I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It Page 10

  “I think I can miss out on that part,” I say.

  “You’re a lot smarter than I was at your age, Alley,” says Mom, “but I’m still your mom, and I can still lecture you about maturity. I know how exciting it is to be in a new relationship, but don’t let it blind you to all the possibilities you have. Your whole real life is in front of you. You’re about to move to Seattle. There’s so much in front of you.”

  I don’t tell her that I’m strongly considering going to Drake instead of Seattle.

  “I envy you, Al,” says Dad. “There are so many different directions you can take your life. The world is about to just open up for you.”

  “Look,” I say, “it’s not like I’m going to rush out and die next week. I wouldn’t do it till I’m at least twenty-one. That’s almost three years from now!”

  “Just keep it all in mind, Alley,” says Mom. “Doug is great, but you can’t arrange your life around someone else at your age. It isn’t healthy. Maybe people did that sort of thing in high school back when my parents were kids, but no one with any sense does it now.”

  “Your mom took some crap for dating me, but she never asked me to convert to Judaism or anything,” says Dad.

  “But you did,” I say.

  “It’s not the same as converting to being dead, Alley,” he says.

  I thought my parents were so much cooler than this. I thought they understood. Just because my mom didn’t have any sense when she was a teenager doesn’t mean that I don’t! Maybe they just never met anyone who made them feel the way Doug makes me feel. If they had, they’d probably be telling me to become a zombie right then.

  In fact, as I lie in bed that night, I try to figure out whether it’s a good idea for me to put Operation Zombie on the fast track—if I’m going to do it, what’s the point in waiting around?

  The hardest part of the process is that you have to die first, of course. That’s a big deal. I make jokes about it a lot in my column (like I once wrote, “Track four of the album was so bad that I said, ‘If this doesn’t get better, I’ll kill myself.’ Track five was worse, so I went out and hanged myself. Luckily for you, dear readers, I got better, though the album never did”), but there’s really nothing funny about it. It’s serious business.

  I reread the poem “Resume,” by Dorothy Parker, which is about all the different methods of suicide and how they’re all more trouble than they’re worth. Then I think of all the ways I could do myself in.

  I wouldn’t want to shoot myself, because then I’d have to go through life as a zombie with a hole in my head. Slitting my wrists would be messy and painful—I hate the sight of my own blood. Getting a doctor to give me whatever they give people who want to get euthanized would probably cost more than I have. Gas would smell bad and might mess up my innards too much—you want your innards to be in the best shape possible when you go zombie, I think. The better they all work, the better off you’ll be. Hanging myself would only damage the spine, but then I’d have to walk around with my head dangling over my shoulder all the time, which would sort of suck.

  I decide that I might as well live.

  At least for now.

  10

  Thursday is the first day since I met Doug that I don’t get to see him. All through school, girls who wouldn’t have dreamed of talking to me before are trying to buddy up to me. Three different girls hint that they’d just love to be introduced to Will sometime, like I could arrange that sort of thing.

  We only get six minutes between classes, and it takes about five minutes to walk from one end of the building to the other, so unless you happen to have two classes right near each other, it’s hard to even find enough time between classes to duck into the bathroom to pee or send a text message or whatever. I can only send Doug one text all morning.

  And he never texts me back.

  I’m a wreck by lunchtime. What if dinner wore him out so badly last night that he overslept and didn’t take his fluid on time? What if the bit of matzoh he ate didn’t agree with him and really screwed him up? What if he’s already crumbled into dust? What if more of the brain-eating zombies rose up out of the graves and killed him?

  I sit down at the lunch table feeling like a nervous wreck, and everyone notices.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Trinity.

  “Doug hasn’t texted me all day,” I say.

  “He isn’t in school, is he?”

  “No,” I say. “He quit after he died. They have one of those zero-tolerance policy things at Valley. Embalming fluid counts as a drug.”

  “Maybe he’s still sleeping, then,” says Sadie. “I’d sleep in if I were dead.”

  “He can’t,” I say. “He has to get up every four hours and drink a shot of fluid.”

  “Probably again every two hours to pee it back out,” says Trinity.

  Peter, of course, is scribbling all this down. I don’t think it’s very funny, though.

  I’m halfway through the meal when Will wanders over to the table. Marie looks like she’s about to melt.

  “Good afternoon,” he says.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he says. “I am aware that you are considering life as a zombie.”

  “What’s it to you?” I ask. “And how did you know?”

  “Mrs. Smollet has asked me to inform you that the council has granted permission for you to become a vampire instead,” he says. “It is far better than life as a zombie. I will handle the conversion.”

  “I’ll do it if Alley won’t!” says Marie. Will ignores her.

  “Mrs. Smollet?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. “You are aware of her issues with mixed relationships. Friedrich and Michelle had her very much in fits, until Michelle signed a letter of intent to become a vampire when she is eighteen. You are eighteen already. She suggests you convert without delay.”

  “Wow,” says Peter, “when your guidance counselor tells you to die, you really have problems.”

  “She is suggesting you would enjoy more to be a vampire than a zombie, if you must be a post-human.”

  “And that I should date you, right? Instead of Doug?”

  This may be the worst attempt at hitting on me ever. Offering to kill me so I can be with him? Just when I thought I’d seen it all. I mean, even when some douche bag comes up with a lousy line to use on me, I have to at least think there’s still hope for him—most guys who hit on me are teenagers. Some of them have barely hit on a girl before, and they don’t know what they’re doing. They might get better someday. But Will has had decades to practice.

  “You can never be with Doug,” says Will. “Not in the physical sense. Zombies can’t do such things.”

  I hate to admit it, but Will’s kind of got a point—if I’m going to convert to post-humanism for Doug, maybe it would be better for me to be a vampire. As annoying as vampires are, it would be kind of cool to be able to lift fifty times my own weight, run two hundred miles per hour and never age. And I wouldn’t have to drink embalming fluid all the time, just that vegetable compound now and then. Maybe it would even be better for Doug to be with someone super strong.

  Then again, I’m not sure what I’d have to let Will do to me to make me a vampire, and something tells me it isn’t letting him write me a prescription for protein supplements.

  And if Doug isn’t going to text me back, obviously, I’m not going to convert for him at all!

  After school, I swing by the nurse’s office. I’ve almost never been there before, honestly. If I’m ever sick, I leave out the side door and get Trinity to say I’m off on newspaper business rather than going through the whole song and dance they want at the office. They only things they can diagnose there are “probable strep throat” and “possible pregnancy.” If you don’t have either of those, they usually send you back to class.

  “Hello,” says the nurse. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for some information,” I say, eyeing the entire wa
ll of pamphlets behind her desk.

  She smiles and looks me over.

  “Woman trouble?” she asks. I see her reaching for a red pamphlet.

  “It’s kind of personal,” I say. “Can I just look over the pamphlets myself?”

  “Go ahead,” she says. “But I’ve seen everything. Drugs, gangs, whatever. You can’t shock me. There are some pretty messed-up girls in this little town!”

  “I’ll bet,” I say as I wander behind her desk. I glance around at the brightly colored pamphlets. There’s one for every kind of health and hygiene issue imaginable. They’re not even in order, really. “Straight Talk About You-Know-What” sits next to “Who Has the Power—You or Drugs?” Next to that are “Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies” and “Dad, I’ve Got a Problem.” I can’t help starting to think about writing an article about this crap, even though I probably won’t have time before I graduate.

  “If you’re having trouble with bulimia,” she says, “those are all down on the lower left.”

  I shake my head a bit.

  The nurse moves in closer to me and starts to whisper. “If you’re having the problem, the abortion ones are in my desk, with the ones that have good information about condoms. Don’t bother with the ones on the shelves for that stuff.”

  “I’m okay,” I say, a bit annoyed.

  Then I see the one I’m looking for: “Vampires, Zombies, and You: Questions and Answers About Post-Humans for Teens.”

  The cover shows a picture of a girl bent over a desk, resting one arm under her chin and one against her face. I think she’s the same girl on the “Highs and Lows: Questions and Answers About Drugs” pamphlet. It’s an old joke, but this poor girl must have more issues than Cosmo. On the drug one, she has a thought balloon saying “Is there no hope?” On the post-humans one, the thought balloon says “Should I convert?”

  I take it and run out before the nurse can ask me if it hurts when I pee or if I’ve been puking in the morning.

  Finally, at four, as I’m driving home, I get a text back from Doug. It’s four words. “Slept. Band practice next.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief, but I’m a little pissed. A whole day of silence, then just four words? I call his phone, but he doesn’t answer. A minute later I get another text: “Need voice for band practice.”

  I guess that makes sense. I mean, band practice must be exhausting for him. Still, I wish he had typed a bit more. And an apology for not texting sooner might have been nice.

  After dinner, but before the meeting, I look at the pamphlet I picked up in the nurse’s office:

  Ever since vampires and werewolves became open members of society, there have been countless articles written about teenagers—especially girls—attempting to become post-humans themselves.

  While the surgeon general has repeatedly warned against dying for any reason, and it is not legal for anyone under eighteen to be made into a post-human, an unknown number of teenagers have already “converted.” Before making this decision, teenagers should know all the facts.

  Becoming a vampire or zombie isn’t really dying, it’s just “converting,” right? My friend told me that everyone else is suicidal, since they die, and post-humans don’t.

  You do have to die to become a post-human. It’s the most important part of the process. In fact, many people don’t survive the process of becoming a post-human (well, technically, none of them do). It’s a very dangerous, difficult procedure, even for experienced vampires. While the Council of Elders has kept the exact process for turning someone into a vampire a secret, they have said that it’s not as simple as being bitten or having someone say a few words over your corpse. Some estimate that half of all who undergo it never wake up.

  But you’re still “alive,” so it’s not really suicide, is it?

  Of course it is. It’s also important to note that most new post-humans undergo massive changes in personality. Your post-human self might look like you did as a human, but odds are pretty good that you’ll change so much emotionally that you’ll think of yourself as an entirely new being (this is especially true in teenage post-humans). It is important for people who want to become a post-human to please a boy friend or girlfriend to consider this.

  Will he or she still love the new you? Will the new you still love him or her?

  My boyfriend and I are both humans. If we convert to post-humanism, that’s a great form of birth control, right?

  Uh, no. While zombies usually cannot have sex or reproduce, the idea that werewolves and vampires can’t reproduce is a common myth. They can, in fact, have sex (at least with each other—vampire/human sex can result in death, or at least tremendous pain).

  And dying is far from being a good form of birth control. There is no form of birth control known to be effective for sexually active vampires or werewolves.

  Exactly! My boyfriend/girlfriend and I totally want kids. If we were both post-humans, the babies would be, like, superbabies, right?

  Nope. Post-humans’ offspring are born as regular humans, and can’t be “converted” until they grow up. If they choose not to convert, the Council of Elders makes their lives very difficult, and they are often not “accepted” by the post-human community. Is this the kind of choice you want your child to face as an adult?

  Becoming a zombie is a safe, painless process, isn’t it? It’s just a regular operation, like having your tonsils out. Risk-free!

  No. How safe can any process be if one of the most important parts is dying? No one knows how many humans have “converted” since post-humans went public, but hundreds have died—and stayed dead—in the attempt.

  While “rogue” doctors and shamans are still known to be performing the zombie operation, many of them turn out to be frauds. Many people have probably already died with a belief that they would be made into zombies, but are still in the ground after failed operations. Others died without telling their parents they planned to become zombies, and were cremated. Oops!

  But everyone wants to live forever, right?

  First of all, even post-humans probably won’t live forever. In fact, while zombies could, in theory, be kept alive indefinitely, most stop taking fluid and crumble sooner or later (usually sooner). And consider this: in four billion or so years, the sun will expand enough that it will probably swallow up the earth. Even if this doesn’t kill the vampires, what will happen to them? Do you want to spend eternity just floating around in space? Four billion years isn’t even close to being a fraction of eternity (and just try finding the vegetable compound on Mars!).

  Becoming a post-human will not solve all your problems—it will only open up a whole galaxy of new ones. Are these problems worth it to you?

  At first I want to throw the thing across the room. It’s probably no more accurate than the pamphlets Mrs. Smollet gives us that say half of all condoms fail, right? I mean, of course four billion years is a fraction of eternity. It’s a tiny, tiny fraction, so small it would be impossible to calculate … or even really imagine calculating … but still!

  Then again, there are some things to consider. Doug has said he was pretty different before he became a zombie. What if I do change? Will Doug still want to be with a zombie version of me? What if all the old Ice Queen Alley personality traits take over and there’s nothing left of the girl he knows, just a zombie girl who makes fun of everything he does with witty one-liners? He’ll probably get sick of me fast if that happens.

  And what if the person he finds to turn me into a zombie screws up, and I just end up dead, or one of those brain-eating idiot zombies?

  Maybe becoming a vampire is the way to go. I wonder if they can even turn zombies into vampires? If we were both vampires, we could be together forever. I wouldn’t want to float through space craving blood or vegetables forever, though.

  Maybe I could become a zombie, and we’d just live for several decades, up to the normal sort of life span a person should have, and then crumble when we were ready?

  When I try to
do more research, I find out that the Internet is full of message boards and groups for people (mostly my age, and mostly girls, except for a handful of boys who are always going on about “power”) who want to convert, though I can’t find a single account from someone who’s actually done it, or even from someone who’s exactly sure how the process works.

  The girls on the boards have a lot of reasons for wanting to convert. Some of them are afraid of dying, so they want immortality, but most are doing it for a post-human boyfriend (or to attract one).

  For a few minutes, I scroll through the boards, reading posts by girls with stories about like mine, and start to feel a little better. It’s encouraging to know that I’m not alone.

  But then I realize something: these girls on the message boards are all really, really stupid. Even more so than people on most other message boards, which, frankly, is saying something. Message boards were full of trolls and other idiots even before the vampire thing fueled the fires of every stupid conspiracy theory on the planet.

  The first clue that they aren’t very bright is that not one of them can spell worth a damn. None of them have any idea of the difference between “your” and “you’re,” and half of them say “should of” instead of “should’ve.” Ugh.

  Then my “old Alley” mentality starts to take hold of my brain and I begin to realize how irrational, naïve and just plain annoying most of them are. The ones with vampire boyfriends are the worst. This one girl is going on about how he follows her everywhere, sneaks into her room to check on her at night and talks about how he could kill everyone in town if it would make her love him more, and how he can’t wait to convert her when she’s eighteen. She thinks it’s really flattering. I think the guy is a stalker and the girl is sick.