indicating the person standing next to me.
“Oh, I know Phil,” Crystal said. “We’re in English together.”
“That is true,” Phil said. “Hi, Crystal.”
“And who’s your other friend?” Crystal asked. “What school do you go to?” That last question was directed at Cody.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I go to school with you. I was in History with you all last year.”
She squinted at him in a really exaggerated way, but I knew that she wasn’t picking up any hits from her memory.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Before he exploded, Phil guided Cody away to another pod of people. Phil apparently knew them. As they walked away, I heard Phil say, “She’s drunk, Cody.” He sounded like that cop who talks to Jack Nicholson at the end of Chinatown: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
“Courtney, do you know Gabe Toye?” Crystal asked me.
Gabe was one of those kids I’d gone to school with since first grade, something Crystal might have remembered if she was sober. He was a good-looking kid, in a beefy all-American way. He stood there grinning at me in a way that I immediately disliked. It was patronizing or condescending or something.
“I think we’ve met,” I said, and that patronizing smile grew bigger.
“Gabe just found out today that he got accepted to . . . Where was it, Gabe?”
“University of Montana,” he said. I did not roll my eyes.
“He’s going to study making movies,” Crystal said.
“Media theory,” Gabe corrected her.
“Wow,” I said. I sipped on my soda so I wouldn’t be expected to say anything else.
“Gabe was just telling me about his application essay,” Crystal said. “Tell Courtney what you wrote about.”
“Scooby-Doo,” Gabe said.
The answer was so unexpected that I burst out laughing. That patronizing smile faltered a little bit.
“What about Scooby-Doo, exactly?” I asked.
“I wrote about how the show is a rationalist anti-fairy tale,” he said. “It basically teaches children that there are no such things as monsters or the supernatural.”
I waited to see if there’d be more, but he just crossed his arms and leaned back. His trademark smile was back.
“That’s interesting,” I said. It wasn’t. It also wasn’t very original or deep. “But I think you missed the point of the show.” Crystal giggled and Gabe looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I was sure he wasn’t used to people disagreeing with him or challenging him in any way. How boy-like.
“Scooby-Doo is a horror story,” I said, “just not the kind you expect it to be. It’s actually an existential horror story where the kids learn again and again that the true monsters are people. All someone needs is some distancing technique, like, you know, a mask, to feel comfortable committing a crime.
“I mean, it’s got more in common with Crime and Punishment than it does with Tom and Jerry. You know?”
Crystal’s smile got bigger and bigger as I spoke, and Gabe’s frown deepened.
“I mean, that’s just off the top of my head,” I said. “I’m sure I’d be able to flesh it out a bit more if I was going to write an essay about it.”
“Oh, Gabe,” Crystal said as she laid a hand on his chest, “don’t be mad that Courtney is smarter than you. She’s smarter than everyone.”
“Yeah, cute,” Gabe said. “I’m going to go talk to some guys over there.” He pointed his chin in a vague direction and then stalked away.
“I don’t think he liked my theory,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Scooby-Doo. He just wouldn’t shut up about it. I knew you’d put him in his place.”
“You could have just told him to leave you alone,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I’d never do that! That’s so rude.”
That made me laugh because she didn’t think that using me like some
kind of smarty-pants guided missile was rude at all.
“So, how about you? Have you heard back from any of your colleges yet?” she asked me. “I’m still waiting on the Evergreen State College and Beloit. I got into U of O, but that’s my safety school.”
“I didn’t apply anywhere,” I said.
She looked at me like I’d farted in church or proclaimed my hatred for UGGs.
“I want to go to Columbia,” I said. “I’ve had my heart set on it forever, and I’m willing to wait until they reopen it.”
“So what are you going to do next year?” she asked. “Work?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or I might volunteer somewhere. I haven’t given it too much thought.”
“Wow,” she said. “My dad would blow his top if I didn’t go directly to college.”
Worse than what she said was the look on her face as it slowly dawned on her what she had said. She clasped her hand to her mouth like she was holding back a scream.
“Oh, God, Courtney,” she said. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to police everything you say around me. And the truth is, my dad and I talked about it a few times before he died. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of me taking a year off, but he also didn’t think it’d be good for me to rush into school if I wasn’t fully committed.”
“Well,” said Crystal. “I’m still sorry. I feel like a douche.”
“You are probably the least douchey person I know,” I told her.
“You know,” she said, and she frowned as she said it, “I wish we’d stayed close like we were before high school. I really miss you sometimes—and the stupid crap we used to do, you know?”
I took another sip of my drink to cover the fact that I didn’t know what to say. I was not prepared for Crystal to enter the maudlin phase of drunkenness, especially not with me as the target for her tears. Thankfully, this was Crystal Beals, and her being depressed lasted about five seconds.
“Oh! Have you heard?” she exclaimed, all hints of sadness evaporated like a drop of dew in the face of a nuclear blast.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said.
High-pitched laughter and the sound of breaking glass came from somewhere in the depths of the group. I saw that it was time to wrap this up soon.
“They announced the details of the senior kegger!”
“That’s great,” I said.
“You’re going, right?” She grasped my arm like my answer was the most important thing she was able to imagine.
The senior kegger was a tradition going back at least to the 1970s—so, ancient. It was interrupted for a couple of years right after the dead came back, but nothing could keep teenage kids from drinking, so it came back. It’s a yearly party, a huge blowout for all of the seniors. All of the seniors, no one excluded. It’s one of the few democratic social events on the high school calendar. It’s also highly illegal. The cops shut down about 75 percent of the parties before they even start, despite the fact that the seniors who plan it bring an eye for detail to the task that made Dwight Eisenhower look like he just threw together D-day at the last minute.
Of course Crystal was among the first to know where the party was going to be.
I looked at her smiling, hopeful face, and I felt my heart sink. I really hadn’t planned to go, but how could I disappoint that face?
“I’m not sure,” I said. “They always get raided, and then everyone gets a minor-in-possession. Not sure if that’s the best way to kick off the summer.”
“It will totally not be busted this year,” she said. “Michael and Dillon and Tyler have a foolproof plan for keeping the location a secret.” I recognized those names; they were all members of the ruling Jocktocracy. I didn’t think those knuckleheads could come up with a foolproof plan for picking their noses, but I thought I’d humor Crystal.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll think about it. Where’s it going to be?”
“Can’t tell you,” she said with a grin.
“How am I going to get there if I don’t know where it is?” I asked.
“That’s just it,” she said. “They won’t tell anyone until the day of the kegger. You’ll have to text a number and they’ll text back with the location.”
I was able to see several flaws in this well-thought-out plot. The first one was that all it might take to bust the party was one fat-mouthed kid telling their parents or the cops what the number was to text. I didn’t point this out.
“Okay,” I said. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.”
I looked around for Phil and Cody. I spotted them on the far side of the group talking to some girls.
“It was good to see you, Crystal,” I said. “I’m going to go find Phil.”
“I really hope you’ll come,” she said. “It might be our last time to hang out before we all go off to real life.”
She didn’t let me leave before I assured her several times that I really meant to think about it. Okay, I might have lied and said I would be there for sure, which I hated to do, but man, I needed to get out of there. The crowd was getting rowdier and louder. There was more breaking glass. As I skirted the crowd to get to Phil and Cody, a shoving match broke out between two meatheads. It was pure play yard stuff, but it was a general indicator that we needed to scoot.
“Hey, Courtney,” Phil said as I approached. “I think it’s time to go.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I said. A beer can, hopefully empty, sailed past us to punctuate the point.
“Go?” Cody said. “Why would we go?” He’d obviously been talking with a girl, a pretty, somewhat chubby girl who looked sort of familiar to me, but I wasn’t able to place her. She had apparently been talking back to him. I understood his reluctance.
“Have you been paying attention to what’s going on around you?” I asked. I saw him looking at the girl and realized that, no, he hadn’t been paying attention to anything else.
“The cops are going to be here any minute, Casanova,” I said. “Say good-bye to your new friend if you don’t want to end up with an MIP.” I pointed at the red Solo cup he held in his hand.
“Really?” he asked.
Phil just nodded.
“Okay,” he said. But he said it in the same way he might ask us to punch him in the junk.
“I have your number,” he said to the girl. “I’ll call you, okay?”
“Sure,” she said. “We need to get out of here, too.” She indicated her posse of bored-looking girlfriends.
Even though he’d agreed to go, Phil still had to grab Cody’s arm and drag him away.
As we pulled out of the parking lot and toward home, I heard sirens in the distance. I wondered how many kids would have a bummer of a story to tell come Monday.
“Who was your friend?” I asked Cody. “She seemed nice.”
“Didn’t she?” he asked. “Her name is . . .” He dug a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and consulted it. “Hannah.”
I started laughing at that, which just made Cody mad, which just made me laugh more.
“Stay gold, Ponyboy,” I said when I was finally able to breathe again. “Stay gold.”
“I swear I don’t understand half the crap that comes out of your mouth,” Cody said in a huff.
That just made me laugh even harder.
And that was a pretty good wrap-up to the day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Areas of Concentration
Mondays were one of the days that I spent the afternoon at the community college for my Organic Chemistry and Biology classes. This was the college where my dad taught, so people, mostly teachers and administrators, were always seeking me out to give me their condolences, offer help, and such. I knew they meant well, but sometimes the last thing you want is to be confronted with the fact that your dad is dead. Especially when you already woke up every morning thinking about him.
By the time I got home, I was always exhausted—emotionally if not physically. That
following Monday was no exception.
I mumbled something incoherent when Diane asked how my day had been, then I told her I was going to rest for a little bit before I helped her with dinner.
I closed the door to my room and lay down. Then I figured I’d surf online at the same time. Just because I was resting didn’t mean I couldn’t multitask.
I dragged my laptop out of my bag and onto the bed beside me. I fired it up and closed my eyes while I waited for it to come to life.
I opened one eye when an alert sounded telling me I had some unread e-mail.
I brought up the e-mail tab and gasped. I’d gotten a note from Dr. Keller. I sat up and clicked on the message.
Subject: Thank you
Dear Miss Hart (Courtney hereafter),
Thank you very much for sending me the sample of Vitamin Z. As you requested, I won’t ask how you got it, but hope someday we might be close enough that you’ll share. I’m sure it’s quite a story.
My colleagues have been studying the sample, and while they have made no great discoveries as of yet, it has given them several avenues to explore which they had not previously considered. Again, we owe you a debt of thanks.
Speaking of debts, I recall from one of your earlier e-mails (actually, I don’t need to recall it, I simply looked up our past correspondence) that you were interested in attending Columbia University. As I’m sure you know, the Army has begun the process of reclaiming the city from the hordes of zombies that currently occupy it. What you may not know is that there is a plan in the works to reopen Columbia as soon as possible once that is accomplished. The administration-in-exile is optimistic that they can be opened to students as soon as the beginning of next school year.
Why might I bring this up? A number of instructors and researchers from every field taught at Columbia have already pledged to return once classes resume. We have been asked to reach out to prospective students to help fill the ranks for that first year. If you are still interested in attending Columbia, Courtney, I would be happy, honored, to offer you my highest recommendation to the admissions board.
Zombified Page 22