Chapter 3

“What’s this all about, Fiona?” I snap the minute the Chorus room door swings silently shut behind us and we’re out in the hall alone, clomping toward the front office.

She’s already walking a few paces ahead of me, none too eager to touch me again, when she calls back cryptically over her shoulder, “You’ll see, Lucy.”

I catch up to her in three long, stiff paces.

(Now, zombies can’t exactly run but when we’re motivated we can move quickly enough.)

“I don’t want to ‘see,’ Fiona. I want to know right now what this is all about.”

She stops and turns and faces me, still careful to keep her distance, and her eyes are no longer scared but concerned and she says, stammering a little because she’s probably not so great at confrontation, “Nothing, Lucy, I just… your skin’s so… cold. And that whole… incident… with the paper towel dispenser—”

“Incident? I would hardly call a broken paper towel dispenser an ‘incident,’ Fiona. Gheez, overreact much?”

“It wasn’t broken, Lucy; it worked fine. For everybody but… you.”

“What is the big deal about the paper towel dispenser, Fiona? Seriously, I don’t get it.”

She shrugs. “Me either; it’s supposed to work on human hands, and it does, so… why doesn’t it work on yours?”

“Because it’s broken, malfunctioning, defunct, a dud… that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, avoiding eye contact all the while, and then she adds, “Well, that’s not all, Lucy. I mean, after I touched you, and my hand nearly froze off, well, I took a closer look and, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way or anything but, Lucy, you don’t look… good.”

“Great, Fiona, thanks. I don’t know how else to take that but the wrong way. But I appreciate that. Way to boost the old morale there. Awesome. Thanks. Great. Super.”

“It’s just… your skin. I’m not sure you’re entirely healthy, is all.”

“I’m just fine, Fiona, seriously,” I snap, voice rising as my frustration reaches a new level of frustratedness. “I don’t need you, or Bianca or Piper or any of your Math-a-lete friends thinking I’m not fine, so you need to just stop, now, with all the handwringing and paper towel dispensing because I. Am. Fine. Honest.”

Even in the face of my harangue Fiona just stands her ground and when I’m through she just kind of says, quietly, so no one else will overhear, “I was concerned, Lucy, that’s all.”

And I kind of step back because I’ve spent my whole high school career here at Barracuda Bay staying out of the civilians’ way and half-expecting them to come after me with pitchforks and torches every day at school and suddenly this one… this one… is concerned.

About me?

But then I see the color of the Pass in her hand – a kind of minty green, and not the cool chocolate minty green like I used to get in the movies when I was alive and could still taste things like chocolate and mint and popcorn, but a kind of medicine-you-don’t-want-to-take minty green.

And I suddenly remember that in addition to all her other I-want-to-get-into-Harvard-so-bad junior year electives she is also the Counselor’s Aid for 6th Period and it snaps me back into the cruel reality of my… particular… situation.

“Okay, Fiona, well… thanks, that’s really… sweet… of you and everything but, what does that have to do with you taking me out of Chorus – and away from Alex Foster?”

And suddenly Fiona is no longer concerned but conspiratorial and she inches just a little closer and says, “So you DO have a crush on Alex Foster? I knew it. I think that’s… sweet.”

Sweet, huh?

That’s girl-speak for NOT sweet.

So I snap back, “Sweet? What’s so ‘sweet’ about it?”

And Fiona takes another step back, crinkling the minty green hall pass in the process and says, “Nothing, it’s just… you guys are such opposites, is all.”

Hmm, and there it is; right out in the open.

We’re “opposites” because why would a strictly hunky, straight arrow, A-list, prep school type with long legs and tight fists and clear eyes and dirty blond curls fall for pale, cold, heartless, rude, some might say moody “Goth Girl,” right?

And I open my mouth to say just that, to spit it out, word-for-word, just like that, but I don’t; I let my eyes do the talking and do they ever, smoldering all the way to the front office.

(Hey, my skin might be ice cold but I can still shoot red hot laser beams with my eyeballs. You know, not literally but… metaphorically… speaking, of course.)

Before we go in I stop her, risking another frosty touch to the shoulder, and say, “Fiona, what I meant was, why am I being called up to the office?”

She shrugs and says, “Well, you know I’m Mr. Thompson’s aide this period, right? And, well, the way your hand was, so cold, and the way the paper towel machine wouldn’t work on only your hand—”

“Arrggh, again with that STUPID paper towel machine? What IS the big frickin’ deal, Fiona? So my hands are cold, so what?”

“It’s not just that, Lucy, it’s… everything else. I mean, you and I have never spent much time together, sure, we have a few classes and I see you in the halls, from a distance, but when you put all the pieces together, the pale makeup, the black clothes, the cold skin and, yes, the paper towel dispenser, I think, is actually what they’re called, not a paper towel machine, anyway, I just mentioned it, casually, to Mr. Thompson and right away he wanted to see you up front so…”

“You mean, the same Mr. Thompson who has an industrial size bottle of hand sanitizer hanging from a clip on his fanny pack? The same Mr. Thompson who opens doors with his feet instead of his hands? The same Mr. Thompson who wipes a germ wipe around his germ wipe container before grabbing a new germ wipe? That Mr. Thompson? The germ freak of all germ freaks?”

“One in the same,” she says, brightening, like I’ve maybe won some type of booby prize or something for getting it right. “He thought maybe your symptoms sounded like the early stages of swine flu so—”

“They’re not symptoms, Fiona, they’re… just… me. That’s how I’ve always been; a little pale, running cold, no biggie. And what right do YOU have to go off telling anyone anything about me, anyway, you nosy little… little… snoop?”

And right when I’m about to break Law # 4 (or is it # 5?) of The 8 Absolutely Unthinkable, Unbreakable Zombie Laws (i.e. “Thou Shalt Not Injure a Human Unless it is Absolutely Necessary”) and pound Fiona Rutherford straight through the cinderblock wall of Barracuda Bay High, the door opens and a huge man with a fanny pack full of dangling hand sanitizer bellows, “What’s all the commotion out here?”

And then he sees Fiona and his hard face softens like he’s greeting his long lost daughter and then he sees me and it hardens like he’s seeing his other long lost daughter – you know, the ugly one who can’t read or write so good – and he says, “Oh yes, Lucy, it looks like we’ve caught you just in time.”