Passing Strange (12 page)

But U R Out????

She’d capitalized the O in “Out,” which was funny, because I wasn’t Out, capital O, at all, was I? I was In. I was passing. But how could this poor dead, scarred girl feel about that?

I didn’t know. But I decided to tell her the truth. Part of it, anyhow.

“I’m passing, Melissa,” I told her. “As a human. I mean, a traditionally biotic person.”

Erase, squeak, squeak.

Passing?

“People don’t know I’m dead. I don’t know if you can tell in this light, but my hair is a little darker.”

Erase, squeak, squeak, squeak.

W/A yr eyes?

“Oh,” I said. “That. Contact lenses.”

She leaned forward, her head tilting to the side.

“You know, Melissa, you don’t need to wear that mask with me, if you don’t want.”

Melissa sat completely still for at least a minute, and I worried that my offer had offended her. The time lag gave me enough time to realize how hypocritical my statement was, considering the mask I wore on a daily basis.

When Melissa finally responded, her reply was brief.

Thank U

She made no movement to remove the mask.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a job—if you can believe it. I work at Wild Thingz! in the mall.”

Melissa drew an exclamation point that covered her whole board.

I laughed. “Yeah, I know. Pretty crazy, huh? They don’t know that I’m a zombie yet, if you can believe it.”

I can believe it
, she’d written.

“Thank you, Melissa,” I replied, as Melissa flipped to a new page and started writing again.

I want 2 not be a zombie someday

“I know what you mean,” I said. I put my hand on Melissa’s knee. The masked girl didn’t try to shrink away from me.

“Take care, honey,” I said. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Melissa nodded. She wrote Thank U on her tablet and then lifted her hand in a wave.

“Soon,” I said. I leaned forward and tilted her mask to the side, gently. I thought she might turn away, but she didn’t. I kissed her cheek, and her skin made a crackling sound beneath my lips.

She sat back and her mask was back in place, her eyes hidden in its shadows. I said good-bye again and stood up.

I hadn’t yet crossed the room when I heard the click of the floor light going off, and I left Melissa in the darkness.

I was going off to pretend I was a real person, selling lame T-shirts and tongue studs to kids who most likely wanted to set fire to the Haunted House and everyone in it, while people like Melissa sat alone in the dark with nothing to think about besides the grim circumstances of their deaths and the even grimmer circumstances of their unlives. It wasn’t fair.

A voice in my head told me that my working and having a job was a good thing for dead kids like Melissa, because only by our getting jobs and going to dances and joining football teams would we ever get the opportunity to do anything else in this society. I knew that the sentiment made sense, but I couldn’t help but think there was an element of selfishness in it, too. I was going because I
liked
to “pass.” I
liked
living people flirting with me, and I liked buying new clothes with the money I made. When I first started passing, I told myself I was doing something radical, that I was contributing to our cause, whatever. I thought I’d be helping. But really I was just hiding.

What I should have been doing was sitting in the dark, trying to teach Melissa how to laugh. How to heal her skin.

I passed under the portrait of Mary, amazed that there was no hint of reproach in the blue painted eyes. I reached the edge of the arborvitae just in time to see the elderly couple step onto the sidewalk from the stone steps. They both smiled at me as they went by. I looked up at the stone Christ and, before I was even aware of doing so, I began to climb the stairs they’d just descended. They looked even happier now than when I first saw them.

I stood in the atrium for a long moment before going in. There were a few people in the pews awaiting their turn. I forced my lungs to draw a deep breath, and I stepped into the church proper.

The roof didn’t cave in, flames didn’t burst through the floor to engulf me. There was no shortage of people in the world that thought me a damned thing, a damned dead monster, an abomination in the eyes of the very Lord whose image looked down on me from the cross at the front of the cathedral. I took a seat in the back pew beneath a stained-glass image of Jesus holding a lamb, a ring of smiling children gathered at His feet. I looked up at His image and then I took the kneeler down.

What am I doing here? I thought. What?

But I knew. I had a lot to atone for, didn’t I?

I’d been to confession twice in my life but not once since my death. The door to the confessional opened, and to my horror none of the three other people in the pews rose to enter next.

Saying their rosaries, I thought. What am I doing here, damned thing that I am?

No heaven for me, I thought, rising from my knees. No heaven for me, no afterlife. Just afterdeath, back here on earth.

I exited the pew with every intention of bolting out of the cathedral as fast as my undead legs could carry me. Instead I walked into the confessional and closed the door. The curtained box smelled like antique wood and incense. The curtain was closed.

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” I said, and I told myself that the wooden booth was nothing at all like the coffin that my parents had picked out for me. I was pausing in my speech, like when I first came back.

“Go on,” Father Fitzpatrick said from behind the curtain. I could tell it was him just from those two little words.

“I…I…” I began, my zombie speech impediment coming on fullbore. “I…have…not…always…been…truthful.” Like that. “With my…parents. With…with friends.”

“Take your time,” he said, his voice free from judgment.

“I have been…neglectful.” I thought about when I’d made the sacrament of confession for the first time, with the rest of my catechism class, how they joked about all the fake sins they manufactured in “the box” so as to somehow minimize the existence of their real sins. “I have…I…I have…”

I could hear the priest sigh on the other side of the divider. “You do not have to worry,” he said. “You are here for forgiveness.”

“Father, I…I don’t…I…”

“Yes?”

“I killed myself,” I whispered. “And…”

I was shaking, actually shaking, something I didn’t think my body was capable of doing any longer. I had more to say, but the words wouldn’t come. I was kneeling and shaking, and my hands were clenched together so tightly that my nails bit into my skin. I was shaking because I was there for forgiveness, but I was afraid I would not get forgiveness. How could there be forgiveness for me, who had taken God’s gift and thrown it away?

And was that even the worst of my sins?

Just when I thought the priest hadn’t heard me, he spoke. He said my name.

“Karen?”

And then I ran as fast my undead legs could carry me, bursting out of the confessional as though I were bursting out of the coffin I was almost buried in. The door slammed against the side of the booth with enough force to split the wood, and the faithful crouching over their beads looked up at me with shock and horror, and I knew that they could see me for what I really was: a monster. An undead monster.

The noise of my exit echoed throughout church. As I passed through the feeble light beneath the stained-glass window I felt my heart beat in my chest three times.

I literally fled from the church, wondering if the stone Christ’s arms were open not to embrace me, but to catch me.

W
HAT THE HELL, PETE thought, punching the button on his cell phone and throwing it to the floor of his car. He’d just left his fifth message for Christie in three days, which is about four more messages than he’d ever left for any girl in his life, after Julie.

His fingers drummed an arrhythmic beat on the steering wheel of his mother’s car. He knew Christie wasn’t dodging him because she was offended by the way things went the other night. She’d been around. And she’d enjoyed it as much as he had, so why couldn’t she answer her damn phone?

Was she playing a game? Was that it? Was this some kind of childish payback for when he went to Arizona? She’d seemed more mature than that.

He turned into the parking lot of the Winford Mall, parked, and went inside. The mall was dead; the only part that had any traffic was the food court, and only because it was lunch time. Pete walked to Wild Thingz! and appeared to be the only person in the store.

Pete hung around the counter for a minute or two before the beady-eyed guy with the piercings came out of the back room, wiping pizza sauce off his chin.

“Hey,” Pete said. “Is Christie working today?”

The guy looked irritated, as though he couldn’t believe Pete was interrupting his delicious pizza lunch to ask him that.

“I’m not really supposed to discuss employee schedules with the customers.”

This guy—Craig, by his name badge, which had a sticker of a comic skull next to his name—had a very hittable face, Pete thought. He considered knocking Craig down and asking him, “How about if I step on your neck, could you tell me then?” Instead he played it cool. Playing it cool wasn’t easy, though—he felt a dark tide of anger that had been building since his first unanswered call to Christie a few days ago.

So instead he smiled. He smiled, but what he said wasn’t a question.

“But you’ll make an exception for me.”

He could see the impact of his words—and their tone—on Craig’s face as his beady eyes grew wide and he licked his lips.

“We don’t have a Christie working here,” he said.

The dark tide swelled. “Don’t be cute. Slim, blond—probably the only person here that doesn’t have any hardware or tattoos on her skin.”

“Oh,” Craig said. “You mean Karen.” Craig said, looking relieved. Pete saw no point in arguing with him, he just wanted to know where she was.

“You her new boyfriend?” Craig said.

Pete nodded, gratified that she’d talked about him at work.

“She was supposed to work today,” Craig told him. “She called in sick. That’s why I’m all alone.”

Poor baby, Pete thought. He debated leaning on Craig a little harder, because he could probably squeeze Christie’s home address out of him.

“She called out two days ago, too. She must be at death’s door or something, because she’s worked every shift I’ve ever given her. She’s usually the one covering for everyone else.”

“Yeah, that’s Christie,” Pete said, implying a long-time familiarity. He noticed that Craig didn’t try and correct him this time. “She must have gone to the doctor, then.”

“Probably,” Craig said.

Pete knocked on the counter with his knuckles.

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

He went back to his car, not knowing what to feel. Should he be worried about her? Or pissed that she’d taken the time to call Beady Eyes but not him? He cruised through her neighborhood, scanning mailboxes for “Smith.” He didn’t find any Smiths, but most of the boxes had no names, just numbers. He looped through each street three times, just to be sure, and then he drove to the school.

If I can’t see Christie, he thought, then at least I can get going on the plan.

The buses were already lined up along the curving ramp by the school, forming a vehicular wall that made seeing the school entrance difficult. Pete parked in the student lot and walked up the steps to the faculty lot, where he could get a clearer look at the entrance. There were a few cars parked at the end of the bus lane; parents of the dorkier children, he figured. He stood near one of the cars, smiling at a middle-aged woman who looked at him over the top of her
People
magazine. She smiled back. The humming buses gave the air a pleasant diesel smell; the vapor of their exhaust rose into the crisp air.

Layman used to bring his stepfather’s truck into work most of the time, Pete remembered. Back before he died. Probably wasn’t doing any driving these days.

Pete frowned at the sound of the end-of-day bell. They used to let the zombies out of class five minutes early so they could shamble on down to the buses without slowing everything down; with Layman being the only corpse left in the school, they probably abolished that policy.

It wasn’t long before kids started spilling from the front doors. One of the first ones out was that little shrimp who had gone out for the football team, Thurston or Thornton or whatever his name was. He moved at a swift clip toward Pete. When he drew near, the recognition—and fear—showed on his face.

Pete lifted his index finger to his lips, and winked. The shrimp wasted no time in getting into the car where his mommy sat reading
People
, slamming the door before she could even finish saying “Hi, honey!”

Pete walked a little further up the hill. Kids were coming out in a steady wave now; he saw Harris Morgan and Holly Pelletier and a bunch of his other old “friends” as they fanned out to clamber aboard buses or cross down to the student lot. He saw a bouncing sheaf of pink hair that belonged to Scarypants’s pudgy friend. What was TC’s nickname for her? Something based on her anatomy, no doubt. Knockers. Pinky McKnockers, that was it. He laughed.

Right behind Pinky came Scarypants herself. Pete almost missed her because she wasn’t as gothed out as usual. Her skirt didn’t look like it had been previously owned by a turn-of-the-century gypsy, for starters. She was wearing functional, not decorative, boots, and the coat she wore could be purchased at Macy’s and didn’t have to be special ordered direct from Transylvania.

Her hair, though, was still long and as black as a crow’s wing.

Behind her, like a huge lumbering shadow, shambled Adam Layman. Pete realized that he’d been holding the door open for the girls.

Aw, how cute, he thought. What a gentleman. An undead gentleman.

There were enough people walking around now that Pete didn’t feel as conspicuous, and Layman and his goth groupies were busy laughing at something the fat pink one said. Pete remembered how slow and ungainly Layman had been during the trial. The big dummy could barely even talk, but now it looked like he was making comments to the girls as they walked onto their bus. Then again, maybe Layman faked the whole thing in the courtroom, trying to pass himself off as a low-functioning zombie to try and garner additional sympathy from the judge.

Pete watched the trio board and the bus pull away, then noticed another hulking oaf leave the school. He’d seen TC’s car in the lot, so he decided to join up with him there.

TC saw him waiting. His face lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree.

“Hey, Pete!” he said, breaking into a trot but then slipping on a patch of wet snow and bouncing into a parked car as he tried to regain his balance.

“Easy,” Pete said as he walked toward him. “Don’t kill yourself.”

“Yeah,” TC said, his stocking cap askew on his lumpy head. “Suicides don’t come back.”

Pete forced a laugh. “So they say.”

“Hey, what are you doing over here, anyhow? I thought you could get arrested if you came back or something.”

“Or something. But thanks for shouting my name across the lot for everyone to hear.”

TC looked shamefaced. “Aw, crap. I’m sorry, Pete.”

“Forget it,” Pete said, punching his shoulder to show there were no hard feelings.

“Hey, how’d your date go the other night? Get any?” TC said, trying to be inconspicuous about rubbing the spot on his arm where Pete had slugged him.

“You know I did,” Pete said.

“Sweet. She from around here? She looked sort of familiar.”

“How would you know? Your eyes never went higher than her neck.” TC started to protest, and Pete feinted throwing another punch at his bruised arm. When he flinched, Pete drilled his other arm with his left, laughing as TC swore.

“I’m just playing with you, man,” Pete said. “Can’t blame a man for checking out the merchandise.”

“She’s pretty hot.”

“In every way. But listen, I’m not here to talk about my many sexual conquests—neither one of us has the time for all that! But I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said about getting back at Layman.”

TC, flattered that Pete actually took something he said seriously, grinned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. But I want us to be smart about it, you know? I wasn’t thinking clearly enough when we first went after Williams.”

“That got out of hand. If Layman hadn’t showed up…”

“Yeah, but he did. But I’ve thought of something that’s going to destroy him. Him and Williams both. It’ll be like pounding nails into their empty coffins.”

“Williams is in D.C. right now. He was actually on TV the other day, talking about zombie rights or some crap. Can you believe that? He…”

“Whatever,” Pete said, cutting him off. “I bet you anything he’s still in love with Scarypants. What I’ve got planned is going to derail the whole zombie love train.”

“What are we going to do?” TC asked.

Pete looked around as though suddenly suspicious of the kids heading out to their cars. “Later. I’ll give you the full plan later. But here’s what I want you to do…”

TC leaned in close as Pete’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“You know where Layman lives?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know his creepy girlfriend lives right next door?”

“Seriously? No, I didn’t know that. How do you know that?”

“I’ve been watching them for a few days now.”

“No shit?”

“None. Here’s what I need you to do. Cruise by his house a couple times a day, and see what you can see. Pay attention to what cars are in the driveways. Layman’s stepfather owns a garage or some crap, so there’s always a couple junkers around. Take a notebook and write down the times you go by and what you see. If you can figure out who’s driving what, even better.”

“Like, you want me to see who is home when, that sort of thing?”

“Exactly,” Pete said. TC was grinning like the idiot he was. “The more information you can get, the better. I know that Layman has two older brothers and his mom and stepdad living in his house. Kendall lives with her parents, but I don’t think she has any siblings.”

“Okay. You want me to go now?”

“See if you can go by around four thirty-five o’clock. I’m going to follow their bus.”

“You want me to come with you? If there’s nobody home…”

Pete shook his head. “No, no. I want to plan this. From what I can see they don’t go anywhere but their houses and school. Doing something here would be too dangerous, which leaves us with one option. But I want it to be flawless. I don’t want their families around, nothing. Flawless.”

“What are we going to do?” TC asked.

“Later,” Pete said, knowing full well that “we” weren’t going to do anything.

When he was done giving TC his marching orders, he followed bus 3 along its route, managing to position himself two cars back, until it stopped off in front of Layman’s house. Phoebe and Adam both disembarked, and Phoebe walked Layman to his door before trekking through the light snow to her house.

To her
empty
house, he thought.

He watched her get a glittering ring of keys out of her bag and unlock her door. Her house was empty, with only a yapping little mutt to greet her, a mutt that Pete could take care of with a quick kick to the head. Her parents were at work; the earliest he’d seen them home was five thirty.

She must have felt someone walking over her grave, because she turned and looked over her shoulder in his direction while opening her door.

Pete turned his head away and joined the flow of traffic as the bus ahead went into gear.