Chapter 13

The AV Club is hardly a class; it’s four geeks – Fiona included – and a broom-closet sized room full of DVD players, dusty computer monitors and twisted up mouse chords.

I ignore the geeks and their wide eyes as I storm into class and ask, “Where’s your teacher?”

As if on cue, Fiona and her three classmates point to another broom-sized room within the first broom-sized room where a man I’ve never seen before – not out in the halls, not on the first day of school when all the teachers stand in front of school to show “solidarity,” or something, not at pep rallies or hurricane drills – is hunched over a computer station with two keyboards and three monitors.

He doesn’t turn his back, doesn’t even move, for all I can tell.

“Is he going to flex over me being in here?” I ask Fiona, but one of the geeks answers instead.

“He literally hasn’t moved in the three years I’ve taken this class, I doubt he’d even notice if we show up anymore, except then he’d have to deliver these DVDs and push play himself.”

“Alex?” I ask, trying not to gush.

The “geek” in question is tall and slender, with a mop of dirty blond curls that manage to fit his sharp, angular face.

He’s got on wheat colored chords and a purple and blue rugby shirt and battered sneakers and I have never, ever been so glad to see his dazzling face in my life.

He’s also no stranger; it’s “my” Alex – Alex Foster.

“Hey Lucy, what are YOU doing here?” Alex asks, his adorable dimples rising and falling with each syllable as he smiles at me warmly.

“Duh, pretty boy,” says another geek, ruining the running across the flowery fields into each other’s arms moment. “She obviously read Fiona’s article and is here to prove that she isn’t a zombie. Right, Lucy?”

“Shut up, Roger,” says Fiona, glaring at the portly geek in the oh-so-ironic “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” XXLL (and that’s being generous) T-shirt.

Ignoring Fiona as if she isn’t even there, let alone staring daggers at him, the big guy puts down the vending machine Danish he’s been noshing, wipes his hands on his double-wide jeans and extends one of them to me.

“Roger Standish,” he says, a blush rising to his face.

I take his hand.

I normally wouldn’t because, well, for obvious reasons but my cover is blown now, my Afterlife likely over so… what the beans?

“Lucy,” I say, gripping his hand.

Oh, that hand.

It is warm and soft and moist and heavenly, like plunging my hand into a loaf of half-cooked bread while it’s still in the oven.

I want to get lost in that hand, stay there until the heat seeps into my entire body.

His eyes bulge at the sudden infusion of cold across his palm but he never flinches, never pulls back, never frowns or yelps or tries to yank his hand back.

When I finally release him he takes a step back, looks from me to Fiona and says, “Well, at least you got ONE fact right in your article, Fiona.”

I laugh and look at the last geek, the frail, skinny girl in the corner wearing last year’s sweater and last decade’s bell bottom jeans.

She doesn’t get up, doesn’t move, but lifts a small, frail hand and says, “Hi, Lucy. I’m… Tara.”

I smile and say, “Hi Tara.”

And I’m about to say something else, I’m about to ask this room full of geeks question after question when Fiona blurts, “I got it ALL right, Roger; more than you’ll ever know!”

“Fiona!” I snap, but she’s halfway across the room by now; she must have slinked away while I was in shock and awe at seeing studly Alex in this tiny room full of nerds.

Between her now is Alex and Roger and she’s close enough to the teacher’s door that she could get to it by the time I could get to her.

“You promised!”

She sees my dilemma, delights in it and visibly savors the moment.

“As a mere mortal,” she says dramatically, almost proudly, stepping slightly away from the teacher’s boom closet door to deliver her soliloquy, “I would say I’m bound by honor to break the promise of a… zombie.”

And there it is; she’s done it.

Just like I’d hoped she wouldn’t.

Just like I knew she would.

I look at the room and the initial reaction is, as I expected it would be, disbelief.

“Please,” scoffs Roger.

“Lucy,” says Tara disapprovingly.

“Enough,” snaps Alex, not quite protectively but just protectively enough to tease a smile from my cold, dead lips.

I think about how we’d flirted outside of shop class the day before, how good it had made me feel, how thrilling it is to see him here just now… and how awkward it’s going to be when he finds out why I’m here.

Not to mention what I really am.

Fiona frowns and while she’s forming her comeback I look suddenly at where I’m standing; the room I’m standing in, the teacher with his back to the class, the rows and rows of video cameras and chords and microphones and web cams and computer monitors and laptops and I make a snap decision.

Before the class can scoff once more, before Fiona can make an explanation, before I can chicken out, before I can consider the implications it will have on Alex and I (yeah, like there even is an Alex and I), I say, “My name is Lucy Frost and I am a zombie. Thanks to Fiona here, the whole school knows it and, even if they don’t believe it, the real zombies won’t care. They’ll be coming here; they’re probably already on their way. Now that you know, now that I’ve confessed, I’m sorry but… I can’t let you go. I need you; I need your help. Somewhere in this room, somewhere in your brains, you and I are going to find a way to make the Council of Elders understand that this was all just a practical joke.”

I expect laughter, and halfway through my little “revelation” I’ve decided to convince the loudest laugher first.

I am not surprised that it’s Roger.

So I walk over to him, force him to put his Danish down one more time and take his warm, bread loaf hand and place it squarely in the middle of my chest, right where a beating heart would be.

I kind of give Alex a side-eye and he’s kind of half-standing, half-sitting, as if he’s not sure whether to be madder at me or at Roger, or if he’s not sure why he should be mad in the first place.

Roger blushes but plays along, like it’s no big deal he’s suddenly touching a real lady girl’s chest, at least until the cold of my skin seeps into that warm, soft hand of his and he realizes I’m not playing and he tries to pull it back.

That’s when things get really intense.

He struggles, and he’s a big guy, I mean, 300-, 350-pounds, easy, and here I am this little pale waif in black and I’m not budging.

I hold firm and don’t let his hand go and he quiets down, the whole room does, and I know I have him when Tara tries to interrupt and asks, “Roger, what’s going on?”

And he snaps, “Quiet, Tara. I think… I think… she’s right. I really think this is for real here. Hold on!”

And he leans closer, to listen to my non-existent heartbeat, to see if my chest is thumping, and after a few minutes when he’s convinced it’s not he leans back, chubby cheeks breaking into a wide grin and says just one thing: “Cool.”

And he nods, and he wipes his hand on his jeans, and picks up his Danish. “Very cool.”

And it’s not what I’m expecting; it’s somehow… better… than I expected.

But Fiona doesn’t think so; not even close.

She loses it; loses it hard.

Fiona snaps, “Cool, Roger? Cool!?! What’s so cool about being a skanky, skeezy, undead, brain-eating ZOMBIE?!?!”

And I look at her, trying to figure out which Fiona I’m seeing; the sweet, nerdy, mousy Fiona or the “showing off for her friends just because she knows something they don’t” Fiona.

And I think I know, but I can’t tell because she won’t look back.

Instead she just keeps boring her eyes into little, waifish Tara.

And Tara, little Tara, slinks away from the corner, her green eyes coming to life and appearing to grow an inch with every step she finally says, in a voice bold and clear, “Dude, what ISN’T cool about being a skanky, skeezy, undead, brain-eating zombie?!?! This is like history, here; scientific history. And you’re going to diss it because you can’t… understand… it?”

And Fiona is blown away; this is not what she was expecting at all, I can tell.

And I kind of feel sorry for her, in a way (though not really) because she’s standing there, hair mousy, face crinkled, pudgy, pink hands on the hips of her baggy, shapeless khakis and I think she’s going to give up, to sit down, to shut up and get along, but she surprises me again.

“History?” she snaps. “Science? This, this… thing—” and she’s pointing to me here, face crinklier, hands pudgier than ever, “is the opposite of that. She’s an aberration; a… a… freak of history, of science. Don’t you guys get that?”

“No,” says Roger, eyeing Fiona coolly from his seat. “I don’t get that at all, Fiona. She’s not an aberration; she’s Lucy. She’s just a kid; she’s just some girl in high school. She goes to our school, she’s a student here, look at her, Fiona; she’s normal.”

“I mean, except for the no-heartbeat, doesn’t breath stuff,” Tara adds, but not in a Fiona way, in a kind of “fan” way.

“She eats brains, Tara. I mean, probably. Don’t you, Lucy? I mean, eat brains?”

I shrug.

“When I have to, Fiona,” is all I’ll cop to.

Roger kind of smiles, Tara doesn’t just kind of, she does smile.

“We all have to eat something, Fiona,” she says sensibly.

“Yeah, okay, I get that. I’ve taken basic Biology but… brains? It’s… it’s… unnatural!”

“So is eating fried cow, in some cultures,” Roger points out. “So is pumping chickens full of steroids to make them bigger and growing them like plants in some warehouse where they never see the light of day.”

“Look, Roger, you big fat gross vegetarian hippie, I get all that, okay? I’ve heard it all before, but this is something completely diff—”

“Stop, Fiona!” Tara snaps, barking out with a big voice for such a little girl. “Lucy has something to say, and it sounds like we’re all in danger so, if you don’t mind, kindly shut UP and let her finish!”

I don’t smile, exactly, because I’m not used to being surrounded by so many Normals, all at once, let alone Normals who now know my deepest, darkest secret – and aren’t trying to chase me out of town with pitchforks and torches – but I don’t growl and chase them off, either.

As Fiona frowns, Roger peppers me with questions: “Why would the zombies be on their way here, Lucy? How many zombies? How long have you been a zombie? Can I be a zombie, too? What do brains taste like? Can I still be considered a vegetarian if I—”

Tara interrupts, “Don’t be rude, Rog, she’s not some circus animal but… he did make a good point, Lucy: how long have you been a zombie?”

Desperate to be in on the action Fiona says, “She just told me she’s been a junior at four different high schools, so that’s, what, 16 years? I mean, if you do the math. Can zombies do math, Lucy???”

“Hold up,” jokes Roger. “You’ve had to go to four different high schools? Don’t you ever get to, you know… graduate?”

I step back a little, his hand is still on my chest – and creeping starboard, if you know what I mean – and say, “This is how I looked when I died; this is how I will look until my kneecaps crumble and my jaw bone falls off and my skull disintegrates. The only way for me to ‘pass’ as normal is to, well, go to high school.”

“Forever?” asks Tara. “Good god, that’s horrible.”

Roger steps back, frowns, rubs his hand and says, “I guess I take back that last bit about wanting to be a zombie!”

I look at Alex, sweet Alex, frowning in the corner and say, “I dunno, going to high school forever kind of has its perks.”

I look back at the geeks and only Tara is smiling.

She raises her hand.

I frown and say, “Yes, Tara?” as if I’m some kind of substitute teacher or something.

“Nothing, I just, well, you said you needed our help. I think, well, I think I know how we can help.”

I smile back and purr, “I’m all ears.”