Zombie Blondes (12 page)

“Sort of,” I confess.

I can sense that he doesn’t entirely believe me.

I keep blinking and looking around because I don’t like
the way he looks at me. It makes me uncomfortable that I can’t see his eyes but that his head moves slightly from side to side. It feels like a million tiny spiders are crawling under my skin as he checks me out the way boys do. Only he’s not a boy, he’s a strange man with no one else around and a tin star that gives him the right to do whatever he wants. It freaks me out a little and I try to look anywhere but at him. I’m aware it only makes me seem guilty of something, so I try to stop myself. Stare him down and wait in nervous silence for him to say something.

The sheriff’s chest heaves slightly when he clears his throat. He cocks his head again, first to the left and then to the right and I can hear the bones crack in his spine. “You’re that new girl? The family that just moved in?” His lips barely move as the words escape through clenched teeth and a sneering smile.

I nod, telling him what he already knows.

I’ve always tried to tell my dad that it’s impossible to hide in a small town but he never listens. Doesn’t take long before the police know who we are, checking up on us to make sure we’re not grifters come to swindle them out of money, like in so many books that I’ve read. They look into our past and know everything about us before the last of our stuff is put away.

The sheriff approaches me and I flinch.

He laughs and throws his hands up to assure me he has no intention of doing me harm. It puts me only slightly at ease. “Sorry to scare you before,” he says and I think it’s about time he apologized. “I was driving by when I saw you duck around back,” he explains. “Never can be too sure about
burglars after people move out.”

“They moved out?” I say, rolling my eyes and pointing to the furniture that sits in the house, waiting for people to come home and find it useful. “But . . . their stuff is here.”

“Yeah, that’s why I was checking up,” he says. “They asked me to swing by. Lot of people around here wait until they’ve settled somewhere, then send for their things later.”

He hooks his thumbs into his belt as he staggers past me, brushing me with his elbow as he does. I watch him test the sliding door by giving it a tug. It’s locked and he seems satisfied. Never bothering to notice the chair tossed aside or the glass shattered on the floor. I point them out to him as nicely as I can without making it seem like I’m telling him how to do his job.

His face puckers up and he shakes his head.

“Nope, it’s probably nothing. Probably just in a rush to leave.”

I’ve spent most of my life in a rush to leave and never left a place looking like that. I keep my mouth shut about it, though. Let the wind blow my hair into my face and I feel safer watching him through the strands like a tiger hiding in the tall grass of the jungle.

“It’s sad really,” he says, but nothing about his voice sounds sad to me as he goes on about how small towns are dying. “Part of my job is protecting empty houses because no one cares about their community anymore,” he says with a grunt of disgust, tapping his knuckles against the side of the house in hatred of all those that disagree with him.

He leads me away from the door. His arms spread like a bird shooing back a predator and then follows me around
to the front of the house. The police car is parked in the street, black and white like a zebra without the stripes, and he walks over to the trunk and opens it. From the sidewalk I can just make out the outline of a bundle of
FOR SALE
signs stacked like luggage as he takes one out and places it carefully in the lawn.

I bite my lip as he hammers it into the ground, the frozen dirt yielding to the metal spikes at the bottom of the sign. Seems like a strange job for the sheriff to be doing. Strange like everything else in this town and he catches me looking at him. He can tell what I’m thinking by the way my eyebrows are raised and he stands up straighter. Tall and threatening, with the trees like blades slicing at the horizon behind him.

“Where is it you live again?” he asks. “I’ll take you home.”

“That’s okay.” The thought of him knowing where I live makes my skin crawl. Besides, the last thing I want is for him to find out my dad is away. He looks like the kind of cop who wouldn’t think twice about taking me away to some orphanage. “It’s not far, I can walk.”

“It’s no problem,” he says, taking another step closer. “I’d really like to meet your father, anyway. He was a cop, right?” I tell him that was a long time ago, but I say it too fast and too defensive. He removes his sunglasses and stares at me through eyes the color of water. Sunken eyes surrounded by a soft pink glow and all the air rushes out of my body.

I slowly start to back away.

“He’s not home . . . not right now,” I say and concentrate to keep my feet moving. “I’ll tell him you want to meet him
sometime.” Then I say good-bye and wave, turn around and force myself to keep from running. Glancing over my shoulder once I’m a few houses away. He’s still watching me and I start to walk a little faster without making it look obvious and by the time I turn the corner I hear the engine come to life.

The car drives off in the opposite direction.

I start to breathe easier when the wind takes the noise away and carries it off over the hills. Hurrying all the way back to my house, I lock the door behind me and sink to the floor. Watch the shadows creep across the room and try to lose myself in their safety.

By the time
the water for my dinner is boiling, I’m already mad at myself for getting so carried away earlier. I dump the dried noodles in the pot, watch the bubbles drown, and shake my head at how silly it was to get so scared. This is exactly why I made my dad promise not to leave me alone anymore. Every time he does, I let my imagination dream up the most outrageous plots.

I should know better by now.

I should know nothing as interesting as murder would happen in a little town like Maplecrest. That doesn’t mean it’s not weird, though.

The way the sheriff snuck up on me and all those
FOR SALE
signs stored in his trunk like dead bodies certainly wasn’t normal. His eyes weren’t normal, either. The same hypnotic eyes as the cheerleaders and the football players and the creatures in Lukas’s comic books.

I pick the pot up off the burner in a fit and slam it down.

“STOP IT!” I shout.

I have to put it out of my mind or I’ll drive myself crazy. Concentrate on making dinner. I drain the water from the pot, leaving only the noodles. Stir in the salt-flavored packet and watch the colors change from white to brown as the noodles soak up the taste. Then I turn on the television and hope it will distract me.

I spend the next few hours happily flipping through boring shows about the junk people find in their attics, cars that have better televisions than the one I’m watching, and sixteenth-birthday parties that cost more than the house I’m sitting in. It’s comforting in a weird way. Reminds me that these people are more like zombies than the people in Maplecrest. Brainwashed and dumb and I finally feel dulled enough to get some sleep.

I go around and turn off the lights in every room. Double-check the lock on the door in the front and back of the house and even the windows just to be safe. As I’m debating whether to bother washing up the dishes or not, the phone rings.

It’s my dad.

I know before answering it because it’s too late for salesmen or surveys or bill collectors and no one else would call here.

“Hey, Dad,” I say when I bring the phone to my ear.

“Hey,” he says and it’s nice to hear the sound of his voice as he asks how I’m holding up. I can hear the traffic in the background and know he pulled over at a rest stop to call me. I picture him leaning against a pay phone, one hand on
the phone and the other pressed to his ear to block out the noisy background. He seems so lonely when I imagine him that way. I give up on the idea of trying to hold any kind of grudge against him and simply tell him I’m fine. I can hear him smile. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but it’s the truth.

I almost tell him about the sheriff but decide to keep it to myself until he comes back. He’d just get all panicky and I don’t want him to worry. Not if I don’t have to.

“School any better?”

“One more day is over, that’s something,” I say and he seems happy to hear I’m back to my old pessimistic self.

We talk for a little while about nothing in particular. He tells me about the traffic around New York and how he’s so glad we don’t live anywhere near there anymore. I tell him about the bug-eyed woman in the pharmacy and how I nearly expected antennas to sprout from her head and he laughs. “You find the strangest-looking people in small towns,” he jokes, but something about it makes me pause.

It’s always been true about the places we’ve been. The little towns lost in the hills are filled with lumbering, crooked-toothed hicks. So many of them that I lose count.

And that’s when I realize what’s been bothering me about Maplecrest. It’s the fact that it’s not filled with those kind of people. There are more beautiful people here than anywhere else. So many pretty girls that it doesn’t seem natural.

“I’ll try to give you a call tomorrow,” my dad says. “If not, then definitely the day after.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumble but my mind is still trying to wrap
itself around the puzzle of an attractive population in the middle of nowhere. It’s like anyone who isn’t perfect is pushed out one by one until the pretty ones have themselves left with a small town of perfection. Secluded by the mountains and with nothing to attract visitors so that they can create their own little utopia where time stands still.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

A recording breaks up our phone conversation. The voice demands more money if we wish to keep talking but we have nothing left to say, anyway.

“Good night, Hannah,” my dad says.

“Drive safe,” I say and hang up the phone.

I stand still in the kitchen for a minute, staring at the dishes in the sink. My fingers still lightly pressing against the receiver as all the events of the past week start playing out in my mind and connecting themselves, getting tangled together like the threads of a spiderweb. The way Diana told me I was destined to be one of them was like she was telling me something that I wasn’t supposed to know. Then she disappears, just like that.

It’s almost like the book Lukas made me read at lunch.

It’s almost like someone took her away for leading me closer to the truth.

I feel like it’s all starting to come together when my concentration is broken by the sound of branches scratching against the window. It startles me out of my thoughts as I snap my head around in the direction of the noise. The sound of leaves being crushed under footsteps just outside the walls. The sound of being watched by hidden eyes. A sound that takes away the calm I’d worked so hard at obtaining
throughout hours of mindless television.

I turn off the lights and stay close to the wall. My back presses flat against it and I hold my breath, hoping whatever it is will go away as long as it doesn’t see me.

In the darkness I can only hear quiet and I begin to hate myself all over again. “It’s probably just a raccoon or a squirrel,” I whisper out loud, hoping it will make it feel more convincing. Then I repeat it. I tell it to myself enough times until I feel brave enough to walk over to the window and press my face to the cold glass.

Nothing stares back at me except the moon and the stars.

Nothing out there but the creatures in my imagination.

I decide to go to bed before I have time to dream up anything else to frighten me. But as I step into my room, I catch the tail end of headlights traveling across the ceiling in a purple and blue pattern filtered through the dream catcher hanging in the window. Only the red brake lights turning off my street are still visible by the time I look out.

“I’m not crazy. Someone was here,” finding the sound of my own voice soothing. Someone was watching. But I’m not stupid enough to kid myself into thinking it was anything different than when we lived in Pittsfield or Burbank. They left when they saw me because they weren’t looking for me.

They never are.

I should’ve known all along. There’s no ghost story in all of this. This is all about my dad. It’s always the same story once we’re found out. People we owe money to always coming by at strange hours demanding this or that.

They’ll keep coming back until they find him at home.
They’re never dangerous. Not usually, anyway. Still it pisses me off. As if I didn’t have enough problems, now I have to deal with this. I wrap my arms around my pillow and let myself fall on the bed.

Next time my dad calls, I’m going to stay mad at him no matter how lonely he sounds!

Lukas comes by my house in the morning before school. I’m
in the middle of wasting time with the usual routine of making little trips back and forth from the bathroom to the television while getting ready when he rings the doorbell. He asks if I want to stop at the diner and get breakfast. The options in my pantry aren’t exactly appetizing, but the amount of money I have isn’t exactly the kind that will last long if I make trips to the diner, either.

“I don’t know,” I say in a way that lets him know he could still convince me. Ready to wiggle out of my slippers and into my shoes if he says the right thing to help me change my mind.

“My treat,” he says and those are the magic words.

“Give me one second,” I shout, leaving him at the door.

I grab my stuff, kill the TV, slip on my shoes, throw on a
coat, and meet him outside. On the way there, I decide not to tell him anything about yesterday. Especially about Diana. I know what he’ll say and I’m not in the mood for all that gore this early in the morning. I just want some pancakes and coffee and to talk about normal things.

I made my mind up last night when I was lying in bed with my eyes open, no more talk about conspiracies or ghouls. I have real problems to deal with, I don’t need to add made-up ones to go along with them. I have a dad who drives halfway across the country, leaving me to deal with the creeps we owe money to. I’m attending a school where the most I can hope to achieve is total outsider status. I have a friend who may or may not have vanished under mysterious circumstances and a sheriff who thinks I’m a troublemaker. The way I figure it, that’s enough.