Twice Shy (2 page)

A male voice rang out from down the hallway. "No way! She doesn't sparkle!" Immature chuckles accompanied the jibe. She ignored them and closed her eyes. Every day it was harder to feel the warmth. As they got closer, it was clear they weren't going to leave her alone.

"Hey, did you screw Edward?"

"Yeah, you like them popsicles?"

"Quiet, guys, she might go cut herself."

"Are you gonna cut yourself, freak?"

She kept her eyes closed, hoping they'd keep walking. She gasped as someone slammed into her. She stumbled forward and her foot exploded in pain, even as her head bounced off the glass. As the contents of her purse spilled, she heard a teacher yell a warning. Footsteps scattered.

She knelt to the ground and picked up her makeup, her ID, and the unmentionables she didn't need but couldn't avoid carrying. As she grabbed her mascara, a hand closed over hers. She looked up, startled, right into those green eyes.

Mike looked worried. "Are you ok?" he asked. She nodded. "You hit the window pretty hard."

She reached up and touched her head. She felt the cut and swore under her breath. She kept her face calm. "I'm not bleeding or anything. Jerks."

He brushed his thumb over the cut. "You've done worse on the swings."

She pulled her head away and stuffed the rest of her belongings into her purse.

"Those guys are a bunch of assholes. Don't let them get to you."

She jerked away from him. "Jocks are jerks. I know the type."

"Not all jocks," he said, reaching for her arm. She turned and staggered away from him.

"Yeah, all jocks." She walked down the hall consumed by tears that couldn't fall.

*  *  *

Her mother looked up as Ani limped into the nurse's office.

"What happened to you?" Her mother circled around the desk to lead Ani to a bed. As Ani sat down, her mom pulled the curtain, then removed a small phial from her purse. The liquid was sticky and pungent, a regenerative ointment reserved for the military and the rich. Her mom clucked and scowled as she applied it first to a cotton swab and then to Ani's forehead. "You have to be more careful. This stuff is only so good."

Modern medicine had come a long way since the Zombie Virus outbreak seventeen years before. After ZV was contained in the United States, her mother had spent her life making sure it would never happen again, and with that experience, she had gained access to all of the state-of-the-art medicines: ZV suppressors, regeneratives, synthetic antibodies. Neither of them had expected to need them quite so desperately.

Ani unlaced her boot as her mother finished dabbing and applied a Band-Aid. "Some jerks pushed me into a window." She pulled off the boot. She didn't want to look.

"Oh, honey!" her mother exclaimed. She looked down.

Her pinky toe was at a right angle. She looked away.

Her mom spoke in a bare whisper. "I'll tape it for now, sweetie, but we'll have to do some surgery tonight. I don't have anything for a broken bone." A sickening crack accompanied a jolt of pain. It faded to a slow burn as her mom wrapped her pinky and the toe next to it in tape. Her mom stood, kissed her forehead, and patted her on the shoulder. "That's good for now. Go back to class."

Ani's eyes widened. "Oh, shit, my trig test!" She shot to her feet and stumbled out of the room, boot in hand.

"Watch your language!" her mother called after her.

"You know you can write her up, Sarah," the secretary in the next room offered as Ani shuffled down the hall.

*  *  *

Ani hustled into Mr. Gursslin's room ten minutes late. "Miss Romero," he said. He looked at the clock, shook his head, and nodded at her desk. The test was already on it. She put the pass on his desk and hurried to her seat.

Mike flushed but didn't look up.

The test wasn't too hard. She finished as the bell rang and hurried out of the room, grabbing Mike's arm as he went past. "Hey..."

He spun and towered over her. "Hey what, Ani? I thought you didn't talk to jocks."

She frowned. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. That sucked, and I was in pain, but there was no excuse for what I said." His delicious masculine smell overwhelmed her; sweat and musk and—she stopped breathing.

He looked down the hall, where Fey scowled at them. "Well, just remember that just because you wear black and hate life doesn't mean you can't also be an asshole, too." His timid smile reappeared. "Right?"

She smiled back. "Sure, Mike. Sorry again."

He walked away as Fey stepped into his place.

"You'd better have life insurance," she said, looking down the hall after him.

"Excuse me?" Ani had almost forgotten to start breathing again.

Fey rolled her eyes in the direction of Mike. "Poaching Holcomb's boyfriend. She'll claw your eyeballs out and leave your corpse on the side of the road." She rolled her eyes again. "Not that you stand a chance with either of them."

Ani scoffed. "Rude, much?"

Fey's eyes widened. "Speaking of 'doesn't stand a chance,' head off Dylan for me, would you?" She whirled around and stalked down the hall, her high heels clopping over the din of the student masses. Ani turned around as Dylan moped up behind her.

He was tall, blue-eyed, and skinny, with an Edward haircut and a permanent scowl. He lifted his chin and brushed his hair out of his face, flashing a silver bracelet. "Hey," he said, his stare following Fey's retreat.

"Hey," she said back.

"Where's Fey going?" His eyes didn't leave Fey's ass until it was around the corner.

"Class, I guess."

Creepy-quiet to begin with, Dylan had started wearing black and cutting himself to impress Fey and had since slid off the deep end. Stealing, smoking, taking X, vandalism, and very bad poetry had yet to change Fey's opinion that he wasn't worth her time. His only use as far as Fey was concerned was stealing cigarettes from the gas station. His dad had been a HomeGuard technician before he died in the war, and Dylan was surprisingly good at breaking and entering—but he charged five bucks a pack.

He glanced up and down the hall. "You hear the new Paramore track?"

She shook her head. "My mom froze my iTunes account. Now I got to work the skating parties with her until I pay it off."

"Skating parties, huh?" His blank gaze floated to her face. It always felt like he was looking through her instead of at her. "At the middle school? Don't you work at the Lair?"

She rolled her eyes. "Mom works the skating parties and wants the help. She doesn't care if I have the money. Look," she said, touching his arm, "I got to get to class. See ya."

"Yeah," he said. He didn't move, so she pulled her hand away and walked off.

When she looked back, his unblinking stare stretched down the hall after the memory of Fey.

*  *  *

Ani sat on the bus, looking up every time someone climbed aboard. Eventually, she saw Mike—getting into Devon's yellow VW.
Damn it. They're not supposed to be back yet.
She looked away as they kissed.

Fey patted her leg. "Life sucks. Get used to it."

Chapter 3

Ani slouched at the table, affecting her best "The world sucks and I hate you all" pose. Three hours of pop music and wailing little kids was the definition of emo hell. She loved it. Her body screamed to move to the beat, and she wanted to skate with the kids, feel their energy as they circled the gym. She'd always liked kids, and she liked middle-schoolers more and more as she got older.
Maybe I'll become a teacher once I escape this hellhole,
she thought.

She tried not to smile at her mom. Her mother hated pop music and didn't much care for little kids. As a birthday present, she had agreed to find a reason to force Ani to come to the middle school skating parties for the rest of the school year. If Ani ever had a question about her mother's love, this answered it.

A sixth-grade girl in a yellow dress and pigtails skated up to the table. Beaming, she ordered a peanut butter cup and bottled water over the noise.

So cute,
Ani thought. She could feel the energy flowing out of the girl, hear the pulse of her heart drumming in her ears. She seemed so
alive
. Ani handed over the goods and sent her on her way with a smile that couldn't be helped. She turned to her mom to thank her.

Her mom smiled, then looked over her shoulder and closed her hand into a fist. It was a code signal.
Animal.
Ani turned around. Mr. Bell, the middle-school principal, had brought his terrier into the gym and was headed to the refreshment table. Ani's chair flew backward. She hurried to the bathroom and locked herself in the stall to await the "all clear."

She didn't know why animals hated her.
You're the walking dead, freak.
Okay, she knew why, but she hated it. Dogs were great ZV detectors. So were cats. And birds. Anything, really. Experiments had shown that all life was repelled by ZV carriers, and would go to almost any lengths to get away from a zombie. On the bright side, the lack of bacteria slowed down tissue decay, and Ani never got mosquito bites.

She didn't know how she'd contracted the virus—it was believed wiped out in North America over a decade before—and she didn't know why it hadn't turned her into a mindless, brain-eating machine. If her mom knew, she wasn't talking. But the other symptoms—necrotized flesh, animal psychosis, dulled sense of taste, touch, and smell—those were in full force. She missed Roscoe. He'd been a good dog.

Her mom whispered through the door, "We're good."

Melancholy, Ani stepped out into the pounding bass beat and tried to enjoy the rest of the evening.

Chapter 4

Homecoming week: a glorification of all things jock.
Might as well strap steaks to the nerds and set them loose in a tiger pen
, Ani thought. It was "Opposite Day," which as far as Ani could tell was blanket permission for homophobic jocks to cross-dress like cheerleaders and prom queens. One of the AV tech kids had shown up dressed in a varsity jacket and football helmet—he'd gone home to change after the team had pummeled him. He'd probably carry the nickname "Helmet" for the rest of his high school career.

Emo kids didn't have school spirit. It was far too positive. Ani wore black, of course, and as usual she was invisible when not a target. Being a girl helped. Dylan and Jake took way more crap than any of the girls did. Most of the time the girls were left alone, except by the emo guys, who gave them a very different type of attention.

"Hey," Dylan said, "do you know if Fey's going to the dance?"

That's so cute,
Ani thought. She stifled the happy thought and rolled her eyes. "You'd have to ask her, Dylan. I'm working three to eight Saturday. There's a Magic booster tournament at the Lair." And afterward, if she could figure out a way to escape both the emos and Devon, she'd try to talk to Mike at the dance. She handed Dylan a five-dollar bill.

He shuffled his feet, his intense stare unsettling. "People still play that, huh? If I had some old cards, could you sell them for me?"

Mike walked out of history and headed for his locker in a cheerleading skirt. He had blue and white pom-poms tucked under his arm.

"No," Ani said. "I..." She tried to step around Dylan, but he stepped with her. "I just work there. Bring them in, and Travis will buy what's worth anything."

"Hey, thanks." He stepped closer—too close. He smelled like old patchouli and Old Spice. He barely moved his lips. "There's Fey. Find out for me, would you?" He dropped a pack of cigarettes into her hand and walked away before Fey caught up.

Ani glanced around for teachers and then handed Fey the smokes.

"You're a life saver, Ani. Payday's Friday. I'll catch you back then."

"Mom's dragging me to Open House on Friday," Ani said. "I have a C in English and she wants to talk to Mrs. Weller. Why don't you bring it to the bonfire?"

"You're going?" Fey asked. Her bloodshot eyes rolled upward. "There’s nothing better to do in this town anyway. Billy J's smuggling in some vodka for the soccer team. It could get interesting."

Ani nibbled her lower lip. "Could be fun to watch."

"And laugh at," Fey said.

*  *  *

Mrs. Weller's room was cleaner than it had been all year. Every pen had its place, and every paper was filed. It looked like the walls had been scrubbed.

"Sarah, Ani, come in," Mrs. Weller said, offering her hand. "I'm so sorry we couldn't catch up during the week, but Ani's grade isn't where it should be, and I'm a bit concerned."

Great. Right down to business.
Ani did her best to not get defensive as they discussed her work ethic.

"We read
The Crucible
in eighth grade, Mom. It's too boring to read a second time."

Mrs. Weller raised an eyebrow. "And you don't think you might get more out of it with several more years of school under your belt, young lady?"

"I didn't get anything out of it the first time—"

Her mother's scowl stopped her in her tracks. "If you're going to be flippant, do it elsewhere. I'll meet you in the Band Room in five minutes."

"Fine," Ani said, snatching her purse off the floor. She stomped out of the room. Her mom probably thought she was acting.
That book sucks.

She slunk into the Band Room. Voices murmured in the back—Mr. Bariteau entertaining parents. Ani sat at the piano, closed her eyes, and put her fingers on the keys. Chopin's
Ballade in G Minor
fit her mood—alternating melancholy and whimsical, violent and breathless, cheerful and mischievous. She screwed up a few times but nothing big, and the little piano couldn't do it justice. All in all, a passable job.

She finished, and applause startled her. Her eyes snapped open to find Mike, his mom, her mom, Mr. Bariteau, Dylan, and several people she didn't know, all watching her. A tear hovered on her mom's cheek. Ditto Mr. Bariteau. Dylan stood in the doorway, mouth open. She looked around for an escape route.