Then Tommy stopped, turned, and began walking in the opposite direction, toward the parking lot.
Or, Phoebe thought, toward the woods beyond the parking lot.
Sudden impulse, perhaps the electric spark pumping
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through her blood, brought her to her feet after tearing the sheet of poetry out of her notebook and folding it into a small fringed square. Her book, pen, and iPod went into her bag, and then she was moving.
The sounds of her heels were like gunshots on the bleachers as she ran down to follow Tommy across the field.
"Get in here, Layman!" Coach Konrathy yelled, waving him over to his office door. Adam sighed, thinking that it would have been nice to have gotten more of his gear off than his helmet.
He gave Martinsburg a cold look as he passed, but Pete stared back without flinching.
Konrathy slammed the door. "What have you been doing all summer? Playing with paper dolls?"
Layman breathed deeply. Last year, he probably would have thrown his helmet at the wall if Coach yelled at him that way. There was a locker door that was bent and twisted like a pretzel, wedged so tightly in its frame that it no longer opened. Coach Konrathy had taken Adam out of a game last year for missing a block that led to Denny Mackenzie getting sacked for the first time in the season, so Adam had taken his frustrations out on his locker.
But this was the new-and-improved Adam Layman, he of the zenlike calm. The new-and-improved Adam thought before he struck.
"No, Coach," he said evenly, his pulse and breathing under control. "I was taking karate classes and working out."
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Coach Konrathy threw his hands up in exaggerated disbelief. "Karate? Karate? I thought karate was supposed to make you tougher, not make you into a total wussy."
Adam felt his breathing quicken, but he concentrated and reeled it back in. No, Coach, he thought, karate has nothing to do with making you tougher, it has everything to do with bringing more control, clarity, and focus into your life.
Focus. When he was ready he answered his coach with a question.
"Is there something wrong with the way I practiced today?"
Coach leaned over the desk so that he was inches away from Adam, close enough that Adam could smell the breath strips that he popped by the dozens during practice.
"You tell me, Layman," he said. "You think there's a problem with your play when you can't even push back a dead kid?"
"I pushed ..."
"You didn't do squat! You're practically a foot taller than he is, and you couldn't do anything but knock him off balance! And you helped him up! What the hell were you thinking? We don't help rookies up until they make the team, you know that!"
Adam summoned Master Griffin's calm but insistent voice in his head. Focus, Adam. Focus.
"He's hard to move when his feet are planted," he said as evenly as he could. "I think he'd be good on the offensive line."
Konrathy drew back like Adam had spit in his eye.
"You do, do you? How about instead of him joining you on the line, you join him on the list of kids I cut from the team?
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The last thing I need on this team is an attitude problem."
Master Griffin had taught Adam all about chi --the life force that centers all beings--in their studies. Focusing on the chi was good for the breathing. It was good for the heartbeat. It was also good to keep Adam from reaching out and squeezing Coach Konrathy by his fat red neck. Despite all this goodness, he couldn't keep his face from flushing.
"I know your grades, Layman," Konrathy said, getting in Adam's face again. "And I know your stepfather. Without football you've got no hope of getting into or paying for college."
He let his words sink in for a moment, and they sunk deep, plunging through the protective calm that Adam was trying to maintain.
"You'd better straighten up and bring your 'A' game to next practice, Layman," Konrathy said. "Now get out of my office."
There were things that Adam wanted to say and do, but he didn't. Coach was right. Without football he wouldn't be going anywhere; he'd end up staying in Oakvale all his life, working at his stepfather's garage, lifting tires and handing wrenches to his stepbrothers. Oakvale might have an "all-inclusive" approach to their team sports, meaning that they didn't cut kids from the team--but Adam could not take the risk. Excessive bench time would ruin his chances of a pro career.
Stavis snickered as he walked by to his locker. Stavis was another guy destined to be an Oakvale lifer, and if Adam didn't make it to college he'd be stuck here changing oil and replacing brakes for knuckleheads like him for the rest of his life.
He thought he'd rather be dead than live in a future like
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that. Dead without returning. Not like the Williams kid. Permanently dead.
His old locker, the one he'd smashed last year, was next to his new locker. He wanted it that way so that he would have a constant reminder of who he'd been and who he was trying to be. He breathed in stages, and his fists unclenched without him being aware of it.
I didn't think the living impaired were supposed to be able to move so fast, Phoebe thought as she walked through the muddy field. Her boots, as shiny and slick as they looked, weren't helping, either.
There was an economy of purpose to Tommy's movements, like he was walking the straightest line possible from his last position on the field toward his destination. His path would take him directly into the woods that surrounded Oxoboxo Lake. Phoebe's grip on local topography wasn't great, but she knew that somewhere on the other side of those woods was her house. Tommy's as well, somewhere a little farther along their bus route.
Tommy moved between two parked cars and reached the short band of grass before the tree line just as Phoebe made it to the track at the edge of the football field. She closed the distance somewhat, but she wasn't going to catch up to him before he entered the woods, as she had hoped.
The only hesitation in Tommy's purposeful stride was when he removed his helmet before stepping into the trees. The light of the harvest moon shone on his silvery blond hair in the moment before the darkness swallowed him.
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Phoebe's breath preceded her, puffs of vapor like spirits dancing in the light of the moon. It wasn't until she was in the woods and the moonlight had disappeared that she paused long enough to think about what she was doing.
The cover of Oxoboxo woods was nearly total; the canopy of leaves above was like an impenetrable shield against the moonlight.
What on earth am I doing? she thought. Even before dead kids began coming back to life, the Oxoboxo woods was a place of mystery and strangeness, a place where ghosts stories were set and told, stories that had preceded the town and the Europeans who eventually settled there.
But she knew what she was doing, deep down. Tommy Williams was in her head, his white, angular face, the ghost of a smile on his lips, and a pale light in his slate-blue eyes. She knew he would stay there until she summoned the courage to talk to him. And then ...?
Phoebe looked over her shoulder, back at the pale parking lot lights visible through the trees. Adam would be looking for her soon, right after he showered and changed. He wouldn't want to be standing around his stepdad's truck, wondering where the heck she was. And if he was too late, the STD would probably flip out like he usually did and ground Adam for the next month of weekends, and it would be her fault.
She looked into the dark shapes of the woods ahead. She could see the vague, grayish outlines of trees now that her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. She counted fifteen steps and then stopped. The woods were so thick even here at the
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perimeter that they seemed to swallow sound as well as light. She was aware that there weren't birds or insects making any noise, and how strange that was.
She sighed and stood there a moment, imagining each breath as a piece of her soul, and then imagining each soul fragment rising toward the impervious roof of leaves an
d seeking a way out to the sky beyond. There was no way she could tell which way Tommy had gone through the forest.
What on earth am I doing? she thought again. A cold wave of fear shuddered through her. She decided that pursuing Tommy through the Oxoboxo woods was a bad idea. She turned around.
And the dead boy reached for her, his pale eyes glowing in the darkness.
Thornton was the only kid left in the locker room while Adam laced up his sneakers. He was standing in front of his locker with a towel around his waist, admiring a huge red bruise that ran the length of his rib cage.
"Wow," the younger boy said, wincing, "I really took a beating today."
"You got up, though," Adam said. "That's the important thing."
"Yeah, I guess I did," Thornton replied, grinning from ear to flapping ear. The poor kid looked like the guy from Mad magazine, but without the missing tooth. Adam smiled to himself, thinking that the season was still young. Thornton walked off to the showers whistling, and Adam thought the kid
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wouldn't have been any happier if he'd thrown a hundred dollar bill at him.
With great power, he thought. The Spiderman clause. Grandmaster Griffin had spent the whole summer drilling that into him, teaching him that being a foot taller and twice as strong as everyone else were not rights, they carried certain responsibilities. He taught Adam that he possessed gifts that could be of great benefit to society or, if abused, could cause great harm to all, including himself.
He was still thinking about that when TC, Pete, and Harris Morgan stopped him in the parking lot.
"Hey, Lurch," Pete said, "where's your zombie friend?"
"I'm not in the mood," he said, waiting for Pete to get out of his way.
"Whose team are you on, big guy?" Pete said, stepping closer instead of aside. "The living or the dead?"
"I play for the Badgers, Martinsburg, same as you. Get out of my way." He looked over his shoulder where his truck was parked but he didn't see Phoebe, which was good. He didn't want her to see this.
And deep down, he knew he didn't want them to see her, either.
"That zombie is coming off the team, one way or another, Layman," Pete said.
Adam was trying to decide if he could take all three of them. TC was the biggest, but Harris and Pete weren't small, and Harris at least was faster than he was. He figured if it came to a head, he should probably try and drop Pete as
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quickly as he could, because then the other two might lose the heart for it. In fact, Morgan didn't look much like he had the heart for it anyway. Adam was willing his body to stay loose when Pete, either sensing where the situation was heading or having made his point, moved out of his way.
Adam moved past him, his eyes not leaving the senior's sneering face as he walked by. He threw his duffel into the bed of the truck from ten feet away.
"Pick a team!" Martinsburg called after him.
Adam got into the cab of the truck and slammed the door. The engine came alive on the third cough of the ignition, and he turned the radio up. He hoped his three teammates would be gone by the time Phoebe showed up.
Phoebe gasped as the dead boy's hand reached out to touch her hair and let the black strands run through his fingers. She was motionless when he brought his hand away and held it in front of her face. He held it close enough so that she could see the leaf he had removed.
Now the only sound was of her breathing. Tommy dropped the leaf, and she watched it hover momentarily before it disappeared in the dark.
"I ... I was following you," she said, instantly regretting speaking. Her whisper reached her ears like a fire alarm in the silent woods. He was living impaired, not a moron. Of course she was following him, why else would he pull the stealth act and sneak up on her? She wondered if his eyes--eyes the color of rain clouds in the dull fluorescent glow of the classroom, but
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reflective, like those of a cat--could register the heat she felt radiating from her cheeks.
"I wanted to talk to you," she told him. "I wanted to tell you that I thought you were brave for doing this. For playing football, I mean."
Tommy didn't say anything, which heightened her embarrassment. He was tall, his shoulders broad. He held his helmet at his side by its face mask. What kind of idiot was she to chase after a living impaired kid anyhow?
Maybe all her common sense had flown away along with her breathing. She was aware, as if from a great distance, of reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the square of notebook paper.
"I also wanted to give you this."
She held the square out to him and watched him regard it with his glowing eyes, his face without expression. There was a moment of agony as he looked at the square without moving, and all Phoebe could think about was the time in seventh grade when Kevin Allieri refused her invitation to a couples' skate at a party in the Winford Rec Center.
But then Tommy reached out and took her poem. She inhaled him when they touched; the smell was like a morning breeze drifting across Oxoboxo Lake.
They stood there without speaking for a minute, each passing second a moment of awkwardness that she felt as acutely as the boys on the field felt their tackles and hits.
"Well," she said, her ears ringing as she was unable to bear the silence any longer, "I've got to go get my ride. Good night."
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He didn't say anything--anything at all. Her eyes were downcast as she turned and started walking toward where she thought the parking lot was. But standing in the forest with Tommy, giving him her poem, it was so surreal, so bizarre that she wouldn't be surprised in the least if the Oxoboxo woods, lake and all, went spinning off the surface of the earth and into the stratosphere. Whatever electrical magic she'd had was now engulfed by a cold inky wave of embarrassment and fear. She was about to collide with a tree when she thought she heard her name.
She turned. All she could see of Tommy was a pale shimmering outline and his eyes, two pale disks of moonlight, about fifteen feet away.
"I think," he said, his voice soft and flat, more like the memory of sound than sound itself, "you are brave, too."
The tiny moons disappeared and she was alone. There was darkness all around her, but it no longer flowed within her. She was smiling when she joined Adam in the warm cab of his stepfather's truck.
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***
CHAPTER SEVEN
T HE WEEKEND MOVED ALONG with a tired languor, as though time itself had become living impaired. Phoebe spent long hours sitting on her bed listening to music with her notebook and pen on her lap, writing nothing and talking to no one. Friday night had been confusing in so many ways, but part of her wanted to hold on to that confusion a little longer and analyze it.
Margi called Saturday night, but in typical fashion, the hour of conversation was focused mainly on Margi. Her history report, the show she was watching, the shoes she was planning to wear on Monday, her thoughts on the new Zombicide downloads. Phoebe didn't mind; having a Margi-centric conversation was always entertaining, and it allowed her to not talk about what was on her mind-- Tommy ....
She almost gave herself away when Margi asked her if she
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was able to accomplish much at the library--she'd forgotten her cover story completely.
"Oh, sure," she said, but really she had just drawn some cartoons in her notebook and flipped through a book she found on the Spanish Inquisition.
"That was convincing," Margi said. "You know, I wish I'd let you talk me into staying, because I'm really having the hardest time doing this history report. Of course, Mr. Adam Lame Man probably wouldn't have driven me home. I swear, Phoebe, he has been crushing on you since the third grade."
"I didn't move here until the fourth grade."
"Well, he probably crushed on you in a past life. Do you ever see him roll his eyes when I tag along?"
"That's ridiculous, Margi."
"Yeah, I know. I'm way hotter than you," she said, and
then laughed.
Phoebe had long known about Margi's fascination with Adam, who was the first friend Phoebe made when she moved to Oakvale. They'd hit it off because Adam hadn't known any other girls who liked comic books, and she was a better swimmer and Frisbee player than he was. He didn't acquire his size, or "inflate," as Phoebe liked to tease him, until middle school. Then his taste in athletics started to lean toward contact sports--sports that she had no interest in, despite having a decent outside jump shot.
Adam was a year older but had stayed back in the second grade, so now they were both juniors. High school took them down different paths--Adam was one of the popular ones,
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Phoebe drifted on the edges. Neither made a big deal of their friendship at school because the incongruity of it confused their individual circles of friends.
That incongruity, as much as the length of their friendship, was what made it so special. Phoebe still felt that there was no one she would rather play Frisbee or go swimming with in the Oxoboxo.
It was special enough that Phoebe knew neither of them would ruin it with more complicated feelings. She thought Margi was the one who was crushing, but for some reason would never admit it.
"You are hotter than me, Margi."
"Right. Is there anything you tell the truth about? You've got the height, the good skin, the cheekbones. What have I got?"
"The wardrobe? And the ..." "Don't say it."
"Well, you do. I think they get more attention than my great cheekbones."
More banter, and then they hung up when Margi's father yelled at her to get off the phone. Phoebe went back to scratching in her notebook.
Adam instant messaged her on Sunday night when she was surfing around looking for the latest news on the living impaired. He asked her if she wanted a ride to school on Monday, which was weird because he never asked that. She typed back Sure and punctuated it with a goofy emoticon that was the Weird Sisters' trademark, a round, horned smiley with
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eyelashes, a tail, and tongue wagging moronically out of the side of its open mouth.
Cool , was his return message, unadorned. Seven?