Zombie Blondes (10 page)

The air is like black smoke when I wake up. Black like ink flooding over me as I scream. The impression of electric blue eyes still there every time I blink. Imaginary eyes staring through the window as the dream catcher dangles helplessly against the frosty glass.

I shove my hands under the sheet and feverishly run them over my stomach to make sure I’m still whole. Kick the
blanket from the bed and turn on the light in a panic before getting out of bed and rushing to the window. A rustling of branches in the bushes outside trails off into the woods as the nightmare travels on to the next person.

I look at the clock and realize there’s no use going back to sleep. I might as well make some coffee and turn the television on. Use the sound of cartoons to wash out the leftover parts of my dream. Wait for the hour to change and then take a shower and get ready for school. Aware that the only good thing about the nightmare is that real life can’t ever be as scary.

One thing I’ve
learned from my dad is that avoiding confrontation is the best way to hang on to false hope. Like the way moving from town to town to avoid debt collectors allows us to pretend everything’s okay once we reach the next home. Problem erased as if it never happened.

I take the same approach through the school day.

I avoid passing Mrs. Donner’s classroom all day. I even go out of my way to circle around the outside of the building to get from third period to fourth and happily accept the late warning from my teacher Mr. Boyle. I even smile when he threatens me with detention the next time it happens, because at least I don’t have to see Mrs. Donner and hear the sweet-old-lady tone of her voice as she rejects me for the squad.

I make sure to avoid Meredith in homeroom, too. I wait until I’m sure she is already done at her locker before going to mine. Then I wait for the halls to clear out before going into class and sit in the farthest desk from hers so that she
can’t break the news, either.

I already know I didn’t make it.

I’m not kidding myself. The tryout was terrible.

It wasn’t just the one fall, but also the way I stumbled through the marching routine, the slight trip I made going into a handstand, and the ever-present attitude of the rest of the girls at even having me there to begin with. But as long as I don’t hear it from Mrs. Donner, I can still pretend it didn’t go so bad. Keep up the appearance that I still have a chance, which keeps the whispers to a minimum as I walk through the halls. Until it’s official, no one wants to say anything too negative about me just in case.

There’s one group I can’t fool, though. The perfect girls. They know exactly what kind of a fool I made of myself and during lunch they make sure that I know it, too.

Miranda, Maggie’s queen henchman of lunchroom character assassinations, cuts in front of me on my way back from buying a diet soda to the table I share with Lukas in the quietest corner of the lunchroom. Waiting until it’s too late for me to stop, she shoves her chair back in the aisle. I stumble into her as she stands up. Knock her back into her chair and brace myself to keep from tumbling onto the floor like the can of soda that slips from my hand and rolls under the next table.

“God! Can’t you even walk without falling?” Miranda yells. She digs her fingernails into my arm and claws deep enough to leave a mark when I finally get my balance and step away. I can see the deep blue veins running down her arms that are thin like the bones of birds and I wonder how she was able to squeeze so hard that I have to shake the pain
from my wrist.

Her identical cheer sisters cover their mouths and whisper to one another between fits of laughter. Behind me, the semipopular non-cheerleader tagalongs start to quip and point, too, as my face starts to turn bright red.

I reach down to pick up the two dimes that I also dropped and Miranda swings around in her chair on purpose to make sure I stagger into her a second time and knock a yogurt out of her hand.

It splatters like dead bugs against a car windshield, burying my twenty cents under its sticky residue.

“What the hell’s your problem?” Miranda says, pushing me into the unfortunate freshman nerd who got stuck behind me by sheer circumstance. The lunchroom aide is standing by the cafeteria door, observing the entire incident. Ignoring the whole thing because that seems to be the rule when it comes to jocks. No disciplinary action needed because they are allowed to get away with everything.

Most of the kids nearby are standing now to watch. Hoping for a fight. But those hopes are dashed when Maggie strolls into the cafeteria. Always late so that everyone can see her walk in. Always an entrance like royalty greeting lesser subjects. But the princess smile leaves her lips when she sees me and Miranda facing off like cats ready to claw each other to pieces. She heads right for us with a determined spark lighting up her eyes.

“Miranda, leave her alone,” she says in the steady voice of a master commanding her dog to roll over. Turning to me with suspicious eyes that study me like bright blue spies, letting me know I’m being watched. Warning me not to get any ideas
that she’s taking my side. I only have temporary immunity according to squad rules that say I’m innocent until proven guilty. But after that, I will be fair game once more.

“Fine,” Miranda growls. Puts her hands on her hips and sneers in my direction. “But next time you do that, I’ll make you lick the floor clean,” she hisses to the delight of those gathered to watch.

I sniff up any sign that she’s gotten to me and scoot around her. She bumps me slightly, but just strong enough that I step in the sour remains of her lunch. “Poor girl’s going to have to buy another pair of five-dollar shoes now,” I hear one of them say and I don’t bother turning around.

My soda ended up in the hands of one of the football players when it rolled under his chair. I’m ready to abandon it, figure it’s lost now that it’s in his possession, a jock, an ally of The Blondes.

I walk past him with my head down.

He touches my elbow as I do and I yank my arm away violently.

“Hey,” he shouts in response. “This is yours, isn’t it?” The can of soda resting in his hand, held out toward me. I narrow my eyes and search him for any sign of a trick. Any clue that he’s only waiting for me to get close enough so that he can open it in an explosion of shaken carbonated foam that will rain down on me, but as far as I can tell he seems sincere and I step cautiously closer.

“Thanks,” I say as the cold metal passes from his fingers to mine.

And though he’s got the same ghost-blond hair and same electric blue eyes, he doesn’t look anything like the others.
Something kind and gentle that I wouldn’t expect after witnessing the on-field violence of the game last weekend. “No problem. And don’t worry about them,” he says, quietly pointing to Miranda and the rest of the rah-rah idiots. “They treat everyone like that at first.”

“Thanks,” I say, feeling shy enough to lower my eyes.

He grins to show me he’s one of the nice ones. Nods as if to assure me they aren’t all obnoxious, that popularity doesn’t necessarily equal cruelty in every segment of Maplecrest High.

When I get back to my table, Lukas has his face buried in one of his comic books. So absorbed in it that he isn’t even aware of what happened a few tables over and I sigh. “Great to know you have my back,” I complain, slamming the can on the table.

“Huh?” he asks, looking up for the first time and confused to find me so annoyed with him.

“Nothing,” I say. I’d rather not relive the experience by telling it to him.

“Okay,” he says. Then he tells me I should wait before opening my soda since I slammed it down so hard. “It’ll fizz all over the place,” he warns.

“What would I do without your wisdom?” I ask but he’s already reading through the pictures of the book again and it goes in one ear and out the other.

I nibble on the apple I brought and keep an eye on their table. None of them even glance in my direction as they gossip together with sun shining on them, making their hair look like polished halos, and I feel a little sick inside. It’s going to be a long year if my dad’s job goes as well as he
hopes.

Lukas suddenly slides the book in front of me with his finger tracing a gory scene of corpses being devoured by creatures with rotting flesh. I feel suddenly more sick and slide the book back toward him. “I don’t want to see that,” I say with the taste of vomit deep in my stomach.

“Just read it,” he begs and I tell him that I don’t want to read it, either. “Look, it says zombies feed off the living and absorb their energy. That’s how they get their strength.” He flips the page and points to another scene that I refuse to look at. “Over here it says how they try to lure others in. They poison their blood until they become one of the undead. And if they refuse, they eat them, too,” he says, shoving the book into my face.

The illustration shows a man pinned to the ground as the ghouls salivate over him. Drops of blood from their open sores drip into his mouth and by the next frame, the man is as disgusting as them. I snatch the book from him, realizing now that my nightmare didn’t come from evil spirits. It came from Lukas and his never-ending barrage of gore comics and silly horror stories.

I wrestle the book from his reach and toss it away.

It slides across the floor and strikes against the trash can placed at the end of our table.

“What was that for?” he asks.

“For giving me nightmares, idiot!” I shout with my arms crossed.

He gets up and retrieves the book. He puts it in his backpack after I tell him that if he opens it once more, we’ll never speak again. I also warn him not to bring up any
ridiculous zombie tales, either. I’m sick of it. If he wants me to believe that crap, I tell him he better show me some proof. “Otherwise, they don’t exist. Get it?” I threaten him.

“Whatever,” he says. “You’ll see.”

I’m sorry, Hannah, I
’m just not sure there’s a space on the squad,” Mrs. Donner says with an apologetic smile. She stopped me in the hall on my way to class before I had the chance to change direction. She breaks the news to me as the rest of the school files past on either side in a whirlwind of shuffling sneakers and broken pieces of conversations.

“I was terrible, wasn’t I?” I ask.

“No. No, you weren’t. You just need to practice,” fixing her glasses as she speaks, searching for something positive to say.

I ask her if that means I officially didn’t make it.

“Not this year, I’m afraid,” she says and lifts her arms, ready to hug me in case I break down in tears as I’m sure many of the other girls who have received the same news in her same words have done before me.

“Maybe next year,” I say, putting on a brave smile, and it seems to please Mrs. Donner that I have so much spirit. But I don’t mean it. Not the part about trying out and not the brave smile, either. I just don’t want her feeling sorry for me. Don’t want her to know I’m even upset.

And I know it’s stupid to be bummed by it. I’ve known since yesterday afternoon that this was coming, but that’s the negative side of keeping a false sense of hope. You almost begin
to believe that a miracle might happen, so it still hurts when the dream is dashed. Not that my ultimate dream was to be a cheerleader or anything. But I didn’t really want to go back to being the girl everyone picks on, either. Not sure I have much of a choice anymore.

I drag my feet down the hall as the warning bell rings. The other kids rush past me, racing against late slips and detentions. I look around for a familiar face coming up behind me, but there’s no sign of Diana.

Maybe she’s already in class. I’m not exactly of interest anymore and maybe our brief friendship was conditional to my being one of the chosen few. Most likely that’s the case. I really hope not. I could use a friend but I can’t say I’d blame her. What wannabe wants to be friends with someone who has already been rejected?

Our teacher Ms. Earle steps into the hallway to close the door as the late bell rings. She frowns when she sees me slowly walking toward her. “Miss Sanders, I thought we discussed this yesterday,” she says, raising her eyebrows and they disappear under the sharp line of her gray bangs clipped in the most boring hairstyle ever invented.

I shrug my shoulders as I walk past her.

Her skin smells like menthol and medicine when she holds up her hand to prevent me from going in. The wind created by all the classroom doors in the hallway closing at once blows the stale scent from her floral-print dress and I politely turn away. “One more time, young lady, and I’ll be seeing you after school,” she says.

“Fine,” I say, without looking at her.

She grunts at my lack of concern but steps aside to let me
enter nonetheless. I walk in with my fingers crossed inside my pocket as I look around for Diana. Her desk is empty, though, and I take one more look behind me to see if she’s even later than I am, but I only see Ms. Earle as the door clicks into place to start class.

Ms. Earle taps a ruler against her desk to end the conversations going on between neighbors. She waits for silence before calling out attendance. Never looking up from her little book where our names are printed in her neat handwriting. I wait my turn and say “here” with a flick of my wrist when my name is said. She finishes up in alphabetical order without calling Diana’s name. Skips over it completely and closes the grade book without another word.

I figure she must know something I don’t. Maybe Diana’s on vacation. Or maybe she’s sick and the office let her teachers know not to expect her. Or maybe Ms. Earle just knows Diana well enough to know she didn’t see her. It seems likely given how she paid special attention to Diana yesterday.

I wait until class is over to ask her. Approach her desk quietly as the rest of my classmates hurry on to their next scheduled destination.

Ms. Earle taps her pen against a pile of papers she started grading toward the end of class after giving us a few minutes to start on our homework. “What is it, Hannah?” she asks, sensing me there more than actually seeing me.