“Okay,” I said, “I’ll meet you back here.”
Zooey nodded and I ducked into the locker room. Once I’d changed into my shorts and T-shirt, I pulled my cell phone out of my gym bag and stepped around the corner into the empty showers to dial Lenny’s number. It rang three times, and his voice answered.
“Hello, this is Lenny—”
“Lenny,” I said, “listen, it’s me—”
“—I’m sorry, but I can’t take your call right now. Leave me a message at the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Hey,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re doing in there, but Zooey doesn’t look so great. Call me back as soon as you get this.” I tried to think of anything else to say. “And whatever you’re doing in there, maybe you should just, I don’t know, dial it down a little?”
Then I hung up.
When I came back out of the gym, the news crew had pulled the curtains aside to reveal the North Pole set in all its glory. Aria was standing center stage, demonstrating her choreography for Ted the reporter, her gown shimmering as it swirled around her legs.
Down on the gym floor, it was business as usual. I saw all the girls lined up on one side in their shorts and T-shirts, looking back at the guys. Zooey was at the end of the line, but she didn’t look like herself at all. Her cheeks and neck were still all flushed, and she was just staring at me. When I mouthed the words “You okay?” she didn’t say anything back.
“Okay, donkeys and donkettes,” Shovelhead said. He was always calling us stuff like that, or else just you guys and you females. “Today we’re going to be starting a new unit, which I know you’re all going to be very excited about—square dancing.”
Everybody groaned. There’d been rumors that the school was going to introduce square dancing as part of some new state requirement—maybe we weren’t getting our recommended daily allowance of humiliation—but nobody could quite believe they’d actually go through with it. Regardless of where you stood on the topic of physical education, making a bunch of eighth-graders spin each other around to “Turkey in the Straw” definitely qualified as cruel and unusual punishment.
“Yeah, I know—awesome, right?” Shovelhead said with a little smile, and made a fist in front of his face, squeezing until the veins popped out. “Awesome” I realized that he was actually enjoying this in a big way. “Now, we’re gonna start by going through some basic steps with the music, and then everybody can come out here and try it together. Can I get a volunteer from both sides? How about you females?”
The girls all took a step back and looked down at their sneakers.
All except Zooey.
She stood motionless, her chin tilted up so that her hair fell back across her shoulders.
“Okay, great,” Shovelhead said, and clapped his hands. “Hey, Andrews, that’s great. How about you fellas? Don’t all volunteer at once.” His cocky little smile had become a big chip-toothed grin. He’d started rubbing his hands together like he did right before officiating a particularly vicious wrestling match. “Come on, guys—she’s not gonna bite. Are you, Miss Andrews?”
Zooey didn’t answer. She just stood there, staring at me, her face flushed bright red. Something was definitely going on inside her. Her mouth was just slightly open, and I realized that she was breathing in this funny way, so I could actually see her shoulders and chest going up and down. She actually looked like she might bite.
Lenny, you idiot, I thought. What are you doing in there?
“Okay, Miss Andrews, since these guys can’t seem to grow some guts, why don’t you just go ahead and pick somebody?”
I shut my eyes. I knew what was going to happen before she even took the first step.
Zooey walked over and grabbed my hand.
TWENTY-ONE: ZOOEY
The truth is, I don’t recall very much about what happened after that.
I remember I was burning up, and these weird hot and cold chills kept prickling up between my shoulder blades and the back of my neck. My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it in my throat. I didn’t feel sick exactly, just dizzy and distant, like I was watching the whole thing through a fishbowl.
I kept telling myself that if I could just get through this without passing out, I might even get a chance to talk to Ted the reporter before they left the set.
That was when I saw Harlan standing there, staring at me.
What I felt next, I can’t describe. It was like something else inside of me just took over, like millions of packets of Really Bad Judgment pills were bursting open. My mind—what was left of it—flashed to sixth grade health class, where phrases like “raging hormones” were tossed around like a joke. It wasn’t so funny now that my legs seemed to be moving on their own, carrying me across the gym floor toward Harlan.
Like I said, I don’t remember much after that.
But it doesn’t matter.
It all showed up on TV anyway.
TWENTY-TWO: LENNY
Looking back, I’m not exactly sure when everything spun out of control, but I’m pretty sure it started when Lug stage-dived into a sea of raging estrogen.
I’d somehow managed to squirm away from him and regain consciousness after being squeezed half to death and tossed into the air. As my head cleared, I saw swarms of ecstatic hormones sweeping forward to embrace Lug, catching him and passing him around, screaming while the music got louder and faster, building to a frantic crescendo. Lug disappeared and a second later he popped back up on the far side of the ovary, waving for me to join him.
“Go on!” Astro shouted, punching me in the shoulder. “They want you to stage dive!”
“I can’t! There’s no air!”
“What?”
“There’s not enough hemoglobin!” I pointed at him. “What about you?”
“No way, man! It’s all you out there!”
Now the entire room was cheering for me to jump. I managed to get up onto the table, felt the mob swelling closer, and sucked in a deep breath. My heart was pounding fast. In spite of my recent brush with lightheadedness or maybe because of it, I actually felt pretty good. The whole ovary was rocking hard enough that I could feel it trembling around me. If this had been a real party, the cops would have shown up already to shut things down, but down here on the molecular level, things were just getting started.
I’m pretty sure this is what they mean by “chemical imbalance,” I thought, and took the plunge. Estrogen and progesterone lunged forward to catch me, and the whole ovary went insane all over again, howling and roaring while the hydroxyls and methyl groups held me up and passed me around above their heads.
Astro got up on the table and started chanting. “Len-ny! Len-ny!”
I struggled to the surface, but the crowd just sucked me back in. Lights were flashing faster above my head, whole galaxies and nebulae exploding to life. My head spun and I grabbed a quick breath as the party went into overdrive. Everything around me was whipping itself into a state of near hysteria, but somehow, against all odds, I was grinning. I wasn’t Lenny Cyrus anymore—I was somebody completely new and different, and maybe dangerous. I was Lenny Cyrus, Supervirus. As the music got louder I felt myself giving in to the euphoria, deep down on the chemical level, letting the energy of the moment carry me forward in a way I’d never done in the outside world.
On the far side of the crowd, Lug was moving faster, his massive, supercharged bulk building speed and power, feeding into the chaos. He was springing up into the air, pumping his fists, waving me forward. Electricity crackled through the open space and hit me like a jolt of pure caffeine, which I guess it might have been. Whatever he’d brought to the party, it was infectious.
The space around us was hot and getting hotter.
Things were definitely getting out of hand, and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop, even if I’d wanted to.
That was when the roof caved in.
TWENTY-THREE: HARLAN
Zooey’s hand felt like it
was about a hundred and fifty degrees as she pulled me out onto the gym floor, leading me forward until we stood in the middle between the two lines of guys and girls. Up on stage, Shovelhead was describing the various square dancing moves from the seventeenth century or whenever it was invented, but I couldn’t think about that now. Zooey’s face was about six inches away, her cheeks blazing red, with those blue eyes locked in on mine. On both sides I could hear the other kids giggling and whispering to each other, egging her on, but she didn’t seem to notice.
She tilted her head down a little so she was looking at me from the tops of her eyes, and bit her lip. “I’ll lead.”
“Uh, okay, but—”
“Here we go,” Shovelhead bellowed from up on stage. “I’m gonna start the music, and all you two have to do is listen to the caller and do the moves as he says them. If you get stuck, I’ll help you.” He reached up to the iPod that he’d hooked to the speakers. “Ready?”
He pushed the button and the music started playing—fiddle and guitar and some guy from Kentucky telling me to swing my partner round and round—but Zooey ignored it completely. For a second she just stood there, as still as a statue, burning up and practically panting.
“Come on, you two,” Shovelhead said, “don’t be shy! Step up, Harlan. Like I said, she’s not going to—”
Zooey grabbed me with both arms and pulled me close up against her, swinging me around so fast that my sneakers actually left the floor. Her body was coiled tight, and I could feel her heart pounding against mine, hard and fast. Her skin was kicking off heat like an intense August day, the kind that overwhelms you and sucks your breath away from the moment you step outside.
“Okay,” I said, “this is kind of...close, don’t you think?”
“Come on,” she whispered into my ear. Her voice sounded husky and totally different, not a girl’s voice at all but maybe that of a grown woman, or possibly some kind of vampire. “Let’s dance.”
“Zooey, I can’t br—”
“Shut up.”
“Okay. Shutting up.” I tried to keep up, but all of a sudden this wasn’t square dancing—it was more like some kind of no-holds-barred mixed martial arts. I tried to pull back, but she wouldn’t let go. She gripped me tighter, one hand on my butt, one running up through my hair, so I could feel her fingernails scratching against my scalp.
The kids had all completely stopped talking. When Zooey spun me around again, I saw they were all staring at us. Even Shovelhead had broken off his steady stream of hilarity and just stood there with his mouth sagging open like a cave leading nowhere, while Zooey whirled me in another foot-scrabbling, butt-grabbing circle.
We spun around again, and that was when I saw it.
Up on stage, the camera crew had stopped filming the sets for Escape Claus and started taping us. I had no idea how long they’d been at it, but I was pretty sure they’d caught the whole thing on film.
My heel caught on a stack of wrestling mats in the corner, and Zooey and I both went tumbling backwards, me on my back, Zooey on top of me, knocking all the air out of my lungs. I stared straight up, fighting to catch my breath. But Zooey wasn’t getting up. Her glasses had slipped off, and her eyes bored straight down into mine, overloaded and blazing with that crazy blue fire.
“Zooey, what—”
She leaned down, narrowing the distance between us until I could feel her breath against my face, coming closer, her lips approaching mine.
“Lenny,” she said.
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
The music cut off.
The silence was deafening. It was like somebody had set off a bomb and left us lying there in the shock waves. Zooey sat up fast, some of the redness fading from her cheeks. She picked up her glasses and settled them back on her nose, then looked up at the stage, where Shovelhead was standing next to the iPod with his mouth still hanging wide open. For the first time in history, he didn’t have a word to say.
“Harlan?” Zooey’s eyes cleared, and she stood up, catching her breath. “What...was that?”
“I have no idea.”
She swallowed and took a step back. The other kids were still staring at us as she turned and ran toward the girls’ locker room.
“Zooey, wait—”
But she was already gone.
TWENTY-FOUR: ZOOEY
When I got to the locker room, I ran straight the showers, turned the water on freezing cold, and stood there, fully clothed, letting the icy needles spray down over my upraised face and trickle down my back. Normally I like my showers hot, but at the moment this was exactly what I needed.
My head finally started to clear. What exactly had just happened back there? Compared to this, getting sick felt normal. At least with the flu, you knew what to expect. I felt like somebody had kidnapped me and was dragging me through the most embarrassing circumstances imaginable:
A) I had grabbed Harlan’s butt during square dancing and tried to kiss him in front of TV news crew, who had probably filmed the whole thing.
B) That was pretty much it.
“Zooey?” asked a voice outside the shower.
I took off my glasses, wiped my eyes, and looked out. Aria was standing there in her Mrs. Claus gown, peering in at me with an expression of...concern.
“Sweetie, are you okay?”
I stepped out of the shower with my hair in my face, dripping on the floor, hugging myself and shivering. “Do I look okay?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. But we can fix you up. I’ve got some dry clothes in my locker, a hair dryer, and some revitalizing moisture mist. We could—”
“Aria, what are you doing?”
She stopped. “What do you mean?”
“You invited the news team here without telling me, you put on your costume and hijacked my interview...” My teeth were chattering, and I tried to get control of it, but that only made it worse. “Now you’re here pretending to be nice to me. I mean, what gives?”
She laughed without quite smiling, a cold chuckling noise that echoed off the wet tiles around us. “Zooey, no offense, but did you see yourself out there? What you were doing with Harlan Williams? I’d say you’re the one who should be explaining.”
I tried to answer but couldn’t think of anything to say. She didn’t seem to mind.
“Poor Zooey,” she said, and leaned forward to pat me on the shoulder. “It’s all right. I’m going to take care of everything. You’ll see.”
“Wait a second.” I pulled away from her. Scheming and being a prima donna I could handle, but this new shoulder-patting development was downright disturbing. “Aria, I don’t want you to take care of everything.”
“Zooey, I don’t think you know what you looked like out there. It wasn’t pretty.”
“I’m the writer and director. Looking pretty isn’t a prerequisite.”
“But being sane is,” she said. “And slow dancing with Harlan Williams in front of the entire gym class doesn’t exactly qualify as sanity, does it? Or have they changed the definition since I checked Webster’s Unabridged?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached into the pocket of her gown for a page of notes. “Now, I’ve got a few choreography ideas that I’d like to try out before this afternoon.”
I finished wiping off my glasses, put them back on, and stared at her. “Aria, what’s this really about?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You seem pretty well prepared to step into the limelight.”
“Rule number five’ she quoted. “Always be ready to assume a position of leadership.’
“Wait.” I gave her a look. “You read Martha Gelhorn-Smith’s memoir?”
“I listened to the audiobook.”
“Right,” I said, and managed a smile. Hearing her talk like this was actually weirdly reassuring, like whatever passed for normalcy had returned to our relationship. As long as she didn’t try to pat my shoulder again, I figured I’d be fine.
“Don’t you want to hear my ideas for Harlan’s
entrance?” Aria asked innocently.
“Maybe later.” The truth was that I still wanted to figure it out myself. “Just make sure you’re ready for the show at three thirty. It’s noon already.”
“Oh, I’ll be ready,” she said. “Just be sure you are.”
“I’m fine,” I said, just my stomach gave a long, loud growl.
It was almost lunch, and I suddenly realized that despite everything that had just happened, I was hungrier than I’d been in my entire life.
TWENTY-FIVE: LENNY
At first I thought the whole ovary was collapsing on top of us. Rippling waves of leukocytes came tumbling down from overhead like an avalanche, blocking out everything and stopping the party cold.
All at once the lights came up.
“Everything all right over here?”
“It’s Whitey,” the estriol molecule in front of me murmured, and all the other estrogen compounds started trying to look innocent and make excuses as hundreds of white blood cells—leukocytes in stark white membranes—came pouring in through the vessels, surrounding the hormones and herding them into the middle of the ovary.
“You,” the white blood cell in front of me barked, pointing straight at me with what looked like a combination of a billy club and a cattle prod. “Authorization, now.”
“I don’t—”
“He’s with me,” Lug said.
The leukocyte in charge didn’t look impressed. “Zip it, alkaloid. This isn’t your fight.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Virus!” another of them yelled, and the estrogens all backed away, creating an open space around Astro. I saw three leukocytes grabbing him and slamming him against the ovary wall. He didn’t look particularly intimidated. “Don’t waste your time,” he muttered as the white blood cells clapped cuffs to every pair of his tendrils. “You guys can’t touch me and you know it.”
Lenny Cyrus, School Virus (9780547893167) Page 9