“I really don’t want to dress up.”
“But we have to! Remo and Connie are going as STOP and GO signs, isn’t that cute? Yanni heard from Torey that the costume competition is still on schedule for Tuesday lunch-”
Prince Fab. Once Corbin was off the phone, having used his father calling as an excuse, he rested his head against the wall. He hadn’t ever watched Spellcasters as a kid except for some episodes a substitute teacher put on one day in elementary school. But he remembered foppish Prince Fab, who flipped his long blond hair around and squealed about how casting spells was hard on his nails. He always got spells wrong on the first try and made a mess for his more talented and stalwart sister Princess Glam to clean up. If something scary happened, he screamed louder than she did. And he minced when he walked. There was no less masculine a character in television land. How humiliating! He’d rather dress up as Glam!
He could do that.
Boys dressed up as girls all the time. Decked out in wigs, purses over their shoulders, short skirts to show off their hairy legs, packing oranges into their bras and wobbling about with their huge feet crammed into heels . . . they were making fun, and Corbin wasn’t making fun of girls with this. Glam had dignity. Corbin was going to put together an awesome Princess Glam costume, and when Sally saw it, she’d break up with him. And that was fine. Bolstering his decision was his dream that night, in which she replaced her breasts with books. The text moved all around the pages. Corbin searched through them frantically, looking for her breasts, and then covered his face in despair. I can’t do this with you. She wailed that they were breaking up and the wail was his alarm for school.
Having that settled made it all right when she screamed Corbie and ran to him across the bus loop at school for a hug. He felt like it was all a show that Sally put on for her friends, a romantic pageant in which he was the prince but any halfway decent looking guy could stand there. Hugging her back, he thought of the picture he would take as Princess Glam and Bleu Cheese as his trusty unicorn steed for his blog and then-
-and then Corbin was sprawled at the bottom of the concrete courtyard that separated the office building from the auditorium. He did not know how he had gone from one place to the other, up at the bus loop, down the flight of stairs to the concrete, or what had struck him. Something had, something hard and his forehead was slick with blood and grease.
People were screaming and running in every direction, and he rolled aside frantically as boys charged past. His backpack was gone. Yellow tongues licked up from trashcans across the courtyard, tongues that tapered and trembled, and dimly he understood that they were on fire. Teachers and police officers were running among the students, whistles were blowing and the intercom crackling with words . . . A baton rose in the air and fell on the back of a student, on the back of Nate Huntsman, who crumpled to the concrete and was still. The baton rose again but Nate was down and the baton fell anyway, the cop screaming but his words lost.
The proctors’ golf cart had been overturned. Something was crashing from a classroom up the stairs, the door flinging open repeatedly and desks flying around inside, hands tearing posters from the walls. In the hallway, lockers were being beaten with chairs. Girls pushed through the courtyard, screaming and with their backpacks over their heads protectively. They climbed up the steps past Corbin and ran for the bus loop.
“No freaks! No freaks! No freaks!”
White billows of smoke shot from a fire extinguisher and engulfed one of the flaming trashcans. Someone tripped over the body of Nate Huntsman and spilled down the stairs. Another boy was shoved into the lockers by a cop, silver swinging from hands to wrists as a teacher darted by with students close behind her. They ran for the auditorium, their forms lost in the clouds of the second fire going out and reappearing under the overhang. The teacher ushered the students into the auditorium and beckoned to a pair of boys hunkered behind a tree. The pealing screams were of tires in the parking lot, kids leaving campus, and Corbin could only sit against the stairs too stunned to move. Nestled up to the wall of the auditorium where no one would step on him, and the boy who had fallen over Nate was buckled on the concrete and screaming with his arm clutched to his chest.
His phone. Corbin had his phone. The letters for texting his mother swam in front of his eyes and he could not call her because she would not hear him over this ruckus. Suddenly he remembered downloading the app last week, a great one that let him speak his texts and the phone translated them into script, and then read out incoming ones to him. His phone didn’t crash, most of the words were recorded correctly, but it was so loud . . . would the phone be able to hear him? The idea floated away as the voice on the intercom came clear for one brilliant shout if you are not in the auditorium, you will be arrested and expelled!
The auditorium. He put his phone away and tried to get up, but his hand slipped on the wall and left a bloody streak. A trashcan had hit him, some dude throwing the one in the bus loop and it knocked Corbin down the stairs. Now he remembered it flying to his face. He hadn’t broken anything and that was lucky.
When his hand slipped a second time, he crawled. People were fleeing for the auditorium, and he hugged along the wall in the same direction. He was still several meters away from the doors when someone shouted, “Shit, it’s Corbin!” and then he was lifted by guys from his P.E. class last year. They carried him inside.
The noise was deafening, the wails of girls and cries of teachers, and one of the boys shouted, “Mr. Goddart, where should we take him? He’s messed up!”
“Oh, fuck, he’s bleeding!” The hold on Corbin slackened on one side.
“Don’t be an idiot, he doesn’t have a stamp!”
Corbin was hustled over the floor to the opposite end of the auditorium. He was set on the lowest row of bleachers. There were tables all along the room, piled with fall schedules yet void of counselors. The nurse knelt down and said, “What happened?”
“Someone threw a trash can,” Corbin said shakily.
“Does he need the hospital?” Mr. Goddart asked.
“Nurse!”
Tissues were pressed into his palm and he held them to his forehead. Sirens screamed outside and the voices pushed together nonsensically in his ears. “-Sombra C arrested six boys where’s Trey Shepherds have you seen Trey in the office zombies-”
The whistles blasted together. Everyone jerked and fell silent. Principal Duncan was standing in the center of the basketball court, and she waited for the silence to become absolute. A teacher pointed at girls talking high in the bleachers, and people hissed at them.
“I have never,” the principal said into a microphone, pausing for a long moment, “I have never been more ashamed in all of my twenty-four years as an educator. Ever. You have disgraced this school, your teachers and administration. Most of all, you have disgraced yourselves. I cannot believe that this is the behavior of the young men and women of Cloudy Valley High.”
“No freaks!” a boy shouted. It went as still as death in the auditorium.
“Freaks,” Principal Duncan repeated. “What freakishness I have seen today was not our two stamped students, but how you comported yourselves. Is this how you would want to be greeted back at school? Is this how we honor the memory of our fallen? Nowhere in this country is there a school untouched by Sombra C, and it is my sad duty this morning to inform you that two of our own died of this illness over the summer. How many of you had the substitute teacher Mrs. Rawn? Raise your hands!”
Corbin had no idea if he had ever had Mrs. Rawn, so he did not. “She passed away in July after five years of excellent service to this school, and she will be forever missed by her husband, her daughter, and her community. How many of you know Shamiqua Brave of the lacrosse team? How many of you have known her since Cloudy Valley Junior High, or Miwan Elementary just a half mile from here? She contracted Sombra C while visiting her relatives in New York City, and she died in August within a confinement point. These were our people. Our friends.
And so are our two students here today with Sombra C!”
People searched the crowds on the bleachers for them. The furor outside was dying down to men and women calling about wounded students, and the rattle of stretchers. The principal was still talking, about pride and tolerance, and the students whispered when she turned over the floor to the counselors. They called out letters for schedule pick-up, and everyone with surnames starting with A and G, M and T filtered down to receive them. Then they returned to the bleachers and the next quartet was called.
A cop came in to speak to the principal. Their conversation passed through the bleachers all the way to Corbin, that there was no damage to the 600, 700, or 800 halls, and minimal to the 500 and P.E. halls. The windows of the office were broken, and two rooms of the 400 hall had been trashed.
Sally. He hadn’t even thought of her. Corbin searched the people filtering down when W was called. She wasn’t among them, and he felt obligated to open his phone and scroll for her name. Sally, not Zaley. Sally had been right beside him at the bus loop and then . . . no freaks no freaks no freaks.
“Hey, man, you okay?” someone whispered.
Corbin stood, nausea rising from his stomach to his throat, and the floor flew up and smacked him in the face.
Elania
Autumn leaves in brilliant color were cartwheeling down the street in the wind. Jack o’lanterns watched from porches and windows. The lawn directly across from the Douglas house had transformed into a graveyard of gray tombstones with skulls pushing up from the grass. A motion sensor among the foliage triggered a giant dancing mummy, and fake cobwebs were draped over the hedges.
Elania was upon the porch, rocking in the chair and her homework pinned down by the weight of her history textbook on the wood floor. She was fighting with herself, wanting to write about what had happened at school and needing to do the work that school had actually assigned. The latter won out when her gaze fell across the PEWTER PRIDE sticker, and she reluctantly retrieved her math. The triplets were in afterschool care until four, giving her almost an hour of quiet. The best use of her time before the house descended into chaos was homework, not free writing.
She had pulled Mr. Baylor for trigonometry, and this was not good. There were eight reviews online from former students and the average rating was two stars. Don’t expect him to explain anything, because all he does is repeat the example in the book. Don’t ask for extra credit, it’s a pet peeve of his. Come in late and he knocks a point off your grade, and you can never earn it back. See previous comment on extra credit. And good luck with his speech impediment, accent, palsy, laziness, whatever it was that made him mush-mouthed. Eight was ert, zero was zerer, like he just couldn’t be bothered to open his mouth fully or shape his lips to spit out the correct word.
The other teacher had had only three reviews, but nothing rated underneath four stars. The lone comment said that if you didn’t know the material, it was your own fault. Ms. Rayden was available before and after school for help, some lunches as well, so there was no excuse. Extra credit was plentiful. It was also not math-related. Volunteering at the food drive for the holidays earned extra points. Elania was on board with that.
For weeks she had been helping at the local branch of Sombra C Relief, and she was sorry to cut back on her hours now that school started. It felt so important! There weren’t enough hands or money, and the organization cleared her application fifteen minutes after she pressed send. They had her sort donations. The collection cans were outside Mr. Foods, local banks, in churches and the temple, and many other places. Pierre emptied the cans on a regular basis and trucked the goods to the warehouse in his van, complaining at length about the location of the Salmon Park Mr. Foods at the northeastern point of the city and practically in the woods. He liked to moan about the distance and how he wasn’t reimbursed for gas, in order to gain appreciation for his sacrifices. He also liked to moan about the big green Waste Less bin in the Salmon Park Mr. Foods parking lot. Waste Less bins were meant for anyone. Anyone could put clothes in; anyone could take clothes out. Pierre thought the clothes should be given to a Goody-Goody to be resold for a small profit, not free for any bum. Someone in time appreciated Pierre effusively to make him go away, and then Elania got to work on the contents with two other women.
Holey underwear, loose change, expired soup, toys, strange notes, religious pamphlets, weird pieces of art, there were bags and bags and bags of donations to go through and not enough volunteers to do it. Liv and Delia were old pros at this, taciturn and steady in their work, and soon Elania acted the same although inwardly she marveled at the crap people put in the cans. There was a sign on the side of each one explaining what was useful and what was not! What were they to do with a plastic vase? A string of Christmas lights? A vibrator? She had to wear gloves because someone vomited in one can, and someone else put in a glass jar of pickles that broke. Both of those infuriated her, as they destroyed many good donations.
Why were people so thoughtless? She had had an unpleasant altercation outside Mr. Foods the week before school began, seeing a woman dump random playing cards, old food, torn socks, and other junk into the donation can. Although Elania explained politely that these items just made more work, the woman shrilled that the recipients should be thankful for whatever they got. It was embarrassing with passerby looking on, but someone had to say it! It cost Relief a lot of money to dump trash, and a person in crisis deserved better. Maybe next time that woman would think twice about donating pantyhose with runs in it and mushroom soup twenty years past its prime.
Elania wanted to write about that for the school paper, too, although she should do the rough draft by hand since her ancient laptop crashed every time the wind blew. Helping with the school food drive for Ms. Rayden and simultaneously earning points to help with math was right up Elania’s alley, but she’d landed Mr. Baylor for trig instead. Oh well. There was no use crying over this. It was what she had to work with, and that was that. Most people had something redeemable in their character, and she just had to figure out what it was.
It was only the first day of school, but so far she had not found it. Mr. Baylor defied description. His hair was a dull brown, his eyes also a dull brown, and he wore glasses in yet the same color. In his fifties, he had had on brown pants and a bland blue shirt, with a plain silver band on his finger. Everything about him was flat, including his droning voice. This was a man who came to work since the clock said it was time to come to work, and for no other reason. The walls of the room were bare cinderblock, and the whiteboard bore only his name and the date. Elania had looked over the objects on his desk, seeking a personal touch, some passion. A grade book, a stack of textbooks, a calendar with nothing written upon it, a plain white coffee mug, and tucked under the desk was a blue lunch cooler. School was a place this man killed time.
Determined to find something likeable about Mr. Baylor through the hour of the class, she thought about how people didn’t always leave accurate reviews of teachers, out of spitefulness over a grade or some other provocation. That bothered Elania, who wrote movie reviews and tried to be fair. She didn’t care for gore or slapstick, but they received a fair shake in her column. Other people did like those genres. They were looking for an unbiased review, not her opinion of the genre itself. And it was a biased sample of students on that website, in regards to Mr. Baylor. Those who liked him well enough, felt neutral, or disliked him mildly weren’t likely to open an account at the website to select stars and record their remarks. So it behooved Elania to give him the same fair shake that she granted movies.
But after the bell had rung to end that class, she sensed the truth in all of those bad reviews she’d skimmed on her phone between periods. Mr. Baylor was going to suck. As was her government teacher Mr. Dayze, but the A in that class would come easily even if he was rumored to be the biggest dick of a teacher at Cloudy Valley High. He’d come in five minutes after the bell, read the syllabus for half an hour, bragged about how he li
ked to push the boundaries in his class, and flipped on the news for the rest of the period. Their homework was to come up with debate ideas, like abortion and homosexuals and the War on Christmas. (Really? It was a war? How many Americans were displaced from their homes, lost their jobs, or were murdered in the average year for daring to celebrate Christmas? Casualty count: zero.) He was really scruffy looking, like he’d rolled directly out of bed and into the classroom.
Even so, it was nice to be back in school. With the exceptions of Mr. Baylor and Mr. Dayze, her teachers were a good bunch. The last two months had just been a stumbling block, but life was going to get back to normal now. As normal as possible with Sombra C right on campus, but neither of those students shared any classes with Elania. Their particulars had passed like wildfire: sophomore Trevor Long at 19% and senior Shelly Cray at 8%. Cloudy Valley High had sixteen hundred students, too many for Elania to know everyone. She couldn’t have picked Trevor out of a crowd, and she’d shared elementary algebra with Shelly in freshman year but had had no contact with her since. Shelly sat in the back of that class, a quiet girl who attracted no notice. She was a runner, Elania knew that much, and perfectly sociable in the company of those on the team.
Algebra. Math. Resolved to pass this class, Elania unwrapped a piece of Halloween candy she had stolen from the top pantry shelf where it was hidden. The boys didn’t know it was there, but their parents had been thieving from the bags. Lollipops with gum in the middle, miniature chocolate bars, sour bombs, there were six bags of goodies tucked behind the containers for flour and lentils. All of them were open at the corner, just enough to let a finger nose through.
Studying the text, she tried not to think of how much Mr. Baylor reminded her of gum chewed to a flavorless glob. After the syllabus, he had opened up the book to the first section and read it to them. He did the example on the board even though it was there in the book, like making it bigger somehow elucidated it. They went through all of the section in this fashion, and then he assigned homework and class ended. Elania wanted to walk out of this room on a positive note, but the only one that came to mind was that school had started late.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 15