Just Like Me (3 page)

I looked back up to the screen to see an army of zombies, making their way toward the screaming actress. I unplugged my laptop.

“Yeapp, total hotties, Lisa.” I replied as one zombie in particular let out a stream of bloody drool.

“No! No! Look!”

I looked back up to see another zombie step into the screaming girl’s path. He had a lot of make up on, but from what I could tell he had dark hair, dark eyes, and not a lot of acting lessons.

“He’s the hottie?” Disbelief colored my tone. I heard Lisa pecking furiously at her keyboard.

“Look at him!”

She whirled her computer around to reveal the actor without the zombie makeup on. He was good looking, I guess. Dark hair and dark eyes, and tan skin. He had that tall, dark, and handsome thing going for him. He also had an arrogant smile, the type of smile that knows it can get whatever it wants. I turned back to my computer.

“I’m surprised he’s not on your To Do list.” I remarked. Lisa laughed.

“Well, if we expanded our lists to include five people he’d probably be number four.”

“Wonderful.”

“Maybe I should switch him to number three…”

“Why do you think he’s so great?” I picked up a pen and began filling in more lines on my mermaid drawing.

“Well, I think he’s a big player. Apparently he’s always bringing different girls to his place when he’s not dating someone.”

“So he just screws girls for fun? Is that the trashy gossip station saying that?”

“Yea. Hot, right?” I shook my head at her, deciding to change the subject. Lisa and I would never agree on this particular subject.

“What’s this movie about anyway?”

“The first one is entitled Zombie Romance. This one is called Zombiefied. The last one coming out in November is going to be called Zombie Grave.” She shook her hands with excitement. “Well, it sounds bad, but you’ve gotta watch the whole thing.” I turned around and gave her a doubtful look.

“Lisa…”
“It’s about this girl.”

“The bad actress.”

“Right, she’s the Veronica on Ben’s list.” I looked back up at the scene. The girl was pretty, I guess. She looked pretty gross with her lips locked with a zombie.

“Ew! Lisa! What is this??” I quickly turned back to my drawing, attempting to draw her mouth on again.

`“She’s in love with him.”

“A zombie?!”

“Yea. He’s just trying to be a normal kid. And they fall in love. But the other zombies won’t accept her until she’s a zombie. But he doesn’t want her to become a zombie. So he has to protect her. This is the second movie I think.”

“Why the hell would you fall in love with a zombie?”

“Well, this gnome cast a spell on him and made him look normal.” She stopped, giving me a glance that said for me to just give her a chance to explain. I was highly doubtful. “They fell in love and the spell wore off. Now the zombie has to find the gnome and get the spell reversed so they can live happily ever after.”

“There are so many holes in that plot you’d think it was Swiss cheese.”

“It’s really great.”

“Sure, I believe you.”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you watch it. The effects are really great.”

“Yea, I guess if they think they can put enough effects in there it can cover for the horrific acting.”

“Say what you will, Taylor Jett is a sexy beast.”

Taylor Jett. What a stupid name. Obviously fake. I shook my head and started to focus on my drawing, smiling when I finally got the mouth right.

I tuned out for the majority of the movie. I heard Lisa sniffling and glanced up to the credits.

“Lisa, really?”

“I just hate cliff hangers!” She cried, looking at the screen. “It ends when they reach gnome hollow with an army of magical gnomes at their door ready to kill Lewis!”

My phone lit up and I see my Mom’s number pop up on the screen. Lisa hops off her bed and grabs her robe and bathroom supplies.

“I’m going to take a shower.” She announces, wiping her eyes. She yanks the door open and then closes it. The bathroom is down the hall, unfortunately. Several shower stalls and toilets in the same room, we share with the whole floor. I take a deep breath and answer the phone.

“Hey.”

“Kale?”

No, it’s the Easter Bunny.

“Yea, it’s me.”

“Hey. How are you?”

“Good.”

A silence broke out across the line. I heard someone coughing in the background, probably Abe.

My Mom and Dad got divorced when I was ten. I haven’t spoken to my father since then. It’s not like he skipped out and didn’t want to talk. He wanted to, but I didn’t want to see him. He got bad into drugs and hurt my Mom on multiple occasions, but really bad one particular night when she flushed the rest of his stash down the toilet. I guess he turned on me one night. Mom stopped him. We left him there in that rotting trailer and didn’t turn back. We never talked about it much. I think more went down than Mom was willing to talk about.

When I was thirteen my Mom married Abe. Named from Abraham in the Bible, and he really is a good Christian guy. He took me in as his own, treated me like a real dad should. After a few years of convincing, and before my Mom’s biological clock ran out (yuck?), they had Nori, my little sister. She’s two now.

“Mommy!” I heard her yell in the background.

“Beth! Nori’s trying to get into your cabinets again.”

“Hold on, Kale.”

I heard some rumbling in the background, Mom’s quiet voice cut through and the noise stopped. I heard some clicks as she picked the phone back up.

“Kale? You still there?”

“Yea, I’m here.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No problem.”
“Nori’s trying to get into everything. She wants pots and pans and if I let her have access to her crayons our living room walls would be rainbow colored.”

I heard her huff as she probably shifted Nori to her other hip. I heard her tell Nori softly that I was on the phone and she squalled. I heard more fumbling and heavy breathing into the phone.

“Kay?’ She couldn’t say my whole name yet. Even if it was one syllable.

“Hey, Nori.” Mom was probably holding the phone up to her ear because I heard her chubby little hands beat together.

“Kay! Kay! Ho?”

“I’ll be home soon.”

“Kay! Bye-bye Kay!”

More shuffling as Mom was put back on the phone.

“She misses you.”

“Yea, I miss her too.”

I could just imagine her wobbling through the hallways, trying to draw pink scribbles on the white living room walls. Her light brown hair was Abe’s, but she had my green eyes. Her chubby fingers were often wrapped around a teddy bear Abe had given her when she was born. She loved that bear. Most likely her light brown curls were in pigtails and she was probably in that pink jump suit my Mom loves her in. I was jealous of her curls; they were Abe’s curls of course. I had stick-straight, dark, dull brown hair like my Mom. I guess some girls are jealous that I don’t have to use a flat iron to get it this straight. It’d be nice to have a wave every once in a while, though.

“How are classes?”

“Fine.”

“How’s Lisa?”

I paused. “Lisa is Lisa.”

“Is she still…” I heard her fumbling with something, probably sweeping up the kitchen. “Dating that um…Brad person?”

“Ben, and yea. I think it’s been ten months.”

“Good for them. Tell her I said hello, if you don’t mind.”

“I will.”

Another pause. This is who I got my quietness from. She was quiet and intelligent, not the life of the party by any means. She kept a desk job at a local hospital, a type of secretary. I guess that’s why she had settled for my dad, she didn’t think she could get any better. But then she met Abe, and he’s a lot better.

I could hear her struggling for conversation. To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything really to talk about anyway.

“So, I saw that college competition thing on the television. That must be exciting.” She was trying.

“Yea, everyone’s talking about it.”

I messed with the light on my desk, bending the neck of the lamp this way and that.

“You think it’ll be there?’

“No, they’re trying to support education so it’ll probably be at a bigger named school.”

Silence.

“I suppose.” She finally agreed.

I heard Nori in the back, running and screaming through the halls. I heard Abe in the background teasing her. I could see him sitting on the couch watching the history channel, his brown curls cropped short, and a flannel shirt on. Mom probably had her holey jeans on and her favorite red t-shirt.

“Hey, Mom? Have you ever heard anything from my dad?” I tensed, biting my lip.

Awkwardness felt like a blanket as Mom quickly cleared her throat. “Oh, well, I better get Nori in the bath before bed time. I hope you have a good night.” I sighed, picking at an invisible speck on my desk.

“You too. Night, Mom.”

I stabbed a button, ending the call. She was obviously uncomfortable with that entire subject. I could try and try to ask her about it, but she’d never talk about it.

I wish Mom would pay more attention to the stuff Abe has on his computer. Abe has web calls he can make to me, and I get to see Nori on them sometimes. Home is two hours away, and it sucks not being able to see them all the time. Nori doesn’t quite understand about the computer, and Mom doesn’t go near it. She won’t go on any social networking sites or put her personal information out there. I think I understand though, she thinks my dad will find us. I tried to explain that just doing a video chat between us wouldn’t hurt anything, but she refuses to take that kind of chance. Not that I think my dad even owns a computer.

Lisa came back in the room then, her hair was dripping and her fuzzy pink robe wrapped tightly around her.

“Burrr. It’s getting cold.” She shut the door behind her and went to grab her pajamas. “How’s your Mom?”

“She’s good. Cleaning, I guess.”

“How’s Nori?”

“Same, can’t say my name yet.”

“Aww, that’s cute.”

I woke my computer up and it buzzed, not wanting to turn the screen on. I glanced back up at the T.V. and there was a rerun of that stupid zombie movie.

“Throw me the remote.”

“Come on, you don’t want to watch the whole movie? You’d really like it.”

“No.”

She sighed and tossed me the remote. I flipped through channel after channel until I reached the Star Gaze show.

“Whoa!” Lisa yelled. “Hold up!”

That Joe dude was back up on the screen, talking about the competition again.

“-reveal the celebrity Thursday! Today’s Wednesday so you better keep on your toes until then!”

“Lisa this is stupid.” I flipped the channel and one of those family sitcoms came on. I stayed on that.

“Is it alright if Ben comes up tonight? He just wants to hang out and I don’t wanna go out or anything.”

“Yea, that’s fine.”

“Cool.”

She pulled out her phone with the bright pink case and started dialing.

“Ben? Yea, she said it was cool.”

I shot her a glare, it’s not like I would’ve said no. I’m not her mother.

“Sure, yea I’ll come down and sign you in. Mk. Bye.” She threw the phone on the bed and grabbed the lanyard with her I.D. and room key. She slipped on her fuzzy pink slippers that clashed with the other pinks of her pajamas. “I’ll be right back.”

She stomped out the door, closing it behind her. I refocused on my computer. I had an oral presentation that I had to practice. I couldn’t do it while they were in the room. I started redoing the designs of the power point, deciding perhaps the brown overdid the purple on the slides. I settled for a light blue with a light brown instead for the background. I rearranged some words so they weren’t such a mouthful. I have to do this presentation for my speech class, but I can do it about anything I want. I wasn’t sure what to do at first; whatever we did a presentation on we had to consider ourselves an expert. I decided I was pretty good at my job, so I chose to write about that.

I’m a manager at a local movie theatre. I deal with unhappy customers and work with the projectors for the movies. I also assist box office and concession. It’s pretty fun. Most of the time I work one week day and two weekend days. I could work more days if I wanted to, but getting good grades is really important to me. I have to make good grades so I can have a chance of getting into the School of Education.

I was tweaking the font on the power point when the door to the room swung open. Lisa walked in, hand and hand with Ben, and they were both deep in discussion about something. Ben’s hair was a dark red; his skin tone wasn’t the normal pale complexion. He was pretty tan, a light sprinkling of freckles across his nose. He had brown eyes and he settled into Lisa’s desk chair. Lisa jumped up on her bed.

“I’m just saying, I’m ok with you doing the competition.” She was saying, adjusting the laptop on her legs.

“Well I’m saying I’m not going to do the competition, Lisa.” She rolled her eyes.

“Well, if it’s a guy you should totally do it.”

“Lisa.” He gave her a look. “I know you want to do the competition, and you think it’ll be ok for you to do it if you give me permission.”

“That’s not true!” She got so excited that the computer almost went toppling off her lap. “I don’t have to do the competition.”

“But you want to.”

“Well, yea…”

“So do the competition. Lisa, I don’t care.”

“Yes you do!”

“If you think this will make me jealous, I don’t care. I’ve heard rumors that it was going to be one of those desperate housewives of some place or another. Not a real celebrity, but just one to get this competition going.”

“A housewife?” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess they could have enough money to provide a good time.”

“Yea…so whoever comes out Friday, if it’s a girl, she’s automatically gonna be on my To Do list.” He winked at her, and then his eyes shot to me. He then looked kind of embarrassed. Lisa waved it off.

“She knows all about our To Do list, Ben.”

“God, you really do tell her everything.”

Me and Lisa winked at one another.

“We’ve only been best friends since second grade, it’s not like we know each other or anything.” I said, turning back towards my power point. Maybe the brown is still a little over powering…

“Hey, I was thinking.” Lisa said after a little bit. “Maybe we could expand our To Do lists…” She was acting nonchalant, examining her nails, but I could see her watching Ben’s expression out of the corner of her eye.

“Expanding to what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe to five instead of three.”

“Ok, but, if we’re expanding, then Loretta Michaels is going on my list.” Lisa cringed, giving a little extra vigor at waggling her fingers.

“Oh second thought, maybe we could just leave it at three.”

We all laughed.