Zombie (24 page)

An all too familiar song starts and that wicked-sick bass line drops in and it’s like crack to the dancing fool kids. Everyone—no matter who they are and what they’re wearing—collapses onto the dance floor, doing the Michael Jackson zombie stroll until the lyrics start and a giant sing-along ensues. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” My body can’t deny “Thriller” and I collapse onto the dance floor and do the damn zombie shuffle, shoulder drop and all, with everyone
else. The song ends and for the fleeting moment everything was better than sixty/forty.

When I was a kid, Dad showed me the film version of the music video and it scared the living shit out of me. It was one of the earliest zombie movies I had seen. I spent that night sleeping on the floor with Dog because I believed that Dog would protect me while I slept and would scare any dancing zombies away. Little did I know that Dog doesn’t get up for shit during the night. When I woke, I was back in my bed and the trees from outside cast shadows across the ceiling that looked like demon claws. Dad had found me on Dog’s pillow and carried me back to bed. The next day I watched the video again and watched it again and then I wanted the whole album and the “Thriller” poster. I asked Mom if I could put the poster on the ceiling of my room and after much whining, she agreed. I positioned it right where the shadows crept into my room and this is how my posters on the ceiling began.

Jackson’s cooz corner isn’t empty. There’s a guy sitting in a chair pressed against the wall with a girl sitting on his lap, her back to him as she grinds down on him. The girl has long blonde hair and wears a tiny white babydoll T-shirt and pink short-shorts. And of course she’s grinding down on none other than Cam Dillard’s lap. And he’s dressed like a plaid-inspired optical illusion. Fuck me. The sight of them dance-humping in the chair takes me out of myself like a ghost, and the next thing I know I am right at their side.

“I hear your Mom takes it up the ass like a champion,” I say, surprising myself that I even said anything at all. I give him two thumbs up.

“Who’s a champion?” he asks.

“Your mother,” I say. More thumbs.

The music fades and the girl climbs off.

“Say it again,” Cam says, leaning closer. “Say it.”

“I said”—my heart slams my ribcage—“your mother takes it up the ass like a motherfucking champion.” I grab my dick. “She calls me her big dick daddy from Cincinnati.”

Cam swings at me, but misses. He jumps to his feet, his hands poised to grab me and beat the living fuck out of me, except he freezes when he sees me—a chair hoisted over my head, daring him to come closer.

“Call me faggot again,” I say. “Go on. Say it.”

“Do yourself a favor,” he says, “and start running.” Cam’s hands are fists set at his sides.

“Suck my dick,” I say and chuck the chair to the floor. It crashes and slides along the floor until it hits the wall and flips over loud enough for the entire room to go completely quiet. A princess spotlight cuts over from the stage to Cam by the vending machines. He picks up the chair and sets it upright. He raises his hand as if to accept blame.

Father Vincent grabs me by the arms as I try and pass him.

“Jeremy, slow down. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I have to go, Father,” I say. I look back. Brother Lee rushes toward Cam, trying to cut off the inevitable, waving at the room, shouting, “No dork. No dork!”

“Jeremy, talk to me,” Father Vincent says. “I can help you.”

“I wish I could. I do. Please, Father,” I say. “If you want to help me, please let me go.”

Cam steps back into the crowd to slip away, but Brother Lee grabs his shirt and pulls him back, then waves his arms at DJ Doug to start the next song. But it’s too late. It starts as several, single voices—loud ones. Then mob mentality takes hold and like a wave rolling towards shore, the distinct voices become pockets, which grow together into a monstrous
dork
thundering down on top of Cam with every variation imaginable.

Finally, the next song drops and the dorking stops and everyone resumes their clothed-fornication, but the damage has already been done.

Suck it, fucko!

M
y plan is to hide away in my stall of solitude, but a group of girls pour out from my bathroom, which has been temporarily converted into a ladies room. The computer printed sign on the door says
LADIES ONLY
. The bathroom where Zink and Paul did what they did the other day. I’m frozen, stuck, glued, nailed, fucked with nowhere to hide, when a posse of girls crash into me, knocking my ass down. The posse tramples over me, steps around me, continuing down the hallway, out of my bathroom and out of my life. Some of the posse bitches wear miniskirts, which allows me to catch a few fast moving glimpses of skimpy underwear.

“Is this a fucking roller derby,” I say. “Watch where you walk. Jesus.”

“Does it feel good to have been shitkicked by a harem of teenage girls?” a girl says, standing behind me. Her hair is a dark and heavy red, her lips too, her skin still tan from summer. Her shirt has sparkling letters across the front that says:
Do you have an older brother
? She wears blue jeans that flare out at the bottom. She smells like purple flowers. “You might just be the luckiest guy at this whole damn mixer,” she says.

“Aimee White,” I say. My smile’s so wide it hurt.

“ ’Tis true and don’t forget, that’s
Aimee
spelled the weird way,” she says. Aimee holds her hands down and I grab them. She pulls me up and we come together and brush against each other. “The infamous Jeremy Barker. J-Dog.”

I definitely brushed against her boob—big time. I got boob.

“My Dad says that when a girl body-checks you to the floor
and causes chronic nosebleeds, that she’s got a thing for you,” I say.

“Jeremy,” she says. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“You smell terrific,” I say.

“Your nose is bleeding,” she says. She taps her nostril. “Again.”

I touch mine and see it—ripe red blood rushing out. Aimee digs through her silver-studded, black purse and hands me a tissue. I tilt my head back.

“This is embarrassing,” I say. “I feel like a fucking loser.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” she asks. “You do get an extraordinary amount of nosebleeds though, I’ll give you that. Do all the ladies have the pleasure of assisting you with your bleeds? Or just me?”

“Who has ever heard of getting nosebleeds only around girls?” I dab and look at the bloody tissue. “Only around
hot
girls?”

“Cute,” she says.

“I’m trying. It’s tough to look cute when you’re bleeding.”

“Did you know that nosebleeds are broken blood vessels?” she asks.

“All I know is that I get them whenever you’re around or whenever I think about you in any way.” Neither of us says a thing. “I think about you a lot.”

“They’re only blood vessels, dear,” she says. “I’m not magic.”

“What causes them to break?” I ask.

“Why does anything break?” she asks. “They’re too weak and they burst.”

“Will you walk me outside?” she asks.

Ever the gentleman, I offer her my elbow, and she accepts, ever the lady, and we leave together, embracing the warm night, while I seal off the blood leak—again.

D
isappearing is in the air tonight. Outside, it looks like a high school used car lot. Cars parked everywhere, parents waiting for their kids, searching for their kids, leaning against trunks, circling the school, hanging out of driver’s side windows. Names being called. It feels like a disaster has happened and this is the depot where the survivors are kept for identification. A car screeches to a stop and a guy gets out and thanks his friend for getting him back to school before his parents came to pick him up. He thanks the friend for taking him; that it was the sickest thing he has ever seen, that he can’t believe that they got in. The car drives away and the guy disappears around the corner of the school.

“What’s Prudence like?” I ask. “Because we worry about you girls over there. Those plaid skirts and white blouses. We worry.”

“We worry that you Byron Hall boys think you actually have a shot with Prudence girls like us,” she says.

“It feels good to be around you.”

“My mom’s car is over there.” Smoke pumps from a tailpipe. “I asked her to wait. No parents allowed,” she says, shaking her finger in a funny way.

I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t make me sound like a fuckwad. This is the moment that counts, the moment where the man steps up and makes the grand gesture, where he says that thing that makes the girl swoon or whatever, but I don’t have anything swoonable. She was the whole reason I came out tonight and I didn’t plan a damn thing.

“Well, this is sufficiently awkward,” she says. “I’m going to leave now. Goodbye, Jeremy. It was wonderful to meet a nice Byron Hall boy. See you around campus maybe. And maybe you should start carrying around napkins.” She taps her nose.

“Wait,” I say, thumbing the tissue she gave me. “I’m not finished yet.” I’m filled with a foggy sense of myself. I can hear heartbeats all around me, some of them are mine. “There’s more. I have more.”

“More of what exactly?” Aimee stands in the street, waiting, but I say nothing. She finally walks back to me. “Here’s some friendly advice, Jeremy. When a girl stops for you,” she says, “you better have something to say and it better be good.”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

“That’s a good start. Always tell us how pretty we are.”

“I love your hair, the smell of your hair.”

“A little weird, but that will work for some girls. What else do you got?”

“I want to call you. Can I call you?” I am an enormous retard on roller skates.

“That wasn’t half bad,” she says.

“I can call you?”

“You can call me,” she says, “but you have to do one more thing for me.”

“Hit me with it,” I say. “Anything.”

“Get down on one knee and ask me again.” She walks toward me. “Go on now. Get down on one knee and ask me again.” Her arms hang by her sides, her hip cocked.

“You really want me to do this?”

“Really,” she says.

I kneel, proposal-like and take Aimee’s hand in my own hand and say, “Aimee, can I call you sometime?”

“Cell phone,” she demands.

I fumble for it in my pocket and hand it over. Aimee punches her number into my address book. She walks backwards. “You did real well.” She continues to walk away. “Very, very well.”

“Why did I have to get on one knee?”

“Because a girl has so few opportunities to be taller than a boy,” she says. “Call me.” She skips to her car.

This is what a happy Jeremy looks like.

A
imee exits the parking lot with her mom and I am left behind. I call Dad to come pick me up, but all I hear is screaming. It’s not Dad screaming, but someone behind Dad screaming—a deep, and gross, and pleading scream.

I walk away from the building and plug my open ear.

I call him Dad.

I say his name.

He doesn’t respond to either.

There is a scuffle that sounds like someone is fighting the phone. Then, the line goes dead. I call Dad back, but his voicemail picks up.

Ballentine is gone again, like vapor.

Z
ink emerges from the back of the school and offers to take me home. He drives a blue Oldsmobile, which I’m not entirely sure they even still make. It’s a giant blue box with an enormous windshield. The floor is clean in the front, but the backseat is covered in blankets and empty soda bottles and plastic bags from grocery stores.

“Your car smells funny,” I say. “Like oranges and maple syrup.”

“That’s the smell of sex,” Zink says.

“Sex?”

“Hot sex.”

“You had sex with The One?”

“No. Not with her. With someone else.”

“Paul,” I say. “I didn’t know you had a car,” I say.

“What was with the kneeling back there? You two set a date already?”

“I did what I had to do to get her number,” I say. “Game on.”

Zink looks at me like I just told him I killed a man. “Barks, you’re a crazy motherfucker. You got digits. Game fucking on,” he says, pulling out of the school circle and into traffic. “What did you think of your first mixer?”

“I survived,” I said. “I went after Cam.”

“Tell me you didn’t do something stupid.”

“I told him that his mother took it up the ass like a champion and then I threw a chair at him so he would get dorked.”

“Why would you slap the hornets’ nest like that?” he asks.

“I’m tired of being the one getting slapped. Besides, Frank took those fuckers down earlier. Why can’t I?”

“Jeremy,” Zink says. “Listen to me. Frank’s hands are registered with the State of Maryland as deadly weapons. That’s why. He can kill a man with his bare hands … literally. That’s why. He knows how to do that kind of shit.”

“I’m not worried anymore,” I say. “Cam’s a pussy.”

“Maybe so, but he’s a pussy with a posse and you are a general without an army. I’m not saying to run from the prick, but telling him that his mom …”

“… takes it up the ass like a champion …”

“Jesus.” Zink shakes his head and laughs. “What the fuck made you say that?”

“He reminded me of my brother and I really hate my brother.” I roll down the window and hang my arm outside, feel the air pass over and through my fingers, the warm air cold at high speeds.

“You’ve got balls, Barks.
Huevoes muy grande
. In one night, you got digits, managed to dork the king of the jocks and embarrass his ass for the second time in one day.” Zink guides the car through empty streets, driving faster than any other car. “
Huevos grandisimo, niño
.”

“Her name is Aimee White,” I say. “When you calling her?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is that a question or a fact?” Zink asks. “Too soon?”

“Tomorrow is for emo puppy lovers. Tomorrow is for people who want to wear matching cable-knit sweaters and whose favorite movie is
Titanic
. Not tomorrow, but in three days. Standard protocol. Three days says you’re interested, but not serious about getting serious. It says that you want to have a good time, but don’t want to get married.”