Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  Like clockwork, Brother Lee appears through the front doors and the girls point to the lecture hall building on the even side of the building, and he escorts them, herding them away from the boys. God, save the boys! The administration hates it when girls visit The Hall, unexpectedly.

  “Fine, fine honeys,” the black kid I sit next to in English says, also a poor bastard. He aims a fancy high-tech camera at me while I watch the girls—click, click, click. He wears a gold stud in his ear, a neon green tie knotted in a Limp Dick, and a red shirt.

  “Honeys?” I ask, pretending I haven’t noticed the girls, pretending I haven’t even noticed that he’s weirdly been photographing me.

  He lowers his camera.

  “The ladies in plaid—they’re nice. You know what I mean, little man?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I say. Mom calls me little man, but he doesn’t need to know that.

  “Meant nothing by it.” He extends his hand, like Mr. Rembrandt did to Dad. “Michael. You sit next to me in English.”

  “I like the way you said that,” I say, shaking his hand.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asks.

  “You said it like an asshole—you sit next to me, instead of I sit next to you, but whatever makes you feel like the boss.”

  “It’s always all about me,” he says.

  “I’m Jeremy,” I say. “And that?” I ask, meaning his fucking camera.

  “My hobby,” he says, snapping another picture. Still staring through his camera, he says, “You were late to class today.” Click, click, click. “What’s the deal with that?”

  “Fuck off,” I say, looking for my girl again. When I find her, she walks with a shake-and-bounce, entering the lecture-hall building, leaving Brother Lee behind to return to his office.

  “She’s a drama chick,” Michael says.

  “You don’t even know her,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “You got it wrong. You always get things wrong.” Click, click, click. “Those girls, those beautiful bitches over there, including the one you want to marry, they’re all in the drama department.”

  “That shit’s off the chain dizzle,” I say, but haven’t the faintest fucking idea what I just said, much less why I said it, and immediately believe with all sincerity that Michael is going to beat the living white hell out of me.

  Instead, he laughs in barks. “You’re a funny little man,” he says, taking a picture of a crushed can of soda in the gutter that looks like it has been used to smoke weed.

  “I said don’t call me that,” I say.

  “I’m heading over there,” he says, thumbing at the lecture hall.

  “Then head,” I say.

  “You have that bad of a day?” he asks. “Or you just on your period?” he asks with another click, click, click.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I say.

  “Want to hear a secret?” he asks.

  “Secrets make me nervous,” I say.

  “I’m African American.” He laughs. “I’m black, except it’s more like yo, yo, yo, I’m black,” he says, thugged-out and gangster-licious. “People picture me slinging dope down in the tenement villages across from Camden Yards.” He slaps me on the back. “Lighten up and laugh, Jeremy. Their ignorance gives me more swagger.”

  “Can you make me black?” I ask.

  Michael laughs. “Sorry, little man.”

  “You aren’t going to stop calling me that, are you?” I ask.

  “I’m not.” He swings his camera to the side and shows me a stack of postcard-size flyers. “Let’s go. You’re coming with me. We’re going to meet those girls and hand out these flyers.” He hands me a stack. “An exhibit of my work.” The flyer has his name spelled different than I expected, Mykel, printed with the event information over top of a collage of photos cut and spliced together. “Chicks dig black artists. Chicks also dig white dudes who look at art.” Michael (or Mykel) opens his bag to reload his camera with film.

  “This is a photography exhibit?” I ask.

  “I avoid explaining what I do, if I can.”

  “And you need my help why?”

  “What bus you take home?” he asks.

  “The 55,” I say. “When my Dad can’t pick me up.”

  “The M-T-A.” Mykel claps. “Going Jeremy’s way.” He claps again and sings. “Mass Transit. Yeah. Mass transit. Yeah. Mass transit. Yeah.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “That’s because you are wound way too tight.” He grabs my shoulders, like Brother Lee did earlier, and shakes me. “Loosen up, baby. Be black like me and loosen up. Swagger, son. Let’s see it.” He reassembles his camera and points the long lens at me like the scope of a gun. Click, click, click. “Come and meet the ladies with me.”

  “I should get home,” I say, as the 55 screeches up to the curb.

  “I’m going to ask you one last question—who is waiting for you at home that is so damn important that they can’t wait?” Mykel puts his arm around me. He smells like cherry flavored bubble gum, but he isn’t chewing anything. “It’s honey time, little man. Say it with me. Come on. Feel how the words fit in your mouth. What time is it?”

  “It’s honey time,” I say, not feeling any blacker.

  22

  The foyer to the lecture hall is empty and quiet and smells like Lysol, like it had just been mopped. Glass-enclosed trophy cases line the walls, housing elaborate and varied trophies topped with tiny golden men in various positions covering what looks like athletic as well as academic accolades. The trophies have multiple levels, some with tiny golden men kicking tiny golden balls or swinging tiny golden bats. There are tiny golden briefcases and tiny golden suits and ties. There are tiny golden onesies with matching headgear, and all throughout the cases arms are upthrust, claiming tiny, golden victory.

  A giant green plant guards the entrance to the lecture hall. Thick spear-shaped leaves aim like arrowheads from pencil-thin branches.

  “I keep expecting Brother Lee to leap out from behind something,” I say.

  “Did you not hear me? I’m black. Brother Lee and I are on a first name basis.”

  Mykel and I follow signs taped to the walls that have the word audition printed on them with arrows.

  “He lets you call him William?” I ask.

  “Better.”

  “Bill?”

  “Fucking weird, right? Bill—about as Asian as my asshole.”

  “He hates me,” I say.

  “He hates all the whiteys.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You prefer honkeys?”

  “Fuck you.”

  We pass the lecture hall and enter the theater where a long line of guys and girls extends out from the stage. The theater is forty rows deep, divided into five sections of red plush seats. Matching red curtains hang over the stage. Two teachers sit at a table at the front of the stage with their backs to the room, facing students performing dramatic monologues. One of them is Father Vincent Gibbs, the Byron Hall chaplain and faculty advisor. He wears all black with an all-black collar except for the exposed white collar where the necktie knot should be. Occasionally, Father Vincent fires off harsh hushes, reminding us that auditions are underway.

  “Please,” he says. “Please be respectful of others. Give the same level of respect for those up here auditioning as you expect to receive when it’s your turn to audition.” It’s hard to take him seriously when he scolds us, because he says everything with such a big, broad smile.

  Mykel moves in front of me and works the girls in line like a pro, approaching each with swagger, handing out his postcards, flashing his amazing smile. I can’t believe his swagger actually works with these girls. They’re drawn to him, surrounding him, speaking to him, wanting to be acknowledged by him.

  At the front of the stage, I see Zink, working his way up the line, the same way Mykel swaggers down the line. Zink shakes their hands, kisses their cheeks, and helps them with their monologues, giving poin
ters, wishing them luck, writing down numbers, running his hand over his buzzed head, like a dog.

  “Yo, J-Dog, come here.” Mykel grabs my shirt and pulls me into a circle of recent acquaintances. He speaks with a hint of a thuggish, gangbanger accent. “Ladies, this is my boy, J-Dog,” he says. “We go way back to the East Side Players.” Mykel introduces me to them by name, but I can’t remember them to save my life. The girls are beautiful, but that’s about all I can see. I can’t tell one from the other. Each holds one of Mykel’s postcards.

  “I have to know—is that the name on your birth certificate?” the girl, my girl, the girl with red hair says. Her skin is tan and smooth and looks like she could be on the cover of the summer issue of Cosmo easy. She smells like a garden, some kind of flower—a purple flower.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, pretending not to have heard her.

  “J-Dog,” she says. “That’s what Mykel said,” she says. “He called you J-Dog. Your parents must have had a difficult time compromising, if that’s what they settled on.”

  “Settled on?” I ask.

  “She’s blowing up your spot, little man,” Mykel says.

  “There are just so many names to pick from—J-Dizzle, J-Bomb, J-Diggity.” She pulls her amazing hair back into a ponytail.

  “J-Bomb?”

  “The name. Your name. Are you lost? Are you having a stroke?” She turns to Mykel. “Is your boy—is J-Dog having a stroke? He doesn’t seem okay.”

  “Nah, girl. J-Dog’s gangsta.” Mykel slaps my back. “We go way back.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.” She pokes me in the chest. Her nails are painted blue, or what Allure calls the newest in color—Blueberry Crush de Jour. “This is new for you, isn’t it?” she whispers. “Talking to girls?”

  “I’m a freshman,” I say.

  “You’re like a tiny little unicorn, all brand new and shiny.”

  “Are you auditioning for a play?” I ask.

  “I’m not an actress, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Then why are you here?” I ask.

  “I really don’t think I have ever met anyone quite like you before,” she says.

  “What I wanted to say was that—what I meant to say,” I say, but stop saying anything and look to my feet and see her feet too. She is wearing that same Blueberry Crush du Jour on her toenails. “I saw you.” I rub my eyes. “Yesterday. Before school and then again after.”

  Big, white, open circle spots flash and pop all around me. I smell purple flowers. I feel wrong. Light fills my head.

  “You feel okay? Because you don’t look okay.” She postures herself, her white shirt opening a bit, enough that I can see a white bra.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t feel well.” My dick shivers. White bra. Light in my head. My legs crumble. The floor rushes toward me, but Zink and Mykel grab me by my arms before I completely collapse and drag me to a seat.

  “Barks, baby, you good?” Zink asks. “Tilt your head back.” He presses a tissue to my nose. “Your nose, it’s bleeding.”

  Mykel moves back to the line of honeys, working his magic, getting digits, pretending he doesn’t know me at all. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done the same thing.

  “What happened?” I asked. I tilt my head back and touch my hand to my nose and see blood and the blood continues to gush. “What is this?” The mortification of the whole scene smothers me in sadness and embarrassment. I hate myself. “This never happens.” I hate everyone in this room. “Jesus.” Hate. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “You don’t need to bleed to make me notice you,” my girl says sitting next to me with a handful of tissues.

  Zink excuses himself, slapping me on the shoulder.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I ask her.

  “Who said anything about hate?” she asks.

  “Doesn’t seem anything like like.”

  “You like me?” she asks, smiling for the first time, but not the smile I want.

  “Honestly?” I ask.

  “Truthfully,” she asks.

  “My name is Jeremy.”

  “I thought it was J-Dog.” She hands me a fresh tissue. “I remember you from yesterday,” she says.

  “Tell me about your play?”

  “It’s about a woman who leaves her family. She leaves her children. She leaves her husband. She’s tired of being someone’s pet. It’s called A Doll’s House. I’m the student director. I assist the director.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with hating me?” I ask.

  The line of guys and girls moves along without any interruption from my bloody nose. Zink and Mykel do their swagger thing. Plaid skirts. Plaid shirts.

  “I don’t hate you,” she says, “but all of this blood and bleeding doesn’t make me like you all that much better.”

  “This is the first time that has ever happened to me,” I say.

  “Isn’t that what you guys always say—that this never happens to you? Don’t you want to save that excuse for our first time together?”

  Oh. My. Holy. Crap. I am gutshot speechless.

  Someone claps. Someone claps loud. In succession. From the stage. Standing at the edge of the stage. I think it’s part of a monologue, but when I steady my sight and open my eyes, waiting for the remaining spots to clear away, I see him. It’s not the priest, but the other one, standing, staring, clapping—Mr. Rembrandt.

  “Ms. Aimee White, by all means, please take your time. I have all the time in the world,” he says. “Tend to the wounded and whenever you’re ready, let me know, let us all know and we will continue. Am I making myself clear, Ms. White?”

  “Mr. Rembrandt,” I say.

  “The director,” she says.

  “Mr. Barker,” Mr. Rembrandt says.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do next. I drop my hand from my nose and tuck the bloody tissues into my pocket and do the only thing I can think to do—I stand and raise my hand to my forehead, my fingers tight together and stiff, and salute him with a chop. Then as she rushes toward the stage with her back to me, I yell, “I LIKE YOU, AIMEE WHITE.”

  Jeremy Barker is black and has that thing called swagger.

  III

  SHAUN OF THE DEAD

  (Released September 24, 2004)

  Directed by Edgar Wright

  Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

  23

  On the 55 home, I freak out about Aimee. I don’t freak out, like some kind of spaz and nerd all over the passengers. But I do replay the past two days in my head and try to guess what will happen next.

  My bus stops at a community college near my house where the remnants of a small carnival are in the process of deconstruction. A Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl fold up and are loaded into tractor trailers. Wooden booths break down into a pile of planks. A canvas tent used to cover the food court is uprooted pole by pole.

  Our driver opens the door and greets the students and teachers stepping inside.

  The last time I went to a carnival like this my Dad taught me all about my penis. And told me he had killed people. And showed me how to shoot a gun. This was a very big day.

  I remember it almost too well. We stood in line for hot dogs and funnel cakes.

  I poked my penis. “Is this a bird?” I said, still poking. “People in my class call it a bird. Is it?” I asked. “A bird?” Poked some more.

  “It’s not a bird,” he said. “It’s a penis.” He asked me what I wanted on my hot dog and I told him just pickle relish. He made a face. He only ever ordered his with spicy mustard. “Jeremy,” Dad said. “You know it’s not called a bird, right?”

  A kid in my gym class, Jerome, had told me that my barn door was open earlier that week and that my bird was going to fly away if I didn’t close it. I didn’t want to tell Dad everything Jerome had said. I didn’t want him to yell at me for leaving my barn door open.

  “So it’s not a bird?” I asked.

  “Jesus. No.
It’s not a bird,” he said. “Am I making sense? Your penis can’t fly. It doesn’t have wings. Because it’s not a bird. Your penis is just a normal penis like any other penis.”

  “My penis is like your penis?” I asked.

  “Smaller than mine,” he said. “But it’ll get bigger as you grow.” Dad warmed up to the subject as we stood in line. He said that only boys had them. He said that girls had less to work with and had something called penis envy. “They have vaginas,” he said. “They each have a vagina. But they wish they had what we have. The dong.”

  “They each have a vagina,” I repeated. “What’s the dong?”

  “It’s just another name for a penis. Dong. Pecker. Dick. Johnson. Snake. Penis.”

  “But not a bird?” I asked.

  “Not a bird,” he said.

  We got our hot dogs and walked to a tent where a man encouraged people to shoot a rifle at alien-faced balloons.

  “Baltonam is under attack,” a born-and-bred Baltimore man said with a hillbilly highway accent, in a backwards O’s hat. “Extraterrestrial warfare has begun in the streets of Baltonam. This is a call to arms, hon. Grab a gun and join the fight. Baltonam needs your help. Five bucks for five bullets. Pop three balloons, kill three aliens, and win one prize.” Gigantic panda bears dangled from hooks above the counter of rifles. “Be a hero, not a zero.” He held a microphone and wore an apron stuffed with cash. His face and forearms were sunburned red. He wiped sweat from under his eyes and unfolded a fat wad of green to make change for some people who stepped up to the counter. “Baltonam. The last stand. Be a hero, not a zero.”