Chapter 5

Suddenly, I have no idea why I asked Mr. Thompson for a pass out of 7th period.

I mean, it’s not like I detest Home Ec all that much, or it’s young, funky teacher Ms. Haskins at all.

I’m just not feeling it today, you know?

What I am feeling is a little Alex Foster “fix” and, lucky for me, I know just where to get it.

There is a door out of C-wing that, if you take it during the last period of the day, takes you to a place where nothing much ever really happens and no one really cares.

It’s called Shop class; and Alex Foster has it just… about… now.

I clutch my pass to my thigh, and keep my head down, because I don’t want to look too totally desperate, and although I don’t have a car, and although I’ve never owned a car, fortunately the student parking lot borders the outside of shop class.

I take it slow, because my window of opportunity is pretty small here; either Alex will be hanging out near the abandoned oil cans outside of shop class like he does every day, or he won’t, so the slower I go, the better the chances he’ll—

“Lucy? What are… you… doing here?”

Bingo.

“Alex? What… why… I mean, I didn’t know you had shop this period!”

(Careful, Lucy, don’t overdo it.)

He’s sitting on an oil can, hands where I can’t see them, talking to a scruffy senior in a grease-stained jeans jacket.

(Eewwww, retro much?)

I stop, but don’t approach.

“Yeah,” he says, as the senior snubs out a cigarette and wanders back into class.

“Or that you… smoked,” I say, a little hesitantly.

(Will wonders never cease?)

“Yeah,” he shrugs, dropping his smoldering cigarette to the floor, snubbing it out with his sneakers and waving the air in front of his face. “It’s not something I really like to brag about it, you know?”

“I dunno,” I say, inching my way over but trying not to look too desperate to inch my way over. “It kind of adds a little… character… to your rep.”

“Really?” he asks a little hopefully, standing off his oil can as if preparing to meet a proper lady.

I love the way his smile is crooked, and always reaches his eyes.

I love the way the sleeves of his rugby shirt are pressed up above his gangly elbows, revealing forearms covered in soft blond hair that glisten in the late afternoon sunlight.

“Well, I mean, so long as you don’t inhale, of course.”

He snorts – a little leftover smoke rolls out – and says, “What are you doing out here? I thought you had Home Ec this period?”

He did?

He did?

He thought?

About?

What I have this period?

This is news to me, but I try to keep my excitement inside as I cross the threshold from “heading to my (nonexistent) car” and formally enter “the shop zone.”

I shrug, making sure he sees my pass, and lie, “We’re making tuna casserole this period and I can’t stand that smell.”

“Ugghh,” he groans, leaning back against his oil can now as I reach the nearest one, “me neither. My Dad makes it every Thursday and it’s such a big batch it’s in the fridge all weekend, though neither of us eat it. He usually ends up dumping it out on Monday morning, and I remind him of this every Thursday but he bakes another one anyway.”

I smile, but only halfway, because I know a.) his parents are divorced and b.) it’s probably not the most smile-worthy thing, growing up without your mom.

(And I should know.)

Without invitation, I kind of crawl up on the oil barrel across from him; he sits back on his.

Again, I hold the pass from Mr. Thompson where he can see it; he finally does.

“Is that a pass from Old Man Thompson?” he asks, big, beautiful, green eyes wide.

I shrug; no big deal.

“Man, I heard those were pretty hard to get. How’d you swing it?”

I shrug; this is the extent of my knowledge of flirting – the shrug. “I just told him I was allergic to tuna fish!”

He snorts. “Good one.”

We kind of don’t have much to say at the moment, but I don’t care; I just want to see him, to take him in, to be near him.

I don’t have much to look forward to in this world, not like normal teens have to get them through their days.

I don’t get to go through a drive-thru after school, because eating normal human food makes me sick now.

I can’t even chew gum, because it deadens what few senses I still have left in my mouth.

I can’t take a nap, because zombies never sleep, can’t go mack on my human boyfriend because it is literally against about 3 of the 8 Zombie Laws to date mortals, can’t really dish to my gaggle of girlfriends because I just have one, and she’s not really the “dishy” type; she being a fellow zombie as well.

So I try to get my “Alex fix” as often as I can, and if we have something to say, great; if not, well, his fluttering eyelashes speak 1,000 words, trust me!

“Hey,” he says, suddenly remembering, “what was up with you and Fiona in Chorus today? I didn’t even know you knew her.”

I kind of freak for a second.

I mean, he was talking to two girls at the same time when Fiona burst in, who knew he was even paying attention to me?

I feel the pass wrinkling in my hand and say, “Oh, that? I knew she was Mr. Thompson’s aide and I figured I’d float the ‘tuna fish allergy story’ by her first.”

I hold up the pass before finally shoving it deep in my pocket. “I guess it worked.”

He shrugs, smiles, kicks his legs against the side of the oil drum; they make a cheap, hollow sound.

I bet he did the same kind of thing when he was a kid in church.

“What are these, anyway?” I ask, eager to change the subject by patting the top of my oil can.

He taps the top of his. “Mr. Schaffer uses them for projects every once in awhile. He cuts them into, like, 12 pieces and we have to take the piece he gives us and make something of it.”

“Yeah, what’d you make?”

“A metal rose,” he admits a little sheepishly.

“Out of one of these?”

“Well, it wasn’t as big as all this but, okay, it was pretty big when I started.”

“When you started?”

“Well, I tried out a few different things, they didn’t work out so well, and when all I had left was a really thin strip, I hit on the rose idea.”

His voice has this lilting effect; it’s not gentle, just… soft.

His voice also matches his looks, almost… unsure.

It’s deep but soft, like he’s always afraid the wrong person might overhear.

I get a little sassy and say, “So… who was the rose for?”

Our oil cans are close enough together for me to kind of gently kick out and rub the side of his sneakers with my own.

“My mom,” he says, avoiding eye contact. “It was the last thing I made her before she and Dad split up.”

“Ouch,” I say. “Sounds like the end of a really sad Lifetime movie.”

“Or a country song!” he says, laughing through his nose.

(Which I also adore!)

He sighs when he’s done laughing, looks inside the shop room, toward the clock, and smiles back at me.

“What about you?” he asks. “I mean, are your folks still together?”

I kind of blank out because, hey, I wanted a little Alex fix but I wasn’t prepared for the 5th degree.

Then I cock my head and say, “I thought everybody knew I lived at the Home.”

He nods, uncomfortably, then stammers (adorably), “I d-d-do, I j-j-just, the way you are, the way you dress, the kids you hang out with, I always just figured you were going through your ‘angry young girl’ phase and there were folks back home waiting for you to get over it.”

“Really?” I ask, and I probably should be offended but I’m not, for some strange reason.

He kind of blushes, afraid that maybe he’s said too much; then nods.

I look down at my outfit – a rather subdued, by my standards, black on gray on black number– and ask him, “How is it that you think I dress, exactly?”

I’m just giving him the business, but suddenly he gets all squirrely for real.

“Oh no,” he says, waving his large, pale, long-fingered hands in front of his broad but flat chest, “I’m not going there!”

“No comment, huh? Well, and my friends? What’s up with that?”

“Nothing,” he says, and it’s funny because mostly we talk just in Chorus, where he’s more quiet and subdued, and here, with his sleeves rolled up and swinging his legs back and forth so close they almost touch mine, and his big crooked grin fixed on, it’s almost sensory overload; like he’s a whole other kid, with a whole other personality, altogether. “It’s just… Ethan Steele? I heard he went into the juvenile detention center last summer. And Dana Latherow? I heard she got caught boosting cars the summer before that!”

“What?” Now even I’m laughing – and he’s laughing – because it sounds so crazy when he say sit out loud. “This is nuts; those two are pussycats, seriously, you’d like them.”

He says, “Yeah, but would they like me?”

Then he tugs at his preppy shirt.

“Sure they would,” I insist.

(And, actually, they really would. Of course, he’d have to die first, and then get reanimated, but they’d love another zombie in town.)

“Yeah, right,” he grumbles. “They’d probably only pretend to like me until I agreed to go out to some abandoned field with them where they’d sacrifice me on some altar or something.”

Now I’m snorting, I’m laughing so hard; the laugh-so-hard-you-slap-your-thighs kind of laughing so hard.

“Hold up,” I say. “Are you calling me a Satanist, or yourself a virgin, because, I dunno, I’m pretty sure neither one is accurate.”

And he blushes so long, so hard, that I’m pretty sure I know why and, wow, does that make me like him even more.

“Alex?” comes a stern voice from the open doorway of the shop class.

(We’ve been laughing so hard, so long, I’ve forgotten we’re still at school!)

“Mr. Schaeffer, hi,” he says, abruptly leaping off his oil drum and sinking his sneakers in the gravel beneath. “This is—”

“I know who that is, Alex, I just don’t know why she’s here, or why you’re still out here. Bell’s about to ring, son, haul your butt back inside and tell your little girly-friend here to run along back to class before she gets a demerit, too.”

Mr. Schaeffer – a burly, stocky man in coaching shorts and a faded green golfing shirt – huffs off and turns away, and Alex kind of blushes and says, “Man, I didn’t realize I’d been out here so long. Time flies, huh?”

“Time flies when you’re insulting people, sure,” I say.

He laughs and kicks up a little dirt awkwardly, like he doesn’t know what to say – or how he should leave it.

“Listen,” I say, breaking the tension as I turn to go. (“Always leave first,” isn’t that what Dana always says?) “You should swing by the Home sometime, Alex. I know it’s not much to look at but Ethan and Dana aren’t so bad once you get to know them. Besides,” I call over my shoulder, “I promise they won’t sacrifice you or anything!”

His snort is all I hear as I force myself not to look back while I walk away.

Okay, well, I have to look back eventually because I’m walking into the student parking lot and, since I don’t have a car, it’s gonna look pretty stupid if I walk up to one and it turns out to be one of Alex’s friends, or even Alex’s car!

When I sneak a peek over my shoulder he’s still kind of lingering by his oil drum, not quite looking at me, not quite looking away, either.

It takes him a pretty long time before he finally returns to class.

That kind of makes me happy.

Even if half that time was spent smoking one last cigarette.

Chapter 5