Zombie Blondes (16 page)

“Something’ll have to be done about that boy. He’s always been trouble,” the sheriff says. I don’t know why, but the tone of his voice gives me the chills. Wondering what he means by
something
. Worried that it means something worse than I can imagine so I tell him the whole thing was nothing. He raises one eyebrow at that and says it didn’t look like nothing. Gives me a speech about how girls try to cover for boyfriends who hit them.

I assure him that Lukas is not my boyfriend and that he wasn’t trying to hurt me.

“If you say so,” he says just like I’d expect from a cop. Maggie’s dad or not, he’s a police officer before he’s anything else and I still don’t trust him. I trust him even less when he starts asking about my dad again and keeps trying
to look over my shoulder into my house.

“He’s not here,” I say, and I know right away that it sounds suspicious. “He works late,” trying to cover but it only comes out sounding more guilty than before.

“Well, in that case,” he says, putting his hands on his hips, “feel free to give me a call if that kid comes back and gives you a hard time.”

“He won’t. But I will,” I say. Then I thank him and begin to close the door. He heads back to the car and stops. Hits his forehead like a forgetful old man on television and turns around. Says he nearly forgot, then congratulates me on becoming a cheerleader. Tells me we’re the pride of the town along with the team. I smile and thank him again, though really it doesn’t make me happy to hear it. There’s just something about him that doesn’t feel right. And once he’s gone, I start to wonder about him. Wondering why he happened to be here on my street and why he’s so interested in my dad. Wondering why he’s so interested in me, too, and why he’d bring me up with his daughter the other day. Wondering why he’d be at Diana’s house with a trunk full of
FOR SALE
signs and why he seems to hate Lukas so much.

None of it makes much sense.

I don’t know why, but I know I don’t like him.

And I know that when my dad calls the next time, I’m going to tell him about it. I’m going to tell him to hurry home.

I’m getting stronger. After only three practices, I don’t need
to stop except for once or twice to catch my breath. I’m learning the routine, too. Mrs. Donner says I’m picking it up quickly. Tells me she’s glad Maggie made her reconsider me for the squad. She called me
ideal
and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t mean the world to me to hear it.

It’s not that cheerleading has all of the sudden become my whole life or anything. It’s just nice to finally be good at something that everybody else thinks is special. It’s nice to be accepted. And I’ve definitely noticed a difference in the way people treat me since I’ve started hanging out with Meredith or Maggie, or even Greg. Not just from the kids in school, either. Even in town. Everyone is much nicer to me now.

I know it’s exactly the kind of special treatment that
would bother me if I saw some other girl getting it just because she was part of the popular crowd, but somehow it’s different when it’s me.

My dad would make a face at me if I said that to him. He’d get that half-frown, wrinkled-forehead look that he makes when he doesn’t agree with me. He’d tell me not to be a hypocrite in the disappointed tone of voice that used to make me cry when I was little. But he’s not here to say any of those things, so I don’t care what he would think.

“Hello? Are you even listening to me?”

I blink myself away from my thoughts and look at Meredith. She hooks her arm around mine so that we’re locked at the elbow as we pass under the fluorescent lights of the abandoned hall. White light that shines down on the speckled pattern of the cheap tile to make it glitter like golden bricks. To tell the truth, it sort of feels that way, too. The last few days have felt like a different world. A better one.

“Sorry,” I say with a laugh to shake off my daydreaming. “I’m listening now.”

Meredith smirks and narrows her eyes at me. She’s getting used to me drifting off. “I
asked
you how you like being one of us . . . you know, being cooler than the rest of the dorks,” she says.

“I guess I like it,” I say. Slowly as if I’m still thinking about it even though I made up my mind three days ago. Then I laugh so that she knows the “I guess” part of my answer was a complete lie.

“No one’s giving you a problem, right?”

I shake my head. Tell her even the teachers are being nice to me and Meredith tells me that’s part of the deal. That’s
part of why everyone wants to be like them.

“How long have you been on the squad?” I ask.

“Forever,” she says in an exaggerated tone. “I can’t even remember what I was like before.”

I grin. I sort of wish I could forget a lot of what happened before.

“Come on, let’s go,” Meredith says. The rest of the girls are already at the diner waiting for us. Greg’s staying a little longer today along with the whole football team. He told me it was their day to lift weights. I couldn’t imagine having the energy to do that after a practice but I guess that’s what makes them the best.

Meredith unhooks her arm from mine. She catches me looking over at the door to the boys’ locker room. “Thinking about lover boy?” she jokes.

“Maybe a little,” I confess. It sounds better than the truth. Better than telling her I haven’t really stopped thinking about him since he kissed me two nights ago. But Meredith can tell that anyway. No matter what words actually come out of my mouth, my smile gives me away.

We both start laughing as we push the doors open and walk into the soft colors of twilight shining off the cars in the parking lot like a string of holiday lights. As the wind rushes up on us, Meredith tells me for the tenth time today how perfect Greg and I are for each other. If I didn’t sort of believe it myself, I’d start to think it was some kind of arranged marriage the way our friends keep pushing us together. But if it is, I guess I’m grateful. I’ve never had a boy who’s so perfect be so crazy about me before.

“Is he coming by the diner later with the other guys?”
Meredith asks.

I shake my head.

Meredith’s eyes light up in surprise because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. The boys come by once they’re through with being gym rats. Those are the rules but Greg and I decided to break them just a little.

“No,” I tell her, “I’m going over to his house when he’s done.”

I bite my lip to keep from showing how nervous and excited I am. Looking over at Meredith out of the corner of my eyes and letting the wind keep my hair in my face so she doesn’t see. But I can see her face. A blue spark of electricity in her eyes. A hungry smile that shows her teeth. And maybe it’s just the way the evening sun mixes with the neon glow of the diner’s sign, but something dangerous flashes across her face. Then it fades as soon as it came. So quick, like something I wasn’t supposed to see, and I can feel my stomach drop the way it does when getting on a scary ride. The panic feeling I get whenever I want to change my mind about going through with something. Because all of the sudden I’m not sure going to Greg’s house is a fun idea.

But that’s crazy.

I know it’s crazy.

I brush aside the hair hanging in front of my eyes and turn to face her. Everything’s normal. Her smile is as friendly as it always is and I know I just caught her in one of those in-between faces. Same as it always is when I’m nervous.

“Oh, look, they already got the good table,” Meredith says when we get inside the door and see the rest of the girls
sitting in the back corner at the big circular booth. They wave to us as we head toward them, moving around to make space for us to sit down.

I look over at the clock hanging behind the counter.

One hour and fifteen minutes until I’m supposed to be at Greg’s.

I listen to everyone gossip about our teachers, the boys on the team, and the kids who they’re going to hate for the next few days. I join in with an occasional laugh or just to say yeah or something else to show them I agree with everything that’s said. But really I’m just watching the clock. Glancing over at it every other minute and hoping for a Cinderella kind of night.

The lights are
on in every window of Greg’s house when I walk up the driveway. It doesn’t look like a real house. Not one that anyone lives in. More like a house out of an old painting. Large windows with matching curtains tied back neatly. A wraparound porch with two rocking chairs creaking in the wind, gently like they’re being rocked by ghost children. Spirals of smoke billowing from the chimney and silhouetted against the bright moon.

Picture perfect.

The complete opposite of every house I’ve ever lived in.

Dragging my feet up to the porch, my shadow grows suddenly long and thin as I step into the warm glow pouring from the front room onto the cold ground.

Everything seems so peaceful that part of me wants to turn and leave. Even the quiet tapping of my feet feels like
an intrusion. I’ve never known how to behave in front of perfect people. I barely know how to act in front of a boy that I’m crazy about, let alone his parents. I’m afraid they’re going to hate me and make him hate me, too. So I just stand there on the porch with the door inches away. Stuck in the middle of the cold wind against my back and the warm light coming from the window above my head.

I hear Greg’s voice on the other side of the door, shouting from the top of the stairs so that his words get tangled up with the noises coming from the kitchen. The clatter of dishes and the sound of running water. The scraping of forks and the shuffling of feet over tile floors. Sounds that are the same in my house and I start to relax. Start to lift my hand and knock.

“Got it,” Greg shouts as his feet thunder down the steps as fast as my heart is beating. Opens the door in a fast, sweeping motion and the smell of food escapes into the air. Then I see his eyes. Eyes like snow falling at midnight. Full-moon eyes that have a way of making me melt when they meet mine.

“Hi,” I say almost in a whisper.

“Hey,” he says as normal as ever. “Come on in.” And when he steps aside and touches my shoulder, I know I’ve made a big deal out of nothing.

I blame Meredith and all the other girls for making me so nervous about this. They wouldn’t stop talking about us the whole time at the diner. They made it seem like this was some big test of our relationship or something. At least Morgan made it seem that way. And she also made sure to let me know she was certain I’d fail. Teasing me that I’d say the
wrong thing. That Greg would be watching everything I said and did in front of his parents and would dump me for the tiniest mistake.

I knew she was full of crap. She was just trying to make me so nervous that I would embarrass myself. I know that, but still it isn’t until I see him smile for the first time that I start to breathe easier.

“Perfect timing,” he says. “I just finished eating.”

I try to think of something clever to say. Something funny about how I always have perfect timing, but nothing that I think up sounds funny at all so I just sort of nod and smile.

“Who is it?” his mother calls out from the kitchen. “Who’s here?” But she’s already poking her head in the doorway before Greg can answer. She’s pretty. She doesn’t look old enough to be his mother. Or maybe she does, but she doesn’t look as old as the mothers of other friends I’ve had. She has her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail but even from just a glimpse of it I can tell that Greg gets his loose blond curls from her. His eyes, too, and it makes me like her right away.

“This is Hannah,” Greg says. The way he says my name makes me smile because the way he says it is so familiar, like it’s been mentioned many times to her before.

“Hi,” I say, forcing myself not to wave like a shy little girl. “Nice to meet you.” Greg’s mother smiles politely and says the same back to me before disappearing again.

Greg rolls his eyes and apologizes for her. “Sorry. She’s boiling some kind of roast or something for tomorrow,” waving his hand dismissively through the air to make sure that I know he’s not really sure what she’s doing and that he
doesn’t really care.

“That’s okay, I didn’t come here to see her,” I say, grabbing his hand and pressing my fingers between his so that the feeling of his skin rubbing against mine makes my breath weak for a second.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Greg says, nodding in the direction of the steps and pulling me there slightly.

“Okay, let’s,” I say.

He leads me there by the hand and I follow. Turning my head to the wall and looking at the photographs and plaques that show Greg’s life. The oldest pictures at the bottom and the newest near the top and I watch him grow up at a dizzying pace. The images passing like the pages of a flip book until we reach the top.

The door to Greg’s room is right near the stairs. The door is open and he stands to the side, letting me go in first. It’s not the first time I’ve been in a boy’s room. Not even the second or third, or even any number I can remember. But still every time is kind of like the first time. There’s just something different about boys’ rooms. The colors. The way the furniture is arranged. The things lying around. It takes a minute for a girl to figure out how to find her way around it. Sort of like walking into the boys’ bathroom by mistake. It always takes a minute to figure out where you are and what those things on the wall are for.

“I see you didn’t straighten up for me,” I say as my eyes travel from pile to pile of books and papers and clothes stacked in every corner. Greg laughs. He says he wanted me to see the real him. I laugh, too. Tell him my room isn’t much better.

“Sit down. I mean, if you want,” he says.

I lower my eyes at him and raise my eyebrows because the only place to sit is on his bed. That’s okay and everything. But I just want him to know that I know a trick when I see one.

He seems to know, though.

It’s not some kind of trick. He knows exactly what he’s trying to do and though it should piss me off, it doesn’t. I sort of like that he’s not playing a game or anything. Not like some of the other boys I’ve liked who always fumbled around the question, trying to act all innocent when we both knew what he wanted.