13 Zombie Apocalypse

When we got to the entrance, I stepped ahead of Parker and her two friends — Naomi and Shoana — to open the door for them. It was also my escape from mall security. I was finally outside the Rideau Centre again. I unzipped my jacket a little and lifted the ball cap from my eyes.

I took a deep breath of the cooler night air. Parker’s invitation to do something fun — and my little disappearing act from security — made me feel good. Maybe I was finally starting to figure out this new city. The shoplifting and my fight with Jayden were a little further behind me.

“Seriously, what made you decide to jump from the escalator there?” Parker asked me.

“I am still trying to figure out when you do this stuff. You know, parkour,” I said. “Like, can you get a job doing it?”

They laughed as we crossed the street into the ByWard Market. Shoana jabbed Naomi with her elbow and whispered something in her ear, all the while staring at me. They both giggled.

“You could be a stuntman,” Naomi said.

“And you will be able to save your girlfriend from the zombie apocalypse,” Shoana said.

Parker rolled her eyes at her friends. “Okay, that’s enough,” she said. “What you should do, Tricky, is those obstacle course races on TV. You could win a million dollars.”

I liked the idea of a million dollars. And being in the movies would be awesome. But zombies only made me think of one thing.

“Well, all of those sound good,” I said. “But what sounds better right now is food.”

We gorged ourselves on hot dogs and poutine. I dug my fork into the French fries. The cheese was so melty under the bubbling gravy, it felt like I could pull it forever from the box and it would never break. The hot dog came rolled in pastry. I covered mine in mustard and relish.

Parker and I shared a BeaverTail — the long, flat donut was covered with chocolate sauce and peanut butter candies. We ripped it in half. Her hand darted out and scooped up all the candy that fell off the top.

“Mmm, you’re too slow,” she said as she crunched.

We spent another hour wandering the tents that held the ByWard Market’s shops.

Most were filled with rows of bright red tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, corn on the cob and every kind of apple you’d ever heard of. One whole tent was devoted to maple syrup: cans and glass bottles in shades of gold and bronze, maple candies and maple cookies. Still others sold buckets of exotic flowers with delicate petals on thick green stems. Those stalls were my favourite. They smelled kind of like the forest back home after a sudden, hard rainstorm.

Parker and her friends pored over handmade jewellery for sale. They held up flowing dresses in pink and green. They tried on sandals.

I zipped into a candy store and came out with five dollars’ worth of licorice for my mom. Ottawa suddenly felt like a very different city. It felt smaller. Everyone said hello to us. Maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss Ottawa as a place that did not want me.

Parker and I said goodbye to her friends when Naomi’s mom came to pick them up.

“Do you guys want a ride?” Naomi’s mom asked us.

“My mom is coming soon,” Parker added. “We will give Tricky a ride home.”

“Do you want us to wait? It’s getting awfully dark out.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to get trapped by the zombies!” a laughing Naomi said as she climbed into the back seat.

Parker closed the car door on her friend and laughed. “We’ll be fine. Thanks for the offer.”

The car sped away and we turned to walk back through the market. It was suddenly quiet too. Most of the tents were closed and lights were turning off for the night. We could see shadows working around corners, but we did not see many people.

Parker and I looked at each other. She tried to smile and so did I.

“I can take the bus,” I said.

“And leave me here alone? Thanks a lot!” She was laughing as she said it. “It’s fine,” she added. “We almost drive right past your place on the way home.”

Parker was shivering a little. Her head was turning from one direction to the other.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, totally. But let’s get going. This place is starting to weird me out. We have to meet my mom on the other side of the mall.”

Something crashed right in front of us. Parker shouted and I jumped. One of the farmers loading her truck had dropped a box of tomatoes. Red goo spread across the pavement.

“Now where?” I said.

Parker took two big strides and jumped for the wall of a building next to us. She burst past the spilled tomatoes and planted her foot on the wall while gripping the ledge to pull herself up.

“Nice!” I said.

I followed, jumping off my right foot and planting my left on the wall. It was an easy escape, thanks to a wall jump.

“Hey, cool moves!” someone said from a doorway. Two men laughed a creepy laugh. They were hidden in darkness. We scooted past them down the sidewalk.

“Are they following us?” Parker asked.

“Nah,” I said. But I wasn’t sure.

Just to be safe I waved Parker to follow me to our right. We turned a corner quickly. Some park benches stretched out down the middle of the sidewalk. I led the way this time, going at them quickly.

I placed my hands on the back of a bench and vaulted over it. Parker was right behind me. We were now far away from the two weirdos.

“That was fun,” I said.

“We have a few minutes to kill,” Parker answered, looking at her phone.

We walked along a low stone fence that looked down on a park below us. I vaulted over some posts cemented into the ground. They were to keep cars off the sidewalk, I guess. Parker ran along their tops, one by one. It looked like she was flying. She barely landed on each before springing to the next one.

I ran ahead. I jumped onto a fancy, old-fashioned street light and spun around it with my hands. We sprinted across the street, vaulting over more of the concrete barriers. We danced along the edge of some flower beds and did a gate vault over a fence.

A statue of an old soldier greeted us at the end of the sidewalk. The path circled around it. We rounded the corner, only to stumble upon three people staring into their cell phones, leaning against a fence.

“Ah!” Parker shouted again, but then started laughing.

The three people didn’t even look at us. They just swayed a little in our direction, mumbling something about “brainless kids.”

We kept running.

“He said ‘brains,’” I said.

Parker was laughing so hard she could barely vault over the fence. We cleared it and did parkour rolls on the grass.

“We are so far from where we need to be,” Parker said.

We turned back and found another path back to the street.

“There she is,” Parker said.

We crossed to where a black SUV was waiting. It was so sleek and shiny it glowed in the night. Parker’s mom saw us and started the engine. It growled to life.

“Mom, step on it. To Tricky’s, I mean Patrick’s house.”

“Were those guys real zombies?” I asked Parker.

“At least now we know we can survive the apocalypse.”

Her mom looked at us like we were losing it. But she managed a small smile. “I don’t want to know,” she said.

I looked around me as we pulled away. The leather seats were cool and smooth. The cabin glowed from a digital screen in the centre. It dawned on me as I pulled on my seatbelt: Parker’s family was loaded.

That bit of nagging doubt suddenly crept back into my head. Why was Parker hanging out with a poor kid from the boonies, anyway? Maybe Jayden was right. Maybe he and Parker belonged together. Parker and I didn’t have anything in common.