18
Sentenced to Food Court
WE SIT IN THE food court, mostly deserted this time of day, two zombies slurping sodas like a couple of poodle-sweatered girls in a ‘50s diner. Aside from yesterday’s grilled cheese sandwich, it’s the first human food I’ve had since I died (do brains count?) but, more importantly, the first nondiet soda I’ve had since I was maybe, what …eight years old?
A few tables away, a frazzled mother sits with her two young boys, yelling at one then another while trying to stuff a quick gyro into her stressed-out gullet. “Jeffrey, stop. Brian, don’t do that. Jeffrey, put that down.”
Chloe ignores them, staring out at the mostly empty stores beyond the food court perimeter.
“So remind me again why I’m not drinking diet.” I take a tentative sip of the thick, syrupy soda. It’s surprisingly good. So good I take two more long, big sips. The viselike tension from my head immediately lifts, as it always does when I’ve been too long without caffeine and drink my first snort of Red Bull—wham—32 grams of sugar straight to the cerebral cortex.
She shakes her head. “For starters, you’ll never have to count another calorie again. Look at you; you’re in the first stages of Assimilation. I bet you’ve lost at least 15 percent of your body fat already. Trust me, it doesn’t take long. By the final stages, you’ll be down to 4, maybe 3 percent body fat, tops, for the rest of your life.
“We’re literally running on electricity now, Maddy, so your metabolism is crazy fast. So this”—she holds up her half-empty cup, as big as most popcorn buckets—”the liquid keeps your cells hydrated; the sugar gives your brain a boost. You don’t need to drink it, not exactly; you can go without it; it just …helps you feel more …human.”
Her voice has turned almost wistful, her eyes falling on the frenzied mother and looking downright sad. I give her the moment, although a thousand questions run through my brain. The biggest one being, Why is Chloe suddenly being so nice to me? The mother looks up, sees Chloe’s stark white face, severe black makeup, scowling eyes, and T-shirt studded with safety pins, and gathers her boys to leave without cleaning up.
Chloe turns to me without comment.
“How long have you been, you know, like …this?” I ask.
“Thirty-seven years,” she says nonchalantly, as if I’ve just asked her the weather. “But …how?”
She turns to me, taking another deep, almost desperate slug of soda. She explains, too calmly, “I was holing up in an abandoned warehouse with my boyfriend. It wasn’t only us; lots of kids did it back then. It was called ‘squatting’; Google it sometime. Anyway, the cops got a tip, raided the place; everybody took off, even my boyfriend. I’d had a little too much to drink, maybe a few other things, so I couldn’t move quite as fast as everybody else.
“Anyway, the cops tried to bust me, I resisted, they tased me; both of them at the same time, set Tasers to quadruple stun. I don’t think they planned to; it just worked out that way. You have to remember, this was back when they first started using Tasers. They were pretty much brand-new, experimental, unproven—twice as big, plus twice as strong, as they are today.
“Anyway, I went through the Awakening; that’s what they call it when you actually die and go into a kind of hibernation. But I wasn’t totally gone; I could hear what they were saying, those cops. I mean, they thought I was dead; no pulse, no breathing, cold skin, the works. One said he had a family and kids and he wasn’t ‘going down for some punk skank.’
“I still remember that: ‘punk skank.’ Nice, huh? The other guy was young, only a kid himself. He said this could ruin his career. So they just left me there; didn’t even throw a blanket over me or anything, like you would for a dog. When I came to a few days later, I stumbled off, figured things out, needed to get away from there as fast as I could. Didn’t want the same cops catching me again, obviously. I went here, went there; soon enough I figured out what I was, learned what I had to the hard way and, well, here I am.”
“How’d you find out about the whole eating-brains-within-48-hours deal?”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t. I just …got really, really hungry and …that was the only thing I had a craving for. I guess it’s like when girls get pregnant; they know what they want. It got so bad after a day that I could literally smell the brains through the grocer’s deli door. I waited and broke in that night and chowed down. It was …awesome.”
The way she’s describing it, I can almost taste the brains right about …Hold up, girl. Focus. Stopping myself from licking my lips at the thought of fresh brains, I ask, “And you never saw your boyfriend again?”
She sucks the last of her soda up and shoves the gargantuan paper cup away. “What, you mean that creep who left me to deal with the cops? No, Maddy, I didn’t; didn’t want to. Not like you and that football stud you were drooling over after school. What’s his name? Stamp?”
I roll my eyes, sipping carefully at my soda. “Lot of good that’s going to do me. You saw Hazel jock-block me.”
Chloe smirks. “Thought you two were best friends.”
“Me too.”
Finally, Chloe points to her temple and says, “Lemme see it again.”
“See what?” I ask, instinctively pushing my ridiculous beret tighter onto my head.
“The mark,” she says, inching closer. “I saw you showing Dane in the trailer, but I want to get a better look. I’ve heard of zombies being reborn by lightning but never met one before. I just want to check it out.”
When no one is looking, I snatch off the beret, bend toward the table, let her see, and then slip the hat right back on.
When I look at her, she’s nodding admiringly. “Very nice. You know, hair grows for six weeks after you die, so by, say, Thanksgiving …that should be all covered up.”
“Really?” I ask hopefully; here I’d thought I was stuck with it forever. (Oh, the things that pass for pleasant surprises when you’re dead.)
“Really,” she says, looking me up and down again. “But now enough with the show-and-tell. If you’re going to pass, we need to do you up right.”
Before I can protest, she stands and tosses her soda into the nearest trash can.
Helplessly, I follow.
A couple of hours and most of Dad’s emergency stash later, Chloe and I are both weighed down with bulging bags from multiple stores. I’m used to shopping with Hazel, a fun, sunny person, in fun, sunny stores, for fun, sunny things. Shopping with Chloe is as dark and somber as the things she makes me pick out: black T-shirts, black slacks, black blouses, black jeans, black socks, black shoes—and that’s before we get to the makeup counter.
“I can’t wear that,” I say as she makes me buy the thick, white face powder my grandmother used to wear to bed every night of her life. “It’s not me.”
“Look.” She sighs, bullying the cashier into ringing it up anyway, along with the $30 of black makeup, lipstick, and nail polish she’s piled onto the cosmetics counter. “Right now you’re already a little—how shall I put this?—gray. And you’re, what, not even two full days in? By Monday morning, trust me, you’re going to need to either (a) wear enough blush to pass as a circus clown or (b) do what I do and go for the Goth look. Trust me, Maddy, this is more believable.”
“Me?” I ask as we trudge out of the department store and head for the mall’s main entrance. “Goth? That’s going to be believable? I think most people who know me—granted, that’s not a ton—but most people who know me would find it easier to believe I was an actual zombie before they’d believe I was a Goth.”
She looks at my trademark khaki slacks, white blouse, high collar, black flats, pomegranate scarf belt (and let’s not forget “le beret”) and frowns. “Okay, maybe not at first, but trust me, every teenager goes through some kind of phase: punk, Goth, rebellious, slutty, skank, whatever. Just pretend this is yours. This way your dad might question it, but at least he’ll understand it—eventually. This way Hazel and your other brainiac buddies might cock an eyebrow, but if they’re real friends, they’ll get over it. It’s the easiest way; trust me.”
She pauses near the fill-your-own-bag-with-jelly-beans store to rearrange the bags in her hands and adjust her black bra strap and says, “Hey, at least Goth is still in. You should have seen me trying to pass this look off back in the ‘80s when everyone and their sister was still a preppy.”
She gives me a quick glance up and down before adding grudgingly, “No offense.”