Chapter 6

I’m not surprised to see Ethan Steele and Dana Latherow waiting for me when I turn up at my locker at the end of the day, their faces taut, their eyes dull, their expressions grim.

Watching them as I approach my locker, I think – not for the first time – how glad I am they’re on my side.

Ethan isn’t exactly huge or anything, but he’s a scrapper.

It’s well known that zombies have, like, 0.2% body fat – trust me, it’s one of the only benefits of the Afterlife – so everything Ethan has either bulges, curves or juts.

He has wheat-colored hair that’s close-cropped to his perfectly round head; it goes well with his milk chocolate eyebrows and dark chocolate eyes.

His cheekbones are male-model prominent, his cheeks vaguely hollow, his faded black T-shirt hugging his tight, firm pecs and barely containing his cannonball biceps.

His skin is marble pale and hairless, his gray jeans baggy and sagging at the waist and tapering down his long legs to his paint-splattered black sneakers.

Dana is curvy and tall, and surprisingly feminine for a girl with no meat on her bones, but all kinds of intimidating just the same.

Most zombies don’t smile much; I mean, what for?

But Dana looks like the type of gal who never smiled much when she was alive, either.

Her hair – this week – is dyed auburn with black streaks, her eyelashes thick with triple coats of mascara, her black lipstick a mirror of her deep, black eyes.

She has hoops dangling up and down both earlobes, with alternating fake ruby and diamond studs.

Today she has on a snug black velour track suit, over a white shirt with “Tramp” spelled out in pea-sized rhinestones.

“So?” Dana asks first, her dead black eyes cold and impatient as she looks me up and down.

“How’d it go?” Ethan asks second, finishing her sentence like they’re some old married couple.

Normally, we would look at each other and grin (like I said, there’s not a ton to smile about when you’re dead, but grinning isn’t exactly off limits), but there’s nothing normal about this stupid, stinkin’, rotten, no good day.

“How’d you guys find out already?” I sigh, avoiding their eyes as I take twice as long to dial in the combination for my locker.

Sometimes it’s nice being one of only three zombies at Barracuda Bay High; sometimes it can get a little cloying.

This is one of those not-so-nice, a-lot-like-cloying times.

Ethan smirks with his crooked grin and says, “Believe it or not, Piper told us herself.”

That actually IS pretty shocking.

I mean, it’s strictly forbidden, according to the Truce of the Living Dead (which, just because they’re not zombies, vampires actually are), for vampires and zombies to communicate with each other – unless absolutely necessary, of course.

(And, yes, if you’re keeping track, it IS one of the 8 Absolutely Unthinkable, Unbreakable Zombie Laws. Just don’t ask me which one at the moment; I’m a little preoccupied what with getting kicked out of school and potentially “outed.”)

“She was pretty ticked off,” adds Dana, in a way that makes it sound like it’s my fault she was ticked off.

“What does SHE have to be ticked off about?” I snap, slamming my locker shut and standing awkwardly with most of my books stacked in my arms.

Although it’s not an actual law, it’s strictly forbidden for zombies to own a backpack, you know, for the uncool factor alone. “I’m the one who can’t come back to school until I get a doctor’s note clearing me from being a health hazard to Barracuda Bay.”

“What?” asks Ethan, chocolate brown eyes growing an extra shade darker as he inches closer to get a better look at the note in my hand. “They can’t do that!”

I shrug, too stressed to go into it right now.

“We can help you with that,” says a voice from over my shoulder and when I turn, Piper has already snatched the note out of my hand. “We have a doctor on call to handle just this type of thing.”

I go to snap it back but it’s well known that vampires are about twice as fast as zombies (and I was never exactly Speedy Gonzalez when I had a heartbeat) so it’s no great feat for Piper to hold the note just out of reach.

“I’m fine, Piper,” I bluff. “I’ll handle it myself.”

“Don’t be so quick to turn her down, Lucy,” says Ethan, of all people, a guy who hates vampires so much he once spent nearly half of his summer lawn mowing money on a voodoo doll that looked just like Piper – in vain, unfortunately.

(Though he still has the special edition “Piper and Bianca Yearbook Photo” dartboard in his room at the Meriwether Home for Wayward Boys and Girls, where all the good zombies live.)

“Yeah,” adds Dana. “If they can get you a note, even if it is from some grody vampire doctor, Mr. Thompson won’t care.”

“You’d do that?” I ask Piper. “For me? For… us?”

She sneers, “Of course not. The last thing in the world I’d do is help you worm smelling chunks of walking meat. If I do it at all, and that’s still a big ‘if,’ it’ll be to save my own skin, not yours.”

The worst thing about vampires is looking at them.

Ugghh.

Gawd.

Seriously?

They are so… gross.

I know everybody thinks they’re all sexy and hot and alluring but, come on over to my side of the Afterlife and I’ll show you a thing or two that’ll put you off vampires well… forever.

Seriously, just watching Piper talk turns my shriveled stomach.

As a zombie, as another Immortal, I can see right through her pasty skin to the black blood running through every vein in her body.

But vampires aren’t like you and, well, they’re certainly not like me.

The minute they “turn” into the Undead it’s like their veins double up on size so they can carry as much blood as possible to their hungry, evil hearts.

So with my super zombie x-ray vision I can literally see the veins and their black blood; it’s like tunnels of warms crawling all over their bodies, right beneath their skin.

You know that invisible guy in Anatomy class?

The big plastic one that sits on the teacher’s desk where you can take out his liver and his pancreas and even his brain and put them back in?

And the veins in his clear plastic arms and legs are red and blue?

Yeah, it’s like that; just… live and in person.

Seriously, it’s like a road map of nasty up one leg and down the other, up her arms, down her throat, around her face, wow, if you could use zombie vision you’d be squeamish, too.

In fact, many times during the day I’ll sit there in class watching the blood worms pump beneath Piper or Bianca’s skin and the whole class is sitting there, clueless to the vampires in their midst and I think, “Can’t you clowns see this?!? Why aren’t you as totally freaked out as I am here?!?”

Then there are the fangs; those slick, sharp fangs that we can see all the way back up her root canal and into her jaw line, pointy and long and just waiting for her to get the slightest bit ticked off so they can point past her gum line, down beneath her lips and straight into the air, where they quiver and shake until drool – actual drool – runs down them.

But the worst part of it all, far worse than the fangs and, yes, even worse than the blood wormy vein slugs crawling all day long are the eyes.

When you can see them, truly see them like we zombies can, vampires have these beady yellow eyes; like cat’s eyes, almost, only they glow all day long, even when it’s not dark out.

So it’s a combination of revulsion and relief when I finally turn from Piper and say, “Whatever the reason, if you want to take care of that for me, for us, for you… whatever… well then, I guess I’d appreciate it.”

Piper and Bianca share a laugh, their yellow eyes glowing, their fang buds glistening.

“How hard was it for you to use that word?” asks Piper knowingly.

I grin and say, “Pretty darn hard and, I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything but, I’ve got a Social Theory test I really need to take tomorrow so…” I hold out my book for emphasis “… I need to know if I should study tonight or not.”

“Study,” says Piper, pocketing Mr. Thompson’s sticky note and turning on one polished high heel. “We’ll get you the doctor’s note before school tomorrow, no questions asked.”

I say, “Sweet, you wanna just bring it by the Home on your way to school because that would just about make my—”

“Puh-lease,” Piper pouts over her shoulder and even from across the commons I can see blood worms pulsing up and down the back of her neck, “it’s bad enough I have to speak to you two days in a row let alone swing by that trumped-up dive you zombies call a home.”