Dead Is a Battlefield

by Marlene Perez

  “And I told you I’m not going to do it!” Edgar’s voice carried clearly through the heavy velvet curtain.

  His mother’s words were equally distinct. “You’ll do it or else.”

  Eva and I looked at each other and started to inch toward the door, but another customer came in behind us and the bell above the door tinkled again. This time they must have heard it as the argument ceased abruptly.

  Ms. Love hurried out. She had pasted a fake smile on her face, but I could tell she was upset about something. Her hands were shaking.

  “How may I help you?” she asked.

  “Uh, they were here before me,” a boy’s voice said. It sounded familiar and when I turned around, I saw Wolfgang Paxton. My day was getting better and better.

  Ms. Love’s smile faltered. “How can I help you?”

  “Do you have any more of the special perfume?” Eva asked eagerly.

  Ms. Love’s smile reappeared. “I’m afraid a new batch won’t be available to the general public for a few more days,” she said.

  “Oh,” Eva said. “Not even for a special friend of Edgar’s?”

  Ms. Love leaned forward conspiratorially. “My dear, the fragrance is extremely expensive. I’m not one to discourage a customer, but are you sure you can afford it?”

  “I need that perfume,” Eva said stubbornly. “I have all my baby-sitting money saved up. I can afford it.”

  My jaw dropped. She had been saving up for a trip to a monster museum for over six months. Her parents had promised to take her, as long as she saved half of the money for the trip.

  Ms. Love shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.” She went to the back room.

  “Eva, what about your trip?” I reminded her.

  But she wasn’t focused on me. She’d zeroed in on the velvet curtains, waiting like a statue for Ms. Love to return.

  After making us wait for at least twenty minutes, Ms. Love came back with a raven bottle with a gleaming silver beak.

  Eva practically yanked it out of her hands, but Ms. Love only smiled and named a price that made me gasp.

  Eva handed over the money without question.

  Wolfgang was right behind me, so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. I stuck my elbow out and it connected with his rib cage. “Do you mind?”

  “May I help you?” Ms. Love said.

  “I’d like a bottle of that perfume,” he said. “For my girlfriend.” Eva had lost interest in hanging around now that she had what she wanted. She didn’t even want to wait for Edgar to come out of the back room, but I was intrigued.

  Ms. Love seemed to be considering it. “And who is your girlfriend?”

  “Claudia Dracul,” Wolfgang said proudly. I didn’t really understand what she saw in Wolfgang.

  Ms. Love paled. “No, no,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re all out of the perfume.”

  “But you just sold her a bottle,” he said. He pointed to Eva, who clutched the purple bag to her chest tightly.

  “We are sold out,” Ms. Love said.

  “But it’s a birthday present,” he said. He looked like he might cry.

  For a minute, I felt sorry for him, but then the same old spoiled Wolfgang appeared.

  “Give me that,” he told Eva. “I’ll pay you double.”

  “No!” she cried.

  He reached for his wallet and took out a bunch of hundreds and waved them in her face. “Triple.”

  “No way,” she said. “I’m not selling my perfume to you for any amount of money. Let’s go, Jessica.”

  I glanced at Ms. Love. She was watching the exchange with a carefully neutral expression, but I caught a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes.

  Eva was already out the door, so I followed her and dismissed the incident from my mind. I was more worried about Jaci than my best friend’s new obsession.

  Suddenly, something occurred to me.

  “Eva,” I said. “Do you have that old bottle of perfume?”

  She stopped and stared at me. “Why?” she asked.

  “I just . . . like the bottle,” I lied.

  Eva reached into her purse and handed me the old bottle. Just as I hoped, there was a single drop left in it.

  As Eva busied herself dabbing the new perfume on her wrists and neck, I opened the bottle and took a whiff. I was curious to see if it still smelled like dirt as it had when I first smelled it on the day of the grand opening. It smelled like regular old perfume, nothing special, like spices, vanilla, and citrus, but there was a hint of something earthy in there, too.

  “It’s nice,” I said. Lame, but what was I supposed to say? That it reminded me a little bit of wet dirt?

  “Nice? That’s it?”

  “What’s the problem?” I said. “I can’t afford it, anyway.”

  “True,” she said. “I didn’t really like it that much when I first got it, either. But now I just can’t seem to get enough.”

  Eva gave me a wave as she took the turn that led toward her house. I watched her receding figure and felt like she was slipping away from me. It was part of high school, I knew. People changed. I never thought my best friend would be one of those people, though.

  I pondered my problem all the way home. There was a car in the drive at the Giordanos, so I rang their doorbell. Rose answered on the first ring, almost like she’d been waiting for me.

  “Jessica, come in!” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a problem I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me with,” I said. “You’re a science major at UC Nightshade, right?”

  Rose nodded.

  “Have you ever heard of a perfume making people . . . sick?” I asked.

  “Like an allergy?” she asked.

  “It might be more than that,” I said. I pulled out the bottle I’d gotten from Eva. “There’s only a drop left.”

  Rose took it and held it up to see. “That should be enough to analyze it,” she said.

  “That would be great,” I said. “My best friend has been acting really strange ever since she started wearing it.”

  “I’ll take it to the lab tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

  After I left the Giordanos, I went home and took a shower. I scrubbed every inch of my body over and over. The smell of the strange perfume seemed to have leaked into my pores, but I finally felt clean again.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Eva wasn’t in school the next day, so I sat with Raven and Andy at lunch and told them about what had happened at The Look of Love.

  “Zombies,” Andy pronounced through a mouth full of tacos.

  Raven rolled her eyes when Andy wasn’t looking.

  “Zombies? That’s your explanation?” I asked.

  Andy shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “I’m so sick of hearing that word,” I said. “If it were zombies, wouldn’t there be a more widespread outbreak by now? Why do Edgar’s Lovelies seem to be the only ones affected?”

  “Have you ever even seen a zombie?” Raven asked.

  Andy raised an eyebrow. “Fought one. Killed one,” she said succinctly.

  “You killed someone?” Raven was horrified.

  “It was trying to eat me,” Andy said defensively. “It’s not like I had a lot of choice.”

  “It used to be a human,” Raven said.

  “Look, newbie,” Andy said. “Don’t lecture me about how to fight. You don’t have the faintest idea what it’s like out there.”

  Raven glanced around to see if anyone was listening, but the rest of the school seemed focused on their food. “For your information, I’m a pacifist,” she said.

  “How can you be a virago, which by definition means you’re a warrior woman, and a pacifist?” I wondered out loud. “Not that I’m taking sides,” I added hastily, after I got a glare from Raven.

  “I will not harm another living being,” Raven said stubbornly.

  “What about in practice?” Andy said. “You clocked me a good one
the other day.” She reached over and casually helped herself to Raven’s fries.

  “That’s different,” Raven said. “We were practicing defensive maneuvers.”

  “Does Flo know?” I asked. “And if not, can you warn us before you tell her? I don’t want to be anywhere near her when she finds out.”

  “She already knows,” Raven said.

  Andy spit out a mouthful of the milk she’d been drinking. “No way!”

  “Andy, gross!” I said. I had raised my arms to block the liquid from getting all over me. “Didn’t your mom teach you any manners?”

  By the look on her face, somehow I’d managed to put my foot in my mouth.

  Without a word, she took her tray and left the table. I stared after her. “What did I say?” I asked Raven.

  “Didn’t you know?” Raven replied. “Andy’s mom died a long time ago. She’s an only child. It’s just her and her dad. And he works all the time.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. I’d been spending all that time with Raven and Andy and I didn’t know something as major as this?

  “Maybe I am as self-centered as Eva accused me of being,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t know that.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Raven said. “She never mentioned it to us. I happened to overhear Flo and Andy talking, or I wouldn’t have known, either.”

  The lunch bell rang and I went to my next class, but I kept thinking of the look on Andy’s face when I mentioned her mom. I had to find a way to make it up to her somehow.

  That evening, I told my mom I was meeting Raven at the Nightshade City Library to do some research. We did have a big project for History. I also wanted to look up witches and zombies, so I decided not to tell her everything I was researching.

  “Research only,” Mom said sternly. “I don’t want you using that time to play computer games or update your Facebook status.” Like I had time for social networking these days. I could just see my status: Battling a zombie horde, then lunch @ Slim’s.

  She dropped me off at the library, which was packed. There were a bunch of my classmates there, probably trying to get a jump on homework, too.

  I spotted Ramona, Raven, and Shannon, who were partners for the history project, and went to sit with them.

  “Who do you think Edgar will ask out first?” Shannon asked Ramona. “You or me?”

  “Or maybe all of the above.” Ramona giggled.

  Raven and I exchanged glances. It was obvious they were enjoying their gossip session, but we needed to get some work done.

  Raven and I left them whispering at our table and headed for the stacks. “It looks like we’re going to have to do all the research,” she whispered as she pointed back at our table. Shannon and Ramona were busy dabbing perfume on their wrists.

  I shrugged. “It’s not like them to be so flaky. I’m sure they’ll pull their weight when the time comes.” But I wasn’t really that sure.

  Raven and I went our separate ways and I found the books I was looking for. I added Sorcery in Secret to my stack of books to check out. I was absorbed in a newer book called Nightshade Through the Ages when someone came up behind me. I was so startled that I dropped the book on my foot.

  I hopped around on one foot. “Ouch!”

  “It’s me, Jessica,” Dominic said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You almost gave me a heart attack,” I replied.

  “Sorry,” he apologized again. “Let me take a look at your foot.”

  “It hurts,” I whined.

  “It’s probably bruised,” he said. “Maybe you should stay off it for a while.”

  “Not going to happen,” I said. I picked up the book on sorcery and tried to hide it from him. I wasn’t ready to tell him my suspicions about Selena yet. Besides, if I did, he’d probably tell her what I said. Even though he had asked for my help, most of the time he acted like a love zombie.

  I was being pretty ridiculous. Selena wouldn’t create a zombie outbreak just to get a boyfriend. Would she?

  “You’re busy,” Dominic said. The hurt in his voice pulled me out of my reverie. “I’d better let you get back to it.”

  I watched him leave and then sighed. What was I going to do about Dominic Gray?

  “Trouble in paradise?” Edgar’s oily voice interrupted my train of thought.

  “None of your business.” I tried to leave, but he blocked my way.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Get out of my way, Edgar,” I said. “What do you think you’re trying to do?”

  “Trying to change your mind about me,” he said. He put an arm up and leaned on the wall behind me.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m leaving. My friends are waiting for me.”

  “They left five minutes ago, when you were occupied,” he replied. “We’re all alone.” He stepped closer to me, but I ducked under his arm and ran out of the library.

  I was surprised to see Eva outside in the parking lot, looking in one of the big windows of the library, so I ran out to meet her.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said.

  “I saw what you did,” she replied accusingly.

  My jaw dropped. “What I did?”

  “Flirting with him like that.” Her voice started to rise. “I thought you were my friend.” She grabbed my arm and gripped it tightly.

  “Eva, what’s wrong with you?” I said. She was squeezing my arm so hard that I was sure to have bruises in the morning. I broke her grip, but it wasn’t easy. Where was my alleged super virago strength when I needed it?

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said. “Leave Edgar alone.”

  “With pleasure,” I replied. “He’s a creep.”

  “Ha!” she said. “You were all over him in the library.”

  “Listen here, Eva Harris,” I said. “I’m only going to say this once. He was all over me, not the other way around.”

  She glared at me. “Of course the only guy who has ever paid attention to me has to be interested in you, not me. After all, you’re Jessica Walsh.”

  My mouth hung open in surprise before I gathered myself enough to ask, “Where were you today, anyway?”

  “I was sick,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t even believe her own lie.

  “Eva Harris, you haven’t missed a day of school since I’ve known you, until now. You’ve been missing a lot.”

  “Okay, but you can’t tell a soul,” she said. “Promise?”

  This wasn’t going to be good. “Promise.”

  “I spent the day with Edgar.” Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

  “You what?” The thought made my skin crawl.

  “We hung out at the store,” she continued.

  “What exactly did you do all day?”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Walsh,” she said. “His mom was there, too.”

  “His mom knew you were skipping?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He showed me his ant farm. He’s so cool.”

  “Ant farm?” That didn’t sound that cool to me. It sounded creepy, but I didn’t like things that crawled.

  Eva didn’t pick up on my unease. “It’s not one of those little kiddie farms,” she said. “It’s enormous and they produce this special fungi.”

  “That’s interesting,” I replied. I was just trying to be polite, but an ant farm made me want to yawn. “You guys have science together, right? Maybe you can use the fungi stuff somehow for your project.” School had barely started before the teachers had assigned semester-long, major-part-of-our-grade type projects in every class.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I promised him I wouldn’t say anything about the fungi.”

  She was so nervous about it that I finally felt a trace of interest. Why was Edgar being so secretive about such a harmless hobby? I assumed it was because he would get grief if word got out.

  “It’s forgotten,” I told her. Then I noticed Edgar glaring at us from the other side o
f the library window. “Now, about the topic. What do you think of doing our project on the history of Nightshade?”

  What was with my best friend? We’d had fights before, but never over a guy.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Eva and I made up the next day, when she was back in school, after I told her I was sorry about a hundred times. But she had some conditions. “I want you to have lunch with Edgar and me today,” she said.

  “I told you I wasn’t interested in him,” I said. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But you also said he was a creep. I want my best friend and my boyfriend to be friends.”

  Boyfriend? I thought of Ramona and Shannon’s conversation in the library yesterday. Edgar didn’t seem to be interested exclusively in Eva. But I knew better than to say the thought aloud.

  At lunch, I found Eva at a table with Edgar and the other Love groupies. She was sitting on his knee and his arms were wrapped around her. There was a strangely blank look on her face. Was she pretending not to see me or was she just wrapped up in Edgar? Either way, my best friend was acting like a brainless idiot.

  I hesitated, unsure what to do, but then Edgar spotted me and waved me over.

  While we ate, Edgar and I were both on our best behavior, but we were both faking it. I was doing it for Eva, but I wasn’t sure why he was pretending.

  “So Eva tells me you have an ant farm,” I finally said, after searching for a neutral topic.

  “It’s a formicarium, or, for the uninitiated, an ant terrarium,” he said.

  “Isn’t that just another way of saying ant farm?”

  Edgar didn’t look too happy at my comment and Eva kicked me hard under the table.

  “I mean, I don’t really know much about the subject, so you could definitely describe me as uninitiated.” From the look on his face, he wanted to describe me as stupid.

  He droned on about ant habitats for the rest of the lunch period. Eva and the other girls hung on his every word. I spotted Raven and Andy across the room and rolled my eyes.

  In Biology class, Raven leaned over and asked, “What was the deal with you today at lunch? You looked like someone was making you eat sour lemons.”