I'd been living next door to Aluka for a couple of weeks before I found out she was a zombie.
I guess you're wondering how I could miss something like that. Zombies are noticeable what you might call a visible minority. But Aluka's not your typical zombie. It's hard to tell that she belongs to the realm of the undead. Among other things, she's a vegetarian. She doesn't smell like an open grave, or lurch around with her arms outstretched. I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed stuff like that early on. Maybe even during our first conversation.
“Hi,” I'd say. “My name's Petey I live next door. We're neighbors now.”
“Uuuggh!” she'd say.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Brains,” she'd say, lurching towards me. “Eat … brains.” Drool would be pouring from her open mouth. And I'd know.
“Hey!” I'd say. “You're a zombie.”
Didn't go that way. It was Labor Day, and I was sitting on the front porch trying to decide on the perfect last-day-before-school snack. Peanut butter or cocktail sausages? Bacon-flavored chips or jelly doughnuts? Figuring out the perfect snack is a favorite game of mine. There are so many possibilities, and none of them is wrong.
I'd decided on crackers with cheese spread when the moving van drove away from the house next door, and a jeep pulled into the drive. Out popped a mom and a baby, and a girl about my age. The mom carried the baby inside, and I went over to introduce myself.
“Hi,” I said. “My name's Petey I live next door. We're neighbors now.”
And she smiled back and said, “Hi, Petey. My name's Aluka.”
We shook hands.
“I'm thirteen,” I said.
“Me, too.”
And we checked each other out, like you do. She was tall and thin. Almost bony. With her long hair and the way she had of gazing off into space, she looked kind of romantic. I'd like to be romantic, but everyone laughs at me. Not to be mean, or anything, they just think I'm funny It helps that I'm kind of short and round.
“Say, Petey, do you have any pets?” Aluka asked.
“No.”
“Good. Pets don't seem to like me much.”
“No pets,” I said. “Got a big sister, though. She's in grade twelve. She's worse than a pet.”
We laughed. “My baby brother is a handful, too,” she said. Then her mom called her to come in, and she said she'd see me around.
See? All perfectly normal stuff. No indication that Aluka was a zombie. Maybe the bit about pets was unexpected, but I just figured she was nervous around animals. Oh, yeah, and her hand was like ice. But most people's hands are cooler than mine.
And anyway, whoever heard of a zombie with a jeep? Whoever heard of a zombie buying a split-level bungalow in a small town like ours? If you want to know what my house looks like, turn on the cartoon channel of your tv set.
I didn't talk to her for a while after that. School started, and I was busy doing homework. I'm in grade seven this year, Mr. Robertson's class, and I never had so much homework. Ten math questions the first night. Homework, the first day of school? What kind of world is this? I went home fuming.
“Hello, Petey dear. How was school?” my mom asked.
“Well,” I began, but Marisa butted in.
“Ohmygawd!” she cried from upstairs. “Mom, come quick! I'm bleeding!”
That's my sister for you. My dad calls her Ohmygawd Marisa. Ohmygawd, today was the worst day ever. Ohmygawd, the movie was so bad I wanted to die. Ohmygawd, look at my hair it's a disaster.
Mom is used to her, but you can't ignore bleeding, can you? She ran upstairs.
I got myself a first-day-of-school snack nachos and hot salsa, if you're interested and took the math problems to my room.
It went on like that for the rest of the week. There were maps to color and cloud types to identify. X had a buddy named Y, and neither of them could solve anything.
Every afternoon, just before the bell went, Mr. Robertson got out a book and read to us. That wasn't bad because I could think about other stuff while the words washed over me. When he brought the book out on Friday, I thought about the weekend. Two days without much homework. There was a new horror movie opening at the theater in the mall. I'd overheard Nancy-Jane talking about it at lunch, while she was eating yogurt and celery. That led me to think about the perfect first-weekend-of-the-school-year snack. Chunky peanut butter. Mmmm. Chunky Monkey ice cream. Mmmm.
Someone was calling my name.
“Huh?” I woke up out of my daydream. Mr. Robertson was standing in front of me, smiling. Smiling teachers are like crying crocodiles you can't trust them.
“Did you enjoy that story, Petey?”
“Bet you wish you could write a story that good, don't you, Petey?”
“Oh … um … yes,” I said.
“Good.” The smile broadened. “I'll give you a chance this weekend.”
He wasn't kidding. He explained that the story, which I hadn't listened to, was about somebody holding his girlfriend's hand while she died. Yech. And now bigger yech Mr. Robertson wanted me just me, no one else to write a story about holding hands, and bring it in on Monday.
“No fair!” I said. “I don't have a girlfriend. I've never held anyone else's hand!”
The class laughed.
“There's always a first time,” Mr. Robertson said. “And, Petey one more thing. Try not to make the story funny”
“What?” I said. “What-what-what-what-what?”
The class laughed again.
“See? Funny is too easy for you,” he said. “Try to be serious.”
The bell rang.
Having a dramatic big sister means that you aren't important. There are times when that's upsetting, but not this afternoon. I didn't want to talk to Mom about my day, so I was happy when Marisa cried, Ohmygawd, look at them all it's an infestation! and Mom went running.
I went for a walk along Westwood Road to the edge of the subdivision. There's a little strip mall there, with a convenience store. As I walked, I wondered about the perfect candy bar. It would have peanuts in it, and white and dark chocolate, and caramel, and it would crunch when you bit into it. Fine. But was it perfect? What was perfection, after all? Could I eat that kind of chocolate bar every day? Could you? I doubt it. Sometimes you feel like sponge toffee. Sometimes you feel like raisins.
The sun was warm, and it shone directly into my face. September can be a great month.
I met Aluka at the store. I'd seen her around, but I hadn't spoken to her since that first meeting. She was on her way out, but she waited while I tried to decide between peanut butter cups and an Almond Joy. I got the cups, and Aluka and I walked home together. I asked her how school was going, if she had as much homework as I did.
“I don't go to school,” she said.
“Wow. Lucky you. Homeschooled, eh?”
“Kind of. My mom works at home and she teaches us.”
“My mom works at home too,” I said. “She's an editor. What does your mom do?”
“She's an animator,” she said.
“Cool! Does she work for, like, Walt Disney?”
“Hmm? No. She's private.”
Aluka approved my choice of chocolate bar. She liked peanut butter cups too. I offered her one and she took it.
So much about food, she agreed, depended on context. “For instance,” she said, “we were going to go to the movies tonight, but my little brother is sick. Now I'll be watching tv. And I won't be eating the same kind of snacks that I'd get at the movie theater.”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You do that too?” I said. “You pick your snacks based on what you're doing?”
“Well, sure. Doesn't everyone?”
It was like meeting my twin, separated since birth.
The wind had picked up a bit, and her hair was blowing all around. She looked like an ad for something. For peanut butter cups, I guess, since that's what she was eating.
“Okay,” I said. “Here's a quiz. What's the best food to eat while you're watching tv?”
She smiled. She knew what I meant right away.
“Drama, or comedy?”
“Comedy.”
She nodded. “That's an easy one. Corn chips. Barbecue corn chips.” She held up her bag of groceries. “Three comedies in a row tonight.”
“Barbecue, eh? Spicy, but easy to handle. Good choice. What about drama?”
“Drama's different. You want something with more depth to it. There's a late movie I might stay up for, so I bought …” She stared over my shoulder and her face fell. “Oh-oh.”
I turned around. A black-and-white tomcat stood there, its back arched and its tail all bushy, spitting and hissing. “Hey, there's Jingles,” I said.
I call him Jingles because he's got a bell. I don't know where he lives. I don't know his real name. But he's a friendly enough cat. I've petted him before.
“Hi, Jingles,” I said, bending down to stroke him. I made that tsk tsk sound with my tongue against the back of my front teeth. “Come here, Jingles.”
But Jingles never took his eyes off Aluka. Weird.
“He must think you're a mouse,” I joked.
Suddenly he flung himself at Aluka. I've never seen a cat do that before. He jumped right off the ground and attached to Aluka's arm.
She never said a word.
“Hey!” I shouted, and lunged for the cat. I got him by the middle and pulled. He hung on with his claws, trying to bite her. As I pried Jingles off Aluka's arm, he lashed out with a back foot. There was a spurt of blood, and I screamed, afraid it was my blood. It was.
I threw the cat away. He landed on his feet and took off. The back of my hand ran with blood. I put it in my mouth.
“How are you?” she asked me.
I lifted my mouth away from my hand. “I'm bleeding,” I said. “What about you?”
She held out her arm. I could see claw marks, but no blood.
“How come you're not bleeding?” I asked.
Our eyes met, as if for the first time. Boy and girl. I gasped. It was like in the movies. Everything slowed down and intensified. I could hear the whine of the traffic on the main road. I could feel the September sun on my bare head. I could see her throat working as she swallowed.
If this really were a movie, I'd have said something smooth.
“Your eyes are like chocolate-covered almonds,” I'd say.
“Your hair is the color of Doritos,” I'd say.
“When I see you, my heart leaps the way it does when I take the first bite of a fresh warm orange cruller,” I'd say.
Didn't happen. I had to burp, and the moment passed. My hand stopped bleeding and we walked up the street. She was as calm as calm. Never dropped her groceries. The parallel scratches from the cat's claws stood out against her pale skin like a tattoo.
The setting sun was behind us. Our shadows stretched across the pavement ahead. I laughed.
“What?”
“Look at our shadows,” I said. “What do they look like? I just noticed. Side by side like this, we look like the number 10,” I said. “You're long and lean, like a 1, and I'm more rounded.”
She laughed too, and we started talking again.
“You don't have to watch tv tonight,” I said. “You and I could go to the movies.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we could.”
“You'd have to leave your corn chips at home, though. It's a horror movie.”
She didn't say anything right away. I looked over. She was gazing over my head, off into the distance. Thoughtful, contemplative, deep.
“Yes,” she said. “Corn chips would be wrong. But I get really scared by horror films. What snack goes with horror?”
“Let's wait,” I said, “until we get to the snack counter. We'll decide there.”
I called on Aluka after dinner. Her mom came to the door, holding the wriggling baby. “You must be Petey” she said. “Aluka's told me all about you. Come on in.”
The baby growled. “This is Imre,” she said. “He's not feeling very well, poor guy. He's grumpy.” (She pronounced it Im-ray like that. Just so you know.)
“Oh, that's too bad,” I said, stepping away from the baby. “Does he have a temperature?”
“No. His tummy is bothering him.”
Imre lunged towards me. I stepped back hurriedly Aluka's mom chuckled. “Funny little Imre,” she said. “Leave Aluka's friend alone.”
“Eat!” cried the baby, in a strange deep voice. “Eat!”
Aluka's mom laughed again. “It's his new word,” she said.
Aluka came out then, with a piece of steak in her hand. “Imre dropped this on the floor.”
The steak looked raw. Aluka shuddered, but she held the piece of meat up to the baby, who grabbed it in two chubby hands and jammed it into his mouth.
I stared. No wonder the kid had a tummy ache.
“Petey, I want you to look after my little girl,” said Aluka's mom. “I know what happened this afternoon. It has happened before. Aluka's … fragile.”
“Mom, please. You're embarrassing me. Come on, Petey.”
“I'll keep her away from cats,” I said.
The baby grabbed at my shirt with his red-stained hands. “Eat!” he cried. “Eat!” His eyes were empty His mouth opened. He had two baby teeth.
“Time to go,” said Aluka, pulling me out the door.
It was an easy decision at the snack counter. We both reached for the red licorice at the same time. “Popcorn's no good,” said Aluka. “You don't want to keep going back and forth between the bag and your mouth.”
“Right. And most of the movie is going to be whispered, so you don't want to be crunching anything,” I said.
We got seats in the front row. A pair of old ladies was sitting behind us. I could smell their peppermints. Bad choice for a horror movie.
As soon as the film began, Aluka started to tremble. While the two teenage campers took refuge from a coming storm in the deserted cabin under the gnarled pine tree, where the famous painter had hanged himself a hundred years ago, Aluka ate her licorice and shivered.
Night fell on the cabin. The storm drew closer. The teens lit a lamp and went exploring. In a cupboard in the bedroom, they found an unfinished painting of the gnarled pine tree. The famous painter must have been working on this when he died.
Aluka finished her licorice. I offered her one of mine. She took it and whispered her thanks. Our fingers touched.
A crack of thunder startled the campers. The boy dropped the lamp, and the girl screamed. Lightning flashed. Aluka grabbed my hand.
I'm holding hands with a girl, I thought. First time ever. Good old horror movies. No wonder they're so popular.
The flash of lightning showed that the picture had changed. Before, it had just shown the gnarled tree. Now, there was a figure of a man in a lumber jacket hanging from the lowest branch. The dead painter had materialized inside his own picture.
Gasps from the audience. Aluka squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
When the teens saw the picture of the hanged painter, they panicked and wanted to leave the cabin, but the storm was right overhead.
“What'll we do, Jimmy?” whispered the girl.
The wind howled. The lamplight threw flickering shadows on the walls. The front door blew open with a loud crash.
Screams from the audience.
The old lady behind me coughed.
The girl ran to close the door. She struggled against the wind. Finally she got it shut and made sure it was locked.
“Jimmy?” she called.
No answer.
“Jimmy?”
She hurried across the living room, bumping into things. In the bedroom, the lamp was still burning on the floor. Jimmy was gone. Gone! And the picture was different again. Now there were two hanging figures the man in the lumber jacket and a teenage boy in jeans. Jimmy was in the picture!
The girl screamed. Aluka pulled at my hand.
Behind me, a lady was whispering, “Gladys? Gladys, are you all right?”
It wasn't coughing, I realized. Gladys was choking on her candy. I could have told her peppermints were a bad choice.
On-screen, the girl clutched at her throat. The evil spirit that had killed the painter and Jimmy had grabbed her too. Behind me, I heard more choking.
“Gladys!” cried her friend. “Gladys!”
I couldn't sit here and let the old lady choke to death. I stood up.
Now the painting showed a pine tree, and three nooses. One for the painter, one for Jimmy, and one for the girl. She was still struggling, but her movements were getting weaker and weaker.
Aluka clutched my hand in a death grip. I tried to pull away from her.
“I have to save Gladys,” I said.
Gladys's friend had her on her feet. She stood behind Gladys and tried the Heimlich maneuver. Successfully. The mint came flying out of Gladys's mouth like a bullet and hit me right in the face. I jerked away from Aluka, bringing my arms up defensively. Her hand came off in mine.
Absolutely off. I held it up like a trophy. It was cold. Her skin was always cold. And the hand wasn't a fake, not one of those prosthetic limbs. This was real. The lightning flashes on the screen lit up the theater, and I could make out a couple of bumps of white bone and some darker, softer flesh.
I screamed and felt myself falling. Everything went dark.
I woke up with my heart pounding. What a nightmare I'd had!
“Pete,” said a familiar voice, in the quiet darkness by my side.
Aluka's mom turned on the overhead light and smiled. “You're awake! How are you doing, Petey? We were worried about you. Aluka brought you home in a cab.”
I was on a folding bed in a strange room. My hands on the coverlet were empty I stared at them.
“Where am I? Why aren't I home?”
“Your parents had to take your sister Marisa to the hospital. There's no one home. Your mom asked me to look after you, so I put you in Imre's room.”
There was the voice at my ear. But it wasn't saying Pete. It was saying Eat. I turned my head in sick horror. Baby Imre's head was at the level of mine. His mouth was open. “Eat!” he said, in his strange deep voice. “Eat!” He leaned towards me.
I screamed again and again.
I was hoarse by the time I finished reading the story. The class burst out laughing. “But I wasn't trying to be funny” I explained to Mr. Robertson. “I was trying to be scary.”
He wiped tears from his eyes.
“Do you really have a new neighbor?” he asked.
“No,” Nancy-Jane answered for me. “I live down the street from Petey The house next door to him is still for sale. His sister is a big drama queen, though.”
Mr. Robertson nodded. “And do you really try to work out the perfect snack?” he asked me.
“Doesn't everyone?”
The bell rang. I wondered if Mom had had a chance to go shopping. The bakeshop makes these molasses spice cookies that would really hit the spot about now.