Zombified Page 16

  “I’m just getting in the front seat,” I said.

  He stood there blinking slowly, not saying anything. After a second, I climbed in next to Warren.

  “See you later, man,” Warren said through a crack in the window. He drove away.

  I didn’t say good-bye.

  What I did was pout while Warren drove to my place. I was angry in that way you can only be angry when you know you’re wrong. One way to think about this was that Phil let me go because he didn’t care about me, but he’d told me he cared for me just a few nights ago. So maybe he let me go because I was a big girl and he trusted me to make responsible decisions.

  “How stupid can you get?” I said to the passenger side window, my breath making a foggy patch on the glass.

  “Come again?” Warren said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just talking to myself.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  We drove without talking after that. Warren played something nice on the stereo, but it was too low for me to really catch it. I looked out at the passing houses and I felt bad about going into that crappy neighborhood earlier looking for zombies. I wasn’t sure why that made me feel guilty exactly. Maybe everything was making me feel guilty. Maybe guilt was my superpower.

  We got to my place and Warren parked in front and turned off the car. I didn’t make any move to get out of the car.

  “Are we gonna go in?” he asked. “It’ll start getting cold soon.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at my little house. I’d let Brandon in a few nights ago and that had ended in a bad way. Then I’d let Phil in and it had ended up pretty good. What might happen if I let Warren in?

  “Is this because of Phil?” Warren asked.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I’m not dumb, Courtney,” he said. “I can see there’s something going on between the two of you. God, I hope you two don’t think you were hiding it.”

  “We weren’t hiding it,” I said, “but I didn’t think we were broadcasting it, either.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m sure Cody has no idea there’s anything going on.”

  I put my head in my hands. “Oh, God, is that the bar we’ve cleared? Amazing. I bet those two junkies we saw earlier tonight are talking about how Phil and I have something going on.”

  “I don’t know why you’re upset,” Warren said. “I think it’s cool that you two like each other too much to hide it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Phil’s a cool guy. A little intense, but cool.”

  I let that sink in. Phil was a cool guy.

  “How serious are you two?” Warren asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Is it a complicated question?”

  “Sort of,” I said. I suddenly felt too close to Warren, too confined inside the car. I wanted distance from him. Physical distance. If it hadn’t been freezing outside, I’d have climbed out of the car. There was no way we were going in the house now, so the car it was.

  “Sort of,” Warren repeated. “Well, how physical have you two gotten?”

  “Jesus, what is this, a locker room?” I asked.

  Warren laughed. “I don’t want details,” he said. “I’m just trying to establish what we’re talking about here.”

  He leaned in a little closer to me, and I retreated, but I only got so far because of the car door.

  “I know you two have been an item since the summer,” Warren said. His voice was pitched low like we were telling secrets and it wasn’t just the two of us. “Have you had sex?”

  I was so glad we were sitting in the dark because I felt my cheeks grow hot. No way did I want him to see me blushing.

  “No, huh?” he asked. “Well, tell me this: Have you two at least kissed?”

  “We have,” I said, and I hated how small and timid my voice came out. “Twice now.”

  “Twice?” Warren said, incredulous. He leaned forward again, and there was nowhere for me to get away. He reached out his hand and touched my chin very softly. “Courtney, if I was your boyfriend, there’s no way I’d be able to keep from kissing you.” Then he leaned forward some more and all of a sudden we were kissing.

  Okay. I realize that was lame. It was also using the passive voice, which four years’ worth of English teachers had taught me to avoid, but it was also accurate. I knew that I was responsible for the kiss, but I felt powerless to control it. It was a force of nature, a tornado, and I was a double-wide trailer home.

  There was no tentativeness in Warren’s kiss like there had been with Phil. His mouth was right there, right on mine, and then, a second later, his tongue parted my lips and started dancing around inside my mouth. I just sort of melted into it. It just felt so good, so comforting, to know that I was desirable, and to have the proof on display like this. To have this gorgeous boy think that I was worthy of this kind of attention. It all just made me lose my mind for a few minutes.

  Why had I wanted to get away from him? Now I just wanted to be close. I cursed the gear shift and brake lever. I wrapped one arm around his neck and snaked the other around his body. Warren responded by wrapping one arm around me, his hand on my back. The other hand went to my breast. He started to squeeze and knead it. It was too rough, almost painful, and I was about to tell him to stop when he moved his hand. Thank God. I went back to enjoying the feel of his lips and tongue.

  And then his free hand was in the front of my pants, and a million warning buzzers went off in my head.

  I got both hands on his shoulders and pushed, but he barely moved.

  “Stop it, Warren,” I said.

  He tried to pull me to him again with the one arm.

  “No,” I said, and I shoved again, this time getting him off me. “Stop it,” I said.

  “What the hell, Courtney?” he asked. His voice was somewhere between bewildered and angry.

  “Just stop,” I said. “Which means get your hand out of my pants!”

  “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “I thought you wanted to do this.” At least he did as I asked and moved his hand.

  “I thought you were just talking about what a great guy Phil is?” I said.

  “Don’t throw that at me,” he said from his side of the car. “I’m not the one going out with him.”

  “But you’re supposed to be his friend,” I said.

  “I don’t care how good a friend he is,” Warren said. “Not when you’re throwing off signals like you were.”

  “Now it’s my fault,” I said.

  “You wanted it,” he said. “You can’t deny it.”

  “Well, now I don’t.”

  “Just like that?” he asked.

  “Just like that,” I said.

  I tried to open the door, but it was locked. “Oh, Jesus, I cannot believe I did this. Phil’s never going to forgive me.” I tried the door again. “Will you please unlock the car?”

  “What if I don’t?” Warren asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You heard me.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Just perfect.” I faced him. “If you’re thinking about forcing me to do something I don’t want to do, it would be a huge mistake.”

  “I don’t believe that you don’t want it,” he said. Shit. He was angry. How had I ever let myself get in a situation like this? My whole life I’d been taught to avoid situations exactly like this. Well, I’d been trained in other things my whole life, too.

  As fast as I was able, I drew my pistol and shoved the barrel into his crotch. Hard.

  “I think this might tell you how much I disagree with you,” I said. It was so satisfying to see his eyes go wide, to see his mouth form this little O of terror. I gave the barrel another shove just to emphasize my point.

  “Okay,” he yelled. “I get it, I get it. I’m sorry!”

  “Sorry for which?” I asked. “Sorry for kissing me when I was vulnerable, or sorry for threatening to rape me?”

  “Rape? Jesus, Courtney!”<
br />
  “That’s what I’d call it,” I said. “But right now, I don’t want to have a semantic argument with you. Right now I just want you to unlock my damn door before I blow your pecker off.”

  Unable to take his eyes off the pistol in his groin, Warren reached toward the control panel and fumbled around until I heard the doors unlock.

  I reached behind me, found the handle, and opened the door. Cold night air flooded the car and covered me in gooseflesh. Keeping the pistol trained on him, I got out of the car. He kept his arms up like he was being robbed. Good, him being scared was exactly what I wanted.

  “Now go home, Warren,” I said. “And I doubt we’ll be calling you to go on any more zombie hunts.”

  He put his arms down. His mouth was a tight line of anger. As he keyed the car to life, he said, “Fine. Whatever, you stupid—”

  I thumbed the hammer on the pistol. It was an obviously deadly sound.

  “Whatever word follows that is probably bad for your health,” I said. “Just shut up and leave.”

  I reached out with my foot and kicked the door closed.

  He immediately put it in drive and slammed on the gas. The car fishtailed as it screeched away from the curb. As he rounded the corner, the window rolled down and he screamed, “Bitch!” I considered running and trying to put a couple of shots in his rear window, but I was too tired. Honestly, I felt like I deserved it. Although his lack of creativity in name calling was somewhat disappointing.

  And then I was left all alone, and suddenly I felt exhausted. I’d never been so tired. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it back into my house. I considered just lying down on the sidewalk and letting zombies find me. But I knew that was defeatist thinking. So, I got into the yard and made my slow way up to the house. It felt like I was lifting concrete blocks every time I took a step.

  When I got inside and locked the door behind me, I let myself sort of melt onto the couch.

  I took my phone out of my pocket and started to compose a text to Phil. Which I deleted. I must have written a hundred texts to him that night, each one explaining what had happened and how sorry I was. I’d violated his trust in me, and now I was no longer worthy of it, or of him and his affections. I deleted every single one.

  Oh, God, I was like the character in a Brontë novel. I threw the phone away. I heard it clatter along the kitchen floor with its maybe-linoleum flooring.

  Why did I want to tell Phil anyway? To relieve my own guilt? Well, screw that. I was going to feel guilty for a while. I deserved it. I welcomed it.

  I wanted to cry. I felt like a big, emotional release would have done me a world of good. But either I was all cried out or I was further punishing myself on a subconscious level. There was no way to force tears to come. It reminded me of that Johnny Cash song about a man who couldn’t cry. If I’d had the strength, I’d have gotten up and put that song on. Instead, I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A Pretty Jittery Place

  There’s this line in a Hemingway novel, I can’t remember which one. I can’t even remember the line, exactly, but it’s about how the character lay in bed for a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken. I wish I’d had the luxury of forgetfulness the next day, because the moment my eyes opened, I remembered that I’d broken Phil’s heart. He just didn’t know it yet.

  I decided for the sake of the rest of humanity that I needed to hide away by myself. I spent that day finishing the last bit of my holiday homework and moping, with occasional bouts of guilt-induced napping thrown in. People underestimate how much you can sleep when you’re depressed, but if you really work at it, you can doze through fifteen or sixteen hours in a day.

  Phil texted and asked how I was doing at one point. I wrote back that I was feeling under the weather. Then it occurred to me that he probably thought I was hung over, so I immediately wrote and told him that Warren and I hadn’t ended up drinking.

  A few minutes later, he texted back:

  Okay. Hope you feel better. Let me know if you’re still up for tomorrow.

  Man, I’d forgotten about going up to see Buddha the next day. I wrote that I’d still be up for it, but he didn’t have to come along if he had better things to do.

  Better than hang with you? Don’t think so, he texted back, and I felt the guilt knife twist in my gut.

  Okay, I texted back, I’m going to try and get some more rest. See you tomorrow.

  Which was the actual truth, because the next thing I did was climb into my Bed of Remorse and mope my way back to sleep for the night.

  I woke up early the next day, my heart pounding, my body drenched in sweat. I’d been having some sort of nightmare, but the moment I opened my eyes, it evaporated. I lay there long enough for my heart rate to get back to normal, then got out of my nest and showered and dressed.

  The next thing I did was difficult. I had a mini-war over whether or not I even wanted to consider it. If I’d been in a cartoon, a little angel and devil would have appeared on my shoulders. I’m not really sure which of them won the argument, but in the end I marched into my dad’s room and broke into the huge bag of cash he’d been keeping in there ever since he took it from me after I admitted how I’d earned it.

  I really didn’t feel good about it. I knew I was violating my dad’s trust by doing that, but I also knew I needed two hundred dollars to make it past the checkpoints along the highway. I also knew that Dad would never even know the money was missing just by glancing at it. He’d have to count it all. I wondered if he ever had. I sure had. Somewhere in my room, I had a notebook with the figure down to the dollar. I tried not to think about it. This money was supposed to be my go-away-to-college fund, but it had all been earned by selling Vitamin Z. I understood why Dad had taken it from me. But I still regretted it.

  I counted out ten twenty-dollar bills and folded them into two little bundles for easy bribing. Those went into the front pocket of the flannel shirt I wore over a black T-shirt. I did my best to put everything back in the drawer the way it had been. Let’s see, I’d replaced one broken window in here, now I’d taken out cash I didn’t want him to know about. What else might I do in that room that I’d have to hide from him? It was best not to think about it.

  I then went into my room, strapped on my pistol, and I was ready. I really wished I had something more badass to climb into than a Subaru wagon, but you can’t have everything. I sent a quick text to let Phil know I was on my way and then I was off.

  He was waiting for me on his front porch when I got there, and I barely had to stop the car and wait for him to climb in before I was off again.

  He gave me a meek smile after he got his seat belt done up.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  I almost asked him what he meant when I remembered I’d told him I was feeling sick.

  “Better,” I said. “Just a little tired. What’d you tell your aunt and uncle you were doing today? I’m sure you didn’t tell them what you were doing for real. Did you?” I worried that Phil being Phil, there was at least an outside chance he’d told them the truth.

  “I just said we’d be hanging out,” he said.

  He reached into his backpack and started rummaging around in it.

  “I brought road goodies,” he said. Pulled out Red Vines and cans of Pepsi.

  “You may road-trip with me anytime, Phil,” I said.

  “These are sort of a way to apologize,” he said. I started to get a weird feeling in my gut, but didn’t say anything. “I acted like sort of a tool last night. I shouldn’t have. So”—he held up a can of soda—“sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And there’s really no reason to be sorry. You should be able to say you don’t want to do something without me acting like a bitch about it.”

  “So you didn’t end up drinking with Warren,” he said. “What did you do?”

  I squashed the urge to get defensive—What do you mean, what did we do? Defensiveness
was a dead giveaway.

  “We just talked for a little in his car, then I went in to bed.” This was factually accurate with just one tiny omission. Namely, the fact that Warren and I had made out for a good five minutes. But I figured life might be better for everyone if I kept that detail to myself.

  “What’d you guys talk about?” Phil asked in a sort of distracted way. I was crossing some lanes of traffic just then, and he seemed to take issue with my traffic etiquette. I wasn’t sure what he was so worried about, our conversation had me so distracted that I was unable to obsess about the road, and I thought I was driving better than ever.

  “We talked a little about you,” I said. “And me and you.” Again, this was true.

  “Good things, I hope,” he said.

  “Of course!” Okay, this was veering toward lying territory again.

  Thankfully, we were coming up on the freeway on-ramp and I slowed the car. The conversation would have to wait.

  “Just sit back and don’t say anything,” I said.

  I pulled to a stop and a soldier walked up to the window, which I rolled down. I didn’t recognize this guy. Of course, after six months, the dude I used to deal with had probably been transferred or had gone back home or something.

  The soldier, a Latino kid not much older than me, leaned over to look in the car.

  “May I ask the nature of your business, ma’am?” he said. Ma’am?

  “I’m headed up to East Portland to visit a friend,” I said. “His name is Buddha.”

  At the mention of the name, the kid looked at me sharply. “License, please,” he said.

  I dug my license out of my shirt pocket and brought one bundle of twenties with it.

  “Here you go,” he said.

  The soldier barely glanced at my license, but he made sure to count the money. He smiled as he handed the ID back and stuffed the money in his pocket.

  “You’re a lot nicer on the eyes than the kid who usually goes on this run,” the guy said. Phil stiffened in the seat beside me, but he didn’t say anything. “Just head north to Exit—”

  “I know the routine,” I said to the kid. “Thanks.”