October Schwartz, Zombie Tramp

October Schwartz is not dead.

Now, there are plenty of dead folks in this book (you read the title before starting the book, right?), it’s just that October Schwartz does not happen to be one of them. That said, it was her first day at Sticksville Central High School, and she sort of wished she were dead.

October had moved to Sticksville only a month earlier, and she didn’t know anyone yet, unless you counted her dad and maybe the Korean lady who sold her gum at the convenience store. She’d spent the month of August reading in the cemetery behind their house and working on writing her own book. So her first day of high school was even more nerve-wracking than it was for most of the students at Sticksville Central. The way she figured it, everybody was going to hate her. They certainly had in her old town. Why should this one be any different?

There were plenty of reasons for the average high school student to hate her: she wasn’t chubby, but she wasn’t not chubby, which, to those naturally inclined to be unpleasant people, meant she was fat. Also, she wore more black eyeliner than most — barring only silent film actresses, really. Add to that the natural black hair she’d inherited from her mom and her affinity for black clothing, and she was like a walking teen vampire joke waiting to happen.

Plus, she was a little kid. Due to the advanced state of middle school in her former town, a futuristic utopia of almost 40,000 citizens — most of them employed by the town’s snowmobile factory — she’d been allowed to skip grade eight altogether in Sticksville (only three hours away geographically), straight into the teenage Thunderdome of high school before she even reached her teens. She was twelve and headed into grade nine, where most of her classmates were well on their way to fourteen if they weren’t there already. This part was to remain a secret from everyone, if she had her way. But even if her classmates didn’t know, October was sure they could smell the tween on her — the stench of Sour Keys and Saturday morning cartoons.

As October pulled on a black T-shirt, she began to imagine burgeoning extracurricular clubs founded on the members’ communal hatred of October Schwartz, its members wearing T-shirts emblazoned with hilarious anti-October slogans.

October’s dad — Mr. Schwartz to you — taught grade eleven and grade twelve biology, as well as auto repair at Sticksville Central, so it was sort of his first day, too. But somehow, October doubted her dad was anxious about what people would think of his clothes and hair.

She left for school early that morning, because she was cautious about that sort of thing. About other sorts of things, she wasn’t very cautious at all, as you’ll see. She shouted goodbye to her dad, who was still busy shaving in the washroom. He didn’t respond, but he was kind of concentrating, blaring music by Fleetwood Mac or some other band from the 1970s.

She walked into the backyard and out to Riverside Drive using the cemetery that bordered their backyard as a shortcut. Mr. Schwartz had been uncertain at first about purchasing a house so close to the town’s lowly cemetery. Not that he believed in ghosts, but there was something unseemly about it to him. However, the price was good and he wanted to find a home before the school year started, so he dismissed his uncertainties. October liked it. She smiled crookedly as she passed through the wide expanse of decaying stone and forgotten names on her way to the first day of the rest of her life.

The air was crisp and a bit cold for early September, like a Granny Smith apple left in the freezer by accident. October lived only about twenty minutes from Sticksville Central, so it wasn’t long before she pushed her way through the double doors of the school’s entrance. She opened her bag and unfolded her schedule.

Evidently, October wasn’t the only student concerned with arriving early. A veritable gaggle of other kids could already be seen congregating, conversing, and giggling inside the main corridor of the school.

One of these students — a tall one with auburn hair and a belt the width of a small diving board, who was standing with some friends beside the vending machines outside the cafeteria (spoiler alert: she’s a witch) — caught sight of October Schwartz and pursued her like a fashionable, but very silent homing missile. October, who was attempting to avoid contact with anyone and everyone, hurried past her. But she wasn’t quick enough to avoid the belt enthusiast’s loud slur:

“Zombie Tramp!”

Mortified, October made a sensible, strategic retreat to the girls’ washroom, which was thankfully empty. She gripped a porcelain sink and stared dolefully at herself in the mirror. Two minutes into high school and things were off to a horrible start. But, above all else, October was determined not to cry at high school. Ever. She was still twelve, but she wasn’t a baby.

She tried to fill her mind with thoughts different from her new “Zombie Tramp” status: her birthday, her dad, and her new classes. What did Zombie Tramp even mean? Why Tramp? Why not Zombie Floozy? Yet, because she was staring into a mirror, her mind kept drifting back to her big, stupid face.

Her dad often told her she was “darn cute,” because he was related to her, but October never believed him. Her dad was no prize himself; how would he know what cute was? October did a quick self-analysis in the mirror. She might have overdone it with the eyeliner today, and maybe she should have taken more effort with her hair. Around her neck, she wore a gift left behind by her mom, a silver ankh necklace. It was probably the eyeliner and all the black that was encouraging the Zombie Tramp comparison.

A short girl with a ponytail entered the washroom and October turned on the taps, pretending she was washing her hands, then hastily exited, wiping her hands on her black jeans. French class would start soon, and October wasn’t sure where her classroom was yet. Or her locker.

When October found her locker, at the top of the arts corridor, she also found another bit of unpleasantness. That very same tall, trendily dressed girl, the one who played so fast and loose with the term Zombie Tramp, was standing right beside her locker. The girl faced the other direction, chatting with a group of similarly attired compatriots who had formed a semicircle that blocked most of the hallway.

“Did you see what she was wearing?” the pointy-faced ringleader asked. Rhetorically, it would appear. “Uh, hello, Janet. Last year called. They want their boots back.”

“And their hair! Haw!” added a little wisp of a girl with a very large laugh. Other girls chimed in; a girl with a goose neck and blonde hair, and a shorter girl with a shirt that read, “So many boys, so little time!”

As the symposium continued, October quietly opened her locker, slid her knapsack inside, and extracted her binder and pencil case, hoping none of the girls would notice her. She felt a little like she was playing Operation, trying to remove the patient’s bread basket without touching the metal edges. Tragically, she was never any good at that game.

“Hey! Zombie Tramp is back!”

Oh, piss right off, October thought.

“You’re new in town, right?” her tormentor with the prodigious belt asked, whipping around to face her. October stood, silent as a tomb — well, not some of the tombs encountered later in this book, but as silent as tombs usually are.

“Well, you can go back to wherever you came from. We’ve already got a couple of goth skeezebags here. Don’t require any more . . . ’specially not the extra-large variety.”

Her minions stared at October, waiting for her to spontaneously combust from the insult.

“That means you’re fat,” whispered the girl who apparently fretted about the ratio of time to boys.

“Ashlie Salmons,” said an authoritative voice behind October. “Don’t you have some class to be at?”

When October turned to identify the speaker, she saw an older man with glasses and thinning white hair standing in the hallway. His arms were folded across his pudgy torso, strangulating his tie. October guessed he was a teacher at the school; otherwise, he was, like, the worst student ever. He frowned at Ashlie Salmons (who, dear readers, is that auburn-haired super-creep we all hate now). The older man arched a bushy, white eyebrow.

“Ms. Salmons, class is about to start. Wouldn’t it be great to begin the school year by arriving on time?” A smirk split the older man’s face.

Ashlie and her friends scattered like cockroaches in a lit room. Well, perhaps not that quickly. They scattered like cockroaches with some sense of decorum.

“Thank you . . . uh, sir,” October stammered.

The older man’s smirk made a subtle transition into a smile. “Not a problem, young lady,” he said. “You look new. Ashlie Salmons began attending Sticksville Central last year, and certainly made an impression on her classmates. But I’ve figured out how she operates. She can smell fear.” He chuckled a bit as he sniffed the air like a dog, then turned on this heel. He continued to speak to October as he walked away. “Don’t worry too much. Their bark is worse than their bite . . . Actually, I think their bark is their bite. Either way, have a good first day.”

He left October stunned outside her open locker. It certainly didn’t seem like a teacher should talk that way about other students. But maybe she was naive about what high school teachers were like. She had French class in two minutes, so she’d soon find out.

The remainder of October’s morning wasn’t nearly as eventful as her pre-class locker encounter. French class wasn’t particularly scary or dread-inducing. It was, to the contrary, October’s best subject. She was, how you say, un connoisseur de la français.

I said it was her best subject, not mine.

She was surprised to see the same older man who saved her from certain doom at the hands of Ashlie Salmons sitting at the front of the class. He was her French teacher, and his name was Mr. O’Shea. He seemed pretty nice, not at all the sort of person who would make students scatter in the hallway. But maybe all teachers had that effect. At the end of class, Mr. O’Shea assigned them a paragraph to write about themselves (en français, naturellement), due Thursday.

Second period math with Mr. Santuzzi, however, wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Santuzzi was a tall, muscular man who wore a tight powder-blue suit and had a dark, handlebar moustache. He explained his lessons like he was barking orders to a deaf battalion of army recruits.

“A lot of you wonder why you have to learn math,” Mr. Santuzzi boomed. “You say, I know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide. I’ve got a calculator. That’s all I need to get by. Why do I need to learn about quadratic equations and conical sections? Put your hand down, I’m not taking questions! There’s a very simple answer to that stupid question: You need to study math because I will fail you if you don’t.”

Then Santuzzi launched straight into his first lesson, reviewing order of operations. OOPS, for all you math fanatics. October (and the rest of the class) were assigned one hundred exercises for homework on the very first day. What is with that? October could read the other students’ minds through watching their eyes; they were already inventing a stockpile of horrible nicknames for Santuzzi.

Mr. Santuzzi’s class was followed by a multigrade assembly for all the Sticksville Central students, held in the gymnasium. The principal, Mr. Hamilton, walked up to the solitary microphone in the centre of the basketball court and welcomed the ninth graders, then welcomed back the returning students. He was new to Sticksville Central High School himself, having recently relocated from a high school in Toronto, where he was vice-principal. In his speech, Mr. Hamilton made it clear he was incredibly proud to be principal at one of the best schools in southern Ontario. Given her experiences so far, October figured his old school must have been a juvenile detention centre if he thought Sticksville was so swift.

High school, he told the assembled masses, sets the tone for the rest of your lives. What sort of people would they grow up to be? Gesticulating wildly, he encouraged students to get involved in school, sign up for extracurricular activities, and meet new people. October took it under advisement, but her mind wandered from the principal’s first day oration. In just a few days, it would be her birthday, and her dad was legally obligated to treat her like gold. Gold that required cake and presents.

She wondered how his first day of school was progressing. Had he been harassed by any mean, trendy girls?

Picking a lunch table in a high school cafeteria is a lot like diving into a cage of bloodthirsty ocelots while smeared in bacon grease. It’s terrifying, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you’ll die, and no matter the outcome, you’re getting bacon grease on you. This is particularly true when you’re the new student at a high school. Doesn’t help if you’re at least a year younger than everyone, too.

October slunk into the school’s cafeteria, brown lunch bag in hand, and surveyed the two long rows of folding tables. She tried to imagine where it might be safe to sit. She spotted Ashlie Salmons, sitting with her squad of super vixens: Big-Laugh-Little-Girl, Goose Neck, Novelty T-shirt. Ashlie glanced at October but said nothing. Maybe she feared there were teachers lurking in the lunchroom. Everyone seemed to already have friends and mealtime companions, and October hadn’t spoken to anyone but Mr. O’Shea all day. She cautiously selected the empty end of the table closest to her right, seemingly occupied exclusively by fat kids, Dungeon-Masters-in-training, and asthmatics, and opened her lunch bag.

“Zombie Tramp!”

October’s eyes widened in fear. The voice wasn’t Ashlie Salmons’s. It was a boy’s voice. The deadly nickname was spreading around the school faster than mono. Grade nine was going to be misery from day one.

She swung around to see who had called her that vile (but by now, quite familiar) name, fully expecting to receive a piping hot hash brown to the face. She was surprised to see a gawky, tall boy wearing a bowling shirt and pinstriped pants, entering the cafeteria. He said it again, and October realized he wasn’t talking to her, but to a short Asian girl dressed all in black, standing between the two aisles of lunch tables — and she was smiling! The two of them had a good laugh about how trampy a zombie the girl was.

Before long, the two realized a chubby goth girl (October) was staring at them. They moseyed right over to her, plunked down on the lunch bench across from her and, seemingly, began training for the World Championship Belt for Poor Posture.

“Is there a problem?” the other Zombie Tramp asked. She suddenly seemed a lot more threatening than the boy.

“Um, I don’t think so?” October guessed, trying to seem breezy.

“Then why were you staring at us?”

“It’s — well, just — it’s a funny story, sort of . . .” October said. Very breezy. “A girl called me Zombie Tramp this morning. I, uh, thought you were making fun of me.”

“Yeah?” the tall boy said. “Was it that girl over there?”

“Ashlie Salmons, yeah.”

“Yeah, my cousin says she’s a nightmare,” said the Asian girl. “Her mom is like the Crown attorney or high judge of Sticksville or something. But Ashlie got left back . . . she’s doing a victory lap for grade nine, which is totally sad. I got the Zombie Tramp treatment this morning, too. Well, I’d rather be a Zombie Tramp than a RICH, SNOTTY, HIPSTER Tramp!”

Ashlie Salmons glowered from several tables up.

“So, I guess we should be friends now,” the girl said. “You know, out of our mutual hatred. My name’s Yumi Takeshi. This is Stacey Mac-somebody.”

“Uh,” the tall boy corrected.

“He’s got a girl’s name. I think his parents hate him,” Yumi said.

So the two Zombie Tramps and the boy with a girl’s name sat and ate lunch together.

The afternoon started with music class with Mrs. Tischmann. October played trombone relatively well. She had initially chosen the instrument in grade seven because it was so very loud, and she stuck with it. Since it was the first day, Mrs. Tischmann eased them into class, asking them how music made them feel, emotionally speaking. Mrs. Tischmann was a wide-eyed woman in a sweater that had double-crossed the wrong bedazzler. Her curly blonde hair was beginning to turn grey and she wielded her conductor’s baton like a natural extension of her body. October thought she was kind of loopy, but a lot nicer than Mr. Santuzzi.

The Stacey kid was in her music class. He played percussion. Or, at least, hit things with sticks fairly rhythmically. Ashlie Salmons was in Mrs. Tischmann’s music class as well, but she played clarinet and sat in the front row, so October barely even had to see her face.

Mr. Page taught Canadian History, which promised to be a more exciting class than the words “Canadian” and “History” might indicate. Mr. Page was kind of funny, in the way that one’s dad is funny (which is to say, not very). During the first class, he told several inexcusable jokes, but was so enthusiastic about them they were almost amusing. Almost.

The things Mr. Page spoke about that October actually heard sounded pretty interesting — Plains of Abraham, Louis Riel, Canadian railway system — but the end of the school day was fast approaching, and with it her attention span was rapidly diminishing. She planned to spend most of the afternoon and evening working on the fabulous horror novel she’d been writing in her spare time over the summer. Hopefully, Mr. Page wouldn’t add any homework to what Mr. Santuzzi and O’Shea had already assigned.

The horror novel was a new obsession. Since moving to Sticksville in August, October had been bored out of her skull. Mr. Schwartz suggested she go outside and find some neighbourhood kids, but there was no way October was doing something like that. Who did her dad think she was, one of the Little Rascals?

“At least go outside, pumpkin. It’s a beautiful day.” Mr. Schwartz said frequently throughout August.

Eventually, October went outside and into the Sticksville Cemetery. She liked walking around the grounds and reading the inscriptions on the headstones. Some of the people had been buried over a century ago. She could barely decipher some of the letters cut into the stone. During one of her cemetery sojourns, October was inspired, surrounded by so many skeletons under the ground, to write a book. A scary book. Writing a book would certainly stave off boredom, she thought.

How wrong she was. Reading a book might stave off boredom, but writing one, as October discovered, is the very definition of boredom. In a little under a month, October had only written three pages, yet had procrastinated countless times through a series of increasingly creative methods.

She had a title, Two Knives, One Thousand Demons, and a general concept: something about a really cool chick defending a small town from hell’s hordes of demon soldiers with only two knives. And there would be at least eleven decapitations. And no romantic subplot. But other than that, she hadn’t progressed very far.

Nevertheless, now that the school year had started, October was looking forward to working on the book again. Perhaps she needed the added pressure and constant stimulus of school work to get her imagination flowing. Despite how difficult and boring she found the writing, she never failed to attempt working on it daily. For all the good it did.

Once home, October ran to her room to retrieve a couple Stephen King novels (a continual source of inspiration), then back down the stairs she rumbled. As she slid open the glass door to the backyard, her dad walked in the front door.

“Hi, Dad,” October said. “How was school?”

“Hello, October.” Mr. Schwartz looked bedraggled. “I didn’t hear you leave this morning. Busy day, busy day. Good kids, though. How about you? Meet any friends?”

“It’s possible,” said October cryptically.

Mr. Schwartz took off his shoes and jacket.“October, I don’t feel up to making dinner tonight. How would you feel if I ordered some Chinese?”

“Sounds great, Dad. I’m going to go outside and write, okay?”

“Okay, pumpkin. Just be ready for dinner at 6:30,” said Mr. Schwartz, and he lay himself down on the living room couch.

October passed through the backyard into Sticksville Cemetery. She sat down, propped her back against a crumbling old tombstone, and tried — really tried — to write. As valiant as her efforts were, she couldn’t help thinking about other things. October blamed her upcoming birthday for her writer’s block.

In just eleven days, October would turn thirteen. Not only was that date her thirteenth anniversary of life on earth — which is totally important, if you think about bat mitzvahs and that kind of thing — it would also mark ten years to the day when October’s mom split, leaving little more behind than the silver necklace October wore.

October was just three years old when her mom ran out, and her dad would never discuss what happened. It made him incredibly sad. And Mr. Schwartz’s sad could be pretty sad. There was still one photo of Mrs. Schwartz in the house, on the nightstand in her dad’s bedroom. October thought he must have destroyed all of the others. She wasn’t sure why he kept that one in particular, but more importantly, she didn’t really understand why her mom left in the first place.

She never knew her mom; she couldn’t begin to imagine what she was thinking, what her motives were. Her dad rebuffed October’s inquisitions every year on her birthday: Why did Mom leave? Where did she go? Maybe he’d finally think she was old enough to know the whole story on her thirteenth birthday. She’d be a teenager, after all. In the Jewish tradition, she’d be a full-blown woman.

That date was only a few sleeps away, so you can imagine it would be difficult for October to concentrate on writing. All kinds of troubling thoughts were spinning through her head.

So instead of writing, she leafed through the current Stephen King novel she was reading. October had read them all by this point in her life, and was now revisiting some of her old favourites. Pet Sematary had long been a treasured possession, with its terrifying cat illustration on the worn paperback cover. And she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read Pet Sematary in an actual sematary . . . or cemetery. (For the same reason, I only read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe while locked in a dresser. True story.) And allegedly, the book was so horrifying that Mr. Stephen King himself was unwilling to finish writing it for years. If that’s not a scary book, I’m not sure what is.

A minute later, inspired by Mr. King’s words, October’s pen started spilling words on the page like it was leaking — and they were good sentences, too. One important plot point from this flood of words was how the demon hordes actually wound up on earth. October ripped off a bit from Pet Sematary and had a heartbroken father attempt to raise his child from the dead in an extremely misguided instance of fatherly love.

The ritual October had written made her especially proud. After finishing it, she read the words aloud, just because they were so killer.

“Billy’s father climbed to the top of the hill, gazing down on the lonely graveyard below. Blood seeped from the self-inflicted wounds in his palms onto the dry grass and he spoke the forbidden words:

As Nature turns twisted and dark,

To this dread graveyard I donate my spark.

As the tears begin to blind mine eyes,

The innocent young and the dead shall rise.”

Many pages later, the sky started to get dark, and October realized her dad would be expecting her home for Chinese takeout shortly. She stood up and examined the tombstone she rested her back against. Vegetation and moss had eaten their way through crevices in the marker. The stone was so old and weathered it was hard to read anything on its surface. “Cyril Cooper” was buried below, according to the headstone. October had to stare at the numbers for half a minute before the dates, 1766 – 1779, became apparent. Cyril Cooper had lived well over two centuries ago. And died at age thirteen.

FROM THE DIARY OF HENRI LAFLEUR - DEFENSE D’ENTRER!

November 14, 1968

(The following diary entry has been translated from the French, for your reading enjoyment.)

Dear Diary,

Hallo, it is me, Henri. I suppose you already know this.

A thousand apologies; I have not written in so long. Ever since I left for school, I have found it very difficult to keep a record of my days. But much has happened since I came to Montreal.

The big city of Montreal is much different from my little town of Baton Nuit. Mother and Father warned me things would be much different in the city. They said it would be difficult to adjust. The English influence is widespread here. Almost as many people speak it as French. And even the French spoken here is hard to understand. It’s an unusual stew of both English and French. Nothing like how people speak in Baton Nuit. I feared at first I must have appeared like a country bumpkin here, but I wanted to study literature and the University of Quebec at Montreal is the place to do it.

I moved into the first bachelor’s apartment I could afford. I didn’t know what the neighbourhoods were like in Montreal. How was I to know how English Westmount was? And wealthy? My apartment certainly doesn’t look like any mansion.

My landlady upstairs comes to my door to pester me daily about rent, even days after I’ve written her a cheque. Nice cars, cars I could never afford — Bentleys and Jaguars — prowl through the streets. I see them on my way to wash dishes.

Yes, I have a job. I wash dishes at a restaurant owned by a troll named Bernard. He possesses no good qualities that I can observe. His nails are always clean, perhaps. But he did introduce me to The Figaro, a wonderful movie theatre at Mount Royal and Papineau that shows all the new American films with French subtitles.

My first month here, I drifted through the old city like a shabbily dressed ghost. I coasted from home to class, from class to work, from work to home. I would sit in my depressing little apartment like a shadow in a darkened room. No one wants to be friends with the backwoods hick. So the movies became my only friend.

As you know, I don’t like many English things except the movies. All my favourite movies have been in English. Mother and Father used to drive us a half hour into town so we could sit in that small theatre for the most recent Hollywood pictures. Now, I could go to the movies every night, if I wished. The Figaro is just a few blocks away. Bullitt, Charly, The Odd Couple, Ice Station Zebra, Barbarella . . . Even better are the horror movies — Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Living Dead. I have seen the latter one at least four times.

For the first month or so, the movies were my only happy moments. But that sad and lonely business all changed when I had a chance meeting with Jean-Paul.

Jean-Paul is everything I am not, but everything I try to be: charming, good-looking, popular with the girls. He is already losing his hair, but still he is attractive with women. His smile, or his unkempt hair — something about him is like catnip to them. He changes girlfriends more often than I change pants.

I helped him out with an essay in our French Romantic Literature class — real easy stuff. I was worried he’d take advantage of me and my offer, but ever since that essay, Jean-Paul has me attached to his hip. I’ve been to five parties with Jean-Paul acting as my guide. It’s like I’m living the life of a rock ’n’ roll musician, in some way. I finally feel at home with Montreal.

Some of Jean-Paul’s friends are on the odd side. They’ve been swept up in some of the more radical student movements. A few are pretty dedicated to Quebec separating from the rest of Canada. Just the other day, a bomb went off at the chamber of commerce, and that separatist FLQ group was claiming responsibility. Jean-Paul and his other friends were discussing the news at a St. Laurent bar, grinning like cats that had eaten English canaries. It made me uneasy.

There was a girl at the last party Jean-Paul took me to: Celeste Boulanger. She was a giantess, and a gorgeous one at that. Six feet tall, with dark brown hair to her shoulders, and tortoiseshell glasses. I have decided I will ask Jean-Paul about her next time I see him. See if she’s single, if she likes country bumpkins. I may be falling in love.