Kiss of Life (3 page)

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"I've been really busy, Karen," she replied. It sounded lame even to her. "I go over to Adam's every night, and I ..."

"I know all about Adam, Phoebe," Karen said. "Adam isn't here, and there's no reason why you couldn't give Tommy five minutes of your time. You know, like you used to every day before algebra class back when the two of you were ...dating?"

Phoebe blushed and set her fork down. She heard Margi tell Karen to take it easy, but she lifted up her hand before Karen could say more.

"I'm sorry, Karen," she said. "It's just really hard."

"It's hard," Karen repeated, her voice growing husky. It was amazing, what Karen could do with her voice, altering the flat monotone that marked the speech of the dead. Phoebe raised her head so she was staring into the blank lights of Karen's eyes. "You think it's hard."

"I know what you're going to say, Karen. I know."

Phoebe knew that the differently biotic had to work at expressing emotions on their faces. She knew from being with Adam since his death that he could have emotions trapped deep within his still heart that his body would no longer convey. She'd spent long hours helping him walk or exercise in the hopes of bringing back a range of motion to his stiff limbs, long hours just sitting holding his hand or leaning against his arm. The time together might make him happy, or grateful, or sad, but Phoebe didn't know. Adam couldn't show it. Yet.

Karen was better at nuance than any of them, as good as some living kids, almost. But if Karen felt any pity for Phoebe, there was no sign of it on her cold, beautiful face.

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"Adam needs me right now, Karen," she said. "His mom said he fell again...."

"He fell?" Margi asked. "I didn't think he could, like, walk yet. Without help."

"He can't. He tries, of course. He's stubborn."

"That isn't being stubborn. It's being smart. He isn't going to ...come back ... by sitting around on his can all day and night."

Phoebe wasn't sure if Karen was being practical or cruel. "He needs me, Karen. I just don't ... I don't think I have anything left for anyone else."

Tommy never needed me the way Adam does, Phoebe thought.

Karen put her arms on the table in front of her, palms up. Phoebe couldn't help but notice how smooth and white they were, like she had been carved from a single piece of white stone.

"I know Adam needs you, honey," she said. "He always did."

Phoebe hesitated, then placed her hands on Karen's open palms, relieved that the subject of Tommy was dropped for the moment. Karen's hands felt warmer than hers, which Phoebe could never understand no matter how many times she experienced it.

"Awww," Margi said. "See, we can all play nice."

Karen smiled, looking embarrassed. "I know it's hard, sweetie. I guess I should be asking how I can help instead of bullying you."

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Phoebe felt a tear roll down her cheek, but Karen was holding her hands so it made it all the way to her jawline before Margi leaned over and wiped it away with the edge of her napkin.

"I don't know," Phoebe said, crying openly now. "Adam ... Adam isn't like you, Karen. Or like Tommy. Tommy told me that you and he came back more because ...because you were loved, and I'm trying with Adam, but it just isn't working."

"He's more ... like me," Colette said. "It will...take time."

The girls fell silent as Principal Kim walked over to their table and asked Colette to follow her. As Colette rose, Principal Kim looked at Phoebe and noticed she'd been crying.

"Phoebe?"

She turned, embarrassed.

"Um," she said, "yes, Principal Kim?"

"Are you all right, Phoebe?"

"Yes. I'm fine, thank you."

Principal Kim gave a slow nod. Phoebe prayed that she wouldn't bring up counseling again: counseling for this and that. Because your friends are dead, because your friends aren't dead. Because they are dead and then they aren't dead and how do you feel about that? How do you feel? How do they feel? How
can
they feel?

Principal Kim's silence was worse even than the mandatory counseling that they'd made Phoebe go to for the first week after Adam was killed. Margi and Karen were looking at the table, compounding the air of guilt that seemed to hang over their lunch.

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"Um, is there anything else, ma'am?" Phoebe said, finally.

The principal thought a moment before answering her question. "You wouldn't know who vandalized the school last night, would you?"

"No," she said, the lie passing her lips with surprising ease.

"I know you spend a lot of time with the differently biotic students," she said, looking at Karen apologetically. "With Adam, and with other kids that don't go to our school."

"You don't know that a zombie did it."

"No, I don't," she said. "But I thought you might know if someone was ...upset with the situation."

"Everyone should be upset." Phoebe's eyes were burning, but she refused to cry again.

"Of course," Ms. Kim's voice was soft. "Understand, I'm more interested in getting people the help they need than I am in punishment. You realize that, don't you? All of you?"

Karen said she did, and Phoebe nodded. She was afraid to use her voice.

Ms. Kim held her gaze. "Well, I'm sure you'll let me know if I can help. Let's go, Colette."

They watched her leave, Karen shaking her head. "You get a few questions, we get interrogated. That's fair."

"I'm sorry," Phoebe said, rubbing at the corners of her eyes. "Thank God, I don't have mascara on today."

"Yeah, what's up with that?" Margi said, as eager to derail the conversation as she was. "And what's with the new wardrobe too?"

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Phoebe looked down at her light green blouse, shrugging. "I just thought it was time for a change."

"A change?" Margi said. "I barely even recognize you half the time now. What are those--
slacks'!
Blue jeans? And all the colors ..."

"She doesn't want to look like she's in mourning," Karen said.

Phoebe, her tears under control, pursed her lips. Sometimes it really did feel as if Karen was walking around inside her head, because she'd nailed her motivations exactly.

"Whaaaat?" For someone as fashion conscious as their pink-haired friend, Margi had a tendency to overlook the obvious.

"She doesn't want to look like she's in mourning. When she's with Adam. Out with the blacks and the grays, good-bye gauzy skirts and ruffled sleeves. Good-bye, Morticia Addams, hello, girl next door."

"I didn't think it was that obvious," Phoebe said,

Karen conveyed sympathy with a slight turn of her eyebrows. She really was amazing. Such an actress.

"Don't get me wrong, honey. Earth tones work for you. But you have such nice creamy skin, and that beautiful black hair-- you're a knockout in black. White, too. And you could give red a chance."

Phoebe thought of the dress she wore for homecoming, a simple, straight sheath so white it shimmered. She ruined it on the muddy earth kneeling over Adam's body as he died. Tommy knelt with her, and he might have held her, or he might have

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tried to help Adam. She couldn't remember much about that night except for her dirty dress and the blood spreading across Adam's chest.

He'd said her dress was like moonlight.

She shuddered.

"I'll try, Karen. I'll try to talk to Tommy."

But later, when she saw him lingering by the doorway to their algebra class, the one that they'd once shared with Adam's killer, Pete Martinsburg, and Pete's flunky, TC Stavis, she found she couldn't try at all. He stood so straight and tall, with his shoulders broad and his face strong and angular. He looked like a sculptor's idea of a young god. Like Karen, he looked as though physical perfection could only be achieved through death.

She watched him for a moment. Watching him, with him not knowing she was watching, gave her a weird feeling in her stomach.

You should have saved me, Tommy, she thought.
You.
But you didn't.

Her breath caught as he turned suddenly and saw her, his gray-blue eyes finding hers even through the passing crowd. Her insides did a somersault, and she turned around in a hurry and marched off toward the nurse's office.

But he caught up to her. Even Adam had talked about how quick Tommy was for a dead kid.

"Phoebe ..."

"Oh hi, Tommy," she said, not stopping.
I'm not ready for this.
"Phoebe, can we--"

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"I'm not feeling very well, Tommy. I'm headed to the nurse's office."

"You're ...sick?" his said, his face a mask of concern. Literally a mask, as expressiveness did not come as easily to him as it did to Karen.

"I'm sick," she said. What right did he have to be concerned for her?

"I'll ...walk ...with you."

"So now you want to move," she said, her anger flashing, the words out before she could stop them. "What?" "Forget it."

"No," he said, "what...did you mean?"

The anger engulfed her like a hot wave pitched by a boiling ocean. She felt it wash over her and carry her out to sea.

"I said,
now
you want to move!
Now
all of a sudden you can move!"

She was shouting, and everyone in the hall stopped what they were doing to stare. She didn't care. They'd stared when they were dating, when they touched hands in the hallway. The only difference now was that they stared openly, instead of hiding behind books and locker doors. Hypocrites, every last one of them, a world full of hypocrites.

"Phoebe, what ...?"

"You didn't move, Tommy! He pointed the gun right at me and you didn't do anything!" "I..."

"All you had ...had to do was ...
move,"
she said. "It

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wouldn't have hurt if he shot
you.
But you just stood there, and ...and Adam's
dead!
He's
dead,
Tommy!"

She looked at him, her eyes blurry with tears. He'd stopped trying to talk, and the mask of concern had fallen away from his face as he stood there.

Just stood there.

"He'd be alive if it weren't for you, Tommy," she said, whispering so the gawkers wouldn't hear.

He'd be alive, she thought, and you and I would be together. Tommy didn't try and stop her as she fled down the hall.

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CHAPTER FOUR

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY,"
Gus Guttridge, the lawyer, said with all of the warmth of a day-old cup of coffee.

"Gee, thanks," Pete replied.

"Cheer up. If you were born a few months earlier you could be tried as an adult instead of a juvenile, and then the circus would really come to town. We're in good shape."

Guttridge sat down at the head of the table facing Pete, his mother and her husband, the Wimp, and the social worker. They were in a conference room at the Winford Juvenile Detention Center where Pete had been living for the past two weeks. There were two wrinkled posters in the room, one that said drugs were Uncool and one that said gang violence was Uncool. Pete didn't mind the detention center. The food was better than what he got at home, and they delivered it right to his room because he wasn't allowed to mix with the other

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kids being held there. Other kids would probably think that was Uncool, too, but Pete thought it was pretty Cool.

"The downside is I don't think you returning to school is an option at this point," Guttridge said. "The best we can hope for is that you'll be sent home, remanded to your mother's custody, and homeschooled by a state-appointed instructor."

Pete thought the downside was looking up. He ran the tips of his fingers along the scar on the left side of his face, the tips of his index and middle fingers tracing the ragged stitch marks where the zombie had cut him. The wound was still capable of flaring into a sudden pain or a steady dull throb, but Pete didn't mind either sensation. The time when his cheek was numb and he was drooling all over the place was worse.

"Typically, murder by a juvenile offender means you get tried as an adult," Guttridge said. "The fact that Mr. Layman is still able to walk into the courtroom himself means that the court is already thinking that this isn't really a murder. We can work with that."

The Wimp, motivated no doubt by a desire to posture for his wife rather than by any real feeling for Pete, asked a question, but Pete wasn't listening to him. He was listening to the voice of the scarred zombie in his head.

"Did you think I would kill you?" the zombie had whispered, its fetid breath like the air from an open grave. "Death is a gift."

In some ways Pete was glad that the zombie had maimed him, because his scar was visible proof that worm burgers were