Passing Strange (9 page)

I
DIDN’T KILL MYSELF BECAUSE
of unrequited love. I killed myself because I was depressed. People can argue the chicken-or-egg aspects of depression all they want; is depression triggered by life’s trials and tribulations, or do life’s trials and tribulations lead to depression? In my mind there’s no argument, no discussion. The blue fog existed before I did; it could come without warning, and when it did it annihilated everything. Maybe life could trigger it, but it was going to be there one way or the other.

But I didn’t kill myself because the one I loved didn’t love me. I don’t have any blame to assign. I killed myself because I’m sick.

Because the one I loved
did
love me. But I couldn’t let anyone find out.

* * *

He called me while I was walking around the mall, on a break. Christmas had come and gone and we were into a new year. I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered anyway. What can I say? I’m a lonely girl.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing?”

Not “How are you, this is Pete” or “You might not remember me, but…” I knew it was him the moment he spoke. That sort of self-assurance is hard to mistake.

“Hi, Pete,” I said. “I didn’t think you were going to call.”

His voice was a low, dark presence through the tiny cellphone speaker.

“Now why wouldn’t I call you?” he said.

“I don’t know.” Because they upped your meds? Because you are an insane, murderous freak?

“Can I come see you?” No footsie, no flirting, right to the point. Just straight ahead and damn the torpedoes—that was my experience with Pete.

“I’m at work,” I replied, all giggly, but trying not to overdo it.

“So quit.”

“I can’t quit, Pete!”

“Why not?”

Um, well, I
…

“I’m saving to get a place of my own,” I said, actually stammering. “Well, with a roommate or two. I need this job.”

“I want to take you for a drive.”

“A drive?”

“Yeah, a drive. I got a new car this summer and I want to see how you look in it.”

Bold, bold. “I can’t just leave.”

“You live with your parents now?”

“’Fraid so.”

“What time do you get out?”

“Four o’clock. When Tamara gets here.”

“I’ll see you then. Better call Tamara and tell her not to be late. Meet me out front.”

I simulated a sigh, like I was weighing this as a major life decision.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing. Okay, four o’clock.” Then, “I’d really like to see you, Pete.”

“Great. Later.”

And that was how I began dating Pete Martinsburg.

Of course, I wasn’t really
dating
him dating him. I was spying on him.

After Pete hung up I was feeling a little excited but also a little blue, as in blue-foggy blue. I went into the back room to open some freight. The box cutters that we use are six-inch-long metal rectangles, about an inch wide, that are coated with yellow rubber. You push at the back of the rectangle to unsheathe the blade, which is the corner of a razor held in place by a metal band. Opening my very first box, which turned out to be full of zombie skin products, I accidentally slashed right across the underside of my forearm about halfway between my elbow and my wrist. The cut was long and deep, and in the twenty seconds I stood there staring at it with what I’m sure was a stunned look on my face, it began to well up with blackish-green fluid.

I
think
it was an accident.

I wasn’t going to let a lethal cut spoil my date with Pete. I went into the bathroom, washed away the zombie blood (so much like caterpillar guts—good thing I’m pretty on the outside, because I’m nothing but gross on the inside) as best I could, and then used half a dozen bandages to try and press the edges of my skin together. I took my sleeves down and hoped for the best.

The whole point was that I was going to Solve the Mystery. I was going to Uncover Evidence. I was going to Blow the Lid off the Great Anti-Zombie Conspiracy. I was going to help bring Pete Martinsburg and his coconspirators to justice.

But things, as they tend to do, got out of hand.

Craig let me leave my shift fifteen minutes early. Ten of those minutes I spent in the bathroom trying to look alive. I’d already called my father to let him know that he didn’t need to pick me up because I was going out with friends. If I were alive, there would have been about three dozen follow-up questions—the who, what, where, when, and why of it all. Instead he told me to be careful, and to have fun.

Pete was waiting for me outside, leaning against a gleaming red sports car that was parked at the curb right by the front entrance. There was sand and salt and snow all over the roads, but his car was sparkly clean, the low purr of the engine like that of a just-fed cat. It was close to dusk but he was still wearing sunglasses, and I could see my reflection in their silver-mirrored surface.

“I left it running for you,” he said, “so you’d be warm.”

“Nice,” I said, indicating the car but still looking at him.

“C’mon,” he said.

He opened the door for me, just like a gentleman, and let his hand linger on the small of my back as he guided me expertly into his car.

“It still smells new,” I said, running my hand along the seat. I caught traces of cologne on top of the scent of leather.

“I like things to be clean,” he said, watching my legs as I tucked the hem of my skirt out of the doorway so he could seal me inside. I don’t blame him—we can all agree I have great legs.

He got in and drove off. Casually, as if he enjoyed the feel of the machine, and not like some knuckleheads do with their first four-wheel toy, peeling out and leaving an inch-thick streak of rubber on the pavement. He turned the radio on but didn’t blare the music as one of those commercial alternative bands with three words in their name came on. They were singing about something that seemed vaguely related to the life I’d left behind. We drove like that for awhile, not saying anything until he asked me if I was warm enough, his hand already on the temperature control.

Such a funny question! Warm enough for what? Well, sure, I’m warm enough!

Karen’s rules of flirting, Number seventeen: In order to appear both mysterious and exciting, avoid direct answers to the questions your target asks. Instead, answer ones the target hasn’t asked.

“It’s so nice in here,” I said, trailing the fingertips of my left hand along my shoulder strap and stroking the armrest with my right.

“Yeah,” he said, glancing over at me. And when I say “glancing at me” I actually mean my face—not my chest or my legs. I suppose I should be making him out to be the totally loathsome creep I know him to be, but in the interest of truth in advertising and full disclosure, I can’t do that. He was forward, sure, and maybe just a little aggressive, but in a way that was flattering and not stalker-y or gorilla-like at all. I know the difference; I’ve been with a lot of gorillas. He repulsed me, obviously, but not because of the way he was acting.

“So,” I said, “where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.”

We were both pros at this, I could tell. It was sort of like a complicated dance where your partner knows all of your moves.

A car cut him off on the highway and he didn’t even get angry. The other times I’d watched him—in school, or that time in the woods—you could almost see the anger, like a snake slithering beneath his skin. With me in the car he was calm, relaxed.

“I thought we’d go to Lake Oxoboxo. Have you ever been there?”

“Yes,” I said, and debated adding “many times,” which would have made him think I was, um, promiscuous. The lake—like secluded lakes all over the country—is our town’s make-out spot.

“I like it there,” he said, managing to make it sound like it was the lakeside ambiance he craved and not the opportunity to paw me in the backseat. “You said you went to school at Winford?”

“Yes,” I said, and I wondered if I should steer him away from the lake—not because I was afraid he was going to try to jump my bones (although the odds of that did seem likely), but because most of my friends were hiding inside of it.

“You guys always beat us in football,” he said. “Except this year.”

“I haven’t been to any games since I quit school,” I told him.

“Were you a cheerleader?”

“Nope, not me.”

“Huh,” he said, glancing at me. “I’m still trying to figure out where I’ve seen you before.”

“One of the games, probably,” I told him. “I used to go.”

We arrived at the lake. Pete pulled into a small dirt lot near the boat launch, next to a few snow-dusted picnic tables in front of the beach.

“You weren’t Gino Manetti’s girlfriend, were you?” he asked.

I shook my head, trying not to panic. What if he knew all the other players, studied their stats or whatever. “No. I used to go out with Jordan.” There were hundreds of Jordans in Winford, right?

“Huh. We beat Winford this year, though. Last game I’ll ever play.”

Pete kept the engine running, killing his headlights. The frozen lake was a luminescent blue in the darkness; the moon swallowed up by the clouds. I felt like I was stepping out onto that ice, with my next question.

“That’s the game that zombie played in, isn’t it?”

Pete nodded. He was looking out at the lake, not at me. “Tommy Williams played one series of downs,” he said. “What a hero.”

“You didn’t have to, like, shower with him, did you?”

This was me being all spy-girl. I wasn’t actually commenting on Tommy’s hygiene; he’s quite clean and uses the full line of Z products. Pete thought it was funny, anyhow.

“No. Thank God.”

“I’d hate to have one of them in the shower. In the locker room. Ick.”

“They snuck him out the door when the game was still going on, afraid people would attack him or something. People threw rotten fruit at us during the game.”

“I saw. That was pretty terrible.”

He looked at me with a weird smile on his face, as though he suspected that
I’d
been one of the fruit hurlers.

“Williams is in D.C. right now,” he said. “Trying to get government aid for zombies. There’s talk about him organizing a protest march or a rally or something like that, and people are actually coming out of the woodwork to support him.”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

“All because of my bad aim,” he said. Then, “You want to take a walk?”

“Sure.”

We exited his car, and I pretended to hug myself against the cold. Pete was wearing a thick ski jacket, and I was wearing a heavy coat, hat, and gloves. I looked like a proper little snow bunny, except that my breath wasn’t visible when I exhaled the way it would be if I were a, um, breather.

“I grew up in this town,” Pete said, as we walked down to the short dock. “Back before there were any zombies.”

He didn’t just say zombies, though. He made the term a little more colorful.

“Your school was one of the first to enroll dead kids, wasn’t it?” As if I didn’t know. That was why my parents had moved to Oakvale one summer after our first move to a remote town in Maine.

“Yeah. And then they started that stupid zombie-love class, which was like leaving out a piece of raw meat and waiting for the flies. Corpsicles from all over started coming to Oakvale.”

I was trying to think of something to say when he abruptly changed subjects.

“So,” he said. “What’s your deal?”

“My deal?”

“Yeah. How come you dropped out of school?”

I shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Grades?”

I licked my lips. “Let’s say discipline problems.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’m very undisciplined.”

I was dancing again. He was obviously intrigued by my discipline problems, but I didn’t want to have to create some elaborate story about how I was a candidate for reform school or anything.

Not that I didn’t have the material. I could have just told him about the months that led up to my suicide.

“So you were aiming at him?” I said. I figured he wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place if he didn’t want to talk about it. “The zombie?”

He stood on the edge of the dock, looking out over the lake. If he thought my segue was strange, he didn’t react.

“He was trying to get it on with a living girl. How repugnant is that?”

“Pretty repugnant,” I said, thinking how different his version of the story was from the one I’d heard.

“More zombies were coming. When I saw that I shot Layman instead of the zombie, I lost my head. He used to be one of my best friends. Layman, I mean.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. But he pretty much chose being friends with the walking corpses instead of me. Still, I wasn’t happy about shooting him, you know?”

We left the dock and walked along the short beach toward the woods, the frosted sand crunching under our feet.

It must have been freezing but Pete was too cool to show that temperature could affect him.

“After I shot him I just took off through the woods. TC—he’s this guy I used to hang out with—we got separated. I was attacked by a bunch of zombies. A freakin’ horde—seven or eight of them, at least. Some of them had knives. This one guy had really long hair and only half a face.”

He pointed to his scar. I thought it was weird that I could heal bullet holes but he’d have that scar forever.

“He gave me this.”

“Oh,” I said, hoping that my eyes looked wet and sympathetic. Tak never talked about his rendezvous, but I’d always had the impression that he was alone when he caught up to Pete in the woods. Neither George or Popeye was staying at the Haunted House then, and Tayshawn hadn’t allied himself with Tak yet. But being attacked by a ravenous horde of zombies sounds more impressive, doesn’t it?

“He said they were going to kill me. And they tried like hell, but I managed to overpower the one that cut me.”

Yeah, right
.

“It gave me enough time to get away. Corpsicles aren’t very fast.”

I looked at the tree line, pretending to be terrified.

“You don’t think there are any zombies there now, do you? In the woods?”