A Living Dead Love Story Series (16 page)

“Now
these,”
he says with obvious relish, “are what zombie movies are meant to be.” He holds them close to his chest on the way back to the sales counter, as if a crowd of customers might storm the store at any moment and try to rent them away from me. Once we get to the register, he takes my other three, adds them to the pile, and studies me a little more closely.

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm dressed like a circus freak, as if my black fingernail polish isn't reminder enough when I hand my card over.

“Let me guess,” he says, swiping my Mega Movies membership card, “you and your Goth friends are having a zombie watching party. You know, getting a jump on Halloween?”

I shake my head. “Haven't you heard? Goths have no friends.”

He smiles anyway, hitting on another bright idea. “I got it: the new boyfriend's a big zombie fan, and you're trying to play catch up so it looks like you share the same interests?”

Ha! I wish that (a) I had a boyfriend, (b) he liked zombie movies, and (c) he was down with dating one—indefinitely. I slowly shake my head. Not even close, pal.

He grows visibly worried. “We don't get many girls renting these,” he says with a grin, scanning each zombie flick slowly as if he's suddenly having second thoughts about renting them to me in the first place.

“Well,” I say matter-of-factly, “you do now.” “I mean, they're pretty gross,” he says dramatically. “You sure you're okay with the walking dead?”
I am now
. “Yup.”

“Monsters chomping on raw brains?”

I actually have personal experience with that one
. “Sure thing.”

“I warn you”—he finally hands them over—”they'll keep you up at night.”

“Not a problem,” I say on my way out the door. “I'm kind of …an …
insomniac.”

On the short drive home, I chuckle at the irony of it all: a real-life zombie renting zombie movies. Slipping through the front door and locking it behind me, as if one of the neighbors might see my towering stack of gore and suddenly put two and two together, I promptly load the top movie on the stack into the high-tech DVD player on Dad's beloved big-screen TV and settle onto the couch with …no movie snacks.

I realize it's the first time I've ever left Mega Movies without an armful of Twizzlers, microwave popcorn, Raisinets, and Goobers in addition to my pile of movies. It's weird. Not only am I not hungry at all (best diet
ever);
I just …don't crave those things anymore, at all. I wonder, will watching movies be the same without movie snacks? Only one way to find out, I guess. I push play on …what is it again?

Oh yeah, get this:
Zombie Homecoming
. Catchy, huh?

As the opening credits roll over a black-and-white screen that looks, cleverly enough, like a formal homecoming invitation on a silver platter, I check out the box it came in. The zombie on the cover is a mostly skeletal girl in a tattered red homecoming dress, a crooked tiara resting on her flat green forehead (so …what, I'm going to turn green now?
That's
my future?), and a black sash hiding a thick gash in her throat, where you can almost, just barely, see the exposed vocal cords. (Nice. You stay classy,
Zombie Homecoming
filmmakers.) She looks all kinds of dead, not very attractive—or fun, for that matter—and about as lifelike as a dollar store Halloween mask on a half-price mannequin.

I sigh, watch the opening scene where the homecoming queen somehow takes a detour past the high school gym (why?), where it's clearly homecoming (I can tell by the big
Homecoming
banner over the double gym doors), and straight to the nuclear plant, presumably to make out with her boyfriend, who, uhhm …works there?

Late at night?

Even though he's still in high school?

And it's …homecoming?

What, he couldn't get the night off?

It goes downhill from there. (But then, what did I expect?) In the first 10 minutes of the movie, our plucky heroine (a) parks her car next to a stack of rusty yellow canisters with a red toxic waste symbol plastered all over them, even though two inches away there's clearly an empty parking lot full of much better spaces, (b) trips, twice, for no apparent reason, (c) finds her boyfriend in the Porta-John (???), (c) makes out with him (in the Porta-John, no less—grossness), (d) follows him back to her car, where (e) he leaves her without saying good-bye (rude), and (f) the toxic canisters magically open up and drown her in her car with a toxic green goop (that looks suspiciously like gallons of neon mint jelly). By minute 11, she's become a great green ogre, her toes falling off as her clueless date slips on her size-10 dress shoes on the way into the homecoming dance; hilarity ensues.

I turn it off shortly after that and stick in
Zombie Groom
next. Wow. Just, wow. At least
Zombie Homecoming
had a
little
charm;
Zombie Groom
is just gross. And not only gross but single-minded, charmless,
and
gross.

One minute the lead character is this semihand-some groom (look, we're not talking A-list stars here) who steps outside his wedding reception for a quick smoke; the next minute, some random zombie walks—sorry, stumbles—over, bites him on the neck, and suddenly he's …drumroll, please …Zombie Groom.

Zombie Groom is a lot hungrier than Zombie Homecoming Queen, who took at least five minutes to chomp her first victim after catching the Z-disease; Zombie Groom goes in for the kill almost immediately, biting his best man on the arm—right before he tears it off and gnaws on the elbow bone (elbone?) like it's a giant chicken leg. Then his best man, with only one arm, bites the caterer in the neck, blood gushes all over the pigs-in-a-blanket and, once again, hilarity ensues.

I watch for a few minutes more as the zombies get grayer and grayer, hungrier and hungrier, and less …human …by the minute. Half an hour into each of the first two flicks (or about as long as I can stand each one) the zombies have dragging arms, missing teeth, shrunken eyes, hanging jaws, blood-soaked chins, and they're eating small intestines for appetizers and human thighs for dessert.

I suffer through a few more—
Zombie Picnic, Zombie Cheerleader 4, Zombie Biker Gang 2
—until I've had about all the standard zombie dialogue I can take: “Brains, eat! Eat brains!” Then I slide the last disc out, put it back in its box, and spread the cases out, side by side, on the coffee table.

You know, kind of like a zombie lineup.

I stare at my future—rotting skin, sunken eyeholes, bad skin (gray or green seem to be the prevailing choices), holes in my clothes, bad prom dresses, torn sashes, grave dust in my hair, intestines like sausages hanging out of my mouth—and wonder,
Is this what I have to look forward to?

I mean, when did the world decide vampires were the sexy undead? In the movies they could fly, flirt, seduce, sparkle, transform, kick butt,
and
look good doing it. Even werewolves got to look human 29 days a month, right? Could go out in the sun, enjoy a fresh burger, play Frisbee with their buds with no one the wiser?

But zombies? I haven't seen one zombie, anywhere, ever, that looks even remotely …human. They are dismal, dead, dying, and gray (or green, whatevs); dead eyes, dead mouths, dead brains, dead souls.

They don't say anything (except “Brains!” or, occasionally, “Eat brains!” or, once in awhile, “Brains, eat!”), don't do anything, don't …
feel
…anything.

So how come I can feel
everything?

And just how long will it last?

H
AZEL SHOWS UP
later that night as I'm watching the last of the zombie movies. (I can't help it; if I rent nine movies, I've got to watch all nine—even if they
are
degrading to zombies, in general and me, in particular).

She doesn't knock on the door, doesn't rap on the glass by the door, just uses her key and walks right in. “Break and enter much?” I say from the den, mostly so she'll know where I am. (As if the screaming victims running from the dead-eyed zombies wouldn't clue her in.) “Bitch much?”

I snort out some of the Mountain Dew I've been sipping.

She flops down on the couch and grabs the cup from me and takes a sip. “Eewwww, where's the diet?” she asks, a wrinkle in her nose and a gag in her voice.

“I'm not buying diet anymore.” I'm little-white-lying easily now that I've done it so often. “All that fake sugar is bad for you. My dad read a study where—”

“Really?” She interrupts, putting the cup down like it contains radioactive waste. “Well, tell him to read the study where high school girls who quit drinking diet soda get fat, lonely, and unpopular. I think he'll find it highly interesting. Maybe he'll even share it with you.”

“Hmm.” I sigh, glad to have Hazel back, on my couch, in my life, riding my ass. “And what respected scientific journal would that be in?
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire?
Or maybe it's in volume 8 of
I Don't Know Jack; I'm Just Making All This Up?”

“Uh, yeah, you'll actually find it in
Common Sense for Loser Girls
, volume 1.”

“Touché.” I giggle and, at last, she joins me.

We sit comfortably for a minute.

She leans back and turns her head my way. “I'm sorry, Maddy.”

I look back, still smiling. “Sorry for what, Hazel? The part about accusing me of lying to you?” And even as I say the words, I kind of feel guilty for giving her grief when, actually, I totally
am
lying to her. “Yes.” She groans.

“Or the part about you stiffing me in Home Ec?” “Yes.” She groans again.

“Well, wait, I wasn't finished yet. Or the part about you not texting me for the last 24 hours?”

“Yes, yes, and whatever
else
you've got stored up for me, yes, I'm sorry for that, too. Maddy, I'm sorry; it's just—”

“Whoops, just one more. Or the part about you interrupting Stamp when I think,
think
, he was going to ask me to the Fall Formal?”

“What?
You didn't tell me that. Why didn't you say something?”

“Uhhm, I did say something—with my eyes. I believe it was, ‘If you don't get the hell out of here, I will poison your dog, if you ever get one,' or something along those lines.”

Hazel is rocking back and forth, laughing, “God, I'm so stupid. I really thought I was doing you a favor.”

“What? How? By getting Stamp to
not
ask me to the Fall Formal?”

“By getting Stamp involved
in
the Fall Formal. I figured, you know, that way I'd have his ear more than his stupid football friends and, you know, could talk you up.”

“Hmm.” I sigh, shaking my head at Hazel's circular logic. “So let me get this straight: rather than letting a half-naked hottie ask me to the Fall Formal on the spot, you figured you'd interrupt me, blow me off, send me away, and lure him onto the Fall Formal Decorating Committee so you could convince him to do sometime next week what he was already willing to do yesterday? That is really awesome, Haze; thank you
so
much.”

She's giggling so hard she almost
—almost
—for-gets to notice my new Goth style. But she wouldn't be Hazel without quietly—and then not so quietly—judging me, so eventually she notices and gives me the proper best friend once-over.

Making sure I notice every eye roll, tongue click, and sigh of desperation over her best friend's fashion faux pas, she gradually works her way up from my black sneakers past my black sweats to my black hoodie and beyond to my pale face and dark eyeliner and maroon lipstick.

“Hmmm.” She finally sighs, staring me in the eye. “Seriously? We're seriously doing this Goth thing? In public and everything?”

I wince. “Well, not permanently, Hazel. I mean, only until I figure out what this …sickness …I've come down with is and get back to normal. Once I'm feeling like myself, when total strangers aren't stopping me in the halls and asking me how long I have to live, yeah, I'll go back to khakis and white linen, but for now …like it or lump it.”

She rolls her eyes and notices my hands on the back of the couch. “The black nail polish is a classy touch. Very eighth grade; so retro.”

“Thank you.” I laugh.

Just like that, Hazel is back: bigger, stronger, happier, sadder, funnier, and more judgmental than ever.

After a few more minutes of busting my balls over the new Goth look, she looks away from me and toward the TV screen. Before I can react and hit the pause button, she sits up, eyes wide.
“What
are you watching?”

I was so happy to see Hazel, I forgot all about the TV. I look at the screen to see the star of
Zombie Gardener 3
using his trimming shears to slice off the toes of his latest victim. At that precise moment, his mouth opens, and black, oozing goo pours out all over the floor of his nursery.

“N-n-nothing, just …some old movie that was on. Saturday night, you know. What's really on?”

But Hazel is smart and sees the stack of zombie movies towering on the coffee table right next to the clicker. “This isn't on TV right now, Maddy; you actually
rented
this crap. Like, actually left the house to go and pick these titles out, specifically.”

She reaches over and sees the zombie titles.
“Zombie Gardener 3?
Who knew there was a
Zombie Gardner 1
and
2? Zombie Biker Babes on Spring Break?
Maddy, what's gotten
into
you? I ditch you for one measly day and you resort to this—”

A knock on the door interrupts her tirade. What's left of my decaying heart flickers, but she smiles to beat the band and says, “Oh, yes. Please tell me I got here before Stamp was supposed to come over and take you out on a date. Please let that be my reward for saying ‘I'm sorry' first this time.”