Passing Strange, Page 2

  I think that’s why my mom avoids me now—the guilt. It makes people angry and it makes people cold. That part of it is my fault.

  I saw that the back porch light was on. Right after I’d started spending my nights and early mornings at the Haunted House, I’d start noticing all of these little signs that, dead or not, someone was still worried about me. Someone still cared. Lights that had been doused when I left the house were turned on. Magazines and books were moved from coffee table to couch. A milk-stained glass would appear in the sink.

  Mom doesn’t drink milk.

  I let myself in and dragged myself into my basement abode. Phoebe tells me that my room is musty (it is a basement, after all), and for her to say anything at all, it must be really bad. The room probably smells because it flooded a few years ago and never really dried out properly. My room is dank. Dank and rank. And it stank. I call it the tomb.

  I sat down at the vanity opposite my bed and looked at myself in the mirror. You would have thought I’d have other concerns at that moment—concerns about my friends and my family, concerns that I wasn’t the only one shot and pursued by angry authorities, but no.

  I was concerned with what I looked like.

  The damage was much worse than I’d even imagined. It was as if I were looking at myself through a broken mirror, but it wasn’t the mirror that was broken. It was me.

  Half of my face was pushed in, the white skin of my cheek all mottled and stained dark blue from the weird zombie blood. I suppose there’d have been swelling if I were alive, but instead my face seemed deflated, and all sorts of strange things happened with the muscles in my face when I frowned. Atop my newly hideous face sat a platinum blond fright wig that looked as if it had been used to sweep the forest floor.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at myself. Pretty long, I guess.

  Eventually I remembered I’d been shot three times, that the wreck of my face wasn’t the only damage. I reached for the third button on my blouse—the first two weren’t buttoned, naturally—and then decided to just rip the shirt open, popping half the buttons off as I did.

  Why not? It wasn’t like I’d be wearing it again, anyhow, with it full of bullet holes.

  I was full of bullet holes, too. Swiss cheese.

  A round hole, the same color as my bra, was above my left breast. There was a second hole, this one an exit wound, higher up and further to the left, just under my clavicle. I turned in the mirror and saw where the bullet had gone in. There was no exit wound for the bullet that hit my face, meaning it was still rattling around somewhere inside me.

  I put my index finger over the first hole. Adam’s life had bled out of a hole very similar to that one. I thought it looked as if it had gone through at an upward angle, which I took to mean that whoever fired it was trying to kill me with a head-shot. Nice. I looked a thousand times worse than Tak, and a couple dozen times scarier than George. Worse even than poor Sylvia.

  Sylvia, I thought, somewhat guiltily. Here I was fretting and moaning about my shattered face, and that poor girl had been taken apart—literally—and was supposedly being put back together, Dumpty-esque, by all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Well, by Alish and Angela Hunter, anyhow, and the other witch doctors at the Hunter Foundation. I didn’t think I’d be around when the Hunters released her in a few weeks. Assuming, of course, that they had any real intention of releasing her at all.

  I heard the floorboards—my ceiling—creaking as some-one—my father, most likely—began to shuffle around the kitchen. Before his morning coffee my father walked not unlike a zombie, whereas my mother was swift from the moment she sprang out of bed.

  And then I heard the thump thump thump of tiny feet, and panicked.

  Every morning upon waking, Kaitlyn runs down the hall and the two flights of stairs that separate our bedrooms to come see me in my cellar lair. It drove my mother crazy, I’m sure. On the rare occasions I’d come upstairs before she left for work, I’d see Mom bustling about, her movements clipped, her mouth a thin line. Dad was usually a bit more generous; he would at least say good morning, and might even make some small talk if the caffeine had kicked in. But Kaitlyn—Kaitlyn was consistent in the morning.

  Kaitlyn’s thumping was getting closer—she would be at the cellar door soon.

  I couldn’t let her see me like this.

  My quarters didn’t offer much in the way of hiding places; the only option I had was the closet beneath the stairs, which was usually filled with Christmas ornaments and decorations, but now held only the empty boxes and bins they spent the other eleven months of the year packed away in. I ran to the closet just as I heard the cellar door swing open, and I went inside, hoping that the boxes I was forced to lean against didn’t rustle too much as I slowly drew the closet door closed.

  “Caring? Caring?” My sister’s high, sweet voice drifted down to my hiding place, and I prayed she wouldn’t come downstairs. I loved the way she said my name; I felt like every time she said it my heart broke and then healed stronger than before.

  “Caring?” I heard her step, cautious now, on the creaky stairs above my head. At least I didn’t have to worry about my breathing giving me away.

  I heard her come down the rest of the stairs. If she were to find me in the closet, face ruined, shirt ripped and buttonless, lying on boxes in the dark…I couldn’t imagine how her tiny growing mind would recover from the trauma. I held on to the doorknob and pulled back so her tiny hands wouldn’t be able to turn it.

  But it could be just as bad if she tried to turn it and couldn’t, because then she’d probably run upstairs and tell Dad, and then they’d both come down and…

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was even more frightened of my sister seeing me in my ruined state than I was of actually being in that ruined state.

  Kaitlyn. I could hear the soft scratch of her footy pajamas on the thin, padless carpeting of my bedroom.

  I had a very clear image of her just then, as though I could see right through the wall. Her long blond hair would be sleep-tangled and static-y on one side, her lips pouty with concentration. Her footy pajamas were white, with a pattern of round, Hello Kitty!-esque panda bears. Katy likes the ones that are upside down the most, because she says that when she’s wearing the pajamas they look right side up to her.

  I knew that Katy liked to go into my room when I wasn’t home, which, if my mother ever found out, would bring me to the point of eviction and would surely mean some form of minor punishment for Katy, who has been warned not to go down there. Mom probably sees it as the equivalent of letting Katy play in a crypt, one that has worse things dwelling within than spiders and the occasional bat or rat.

  But Katy braves whatever threats that have been offered, and I know this because there’s evidence of her visits. The blankets of my bed pulled back, the satin pillow on the floor, a drawer open. Once for three days running there was a new stuffed animal propped up on my pillows, and when I asked her about it, she said that she was worried I’d be lonely in the cellar by myself.

  “Caring’s still not home!” she called. I couldn’t make out the muffled reply that answered her, but it was probably a command for her to leave my room. My tomb.

  I heard her steps recede slightly, and then a hollow clunk, and I knew that she’d taken the seat that I’d just vacated in front of the vanity. I pressed my ear to the door and heard the rough whisk of my brush through her hair. A box shifted beneath me, and the brushing stopped.

  “Caring?”

  I pretended to have rigor mortis. I was totally motionless. A moment later there was another clunk followed by the sound of Kaitlyn’s feet scraping along the carpet, then thudding on the stairs. I was relieved she’d gone but also worried that I might have scared her.

  She is gone, I sighed. I still practice breathing and facial exercises. Shallow breaths, deep breaths, three stage breaths. Popeye makes fun of me when he catches me doing it—“What, you aren’t relaxed eno
ugh?” he’ll say. But the breathing does something for me. I don’t know what, exactly, but I think it’s good to fill my body with the things it used to need to operate, like air. Maybe I’m hoping my body will remember.

  After my nice long sigh I listened to my sister’s voice greeting my father. His response was a low rumble, the male version of Charlie Brown teacher-speak, but her voice was loud and sharp as she told him again that I wasn’t home. Sometime later I heard them leave the house, he on his way to work, she on her way to day care.

  I heard the door slam shut behind him and felt an enormous sense of relief. But I also felt something else, something I haven’t felt since I died.

  I felt tired.

  The feeling covered me like a shroud. It was as if whatever spark had kept me going all these post-death months was suddenly extinguished. I took one step, and it felt like I was dragging a train behind me. I sat down on my bed, my arms and legs heavy, wondering if the bullet that had smashed my face was still somewhere in my head, worming around. Maybe I was on the slow path to retermination, my number up a second time. I felt like maybe the bullets had gotten me and that it was time to lie down and let go.

  I lay back on the bed and rested my head on the square silk pillow.

  I closed my eyes.

  But I’m not ready this time, I thought.

  And then, nothing.

  * * *

  I fell asleep. I mean I really fell asleep, with dreams and everything! My psychology teacher told me we only dream in black and white. I’ve always disputed that idea. My first dream as a zombie was definitely in color, bright vibrant color. I was standing on a beach, looking out at the most sparkling blue water I’d ever seen. The sun was just beginning to rise, its rays dappling the waves with shining light. I stared at the water while the wind was blowing back my hair and pulling at my clothes, and I lifted my arms, half expecting to be scooped up and carried into the sky like a kite.

  I heard someone behind me whisper my name, and turned around. There, at the edge of a thick band of vibrant tropical foliage, came Mal, shouldering his way through some Jurassic-looking fronds. He was smiling. Mal was smiling!

  The moment his foot stepped onto the white sand beach, other zombies began to appear from the “forest primeval,” walking through the brush and onto the sand. Colette, Adam, Popeye—people I recognized from the Wall, the room in the Haunted House where we hung photos and notes from zombies all over America. There were also people I’d never seen before. Melissa, who I saw first as a shock of red hair and a white Greek comedy mask. She dropped the mask when our eyes met, and she was so beautiful it made me want to cry.

  Tommy was there, and Sylvia, and Kevin, and just about everyone I know. Tayshawn. Jacinta. They all kept walking toward the sea. Some of them touched me as they passed, lightly, on the hands or the cheek. When I turned around some had just begun to walk into the water; I remember Cooper Wilson breaking into a run, splashing around and flopping face-first into the light surf. It was so beautiful watching all of us together.

  Soon, everyone but me was in the water, and most of my friends were already under the water. I was the only one left on the beach, but I didn’t mind. I was having fun, like a new mother watching toddlers splash around a kiddie pool.

  And then they started coming out of the water. I think Tommy might have been the first.

  But he wasn’t a zombie anymore. No one that came out of the water was a zombie anymore. I remember seeing Popeye and noticing that all the awful things he’d done to his body had healed. I saw someone I didn’t recognize and then realized it was George—but George restored! He was actually really cute!

  Everyone walked by me and headed back into the forest or jungle or whatever it was until I was the only one on the beach, and I thought, well, here I go. I’m going into the water so I can be healed and whole and won’t that be wonderful, and I took one step and thought I could feel wet sand squishing through my toes, and when I looked up again there you were.

  The one I love.

  You were so beautiful and strong and clean-looking, the water glistening in your hair. The sight of you stopped me in my tracks.

  I haven’t laid eyes on you since I killed myself. I never got the chance to tell you the things I wanted to say. In what passes for “life,” I had no idea how you would react to me.

  But in my dream you were smiling. And you spread your arms.

  I looked at you and you started to speak and then I woke up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE BEEN happy—everything in the dream had been so nice, and just the idea that I could dream was nice—but instead I was very, very sad.

  Once again I didn’t get the chance to say all the things I needed to say. Once again I’d been so close to you, and now you were gone.

  A moment later, I realized that I was lying on my bed with my shirt ripped open and my black bra exposed. I got another blouse from my closet, and while buttoning it up I started sifting through the dream, looking for meaning. I’m not as witchy as the Weird Sisters, maybe, but I’ve always believed in signs and portents. And what else could the first zombie dream be but a cryptic message to be deciphered?

  I felt like crying. I’d have been crying if my stupid body worked the way it was supposed to.

  I tried to remember as much as I could about the dream, about the parts of the dream that weren’t you. I thought about the ocean water, how incredibly blue it was, as if it were being lit from below as well as above. How it healed everyone who had stepped into it, and how I didn’t get the chance, but of course as soon as I thought that, I thought about you and how you stepped out of that healing water, and I wasn’t sure but it might have been a you I’d never seen before—you as you might be today, three years older than you were when I died. But then I wondered how that could be; since then I haven’t seen you anywhere but in my mind’s eye.

  I happened to walk by my vanity at that moment and glanced at myself in the mirror. That’s a testament to the ability of dreams to transport you from all your worldly cares—I’d completely forgotten that my face was a shattered ruin.

  But that isn’t what I saw in the mirror. What I saw was my eyes, which had gone from diamond clear to a brilliant blue, like two sapphires filled with sunlight.

  “Like two sapphires filled with sunlight.”

  Do you remember when you said that to me?

  I remember everything about that day. We’d ridden our bicycles to the edge of the woods of a forest very much like the one where I spend most of my time now, the Oxoboxo. We took off our shoes and socks and followed the grassy path that led into the forest and the lake.

  We were holding hands, and walking, and talking, and everything we said seemed to be silly and important at the same time. I remember one of us saying—and it really is hard for me to remember who said what because we were so simpatico, so in tune with one another’s thoughts—something about how different the woods would be if the skunks were as plentiful as the squirrels, and there seemed to be great wisdom in this observation, even though we were both laughing.

  We’d been friends for so long—sort of like Adam and Phoebe, in a way—it was so natural to be together, whispering, laughing. And then hand in hand went to arm in arm, and then we were walking more slowly and you moved your arm around my waist. We were walking toward the lake—a different lake, a different state—and the sun had just begun to set, and the old cliché about a handful of coins being scattered across the surface of the water, glinting in the sun, came to mind. We’d stopped talking, but then we sort of laughed at our silence and sat down on a rock outcropping that overlooked the shore. We were serious but lighthearted, too. There was a sailboat tacking in the light wind that seemed determined to entwine our hair. Sitting beside you, I compared our late-summer tans—yours far deeper, the color of fresh honey—and you pressed your thigh against mine to prove it. School would begin in a few days, and I was scared. I didn’t want it to begin, but mostly I just didn�
��t want the summer to end.

  “Don’t worry,” you said. “We can do this. We’ll be fine.” And I believed you. You alone knew me. You were the only one who knew what I was like, about the blue fog of depression that could sometimes drop between me and the rest of the world. You couldn’t make the fog disappear—no one could—but you could always find me when I was lost within.

  We hadn’t looked at each other in some time, I realized. We’d looked at our dusty legs and our tans and bare feet, but not at each other. I turned toward you then, and you said my eyes were sapphires filled with sunlight, and then I knew. I could see it in your eyes. I could see it; it was more than just sunlight, and it was like I could see myself, reflected. I leaned forward, or maybe you did, and our lips brushed, and we pulled back, together, as though to make sure it was okay, and it was. And then I was pressing my lips to yours and our mouths opened, and I couldn’t imagine that what we had would ever go away.

  But it did. It went away as if it had never been there at all.

  We’d stayed at the lake until the sun had gone down, and I was terrified as we walked back through the forest in the darkness. We were only a mile or two in, and I clung to you the whole way, shrieking every time some unseen animal scampered through the underbrush. But we made it out to where our bicycles and our shoes lay, and we were unharmed, if not unchanged. We embraced once we were there, safe, and we kissed once again before we rode home.

  Somehow, the sunlight all drained away.

  We were together for almost the rest of the summer, but the closer we came to the start of school, the more scared I became. I wouldn’t let you come near me once school began, and when you called me at night I’d try to convince you that we’d made a mistake.

  I think—I know—that I was also trying to convince myself. Then one day at lunch I made it clear to you that you needed to give me space. And you were finally convinced.

  Before long, you were with someone new.