The next Friday, Kate stopped by my house to pay her share of the Zombiegeddon team entry fee. Due to a plumbing emergency, the escape room was closed for the night. I had let Mom know a friend from work was coming over, but she was out shopping at Target when Kate arrived.
We headed straight to my room and hopped on my computer. “Okay, we’re officially registered.” I forwarded her the email confirmation. “Damn, that fee was so expensive!” A hundred dollars! Goodbye, Xbox Live game pass fund. You’ll be sorely missed.
Kate beamed as she handed me a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “I deposited my first paycheck.”
The competition was the same weekend as my regional cross-country qualifiers, but the potential upside of this competition (cash money!) outweighed the benefit of medaling in the regional meet (no cash money!). Truthfully, I hadn’t gotten any faster over the last year, and I already had plenty of sports fodder in my early-action college applications.
My Visine-soaked eyes twitched from pulling an all-nighter. I’d spent hours combing through most of the competition’s excessively long terms and conditions, studying the campgrounds and the nearby vacant properties on Google Maps, running offensive and defensive strategies (kill versus hide) through my head. The competition had one simple objective: to be the first team to make it to the other side of the campground alive.
I could do that.
We could do that.
She flipped through my printouts. “Hey, did they ask for a team name?”
I clicked on the registration email. “Um. Don’t be mad. In the blank space for team name, I wrote ‘TBD.’” I shot her a grin-wince. “I should have read the instructions more closely. I thought I could go back to that later. Sorry.”
To my relief, she laughed. “Team TBD? Nice alliteration.”
“I also forged my dad’s signature on the parent consent for—”
I stopped talking when door creaked open. My mom came in with a tray of snacks and juice. “Nuts, apple slice, Cheez-It, and Oreo.” Her eyes widened when she saw Kate, but then her mouth curved into a smile, which wasn’t a good thing for me. “Nate say you like cheesy crunchy food. He remind me several time to buy at Target this afternoon.”
Oh no.
“I always tell him he play video game with same friend. I see he make new friend.”
Oh no.
Kate said, “Thank you for having me over. And for the food and drinks, Mrs. Kim.”
Mom continued smiling.
Shit.
“Nate never bring home a girl before.”
I coughed some juice out of my nose. “Thanks, Mom, you can go now.”
“You have two cookie each,” she said. “No fighting.”
She wouldn’t leave. Instead, she puttered around, straightening my bookshelf and picking up some dirty clothes I’d stuffed under my bed. She pulled out the pajamas I’d worn that week and some old Pokémon cards from under the dresser.
I cleared my throat. “Mom, can you please leave? I’ll clean up later. I promise.”
She held up the trading cards and asked Kate, “You play these too?”
“When I was younger,” Kate said, amused.
“He used to play all time. Pokémon this. Pokémon that. You know what that make me? His mother?”
Kate shot me a concerned look, and I shrugged. I had no idea what in the hell Mom was talking about.
She took the bait. “What does that make you, Mrs. Kim?”
Mom held her head high and puffed her chest. “I am Poké-MOM!”
Kate snorted hard. Any harder and she would need to see an ENT specialist.
Mom jokes. So grossly underrated compared to Dad jokes.
“Oh God, can you leave please?” The warmth in my cheeks spread through my whole body. I was on fire, and not in the “boy, you got this!” sense. Thankfully, my mom exited quickly, taking the laundry and Pokémon cards with her.
Kate wiped her eyes. “Oh my God, your mom—she’s so funny!”
“Yeah, she’s a real riot,” I said flatly.
She took a small handful of Cheez-Its and popped them in her mouth. “Fank your murm for thith,” she said with her mouth full, giggling as she walked over to the short walnut bookcase under my window. Kate examined the trophies my mom had lined up in a perfect row just before I kicked her out.
She swallowed. “Damn. You really do Krav Maga? Isn’t that the martial arts where you attack to kill?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. But it’s more like, defend yourself to the death, for me at least. I have two more belts to go.” The last two were basically impossible to get. For brown and black belt, I’d need to master choke holds plus gun and knife disarmament, which would take several years minimum. That was some military-level shit. “All you learn the first few months is how to kick a perp in the balls.”
“Well, that sounds handy. Or should I say, ballsy? Can you teach me sometime?”
I snort-coughed my juice again. It burned. So painful. “You can lend my mom that joke. And sure. I’d be happy to let you practice pretend-kicking me in the balls. Maybe after work one night.”
We smiled, and our eyes locked for a fleeting moment. She glanced down and went back to trophy scrutiny. “You got first place in one hundred meters last month? Wow, you’re fast.” She peered closer at a small, shield-shaped plaque next to my latest track award. “And only second place in archery?” she smirked. Wiping the dust off my name with her index finger, she asked, “Who got first place?”
“This guy Nate Bishop. He cheated, though. He took an extra turn. But he’s not around anymore.” Nate moved to Olympia a month ago and I heard he went by Nathaniel now, his full name. Good riddance. He really was a better shot than me, and all around a better, stronger, faster Nate. Way better looking than me, too, the bastard. Nate 2.0.
“No rock climbing or mountaineering awards, Nate? Such an underachiever.”
I scratched my brow. “Mountain climbing is on my bucket list. Rock climbing’s not my thing. Way too scary. Too high for me.”
“I was kind of joking about the last two things. I don’t have any awards or trophies like these. I only do theater, and I never win trophies for getting my lines right.”
She didn’t ask any more questions, a relief really, because no normal person likes to talk about their fears.
By some stroke of luck, I’d moved all of my grade school trophies and other embarrassing old arts and crafts projects to my closet just a few days earlier. She didn’t see my cringeworthy honorable mention for fifth-grade spelling bee or my most improved fourth-grade soccer certificate. “Most improved” awards were the worst: you sucked at something and got better. It didn’t mean you were actually any good.
“This is so cute,” she squealed, lifting my “Fastest Tadpole—Freestyle” medal from the shelf. Crap, I’d thought that I’d thrown that out years ago, or at least had moved it to the closet with my other kiddie awards. I quit swimming the day we tried the high-dive board. Thankfully, she put the medal back on the bookcase, next to my Eagle Scout award.
She bit her bottom lip and glanced up. “Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I forgot that I got the Gold Award in Girl Scouts. For first aid, starting fires, and setting up camp. I’m good with a compass and stainless-steel cooking utensils too. And I’m excellent at up-selling boxes of cookies.” She took a dramatic bow. “I earned patches, not trophies, though. Maybe I’ll wear them all to intimidate our competition.”
My snort laughter cleared the juice from my nose.
I pointed at her ratty zombie wig peeking out of her tote bag. “Well, if you wear that too, everyone will steer clear of us, even the zombies.”
She punched my arm, then jumped. “Argh, shouldn’t have done that. Don’t put me in a choke hold and snap my neck! Save your energy for the competition.”
Stepping back and taking in all of the trophies in their entirety, she asked, “Why do you do all of this?”
“For glory!” I thumped my chest with my fist.
“Har har. No really, why do you do so many activities? You have a job too, and your afternoons and weekends must be packed with lessons, meets, and tournaments. Is it fun? Don’t you feel overbooked all the time?”
Krav Maga. Archery. Cross-country. All of these activities were for college applications, but they turned out to be the perfect training for zombie survival. With this victory under my belt, it would add credibility when I jump-started my dream career as CEO of a doomsday survival company, and maybe, just maybe, I could catch the eye of the investors of Zeneration to help me fund the production of my how-to guides and survivalist kits. A guy could dream, right?
All I needed now was a win. And probably an elevator pitch for my business, just in case.
“Well, I’m investing in my future because I want to get into a good college. To do that I need to stand out. And I want scholarship awards. Also, I want to build up my résumé, and having activities would make me seem interesting to the application committees. Ultimately, though, this all leads to my one simple goal in life.”
Kate said, “Happiness!”
Simultaneously, I said, “Make a shitload of money.” Didn’t everyone want that?
Kate shrugged. “Wow, okay. You’re the most ambitious person I know. And that says a lot—my dad is pretty intense. He’s always working.” She gave a palpable sigh of disappointment. “Just do me a favor.” She looked me straight in the eyes and put her hand on my wrist. My wrist! “Please make sure you don’t forget to enjoy your life, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I was enjoying life, even now, wasn’t I? Being here with Kate was enjoyment. Talking about my future was enjoyment. Money talk? Enjoyment. See? A confetti cannon of enjoyment. BOOM!
She smiled. “According to my therapist, it’s important to focus on things you want to do in life. Joy will follow.”
“Okay. Sure.” Total BS if you asked me.
Judging on her dimples alone, Kate was satisfied with my answer. She squeezed my wrist, pumping tingles down to my fingertips. Then sadly, she let go.
“Promise?” she asked.
I nodded, wishing she would grab my wrist again.
Something next to my desk caught her eye. “What’s this?” she asked, pulling out a yellow sports Walkman from an old milk crate. “Where’d you get this stuff?” She’d discovered my box of old tech junk my dad gave me, the gadgets from when he was younger. She held up a dusty Nintendo Game Boy, Sony Discman, first-gen iPod, and a Microsoft Zune. My plan was to one day sell them all on eBay for thousands of dollars.
“You probably don’t even know what half of that does,” I said with a smirk.
She raised an eyebrow. “This plays Mario. These play music.” A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “This Zune thing, though, no clue. I’d need to google that.”
I burst out laughing. “I’m impressed. You’re nerdier than you let on.”
More rummaging. “Why do you have a keyboard in here?” She didn’t pull it out all the way but wiped off dust from some of the keys. “It doesn’t look old.”
“My dad used to work at an IT department of a big tech company. He had this IBM keyboard from the nineties and gave it to me. Push down the keys. They’re buckle-spring and make a loud clickity-click sound when you type. It’s very satisfying.”
She laughed and typed her name. “I haven’t used a regular keyboard in a while. I’ve been only doing touchscreen typing lately.”
The keyboard went back into the crate as she continued her detective work. She opened the closet door and yanked the dangling string to turn on the single, low-watt bulb.
“What the hell?” Kate panicked, stumbling backward as the overhead string swung back and forth like a hypnotic pendulum. Her butt slammed into the tall bookshelf inside my walk-in closet displaying my vintage Harry Potter and Minecraft Lego collectible sets, still in original boxes. The bookcase swayed, and my foot-tall Lego Dumbledore toppled onto the carpet, dismembering his head from his body. The damage could have been much worse. I was lucky an embarrassing plume of dust didn’t poof from Dumbledore’s face-plant into the flooring. I hadn’t vacuumed in there for years. Maybe even never.
Directly across from Kate was my autographed, life-size foam-board cutout of my entrepreneurial idol, Robbie Anderson-Steele. CEO of Digitools. The way the color instantly drained from her face you’d think she had discovered my closet was a secret zombie actress murder room.
I let out a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “Meet Robbie Anderson-Steele. I won him at an invention competition. My friends Zach and Jaxon brought the cutout home and put it in my room. It’s sort of a joke.” Not really, though. I won a five-hundred-dollar gift card too. “He’s this famous entrepreneur who’s written a lot of bestselling business books.” Which I stood in line for at Barnes & Noble for two hours for to get signed. And I watched his recent TED Talk maybe a hundred times. “I was going to throw that away soon. It’s kind of ridiculous because it takes up so much space.” Probably not, though. I kind of love it.
Kate shook her head like she was trying to knock Robbie’s image out of it. She broke her gaze to pick up Dumbledore and put him back in standing position. With a staggered breath, she admitted, “Well, I definitely wasn’t expecting that.”
“Sorry. Am I weird? You can just say it,” I said, shoulders slumping.
“Hey, I like weird. Weird is good. Weird is interesting,” she assured me. “And I’m the weirdo who roped you into a zombie survivalist competition, remember? Speaking of which, while we have time, let’s go to the army-navy place and see what basic supplies we can get for the competition. They said we’re all allowed one backpack per participant, and we can swap things out during the competition if we see anything better lying around.”
“It’s like in one of those Resident Evil games where the player is only allowed to use one weapon at a time.” I grinned. “We should read the game rules together later.” Grabbing my set of keys from my desk, I shouted, “Mom! Dad! I’m going out for a bit!”
No answer.
Outside my bedroom window, Mom knelt in her garden, wearing thick canvas gloves and a wide-brimmed visor. Lucy was next to her, digging holes with a toy shovel. Farther away, Dad mowed the grass, wiping his brow by pulling up his undershirt and swiping his forehead with the frayed hem. As he trimmed the yard’s edges, he leaned his body away from our tilted, humidity-warped back fence. Another broken thing on Dad’s handyman to-do list. Fixing the fence was something he just never had time to do. He was always do-it-yourself-fixing something more mission-critical, and Mom and I were always looking up on YouTube how to fix his fix after he went to bed. The Home Depot folks knew us all too well.
Kate tidied up the electronics in the crate and pushed it back into its original spot. “This feels like a setup to a bad joke. A former Eagle Scout and Girl Scout walk into an army-navy surplus store.”
I snorted again.
With interspersed fits of giggles, she continued. “Ooooh, I have the perfect setup. Store owner looks at our pins and awards and badges and goes, ‘This place is expensive. You’re going to need an IOU. You’ll come back with more money, right?’ The Eagle and Girl Scout say—”
“Scout’s honor!” I finished, and we gasped with laughter. We could barely breathe, the joke was so bad. My mom would’ve loved that one.