Sixteen Going on Undead (2 page)

“Idiot!” Ronnie spat. “You were attacked. You should rest. I already called your mother and the police.”

“You what?” I crawled across the floor and grappled for the hand mirror on my dresser. Ronnie, the unhelpful jerk just sat there looking at me like I was crazy. I held the mirror up to my face and craned my neck to see if there were two puncture wounds there like they showed in the movies. Nothing. Not even redness, but that might attest to the fact that my brown skin was too dark. I didn’t bruise easily either. “What the heck happened to me?”

Ronnie’s eyebrow went up, just one. I had often teased him that the way he could look down on a person with that one eyebrow raised, could singe you in seconds, and I admired how he did that to people. Put them in their place in half a heartbeat. I wouldn’t admit that to Ronnie of course, and I’d practiced the look in my mirror but never got the hang of it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demanded. “If you saved me, then you know what happened after I passed out...after he...uh...after I was attacked.”

My scrawny friend rested his arms on his knees and sat forward scrutinizing my face like I was keeping secrets from him. I looked away, examining my neck again. Hadn’t Ronnie seen how that vampire bit me? Or did I dream that part? There was no evidence whatsoever, and I wasn’t going to ask him in case it never happened. I’d look like a fool.

“I came over because I still wanted to see Transformers, and I didn’t want to see it alone. I decided I was going to drag your stubborn ass out to the car if I had to. When I came in, I heard a yell, and the back door was open.”

I rolled my eyes looking at him through my hand mirror. “Meaning you walked in like you live here as usual.”

He nodded matter-of-factly. “When I got outside, at first I didn’t see you, but I heard a scuffle, and what did my four eyes see?”

“Get on with it, Ronnie! Damn!” He liked to drag everything out and make it a drama it didn’t need to be. I sometimes called him an old woman, but that made him mad. He would then call me Red because of that one time I dyed my hair, and it came out bright red. I looked like a rooster until my mother broke down and took me to the salon to get it fixed. After that, the stylist taught me a little about following directions, but I had been too scared to dye my hair ever since.

Ronnie grumbled since I’d taken the fun out of his story-telling. “He was on top of you and kissing your neck. I thought you liked it. I started to leave.” His look was accusatory like I’d done something wrong.

I held up a finger. “Okay, first, I have never attracted a boy that hot. And second, I would not be doing it in Mrs. Knowles’ back yard.”

“Hot!”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway.” His nostrils flared making me want to laugh, but I held it in. “I grabbed the bat you must have dropped and took a swing at him. He ran off after that, and I got you in here.”

I frowned, trying to recall what I had seen or thought I saw when I was in and out of it. “What about that light?”

“What light?”

I set my mirror on the dresser, deciding that there was nothing to find on my neck, and turned to face Ronnie. “I saw this bright, white light. It almost blinded me.”

Ronnie burst out laughing so hard, he fell off his chair, and he still didn’t stop for a long time until I walked over and kicked him in the thigh. That sobered him since I was dangerously close to his goods, which I had not meant to do. He covered his precious jewels as he rose, and I rolled my eyes.

“Hey,” he grumbled. “Watch it.”

“The light?”

He waved his hands and snorted, but I acted like I was ready to do some damage to him with the tip of my shoe. “Maybe it was that light from the other side. You know when people are dying?”

“Funny, Ronnie. Real funny. How could I be dying when you said that guy was just kissing my neck?”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying. You’re the head case that saw the light, not me.”

“Whatever.”

My bedroom door burst open, and I found myself engulfed in my mother’s embrace. I thought I heard a rib crack under the pressure and cried out. She eased her hold and leaned back to cup my face. “Baby, are you okay? Ronnie called me to say you were attacked. What happened? Did you call the police?”

We both looked at Ronnie. He had the nerve to look guilty and stared at the floor. “Well I did call them, but...”

“But what?” My mother’s hand went to her hip. “Ronnie Jenkins, you better look at me when I’m talking to you, boy. Speak up!”

Ronnie paled. He was a lot lighter than I was. His cheeks were little round cherries behind his glasses. “Uh, well, you see...I told them this guy was kissing Tanesha in the neighbor’s yard, and...”

“Oh my goodness, Ronnie, you stupid!” I burst out laughing so hard, and my mother joined me. We shouldn’t have been laughing, especially me since that whole incident really happened, although the more time that passed made it feel like a dream. Maybe that’s why I was laughing. Maybe that boy
was
kissing me, and had been a little too eager to come onto me? So he knocked us both over on the ground. Yeah, that made sense. Not!

My excuses were stupid, but I had no other explanation. What I thought happened, couldn’t have happened. And Ronnie told me Mrs. Knowles wasn’t even out there. I remembered hearing her TV still going while that boy was on me. I could imagine seeing her silhouette through the window like always, watching her shows. So what really happened?

When my mother smirked at Ronnie in disgust at his obvious jealousy, I thought fast. If I couldn’t explain it, and Ronnie couldn’t either, the best bet might be to pretend it never happened. “Ma, I was talking to this boy I met, and Ronnie got a little too bat-happy and ran him off. No big deal. You know how he gets.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She rolled her eyes at Ronnie. “Okay, well whatever. We were on our way home anyway, ’cause Sharon got in a fight with her husband earlier, and he followed us down to the club like he expected to find her cheating. I need to find some new friends because, for real, I can’t take all the drama.” With that statement, she directed a look at Ronnie, and he looked like he was about to faint.

I had pity on him, grabbed his shirt front and dragged him to the door. “Sorry about the scare, Ma. Me and Ronnie are going to the movies. Be back about eleven thirty. Is that good?”

She nodded. “Yeah, okay, sweetie. Have fun.”

Outside, Ronnie stopped me and made me face him. “Why did you lie?”

“What was I going to say? You couldn’t explain what happened, and neither could I. Who’s to say it wasn’t just like you or I said. A cute boy got grab happy, and you ran him off. Case closed.”

He seemed to think about it, looking up at the sky. “Yeah, okay.”

I walked past him to Mrs. Knowles’ front door. Ronnie caught up to me.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“You said she wasn’t out there. I don’t know what happened, but I know I ran outside because she was in trouble. I need to be sure she’s okay.”

I rang her doorbell. While I waited tapping my foot, I took in the surroundings of my neighborhood. In the summer, the older folks sat on their porches and talked to each other over the railings. Sometimes if a younger mother sat out, she’d let her kids run around after dark as long as she could see them. But that was usually the woman directly across from my house. I called them the ghetto family. They came home at all hours, blasted music from their car at like one a.m., and yelled so loud when they got into arguments on the front porch, that I could hear the fussing from my room at the back of my house. I wished they would move out of the neighborhood and give us all a break.

While I stood there, all of a sudden this weird feeling came over me. I don’t know if it was dizziness or what. Maybe not dizziness, more like clarity. I couldn’t describe it if I tried. It might be better if I said what the results of the feeling were.

I had scooted down Mrs. Knowles wall and was flicking at a spot of dirt on my sneakers I assumed I’d gotten when I fell down in her yard. Then I realized I could hear her flick the channels on her TV at the back of the house. That was weird, but I thought it might be my imagination. Either way, that old woman was ignoring the bell. I knew for a fact that she didn’t have hearing problems even at her age.

Without getting up, I reached for the bell and pressed it again. With my body twisted to the side like that, one of my ears faced the road, and I was on a line with my neighbor’s house across the street, the ones I’d called ghetto. The part that almost had me hyperventilating was that I could hear them getting into an argument. My mind must be playing tricks on me, but I listened.

“So you’re not going to cook anything tonight?” the husband said. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t want to know. I knew the kids even though they weren’t my age. They were several years younger.

“No, I’m not cooking,” the wife responded. “You ain’t think of me when you was out with your boys last night. I’m not thinking about you tonight.”

“You’re not going to cook?” he asked again.

“Did I stutter?”

“Rochelle! What I marry you for?” So that was her name.

Her response embarrassed me when she told him why he had married her. Not that I hadn’t heard that kind of talk before, but the fact that I was hearing it inside their house made me start shaking. I got up and walked down Mrs. Knowles’ sidewalk toward the curb. I stared at their house and then looked up and down the street. I didn’t see the husband’s SUV. Maybe I was wrong, or this was my imagination. He probably wasn’t even home.

But then the front door banged open, and he stomped out. I looked away pretending I hadn’t been staring just now. The man flew down the steps to the street so fast, he stumbled, and I winced. That side of the street was steeper than our side for some reason. My side was almost flat ground, where their front lawn was a hill.

His wife barreled out of the house after him. “And you better not stay out all night. I mean that, Malik. You hear me? Malik!”

“The whole neighborhood hears you,” Ronnie muttered at my side. “Hey, you ready to go? She’s not going to answer, probably absorbed in who gets kicked off the island this week or something.”

I would have laughed at that, but was too shocked. “They were arguing.”

“What else is new?”

“No, but I heard them before they got loud, Ronnie.” I swallowed, my mouth dry. I looked around at the different houses and tried to hear on purpose what was going on inside them. Nothing. Ronnie was looking at me with that raised eyebrow again. “I know you don’t believe it, but I heard it. My hearing was...I don’t know...strong.”

Ronnie grinned and dragged me toward his brother’s car. “Yeah, just like that guy was biting your neck out back, right? Whatever, let’s go, or we’ll miss the next showing of Transformers.”

I let Ronnie get me in the car, but it wasn’t until much later when I was tucked in bed thinking about how good the movie was that I realized one important fact about the crazy night. I had never told Ronnie that that guy was biting my neck.

Chapter Two

I decided to be a responsible sixteen-year-old and get a job. Everybody I knew had applied to the movie theatre. It was a cakewalk. You go in there, serve a few customers, and get to see all the free movies you want while getting paid. Wouldn’t you know though, they didn’t call me in for an interview. The place that did call me was the grocery store. Great. Heft people’s bags to their cars and many times—at least in our area—get stiffed on the tip. On top of that, where were the perks? I couldn’t see any. Like I wanted to work all around the clock, get my schedule shifted constantly, and stand on my feet until they felt like blocks of painful pulsating flesh.