by Stacey Longo
I decided to wear my Siouxsie shirt under the black velvet jacket with jeans for my first day. I pulled my mousy brown hair up in a half-ponytail, letting some wisps tumble down to frame my face, and topped off my look with maybe too much black eyeliner, already hearing Mom in my head asking why I wanted to look like a raccoon. Blossom opted for a black tee and leggings, and waited patiently for me to finish my makeup before pointing to her own eyes.
“Yageeeh,” she said, and I sighed. She wanted heavy eyeliner, too. Great. I’d match the weird zombie girl. It wouldn’t take people long to figure out we were sisters.
Blossom wasn’t allowed to put on her own makeup. Too risky. Zombies tended to be a clumsy bunch when it came to hand-eye coordination, and it would only take one accidental stab with an liner pencil for her whole eyeball to pop out.
I told Blossom to close her eyes and began smudging the edge of her lid. I supposed I could do this for her. After all, she had taught me how to properly apply makeup, back in her predeceased state.
When I finished, Blossom blinked a few times in the mirror, then offered me a close-mouthed smile. She was really self-conscious about not having any teeth. Mom had promised to look in to soft dentures—something resembling teeth but wouldn’t actually break skin if she tried to eat anybody—but nothing had come of it yet.
Blossom had her flaxen hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and I didn’t blame her for being angry about having to wear a helmet, but we’d decorated it together the night before. I’d painted a few Mexican Day of the Dead skulls on it, and a couple of quotes from her favorite Inkubus Sukkubus songs, and that had seemed to perk her up a bit. I could understand why she was unhappy. So far, people in Connecticut seemed zombie-shy and gun-friendly, and on top of that, Blossom was about to start her senior year with a permanent sentence of bad hair days. I patted her on the shoulder.
“You look really pretty,” I said.
“Garg slaah,” she replied, smiling.
“Thanks,” I said. “Let’s go knock ’em dead.”
~~**~~
The special needs bus was fairly crowded. There were two other kids in wheelchairs, but they were strapped in to keep from sliding out. The bus driver raised an eyebrow when Blossom folded up her own wheelchair and stored it in back before climbing into the bus on her own two feet, but said nothing. I sat next to her, across from one of the wheelchair kids and another girl who seemed out of place. She wore a Rob Zombie T-shirt, black jeans, and had one eyebrow and her nose pierced. Her hair was black, with fuchsia highlights, and I wondered for a moment how I’d look with the same pink streaks.
“I’m Nanette,” she said when she caught me sizing her up. “This is my brother, Jordan.” She waved a loose hand at the boy strapped to his chair next to her. “Cerebral palsy. You?”
“Jasmine,” I said, pointing to myself. “My sister, Blossom. Nuclear waste accident.”
Nanette laughed. Blossom moaned softly. “Oh. You’re serious?”
“Yup. It’s really not as uncommon as you think, though I’m starting to wonder if there’s ever been a reactor disaster this side of the Mississippi. Your parents make you ride the short bus too?”
“You probably shouldn’t call it that. I don’t mind riding it, really. Jordan needs someone to help him when he slides, or to interpret when he cries. He has an aide all day at school, but he’s my brother. Nobody understands him like me.”
I looked guiltily at Blossom, who nodded and gurgled. Us too.
“Where’re you from?” Nanette asked. “Because it sure isn’t Glastonbury. No offense, but I don’t think any of the lily-white yuppie hipsters at our school have even heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees.”
“Arizona—Little Hop. It’s about forty-five minutes outside of Phoenix.”
Nanette nodded. Nobody’s heard of Little Hop, but everybody knows Phoenix. “What year are you guys? Jordan’s a junior—I’m a sophomore.”
“Me, too. Blossom’s a senior. She was held out a year after the accident.”
“Well, if you want, once we get there, I can show you around a little bit,” Nanette offered with a bright smile, and I nodded, returning her grin.
“Great. Thanks!”
The bus ride passed quickly, Nanette and I discussing our favorite punk rock bands from the seventies and eighties. Nanette admired Blossom’s helmet and declared it “full-on fantabulous.” By the time we arrived at school, we’d already started following each other on Twitter, and I felt a little better.
I had a friend.
~~**~~
What would normally have been our homeroom period was spent in assembly. The school had a new principal this year, and he wanted to introduce himself to the students. Dr. Taylor looked bookish and nervous up on stage, promising a challenging yet fun academic year and a winning season for the Tomahawks.
“Taylor was principal at the junior high when I went there,” Nanette said.
“Really?” I whispered back. “He looks like he could be a student himself.”
“Oh no, he’s wicked old. Thirty, at least.”
He was flanked by a plump woman with fluffy orange hair, who Nanette told me was Mrs. Rhodes, one of the two vice principals. She stood beaming next to Dr. Taylor, hands clasped behind her back. Standing slightly apart from these two was Mr. Larson, the other vice principal. He was tall and muscular, with deep wrinkles etched into his smooth forehead. He reminded me of an aging pro wrestler, and Nanette confirmed that everyone called him the Animal, though never to his face. If you were caught smoking or fighting, you definitely wanted to be caught by Rhodes, not the Animal. “He keeps a baseball bat in his office signed by that principal in New Jersey that they made a movie about. Joe Clark? Louis Clark? Whatever. The Animal’s a real ball buster,” Nanette whispered.
After Taylor finished up his speech, Larson stepped up to the microphone to remind everyone of the rules.
“No gum, no offensive shirts, no wearing pajama bottoms to school,” he said, ticking off the list on his thick fingers. “No cell phones except during lunch or free periods, and even then, take it outside. Any underclassmen found parking in the senior lot will be suspended for a week. Driving is a privilege, not a right, so don’t pull any smart stuff like forging parking passes, or nobody will be allowed to drive to school!” he barked, ending in a crescendo. Apparently, parking in the wrong lot was a personal issue for Vice Principal Larson. After a few more warnings and one final “Go Tomahawks” cheer, we were released to find our classes.
Algebra was my first class of the day. A guy with neatly trimmed brown hair, pressed chinos, and a hoodie sat right behind me. He kept kicking my seat and calling me new girl.
“Nice outfit, new girl.” Kick. “What, you think you’re a vampire or something?” Kick. “How are your boyfriends, Edward and Jacob?” Kick.
I politely ignored him, though silently plotted his death, and watched the clock until the bell rang. Second period was ceramics, which I was happy about. I loved getting my hands dirty in clay.
I sat at a table with a tall, thin girl whose sienna hair was as long and straight as she was. She towered six inches over me, easy. She introduced herself as Beki and told me she was a senior.
“I’m hoping to go to the University of Delaware next year. Or the University of New Mexico. I’m not sure yet. I have to check out which one has a better music scene.”
I told her I was from Arizona, which was right next door to New Mexico, and there was absolutely no music scene to speak of in the Painted Desert, but she ignored me, jabbering on. Someone had told her the Shins were from Albuquerque, and if those underappreciated musical geniuses were spawned there, then maybe there was something magical in the water. Then again, she mused, the Spinto Band had gotten together in Wilmington, so maybe that’s where aspiring rock ’n’ rollers should go to find their musical soul mates. I had nothing to add, though Beki didn’t seem to mind: she spent the entire period carrying on the debate between the two states all by hersel
f. I was happy to escape to third period free, where I met Nanette in the quad after grabbing my cell phone from my locker.
Nanette pulled up the seat-kicker’s profile on Instagram pretty fast once I told her about the ironed chinos, and confirmed that it was Andy Strand, a junior who worked after school at Bleak House, a nearby home for the disabled.
“Jeez, what a terrible name!” I said. “Why don’t they just call it ‘Your Life’s Gonna Suck Here’ Meadows?”
“I know,” Nanette agreed. “But it was named after William Bleak, some bigwig in psychiatric research who happened to be living in Glastonbury when he croaked. His estate left a ton of money to the town with orders to build the place.” She dismissed the nuthouse discussion with a wave and continued trolling Instagram. “Describe the girl in your ceramics class again?”
Beki Duncan was flighty, yet nice, according to Nanette, and used to date Ken Yothers, who went to school at Cheney Tech in Manchester, one town over. Nanette knew little about Ken, only that he had a sweet car and bad acne and preferred to date girls from Glastonbury High rather than in his own town. Ken had cheated on Beki with Beki’s best friend Jillian Mott, and as a result of this new relationship, Beki had been frozen out of her old crowd at GHS. I felt a twinge of anger on Beki’s behalf. That didn’t seem fair at all.
“Maybe it was an unfortunate result of Jillian feeling too guilty about stealing Beki’s boyfriend to be around her,” Nanette guessed. “But more likely it’s just because Jillian is a stone cold mean girl, which, FYI, she is.” Before she could tell me more, Nanette’s phone chirped, and she immediately forgot me and started typing.
I checked my phone to see what was going on in the virtual world. There was an Amber Alert for a missing girl in East Windsor, but since I didn’t even know where that was, I ignored it. Back in Little Hop, my friend Patty tweeted she was leaving school early for the day to go to Canyon Lake. I looked down at my velvet jacket, pulled snug against me in the crisp autumn air. I’d bake like a potato if I wore it in Little Hop this time of year.
In fourth period English, Ms. Youngquist handed out Kindles with our reading for the semester already pre-loaded. We had to read the first three chapters of Dante’s Inferno by tomorrow. There was no messing around with Ms. Youngquist. She didn’t care if it was the first day of school. We were going to get educated on classical literature if it killed us.
When I left English class, heading to the cafeteria for lunch, I spotted a group of three pretty girls in the hallway, whispering and glowering at me as I walked by. I raised my eyebrows and smiled as I passed them. They looked like hippies, with their tie-dyed tops and long, flowing skirts, but I could be friends with all types, I figured.
“What’re you looking at, dogface?” the brunette said with a sneer.
“Nice jacket, freak. Not,” the chubby blonde added.
“Hey, the sixties called—they want their wardrobe back,” I said, grinning as widely as I could.
Nope. I was not going to be friends with the hippies.
I didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch, but I was still guiltily grateful that Blossom and I had different lunch periods. The cafeteria can make or break one’s reputation, and sitting with the only zombie in the school, complete with wheelchair and helmet, would destroy mine. I took my Kindle and my lunch outside. I sat on a bench alone, munching an apple and joining Virgil and Dante in Hell.
“What’cha reading?”
I looked up to see a thin, shaggy-haired Asian kid in an unzipped green hoodie and a Superman shirt standing in front of me. He had a rolled-up magazine under his arm, and it kind of looked like Zombie GQ, but I didn’t want to ask. “Dante’s Inferno.” He sat down next to me.
“You’ve got Youngquist this semester? Good luck. She’s tough.” The boy introduced himself as Mickey, and started reading over my shoulder. “I had Youngquist last year. She hated me. I hated Dante. It was its own vicious circle of Hell.”
I smiled at Mickey and powered down the Kindle. “I don’t know—Youngquist seemed okay today,” I said. “I’m not happy about the homework, but at least I’m not reading Othello for, like, the tenth time.”
Mickey was a junior, had—“Don’t judge me for this, I’m nothing like the rest of the tools in this town”—lived in Glastonbury his whole life, and knew everyone in school. He helpfully pointed out people in the courtyard and advised me on who was cool and who was not.
“See that group of jocks in letterman jackets over there? That’s the soccer team. They’re a bunch of dill weeds, but some of my best customers.”
“Customers?” I asked. Uh-oh. Was I making friends with that wrong crowd Dad sometimes warned about?
“Well, see, I kind of specialize in forged hall passes and notes from home,” Mickey said in a confidential hush. “I perfected Rhodes’s signature two months into my freshman year. I’m still working on Taylor’s autograph, but I should have it nailed down in a couple more weeks. That’s not public information.” He squinted at me as if just now trying to decide whether or not I might be a hall pass narc.
“Awesome. How much do you charge?”
“Ten dollars a pass or note. It’s a fairly lucrative means of income.” He smiled, then pointed to a group of girls leaning against the side of the school. “There, that’s the stoner crowd. See the brunette in the middle, trying to hide her cigarette? That’s Jillian. We used to date. That is, ’til she dumped me for some musclehead at Cheney Tech.”
The girl he was pointing out was the same one who had called me dogface in the hallway. Nanette had been right on. Jillian Mott was a mean girl.
The bell rang, and Mickey and I stood up. “Thanks for the info,” I told him, brushing off my jeans.
“No problem. Stick with me, kid, and we’ll go places.” He gave me a lopsided grin. I followed him back into the school and set about surviving the rest of my first day of school as the new kid.
I made it through biology, history, gym (with Beki again, thank God: we signed up for badminton immediately, so as not to be stuck playing baseball with people who might have actual athletic talent), and French class with minimal headaches and homework. I met Blossom, Jordan and Nanette out front at the end of the day to wait for our bus. Blossom was beaming, as much as a zombie is capable of strong facial expressions: her eyes were wide and she wore her tight-lipped smile. She proudly held open her backpack to show me a pair of crudely fashioned horsehead bookends.
“Yarr rguuuhhhhh bah!” She proclaimed. I made them myself!
“Pretty cool,” I confirmed.
On the bus ride home, Blossom gummed the corner of her phone case. Mom and Dad were pretty good about treating us both exactly the same: if I had a cell phone, my sister would have one too, though Blossom wasn’t particularly adept at using hers. She had a Twitter account and a Facebook page, like me, but she never tweeted or posted anything. I’d set up her profile photo for her: a screen shot from The Walking Dead, when zombie Sophia emerges from the barn. Blossom and I had thought it was hilarious. Mom complained it was a little cruel, but when Blossom chuffed in laughter over it so hard she’d practically popped an eyeball, Mom let the argument drop.
Blossom soon grew bored of gnawing on her case and actually pushed a few buttons on her phone. The Amber alert I’d ignored earlier came up on her screen, and she managed to clumsily click on it to bring up the details. She stared at it for a moment, then elbowed me and showed me the photo of the missing girl.
It was Blue Pixie from Hot Topic.
THREE
Mom totally freaked out when she saw Blossom’s horsehead bookends.
“Who puts a zombie in shop class? What the hell are they thinking?” she yelled, and marched to her computer to shoot off an angry email to the school. I didn’t see what the big deal was.
“For God’s sake, Jasmine, she’s clumsy. She’s got absolutely no depth perception. You’ve seen how she walks into doors and walls all the time. What if she cuts off a finger? Her bones don’t k
nit like ours do. Her skin’s not pliable enough to reattach limbs. I don’t think I can fix her if something’s hacked off!” She was frantic, and Blossom shrank away from her, shambling out to the fenced-in backyard, moaning the whole way. I felt bad. Blossom was pretty proud of her bookends, and rightly so. Sure, if Blossom hadn’t told me they were horse heads, I probably would’ve thought they were some sort of weird, fat birds. The horse snouts were a little lumpy, and didn’t exactly match. The sides were jagged and needed more smoothing. But overall, those bookends were a major achievement for someone who often couldn’t control her own drooling. Mom hadn’t seemed to notice the fine craftsmanship at all. I had no doubt Blossom was expecting an “Atta girl!” but what she’d gotten instead was the possibility of being yanked from the one class in which she’d actually achieved something today.
Mom could be a real jerk sometimes.
I went online and IM’d a few people from back home, feeling jealous when Patty told me about her afternoon at the lake with Paul Peters. Had he drawn silly cartoons on her arm, like he’d done for me so long ago? Was he a serial cartoonist? I decided to ignore Patty’s message with the tongue-sticking-out emojis around Paul’s name and started texting Nanette. She gave me the scoop on Mickey (He likes to say he dated Jillian Mott, but really, they just went to Burger King a couple times during seventh period free, it’s not like he was her bae or anything), but she assured me if it was someone to hang out with at lunch, I could do worse. I padded out to the lawn and managed to convince Blossom to come back inside, and we watched TV for a couple of hours until Mom made dinner.
“What did you think of our new school?” I asked her tentatively, ignoring the TMZ exclusive on Miley Cyrus’s new hairdo.
“Gaag,” Blossom shrugged. It’s okay.
“Any cute guys in your classes?”
“Yarl. Gargh. Blarhhhhhh,” she said, drawing the last syllable out. I had history and science with Jordan, so at least I knew someone. No one cute.