Chapter 7

For once, much as I hate to admit it, Piper is right.

We do live in a dive.

(And a dumpy one at that.)

The Meriwether Home for Wayward Boys and Girls is actually one of those old school Florida roadside hotels the state bought years ago and turned into a modern version of an orphanage.

You know the type.

Heck, you and your family have probably driven past a few dozen of the same type of identical roach motels on your way down to Disney World, Daytona Beach, Miami or the Florida Keys; as in, driven RIGHT past them – and straight to the nearest Holiday Inn.

Holiday Inn it ain’t.

There are two floors, no elevators and vending machines that rarely work at the top of each of the four sets of stairs.

Most of the parking spaces are empty because most of the residents of The Meriwether Home for Wayward Boys and Girls either a.) Can’t drive, b.) Can’t afford a car or c.) Could drive before they got arrested one too many times and had their licenses taken away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, “the Home” as we zombies like to call it, isn’t exactly without its amenities.

There is a kidney-shaped pool in the courtyard, with a deep end that’s pretty shallow and a shallow end that’s really shallow, plus a few sets of rusty old-school patio tables and chairs surrounded by a low chain link fence.

The neighborhood isn’t so bad, either.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is a ROUGH neighborhood, but not for the Living Dead.

There is a 24-hour Stop ‘N Shop right around the corner, to help fill those endless nights with last-minute puzzles or playing cards or scratch-off Lottery tickets.

There’s a Laundromat next to the Stop ‘N Shop, which comes in handy because the two “complimentary” washers and dryers at The Home haven’t worked since 1972 when they were first installed (probably).

And, if you’re feeling extra guilty about the sins of your past life, there’s even a church right next door, The Chapel of the Holy Redeemer, complete with an all-night confessional and 24-hour gift shop, where for $5 measly bucks you can buy rosaries, mass cards and/or all the holy water you can cart away.

(You know, if you’re into that type of thing.)

The rooms are doubles, not co-ed, with girls sharing with girls and boys sharing with boys.

Since zombies never sleep or eat and generally wander around 24-7 and tend to get on each other’s nerves if stuck together for long periods of time (kind of like ferrets), the Florida chapter of the Council of Elders squared it with the folks who run the Home to make sure each of us had our very own space.

(Of course, they left out that whole “because they’re zombies and will disrupt the sleep patterns of your mortal orphans” part.)

At this hour the Home is deserted, the rooms dark, the pool empty except for the lonely family of ducks who float around most days and which Dana and I feed from time to time.

As usual, Ethan and Dana follow me into my room, which because of its bare walls and stripped down furnishings seems to be the hangout room of choice.

Each room at the home comes complete with two double beds, a table, two chairs and a lamp – TVs are optional and you have to get them on loan from Mrs. Hellman (yeah, like the mayonnaise) in the front office.

(I try to stay out of her hair as much as possible, so I don’t have a TV.)

I also don’t like clutter, so the minute I moved into the Home a few weeks before freshman year started, I got rid of everything that wasn’t nailed, bolted or sealed tight; the second bed, the lamp, the TV stand, the alarm clock, even the ice bucket!

I shoved the lone single bed into the corner to leave me as much pacing room as I could finagle for those long, lonely 10-hour nights spent walking back and forth, back and forth across the faded orange carpet.

And since I never use it, the only reason I kept one bed in the first place was so people wouldn’t keep asking me, “Hey, where do you sleep?” every time they walked past my room.

I kept the little table and the two chairs because that’s where I set up my laptop and do my homework (and, I confess, play the occasional game of Diner Dash 18), but gradually Ethan brought his chair in, too, and so now we all have a place to hang out after school and on weekends.

Dana went the other way; her room is cluttered with everything mine is not.

She uses her second bed as a combination scarf-slash-belt-slash-accessory table, has her closet and dresses jammed to the gills with her frilly Goth-inspired but not quite outfits and has covered every available inch of counter space with makeup, makeup and – believe it or not – more makeup.

She painted the walls purple (Shhh, don’t tell Mrs. Hellman), added silver mirrors from the thrift shop down the street and covered her lamps with maroon scarves, which gives her room a kind of psychic-at-the-carnival feel.

Everywhere you look, where there isn’t makeup or belt buckles, that is, are tiny jeweled boxes in all shapes and sizes that she’s collected throughout the years.

There’s nothing really inside of them, old movie tickets, phone numbers that are probably no longer even in service, a single earring she’s hoping to find the match to someday, she just likes the way the light catches them in the afternoon.

I’d call Ethan’s room a “man cave” but man do I hate that term, so I’ll call it a “bachelor pad” instead (although that’s not a whole lot better).

Ethan works odd jobs when he can and spends every single penny he earns (the Council of Elders gives us a monthly stipend – kind of like zombie welfare – so we don’t really need money) on computers, monitors, joy sticks, joy chairs and video games, so walking into his room is like navigating a sea of wires, cables and potentially neck-breaking chords strung here and there.

He gets movie posters free from the Mom and Pop video store two blocks over, and hangs them up to cover the holes he’s punched in his walls when he gets really frustrated at losing a new game.

They’re all zombie movies – Zombie Bride 3, The Cheerleader Who Wouldn’t Die, Date with the Living Dead; his little inside joke that no one really gets but Dana and I (and isn’t all that funny to begin with).

The other residents of the Home come and go, literally.

Most don’t stay long and, if they do approach us (something we don’t generally encourage), don’t hang out regularly.

It’s not that we’re unfriendly, just not overly so.

Plus, unlike the kids at Barracuda Bay who don’t pay us much mind, at the Home there’s nothing for the other kids to do BUT check us out, and the closer we get to people, the more likely they are to discover our pesky little secret.

So today, like most days, like most nights, like most mornings, like most seasons and weekdays and holidays and weekends, it’s just the three of us.

Not that I mind, exactly.

Dana hasn’t been around long – only a couple of semesters – but we clicked right away.

She showed up about halfway through sophomore year, and I knew the minute I saw the words on her ironic black T-shirt under her purple paisley vest over her maroon skirt and black fishnet stalking – “My eyes are up there” – we’d be fast friends; and we were.

I mean, we are.

Although she is sexier than me, more feminine than me, taller than me, curvier than me, we still share makeup tips, graphic novels, funny YouTube videos and accessories just like human best friends; sisters, even.

Unlike most zombies, her eyes still have a little green left over the deep black they will eventually become.

Her skin is grayish, like mine, like Ethan’s, but somehow… not quite like ours, either.

There is still a lifelike quality to her, as if her body hasn’t quite gotten the message that she’s long since dead.

Her limbs don’t seem quite so stiff, her skin not quite so gray, her eyes not quite so dull.

As a result it’s a lot easier for her to “pass” at school, which is just as well because according to Law # 5 of The 8 Absolutely Unthinkable, Unbreakable Zombie Laws (i.e. “Thou Shalt Not Associate With Other Zombies Unless Absolutely, Positively Necessary”) Dana, Ethan and I aren’t technically supposed to hang out at school together.

That’s fine with me.

I was a loner as a human, so it wasn’t such a big transition to the Afterlife, but Dana has pictures of her old self in her room and they are so night and day from who she is now it’s not even funny.

(Well, it actually is funny so, scratch that.)

I mean, to look at this hardcore, tough-talking, sassy-walking, bully-punching chick now you’d think she’d always been a toughie but, in fact, in her past life she was a real doll; bowties in her pigtails and khaki slacks and pastel blouses and braces!

Braces!

It helps that she’s made a few human friends at school; nothing special, nobody she’d ever bring around the Home, that’s for sure, but at least she hasn’t had to cut humans off cold turkey like I have.

And Ethan?

Ethan is Ethan; like no zombie you’ve ever seen, alive or dead.

He keeps his dirty blond hair cut close to his skull, sometimes closer than others on account of he does it himself with a pair of electric clippers he bought for $2 at the pawn shop around the corner from the Home and they only work about half the time; and the rest they work twice as well, so he never can tell just how close a shave it’s going to be until he’s done and looks in the mirror.

It could be long or short, his hair, because you never see it anyway thanks to his perpetual hoodie.

And this guy wears a hood like nobody’s business.

I mean, it’s like Ethan was born to wear a hood, like Obi Wan Kenobi or Darth Vader, you know?

And he likes the wide kind, too, the kind that puddle on his shoulders and cast his face in shadows and come way down over the top of his head so only his shiny aviator shades, blunt nose and thin lips stick out when he cruises silently through the halls at school like a shark slicing through a school of fish.

He is bad without being too terribly bad and good without being too terribly good.

He showed up a few semesters before Dana (the Elders don’t like to “clump” zombies by having them all show up at the same school together on the same day because, well, obvious much?) and we kind of started hanging out at the Home just because we were the only ones still awake after the official “lights out” at 11.

One of the great things about being a zombie is you can see in the dark; I mean, there IS no dark, not for zombies.

So when I say I threw out my lamp, it wasn’t because I’m an anti-hoarder and can’t stand clutter, it’s because, really, why would I keep something around I didn’t need?

And zombies don’t need lamps.

The minute the sun goes down, the sky takes on this, well, it’s hard to describe but it’s this yellow sheen, like when Ethan switches to night vision goggles in one of his video games – not that I sit around watching Ethan play video games all day – but I’ve seen him do it once or twice and that’s what it’s like just the same.

And all night long, it’s like it’s still daytime out; at least for us.

So even when I’m pacing around my little empty hotel room at night, with no lamp and the light in the bathroom turned off, it’s still light.

Not like noonday bright, but bright enough; like mid-morning or late afternoon.

Even if I’m in the graveyard doing Reanimation Patrol, it’s like it’s the middle of the day.

But now it is the middle of the day, and the mood inside my cramped little room is anything but “light.”

“I don’t know, Lucy,” Dana is saying, her left foot fidgeting on the bare linoleum floor.

(Oh, I didn’t tell you? I ripped up the carpets, too. Sorry, Mrs. Hellman; you can keep my security deposit!)

“That was a pretty amateurish move, trying to use the hand dryer like that.”

Huh, shows how much Dana uses the C-wing girls’ room.

“It’s not a hand dryer, Dana; it’s a hand towel dispenser.”

“Same difference,” Dana snorts, but it’s not an “I’m so mad at you I could snort” snort, it’s more like a “How could you be so stupid?” snort.

(Which I’ve just decided is a lot worse.)

“The point is,” she sneers, “it’s like coming to school without three coats of makeup on or something.”

I make a kind of clicking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and let out an anguished, “Don’t you think I know that, you guys? I’m ticked off enough at myself already.”

“Maybe so,” adds Ethan, “and we’re not trying to kick you when you’re down but, what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, Ethan, that’s just the point. I’ve used that bathroom 8,000 times and never thought twice about it. How should I know they went and changed the dispensers overnight?”

“Well,” Dana points out, playing with one of the jeweled coasters she gave me for Christmas last year, “it’s kind of your job – our job – to pay attention to those kinds of details.”

“Yeah, I know that, Dana; I get that. I just, I slipped up, guys, I’m sorry.”

“What if the Council finds out, Lucy?” Ethan asks pointedly, his dark eyes judgmental. “I mean, they could split us up, they could send you to Afterlife Academy; they could send all of us to Afterlife Academy. I’m just saying, it’s not just you anymore; you have other… people… to care about.”

I shoot Ethan a look, because he normally doesn’t talk like that.

I mean, for Ethan, that’s about as sentimental as he gets.

I kind of gasp, look at them both and say, “I would never want anything to happen to you guys, ever. You know that, right?”

Dana looks from Ethan then back to me and rolls her eyes.

She knows I’ve been crushing hard on Ethan for years now, knows he’s made a few comments along the way that indicated he might, maybe, could, possibly, sorta, probably feel the same way, and she gets a big kick out of the occasional moments of not-so-sexual tension that crop up from time to time.

“What Ethan’s saying, Lucy, is that we have to look out for each other, that’s all. We can’t afford to get… lazy. Ever.”

I groan, leaning back against the wall.

“I’m sorry, really I am. I’ll make it up to you guys, I promise.”

“How?” Dana asks, cutting me a dark look; few chicks can cut a dark look like Dana Latherow.

“How… what?” I ask, looking from one to the other and back again.

I mean, what do they want me to do, turn myself into the Council of Elders because some stupid chick got a bee in her bonnet about my cold skin?

Ethan sighs, looks at Dana, who sighs, and he looks back at me and asks, with a rough edge to his voice that I don’t hear often, “What she means, Lucy, is… what are you going to DO about it?”

“Do about it?” I ask. “What’s there to do about it? The vampires are getting me a doctor’s note,” I can’t believe I just said that out loud, “and by tomorrow Fiona will have forgotten all about it.”

Well, one out of two ain’t bad…