He jerked away from me and yelped, “Hey!” Then there was silence for a while. “Oh, Jesus,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “so you’re awake?”
“I am now.” His voice sounded thick with phlegm and he coughed, and then he moaned. “Where are we, Court?”
Court? Even in my diminished state, I knew that that particular bud would need clipping. “I was hoping you could tell me, Brand.”
“Why are we outside? Where’s my truck?”
“These are all excellent questions.” I’d planned to say something else, too. Something really scathing. Nothing would come to mind. “I wonder if Sherri is feeling like crap right now, too. I mean, I hope she is since this is her fault.”
Brandon didn’t answer. I heard him moving around and decided to take a chance and open my eyes to see what was up. I winced away the pain of actually taking in the world. Brandon had sat up. He slowly looked all around us.
“Where is Sherri?” he said.
I sat up as fast as I dared—which wasn’t very fast—and my head swam anyway. Tiny black dots floated in front of my eyes until I squeezed them shut. Once the feeling passed I opened them again.
We were in a pasture bordered on one side by a split rail fence and on the other three by rows of some sort of trees. What they were, I had no idea, I’m not a tree expert. A few cars buzzed by on the road beyond the fence.
“There’s your truck,” I said to Brandon.
“That’s good. I’m glad we didn’t walk all the way here.”
“Yeah, driving while we were blacked out is so much better,” I said. “But where’s Sherri?”
Brandon just shook his head. He looked really far away and he had a dopey grin that irritated me.
“What’s up with your arm?” he asked.
I looked at it again.
“I don’t know, scratches I guess.”
“Scratches?” The dopey grin was gone, replaced by a look of concern. Hungover concern.
“Down, boy,” I said. “If these were zombie scratches, I’d already be, you know . . .”
“I guess.”
I poked around in my mouth with my tongue again. There was something in there. I finally reached in and dug around with my fingers. I pulled something out and looked at it. It looked like I had a bunch of hair in there. What the hell? I threw it away in disgust.
“We have to go look for Sherri,” I said. “Why aren’t you concerned about where she is?”
I took out my phone and dialed her number. It went right to voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message.
“Sherri’s fine,” he said. “She’s probably at Buddha’s place, or she woke up in a field like we did.” He looked around, like maybe Sherri was going to spring up out of the grass.
“That’s not good enough!” I shouted. “We need to look for her.” I felt so scared I could barely think. The only thing that made sense was to try to find Sherri.
“Okay,” Brandon said. He did an impersonation of a reasonable person, but I could see anger creeping in at the edges. “Where should we start? Buddha’s place?” He stopped and looked around. “Where is that, do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s right, Court, you don’t know. I don’t know.” He stopped and scooted close to me. It felt like he was about to reach out for me, but maybe he thought better of it. “We’d just be running around, burning gas and making ourselves crazy. The best thing we could do is head home and wait for her to call us. The moment she does, I’m in my truck so I can pick her up.” He gave me a sincere smile that made me want to punch him in the junk. “Believe me, she’ll be okay.”
“What if she’s not okay?” I asked.
“Jesus,” he said, “you worry too much.”
I worry too much about my friend who went missing while we were stoned out of our heads on a drug made from zombie brains. A friend who was the main course for a bunch of shufflers for all I knew.
“Take me home,” I told him, and slowly managed to stand up. The ground seemed to roll gently beneath me as I walked toward the truck. It was like the one time I was on a boat. I didn’t like it.
Brandon caught up to me and he took my hand in his. I let him because it helped steady me.
“I’d drive you home if I knew where we were.”
“We’ll figure it out on the way.”
“What’s all over your face?”
“I don’t have a mirror, jackass.”
He turned his head this way and that and squinted at me. “It looks like either your lipstick got smeared all over your face . . .”
“Or . . . ,” I prodded.
“Or, I don’t know, blood maybe?”
I stopped. Something nagged at me. Something from last night, and then the fact that I had hair or something in my mouth.
“Oh, shit,” I said, and I started to retch. I didn’t even try to hold it back. I just wanted it out of me. I fell to my hands and knees as I heaved up everything in my stomach. The pain in my head shot from “dull ache” to “drum circle” in nothing flat. Brandon backpedaled away from me and fell on his ass.
“What’s going on, Courtney? Are you okay?”
I waved him away. He let me finish without talking to me again. When I was finally done, I grabbed up a fistful of grass and wiped my mouth as well as I could.
“Do you remember a cat?” I asked. “From last night?”
“Maybe? Why?”
“I remember a big group of us cornered it in an alley . . .” My voice trailed off. I tried to think of some other explanation and came up empty.
“What is it, Court?”
“Don’t call me that anymore! I hate that shit—shortening people’s names. We’re not in an episode of Friends, okay?”
“Okay, just tell me what’s going on.”
“I think I ate a cat last night,” I said. I whispered it. Brandon sat forward and I know he was about to ask me to repeat myself. Then he got it. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
“Yeah,” I said. “If I hadn’t just puked, I think I’d be sick.” I could barely remember the specifics. All I could recall with any clarity was the feeling of belonging and how incredible it was. But I could bring to mind enough flashes to know that I’d helped kill and eat that poor cat. I wanted to be sick all over again, maybe forever. I’d never killed anything that wasn’t already undead. Oh, God, I didn’t even kill spiders—I scooped them up and put them outside. How could I have done this? All because of that stupid drug.
Did other people on Z kill animals? Had they ever killed other people? I shoved the thought away for now.
“Do you have any water in your truck?”
“I should have some bottles in there, yeah.” He stood and held out his hand to help me up. My head actually felt better since I’d been sick. Yea, vomiting. He took my hand again and we started back toward the truck.
“Do you think that’s where you got those scratches?” He examined my arm.
“It must be,” I said. “Which is fine, that cat deserved to scratch the hell out of me.”
“It wasn’t you,” Brandon said, “it was the drugs.”
“That’s bull, Brandon, and you know it. I chose to take the stupid drugs. Me.”
He didn’t answer. When we climbed over the fence, Brandon opened the truck and found a bottle of water for me. I used it to wash my face off and then to rinse out my mouth. He held out a second one for me and I drank that one down. I immediately felt better when I drank it. I just didn’t know if I deserved to feel better. I thanked him and climbed into the truck. I just really wanted to get home. I wanted to see my dad.
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
“What is it?” Brandon asked as he got us onto the road and started driving in the direction we’d been facing.
“My dad is probably freaking out.”
I found my phone in one of my jacket pockets. I expected to see a zillion messages. There was just on
e. I pushed the RETRIEVE button and listened.
“Hey, Courtney, it’s Dad. I just wanted to touch base and let you know not to stay up waiting for me to get home. I’m going out with Beverly and we’ll more than likely go back to her place after. There’s a lasagna in the fridge and a twenty on the counter in case you need anything. Call me if you need to. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow. Love you. ’Bye.”
I stared at my phone for a long time. I felt like it had betrayed me. Or Dad had. Someone sure had. Maybe me.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” I said. “Where are we?”
“I think we’re actually somewhere around Silverton. I saw a marker and we’re on Two-thirteen. If I keep driving this way, I’ll run into Silverton or Salem. Either way, it won’t take too long to get you home.”
I didn’t say anything. I just sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. I wanted to have a world-class sulk.
I tried calling Sherri again. I just got her voice mail. “Call me,” was all I said when I got the beep. I settled back into the seat.
It turned out we were headed toward Salem and would be home in twenty minutes or so. I fought with myself the whole way there. I kept telling myself that Sherri was fine; she’d probably made her way home the way Brandon and I had made our way to that field. I’d hear from her later. Other stuff worried me, too. The fact that my dad wasn’t home, hadn’t been home, really irked me. I told myself that it chapped my hide because he was being totally irresponsible to stay out all night when he had a teenage daughter at home. He should be there for me when I needed him! That wasn’t it or, at least, that wasn’t all of it. A big part of it was that I wanted him to know I’d been out all night and to be furious and demand to know where I’d been. I wanted him to do all the things Dad had never done—I wanted him to goose-step back and forth in front of me and send me to my room without any dessert.
I wanted him to get out of me what had just happened. Why did I want to get caught? It was freaking dumb to think that would make things better. I mean, I’d probably lose all the money I’d earned over the last year. That meant bye-bye New York, or anywhere else cool, after I was finally done with school. More than that, I could end up going to jail. They’d probably make me tell them about Buddha. How long would I last in jail once Buddha figured out it was me that got him arrested? No, telling anyone, my dad included, was not the way to go. I needed to stop being all passive-aggressive with myself. If I wanted to stop selling drugs, I should man up and just stop. I totally could anytime, too. As soon as I had another few thousand, I would stop.
I heaved a big sigh and sank even farther into the seat.
“I’m sure Sherri’s fine,” Brandon said. He gave me quick concerned glances as he drove.
I forced a smile. “Thanks. I’m sure she is, too.” It was easier to lie than it was to tell him that I was worried. But just hearing him mention her name made my heart beat harder.
We drove on for a minute before he cleared his throat. I thought maybe he wanted to turn on the radio or something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just wanted to ask you about last night.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“Did you like it?”
“Did I like it?” I repeated. I couldn’t believe he was asking that. “Brandon, last night, while under the influence, I ate a kitty!” I was sitting up by then, practically shouting right in his ear. When I was done, I scooted as far away as possible—right up against the door. My head throbbed again and I savored the feeling.
“Yeah,” he said nearly whispering. “I mean except for that.”
I felt my jaw fall open. I rubbed my face. He was serious. “Except for the part where I killed and consumed a small animal, did I have a good time? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, Brandon, except for that, I had a lovely evening.”
He nodded, this weird, convulsive head movement. “Sure,” he said. “Sure.”
“I get the feeling you want me to ask you how you liked it, Brandon.” He shrugged in this really unconvincing way. “Okay, so how’d you like it?”
A huge grin consumed his face. “Oh, my God, Courtney, I loved it. I thought it was incredible. I mean, when was the last time you felt free of all the clutter inside your head?”
“Eyes on the road,” I said as we started to drift into the oncoming lane.
“Right, sorry. I mean pot and beer will help your problems seem not so bad, but they’re always still there, right? Last night I felt like . . . I felt like not me. It was amazing.”
“What problems?”
He looked confused. “What?”
“You said pot helps you not care about your problems. What problems?”
“What, I’m not allowed to have problems?” The grin was gone, replaced by an ugly scowl. He hunched over the steering wheel and refused to look my way. “I guess only you’re allowed to have problems, right?”
I ran my hand through my hair. I didn’t want to deal with this right now. “Sorry. You have problems. The Z helped you forget them. Go on.”
“It didn’t help me forget them,” he said. “While I was on it, my problems didn’t exist. Dude, I felt like I didn’t exist.”
“And that was good?”
“You took it, too,” he said. “You tell me.”
I remembered the feeling of giving myself up, losing my identity and becoming a part of the mass mind of undead outside Buddha’s apartment. It had felt good at the time. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t tell me what I think, Brandon,” I said. Junior Timothy Leary let it drop.
I tried to close my eyes, but every time I did, I saw Sherri in any number of horror-movie scenarios. Each one involved zombies feasting on her guts as she screamed and screamed. Keeping my eyes open became the order of the day.
We finally pulled up alongside my house.
“Thanks for the ride,” I told Brandon as I climbed out.
“Sure,” he said. “Hey, let me know when you hear from Sherri.”
“Do you really care?”
The look he gave me wasn’t anger or anything I’d expected—it was hurt. Oh, shit.
“Sorry,” I said. “Discovering I killed a small animal can make me a real bitch. Of course I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” he said, and I closed the door before he could say anything else. The truck pulled away as I opened the front door to the house. I gave thanks that the curtains were still drawn—of course they were, Dad hadn’t been home all night!—the dark felt good on my eyes.
I went into the kitchen and drank about a gallon of water. I knew that I should take a shower and wash out the scratches on my arm or, at the very least, brush my teeth. I felt like ten pounds of crap crammed into a five-pound bag. Somehow, I bypassed the bathroom, went right to my room, and collapsed onto the bed. I tried Sherri’s phone and it went to voice mail. I asked her to call me as soon as she could, then I let the phone drop to the floor.
I fell asleep thinking of all the different ways Sherri might have died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Darth Vader Is Your Dentist
Sunday passed in a cone of dread-filled silence. I jumped at every sound, waiting for Sherri to call me. I kept dialing her—like every five minutes—but it immediately went to voice mail. Until I got a robot voice telling me the mail box was full. After that, I had no choice but to call the landline at her house and risk speaking to the mutants that passed for her parental units.
The phone rang more than half a dozen times and I was about to hang up, but then someone picked up.
“What?” A woman’s voice. Sherri’s mom.
“Hi, Mrs. Temple,” I said. “May I speak with Sherri.”
“You could if I knew where she was,” she said, and I heard her draw on her cigarette.
“So she’s not there right now
?” I asked. I fought to keep my voice calm.
“This is Courtney, right?” she asked. “Jesus, Courtney, I think the last time I saw her was . . . what, Thursday night.” Another draw on her cancer stick and this time I heard her exhale. “You don’t know where she’s got off to, do you, Courtney?”
“No, Mrs. Temple,” I said, and, for once when I was asked that question, I didn’t have to lie when I answered.
“Yeah, well,” Mrs. Temple said sounding philosophical, “I’m sure she’ll come home when she gets hungry.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and forced a chuckle. “Well, if you see her, please tell her I called.”
“Sure,” Sherri’s mom said. “If you see her, tell her it’d be great for her to put in an appearance around here. The lawn needs mowing.”
I promised I’d do that and hung up. It took all my strength not to pick up the phone again and call Brandon. I wanted to demand he take me back to Portland so we could look for Sherri, but I knew what he’d say to that and part of me knew he was right. Where would we even start looking?
I had to have faith that Sherri would just show up soon and laugh at me for worrying about her.
“Jesus,” I could hear her say, “you are such a virgin.”
I needed to take my mind off the situation—as if that were possible—and decided the best way to do that was some busy work.
After I showered and got dressed, I broke open the cellophane brick Buddha had given me and a million little Ziploc baggies fell out. I put those away and put some aside to take with me to work the next time I was on at the Bully Burger. I felt like a hypocritical shit packaging up more Z, but I still needed to sell it and pay Buddha for the stuff.
Dad finally came home and he and I seemed to avoid each other. I knew why I was doing it—I was still in shock a little bit from what happened Saturday night. I had no clue what his deal was, though. I’d walk into rooms that I thought were empty and find him in there muttering to himself. When he noticed I was there, he’d smile at me, kind of embarrassed, and then he’d make some lame excuse about forgetting something in another room. His behavior was slightly bizarre and creepy. To be honest, I was too wrapped up in my own head to ask what was up with his.
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