He still had his list; he carried it around in his wallet. After taking out Dead Red from the neighborhood, Williams seemed the obvious next choice. The slutty zombie could go last; no one was likely to miss her. Pete figured that he'd put the hurt on living kids a lot better if he took out all their dead buddies first. He could--and did--slap around that puny Harrowwood kid whenever he felt like it, either in practice or outside the locker room. Pete smiled, thinking about the block he'd dropped on purpose against Ballouville so that their big tackle could paste a good one on the kid. He'd sat out the rest of the half.
There was a wide cardboard sign above the corridor archway proclaiming the date and time of the homecoming dance. Pete thought that Oakvale should have waited a week and had it on Halloween, seeing as how a bunch of the students had built-in costumes.
"We still going to do it at the dance?" Stavis asked.
"No, I've got a better plan now."
"Really? What is it?"
"I heard about a party," he said, "and we're going to crash."
That was the one good thing about having a little punk like Harrowwood in the locker room, a guy who had to use his mouth to make up for his shortcomings. Thorny had started
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running his mouth about this "sweet party" he was going to after homecoming, and how not that many people were invited, and blah and blah. Adam had shot Thorny a look, but it was too late.
Pete had caught up to Harrowwood in the parking lot and had the full story in two slaps. "What party?" Slap. "I don't know about any party." Slap .
"The zombies are having a big party 'cause most of them can't go to the homecoming. Heck, most of them don't even go to school...."
"Where?" Pete had asked, but that was the one question Thornton couldn't answer.
"They won't tell me," the runt had said. "I'm supposed to follow Layman over there. He's been a couple times."
"If I find out you are lying to me, Thorny," Pete threatened, "I swear you'll be partying with them permanently."
"I'm not." The fear in the kid's eyes told Pete what he'd needed to know. "I swear it."
Stavis's nasally voice brought him back to the present. "A party? What kind of party?"
"A zombie party," Pete said, imagining a whole house full of worm burgers, and then imagining the house on fire.
"No way."
"Way," he said, seeing flames rising, smoke curling up under the moonlit sky. He was smiling as they arrived at their class.
He'd planned on being a little earlier to class than the rest of the pack, which was easy to do, because the nosebleeds
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weren't too interested in punctuality. There was only one other student in the class, and she looked up at the board as the teacher passed an eraser over the grayish surface, her stare more vacant than school on a Saturday. "Ugh," Stavis said.
Pete laughed and winked at him. He gripped him by one bulbous shoulder.
"Talk to you later, man," Pete said, and went over to sit next to the girl.
"Hey, kid," he said, smiling, "I hear there's a big party going on after the dance."
Colette swiveled her head toward him with all the alacrity of a slowly oscillating fan, and it took her a while to bend her mouth into a smile, but Pete suddenly felt like he had all the time in the world.
Phoebe jumped as a cat screeched like its tail was being stepped on. Gargoyle leaped off of her bed and started barking at the four corners of the earth.
The unearthly sound was her computer's way of letting her know that Margi had just signed on to the Internet. The name Pinkytheghost appeared next to an avatar of a pink Casper-esque phantom that fluttered like a sheet on a clothesline along with Margi's first message of the night.
I got my dress May. U have yrs?
Phoebe shushed Gargoyle. His bobbed tail stuck straight up, and his low growl was more endearing than threatening. Phoebe typed back Yep .
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U promised we would both wear black. Is yr dress black?
Phoebe sighed, because Margi typed like she talked: fast and incessant. Phoebe had been reading the latest installment of mysocalledundeath.com and was trying to decide how she felt about it. Because, unlike a good many of the differently biotic topics it contained, this one was deeply personal to her. The title of the blog, which Tommy had posted earlier that day, was Homecoming.
Nope, she typed.
Promise-breaker , came Pinkytheghost's reply. And then, Me neither .
Phoebe smiled, hoping that if she ignored Margi for a few minutes her friend would get wrapped up in some other Internet diversion.
So what are U doin ? Pinky/Margi asked. So much for her theory.
Phoebe scrolled down the blog entry and read what Tommy had written.
I'm going to the homecoming dance at my school. I have a real live date. And when I say real live date, I mean an actual
living, breathing, traditionally biotic girl .
Phoebe frowned and turned down the Bronx Casket Company album she'd been listening to on her MP3 player, on the odd chance that one of her parents crept into her room. She didn't want them to read the screen.
R U there ? Pinky/Margi typed.
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Phoebe typed back No . Never mind her parents; she didn't want Margi to read this blog. Or Adam, or Karen, or anyone else. She had a vision of Tommy whisking her around at the party, showing her off to all his dead friends and saying, "Hey, everybody, this is my traditionally biotic girlfriend," and then forgetting her name.
Don't be a b* ***, Margi typed. Is my special fluffy boy there?
Phoebe looked over at Margi's special fluffy boy, who had resettled at the edge of her bed.
Gar says hi , she typed.
She turned back to the blog.
The dance will not be our first date. We have gone to a movie at the mall. She has been to my house and has met my
mother, who likes her a lot. I like her a lot, too.
That's what you get for writing poetry, Phoebe thought, her pulse racing from more than the music. She wanted to call Tommy up--Tommy or Faith--and ask him to pull what he had written. What if the hordes of protestors her father had warned her about were reading this? What about the faceless white van patrol; what if they were monitoring his posts? She wasn't comfortable with this at all; in some ways it was like a kid climbing up on a table in the middle of lunch to declare his love for a girl he barely knew. Uncool. Definitely uncool.
XOXOXO special fluffy boy , Margi sent.
Phoebe made a noise of exasperation that caused the special fluffy boy to lift his head from his special fluffy pillow.
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She looked over and assured him everything was all right.
"I just wish our friend would shut up," she said under her breath. Gargoyle returned to his reclining position, looking disappointed.
What can it mean for a differently biotic boy --a zombie--to like" a traditionally biotic girl? And what would it mean if the living girl liked" him as well? Would society crumble? Would nations fall into the sea? Would the heavens open up? Would the falcon no longer be able to hear the falconer?
Phoebe rubbed her eyes. This was a little esoteric for Tommy, whose typical writing was quite literal except during the times he was speculating on the anti-zombie conspiracy he saw stretching across the country.
What R U listening to ? Margi sent. When Phoebe rushed a response of BCC back, Margi's response was swift even though she upped the point size of the font and colored it red.
No way! Me 2! Telepathetic!
Yeah, Phoebe thought, unable to get too excited.
I don't know what will happen. I don't know if anything will happen. I don't know if a mob of traditionally biotic people with minds less open than my date's will drag me bodily from the gymnasium and put me to the torch. All I know is that I want to go to the dance with her, and actually dance. I know this because I know that when I am with her, there are times,
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&nbs
p; even if they are brief when I no longer feel like a zombie. There are times when, for an instant, I forget that I've died and I no longer breathe and my heart no longer pumps blood throughout my body.
I forget these things when I'm with her. I think that if I could dance with her, just once, I might feel like I was alive again.
She could feel tears building up, but she blinked them away and forced the air in and out of her lungs in a steady rhythm.
No pressure, Phoebe, she thought, and an escapee from her tear ducts plopped onto the space bar of her keyboard. She laughed and wiped at her eyes.
There were a few posts under the Comments section of the day's blog. The first was a single word from a poster by the handle of BRNSAMEDI666, who wrote a single word, all caps: SELLOUT!
Why should traditionally biotic people have all the fun, Phoebe thought, recalling the naked anger on Smiley's-- on Takayuki's--face as she and Adam entered the Haunted House.
On cue, another post from PinkytheGhost arrived.
R U & Lame Man still fighting?
Phoebe frowned, signed off, and put her computer into idle mode before sitting on her bed next to Gar, who rolled over in anticipation of a belly rub. It seemed easier than trying to respond to Margi's question.
***
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"You're late," Pete said, letting Stavis into his room through the garage. He had the whole basement floor of the house--a raised ranch--to himself, while Moms and the Wimp occupied the top two floors. There were three usable rooms in the basement: his bedroom, his exercise room, and his recreation room, which had a thirty-six-inch plasma television, another gift from dear old Dad. Stavis walked to the short refrigerator in the corner and popped open a can of beer. He didn't ask for permission.
Pete lifted the rifle he'd stashed behind the couch and pointed it at Stavis's head as he turned around.
Stavis swore and stumbled back against the fridge, spilling a good quarter can of beer on himself and the floor.
"Easy, stupid," Pete said, lowering the rifle sight. "You spilled all over yourself."
"You scared the shit out of me, Pete!"
"Take it easy," Pete said. "Enjoy your beer."
Pete watched him take a long pull off the beer, and he tried to keep from laughing. Stavis's normally beady eyes were as round as hockey pucks.
"Throw me one of those," he said, hoping to distract Stavis before he wet himself.
"Where the hell did you get that thing?" TC asked, carefully handing Pete an unopened can as though he were afraid a sudden movement would get him plugged. "Is it your step-dad's?"
"Hell, no," Pete said after taking a long drink. "The Wimp doesn't believe in guns. Thinks they should be criminalized, that sort of thing."
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"What is it? Where'd you get it?"
"It's just a .22. There's a guy up the street who uses it to shoot the raccoons that come up through the woods to raid his garbage."
"Did he sell it to you or something?" Stavis asked.
Pete smiled at him. "He doesn't know it's gone."
TC downed the last of his beer. "Wow," he said, and Pete told him to help himself to another one.
"It's just me and you this time," Pete said. "Harris is wussing out."
Stavis slumped onto the sofa. He pushed the Xbox to the side of the coffee table and set his drink down.
"That last one was pretty gross," Stavis said, and Pete watched him rub a beefy hand over his close-cropped hair. "Who'd have known those zombies had so much gunk left inside of them? It was like you whacked a rotten watermelon or somethin'."
"Or something," Pete said. Stavis looked flushed, and beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead. "You're with me on this, right?"
"Oh, absolutely, Pete," he said, and belched loud enough to shake the dust off the plasma screen. "You know it."
"I need to know, TC," he said, "because I'm going to take another one of them down. Williams. He's got it coming."
"I know, man, I know. I'm with you."
"They aren't people, TC. You know that, right?"
"Who knows what they are," TC said.
"No one, that's who. I saw on the news that they think
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some kind of parasite crawls into their brains and controls their bodies after death."
"It might be hairy," Pete said, drawing on his beer. "They've got this house where they all hang out, over on the other side of the lake."
"Like ants," Stavis said, belching again.
"Yeah, like ants. They'll all be there, too, so I need to know you got my back. If Scarypants or anyone else tries to get in the way, you have to take them out for me."
Pete got jumpy just thinking about it. Williams was like some kind of unofficial leader of the dead kids, sort of like Pete himself was the unofficial leader of most of the school. If Williams went down, it should be pretty easy to get rid of the others, and in getting rid of the others, maybe he'd be able to get rid of Julie, too. She just wouldn't leave his head. It was as if she'd walked out of his dreams and into his waking life. He'd seen her twice since the incident in the hallway.
"I got your back, man," Stavis said, and leaned over to clink his can against Pete's.
Loser . "That's good, man. You know I appreciate it."
Pete looked at Stavis and sipped his beer and considered telling him all about Julie: how he met her, what they did, how she died. He thought about telling Stavis these things, and then Stavis belched loud enough to peel paint off the walls.
Pete sighed, all impulses to relieve himself of his innermost secrets gone. "Cool. We still riding together? I'll pick you up around seven thirty."
"Seven thirty," TC agreed.
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Pete grinned. "You still going with Sharon, right?" he said. "You know she's a pig."
"Oink, oink," TC said, and Pete laughed as TC launched into an increasingly obscene imitation of snuffling sounds.
"And you know we aren't going to have time for any of that stuff, right? We've got to dump the girls and get over to this zombie house before their party is over, you got it?"
"Aw," TC said, disappointment clouding his sweaty face.
Pete waved it away. "Don't worry about it. I'll get you a makeup call. Maybe a real girl, one of my friends from Norwich."
"Awright!" TC said, leaning over yet again for the can-clinking thing. Pete obliged.
TC crushed his can, his thick, stubby fingers wadding it up like a tissue. "Hey, you steal bullets, too?"
"Naw." Pete chuckled. "I got a box at Wal-Mart."
"Wal-Mart," Stavis said. "That's freakin' classic."
"Yeah," Pete said, reaching for the remote. He'd bought a whole box, but he planned on using only one.
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***
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
P HOEBE, IN HER HEART OF hearts, wanted to wear black. She and Margi had sworn they would never attend any of the ridiculous dances and socials that the school sponsored throughout the year. But on the other hand, they both harbored a secret desire to at least be asked by someone to go. They'd made a half-hearted pact that if they ever went, it would be in dresses of flowing black taffeta, complete with veils; Weird Sisters to the end.
Phoebe turned in front of the mirror hanging from her closet door, admiring the way the sleek fabric--a silky, almost shiny white--cut in and hugged her middle and fell along her hips.
She turned back to face herself, pleased that she'd gone with the white dress in the end. Black looked great on her, but something about going on a date with a dead kid while wearing a dress appropriate for a funeral just didn't feel right. She
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didn't need the attendant barrage of comments from her parents, either. The worst comment she'd had to endure thus far was one from her dad about the neckline of the dress, which of course was lower that he would have liked. Phoebe was thankful that he kept whatever Bride of Frankenstein jokes, which were surely buzzing around his skull like angry hornets, to himsel
f.
Phoebe scanned herself from head to toe before settling on a staring contest with her reflection. Her skin was pale but not sickly; it was not as free from blemish or as even in tone as Karen's, but it didn't have the bluish cast that hers did in certain light, either. Phoebe was slim, and although her figure, again, was not as stunning as Karen's, it was at the very least attractive. Chasing after the Frisbee in the school yard had helped shape some dangerous curves, she thought, and her arms and legs had some nice definition that they would have lacked had she spent every free hour writing goth poetry.
She looked deep within her eyes, which were a warm greenish-hazel color. She liked to think that they were flecked with gold, and if the candles in her room flickered just so, they were.
She was pretty, she realized. Maybe even very pretty.
The thought made her breath catch in her throat. When she broke contact with the pretty young girl in the mirror, she reached for the fuzzy purple notebook and pen that she kept at all times on her nightstand, opened to the first blank page, and began to write.
"The limousine left when the driver realized that my son was
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differently biotic," Faith told them, a hint of apology in her voice. "It looks like the kids will be in the PT Cruiser tonight."
Phoebe overheard her talking in the kitchen as she came down the stairs. Her parents stood off to the side of the kitchen, uneasily talking to Faith and her undead son, who looked uncomfortable looming in the doorway in his blue suit jacket and tie. Faith saw her enter, and her face lit up.
"Phoebe, you look beautiful, honey!" she said. "Just beautiful!"
"Thank you," she murmured in reply. She was wearing enough makeup to mask the color that rose to her cheeks, but there was nothing she could do to ward off the spots of blush that she could practically feel rising along her throat. The plunging neckline was a Pyrrhic victory at best, it seemed.
"Isn't she beautiful, Tommy?" Faith said, but Tommy just stared.
Phoebe blushed, but she stared back. The suit fit him wonderfully, seeming to accentuate the quiet strength that she found so attractive in the way it fell across his broad shoulders. The corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile.
From the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw her father open his mouth, and she steeled herself for soul-crushing embarrassment.