Zombie (35 page)

Father Vincent and I are sitting on the top bench of the bleachers, watching assistant coaches mark the field with orange cones.

“You know, you never did tell me your five codes,” Father Vincent says.

“Five simple codes to survive the Zombie Apocalypse,” I say.

Father Vincent retrieves a booklet and baby pencil from his black sport coat. Not the blood moon one I saw before. This one is gold and green.

“Different cover,” I say.

“Cornfields by my house when I was a kid,” he says. “When I use up all the pages of a notebook, I transfer the unfinished tasks to the next one.”

“And my five codes are an unfinished task.”

“Something like that.”

“Are priests allowed to write down things they hear in confession?”

“Probably not,” he says. He returns the notepad to his pocket. He’s got on his God Squad uniform—black pants, black shirt, little white collar in the front. “I still want to hear them, if you want to share.”

“Do you know how to tie a tie, Father?”

“Neckties are not standard issue for God’s troops, my son.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s okay if you can’t tie a necktie.”

“Maybe you can teach me.” He checks his watch. “But some other day. I have to get over to the theater soon. We’re running a final dress rehearsal with tech, makeup, wardrobe, the works.” He unwraps a stick of gum and slumps back against the row behind us. “I miss the Spirit Committee.” He pauses. “Do you think you can make the preview tonight?”

“Unlikely,” I say. “I can’t go to the bathroom without at least a dozen people signing a notarized affidavit, stipulating the date, time, location, and duration of my visit.”

The blue side doors to the school swing open and slam against the wall. Kids push past each other. They kick and punch and sometimes exchange intricate handshakes.

“Maybe I can speak to Phil and Nancy. Make a formal request. See if they’ll break the court’s rules this once.”

“No,” I say. “Please don’t.”

“I can be awfully persuading when I dress like this.”

“Everyone wants to talk to Phil and Nancy. After our weekly sessions, my court-appointed family therapist asks Phil and Nancy how I’m adjusting. My teachers mail my grades and progress reports home to Phil and Nancy. The State of Maryland pays money every month to Phil and Nancy, to cover my cost of living, my expenses. Detectives, police—they ask Phil and Nancy to talk to me about everything and see if I remember anything new. Baltimore City Clerk’s Office for Family Court. The office of Judge Michael Thomas Antrum. My mother’s addiction specialists. All of the lawyers because we all have lawyers.”

Football players jog out among the cones, helmets in hand, past some Blue Jay Bandits, fully clothed in their standard plaid attire, Cam and a few others. Soccer season ended last week. Our guys didn’t make it past regionals. So they hang out at football practice now, shouting insults or squeezing off an occasional airhorn blast.

The players pull on their helmets and run drills, keeping focus—tap dancing through a hopscotch made out of string, pushing a metal bleacher around the field with their taped hands, fighting their way out from inside a circle of angry men hellbent on knocking the football loose from his hands. Coaches sound their whistles, regularly, walking among the players, while Mr. Vo observes. He wears a tweed top coat, black leather gloves, and a bright blue scarf wrapped around his neck. Young men tackle young men on cue. Tiny silver clouds puff from their mouths.

After that night, my life took a turn.

No one believed me, for one thing. No one wanted to hear what I did to Mr. Rembrandt with the baseball bat. No one trusts the son of a handless man.
There’s nothing we can do to help him—he’s Ballentine’s boy
. This is what I imagine former family friends and neighbors say about me now.

The day after Dad had his hand cut off the detectives took me back to Tiller Drive to find the house. We did and it was empty, spotless, gone. I knew it would be. It looked like no one had ever been there and nothing had ever happened at all.

Mr. Rembrandt stopped coming to school. More rumors flooded the halls about him but nothing remotely close to the truth. I don’t know if I killed him or not. The funny thing is—I don’t expect to see him again. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think I will. Gut feeling. Perhaps I just don’t want to think about it—about what I would do or fail to do, if I saw him again.

Dad was released from Johns Hopkins into the psychiatric facilities at Sheppard Pratt in Towson. He’s been on suicide watch and in isolation since it happened. His lawyers say that he’s being well-cared for, but I haven’t seen him or heard from him
myself. All I know is that he’s alive, which I guess is a good thing considering.

After Mom found out about Dad, she left Zeke and disappeared for almost a month. I found out in family court that a security officer George found her in one of the empty units of
The Prince Edward
. She’d been living in a plastic apartment and doing her dope. She’s back with Zeke and Zeke tells me that she shoots her morphine now. I see her in custody court sometimes. She’s far from well.

Jackson moved out of his apartment in Fell’s Point and lives with one of his coozy girlfriends somewhere downtown between the Inner Harbor and Tiller Drive. He ran out of money when Dad went away. Jackson calls me when he has time. When he thinks of it. Usually a voicemail. He calls me Stumps, and then goes silent until the message runs out of space.

Tricia took care of Dog without me even having to ask. She saw all the drama and took it upon herself to make Dog a permanent part of her family. Dog and her fat little dog, Travis. I saw her the last time I was at the house. She asked if I wanted to see her, and I said not this time. She made me promise to come back and visit. I said that I would, but I think she knew I wasn’t coming back.

Phil and Nancy Weber live in a ranch-style house an hour outside the city. They don’t have any kids of their own. It was just me at first, but starting last week they added an eleven-year-old. His name is Matthew and he goes to public school. We share a room with all of the basics. No bunk beds like in the movies. Twin beds, each with our own nightstand, reading lamp, trunk for our clothes, and a closet we share. I gave Matt my half. He likes to hang up his T-shirts. He doesn’t like them folded. I’m fine with the trunk.

The Webers don’t watch a lot of TV or movies. He is a loan officer at a local bank and she is a real estate clerk for a law firm. They subscribe to more newspapers than magazines and have a garage where they park their used cars and store their tools and lawn furniture and Christmas decorations. A two car garage like a normal American family. No basement.

A yellow school bus picks Matt up every morning outside of the Webers’ house. I wait with him. He never says much. Nancy then drives me to school since she works downtown. The only thing left over from before is the chopography.
Little Men
. It’s hung above my bed.

“So let’s hear your codes.”

“I don’t remember them.”

“Is that so?”

I tap my forehead. “All gone, Father. Poof.”

He offers me a stick of gum. I thank him, but I put it in my pocket.

“The Webers—they’re only temporary,” he says. “Until things change.”

“Do you know what they call me?” I ask. “The students?”

He watches me. He doesn’t say anything.

“Monster,” I say. “Not
a
monster. Not
the
monster. Just monster.”

When I first moved in with the Webers I found an unread copy of
Notes from Underground
in their living room library of historical fiction and political biographies. Nancy apologized, knowing my connection to the book, but didn’t know where it had come from. Phil didn’t even know who Dostoevsky was, spending more time trying to pronounce the name than searching his memory of ever owning it. This and
Little Men
and zombie movies are all that remain for me. My inheritance. So I read it.

The football team stands together on the field, facing Mr. Vo, an army before their leader. They are silent, awaiting instruction. An assistant coach holds a whistle in his mouth, taking cues from Mr. Vo via subtle nods, before piercing the air. After the whistle, he shouts out the word
left
or
right
. Players slap their helmets hard with both hands open, pivot in that direction, keep pace with one another—a single unified force—while running in place as quickly as possible.

After a dozen pivots, instead of a direction, Mr. Vo shouts to the young men.

“St. John Baptist De La Salle.”

“Pray for us.”

“Live Jesus in our hearts.”

“Forever.”

“One more time. St. John Baptist De La Salle.”

“Pray for us.”

“Live Jesus in our hearts.”

“Forever.”

A description comes to mind from the text of that night, like it had been written back then, but about today. Not a literal description, but more to the center of things. Deeper underground.

I ran out into the street. It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to be heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I ran to the cross-roads and stopped short. I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness
.

In another light, this could have been a winterland Zombie Apocalypse—the only thing missing, the undead.
Undead Notes from Underground
.

Off in the distance, at the bus stop, I can see Mykel. He’s wearing a big winter coat and a new era Orioles’ baseball hat with the giant orange
O’s
emblem on the front, taking photos as usual, though I can’t tell of what. A car pulls into the bus lane and the passenger door opens. Mykel gets in and slams it. Zink signals and pulls out into traffic. I would never have expected them to be carpool brothers, but there it is, plain as day. Swagger.

“Miracles,” Father Vincent says. “They do exist. I promise you, they do.”

“I had a dream once about a miracle,” I say. “Everything stopped. Time was frozen. But I was marching. And for all eternity nothing could ever change from the way it was at that one frozen moment.”

Father Vincent looks at me, waiting to see if I’ve got more to say. But I don’t. And before he can figure out how to respond, an air horn strikes the sky. It’s one of the Bandits, the guy sitting next to Cam, announcing the presence of a girl.

The girl ignores the Bandits and football and turns toward me.

The Plaids and I never settled things from that night at Mykel’s chopography exhibit. Cam hasn’t looked at me even once since I returned to school—none of them do anymore—not that I’m complaining. I know they talk about me behind my back. I’ve heard the things they say, some of it true, most of it not. Nothing true ever stays a secret in these halls and even the truth has a way of sounding like a lie. Either way you’re fucked here and not in the good way, as Jackson would say. But they don’t see that. The Plaids don’t see me—not when I’m right there in front of them. They see only what they can step on and kick, what’s unapologetically in their way, and it’s like I’m not part of that world anymore.

I would have thought a kid whose dad cut off his hand would have been Plaid-target #1. But that just isn’t fucking so. It’s like there’s this fog that’s settled between us, and the closest they’re willing to get is a couple of half-hearted catcalls directed at the girl walking toward me along the field’s edge.

Aimee.

She’s layered in a peacoat with a matching knit hat and scarf—her scarf tied the French way around her neck, doubled over with the open ends pulled through the loop. Her nose is red from the cold and she climbs the metal benches with care. She drove like a professional wheelman that night. When we got to the hospital, she stuck by me until the cops made her call her parents and they took her away. The Whites had to leave behind their blood-spattered SUV, which the police impounded as evidence. We haven’t seen each other outside of school since that night. Partially, the Webers. Partially, her parents, who are still waiting for their SUV. Everyone is trying to put as much distance between us and that night as possible. The collective solution is forgetfulness.

I see Aimee every day after school.

She climbs up and Father Vincent goes down.

A question in those final pages of
Notes: Which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

She and I sit quiet on the bleachers and listen to the young men
fighting below us. This is our reality. We do not kiss, but instead wait for things to change—for the beautiful monsters that I know will someday come.

This book has long been a troubled and disturbed project of mine. The following people not only believed in my deranged ideas and fictive reality, but worked miracles to make sure both me and this book came out on the right side of crazy.

My loving parents, Rick and Ann Angelella, and sister, Gina Angelella. Thanks for never mentioning that my five year plan to write and publish a novel actually took ten. This book, I’m certain, is proof that my plan was (mostly) never a lie.

My amazing uncle and kindred spirit, Michael Angelella, for introducing me to the sadistic art of writing and numbing me at an early age to the searing pain of a red-lined manuscript.

My cousins: Dominic Angelella, for keeping me musically current and reminding me what it means to be fearless; and Hallie Angelella, a fellow starving artist in Brooklyn and Ithaca College Bomber.

To my late-night writing partner and resident soothsayer, Jess Ashley, for giving important, poignant and perceptive feedback on my teenage landscape and for teaching me what girls actually wear.

To my teachers: Fred A. Wilcox, for daring me to write out my demons; Patricia Volk, for convincing me to resurrect this novel after I had left it for dead; Amy Hempel, for teaching me how to
write a sentence and break a story; Askold Melnyczuk, for diagnosing my obsessive personality and rightly prescribing Fyodor Dostoevsky; and Bret Anthony Johnston, who challenged me to make Jeremy walk off the damn page.