Adventures of a Middle School Zombie

by Scott Craven

  As soon as Robbie had run out of Woodshop, Mr. Anderson walked over (he never rushed anywhere, even when blood was flying), looked at me, looked at the finger near the saw, looked at me again.

  “Circle of Shame,” he said. “Now.”

  “But I just cut off my finger!” I said. “I should be going to a hospital.”

  He picked up the severed finger and brought it to about three inches from his left eye, examining it for a few seconds. He handed it to me.

  “That finger’s been torn, not cut,” he said. “I have seen enough zombie movies to know the undead can survive such an inconsequential injury.”

  I silently cursed Hollywood, especially George Romero.

  “You’ll live,” Mr. Anderson said. “And you will clean this up. You will make sure to dispose of it in such a way that it poses no danger to others. You will then spend the remainder of the period in the Circle of Shame. And if due to your carelessness I have another zombie in my class, you will be spending the rest of the semester in the Circle of Shame. Any questions. No. Good.”

  After cleaning the floor and band saw, then wrapping up my finger, I spent the rest of the period in the Circle of Shame, probably the only kid in Pine Hollow history to be punished for losing a finger. Chris came over when Mr. Anderson wasn’t looking and gave me a fist bump.

  “That’s a game changer,” he said. “I just hope it works out in your favor.”

  When the bell rang, Mr. Anderson told me to report to Mr. Buckley’s office “for further debriefing.”

  Now I faced Principal Buckley.

  “I will ask you one more time,” he said. “Do you know why you are here?”

  “No, sir. All I know is that I suffered a horrible accident in Woodshop and since then I’ve been punished.”

  “Well that’s, as you know, you are not … ” he stammered. “You are a special case. Due to your, eh, medical condition, I must take other aspects into consideration.”

  “What do you mean, my ‘medical condition’?”

  “Mr. Rivers, when you came to this school, everyone was briefed on your unique physical state,” Principal Buckley said. “I do not pretend to understand it, but I do know it gives you various, hmm, abilities, which other students do not possess.

  “For example,” he continued, looking at a pile of papers in front of him, “in third grade, you demonstrated an ability to bend back your fingers until they touched your wrist. Three students suffered broken fingers when trying to emulate your stunt.”

  I really hadn’t understood then what it meant to be undead. I’d had to send each of those kids apology notes and visit their parents to explain how I never meant to hurt them and would never do that again.

  “In sixth grade, a similar incident occurred, and one boy broke two fingers and dislocated his thumb.”

  OK, I had meant that one. This kid Bruce had been riding me all year, not because of what I was, but because I pretty much sucked at sports at the time—once he even paid a kid to take me onto his basketball team in PE, just so Bruce’s team wouldn’t get stuck with me. His catchphrase was “Zombies can’t jump.” Which is true, but after one game I made up this stuff about how the farther you could bend back your fingers and thumb, the better you would be at sports when you were an adult. He lost.

  “In fifth grade, you were witnessed jumping off the top of the jungle gym after telling those nearby to ‘Listen for the splat.’ You suffered … let’s see here.” He flipped the page. “‘Traumatic injuries to knees, hips, ribs, and internal organs that ordinarily would have required immediate surgery.’ Yet the children present said you rolled up your pants to expose bone.”

  I laughed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said I exposed bone.” I laughed again.

  “Mr. Rivers, I use this to point out that you feel little if no pain, and there is certainly no evidence in any of these records of any profuse bleeding. Yet I am told that today … let me see … that ‘blood spurted as if from a fountain.’ You can see my problem with these inconsistencies.

  “Mr. Rivers, would you please roll up the sleeve of your left arm.”

  Crap. There was only one thing to do. Time to play the zombie card.

  “Mr. Buckley, even I don’t know why my body does the stuff it can,” I said. “I wish I did. More than anything, I want to be normal. And I just want to be treated normally, like every other kid in this school. I mean, if this had been anyone else, wouldn’t I be in the hospital by now?”

  “Mr. Rivers, I think that is beside the point—”

  “Is it? Isn’t that just the point? That you treat me based on who I am, not on my disabilities?”

  “But they’re not really disabilities.”

  Got him.

  “But Mr. Buckley, each year I get to skip the physical at school. And for annual photos, I was the only boy allowed to put on makeup so I would blend in more. My mom says it’s because of the American Disability Act—”

  “You mean the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

  “So you have heard of it.”

  I swear I saw a thin sheen of sweat break out on Principal Buckley’s forehead.

  “Look,” he said, putting the papers into a pile and closing the file folder. “I never agreed to have you at this school. But I didn’t have a choice. You were shoved down our throats. So let me make this clear, Mr. Rivers. I will tolerate you because I have to. But that does not mean I have to welcome you. I will be keeping a much closer eye on you. And the next time you step out of line, you will be punished to the limit, particularly if it means suspension. Or expulsion. So watch yourself. Now you’re excused. I have to get to the hospital to visit Mr. Zambrano.

  “Remember, this is not over.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “He did what again?”

  “Ran out. Screaming.”

  “Like a little girl.”

  “Yeah. But that’s an insult to little girls.”

  Anna smiled in a way that seemed like it would protect me from whatever evil was going to come my way for finally standing up to Robbie.

  We sat at a picnic table in Make-Out Park just a little ways from school. Its real name was McSouderman Park, named after some guy who might as well have invented playground equipment, for all we knew. Everyone called it Make-Out Park, and I probably don’t have to explain why.

  It seemed like days had passed since a blood-covered Robbie ran screaming like a little girl out of Woodshop. But it was only that afternoon, a few hours ago.

  “Did it all work just like we tested it?” Anna said.

  “Pretty close,” I said. “It took me a little longer to get the blood flowing, but after that it was even better than I could have imagined.”

  “Then it must have been amazing, because you were imagining a lot.”

  I was. I was imagining even the most gloriously stupid stuff. Like, what if I was able to turn Robbie into a zombie?

  “What if I really could turn Robbie into a zombie?”

  “Huh?” Anna lifted her eyebrow as if to say, “Are you crazy?” But all I saw was a girl who looked even cuter when she raised an eyebrow.

  “How else would he know how I felt unless he took a few steps in my shoes? Slow, lurching steps?”

  As I’d walked to the principal’s office after I sent Robbie to the hospital, I pictured what a Rombie would look like. Dull, stupid, gray.

  Just like Robbie. But gray.

  “Think about what you’re saying,” Anna said. “Let’s really imagine a school where Robbie is a zombie. But first, I want to tell you about Monty and Tran.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Right, which is why I am going to tell you about them if you’d stop interrupting.”

  The raised eyebrow again. Cool.

  “Monty and Tran were foreign exchange students at my old school last year. To make them feel at home, they had the same teachers, the same English tutor, the same after-school activities. They were put toget
her to do all sorts of projects on China. At lunch, the cafeteria lady would wait for them at the end of the line and hand them chopsticks. But the real kicker was near the end of the year when we had Chinese Appreciation Day and—”

  “All that sounds nice,” I said.

  “What did I say about interrupting?” Arched eyebrow again. OK, I’m good.

  “Sorry.”

  “Chinese Appreciation Day. Everyone was waving Chinese flags during the assembly as Monty and Tran went onstage to talk about their home countries. Monty told us all about Vietnam. Tran talked about growing up in South Korea.”

  “I thought they were Chinese.”

  “So did everyone. Turns out Monty and Tran had very little in common and really did not like one another all that much. They had a miserable school year.”

  “Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with Robbie being a zombie?”

  “You two would be the only zombies in school. One zombie is an oddity. Two is a minority. You guys would be homeroom buddies. Lab partners. You’d have your own table at lunch. You’d be together in every class. You’d be the only two members of the Zombie Club. Because that is what school administrators do. To make you feel comfortable.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want Robbie to be a zombie. I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  For a second or two, I hoped Robbie was OK. Even fully recovered.

  “Besides,” Anna said, “I am sure there is better zombie company out there besides Robbie.”

  I wasn’t really paying attention to what she was saying. I was still thinking about Robbie, wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have pranked him like that.

  Wait, what was I thinking? It was a prank. I could no more turn anyone into a zombie than a bite from a dachshund could turn someone into a wiener dog.

  Ha, Robbie as a wiener dog.

  “What are you smiling about?” Anna said. “Having zombie company?”

  “Huh, what?” Wiener-dog Robbie. That would be cool.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luke looked at the flyer, looked at me, back to the flyer, back to me.

  “Why would you suddenly change your mind now?” he said.

  “Because things are finally dying down,” I said.

  “I get it. Funny.”

  “Dude, I gave up undead puns years ago. No, I really just want to blend in for a while. Besides, did you notice the fine print before? That’s a direct shot at me.”

  I had shared with Luke my doubts about the dance. I really liked Anna, but how would she be treated when everyone saw us at the dance together, like a couple? Sometimes I got the feeling even Luke was getting tired of being a bit of an outcast, and he was my best friend.

  Luke looked at the flyer again, posted in the cafeteria. In big black letters at the top it said, “Fall Dance.” Below that, “Let warm hearts cure the season chill,” and at the bottom, in tiny print, was “‘Warm hearts’ does in no way imply the exclusion of those with unwarm hearts.”

  Luke peeled the tape from the bottom two corners and folded the paper just above the fine print. He slowly tore it across the fold, crumpled the strip into a ball, and tossed it into the trash can.

  “There, better?”

  “Oh, yeah, much better. Now I feel so welcome.” Word of my run-in with Principal Buckley had spread quickly, thanks to a memo he’d sent out to teachers the following week (with orders to post it in every classroom). In it, he ordered teachers to ensure all classroom activities were “undead-friendly” and indicated that failure to include the “heartbeat-challenged” would be subject to penalty. And penalty meant one of two things: supervising detention for a week or coaching the teams for the annual end-of-semester flag football game between the seventh and eighth graders. Actually, the penalty was coaching the seventh graders, since the team’s only goal each year was to survive with no debilitating injuries.

  Not that I had been blending in before, but the memo made it a lot more difficult. That, and the return of Robbie.

  The news of the Bloodiest Period (leave it to middle-school kids to give it a double meaning) spread even more quickly than Principal Buckley’s memo. What surprised me was the number of comments on Facebook that said Robbie had it coming. As Pine Hollow’s No. 1 bully, he’d made quite a few enemies among the physically weaker set, for who it seemed I was now the poster boy. The week Robbie was gone was one of the best of my life, up there with the time Mom and Dad and I went to Hawaii, and I snorkeled without actually needing a snorkel.

  I’d kept up my disinformation campaign on Facebook, updating the status to “Undead and loving it” and posting photos and comments from some of Hollywood’s best zombies. My favorite was by the half-zombie from The Walking Dead, who commented, “Still trying to pull myself together.”

  The Wikipedia page was not nearly as popular. Someone added a section called “This is total bull,” which quoted a bunch of made-up scientific studies to disprove the existence of zombies entirely (I took offense). I did the only thing I could do. I added an “Oh yeah?” section with additional zombie proof added by fictional researchers. It was almost as if you couldn’t trust Wikipedia.

  I went on Twitter once or twice a day searching for zombie-related tweets. The traffic was especially hot on the day after the prank, and this was the cleverest: “Rob Zombie? Out. Rob is Zombie? In. #undeadrevenge.”

  But it came to a dead stop the day after with this one: “@deadjed, you are going to be all the way dead when I get back. Your little friends too. #nozombieshere.”

  That extra space I’d been getting in the hallway disappeared with this tweet. I overheard the conversations at lunch and in the hallways. Robbie was just fine. Better than ever, in fact, and completely zombie-proof.

  The next day, this tweet: “How many zombies does it take to change a light bulb? None, it’s lights out for them. #reallydeadjed.”

  Then this: “If you cut a zombie, does it bleed? Let you know Thursday when I’m back. #remembertodismember.”

  On Wednesday, Luke said, “I was just thinking how Twitter is for losers. I’m going to sign off for good. You should, too; what a waste of time.”

  “Luke, I’ve already seen Robbie’s tweets,” I said.

  Luke shook his head. “Anybody can talk tough on Twitter.”

  “And Robbie can punch tough in person.”

  “There is that.”

  I’d made Robbie look like a fool in front of everyone who feared him. He had only despised me before that. Now he hated me. He was going to do whatever it took to make my life—or at least my undeath—miserable. I’d known payback was coming the moment I started thinking of ways to stand up to Robbie. But that didn’t make it any less frightening.

  Thursday morning I called Luke, told him I wasn’t going to school. Just wasn’t feeling right, I said.

  “That’s how you feel every day,” Luke said. “Goes with the zombie territory.”

  I smiled for what I figured would probably be the last time in a very long while.

  “True, but today is a little worse than usual.”

  “Jed, I’ll be there for you this time. I promise. Going to go full Luke on them.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  He laughed, then got way too serious. “No way you’re going to face this alone. Let me come over, we’ll head out, see what happens. We’ll get through it. If you’re alone, I don’t like your odds.”

  “Like I said, staying home today, but thanks.”

  I hated lying to Luke, but I had to do this alone. Otherwise, it was only going to get worse.

  I waited a half hour and headed out. I knew Luke would already be in class. Hey, maybe Robbie would get tired of waiting. Maybe he would be spotted by a teacher and forced to go to class.

  But probably not. Sure enough, Robbie was in front of the school to meet me. Joe and Ben, too, who’d kept themselves scarce while Robbie was laid up fighting nonexistent zombie germs.

  Everyone e
lse was in class. It was just us. Cozy.

  “If it ain’t Dead Jed,” Robbie said, stepping up and putting his face inches from mine. “I’ve been looking forward to this, Zom-boy.”

  Suddenly, I felt an intense pressure just below my ribcage, and then a fire racing through my chest. Robbie stepped back, revealing the hilt of a small screwdriver sticking out my left side. I grabbed it and pulled, two inches of almost needle-thin metal coming out.

  He stabbed me. That SOB just walked up and stabbed me.

  Robbie’s smile widened to an impossible length. “I learned some really cool things while I was getting stuck like that in the hospital,” he said. “Did you know that red-colored syrup mixed with a small amount of the stuff that apparently keeps you going really isn’t harmful? And that it only takes several days of testing and probing and dissecting to figure that out?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

  “The worst thing you can give me,” he said, “is a rash. I can live with that. Which is more than you can say.”

  He turned and walked away, followed by Ben and Joe. Joe looked back, pointed his index finger at me, and curled it, as if pulling a trigger.

  I could only stand there. I looked at the hole in my shirt, conscious of the screwdriver in my hand. I centered the blade over the hole and plunged it back in. A shockwave of pain disappeared almost as soon as it swept through me. I dropped my hand, the screwdriver still buried in my torso. I played with the idea of going to class just like that before I took it out and put it in my pocket.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As excited as I was to go to the dance with Anna, I was giving it much more serious thought as the day approached. I remembered how nervous I was in the few days after I asked her out. I didn’t even want to talk to her, fearing she would use it as an excuse to change her mind. I imagined it would go something like this:

  Me: “Hi.”

  Her: “I don’t want to go to the dance with you.”

  Me: “OK.”