Thanks to everyone at Random House, including Stephanie, Krista and Colleen (whose handwriting I could spot anywhere now!). Thanks to the lovely Ronica for putting up with me while the book took over my brain, and to the cast and crew of At Last, Okemah!, who lugged equipment while I sat against walls and scribbled away on this project. Thanks to Voltaire, who inspired me to write “I Thought She Was a Goth,” the song on which this book is loosely based, ten years ago. Thanks also to Jennifer Laughran, Nadia Cornier, the Weird Chicago Crew, the Smart Aleck staff, Robert Aspirin, Paul Morden, Kitten, Vixy and Tony, Seanan (and the rest of the filkers) and everyone at Sip Coffee in Chicago.

1

Watching a vampire make out with an idiot is kind of like going to the farmers’ market and noticing just how many farmers have lost fingers in on-the-job accidents. Even though it’s kind of disturbing, it’s impossible to look away.

Right now, two lunch tables over from mine, Fred (a vampire) is making out with Michelle (an idiot). And everyone in the cafeteria is watching the show.

“My God,” says my friend Trinity. “It’s like he thinks her head is a Tootsie Pop.”

“Keep watching,” I say. “Maybe we can finally find out how many licks it takes to get to the candy center.”

I’m not just being my usual, devastatingly witty self here. I actually think that the only thing between Michelle’s ears might be some sort of chewy candy.

“I’ve lost count already,” says Peter. “He must be about halfway through her skin by now. You’d think he’d just bite her and get it over with. That’s what I always do with Tootsie Pops.”

“They don’t really bite people,” says Sadie. “Not anymore.”

“So what does he have to do to make her into a vampire?” asks Peter.

“It’s a secret, but it’s probably nothing he can do in a high school cafeteria,” says Sadie.

They’re already doing several things they aren’t supposed do in a high school cafeteria, but the lunchroom monitors are all too chicken to tell a vampire to knock it off, even though everyone knows they’re not really dangerous.

It was quite a scandal a few years back when it turned out that Megamart was bringing corpses back to life to work as zombie slaves in their stockrooms. When word got out, all the other post-humans (vampires, werewolves and all the undead types that turned out to have been living among us for centuries) got really offended and decided to “come out of the coffin” to lobby Congress to close all the loopholes that let Megamart get away with that.

There was wall-to-wall coverage in the media for months. Every news station had stories of “The Vampire Revelation” like “How the Vampire Invasion Is Threatening Your Family” and “How to Protect Your Newborn from Werewolves.” But after a while, everyone figured out that nothing had really changed—vampires and stuff have always been around. Now we just know about it. And they aren’t nearly as scary as they’d been made out to be; they’re a lot faster and stronger than regular people, and they’re apparently more or less immortal, but they don’t really drink blood anymore (there’s some kind of vegetable compound that’s more satisfying and easier to get), and they don’t get their “powers” from anything supernatural (it’s something to do with protein mutation or something. I forget). Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies turned out to be regular scientific phenomena, and life went pretty much back to normal.

The teenage vampires are a pain in the ass—they never actually mature, no matter how old they get, since their pituitary glands are sort of frozen in time—but dating one has become the ultimate status symbol. Most girls in school dream of having a loser like Fred fall in love with them and turn them into a vampire. I guess living in Iowa does make life as a corpse seem exciting.

“Dead people have no reason to live,” I say. “Shouldn’t we have stopped thinking vampires were awesome when we found out they spend most of their time acting all emo?”

“You’re just jealous, Alley,” says Marie. “Can you honestly tell me that if some guy rose from the grave and spent a hundred lonely years looking for just the right person, then fell for you, you wouldn’t think that was totally romantic?”

“I’d think he was a stalker,” I say.

“It’s true love!” says Marie.

“Get real,” says Sadie. “It’s hot, but it’s just lust. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Sadie is my oldest friend. She kind of falls for the whole vampire thing, but at least she’s realistic. She likes dead guys, just like every other girl in school, but Marie loves them. She isn’t even interested in dating living guys. She’s, like, necrosexual.

“You guys are just prejudiced,” says Marie. “I would kill to date a vampire. I mean, he’s crazy strong, but not strong enough to stay away from her. How romantic can you get?”

“Right,” says Peter. “I think that’s on page one of How to Get Teenage Girls to Fall in Love with You.”

“And her parents probably think he’s a monster, but she truly understands him,” I chime in.

“See?” asks Peter. “Textbook.”

Everyone at my table is on the staff of the school paper. Trinity Pearl, who sits to my right, is the editor in chief. She’s wearing a formal ball gown (she’s into tango) covered in safety pins (she’s also into punk). Next to her is Peter Woolcott, the most transparently gay teenager in the greater Des Moines area. On the other side of him is Marie Beecher, the necrosexual fashion editor who doubles as our pet idiot, then Ryan Deeborn the film critic, then Sadie, who covers local news (she drew the short straw). Peter’s gossip column, “No Siree,” is really just a report of all the witty things we say at lunch (and occasionally, the dumb things Marie says. She’s a little dim, but we love her anyway). Our skill at making fun of things has made our table sort of famous; around school they call us the Vicious Circle.

Two tables over, Michelle is making noises that sound like they’re coming from a wounded animal and saying “Oh, Friedrich, Friedrich” loudly enough to make sure we all hear her. It’s kind of annoying. I mean, if you so much as hold hands with someone who isn’t a vampire, you get detention for public display of affection. It’s a total double standard.

“God, if I ever get like that, just drive a stake through my heart or something, okay?” I ask.

“No danger of that,” says Peter. “Eight days till prom and you’ve still never had a second date?”

“Who needs a second one when you get everything you want on the first?” I ask. And I give him my most self-satisfied smirk.

It’s not that I’m inexperienced; I’ve made out with plenty of guys. But I just make out with them, send them on their way and then make fun of them without naming names later on. It’s not very nice, I know, but guys know what they’re getting into when they make out with Alley Rhodes, the Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle.

A lot of people think I hate guys or something. I don’t, really; I just hate the idea of getting stuck in this town, so I don’t have any desire to get involved with a guy who lives here. And it’s not that I don’t want to go to the prom, but there’s only a month till graduation, and three months till I’m outta here altogether. No point complicating things by having a big expensive date. I’m just going to go with Sadie and make fun of everyone else.

“Doesn’t anyone remember what a loser Fred was before people knew he was a vampire?” Peter asks as Fred slides his hand up Michelle’s leg under the table. I swear I see Fred glance around to make sure people are watching.

“He was my lab partner for a while,” Trinity says. “He’d act like a jerk half the time and mope around the rest.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t think it was possible, but the guy is both a wiener and a dick.”

“Yeah,” says Trinity. “Kind of cocky, too.”

Peter scribbles that down for his column.

When I was a freshman, back when everyone except a handful of conspiracy theorists thought vampires were just fictional characters, our cafeteria was like any other. There was the jock table, the prep table, the drama table, the band geek table and a table full of kids who were into role-playing games. But now it’s just one goth table after another. When the guys saw how the girls just melted over the vampires, they all started trying to be goths. It makes our yearbooks really depressing. Looking across the cafeteria today, I see so many people in black that you’d think Cornersville Trace High School was a Transylvanian biker bar or something. But we’re just another school in the post-human era.

That’s what we’re living in, by the way, according to all the news blogs. The early post-human era. I suppose it beats living in the disco era.

But as for me, I’m only into one dead guy: Cole Porter, the greatest songwriter who ever lived. He wrote show tunes like “I Get a Kick out of You,” “It’s De-Lovely” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” back in the 1930s, when guys really had style. I’d totally have his babies if he wasn’t dead and gay and staying both ways, as far as I know. I sang his song “Love for Sale” at a talent show when I was six. I lost, but at least I lost with style.

“Uh-oh,” says Marie. “Show’s over. Here comes Smollet.”

Mrs. Smollet, the guidance counselor, wanders up, making a face like she’s sucking on about nine lemons, and taps Fred on the shoulder. She can deal with him better than the other teachers, since she’s a vampire herself.

Fred pulls his hand from under the table, and he and Michelle straighten themselves out. Most girls would probably blush if they found out that everyone, including a teacher, had been watching them getting felt up, but Michelle just looks around proudly, soaking up the jealous glares.

Mrs. Smollet is one of those guidance counselors who go on and on about abstinence and “old-fashioned values.” I was shocked when it turned out she’s a vampire, but I guess it makes sense, if you think about it. Women in the Victorian era, when she grew up, couldn’t even say the word “toes” out loud without blushing unless they were hookers, so it’s no wonder that she gets freaked out by anything remotely related to sex. She was the one who made the school change the name of my music column from “Going Down a Dark Alley,” which she thought was “too suggestive and urban,” to “On the Beat with Alley Rhodes.” Lame.

“Okay,” says Trinity. “Now that the show’s over, we have stuff to cover. Peter, do you have your column ready?”

“Almost,” he answers. “I just need to throw in Alley’s line about someone being both a wiener and a dick at the same time, and her thing about dead people having no reason to live.”

I smile proudly. Two in one column! None of us wants to admit that we don’t make up our one-liners on the spot, but I’ve been waiting to use that “dead people have no reason to live” line for days.

“And Alley,” Trinity continues, “I hate to tell you this … but you’re going to have to cover the Sorry Marios tonight.”

“I knew it,” I say with a groan.

“It’s big news,” says Trinity. “They just hired Will to play drums.”

The Sorry Marios are a bad local band featuring Nat Watson, the star of the basketball team, as lead singer and guitarist. Nat’s not a bad guy, but he is a bad singer. And Will is one of the other vampires in school. He’s an even bigger jerk than Fred.

“I understand,” I say. “But I’m not happy about it. They suck.”

“Maybe they’ll be better with a vampire on drums,” says Sadie. “Aren’t vampires, like, musically gifted?”

“Some are,” says Marie.

“It’ll take more than that to get them not to suck,” I say.

“Well, skewer them if you have to,” says Trinity, “just make it funny. It’s not like you aren’t at the Cage every other Friday night anyway.”

“Anyone want to go with me?” I ask.

“I’m going with a bunch of other people,” says Marie. “Will doesn’t have a prom date yet.”

Marie goes to every event in town that might have a post-human present. If she thought a vampire would be there, she’d go to the opening of an applesauce jar.

“I’ll go with you,” says Sadie. “Are you getting in without paying the cover?”

I look up at Trinity.

“You took care of that, right?”

She nods. “You and a guest are on the list, and you get free pizza. Eddie promised me.”

Another sigh. “Somehow, the idea of free pizza at the Cage doesn’t make this sound any easier.”

“Live with it,” says Trinity. “And bring your laptop with you. I’ll need your review by nine.”

“Fine,” I say.

We’re still called the “newspaper” staff, even though the whole thing was moved online last year. It’s just a blog, really. But we still have deadlines and stuff.

I’m already writing the review in my head. Maybe I’ll open by saying “The Sorry Marios should really be called the Sorry Excuse for a Band.” Or maybe “There’s never been a ‘scene’ here. No one talks about ‘the Des Moines Sound.’ And on the basis of the Sorry Marios, I suppose it’s just as well.”

Suburban Des Moines isn’t really all that bad, honestly. I’ve been to worse places. Like Nebraska.

But once I graduate, all that’s going to be left of me here will be an Alley-shaped hole in the door and a collection of witty zingers that will stay online and make me and my friends legends in Cornersville Trace for years to come.

The pool of datable guys is sure to be much larger in Seattle, where I’m going to college.

I’ll only have to be this lonely for a few more months.

2

I think it’s kind of cool when people have names they can easily change. Like, if a girl named Jennifer gets tired of being herself, she can start going by Jenny or Jen and turn herself into a whole different person.

I actually have about five variations to choose from:

1. Algonquin. This is my real name, believe it or not. My mom gave it to me because I’m, like, one-sixty-fourth Native American and she thought it would be really “empowering” for me to have a name that reflected my one-sixty-fourth share of heritage. She’s really into things that are empowering.

2. Alley. This is what most people call me. It’s what I put on the top of math worksheets and stuff. Sometimes people try to spell it “Ali,” which is okay, but I prefer “Alley.” It’s very urban, in a way. And anyway, there are four Alis in the senior class already.

3. Al. Some people call me this. I usually let them, unless they start calling me Weird Al. Then, action is required.

4. Quinn. Another short version of Algonquin, taken off the end instead of the beginning. This one doesn’t come up much, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

5. Gonk. The middle part of Algonquin. Mom thinks this one is empowering, too, because “Gonk” is the noise you hear when a woman beams her abusive husband on the head with a rolling pin.

No one really calls me Gonk except Sadie, though. She was the first one ever to use it, back when we first became friends at age nine. We met at Take Your Daughter to Work Day, when my dad still worked in an insurance office (this was before Mom stated making so much in real estate that Dad could quit to be a househusband and make scrapbooks all day).

Des Moines is the insurance capital of the world (Nebraskans say Omaha is, but they’re wrong). A pretty large chunk of the people in my school will probably end up working in insurance sooner or later. I think Mom’s plan in sending me with Dad to Take Your Daughter to Work Day was for me to find out that insurance was boring and set my sights higher. It worked.

I think Dad is now about the most popular guy in town among the local women, because he’s the only guy who hangs out at the scrapbooking store. Only he doesn’t make family vacation scrapbooks—he makes music scrapbooks. Like, he has a Rolling Stones scrapbook, and one for Cole Porter that he made for me for my birthday one year, and about five of them full of stuff from all the concerts he and Mom have been to over the years. He has great musical taste. I learned all I know from him, and I know a lot. You have to, if you want to write a decent music column.

Sadie arrives in her car at seven to go to the Cage, wearing a vaguely goth outfit that I think she borrowed from Trinity (who isn’t really a goth, though her ball gowns make her look like she is).

I step into Sadie’s car and she pretends to be excited about the show. “Ready to rock?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Shame I have to go hear the Sorry Marios instead.”

We drive up Sixth-second Street, past the mall and onto Cedar Avenue, which was a little empty road to the interstate when I was a kid but is now full of strip malls.

The Cage, where the band is playing, is the oldest building on the street. Since it was built, it’s been about six different things. When I was little, it was one of those places where they have video games, jump-in-the-balls pits and singing robotic animals. Then it was a strip club for a while—rumor had it that they kept the jump-in-the-balls pits. That didn’t last long, though, and it became a pancake place, but that went under in a real hurry, because no sane person wanted to eat at a pancake place that used to be a strip club. Now it’s the Cage, Cornersville’s lone all-ages venue for live rock music.

The inside of the place has the look of any other bar and grill—street signs and goofy crap all over the walls, a digital jukebox, a video game or two. But when the post-humans went public and goth became the style of the decade, Eddie put up a bunch of fake cobwebs and stuff. It’s pretty ridiculous, honestly. It doesn’t look like a goth club at all. It just looks like a family restaurant with cheap Halloween decorations.

When Sadie and I arrive, Eddie and the kids from the band are the only people there. Will is setting up his drums and looking around in disgust. I swear that looking around in disgust is one of vampires’ actual powers—every vampire I’ve ever known is an expert at it. Will’s not unattractive, really; in fact, he’s pretty hot. He’s also pretty annoying, though. Even Sadie, who generally likes dead guys, can’t stand him.

I ignore the band and head straight for Eddie.

“Hiya, Eddie,” I say, shaking his hand like a pro. “Thanks for the hookup tonight.”

Eddie nods and tilts his head toward a table at the back, where Sadie and I sit down.

Eddie is about fifty and owns three or four businesses in town that always seem to be hanging on by a thread. He’s always wearing a straw cowboy hat and chewing on a toothpick, and he usually seems stoned. Some nights when there’s no show booked, he plays covers of songs by bands like the Eagles and Neil Young on an acoustic guitar for the people who hang around the bar. I’ve only been there once on those nights, but seeing an old hippie guy singing “Take It Easy” surrounded by fake skulls was too much.

“What are you eating?” he asks us.

“Whatever won’t kill me, please,” I said.

“Whatever don’t kill you’ll make you stronger,” says Eddie, who is always ready with folksy wisdom.

“All right,” I say. “Then give me whatever will make me stronger.”

“One pizza, coming up,” said Eddie. He doesn’t even take the toothpick out of his mouth as he heads for the kitchen.

I pull out my laptop and get to work writing. You can write a pretty good chunk of a concert review before the concert even starts. It’s like writing an obituary. All the big newspapers have obituaries written for celebrities years in advance. When Bob Hope (my grandpa’s favorite comedian) died, his obituary in the New York Times was written by a guy who’d been dead himself for twenty years and wasn’t even a vampire or anything. He’d written up the obit and just left a few lines for them to fill in whenever Hope actually died. You can do pretty much the same thing with music reviews: just ramble on about the band and the kind of crowd they attract, then add some details about the show after it starts.

Gradually, more people begin filing in. The bulk of the crowd is made up of girls who are clearly hoping to become Will’s One True Love (or at least his prom date). They’re walking around flashing smiles that show no cavities and wearing clothes that nearly do show a couple of them. Some of them are wearing skirts that I’m pretty sure are supposed to be belts.

The guys there to pick up the girls who can’t catch Will’s eye are all dressed in goth gear—even the ones who would clearly be more at home in backwards baseball caps and Abercrombie shirts. Like the girls, they all appear to be drunk already. Every last one of them.

Eddie comes out and put a couple of slices of slimy pizza in front of us, then leans over to me.

“Take it easy on these guys, okay?” he asks. “They’re good kids.”

“I’m not here to review their behavior,” I say.

“You know what I mean,” says Eddie. “Be nice.”

“Nice doesn’t sell papers, Eddie,” says Sadie.

Eddie, who probably neither knows nor cares that we don’t have a paper, per se, anymore, just a Web site, sighs and walks back to the bar. Sadie and I force the pizza down, then likewise head over to the bar, which is out of the way of the dance floor Eddie has created by moving most of the tables against the wall. The crowd is getting bigger and more annoying around the tables.

Some guy in a fake top hat that he’s totally not pulling off comes over to us.

“Hey, cuz,” he slurs to me.

He is clearly either drunk or stoned. Probably both. Most of these guys call everyone “bro” or “cuz,” which sounds weird coming out of a guy in goth gear.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Buy you a beer, cuz?” he asks.

“You and what fake ID?” I ask back.

“Did you just hit on her by calling her your cousin?” asks Sadie. “’Cause, damn!”

Top Hat Guy (which is a lousy name for him, since there are tons of guys in top hats there) slinks away. I note that he at least has the decency to seem a bit embarrassed. Sadie and I exchange a “job well done” nod.

“You know who had the best line to use on douche-bag guys like that?” asks Sadie. “Tennessee Williams.”

Tennessee Williams, the playwright, is Sadie’s own “dead gay guy from the 1930s” obsession. Only, she would really date him if he was undead and straight; I’m happy just having Cole Porter be the kind of fantasy crush that can’t possibly hurt me or let me down.

“What was it?” I ask.

“Well, one time this drunk came up to him in a bar, whipped his thingie out, and asked him to autograph it. So Tennessee looked down, and said, ‘Well, maybe I could initial it.’”

“Nice!”

They just don’t make guys like they did back then anymore.

I order a can of Coke from the bar, and a second later I see a pale hand reach out to open it. It’s Will. The vampire.

“Um, hey,” I say.

“I thought I would give you a hand,” he says with his Eastern European accent as he hands me the open can.

Oh, crap. I’m getting hit on by a dead guy.

“I had it under control,” I say.

“I only wished to help,” he says.

“Oh, God,” says Sadie, with a chuckle. “He thinks you’re Fruit Cup Girl!”

Fruit Cup Girl sits two lunch tables away from us—we watch her every day at lunch. Every day, she pretends she can’t get her fruit cup open and asks this one guy at her table, who she clearly likes, to open it for her. Peter recorded the whole saga once in “No Siree,” changing just enough of the details that no one could be sure who it was about. A lot of girls do that kind of trick, after all. I wouldn’t dream of it myself. I mean, who wants to date a guy who thinks a girl who can’t operate a fruit cup is attractive?

Will looks uncomfortable for a second, like being around for two hundred years hasn’t taught him to recognize rejection. I guess not a lot of girls reject him. The whole reason male teenage vampires stay in school even when they’ve been teenagers for a couple hundred years is to meet girls.

“You are Alley Rhodes, correct?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I don’t date people I’m reviewing, so run along, okay?”

Will finally slinks away, looking kind of pissed.

“Wow, Alley!” says Sadie. “You got hit on by a vampire!”

“It was everything I dreamed it would be,” I say.

“Maybe he just wanted to sleep with you so you’ll give him a good review,” says Sadie.

“Can they do that?” I ask. “Sleep with people?”

“From what I heard, they can sleep with people, but not without killing them. He’d probably just have to stop at second base or something.”

Keeping track of what’s true and what isn’t about vampires is basically impossible. Like, some of them can read minds and some can’t, but most of that stuff about being scared of crosses and garlic and sleeping in coffins was invented by writers a hundred and fifty years ago. Garlic sales are still skyrocketing, though.

I’m just finishing my Coke when I notice a guy standing around at the back of the stage. He’s pale, with a long, angular face. His dark hair is kind of an elegant mess, and he’s wearing a moth-eaten suit. It’s a more authentic goth look than most of the guys in the place have.

“Who’s that guy?” I ask. “Is he in the band?”

“I don’t know,” says Sadie. “He’s kinda cute.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe he’s managing the band or something.”

“Would you give them a good review if he made out with you?”

“Hell no. But he’s welcome to find that out the hard way.”

And just so you know, it’s not like I’m a slut or anything. I don’t go around hooking up with every guy I meet at the Cage. But the fact that I try not to date local guys—especially considering I’m about to move—doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. Because I do. A lot, honestly. Making fun of idiots who hit on me can kind of help me keep it in check, but even I can’t fight hormones that well.

Eight-thirty rolls around and the band is still setting up. A bunch of girls who saw Will save me from the perils of opening my own can of pop wander by and give me dirty looks, and I just grin. Three more months and I’ll never have to see a single one of them again. I should make one of those paper chains like kids make before Christmas and tear off one link every day until it’s time to go away to Seattle.

“They’d better get started,” Sadie says. “Trinity wanted the review by nine, right?”

“I only have a couple lines left to add,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”

Finally, at a quarter till nine, the band starts up, giving me exactly fifteen minutes to write my review.

Nat is a nice guy. I have nothing against him. But his guitar skills are definitely not beyond the “advanced beginner” level. His singing isn’t too bad, but when the band joins in behind him, they don’t quite play along with him, exactly. It doesn’t seem like they’re all playing the same song. Will, especially, seems like he’s playing the wrong song.

The first song turns out to be a slow jam on “Margaritaville,” by Jimmy Buffet. The band’s goth look is totally wrong for that song. Like, hilariously wrong. And I’ve never cared much for the song, anyway. It’s like, a bar-band cliché. Not that anyone minds—no one’s paying attention to the music.

Most of them never really listen to music. Practically no one actually does. Even at concerts people pay good money for, instead of a three-dollar cover charge, they talk through the whole thing. I feel sorry for them, since none of them understand what it’s like to have a song just get into your soul and become your whole world. They don’t know what it’s like when a song changes your life. They’ve never felt the way I did the first time I heard the Ramones sing “I Don’t Want to Live This Life,” and they’ll never understand why I cry (in a good way) when I listen to Neutral Milk Hotel. The people in the crowd might recognize a Cole Porter song that’s been in a commercial or something, but they wouldn’t recognize his name unless they saw the drama department put on Kiss Me Kate and bothered to read the program. They may drive nice cars and live in big houses in gated subdivisions named after trees, but these kids are deprived.

“Margaritaville” turns into an extended, incompetent jam that drags on for ten agonizing minutes while I finish my review:

ON THE BEAT WITH ALLEY RHODES The SORRY MARIOS at the CAGE

The Sorry Marios, featuring Cornersville Trace High School’s own Nat Watson on acoustic guitar and local vampire Wilhelm Tepes on drums, played the Cage on Friday night, opening with an extended jam on “Margaritaville.” Did anyone else who was there find it odd to see a teenage band playing a song about margaritas to a room where the only person who could drink legally was Wilhelm? Not that legality mattered; half the people there were drunk when they showed up. Maybe they figured, in a rare show of wisdom, that the music would be a lot easier to sit through if they were loaded.

Seeing a vampire drummer was an exciting prospect, but those who believed vampires had some sort of otherworldly musical talent were surely disappointed. Will could play the drums, all right, but he didn’t always seem to be playing the right song. Some people are said to be marching to a different drummer. Well, Will seemed to be drumming to a different marcher. Nat does have a good voice, though, and plenty of potential—if he gets a new backing band.

For the record, my reviews aren’t always this mean. It’s like, constructive criticism. If Nat wants to make it as a musician, he needs to know what he has to work on if he wants to take things to the next level without embarrassing himself, right?

The first song isn’t even over when I hit Send.

3

Once the review is sent, I could get up and leave, but if anyone saw me leave, they’d know I didn’t stay for the whole show, which would make me look really unprofessional. I have to stick around for at least half an hour.

I look over at Sadie, who cringes. I cringe back. But then I turn away and force my attention onto the pale goth guy in the moth-eaten suit who’s been hanging around the back of the stage. He’s actually not bad-looking at all. Maybe he’s the kind of guy I could have some fun with while Dad is at the scrapbooking store. Just looking at him makes me realize it’s been a while. Not that hookups make me less lonely in the long run, but they make me less lonely for the afternoon, at least.

Nat steps to the microphone. “All right, everybody,” he says. “Thanks for, uh, coming out and supporting us. We’d like to bring up a guy who’s sort of a part-time member. This is Doug, from West Des Moines. We used to be in plays together down at the Playhouse. And now he’s gonna come sing a couple of songs.”

Nat steps away and the pale guy who’s been hanging out behind the stage walks up to the mike.

“Thanks,” Doug says. He has an interesting voice, low and breathy, kind of like Leonard Cohen, a really great poet/songwriter who, I’m sure, he’s never heard of. No one around here has heard of him, though they at least know his song “Hallelujah” because it was in Shrek and on American Idol and every TV drama known to man.

They start playing a basic punk beat (badly, I might add), and Doug the Goth mutters, “My story’s much too sad to be told, but nearly everything leaves me totally cold,” into the mike, then starts singing.

“I get no kick from champagne …”

There are certain words we can’t use in the school paper, so we made up ridiculous substitutes, like “shlabotnik.”

All I can think right now is “Holy shlabotnik.”

He’s singing “I Get a Kick out of You.” By Cole Porter.

And I can tell from the first line that Doug actually understands the song. He understands that it isn’t a happy song, like most people think: it’s a miserable song about how your only chance at not being miserable is this one person you have a crush on—even though that person doesn’t like you back. The way Doug is singing (well, not singing so much as whispering and muttering, like he’s in pain) makes it clear that he knows the song really well. His voice isn’t a Broadway voice; it’s that Tom Waits or Bob Dylan type of voice that may be kind of rough but makes it sound like every word he’s singing is real.

Yes. I definitely need to take this guy to my room sometime. Soon.

Then, in the second verse, he actually sings the line about cocaine. When Porter first wrote the song for the show Anything Goes, the first line of verse two was “Some get a kick from cocaine.” But people usually water it down by changing it to “Some like that perfume from Spain” (lame). But he sings the real line.

I look over at Sadie with my eyes wide, and she just grins.

After the bridge, he changes one line in the third verse—the line about “I get no kick on a plane.” Normally, I’d be against rewriting Porter under any circumstance, but I suppose this is fair enough, since no one gets a kick on a plane anymore. I can’t quite make out what he sings instead; it sounds like “I get no kick eating brains,” but that can’t be right.

Whatever it is, I suddenly feel like my heart is beating to the rhythm of the song. That feeling that probably no one else in the room ever gets from music? I’ve got it. It’s like everything in the world except me, the singer and the song has just turned into the static between stations on a cheap car radio. I have never felt this way about a singer at the Cage. Not even close.

The song winds to a close and I’m so surprised by what I’ve just seen that I can’t even move. Not until I see a hand waving in front of my face.

“Gonk?” asks Sadie. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“That song wasn’t half bad, honestly,” said Sadie. “Cole Porter, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “It was fine.”

“Oh my God!” says Sadie. “Let me see your eyes!”

She steps around and looks into my eyes, then starts laughing. “You’re totally smitten!” she sings, teasing me like we’re both in kindergarten.

“I am not!” I insist. “I just really like that song. And he did it right, too. Almost nobody does that. I have, like, fifteen versions of it on my iPod, and maybe two of them get it right.”

The band starts up, but it sounds like they aren’t all playing the same song again. Doug is motioning to them, trying to give them directions. Then he sort of gives up, steps back to the microphone and sings the first line:

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel …”

Oh. My. God.

Holy shlabotnik again.

He does know who Leonard Cohen is. He’s singing one of his songs. And even though the band seems to be playing three different songs, none of which is the right one, he’s doing a pretty good job.

He gets to a line of the song about getting a certain … favor from a girl in a hotel room and all the douche-bag guys in black cheer. They don’t know that he’s singing about a girl who had been dead for a while when the song was written. They don’t care.

But as much as I’m almost ashamed to admit it, I’m imagining myself as the girl in the song. Not dead or anything, but, you know. In the hotel room with the singer.

I shake my head and try to get ahold of myself. This is not the way I think! I do not fall for guys like this!

I wander away from our seat over to a spot by the window, which is all fogged up, and draw a picture of the Seattle skyline in the fog with my finger. It’s an easy skyline—just a bunch of normal buildings, plus the Space Needle. Back in the 1960s Jim Morrison described it as “a 1930 version of twenty years in the future.” It still looks like that now. Drawing on the window distracts me for a second, but I can’t keep my attention away from Doug the Goth.

Who knew a singer like this could come out of West Des Moines? About the only famous singers from around here are Andy Williams and the guy from Slipknot.

And what in the heck is Doug doing playing in the Sorry Marios? He’s working way below his grade level here.

And no one in the room knows it but me.

They don’t know a thing about music.

The song ends and Doug says “Thanks” into the mike, then stumbles away. The band goes into a really bad Green Day cover, and I wander back over to Sadie.

“That was pretty awesome,” I say.

Sadie laughs at me. But before she can lay a brilliant zinger on me, Marie the Necrosexual stumbles up to our spot. She’s clearly wasted.

“Hey, you guys,” she slurs. “I still like vampires and all, but these guys suck!”

I’m snapped back to reality by the look on Marie’s face. I’ve seen it before, back when I was younger and my mom hadn’t quite outgrown her party-animal teen years.

“Oh, great,” I say. “She’s about to blow.”

“Yeah,” says Sadie. “She’s in that about-to-barf state. Is there a word for that?”

Marie wobbles a bit. She’s not quite there yet, but it’s coming.

“Nauseated?”

“No,” says Sadie. “Nauseated means you feel like you could barf. Is there a word for when you’re about to?”

“Not in English,” I say. “It’s probably one of those things where there’s a Yiddish word for it, but not an English one.”

I really should have paid more attention at Jewish summer camp, like Sadie did, instead of focusing all my energy on prank wars and flirting.

“Yeah,” says Sadie. “It’s probably something like ‘verblecht.’”

“That’s what she is,” I agree. “She’s verblecht.”

“Yeah,” Marie slurs. “Tell Peter that one. I’m verblecht!”

“Let’s get her out of here,” says Sadie.

I close my laptop and tell Eddie to keep an eye on it, and Sadie and I lead her through the crowd and out into the parking lot. Through the window, I can hear the band slogging their way through the last verse of “Time of Your Life.” Nat is singing in a bad key for him. If I was still writing the review, maybe I would say, “I felt like giving Nat a chair to stand on so he could have a better chance of reaching the high notes.”

But then again, even I’m not that big of a jerk. I say stuff like that in my column, and Peter’s column, all the time, but at least I don’t name names.

Marie ralphs into the bushes while Sadie holds her hair, and I wander back up to look at the band through the window, just on the off chance that Doug is singing again, but when the song ends, Nat announces that they’re going to take a short break. While Marie recovers, Sadie comes back over to me.

“Smitten!” says Sadie.

“That guy knows Leonard Cohen and Cole Porter!” I say. “What the hell is he doing in a band like this one?”

“You’re past smitten!” says Sadie. “You’re versmote!”

I wander back in to pick up my laptop from the bar, and maybe ask Doug his last name. That’s all I want to know. I want to Google him and see if he’s been in some other band or something. After I know his name, I will walk out of the Cage and go back to just waiting to move to a city with more datable guys. He’s probably got a girlfriend anyway. Singers usually do.

But when we get in, all the girls are crowded around Will on the other side of the room. Doug is sitting right in my chair, in front of my closed laptop.

And all of a sudden, as we get closer to him, I start to get nervous. I have never been nervous around a guy before. What in the hell is wrong with me?

“Hi!” says Sadie to Doug, cheerfully. “We’re from the press, and we need some information about you. You live in West Des Moines, right?”

Doug looks at her for a second, then mutters, “Sort of. I don’t really live there, exactly.” At least, I think that’s what he says. He talks the way he sings—in a low voice like a whisper. Very quiet.

“Why did you only do two songs?” I ask.

He sort of points at his throat, like he’s telling me it hurts. Sadie opens my laptop and pulls up a word processing program. “Just type it,” she says.

He starts slowly typing something out. On the one hand, I’m annoyed that Sadie has taken it on herself to let anyone touch my computer. It’s a part of me, like a diary. On the other hand, there’s this intimacy about letting the guy type on my laptop that’s kind of thrilling, in a way. I’ve never let a guy do that before.

He’s not a fast typer. He looks like he’s being very careful. Finally, he turns the screen to us so we can see what he wrote.

My throat isn’t in good shape. I can only do a couple of songs before I don’t have any voice left. I’m not really in the band. Nat just lets me sit in. Old friend.

So it’s health stuff, I guess. Allergies, maybe. That’s freaking tragic.

“Well, Doug,” says Sadie, “this is my friend Gonk.”

“Alley,” I say. “People call me Alley. It’s like, they’re both short for Algonquin, which is my whole name. So you can also call me Quinn, or Al. Only Sadie calls me Gonk. It’s her thing.”

He’s just looking at me. I’ve totally embarrassed myself, rambling on about my name. He must think I’m another dumb drunk girl. I almost want to buy a can of pop just so I can demonstrate that I know how to open them. He doesn’t even say hi. He just waves.

“Gonk was very impressed that you knew Cole Porter and Leonard Cohen,” says Sadie. “She thinks you’re pretty awesome.”

The dim lights probably cover the fact that I’m blushing.

“Not many people sing that song the right way,” I say before Sadie can embarrass me any further. “I mean, you not only got the cocaine line, you seemed like you knew what the song was about.”

He types out, “Nat understands it, too, even though he’s not so good at playing it. He’s a theater person. But I’ve been trying to explain music to Will for years. Hopeless.”

“Oh my God,” says Sadie. “You’ve known him for years?”

Doug nods.

“Are you a vampire, too?” asks Sadie.

I’m totally relieved when he shakes his head no.

“Well, that’s good,” says Sadie. “Because Gonk isn’t into vampires, but she’s totally into you, and I’m here to set the two of you up. Were you singing that Cole Porter song to anyone?”

He shakes his head again.

“So you’re single?” Sadie asks.

Doug nods, and I swear my heart sort of flutters. I always thought hearts only really did that if you were about to have a heart attack or something. You’re supposed to feel things in your brain, not your heart, right? I mean, that’s where I’ve always felt stuff before. Either my brain or my stomach. The heart thing is kind of new.

“Good,” says Sadie. “You and Gonk are perfect for each other. She’s a Cole Porter freak, and her dad probably has a Leonard Cohen scrapbook. You busy tomorrow night?”

Doug shakes his head, and Sadie takes the computer and types out my address.

“You have a car?” she asks.

Doug nods.

“Here’s where she lives,” she says, pointing to what she’s typed on the screen. “Can you pick her up tomorrow night at seven?”

Doug starts typing again and then shows me the screen:

You really want to go out?

I can’t say anything. I just smile. I nod a little and blush a lot.

Doug smiles and types that he’ll pick me up at seven.

I don’t remember a thing about the next several minutes. I remember we loaded Marie into Sadie’s car and took her to my house to clean her up, and I remember Sadie teasing me about how she knew I’d be knocked on my ass by a guy sooner or later, and that’s all.

When I get online, I find that Trinity’s already posted my review to the paper’s home page.

4

I have hooked up with guys before. I’ve even liked guys, in a way. Enough to make out with them, at least.

But I’ve never really been on an official “date.” I mean, who does that anymore? Who goes on “dates” or talks about “going steady” or whatever outside of, like, Archie comics? When I make out with a guy, we usually start out hanging around with a bunch of other people and then drift back to my place or a parking lot or someplace like that to work off some steam in private. I wouldn’t do that with a guy that I disliked or anything, but I’m pretty good about not letting my emotions get too involved in my conquests.

Rule #1 for me is never, ever date a guy from Cornersville Trace. Half the people in town want to live here forever; even moving ten miles away to downtown Des Moines would be too much for them. And if you try to tell most of them that this town is a dead end, they’ll say, “You know, we’re supposed to be getting a Red Lobster on Cedar Avenue soon.” We’ve been supposed to be getting a Red Lobster since I was about seven. People act like it’s going to make us a very cosmopolitan town, even though they got one in West Des Moines, out by Valley West Mall, years ago, and that sure didn’t turn into a big city.

But they did at least get to be enough of a town for someone like Doug to come out of there. Even though he said he didn’t exactly live there. He probably lives in Clive or Windsor Heights, the two tiny suburbs right next to West Des Moines. Everyone tends to forget those towns exist, so people who live in them usually just say they’re from West Des Moines.

But anyway, the idea of living here any longer than I have to has always been so unappealing that I’ve just kept all my emotions in check to ensure that I don’t get tied down to a guy here. Froze them in ice, like. To be totally honest, all of my making fun of guys and couples and the whole dating scene at lunch is just, like, a defense mechanism. Something to keep me from feeling lonely. Something to keep me from being bothered by the fact that no one asked me to prom (even though of course I want to go). And anyway, I’m part of the Vicious Circle, damn it, and I have to be snarky.

So I’ve really never felt the way I feel when I wake up Saturday morning. Excited that I get to talk to Doug more and get to know him better and see what makes him tick. Maybe (probably, if I have anything to say about it) see if he’s a good kisser. And I’ve never, ever been so afraid that something I wrote for the paper will bother someone.

Sadie shows up at three to help me get ready. I had no idea getting ready for a date was the sort of thing that was supposed to take four hours, but then again, the date is all I can think about, so I figure I might as well spend my time preparing for it. After some debate, we play it safe and go with a vaguely goth look: a black velvet shirt and skinny black Audrey pants. It’s casual, elegant, and dark enough that I could pass for a goth. Maybe not one of the genuine “so goth I tag the walls with a fountain pen” types, but at least a goth sympathizer. I mean, I know guys don’t think about this stuff much, but if he happens to catch a glimpse of us in the mirror somewhere, I want him to notice that we look good together.

At seven, Doug arrives in his car, which is an old, beat-up Dodge. Powder blue, which means it has to be from the 1970s. I’m waiting at the front porch so we don’t have to go through the whole “meet the parents” routine. I’ve never been through it before, but the very idea is enough to make me feel … well, verblecht. Dad will probably try to talk about football (about which he knows even less than I do) and Mom will give him a little speech about responsibility and respect, and I will curl up into a ball and die. I’ll die again when Mom subtly implies that she thinks we’re not really going to dinner, we’re going to some sort of heavy-metal vomit party. That was how she spent her teenage years, along with a good chunk of her twenties, and I think she believes that I’m secretly out partying all the time and that she needs to give me the occasional boring speech about moderation and safety when I just want to get out of the damn house.

So when the car pulls up, I simply step out onto the porch and start walking down the driveway. Doug is wearing the same suit he was wearing last night, and the same goth makeup, from the looks of it, only it’s blended in so well that I’m not even sure it is makeup. Maybe whatever health thing he has makes his skin look weird.

“Hi!” I say.

He waves back, smiles and opens the front door on the passenger side for me. Normally, if a guy did that I’d roll my eyes and ask if he thinks I’m a poor helpless damsel who can’t operate a door, but this time … it’s different. I feel pampered. It’s kind of nice.

Inside his car, there’s a weird smell that I can’t quite place and choose to ignore, and a really ornate dashboard. I mean, like, if Queen Victoria had driven a powder blue Dodge, this is what her dashboard would have looked like. It’s obviously not the car’s original dash—it’s wooden, and has lots of intricate designs carved into it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“Cool dash,” I say.

Doug climbs into the driver’s seat and smiles. “Thanks,” he says. “I made it myself.”

“No kidding?” I ask. “This looks like super-advanced woodworking.”

He shrugs. “It’s a frame I carved and decorated to cover the regular dash,” he says. “Sometimes I just have to build something. I can’t explain it.”

“That’s one of the typical guy stereotypes I don’t mind so much,” I say.

“We don’t have many good ones,” he says. “Grunting, being smelly, being obsessed with sports, sex and violence, all of that. At least this one is productive and creative.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But seriously, most guys are like that.”

“I used to be about like that myself,” he says. “I’ve gotten a bit better, but I still like to work with my hands. I also still smell most of the time.”

If this was any other guy, I’d probably stop him right there. I’d say, “I can think of a few things for your hands to work on,” and then move straight into having him do exactly what I have in mind. But this time, I’m taking it slow. Slower, anyway.

I’m just about to ask what changed him when I notice the stereo. It’s a tape player.

“Whoa!” I say. “Is that an antique?”

“I guess so,” Doug whispers. “It came with the car.”

“Do you actually still have tapes?”

“Nah,” he says. “There’s an adaptor.” He plugs a thing that looks like a cassette into the tape deck. It has a wire running out of it into an iPod, and one of those portable CD players is sitting between the seats.

He fires up the iPod. “This is the Alley playlist,” he says, with kind of a nervous smile. The first song up is “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

Cole Porter.

There is no better way to show you have class than Cole Porter. One Cole Porter song can turn a beat-up, weird-smelling powder blue Dodge into the classiest car in the world.

I have this voice in my head begging me to say something snarky about his suit, or the smell, or something. Anything to make sure the date is a flop, so I don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to do something stupid to screw this up, so every instinct in my body is telling me to do something mean to scare him off. But I keep myself in check. It’s only fair. Plus, he’s hot. No point scaring him off without at least making out with him first, right?

We don’t say too much as Doug drives up to Eighty-sixth Street; we just listen to the music.

“Sorry if I don’t talk too much,” he says. “It’s hard for me.”

“But you’re a really good singer,” I say.

He smiles—he has an awesome smile. “Thanks,” he says. “But I can only do two or three songs a night before I’m worn out. I even have to pace myself when I’m just talking.”

“Is it allergies?” I ask.

“Something like that.”

We drive along a bit more. The playlist turns out to be a mix of Cole Porter and Leonard Cohen, plus a few other songs. There’s a Joni Mitchell track. How did he even know I like her?

We drive out of Cornersville Trace and right through West Des Moines, onto the interstate and into the city itself. Des Moines is not exactly a towering metropolis, but we do have a couple of skyscrapers and a few good restaurants and coffee shops, and more of them are opening in the west end all the time. There are two or three blocks where you can trick yourself into thinking you’re in a really big city.

Doug parallel-parks like a pro outside of a place called the Noir Café, which is a little bistro that looks like it’s in someone’s house. I think it used to be called just Le Café before the whole goth thing. I’ve heard about the place; it’s more popular with the real Goths, the ones who would still be goths even if this wasn’t the post-human era, than it is with the preps-in-capes crowd, who I guess still hang out wherever it is that preps hang out.

Inside, I feel like I’ve been transported back in time. It’s not like the Cage, which is obviously just a regular bar and grill with cobwebs in it. This place looks like a Victorian mansion. I don’t feel like I’m in Iowa at all.

The hostess recognizes Doug and leads us to a quiet corner booth, and I feel like a movie star.

“You take dates here a lot?” I tease.

He smiles shyly. “I don’t date much.”

“Neither do I,” I say. “There’s not much of a pool of datable guys in this town.”

“Or datable girls,” he breathes.

“Fair enough,” I say. “You do the goth thing a lot better than most of the guys, though. Most of them are just jocks trying to pick up girls who like vampires.”

“You aren’t into that vampire stuff?” he asks.

“Nah,” I say. “All the vampires I know are dicks.”

“Tsk, tsk,” he says. “Stereotypes.”

“Well, it’s true. I mean, no offense to Will.”

“Oh, well, he is a dick,” says Doug. “But I really wanted to sing with a band. Even if he was in it. I heard girls like guys who are in bands.”

He smiles a little, and I smile back.

A waitress brings out some coffee (iced for Doug, hot for me) and Doug suddenly looks nervous.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I don’t want you to think I’m a drunk or something,” he says as he pulls a flask of something out of the inside pocket of his suit. “It’s just medicine. I have to drink this stuff every four hours.”

“Even during the night?”

He nods.

“So you never get to sleep a full eight hours?”

He shakes his head sadly as he starts to pour a bit of the stuff from the flask into the coffee. It smells a bit like the car. “I tried to invent something that would automatically pour some down my throat in the night, but it didn’t work well enough that I could count on it. And I couldn’t count on myself to swallow it in my sleep.”

“Oh my God, that’s tragic!” I say.

He shrugs. “Just my cross to bear.”

“It’s not just allergies, is it?” I ask.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “But I’m not going to die of it or anything, as long as I keep taking this stuff. And it’s not contagious or anything, so don’t worry.”

He takes a sip of the coffee and cringes.

“Does it taste bad?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t taste much, honestly,” he said. “My taste buds aren’t what they used to be.”

Something about all this sort of triggers a mother instinct in me or something—I just want to cuddle up to him and say that everything will be okay. Suddenly, the vampire thing makes a little more sense to me. There really is something hot about guys with tragic stories.

His eyes, I notice for the first time, have this glazed, world-weary look. Seventeen and already world-weary. Wilhelm and Friedrich, the vampires, don’t look that jaded, and they’re like two hundred years old, at least. Obviously, this guy is deep.

“So,” he says, “what did you say in the review?”

I was hoping he wouldn’t ask that. But I don’t have a lie thought up, and anyway, I know he’ll see it sooner or later.

“It wasn’t a good review,” I say. “I just wrote about the band. Not the special guest.”

I don’t mention that I actually sent it in before he sang a note. I don’t really want to admit that.

He takes another sip of his coffee-and-medicine cocktail. “Well,” he says slowly, “that’s understandable. I know the band sucks. It’s just the only one in town that would let me sing.”

“You can do better,” I say.

He gets a sort of mischievous grin.

“What would you have said about me, if you were writing about the special guest?” he asks.

I think. “Well,” I say nervously, “I think I would have started by saying that the part-time member of the band from West Des Moines was the best-looking guy in the group.”

He smiles shyly, and I keep going.

“Then I would have said he had a more convincing goth look than anyone, even the vampire. He really had the look of a corpse that just crawled out of the grave. And I mean that as a compliment. His throaty whisper betrayed a world-weariness beyond his years, but sounded absolutely genuine.”

He’s really smiling now, and I know I have him.

“Anything else?”

“I’d say that the measure of a good singer isn’t how strong his voice is, or how pretty it is, but whether he sounds like he really understands the songs he’s singing. Doug, special guest of the Sorry Marios, picked two songs that few guys in town have ever heard, let alone understand, but it’s clear from the first note that Doug understands every word. He’s going to be a rock star for sure.”

“Thanks,” he says.

“It’s true,” I insist. “You could totally be a star.”

“Nah,” he says sadly. “Not me.”

“Yes you will,” I argue. “Maybe not, like, multiplatinum, but you’ll be critically acclaimed, at least.”

“Rock stars have to sing more than two songs per night,” he says.

My heart sinks. Not out of disappointment for myself, but for him. He’s right, of course.

“You could record an album, though,” I say. “You don’t need to sing more than a couple of songs a day to do an album.”

“I guess so,” he says. “Maybe someday.”

“I’ll help you,” I say. “I’m going to make you a star. Not playing live much will be part of your mystique.”

He smiles a little. “So that’s what this is about?” he asks. “Riding my coattails to fame and glory?”

I can’t tell if he’s teasing or not, but I decide to assume he isn’t, just to be on the safe side.

“No,” I tell him. “That’s not why I’m going out with you. I just like you.”

I smile.

He smiles back.

I move my hand over so it’s right on top of his, not just up against it, and lean over. He suddenly looks really nervous.

“There’re a lot of things I can’t do,” he says. “With my … health.”

“Well,” I say, “can you kiss girls?”

He nods, and I lean over and give him our first kiss. Whatever it is that he has makes his mouth cold and dry, and I can taste the medicine on him, but he leans into the kiss.

If you really like someone, it doesn’t matter what their mouth feels or tastes like. The kiss is still awesome.

The whole rest of the night is a bit of a blur.

It’s the same feeling I got the first time I heard the harmonica solo on “Oh Yoko” by John Lennon. The song is already ecstatically happy, but when the harmonica comes in, it sounds like pure, wild happiness distilled perfectly into a few seconds of music.

One date, and I’ve got “Head Over Heels” by Tears for Fears playing in my head on an endless loop.

5

The next morning, I wake up terrified. What if I’m coming on too strong? What if he thinks I’m some kind of freak? What if he’s lying in bed thinking, “I never should have made a playlist for that girl, now I’ll never get rid of her”?

Then I pick up my phone. Three text messages.

The first is from Sadie: “HOW DID IT GO?”

The second is from her, too: “WELLLL?????”

And the third is from him: “Second date?”

I immediately text him back: “Hell yeah!”

Then I collapse on my bed and enjoy that “butterflies in the stomach” feeling. I’ve felt the butterflies before from time to time, but this is the first time I haven’t sort of wanted to attack them with a flyswatter.

I wander (well, skip) downstairs just after noon and find my parents at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and eating donuts. My mom’s reading a financial magazine while Dad works on his new book. He wrote one called Music Scrapbooking Ideas—he’s kind of a pioneer in the field of scrapbooking for men and hipsters. His book sold well enough that now he’s working on a follow-up called (get this) MORE Music Scrapbooking Ideas.

I always thought it was kind of lame, but this morning I can’t help but imagine being Mom’s age and making a music scrapbook with Doug.

After one date! What kind of an idiot am I? I’m not one of those girls, like Michelle and Marie and all the other great thinkers of our day. But suddenly, I sort of have an idea of why girls like that are the way they are. I still think they’re idiots, but at least I understand where they’re coming from. How can you not want to feel like this all the time?

Sadie texts me three more times before I finally call her back.

“Well?” she asks.

“It was great,” I say. “He made me a playlist and we went to the Noir Café.”

“Fan-cy,” she says. “What’s he like?”

“He’s awesome,” I say. “And I feel so bad for him. He’s got some disease that keeps him from being able to sing or talk much, and he has to take medicine every four hours.”

“Oh God,” she says. “What disease is it?”

“I didn’t ask,” I gush. “He seemed kind of embarrassed by it.”

“Hot,” says Sadie. “An embarrassing disease. Unless it’s like, an STD or something.”

“I don’t think it is,” I say. “I mean, he said it isn’t contagious. Aren’t all STDs contagious, like, by definition?”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I think so.”

“So whatever it is, he has to take medicine for it every four hours, it makes his throat kind of weak, and I think it makes his skin look kind of weird.”

“Was he wearing the same kind of goth makeup as on Friday?”

“Yeah,” I say, “but I don’t even think it’s makeup. He just looks like that ’cause of the disease.”

“Maybe he has a spastic colon,” Sadie muses thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that turn people weird colors?”

“Ew,” I say.

“Big Daddy has a spastic colon,” she says in a fake Southern accent. “That’s why he’s all yella.” She’s quoting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Tennessee Williams, of course.

“You think that’s it?”

“That would explain why he seemed embarrassed,” she says. “No one wants to talk about their colon on the first date.”

“But he’s not yellow,” I say. “He’s kind of gray.”

“Weird,” she says. “But I bet it’s some kind of gross digestive thing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But still. It just, like … makes me want to hug him and make it all better. Is that, like, unfeminist of me, or something?”

She laughs again. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Not if it makes you happy.”

I collapse onto my bed and just enjoy the butterflies again, even though they frankly scare the hell out of me. I’m not the kind of girl who wants to hug guys and make them feel all better! I’m the kind of girl who makes out with guys and sends them on their way so I can say funny things about them that will end up in Peter’s column!

A long time ago, Trinity and I made a list of types of guys you should never date. We add to it every now and then. It includes things like never date a guy whose computer costs more than his car (you’ll never get him to pay attention to you except over instant messages), never date a guy who has a pet lizard (he’s probably into weird stuff in bed) and never under any circumstances go on a second date with a guy who says the word “married” on the first date (he’ll turn out to be a mama’s boy or a religious type).

Doug didn’t do any of those, but I can think of a bunch of ways he would fit into the list. He drives a powder blue car, the kind of car that has “drugged-up loser who works at the Jiffy Lube and is obsessed with heavy metal” written all over it. He has that weird smell—which could mean a lot of things, though in his case I know it’s from medicine. And he wore the same suit two days in a row. Guys who do that usually have some sort of irritating political reason for not changing clothes or bathing every day.

But looking back, wasn’t the whole point of that list to make us feel better about not dating anyone? Trinity hasn’t added anything to it since she started dating Troy, a lame guy who works at Wackfords, the corporate coffee shop on Cedar Avenue, and wears sandals in the winter. He’s violated the list nine different ways (I counted), and she still seems happy with him. Isn’t it generally known that you have to overlook flaws in people you date, to some extent? I mean, you expect them to overlook your flaws. It’s only fair that you overlook some of theirs.

“So, how did it end?” Sadie asks. “Did you act out that Leonard Cohen song he sang?”

“No!” I say. “And that song’s about a dead girl, anyway.”

“Really?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s about an affair he had with Janis Joplin.”

“Wow,” she says. “You can be Janis Joplin to his Leonard Cohen.”

“I’m rolling my eyes right now,” I say. “So far back into my head that I can see my frontal lobe.”

But I’m not. I’ve pictured that a lot. Him as Leonard Cohen and me as Janis Joplin. Not just acting out the song, but being that kind of couple. The kind that creates beautiful music, so beautiful that in fifty years there will be a movie called Doug and Alley: A Love Story about how we changed popular culture forever. Janis and Leonard weren’t like that—I think it was just a short affair that no one even knew about until way after she died—but you get the idea. We could be what they could have been.

“So, do I need to find a date for prom, or what?” she asks. “Are you going with him instead of going with me to just make fun of stuff?”

“No offense, because I was looking forward to going with you, but I hope so,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll get a date, too.”

“What if he doesn’t ask me?”

“Then you can tag along with us anyway,” says Sadie. “And we still have to shop for our dresses regardless. You wanna hit the mall?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. And I’ll bet you ten bucks I have a date by then.”

“You’re on.”

Well, that’s a bit of pressure. I mean, going to prom with just Sadie and some other single people to make fun of things would be okay, but I don’t see how tagging along on a date wouldn’t make me feel like a pathetic third wheel.

Sure enough, when she arrives twenty minutes later, she already has a date lined up.

“With who?” I ask.

“Peter,” she says with a shrug.

“Peter’s gay,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “He’s as close to Tennessee Williams as I can get on short notice.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Even if Doug doesn’t ask me to prom and I end up tagging along, I won’t be tagging along on a real romantic date or anything.

“You’re insane,” I say.

“You should talk!” she says. “And it’s not like Peter isn’t good-looking.”

“True.”

We drive off toward the mall. I haven’t been there in ages. I buy most of my clothes online or in the thrift stores around Drake University and Grandview College. Hanging around at the mall sort of lost its appeal for me as soon as I got a license and could drive myself anywhere better.

As a matter of fact, when we step inside, I realize that I haven’t really been there at all since the whole goth thing took off. There were always a handful of goths hanging around the food court, but this is the first time I’ve seen goths at the sporting goods store.

What’s really weird is that it’s practically empty. I guess ever since all the strip malls sprouted up like weeds and that giant new mall opened in West Des Moines, no one wants to go to this one anymore. There’s just, like, a cluster of goths here and there, almost like rival gangs (as if gangs hadn’t been played out since the early nineties), plus some moms out with young kids, avoiding the goths. Maybe hanging out at the mall has just gone out of style, along with gangs.

There are several types of goth groups hanging around. They all look about the same, since they’re all just wearing black, but the sporting-goods-store goths are acting like jackasses, knocking each other’s hats off and probably farting out loud, the country goths are wearing bigger belt buckles than the others and the “real” goths are huddled up against the wall over by the ATM. The food-court goths are drinking cans of Dr Pepper and eating chili fries, possibly because they look like bloody guts.

We’re just about to head into a dress shop when one of the groups starts moving toward us. Only this is no ordinary gaggle of goths: it’s Will and his clan.

“Alley,” Will says.

“Hey, man,” I say casually.

He just glares at me.

“Read the review, eh?” I ask.

He glares harder, which sort of confirms it.

“Well, I was a little hasty, to be honest,” I say. “The other singer was fantastic.”

“Doug is not an official part of the band,” says Will solemnly. “And you have offended my clan.”

“Oh, deal with it,” I say. “What are you gonna do? Bite my neck?”

He glares harder—he’s a lot better at glaring than he is at drumming. Some vampires don’t mind jokes about sleeping in coffins or biting necks or any of the other stuff they only do in movies (at least since they discovered the vegetable compound back in the Civil War days), but others get pretty offended. Obviously, Will is one of the latter group.

“You are making a mistake with your affections,” he says.

“Jesus,” I say. “You’ve been in America since before my parents were born, and you still talk like a German guy who just learned English from watching the BBC!”

“You can’t blame him,” Sadie chuckles. “It works on all the other girls.”

“When a girl turns down your advances, the polite thing to do is just move on,” I tell him.

“For the news travels fast,” he says ominously, like he’s telling me some big secret. “Of your affections.”

One of the others in the clan says, “He means we all know about you and Doug Benchley.”

“Oh,” I say.

This makes me a bit nervous—how do they know? Did they do some kind of vampire spying thing?

“You are making a mistake,” he says again.

“I can take care of myself,” I say. “Remember how I can open up a can of Coke all by myself?”

“I’ve even seen her open bottles,” says Sadie. “And a pickle jar, once.”

“I have waited to find you, you know,” he says. “I have waited all my years for a girl just like you.”

“You can wait a little while longer, then,” I say.

Sometimes I think vampires have spent centuries just honing their pickup lines. But I’m immune to pickup lines.

Will just shakes his head and goes back to glaring at me. Even when he turns to look at the others who are there with him, I can still feel his eyes on me. When a vampire glares at you, man, you stay glared at.

And the group starts to move on.

“Your boyfriend is dead,” he hisses at me as he walks past.

The group moves away from us and heads over to the poster shop.

“Oh, shlabotnik,” I say. “Is he saying he’s going to beat up on Doug?”

For just a second, I get scared. I don’t want anything to happen to Doug.

“Kinda sounds like it,” says Sadie. “He can’t do that, though.”

“Why not?” I ask. “I mean, vampires can lift, like, fifty times their own weight. I know they haven’t killed anyone in about a hundred years, but it’s not like they signed a treaty!”

“Yeah they did,” says Sadie. “If a vampire attacks a human, they get brought to trial by the Vampire Council of Elders. They actually signed a treaty, too. It was part of the agreement when the government agreed to leave them to their own affairs.”

“I’m still gonna tell Doug to watch out,” I say. “I mean, a treaty’s probably only as good as the paper it’s printed on.”

“It’ll be fine,” says Sadie. “He’s just acting all tough. If that Council of Elders finds him guilty of attacking anyone, they’ll rip him to shreds. Literally.”

And so we get back to shopping. We end up finding some awesome black dresses at Hot Topic, which used to be a normal-sized mall store but is now one of the anchor stores, like Sears. They’ve really expanded in the post-human era. I pick out a vintage-looking red and black ball gown; it looks sort of like something Trinity would wear, only she’d cover it with safety pins and punk-rock buttons and stuff.

I want to send Doug a picture of it over my phone, but I decide to just surprise him. I can’t believe how girly I’m getting about all this stuff (assuming he takes me to prom in the first place). It doesn’t feel like me. In fact, it almost seems like Alley the Ice Queen is just a girl I used to know but haven’t heard from in a while. It’s a weird feeling, but not really a bad one. The idea of changing is always scary, but once it happens, sometimes it’s not so bad. It just feels natural. And all this after one date!

There’s only one explanation: Doug is awesome.

As Sadie and I are heading home, I send him a “thinking of you” text.

Five minutes later, shortly after I get to my room, he texts back with: “Dinner tonight?”

I text back “7?” and start digging through my closet, trying to find something cute yet sophisticated.

6

The sun is just setting over Towson Street when Doug’s car pulls up. This time, both of my parents are pretending not to be waiting by the front door, but I can see that they are. I never should have told them I was going out with a guy instead of staying home. I should have just told them I was going to hang out with Sadie.

“Are you going to introduce us?” Dad asks.

“No,” I say.

“You know, there was a time when meeting the parents was something a boy had to do before a date,” says Dad.

“Hate to tell you, Dad,” I say, “but if any guy ever asks your permission to marry me, I’m telling him no when he asks me.”

“Attagirl,” says Mom.

“Hey,” says Dad. “It’s not like I’m trying to be all old-fashioned or anything. I want to meet this guy for entirely selfish reasons. I’m just curious.”

“Just promise you’ll call if either of you is too drunk to drive home,” says Mom. “Not that I want you to be drinking, but I was a teenager once. I know what goes on.”

“I know,” I say. “You were a teenager until you were, like, thirty.”

Mom blushes a bit. “Let it go, Alley,” she says.

She really was still in “college party animal” mode when I was a kid. And even now that she’s finally a responsible, smart, even cool adult 99 percent of the time, she still gets trashed about once a year when her old friends come over. It’s pretty embarrassing to watch.

I can see that Doug is getting out of the car and is about to walk up to the door, so I run out to his car before he gets far to save us all the “meet the parents” ritual. As soon as we’re safely in his car, I lean over and kiss him.

He kisses me back and smiles. That weird medicine taste is starting to get almost arousing—it’s kinda gross, but it also tastes like him.

I can only imagine all the things I would be saying at the lunch table about his smell if I didn’t like him. But even though a couple of brilliant zingers occur to me, I keep them to myself. It would just be mean. It always was mean, of course. Now I’m starting to feel bad about every joke I ever cracked about a guy who hit on me. Was it so wrong of them to try to start up a conversation with me, even if they did do a lousy job of it?

Doug’s wearing the same outfit he’s worn for the last two days. This sort of disturbs me for a second, and my mind immediately jumps right to making up jokes, but then I think, You know, goth gear isn’t exactly cheap. He probably can’t afford too many outfits. Maybe he feels like he has to stay in goth mode to impress me. It’s kind of sweet.

“Thought about you a lot today,” I say.

“You too,” he breathes. “Where do you want to eat?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Someplace downtown again?” I don’t tell him I want to be someplace where no one at school will see us. I have a reputation to hang on to. An image, in a way. Everyone has one, whether they like it or not. Even if people find out that Doug and I are hooking up somehow (and Will had better not have done some kind of sneaky vampire spying to find out), they can at least imagine that I’m spending all the dates subtly mocking him, like I do with every other guy I’m ever seen with. I’m not quite ready to let that image go. It’s been part of who I am for too long, I guess.

“I know a place,” he says. And we drive off toward the interstate, with the Alley playlist blaring just loudly enough that we can talk over it without having to shout.

“Is this the way you thought the world would be when you were in high school?” I ask, just making conversation.

He chuckles. “Getting closer. But up till the other day, not at all.”

“Me neither,” I say. “My uncle had this whole stack of Archie comics. I used to think being a teenager was all hanging out at the malt shop and going to the beach in a beat-up old car.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Pulling pranks on the teachers, accidentally getting two dates for Valentine’s Day … at least I’ve got the beat-up old car.” He looks off down the road almost wistfully.

“I’ll bet that malt shop in Archie’s neighborhood got driven out of town by major chains years ago, anyway,” I say.

“No one really gets the teenage life they dream about, do they?” asks Doug. “I mean, people who say it’s the best years of your life are probably pretty miserable as adults.”

“I sure hope so,” I say. “’Cause if this is as good as it gets, I want my money back.”

Until I was eleven, I honestly thought everyone in high school went out on dates every night. And that part-time jobs and babysitting paid enough that I’d be able to afford to buy most of the clothes in the fashion spreads in Seventeen, not just the shoelaces. I know a lot of crazy, psycho girls, and I think half of them got that way because their real life as a teenager falls so far short of what they believed it was supposed to be. They probably wouldn’t date Doug because of his health or the way his skin looks, because he doesn’t look like the imaginary boyfriend they’ve had since they were eight. They’d feel like they were “settling” for him and act all bitter about it.

But now, out on a date with him myself, I feel like I’m finally getting the teenage life I was promised by TV and magazines.

“One thing I can tell you,” he says as we cruise up Cedar Avenue, “I sure didn’t think I’d have to be taking medicine every four hours.”

“I’ll bet,” I say.

Then he pulls off the road and into a strip-mall parking lot.

“I hate to have to do this during a date,” he says, “but I need to pick up some more medicine.”

I look up. It’s Megamart. Even before they started bringing people back from the dead to work for them, this store basically closed half the businesses in town. It makes me almost wanna throw up a little just looking at it.

“You have to get it here?” I ask. “You don’t strike me as a Megamart type.”

“I don’t buy stuff from them,” he says. “I get it free. Part of a legal settlement.”

“I guess that’s okay,” I say. “It’s not like you’re supporting the business or anything.”

“Nah,” he says. “But I don’t blame you if you just want to wait in the car.”

“Okay,” I say.

Call me a snob, but I honestly don’t think I can set foot in that store. I’d feel gross the whole rest of the night, and not just because of that smell Megamart stores always have. I mean, it was the way Megamart was treating the dead that led vampires to go public after thousands of years. When that story first broke, Megamart had something like ten thousand zombie employees in Iowa alone working as slaves behind the scenes, sort of like undead Oompa-Loompas or something. None of them kept working there after the laws were changed; most of the zombies stopped doing whatever it took to keep them “alive” and sort of crumbled into dust shortly after the laws that freed them were passed.

But it’s still pretty well known that Megamart doesn’t treat their regular employees much better than they treated the dead ones.

While Doug is in there, I find the book of CDs sitting in his backseat and flip through it. Besides a Cole Porter “best of” disc and more original cast recordings than any other straight guy alive probably owns, there’s a whole section of Leonard Cohen, some Moldy Peaches, Nick Drake, the Pogues, Death Cab, Of Montreal, Tom Waits … all the stuff I’d expect a hipster to have (and none of which is in the pathetic excuse for a record section Megamart has). Good taste, but strangely, other than a copy of The Devil’s Bris by Voltaire, I really don’t see any goth. He doesn’t seem like the kind who’s just in it for fashion. I would have expected to at least see a few Cure, Cruxshadows or Bauhaus albums or something.

After a while, Doug comes out carrying an unlabeled box, which he loads into his trunk, and we’re back on Cedar Avenue and heading to the interstate. Des Moines has a small-enough metro area that we’re downtown in all of fifteen minutes, during which the iPod plays “Miss Otis Regrets” (awesome), “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Don’t Fence Me In” (which has never been high on my list, but now I kind of like it), all of which are by Cole Porter, and “Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen, which happens to be one of my favorite of his songs.

We don’t say too much; I know it gets hard for Doug to talk, and I don’t want to wear him out or anything. So mostly, we just ride and listen to the music with our hands touching until we’re in the heart of the city.

Doug parks in front of a little Italian place that I swear is right out of Lady and the Tramp. There are checkered tablecloths. The waiter talks in a thick accent. Just like at the Noir Café, I don’t feel like I’m in Iowa at all.

I slide into the booth, make sure my foot is on top of his and try to look as cute as humanly possible.

“So, tell me more about yourself,” I say. “Where do you live? What do your parents do?”

“I’m on my own,” he says. “My parents are in Florida.”

“On vacation?” I ask. What we can do with his parents out of town is not lost on me for one second.

“No, they moved there,” he says. “I never really got along with them anyway, so I stayed here.”

“You have your own place?” I ask. “Are you serious?”

He looks almost embarrassed. “It’s not much to look at,” he says. “I mean, it’s tiny, to start with. And there’s dirt everywhere.”

“But that’s so mature of you!” I say. “Living on your own and everything. I mean, you’re what, eighteen?”

“Seventeen.” All of a sudden, he looks really nervous, and I feel like I’m prying.

“If you don’t want to talk about this stuff, that’s okay,” I say.

He shrugs. “It’s complicated,” he says. “Some days I feel like I’m doing well. Other times I’m just falling apart, you know?”

“Totally,” I say. “Your health probably doesn’t help much.”

“It’s hell, if you want to know the truth of it,” he sighs. “I’m in pain, like, all the time. Every move I make hurts. Some days I can hardly walk. I just, like, lurch around.”

I almost say “I know the feeling,” but I stop myself.

I can’t imagine what it must like to be Doug, in pain all the time. I don’t know if I could do it. I just want to kiss him and make it all better. Or do anything to make it all better.

The waiter comes to take our order. I get spaghetti; Doug gets iced coffee and soup with an ice cube in it to cool it down. He tells me he can’t really do solids or hot stuff very often.

“That’s so sad!” I say. “You’re breaking my heart!”

“I’m used to it,” he says. “I don’t even really get hungry much. The medicine takes care of it.”

“Do you at least get to take any cool painkillers?”

He shakes his head. “They don’t do much for me anymore. There’s one thing I can take, but it’s hard to get.”

“Too expensive?” I ask.

He nods. “To start with.”

“You should move to England,” I say. “Or Canada, even. Health care is so much easier to get there.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d love to live in London.”

My heart flutters a bit more. There’s a chance that I won’t end up stuck in Iowa if the stars all keep lining up and I wrap my life around Doug’s. The drawbacks of being in a relationship just seem to be dropping away one by one.

But then he looks away kind of wistfully and says, “I don’t know if I can ever leave Des Moines, though. Moving would probably be impossible.”

I take a sip of water just to put a cup in front of my face in case I’m not doing a good-enough job of not looking disappointed.

But maybe I can work with this. After all, what’s the real point in moving to a bigger city, if it isn’t to find a bigger pool of datable guys? There are more reasons, of course, but I can’t think of them right now.

“Does it hurt to kiss me?” I ask.

He smiles a bit. “Yeah,” he says. “But it’s totally worth it.”

And he leans over and kisses me. It’s the first of about a million kisses over the course of the evening.

By the time we’re done eating, his voice is worn out to below a whisper, and if he was any other guy I’ve ever kissed, the rest of the evening would be one long, uncomfortable silence. But it’s almost like we’re talking with our eyes. We don’t go so far as to do the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti kiss, since Doug isn’t eating, but I wouldn’t feel totally embarrassed if we did.

And that’s when I start to think this might already be love. If you can even think about doing a spaghetti kiss without feeling like a dork, it kind of has to be.

I’ve probably heard about ten million love songs in my life. And sometimes I’ve found them really moving. But now I want to go home and listen to them all again, because I know they’re going to sound totally different.

I feel totally different. Like the person I was just a couple of days ago was someone else altogether.

Forget my reputation. What good is an image if it’s not who you are?

Back at the car, Doug takes a swig of his medicine, which helps him get his voice back.

“Hey, Doug,” I say as we start to drive away. “I think I’m going to start going by Gonk.”

“Gonk?”

“Yeah … the middle part of my name. Everyone at school knows Alley the Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle. That’s what they call our lunch table. The Vicious Circle.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“Well, the table is shaped like a circle, for one thing. The ‘vicious’ part is because we’re kind of jerks. There’s a column in the paper that’s just reports of us making fun of stuff all the time. I’ve never acted that way around you.”

“Well, thanks, I think,” says Doug.

“It’s hard,” I say. “I have, like, an instinct to say mean things about people. But I don’t want to be that person around you.”

“Gonk,” he says, like he’s trying the word out. “That’s a cool name. Sounds like a noise.”

“Gonk Rhodes,” I say out loud for the first time. “That’s who I am from now on.”

“Cool,” he says. “So, Gonk, I talked to Nat this afternoon.”

“Is he pissed about the review?”

“Nah, the band’s breaking up at the end of the summer anyway, when he goes to college. He only hired Will to get people to come to the show. He thought the review was funny.”

“Thank God,” I say.

“But he was telling me prom at Cornersville Trace is on Saturday.”

I feel the air getting sucked out of my lungs. Here it comes.

“True,” I say.

“I assume you have a date,” he says. He’s obviously nervous. It’s very cute.

“Nope,” I say. “Who wants to date an ice queen?”

“Can I volunteer?”

I grin. “If you want to take me, wild corpses couldn’t drag me away.”

“Sweet.”

I smile. He smiles. We’re both smiling so big that we don’t even talk, until he says, “They really call you an ice queen?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, would it offend you if we went for a dessert with ice cream in it?”

“Not at all.”

“I know the perfect place.”

He turns off the road we’re on, and I send Sadie a quick “he asked!” text, then put my phone in my pocket, feeling it buzz as she sends me a million responses that I’ll ignore until I get home.

Doug drives out of downtown, past the Playhouse on Forty-second and then onto Hickman, and a few minutes later we’re parked in front of Snookie’s Malt Shop. An actual, honest-to-God malt shop. Just like in Archie comics.

We share a chocolate malt, and I half expect him to give me his pin and ask me to “go steady.” Hell, I half expect to hear the sound of all the other girls at school singing a song about it off in the distance, like in Bye Bye Birdie or something. The drama department did that show one year and I felt like I was watching something from another planet, even though the story didn’t take place that long ago, really. I mean, it’s almost impossible to believe that people really lived like that before they were liberated by the Beatles in 1964.

But now I’m actually living it out.

And I hope it never ends.

Of course, if the real me—or the old me, I guess, Alley the Ice Queen—was in control of my head at this point, she would be shouting, “You idiot! This is all going to fall apart. No good will come of this!”

And she would be just about right.

7

I think the worst love song I’ve ever heard is called “Tammy’s in Love,” which is from a dumb but harmless 1950s movie (the class people had in the 1930s sort of dried up after World War II, if the way people act in movies is any indication). It has this line “The ole hootie owl hootie-hoos to the dove … Tammy’s in love.” Terrible. Or at least, I used to think so. Now that I know that the whole “going on dates to the malt shop with a guy you really like” thing actually exists, I’m starting to get it.

I wake up the next morning feeling like I want to hootie-hoo to the dove. And I don’t even feel like slapping myself upside the head for thinking it. Not really.

After a shower, I’ve calmed down a little. I used to think teenage relationships were for idiots. I didn’t feel bad about making fun of couples at the lunch table because I figured that if you were dumb enough to get into a “serious” relationship in high school, you sort of deserved it. Now I’m willing to admit that maybe some of what I thought about teenage relationships being for idiots was wrong, but I’m not willing to totally reverse my opinions. I mean, most of the couples at school are pairs of idiots. Fred and Michelle, for instance. Maybe I can be Alley part of the time and Gonk the other part. Would that, like, be a multiple personality disorder kind of thing?

Sadie and Trinity pick me up in Trinity’s Volvo station wagon, and they both see it in my face.

“Holy crap, Alley,” says Trinity. “Sadie told me you were versmitten or whatever that word was, but I’ve never seen you look like this!”

“Versmote,” Sadie corrects her. “We have got to work on your fake Yiddish.”

“Please, don’t let me turn into one of those girls who’s stuck so far up her boyfriend’s butt she can’t see out,” I say. “Make fun of me or something.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Trinity says. “They don’t call us the Vicious Circle for nothing.”

“We’ll show no mercy,” says Sadie. “I promise. But was the second date as good as the first?”

“Yeah,” I say. “We went to a malt shop.”

“A malt shop?” asks Trinity. “There’s one still around?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s sort of by Drake.”

“Dreamy,” says Sadie, with a chuckle. “Oh, Alley, how do you absolutely feel? In your deepest, secret soul?”

I just kinda blush. I know she’s making fun of me and that I frankly deserve it, but how I absolutely feel is great.

“Did you ever find out what’s wrong with him?” Trinity asks. “Sadie was telling me he’s kind of a mess.”

“He is,” I say. “He has to take this medicine every four hours, and he’s in pain, like, constantly. I just want to kiss him and make it all better!”

“It’s like, tragic,” says Sadie. “Which is totally hot.”

“And it gets worse,” I say. “His parents have practically abandoned him. He lives by himself.”

“He has his own place?” asks Trinity. “You’re living the dream!”

“Yeah,” I say, “but I think he’s kind of embarrassed by it. I’m almost afraid he might live in his car, or in a storage locker or something. He seemed really nervous when I suggested he take me back there.”

“Maybe it’s just performance anxiety,” Trinity suggests. “I mean, if he’s in pain all the time …”

“Yeah,” I say. “We’re going to have to find ways to work around that stuff. I mean, we can do that, right? Quadriplegics still get married and stuff. They make it work.”

“Sure,” says Trinity. “The guy can sing, and eat, and drive a car. He’s not totally immobile.”

“He’s a good kisser, to start with,” I say. “We can build from there.”

“And you can do plenty of experimenting if he has his own place!” says Trinity. “You won’t have to wait for your parents to go out, or waste your money down at Motel Six or risk getting a stiff neck in the backseat.”

“If I can get him to take me there. I offered to go last night, but he was a total gentleman.”

“Crap,” says Trinity. “That sucks.”

I didn’t offer to go back to his place, exactly. I basically threw myself at him at the end of the night. I’m not really that proud of it. I mean, maybe he wasn’t ready to go further than kissing (hard as it is to believe that any guy, anywhere, ever, isn’t). Plus, if it hurts to kiss me, how much must doing anything else hurt? We’ll have to take this slow. I guess that’s the benefit of dating someone with physical handicaps: you can’t rush into things.

But I kind of want to rush.

We pull in to school and sneak through the door that leads to the newspaper room; it’s kind of like our own private entrance. Ryan and Marie are already there, reading news blogs online. Ryan has a Web browser open to my review.

“Well played, Alley,” says Ryan. “You really nailed these guys.”

“I can vouch for it,” says Marie. “I was there.”

“Do you remember any of it?” I ask. “You were trashed!”

“I remember you talking to that zombie guy,” she says.

“Zombie?” I ask. “There weren’t any zombies there. You really were trashed!”

Marie frowns. “That guy who sang for the band on a song or something,” she says. “Wasn’t he a zombie?”

“No!” I say, a little offended. “He’s just a goth. And he’s a real goth, too, not one of those posers. Almost all the zombies crumbled after Megamart let them go. There aren’t any left around here.”

“There might be,” says Marie. “I mean, not all of them crumbled. And there are probably others that other people made. No one knows for sure.”

“No one knows how many zombies there are?” I ask.

“Well, no,” says Trinity. “It’s not like people file paperwork when they illegally raise the dead.”

“Crazy,” I say. “I thought they were almost all back to being dead full-time.”

“Anyway, that singer happens to be Alley’s new boyfriend,” Sadie says.

I blush a little as Ryan and Marie do the “Ooooh” thing.

“He’s the love of her life!” says Sadie, in a cute voice that makes me want to punch her a little.

“Shut up!” I say, even though I don’t totally disagree with her. “We’ve only been on two dates.”

“He made her a playlist!” says Sadie. “And they’re going to prom!”

Marie squeals. I blush more as she rushes up to ask me questions about my dress.

Ryan starts taking notes. I can see that he’s thinking up good one-liners to throw at me at lunch so Peter can put them in his column. Ryan’s probably the least funny person at the table, but he gets a good one in now and then.

I shake my head, trying to go back to being regular, devastatingly witty, sophisticated Alley. The girl everyone at school knows, loves and fears.

It turns out that I need every bit of iciness I’ve ever had inside me, because a lot of the vampire-loving girls in school have read my Sorry Marios review. And they aren’t happy about it. All the way down the hall, girls are mouthing unpleasant words at me. Even Fred and Michelle stop making out long enough to give me dirty looks. The old Alley thrived on idiots being pissed at her, but now it kind of bothers me. I’m feeling too good to get scowled at.

When I get to first period, I sit at a computer and quickly write up a “part two” of the review:

The SORRY MARIOS at the CAGE:
PART 2

(not posted previously due to digital error)

There was one bright spot in the Sorry Marios’ set, and it soared. Midway through the set, a special guest was brought on as a singer. Hailing from West Des Moines, Doug Benchley has a breathy whisper of a voice that makes him sound far older than he is. The two selections he sang, by Cole Porter and Leonard Cohen, demonstrated not only terrific taste in music but also a sense of daring. Not many guys would sing a show tune at the Cage, for fear that some douche bag would accuse him of being gay. Though his health prevents him from being a full-time band member, Doug’s occasional presence alone makes the Sorry Marios well worth sitting through. It was even worth my while to get hit on by a guy who called me “cuz.” That’s how good he was.

I’m supposed to send things to Trinity for editing, but this time I just post directly to the Web site, then go straight to the board at the front of the room and write the URL.

“Here’s the second part of the Sorry Marios review,” I say to the whole room. “It didn’t go up right away for some reason. One of those e-mail glitches. Tell your friends.”

That shuts people up, at least for that class. Half an hour later, I’m still on the computer, trying to make it look like I’m working on a spreadsheet, but I’m actually on Google, looking up diseases and trying to figure out what, exactly, might be wrong with Doug.

I can’t really find any disease that fits all his symptoms. Honestly, everything points to Sadie being just about right—he must have something kinda gross that he doesn’t want to talk about. Like something wrong with his colon that causes explosive diarrhea or something. That would also explain why it’s hard for him to talk, since he’d probably be really dehydrated all the time.

No wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it on dates. Ew.

But I don’t care what’s wrong with him, really. He could be missing all four limbs and have a colostomy bag and I’d still want to go out with him. I mean, the guy likes Leonard Cohen. And he treats me like a queen.

Class is almost over when this girl named Crystal walks over to me. She’s one of the sluttier girls in school—she was one of the girls wearing a belt as a skirt who was hanging around Will at the Cage. I assume she’s coming to chew me out, but she’s grinning.

“Hey, Alley,” she says.

“What’s happening?”

“I wanted to make sure you know about the party Friday at 1518,” she says. “You and Doug have to come! It’s the preprom bomb.”

“Who’s Doug?” I ask, trying to be all coy.

Crystal giggled. “No point denying it, it’s all over school that you’re dating him. Marie told someone who texted it to Brittany. God knows how many people she might have told by now. And Will already knew.”

I sigh. I figured it would at least take until third period to get out.

“Great,” I say. “So much for keeping it quiet.”

“Anyway, it’s at 1518 on Friday night. Michelle and Fred will be there, so you and Doug have to come.”

“What’s 1518?” I say. I’ve always suspected the “popular kids” have some sort of secret hangout. I’m not that interested in going to one of their parties, but maybe I can get a newspaper story out of it. Undercover among the cheerleaders and football players and vampires. One last big snarky story before I graduate.

“1518 Bartleby Way,” she says. “Haven’t you been there before?”

“No,” I say. “Is it someone’s house?”

“It’s that empty one back behind the cemetery on Bartleby,” she says.

“That house?” I say. “People have parties there?”

“Sure,” she says.

1518 Bartleby Way is an old house that every kid thought was haunted when I was little. It was one of the first houses to be built in town, and then the cemetery grew around it, so when the last owner died or moved to Florida or whatever, it just sat empty. Kids swore up and down that they saw lights on inside now and then, but after it turned out that ghosts and stuff were real and some international brotherhood of ghosts said there was nothing in that house, the stories sort of died down.

“So all those lights kids used to see there were just people having parties?” I ask.

“Probably,” she says. “It gets pretty wild in there, too. No one’s sure who really owns it, so no one stops us.”

“Are you sure I’ll be welcome there?” I ask. “Isn’t everyone pissed about the review?”

“They’ll forgive you when they find out about your boyfriend. You and Doug have to come. Promise?”

Wow. Who knew having a boyfriend was a ticket to an instant social life?

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say. “I don’t control his schedule.”

Crystal chuckles. “Honey,” she says, “you got a thing or two to learn about relationships!”

I don’t know if Doug will want to go to a party—I mean, what if his disease flares up and he has to spend the whole thing in the bathroom? But I’m halfway curious to check out the house. I mean, it was a part of the mythology of my childhood. But then I remember the Sorry Marios are supposed to be playing a gig that night at a private party—it’s probably this one, and Doug will be going anyway to sing a couple of songs.

The next class, two more girls invite me to the party at 1518 Bartleby Way. Everyone is kind of hovering around me now—not in the same way they were an hour ago, when they were pissed off about the review. Now they all want to invite me to parties and ask if Doug knows anyone who can take them to prom. I’m amazed at the turnaround.

Third period, computer lab, is when it all falls apart.

I’m in the middle of Googling more colon diseases, seeing pictures of stuff I hope I never see again, when it happens.

“You’ve got to come to the party, Alley,” says this girl sitting next to me. “You’ve got to. Everyone’s dying to meet Doug. Pun not intended.”

I look over at her. Do I even know this girl? I sit by her in the computer lab for the media class, but I’ve never spoken to her or anything.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Where’s the pun?”

“You know. Dying,” she says.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

“Sorry if that’s not PC,” she says. “But I don’t think I’ve ever met a free zombie before.”

“Doug’s not a zombie!” I say. “He’s a goth! Why does everyone keep calling him a zombie?”

The girl turns a bit pale.

“Um, Alley?” she asks. “Have you Googled Doug? ’Cause a bunch of other people did this morning after part two of your review came out.”

I start to feel the blood going out of my head. Everything around me fades away.

I thought all the zombies crumbled after Megamart let them go, but Marie has a point. Maybe not all of them did. And there probably are people still making them. I didn’t think zombies were quite as functional as Doug, but maybe if they made him into a zombie before his brain totally rotted away …

And Doug did get some sort of medicine at Megamart….

I normally Google everyone I meet, but after getting that date, I felt almost like it would be … impolite to Google Doug. Like I was stalking him or something.

I’m not really ready to Google him now, but I have to know.

I start by just going to the second part of the review on the Web. I never read the comments, since it’s mostly just anonymous idiots shooting their mouths off, like every other “leave your comment” section on the Internet, but now I see that Nat left one: “Sorry you didn’t like the rest of us! Doug’s a good guy. We were in plays together when I was a kid. Only he used to be four years older than me, and now we’re the same age!”

Shlabotnik.

There’s no putting it off any longer. I type Doug’s name into the Google search box at the top of the window.

As soon as I hit Search, I see it: one of those “memorial” pages where someone puts up a picture of someone who died, and then all their friends leave notes and messages and stuff. And there it is: a picture of Doug, looking healthy and happy and not at all pale. Like just a normal person in a Nirvana T-shirt. Below that, there’s a picture of him as Harold Hill in The Music Man, and a little paragraph about his life.

Doug died in a car accident four years ago.

I feel my stomach knotting up and my fingers starting to shake. My eyes go blurry for a second. I feel like I’ve been standing on a rug that just got pulled out from under me, and my head has gone crashing to floor with a big gonk.

My vision gets blurrier and my breath gets shorter as I read through the notes people have left on Doug’s memorial site. He didn’t even look like a goth when he was alive. From the comments people have left, he was a regular hipster drama geek.

All the pieces fit. That smell in his car and the medicine? Obviously embalming fluid—a quick Google search confirms that zombies need to drink that stuff every four hours to stay moving. The stuff that would stop the pain but he couldn’t get it? Probably brains.

The suit he wears probably is the one he was buried in.

And when Will told me he was dead, he wasn’t saying he was going to kill him. He was just stating a fact.

I’m totally verblecht.

And I feel like a complete moron.

This is why I’m suddenly popular. I’m the second girl in school to date a dead guy.

I’m still in a total haze by the time I make it to the lunch table. Peter is waiting for me, notebook in hand. So is everyone else. I can see by the looks on their faces that they’ve found out, too. Marie and Sadie seem kind of jealous, but nervous on my behalf.

“Here she is!” Peter says. “The only girl I know who can a win a heart that’s already decomposed!”

“Shut the hell up,” I say.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of!” says Marie. “I mean, dating a zombie isn’t quite as cool as dating a vampire, but it’s like dating a dentist instead of a doctor.”

“Or dating a drummer instead of a lead guitarist,” says Peter gleefully.

I imagine grabbing Peter’s backpack and busting him over the head with it. I imagine hearing the noise (gonk!) and watching the blood pour out of him. And maybe collecting the brains for Doug.

But that’s just stupid. Even I realize I can’t possibly keep seeing Doug.

“Shut up, the both of you!” I say. “I have to break up with him! I can’t date a dead person!”

“That’s so racist!” says Marie.

“And it would be so mean!” says Sadie, who I thought would be on my side. “Think how traumatized he must already be from dying!”

“As a matter of fact, that’s what he died of,” says Peter. “Trauma to the head!”

I grab Peter’s sandwich out of his hands and throw it across the room. It lands on a table of jocks in black.

“Calm down, Gonk,” says Sadie. “Look, I know it’s a shock, but we’ll get through this.”

“You’ll get used to it,” says Marie.

“Easy for a necrophiliac to say,” I say to her. “And I thought you’d be on my side, Sadie!”

“Well, sorry,” Sadie says. “I just don’t see how him being dead is any worse than him having a spastic colon, if he can still move around and talk and stuff. You’re moving away soon, anyway. The relationship has an expiration date.”

“What the hell am I going to do?” I ask. “I mean, what if he gets all stalkerish? Do zombies have any weird powers, like invading people’s dreams and stuff?”

“No,” says Marie. “They’re just like regular people. Only, well … you know.”

“Most of their internal organs only sort of work,” says Ryan.

“And they don’t age,” says Peter.

I slump over and beat my head against the lunch table a little.

“I can’t believe you don’t find this more romantic!” says Marie. “I mean, this boy came back from the dead for you!”

“No he didn’t,” I say. “He came back from the dead to work at Megamart.”

“Oh God, he was one of those?” asks Sadie. “That’s awful.”

“I think so,” I say. “I know he gets free embalming fluid from them.”

“Wow, that sucks,” says Trinity. “That must have been awful for him.”

“Almost all of those zombies they brought back just let themselves crumble after they were freed,” says Sadie. “It hurts like hell to be alive, and they’re not even really alive, anyway. And that was, like, two years ago. He’s stayed alive for something. It must have been to fall in love with you!”

“How can that be?” I ask. “He didn’t even know me until Friday!”

“Still, he’s kissed you,” says Sadie.

I nod a bit.

“So,” she says, “he’ll go through mind-numbing pain just to kiss you. You are so lucky!”

“Only you and Marie would think it was lucky to date a dead person, Sadie,” I say.

“Well, me, Marie and practically every other girl in school,” says Sadie. “Remember, I’m going to a prom with a guy I know won’t kiss me.”

“It’s nothing personal, you know,” says Peter. “Grow a beard and we’ll talk.”

“So, what if I do stay with him?” I ask. “What’s going to happen? I mean, it’ll be okay for a while, then I’ll be that dork in college who’s dating a dead high school boy.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” says Sadie.

“Then when I’m thirty and he’s seventeen I’ll be a cougar, and then I’ll get old and it’ll be like some kind of sick Harold and Maude thing.”

“You guys can work it out,” says Trinity. “I mean, give it a chance!”

“Why couldn’t he have just had a spastic colon?” I ask.

I bury my head in my hands and try to keep from crying. Two hours ago, I felt like I had finally arrived. I was living at last! I was in love! In love with a boy who probably had some gross, explosive digestive disorder, but still.

It all seems so obvious, now that I think about it. Of course he’s a zombie. Everything he said makes sense—he doesn’t have room for another person at his place because it’s probably a grave. A million little things like that … I’ve been so blindsided by love that I overlooked all of them.

I mean, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, overlooking flaws, right? Everyone has flaws. Everyone’s broken.

It’s like the chorus of one of those Leonard Cohen songs from the Alley playlist: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Maybe that was supposed to be a clue. I don’t know.

There are some flaws you have to overlook in a boyfriend, like poor taste in shoes, occasional body odor, nose picking and the general cluelessness that all guys have. I mean, nobody’s perfect.

But what about being dead? That’s something else altogether. You have to draw the line someplace.

I gather my courage to send him a text—“I saw your Web page. You know which one.”

A minute later, he texts back, “Please don’t hate me.”

And for just a second, I do hate him. He led me on! He let me basically fall in love with him and dream about a future with him, and all the while it’s only drinking six shots of embalming fluid a day that’s keeping him from crumbling into dust. What a jerk!

I’m breaking up with him, all right.

I send him a text asking for directions to his place and telling him to meet me there after school. We have to talk.

8

I have always considered myself smart. Everyone considers me smart, in fact. My whole image, the whole persona of Alley Rhodes, Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle, is based on the notion that I’m smarter than most of the people in school—especially most of the guys who hit on me. How in the hell could I have been so stupid that I didn’t even realize Doug was dead?

Maybe it was because he doesn’t act much like I imagined zombies would act. I don’t think I’ve ever met one before, and I guess I think of them as creatures that lurch around going, “Brrrrraaaaaaiiiinnns.”

But from what I’ve learned after spending half of the rest of the day online, that’s just a temporary state for zombies. When someone performs the operation to “create” a zombie, the corpse stays dead for a while, then goes into a “frenzy” that allows them to break through the coffin and climb up through the dirt and out of the grave. They’re senseless, super-strong brain-eating monsters for a few hours, but then they settle down. The ones who had time to decompose probably won’t ever get any brighter, since their brains have rotted away, but people who were made into zombies within a week or so of dying maintain a pretty high level of functionality. Doug must have been made into a zombie pretty early on.

That’s the impression I get, anyway, from piecing information together. No two sources seem to say the same thing about zombies. Creating them is totally illegal, after all, and the government doesn’t let too much information about them get out.

At the end of the day, Mrs. Smollet, the vampire guidance counselor, corners me in the hall.

“My office, Miss Rhodes,” she says. “Now.”

I really, really want to hurry on my way out to the grave yard, but I follow her into her office, where she directs me to sit in a chair in front of her desk. She stares at me for a second.

“Well played, Rhodes,” she says. “You always were too smart for your own good.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

“I have girls in here every week asking if I can write to the council and get them permission to become post-humans. I always turn them down, except for that little moron, Michelle, after she managed to snag herself a date with Friedrich. I do not approve of mixed relationships.”

“Because you don’t want humans to be pressured to convert?” I ask.

“Mixed relationships are simply not … traditional,” she says. “I’ve learned to live with Friedrich and Michelle, since she signed a letter of intent to convert when she’s eighteen. But you’re eighteen already, so I’m going to file the paperwork for you. Happy?”

“I’m not converting!” I say.

“Nonsense,” says Mrs. Smollet. “You think you’re that much more mature than every other girl in school?”

“Yeah, kinda,” I say.

“The paperwork is on its way to Europe already,” she says. “I don’t want to hear any more about you dating post-humans until you are one.”

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You’re practically ordering me to die. What kind of guidance counselor are you?”

“I’m a very traditional one, Miss Rhodes,” she says. “One who does not approve of mixing species.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry,” I say. “I’m breaking up with Doug this afternoon.”

“See that you do,” she says. “If you’re going to chicken out from converting but don’t break things off with the zombie, there will be consequences.”

I sigh and excuse myself from her office. I have too much to worry about without having to give a rat’s ass what Mrs. Smollet thinks about me and Doug. I’m half tempted to stay with him just to spite her.

But I can’t do that.

I mean, a lot of people don’t approve of teenagers dating post-humans because they always want to “convert,” which I guess makes sense. But Smollet apparently doesn’t want teenagers dating post-humans because they might not convert. What a maniac.

I walk home, borrow my dad’s car without telling him and drive out to the graveyard, riding along a lot of the same routes that Doug and I have driven over in the past few days. I drive right by the malt shop.

The graveyard is actually pretty close to downtown, near the river. My great-uncle Joey is buried here, so we used to come here every Memorial Day. I never knew Uncle Joey—he died in Vietnam—but I’d play around and climb the gravestones and stuff while my family stood around at the grave. I’d collect pinecones, if I remember right. I wasn’t old enough to understand what was really going on, of course.

But I haven’t been in a graveyard at all since I was a little kid. There aren’t many of them in town. Cornersville Trace is pretty new; not enough people have died there even to fill up the little cemetery on Bartleby.

So it’s weird to be in one, especially since it really doesn’t feel any different from just walking through a park. It’s not scary at all. It’s just … weird. I’ve always wanted to live a surprising, unpredictable life, but I sure never saw something like this coming. Especially not in Iowa. Nothing like this ever happens around here.

I spot Doug’s grave right away—it’s the empty one in front of a stone that looks massive from a distance. As I get closer, I can see that he actually started out with a modest gravestone, but some additions have been built. There’s a small stone on the ground with Doug’s name and date of birth and date of death, which was about four years ago. But then, behind it, there are stones stacked up and cemented together into a big, like, sculpture of Doug. Or a sculpture of a person, anyway, that I guess resembles him as much as any pile of rocks could. It’s kind of beautiful.

Then, down in the hole, I can see that he’s really tricked out his grave. There’s an open coffin, which would be kind of creepy except that it just looks like a bed in a box. He’s got a little mattress in there, plus a pillow and an electric blanket. There’s a ladder to get in and out, and a generator for electricity, a stash of embalming fluid … even one of those little handheld video players. All the comforts of home, except for a bathroom. I guess he doesn’t need one of those, since he doesn’t really have a spastic colon.

Doug is nowhere to be seen.

I’m breaking things off with him for sure, but if he stands me up, I’m never even talking to him again. And he can forget about me producing his music or promoting his career more than I already have.

Suddenly, I hear a rustle coming from a few graves away.

I turn, thinking it’s Doug, but instead, it’s another zombie!

And this time there’s no mistaking—this is not the kind of zombie that could pass for a living person, like Doug. It’s rotting and gray and disgusting. It looks like it used to be a middle-aged fat guy, but it’s so decomposed that I can’t even be sure. And it’s looking right at me, lumbering slowly toward me.

“Brrraaaaaaiiiiinnnsss!” it says.

I scream like a girl in a bad horror movie and run like hell away from the grave. Over my shoulder I can see the zombie following me, but not exactly at a pace that would let it keep up. I’m just thinking I’m in the clear when another zombie—an old woman, from what I can tell based on the parts of her that haven’t rotted away—crawls out from behind a tombstone.

“Brains!” she growls.

I scream again and keep on running, but two more zombies jump out into the path! I turn around. There’s another one standing next to the woman now, and the fat guy is starting to catch up to them. They’ve got me surrounded!

“Brraiiinnsss,” they’re groaning.

I turn to my left, but it looks like some others are coming up on me from that side!

They’re closing in on me.

“Get away!” I shout. “Shoo!”

Well, what do you shout at zombies?

Maybe their eardrums are too rotten for them to hear, or more likely they just don’t care. They’re still coming. A zombie in a flannel shirt with a bushy mustache (God, what kind of hick buries a loved one dressed like that?) is moving faster than the rest—I turn, but if I ran, I’d be running right into more zombies!

This is it, I think as they move in on me. I’m going to die.

I’ve never thought much about how I would die, but I certainly never thought I’d die of being torn apart by a zombie who looks like he used to be that lumberjack guy in the paper towel commercials.

Then, another voice.

“Gonk!”

It’s not loud—more like a theater whisper. But there’s no mistaking it.

“Doug!” I shout back. “Help!”

I am the kind of girl who can take care of herself. I can open doors and pop cans with no help from anyone. I can even kick a little ass, if necessary. But I am not equipped to deal with brain-eaters.

Doug comes lurching into the center of the circle of zombies closing in around me.

“What the hell is happening?” I ask.

“They’re in frenzy mode,” he says. “Just crawled up. I don’t want to have to fight them, but I will if I have to.”

“Fight them!” I shout.

Doug pulls a switchblade—the kind tough kids in the 1950s had—from his pocket, walks up to the guy in the flannel and starts slashing near his mustache. I turn away. I can’t imagine watching anyone get stabbed. Not even a dead person.

There’s an awful crack, and the guy’s head starts wobbling around on his neck. Then Doug smacks the fat guy and the one that was standing next to the woman.

“Run!” he says to me. “Get in my grave! They won’t get into another person’s grave.”

I run like hell back to Doug’s grave and climb down the ladder and onto the mattress in the open coffin. It’s more spacious down here than you’d think. He’s really made it pretty homey.

I don’t dare to look, but I can hear the sound of a pretty good fight going on above me. Doug is shouting out threats, and the zombies (well, the other zombies) are still going, “Brrrraaaaiiinnnns.”

Finally, there’s silence. A minute later, I look up and Doug is standing over the grave, looking down. There’s gunk on his knife.

“You okay?” he asks.

He looks exhausted.

I nod. “Are they gone?

“Yeah,” he croaks. “I’m gonna have to drag the bodies back to their graves later. That’s gonna be a pain in the ass. Don’t look. They’re in pieces.”

“What the hell was that?” I ask. “I thought it was illegal to make new zombies.”

“It is,” he says. “But someone apparently made a bunch more in the graveyard recently.”

“Someone’s making new ones?” I ask.

“If I had to guess,” he says, “I’d say someone went around casting the zombie rites over a whole bunch of graves in one night. It’s not that hard—you just mix stuff into the soil and wave some sticks around to stir up the energies. Every few nights, a few more of them have been waking up. That’s why I got this knife.”

He kneels down, groaning with pain, like he’s really stiff and sore, to wipe the knife off on the grass.

“Why didn’t they all rise up at once?” I ask. “Isn’t that how it works? You cast the rites and they rise in a few days or something?”

“Depends,” he says. “Some of them rise up in just a couple of days. Lutherans, especially, for some reason. Others take longer. Like, up to a month. And the longer it takes, the stronger they get.” His voice is trailing off. It’s barely a whisper now.

“Were those ones strong?”

“Yeah. But they had all decomposed enough that they came apart pretty easily.” He shudders a bit. “Whoever made them did it wrong. They’re supposed to have just enough energy in frenzy mode to break through the coffin and climb up, then be worn out.”

We just stare at each other for a second. It’s the first awkward silence we’ve really had.

Finally, he says, “You want to talk?”

I nod.

“Okay,” he says. “But don’t come up. Let me come down there. It’s pretty ugly out here.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “You look like it really hurts to move.”

“I’ll be comfortable down there.”

He climbs slowly down the ladder—I can tell that it hurts him like hell. I sit up on the mattress and he sits next to me. We have another long, uncomfortable silence while I look him over. He drinks a big swig of embalming fluid.

God, he’s so attractive. Even now that I know that he’s dead.

And he just got in a fight for me. I know it’s kind of a cavewoman thing to be flattered that a guy fights for you, but I can’t help it. It’s hot. He didn’t just fight for me, he saved me from having my brain eaten by a mustached zombie in flannel.

There’s no way I can break up with him. Especially not right now, after he’s just saved my ass.

“Nice place you got here,” I say.

“I live in the car, mostly,” he says. “It’s, like, my indoor place. This is the outdoor one.”

“You make the statue yourself?”

He leans back against the dirt and takes a second swig of fluid.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Like I said. Sometimes, I just have to build. It’s one of those instincts that doesn’t even go away when you die. Sometimes I wake up at three to take my fluid and there’s just this voice inside me that says, ‘You have to build!’”

We’re quiet for a few more minutes; then he says, “I’m sorry, Alley. I thought you probably knew at first. Then you were all curious about my health, so I figured out that you didn’t. And I just let you go on thinking I was just a goth or something.”

“I was an idiot not to notice,” I say.

“Well,” he says, “I understand if you never want to see me again. I wouldn’t blame you.”

I look at him, and at his eyes. I’ve always heard that dead people’s eyes are kind of glazed over, but that’s not the case with Doug. His eyes are alive. He’s alive. Maybe he was dead once, but he’s alive now. He’s a little broken, but we’re all a little broken, right?

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen knows everything.

Doug’s alive. And he’s mine.

“I just have one question,” I say. “Did you ever think, when you were alive, that you would get a lot hotter if you died?”

He looks confused for a second; then he starts to smile. Then I guess it sinks in that I’m not going to dump him, and he starts to chuckle. I can see that he’s really relieved, like a weight is off his shoulders. It must be totally stressful to have to keep a secret like that, especially from someone you like.

And then I laugh, too, and we just sit there in his grave, laughing.

“Like they say. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse,” he says, when we settle down.

“I didn’t really read the whole memorial Web page,” I say. “What was dying like? I mean, it’s cool if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m curious.”

“It wasn’t so bad, I guess,” he says. “I don’t really remember, though. I remember being in my car, and then there was this big noise, and the next thing I knew I was wearing a Megamart vest over this suit. I looked like an idiot.”

“That was it?” I ask. “No white light or any of that? No frenzy after rising up?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I seem to remember there was something in between dying and rising up, and I want to say there was a green field or something, but now it’s, like, one of those dreams you can’t quite remember, you know?” He pauses. “I hope I didn’t get, like, reincarnated. Some punk toddler would be running around with my soul.”

I chuckle. “I wouldn’t worry about it. If there’s such thing as a soul, you have one.”

“I must have been in a frenzy to dig my way out of the grave, but I don’t remember that at all, either. You don’t really think when you’re in frenzy mode.”

“So, your parents moved after you died?”

“Yeah,” he says. “My parents were already planning to move to Florida. I was kind of pissed off about it. That’s why I was out driving recklessly.”

“You didn’t want to move to Florida?”

“I had two months before I graduated,” he says. “If I moved, in ten years, my high school reunion would have been with the people I went to school with for two months, not the people I’d known since kindergarten. And it wasn’t, like, Miami or some decent part of Florida. It was some part that’s even worse than here. The Redneck Riviera, they call it. In hindsight, I should have just suffered through it and gone to college.”

I lean forward and brush some dirt off my back.

“So they don’t know you’re a zombie?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I mean, the Megamart guys must have snuck in and done the zombie operation right after I was buried, or I wouldn’t be in this kind of shape. But I was down here a while before it kicked in. Even if they did know, I wouldn’t really want them to see me like this.”

“What was it like working at Megamart?”

“Terrible. It hurt every second, having to lug boxes around. But they didn’t tell us anything. They fed us the embalming fluid every four hours. They never gave us the option of not taking it.”

“But most of them stopped right after they got freed, right?”

“Oh yeah. Most of them weren’t functional enough that they could come as close to living a normal life as I do.”

“So you keep drinking the fluid.”

He’s quiet for a minute, just staring off into space.

“Remember how we were talking about what we thought our teenage years would be like?” he asks. “The beach, and dating, and all that? I never got to do any of that. I never had a real girlfriend. I never went to prom. So many things … I never got to be a rock star, like I always wanted to. It’s like in Our Town. I was in that play with Nat years ago. You ever see it?”

“I read it for English class,” I say. “I don’t know it that well.”

“Well, in the last act the main girl, Emily, is dead. And even though the other dead people tell her she shouldn’t, she goes back to relive a day, and it’s just too much, because now that she’s dead, she notices everything, like clocks ticking, and sunflowers, and coffee, and freshly ironed clothes and sleeping and all of the things that she just took for granted. And it’s so overwhelming to see it from the other side and watch everyone not even noticing it all that she can’t handle it. And right before she goes back away from the world, she turns to some other person in the graveyard and asks if anyone alive ever realizes it. Like, if they realize life. Every, every minute of it.”

“Saints and poets. Maybe they do some,” I say, remembering and finishing the line from the play.

He smiles.

“That’s right,” he says. “It was like that. I mean, until you’ve been dead, you really have no idea how great it is to be alive. Even working at Megamart seemed wonderful for a minute. The feel of boxes in my hand, that Megamart odor … all that. It got old fast, but just to be working, you know? After I’m not even alive? When we got freed, I thought maybe I could hang around a while and do some of that stuff I never got to do.”

His mouth sounds like it’s stuffed full of cotton. He opens up a backpack at the foot of the coffin, pulls out another bottle of fluid and takes another swig. His voice comes back.

“I mean, you really can’t imagine how awesome coffee tastes, or how awesome it is to hear music, to hear idiots talking … I mean, it hurts. Everything hurts. But everything in the world is so awesome that sometimes I just can’t stand it. And that was just what I thought before I met you.”

I kiss him so hard I’m a little afraid he might fall apart or something, then pull back.

“Do you think I realize life? Like, at all?”

“No offense, but hell no,” he says. “No one does. Not even saints and poets, if you want to know the truth of it. But you come closer than most people. I can tell because you listen to music. You let songs get to you. Almost no one does that. There are songs that make you cry, right?”

“Sure,” I say.

“When you’re dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry.”

We sit and stare at each other for a bit, and I try to notice all the little things of life. I feel the dirt against my back, the sun on my nose, and the song in my head. I feel like I’m close to “realizing” it. But Doug’s probably right. Unless you’ve been away from something, you never really see it. I remember my English teacher saying The Great Gatsby is the greatest book about America ever—or at least the greatest that had been written up to the time it came out—and F. Scott Fitzgerald had to leave the country to be able to write it.

Then I think of a line in a Tom Waits song: “Never saw my hometown till I stayed away too long.”

I guess you never can see life until you’re dead. It makes sense.

I’m so excited to have a boyfriend, I can’t imagine what it’s like for Doug to have a girlfriend. It must be even more overwhelming for him.

“So, let’s talk,” I say. “I don’t want to, like, rush you into anything, but if we’re going to be an official item, we should work some stuff out first. I need to know what you’re capable of.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be much of a dancer at prom,” he says. “I can still move around if I have enough fluid in me, but I never could dance.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “But I need us to make a list of what we can and can’t do, okay?”

And for a few minutes that should be pretty embarrassing but are actually pretty comfortable and even a little clinical, I run through a list of various activities, like holding hands, slow dancing and stuff like that, that most couples do. I’m a bit disappointed that most of the things I’d like to do eventually are probably impossible for him, but there’s plenty of stuff we can still do. Enough, anyway.

Eventually, we have a sort of menu of stuff you can do with a zombie boyfriend.

There are still a few things I want to know, but I’m afraid to ask. Like, would moving out of Iowa be really hard, or flat-out impossible?

But I don’t have to go to Seattle. I got into Drake, too, which is all of fifteen minutes from my house—and only about five minutes from Doug’s grave. It was my safety school. I can’t believe I’m even thinking of not going to Seattle, but I am.

“So,” he says. “We’re official now?”

“I guess so,” I say. “Are you still supposed to give me your pin or something? Is there paperwork we have to get notarized?”

We have a bit of a laugh.

“What kind of pin?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A class pin, or something? Do they still make those?”

“Maybe we just have to make some public appearance,” he says. “So people know.”

“They know. It’s all over school. Will already knew about us on Saturday,” I say. “Do all the post-humans belong to the same club?”

“Not exactly,” he says. “But word gets around. I know all the vampires and werewolves in town. Not that there are very many. I mean, Des Moines isn’t the most diverse city in the world. But you know about your guidance counselor being a vampire, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “She wants me to break up with you. Or kill myself. Whichever.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She doesn’t really approve of mixed relationships.”

“A lot of vampires don’t,” he says. “I mean, I owe them big for getting those laws passed, but I don’t like them much, personally. None of them that I’ve met, anyway. I think being alive as long as they have without sleeping or anything kinda messes with their brains.”

We sit there for a second.

“So, how worried should I be?” I ask. “I mean, I heard that any zombie can go into a frenzy for brains if they don’t get their fluid.”

He looks at me very seriously. “Listen to me carefully, Gonk,” he says. “If you ever see me starting to go brain crazy, I want you to immediately go to the nearest convenience store and buy a slushee.”

“A slushee?” I ask.

He nods. “’Cause if I’m brain crazy, I won’t be thinking right. I won’t be thinking about anything except getting fresh brains. But if you shark down a slushee, you can get brain freeze. I won’t go after a frozen brain.”

I look at him for a second, and then his serious face turns into a smile, and then he starts laughing again. He was putting me on!

“You dick!”

“Sorry!” he says. “But I totally had you going, didn’t I?”

“Yes!” I admit.

He laughs. “Actually,” he says, “if I don’t get any fluid for four hours, I start to dry up. I’ve never gotten to the six-hour mark, but at that point you do go into like, a frenzy for brains. But you’re so dried up that you can’t really even move, let alone overpower anyone and crack their head open. If a zombie on a brains frenzy catches you, you probably deserve to die.”

“So I would have deserved it if those guys caught me just now?”

“Oh, no, I don’t mean that,” says Doug. “For one thing, you were surrounded. For another, those were new zombies. The whole reason you stay underground is to build up all this energy and strength so you’re strong enough to break out. For those first few hours, zombies are a lot more powerful than they’ll ever be again. The ones who get made into zombies after their brains are rotten stay like that, only the frenzy thing calms down. They still just amble around going ‘Brraains’ all the time. I can’t stand that kind of zombie. It’s like hanging out with the biggest idiots on the football team.”

“So they’re all really dangerous at first?”

Doug shakes his head.

“No. Like I said, whoever made these ones did it wrong. Gave them too much energy or something. If you do it right, they’re supposed to be all worn out by the time they’ve broken through the coffin and climbed above-ground. That takes a lot of effort. Once they get out, they should still be in frenzy mode but not have enough energy left to get anyone’s brain. But if you’re in trouble, you can always get in my grave. Post-humans can’t go into other people’s graves. Not even vampires can. Most people don’t know that.”

“What’s the deal with brains, anyway?” I ask. “Are they that much better than fluid?”

“Brains are way better than fluid,” he says. “They won’t keep you alive, but they take the pain away. But even if you can find them, it’s dangerous to eat them. You can get hooked. Brains for a zombie are like heroin for people. It’s better not to even get started.”

“Who do you think made those zombies that attacked me?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Megamart again?” I suggest. You’d think the huge lawsuit and expensive settlement would have put them off post-human slavery, but everyone knows they’ll break any law or moral code to keep prices low.

“I wouldn’t put it past them. New ones usually lurch toward whoever created them. There’s probably a Megamart in the general direction they were heading.”

“They weren’t heading in any direction,” I say. “They were surrounding me.”

“Well, you sort of distracted them. You know. Having a brain and all.”

I shudder a bit.

“Do you know how it works? Like, how they made them?”

He moves his head back and forth a little bit. “I know how to do it, yeah,” he says. “I picked it up while I was working at Megamart. I don’t know why some rise up faster. Maybe Lutherans have some kind of food that they like to eat more than other people. It’s been driving me nuts trying to figure it out. You aren’t a Lutheran, are you?”

I shake my head. “Jewish,” I say.

“Huh,” he says. I can see he’s a bit surprised.

I snicker a little. “Is that a problem?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “It’s just …”

“I don’t look Jewish?”

“I guess I just didn’t know Rhodes was a Jewish name.”

“I’m a protestant on my dad’s side,” I say. “But my mom’s Jewish, which is what counts. If your mom is a Jew, that makes you one.”

“Huh,” he says. “I didn’t know that.”

I’m not offended that he seems surprised I’m Jewish or anything. I mean, there are probably more post-humans than Jews in Des Moines. Sadie and I are about the only ones in school.

I just shrug.

“Can you date people who aren’t Jewish?” Doug asks.

“I already am, aren’t I?”

We kiss a little more. After a while, he pulls back. “I wish I could get a new suit for prom,” he says. “I mean, I got a bunch of money from Megamart in the settlement. It’s how I got my car and the DVD player and stuff. But it won’t last forever. I have to be really careful with it. Before I met you I was thinking I’d just stay alive till the money ran out.”

“Well,” I say, “I know a way we can make you some more cash.”

“No one’s hiring zombies, you know,” he says.

“Forget that,” I say. “I’m not one of those girls who expects her boyfriend to work some crappy job just so he can buy her things. But I said I was going to make you a star, and I am.”

I pull out my laptop from my backpack and open up a music program. The laptop has a built-in microphone.

“We,” I say, “are going to start recording your demo tape right now. Sing.”

He looks at me. “With no music?”

“We can overdub it later,” I say. “This is just a demo, anyway.”

I set the program to play a basic 4/4 rock drumbeat and hit Record.

“Go ahead. Sing.”

He smiles, then takes another sip of the fluid from his bottle. He starts to sing “I Get a Kick out of You” to the rhythm of the beats. His version. Just him and the drums sound so much better than he did with the Sorry Marios. Watching him sing is the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. Later on, when we find the right musicians for him, we can overdub their parts without too much trouble.

Besides the lack of music, there are two things different from the version he did at The Cage.

Number one: This time, I can tell that the third verse, the one he rewrote, really does go “I get no kick eating brains/one little taste, and the rest goes to waste.” Clever.

Number two: This time, I can tell that he’s singing to someone.

Me.

And unlike the woman the guy in the song is supposed to be singing to, I get a kick out of him, too.

“Is it possible to turn Jews into zombies?” I ask when he’s finished singing.

“You can turn anyone into one,” he says. “Why? You want to be one?”

This is too much to think about. But if Doug and I are going to be a long-term item, I’ll probably have to become one sooner or later, won’t I?

“Let’s just say it’s on the table,” I say. “Maybe.”

“I’d never ask you to do that,” he says. “Never.”

“But if I wanted to?”

He smiles. “I’m sure it can be arranged.”

9

It doesn’t take as long as you might think to get used to the fact that you’re dating a dead guy. By Wednesday, I’m pretty much cool with it. After all, he’s a better kisser than any of the living guys I’ve kissed. That whole thing about “noticing” life makes him very … attentive … in his kissing, which is nice.

It’s still weird to think that my boyfriend’s heart doesn’t beat, and there are some things that couldn’t go on our menu of things we can do that I’m kind of disappointed about, but it’s not like I need them to be happy with my life. I’ve done a lot of things on the menu with other guys, and they were nothing to rearrange your life over. Half of my persona as the Meanest Girl in the Vicious Circle has been based on being underwhelmed by guys.

Then again, all of the things I’ve done would probably have felt different if I’d been with someone I actually cared about.

On Tuesday night, Doug and I go to the Noir Café again. It’s a big step for us, because after the date, we do #4 from the menu. It’s not as big a step as doing #6, #7 or #8 would be, but it’s a step. And it’s the first time I’ve been out with him knowing that he’s a zombie.

Even though I feel like I’m floating sometimes, the Vicious Circle does their part to keep me grounded—in between chat about the prom.

“You know what would be awesome?” asks Marie on Wednesday. “If you went dressed as a zombie yourself.”

I chuckle a bit. “I don’t know,” I say. “He might find it kind of offensive, don’t you think?”

“Why would he?” asks Sadie. “He seems to have pretty thick skin.”

“And you know you have a shot at being the king and queen of the prom, right?” asks Marie.

I look at her. This has honestly not occurred to me.

“No,” I said. “You really think so?”

“Of course,” she says. “There are only two girls in school dating a dead guy. Michelle and Fred probably have the edge over you, but if you show up dressed up in zombie gear, that could put you over the top!”

I take a second to think this over. I never, ever in my life would have thought I’d even go to prom with a date, let alone have a shot at being prom queen. I would have said that I didn’t want to be queen, in fact. But I guess it’s like being one of those musicians who say they don’t care about awards until suddenly they get nominated for a Grammy—all of a sudden, they realize they do want awards. They just never thought they could get one before.

When I think back to where I was just a week ago, it’s almost impossible to believe how much I’ve changed. A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed that anything could make me consider going to Drake instead of moving to Seattle. But I’m considering it.

And I sure as hell wouldn’t have believed that I might be thinking about becoming a zombie myself. But I find myself thinking about that. Like, constantly.

I know it’s a massive decision, but I kind of think that if I want to be with Doug forever, I’ll have to go zombie sooner or later. I can’t be sixty and dating a guy who looks seventeen, even if he is actually older than me. And anyway, the brain doesn’t mature too much after death. He’s probably past the teenage mentality by now (he’s totally mature, after all), but he’s not going to get much more mature. If I want to stay with him, I can’t get too much more mature myself.

Obviously, being a zombie wouldn’t exactly be fun. It hurts just to move around, and you never get a full night’s sleep, because you have to take the fluid every four hours. Eek. And even though times are changing and there are more options out there for post-humans, your career choices are always going to be limited.

But I don’t see any reason why a zombie can’t be a music critic. Or produce another zombie’s tracks.

And there’s another thing to consider: even if I take care of myself as a human, I’m still going to get old and die eventually. As a zombie, I can live forever as long as I’m careful. Doug says he doesn’t think zombies go nuts from being alive too long, like vampires do, probably because they at least get some sleep now and then, which vampires don’t do.

In fact, he thinks that if I have the operation right after I die, instead of a few days later, like he did, I won’t decompose at all. I’ll still look totally alive. There’s something to be said for that lifestyle, don’t you think? Everyone knows your heart dies (in a figurative sense) when you’re thirty anyway. We’d be the two most alive people on the planet, if you think about it.

But that’s a step to consider another time. Not something I really have to worry about a week into a relationship. I have a few years to figure it all out.

Our biggest step for the moment is having dinner with my parents tonight.

I’ve told them that the guy I’m dating is a post-human, and they’re cool with it. Or they’re trying to be.

“I have to admit it’s hard to get used to,” says Mom. “It sort of puts some limits on your relationship, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “Though the fact that he’ll be young and hot forever is nice, as long as nothing falls off of his face or anything.”

“He sounds like he takes good care of himself,” says Dad. “That speaks well of him.”

“He sounds more responsible than I was at his age,” says Mom. “And anyway, it’s not like I have to worry about you getting pregnant, huh?”

“Nope,” I say. “It’s beyond the realm of science.”

“If you want to tease him a bit, I can do the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner thing,” Dad says. “I’ll be all, ‘No daughter of mine is dating a dead boy! What will the neighbors say? I’ll get kicked out of the country club! Property values will go down!’”

“Please don’t tease him!” I say. “He gets kind of embarrassed by that stuff. And don’t mention the smell of the embalming fluid. You’ll get used to it fast. Trust me.”

“We’ll do our best,” says Mom. “But I haven’t spent much time around post-humans before. I’m a little worried that we’ll say the wrong thing and he’ll get offended, even though we’re absolutely not prejudiced.”

“Just be yourselves,” I say. “Dad, you can show him some of your scrapbooks. He loves music.”

“Cole Porter, right?” asks Dad.

Dad’s Cole Porter scrapbook really isn’t all that great, so I steer him toward some some others.

“He likes Cole Porter, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones….”

“Ramones!” says Dad. “I have a great Ramones scrapbook.”

“Perfect,” I say. “And Mom, you can talk about how much you hate Megamart.”

“Was he one of those poor zombies who had to work there?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Oh, that poor kid!” she says. “As if dying weren’t bad enough, but to have to work at Megamart on top of it!”

“He loves to talk about how much they suck,” I say. “You guys can have a whole Megamart hate fest.”

“I’m always up for one of those,” says Mom.

Perfect. It’s nice to feel like you have your parents under control, though I’m honestly a little bit disappointed. Every girl sort of wants one of those boyfriends her parents can’t stand, even though she knows he’s awesome. Having your parents totally understand that you’re dating a dead guy right off the bat instead of coming to terms with it gradually takes some of the fun out of it.

I set the table carefully. It’s a little awkward to set up a dinner when the guest of honor can’t actually eat anything. Doug can drink a little, like iced coffee or soup, but most solid food is basically impossible for him. He worries that he’ll bust one of his teeth or something, and plus, there’s the bathroom issue. There’re some things he has to be really careful about in there (this is a lot more information than I ever thought I’d want to know about a guy after knowing him less than a week, but it’s kind of important to know these things when you date a dead guy). And anyway, he gets all his energy from whatever spell or operation or whatever it was that made him a zombie, so he doesn’t have to eat, really.

So we set up a light dinner—matzoh-ball soup, a Jewish comfort food. Doug thinks he can probably even eat a little of that. Matzoh balls are sort of like meatballs made of bread. They’re a lot better than they sound. Trust me.

Doug arrives at seven—right on time, as always.

I step outside to greet him, and we kiss a little in the driveway. It’s weird how someone so cold can make me feel so warm. It’s magic, is what it is.

Once again, the old Alley would probably kick the new Gonk’s ass for thinking that, but it’s true.

“You ready for this?” I ask.

“I suppose so,” he says. “I haven’t really sat down with adults much since I was alive.”

“No chatting in the break room at Megamart?”

“We didn’t get breaks,” he says. “If we were caught up on work, they’d find something for us to do. We’d sweep the floor over and over, even after it was already clean.”

“Well, it’ll be fine,” I say. “They’re totally cool about everything.”

“I’m gonna be okay, right?” he asks. “I mean, I don’t know much about how you eat a Jewish meal.”

I chuckle. “You put the food and drink in your mouth, chew and swallow,” I say. “Pretty basic.”

“And I don’t speak a word of Hebrew,” he says.

“We’re not that observant,” I say. “Sometimes my mom says a prayer in Hebrew before we eat, but that’s about it, and Jewish prayers are pretty short and to the point. Just smile and nod if she does it tonight.”

“Okay,” he says. “I just don’t want to give away that I don’t know much about your people or anything. I’ll look stupid!”

“You’ll be fine!”

Doug is never cuter than he is when he’s nervous.

My parents are waiting on the front porch.

“Hi!” says Dad, extending his hand. He shakes Doug’s hand just the way I told him to—very lightly. Firm handshakes aren’t very safe with zombies. Doug gives a similar handshake to my mom, who invites him inside.

I’ve always dreaded having to do the “meet the parents” thing with a guy. Like, I have nightmares about it. None of the guys I’ve made out with in my bedroom in the past would have been worth introducing to them, though, so I’ve always been spared this particular ritual. But Doug is a perfect gentleman.

“So, Doug,” says Dad. “I hear that you like Cole Porter.”

“Sure,” he says. “I like any kind of music that doesn’t suck.”

“My kind of taste,” says Dad.

“Alley’s never brought a boy home to meet us, you know,” says Mom. “But from what she tells us, the way you sang ‘I Get a Kick out of You’ really swept her off her feet.”

“I’m not sure which is the bigger accomplishment,” says Dad. “Singing after you’re dead, or sweeping Alley off her feet. A while ago I would have thought both of those were impossible.”

I blush a little, probably. Doug looks like he’d be blushing, too, if he had any blood to rush to his cheeks.

I get a bit nervous when I realize how much my mom’s matzoh balls look like brains (the kind of thing I never would have stopped to think of before), but if anyone else notices, they have the good sense not to say anything. Doug’s soup has an ice cube in it to keep it cool. He looks kind of weirded out by the matzoh balls, but he nibbles a bit of them in addition to drinking the broth, and seems to like them. It was a good choice. I wouldn’t have subjected him to gefilte fish, which is so close to liquid that he could probably handle eating it but is also an acquired taste. Not something you give to a person who’s still afraid my parents might pick on him for not wearing a prayer shawl or something.

“Well, Doug,” asks Dad. “We haven’t really done this with Alley before, but I believe I’m supposed to ask you where you see yourself in five years, right?”

“Good question,” he says. “Just the fact that I’ll still be here at all is pretty major.”

“So you aren’t thinking of college?” asks Mom.

“Only if they pass laws making the undead eligible for scholarships,” he says. “We think we have the votes in Congress, but you know how it is. Things move slowly, and there aren’t a lot of zombie lobbyists.”

“We’re going to get his album recorded and for sale online this summer,” I say. “If all goes well, he’ll be able to afford any college he wants pretty soon!”

I do my best to keep Mom and Dad talking about themselves, and direct the conversation so the only things they say to Doug are yes or no questions he can answer by nodding or shaking his head and not hurting himself. I’m getting the hang of all of this fairly quickly, actually. I’m pretty proud of myself for it.

At the end of the night, I walk Doug out to his car and give him a good-night kiss. I would like to do something else off our menu, something we haven’t tried yet, but none of them are really things you can do in a driveway, especially when your parents are probably watching.

“Have you told them you’re thinking about becoming a zombie?” he asks.

“Not yet,” I say. “I don’t know how well they’d handle that. I have to sort of ease them into things.”

“It’s not urgent, anyway,” he says. “I mean, we’ve just started going out.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s almost like being one of those dumb couples who start naming their kids on the second date.”

There are a lot of girls at school who do that sort of thing. The Vicious Circle calls them Junior Mommies. They have all their kids named, they’ve picked out what color house they want to live in, and they read parenting magazines. They’re mostly smart enough not to actually want to be teen moms or anything, but they can’t wait to start having kids. Most of them are just dying to get married, not so much because they want a husband but so they can start right in on parenthood. I realize that thinking about dying is even worse than that, but when you date a dead guy, you have think about whether these things are an option, at least, early on. You want to know what you’re getting into in a relationship, right?

But hearing him bring up the whole “me as a zombie” thing makes me a little nervous. Ever since I first asked about it, Doug’s talked a lot about it. Like, maybe even a little too much. He says he’d never ask me to become a zombie, obviously, but I can tell he really likes the idea. It’s not like he’s putting any pressure on me, but just knowing how much he wants me to do it almost feels like pressure. I try not to think about it like that, since it’s not really fair to him, but I kind of wish he would stop talking about it.

I decide to change the subject.

“I’m going to hate tomorrow,” I say.

He makes a sympathetic face. “I will, too. But we’ll survive. And Friday will be great.”

Tomorrow is going to be the first day all week that I don’t see him. There’s a newspaper staff meeting in the evening, and no real time that I can get away for a date. But the day after that is the party at 1518, which I’m really starting to look forward to. I mean, it’s my first real chance to show off my hot boyfriend! And the Sorry Marios are going to be playing in the living room, so Doug will probably sit in for a song or two.

Plus, I’m sure I’ll get material for a really wicked article for the school paper: “The Secret Life of the Popular Kids,” a parting gift to the school from Alley Rhodes.

After he drives off, I sort of float my way back to the house. I walk, actually, of course, but there’s something about kissing Doug that always makes me feel like I’m floating. Maybe the smell of the embalming fluid makes me a little light-headed. Or maybe I’m really just in love.

As a matter of fact, of course I am. It feels soon to say it, and neither of us has said it out loud, but I think we both feel it.

Inside, Mom has made coffee, and she and Dad are still at the table.

“He seems like a very nice young man,” says Mom.

I just smile.

“He’s smart, too,” says Dad. “It’s such a shame he had to die so young.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “There’s something to be said for staying young forever, don’t you think?”

“Not really, Alley,” says Mom. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be a teenager for one extra second, let alone forever.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” I say. “As I recall, you kept acting like a teenager for several extra years! And Doug probably has the emotional maturity of at least a twenty-year-old by now. Wouldn’t staying in your twenties be kind of awesome?”

Mom and Dad both shuffle around uncomfortably.

“Algonquin,” says Mom, “please tell me you’re not thinking about becoming a zombie yourself for this boy.”

“Why not?” I ask. “I mean, I wouldn’t do it right away or anything. I’d wait a few years, till I’m really all grown up and in the prime of my life and stuff.”

Mom sighs. “But think of all you’ll miss out on,” she says. “You’d never have children.”

“We could adopt,” I say.

“Zombie adoption is almost impossible,” she says. “Most of the antizombie laws have been overturned by now, but I don’t think they’ll ever make a law requiring adoption agencies to let zombies adopt.”

“That’s terrible!” I say.

“Well, they don’t usually let people with terminal diseases adopt,” says Mom. “It’s not really safe to entrust a child to someone who might crumble into dust without embalming fluid every four hours.”

I pout for a second so I don’t have to agree with her, but I know she’s right. Emotionally, Doug would make a great dad—he’d be a better dad than I would a mom—but physically, I’m not sure any zombie could handle it.

“Well, I don’t need to have kids,” I say. “I know I’d miss out on a lot if I were a zombie, but if I don’t become one sooner or later, I’ll miss out on Doug!”

Dad looks like he’s trying his hardest to keep his mouth shut. Mom does the talking.

“Alley, I’ve always told you not to throw your life away over a guy,” she says. “I’ve always been proud of the way you’ve avoided getting tied down to someone who might make you reconsider going away for college.” She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I slither out from under her.

“It wouldn’t be throwing my life away!” I say. “It would be, like, immortality. It’s the opposite of throwing your life away!”

“Have you really stopped to think of all you’d miss out on?” she says. “Not having kids is just a small part of it, in the long run. You wouldn’t get to grow old. That’s part of life.”

“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 wall 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.

I post a reply to one of her posts that just says, “I’ll bet he says that to all the girls.”

Ten minutes later, I have ten responses (and thirty private e-mails), from girls who think I have a lot of nerve to suggest this girl hasn’t found true love because her boyfriend wants her to be dead.

One person writes and says, “How can you not want to be a post-human? Humans are so awful! We’re selfish monsters who are destroying the planet. Everyone should convert.”

I write back, “Maybe the fact that they don’t have to drive much gives them a smaller carbon footprint, but part of the life cycle is that you’re supposed to die and stop taking up space! If everyone lived forever, there wouldn’t be any room left eventually!”

Another writes and says, “u r being a total bigot, u no. Some of my ancestors became vampires. Its my heritage, and u r not respecting it. We should ALL become post-humans just as a show of solidarity for what they suffered through.”

I write back, “My people used to be slaves, but that doesn’t mean I want to go build a pyramid!”

One girl says she wants her and her boyfriend to become zombies because they won’t be able to have sex. “He wants to do it eventually, and being a zombie will make being abstinent so much easier for him!” she says. “We’ll never have to do it!”

I write back, “Few religions want you to stay abstinent forever unless you’re a nun or something. If you’re that freaked out by the idea of ever getting past first base, talk to a shrink, not a zombie-maker.”

Thirty more e-mails come from the girl’s “fans.”

It’s a good thing I haven’t decided to give up on being Alley of the Vicious Circle completely. I can put her aside and be Gonk when I’m with Doug, but if being in a mixed relationship means I might have to talk of more of these idiots, I’m going to need to have Alley waiting in reserve.

I spend the next hour just making snarky comments to girls who think it’s great that their boyfriend pressures them into dying instead of pressuring them into having sex. I make fun of them right and left before I realize that I was just about as dumb as them a few hours ago, and that I should take it easier on them. Most of them aren’t dumb so much as delusional and depressed people who’ve tricked themselves into thinking they’ve found a way to turn things around. They’re sick, really. It’s not nice for me to be mean to sick people, even though they honestly need to hear the stuff I’m telling them. It’s not even like I’m picking on their taste in music—it’s quite literally a matter of life and death. But being mean about it won’t get me anywhere.

You sacrifice things for love. You overlook flaws. But you have to draw the line someplace. And even though I’ve decided that being dead isn’t necessarily the place to draw the line, dying yourself has got to be over the limit.

By the time I have to go to Sip Coffee for the newspaper staff meeting, I’ve decided to just forget about dying. The fact that I might go to Drake instead of the University of Seattle to stay with Doug ought to be enough, right? If Doug insists that I have to die to be with him, we’ve got problems. Just because I’m not going to be the Ice Queen anymore (and the e-mails I’m getting from people on the boards call me a lot of things that are a whole lot worse than that) doesn’t mean I have to be a dumbass.

Sip is a coffeehouse (another of Eddie’s establishments) in the old downtown area. It’s about as hip as Cornersville Trace gets. Trinity works there part-time, so she gets us a discount on coffee whenever we go in.

The whole staff has to attend the meetings there, not just the few of us who sit at the lunch table, along with Mrs. Winterbaum, the faculty sponsor. She’s the best kind of faculty sponsor: the quiet kind. She stops us from putting in swearwords or really explicit references to sex and stuff, but other than that, she just sort of lets us do what we want with the paper. I’m convinced that’s why we’re a success.

Most of the crew is already there when I arrive, and I sit down next to Sadie on one of the couches.

“Did you ever hear back from Doug?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “He was sleeping, and now he’s at band practice.”

“Boys,” she says. “You can never tear them away from band practice.”

“They’re playing that party tomorrow night,” I say. “You know they need practice.”

“And a new drummer,” says Sadie.

“If you ask me, Doug just needs a band of his own,” I say. “I’ve already recorded him singing a few songs. We’re going to do a whole album.”

The door to the back room opens and Trinity walks out, followed by Troy. Her shirt is untucked, and his belt is undone. She’s told me before that she likes to make out with him against the ice machine. Maybe Doug would like that—the cold might numb the pain.

“Okay,” says Trinity casually. “Is everyone here?”

“I think so,” says Sadie. “Everyone but Winterbaum.”

“Then let’s get started. Deadline is tomorrow night and I only have columns from about half of you.”

“Well, excuse me,” says Peter. “You guys haven’t been particularly witty this week. It’s all just talk about dead people at lunch!”

“Then go with it,” says Trinity. “Write something about Alley and Doug. A profile or something.”

“Got it,” says Peter. “From Ice Queen to prom queen.”

I blush.

“Save that line for after the prom,” says Trinity. “Alley, you’re thinking of converting, right? That’s a timely issue.”

“I’m not converting,” I say.

“What?” asks Marie.

I’m just about to explain that teenage conversion is for suckers when the front door opens, and Mrs. Smollet walks in and gives me a smile before coming to the corner where we’re all sitting.

“Um, hi,” says Trinity. “Can we help you?”

“You certainly can,” says Mrs. Smollet. “I’m your new faculty sponsor.”

For a second, no one says anything.

“Don’t get too excited, guys,” she says. “Mrs. Winterbaum will be handling the 4-H club from now on.”

“The 4-H club?” asks Trinity. “We have a 4-H club?”

The 4-H club is for kids who are into farming. I know we live in Iowa, but it’s not like anyone in school actually lives on a farm. A Future Insurance Industry Workers of America club would probably do better.

“Of course we do,” says Mrs. Smollet. “And it’s a better place for her, since she’s clearly not been trying very hard to keep you guys in line.”

“I think we’re doing all right,” says Trinity.

Mrs. Smollet pulls out a printout of the latest online issue and looks right at Peter. “Peter,” she says, “you used the words ‘wiener,’ ‘dick’ and ‘cocky’ in the last installment of ‘No Siree.’” She looks like it pains her to say those words, then gives him a glare that would probably kill a lesser man.

“Uh, yeah,” says Peter.

Then she turns and narrows her eyes at Trinity and me.

“And he was quoting something you two said out loud at lunch?”

We both shrug.

“This is a high school newspaper,” says Mrs. Smollet. “You shouldn’t be using those words in print, let alone at lunch!”

“You can say those words on basic cable!” cries Trinity. “As long as you’re using ‘dick’ as a synonym for ‘jerk.’”

“And ‘cocky’ isn’t even a bad word!” says Peter.

“Neither is ‘wiener,’” I point out. “It’s just another word for wimp.”

“But in this context, it’s an obvious play on words, and it’s inappropriate,” Mrs. Smollet insists.

Everyone grumbles and scowls, and Mrs. Smollet takes a look over at me.

All of a sudden, I hear her voice in my brain out loud, like I have headphones playing a recording of her—it must be some kind of vampire trick, sending words into my head that no one but me can hear.

You know why I’m really here, Alley, she thinks at me. I want to make sure you don’t start writing about the advantages of “mixed” relationships here. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that if you want to date dead boys, you ought to be dead yourself. Think about Will’s proposal.

It’s incredibly creepy. Like, “I might need to change pants” creepy.

I try to think Get out of my head, you old bat! back at her, but I’m not sure the “thought projection” thing is a two-way street. Honestly, I hope she can’t hear any of what I’m thinking.

I feel totally violated. What gives her the right to send words into my brain? That place is private.

“I have to go now,” I say, standing up. “I’m feeling a bit verblecht. I’ll have a column in by tomorrow, okay, Trin?”

“See ya,” says Trinity. She can tell by my face that I’m serious. I really need to leave.

I don’t want to be anywhere near Mrs. Smollet. I can still hear her voice in my brain saying, Get back here! as I walk away, but it gets quieter and quieter as I move across the room, and it’s totally gone by the time I’m out the door.

Back at home, I do some Googling and find out that thought projection is a skill a few vampires have learned, but none of them can project their thoughts very far, so I don’t have to worry that she’ll come barging into my brain while I’m at home. Only when she’s right near me.

Of course, as fast as vampires can move, sneaking into my house wouldn’t be that hard for her. Do you have to invite vampires into your house before they can come in? I saw that on a TV show once, but it was back when everyone still thought vampires were fake.

Some more research tells me there are certain things vampires need permission to do, but the Council of Elders hasn’t made all of them public. No one can think of any instance when a vampire has entered a house uninvited, but then again, who does barge into a house uninvited, other than burglars and annoying relatives? The only place that anyone knows for sure vampires can’t go is inside other people’s graves.

Vampires have assured us that we’re safe from them and all, but there’s still a lot that we don’t know and that they won’t tell.

Call me a bigot, but they make me freaking nervous.

11

“Here it is,” I say to the lunch table. “My resignation.” Sadie is holding my hand for support. Marie and Ryan look shocked, but they’re probably relieved. They know as well as I do that Smollet only took over as the paper’s sponsor to make my life hell until I agree to become a vampire. If I’m gone, she’ll be gone, too, before she can turn it into a “good old-fashioned wholesome paper.” Which is what she plans to do. Peter says she even wants to bring back the print edition. And probably a social register, like they had in old-time small-town papers: a whole column of stuff like “Ryan Kowalski’s family entertained visiting relatives with a barbecue at their 76th Street home Tuesday…. The Ladies’ Auxiliary plans to host a barn dance as soon as a barn can be procured….”

“You don’t have to do this, Alley,” says Trinity.

“Of course I do,” I say. “I don’t want to wreck the paper for everyone else. This should get Mrs. Smollet off your backs before she starts making you include whole pages of farm reports and reviews of tractor shows.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” asks Trinity.

I nod. The mood around the lunch table is pretty grim. I’m feeling pretty lousy myself.

“Plus,” I say, “I don’t really feel like writing mean reviews anymore. I, like, don’t want to be that person all the time now. I’m Gonk now. Not Alley the Ice Queen.”

“A legendary member of the Vicious Circle bites the dust,” says Trinity wistfully.

“Oh man,” says Peter, “there’s a zombie joke in there somewhere.”

“You’ll still cover that party tonight, right?” asks Trinity.

“Sure,” I say. “It’ll be my farewell article.”

Being on the paper has been a part of my life as long as I’ve been in high school. Even if I’m not going to be Alley full-time anymore, it’s sad to have to give it all up. In the great scheme of things, it’s nowhere near as big a deal as giving up being alive will be, but still. It’s a sad moment. I feel like I’m giving in to someone I shouldn’t be surrendering to. Maybe I can send Mrs. Smollet some nice photos of me and Doug doing #7 on our menu. She’d love that.

By the end of the day, though, it’s all out of my mind. I have a party to attend.

I’ve been to parties before—Trinity has them all the time, and I’ve had a couple myself. But I’ve never been to one of the popular kids’ parties before, and I’m sort of thinking of myself as one of those people who go to live among chimpanzees for a while to study their habits and see what they’re like in the wild. I’ll have a full fair and balanced report for my last article.

It also happens to be sort of a “coming out” party for Doug and me—our first date where people from school will see us, and therefore my first real chance to show off my hot boyfriend. I’m not above that. I used to think I was, but, well, I guess I’m not.

And at some point in the evening, I fully intend to do #7 on our list with him for the first time. And tomorrow, after prom, #8.

After school, he’s waiting for me in his car out on the street. Girls are kind of hovering around the general vicinity, trying to get a glimpse of Doug and trying not to seem all jealous as I get into the passenger seat.

I lean over and make a big show of kissing him before he drives off. Not just because I want everyone to see, but because I’ve been craving him. I’m becoming, like, a formaldehyde addict. If I don’t taste that hint of embalming fluid, I start to go through withdrawal.

I may have decided I don’t need to die to be with him, but I still feel like I could be with him forever. This doesn’t feel like a relationship with an expiration date.

“I missed you,” I say.

“I missed you more,” he says back as we start driving away.

We cruise away from school and up to Cedar Avenue, where there’s a men’s clothing outlet. I’m buying him a new suit.

“It’s so weird to be buying clothes again,” he says. “I haven’t really needed any new clothes since I died.”

“Yes you have,” I say.

“No, really,” he says. “I don’t sweat anymore, so I never really smell like anything but the fluid.”

“Yeah, but that suit is falling apart,” I say. “Plus, there’s dirt all over it.”

“It goes with my skin,” he says.

“You need a new suit,” I insist with a chuckle. Boys!

He pulls into the parking lot, and I grab a few suits off the rack that will look good on him, then drag him into the dressing rooms. There’s no one around to stop us, so I walk right in with him and watch him try them on. It’s just about the hottest thing ever.

Eventually, we decide on a charcoal suit with brown pinstripes. It has a cool, vintage gangster look.

“I think you need a hat,” I say.

“You just want to cover my messy hair, don’t you?” he says.

“Nuh-uh,” I say, even though his hair isn’t great. “I just think you look really good in hats.”

“Well,” he says, “if I’m gonna wear a hat to prom, wouldn’t your parents want me to wear one of those … beanie things? The Jewish hats?”

“A yarmulke?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “Those.”

I laugh a bit. “You’d look cute in one, but let’s see what they have here first.”

We find a fedora that matches the suit—and completes the 1930s gangster look, which is a really hot look for him, and not just because of my “dead guys from the 1930s” fetish.

We head downtown for a coffee (and a sandwich for me) at the Noir Café, which is sort of becoming “our place.” I’ve never really felt like a part of an “us” before, but it turns out that it’s pretty awesome. And on the way there, we actually drive right by the Drake University campus, and through the little campus-town area, which is about like any other college town (if a bit smaller). I could probably survive there.

In fact, the forms to get me into Drake and out of Seattle are sitting at home on my desk.

Going there will be enough of a sacrifice. I don’t need to convert. I’m only eighteen, after all. It’ll be at least ten years before I’m really too old to be with Doug. Probably more. By then, maybe they’ll have some new surgery or something that’ll stop me from aging or help zombies live more normal lives. Scientists are learning a lot from vampire blood. It’s better than stem cells.

After our coffee, we head back to Cornersville Trace and park outside the cemetery on Bartleby Way. We’re pretty early, since Doug wanted to be here when the band set up (which he thinks is only polite if they’re going to let him sing). He’s got a whole stash of embalming fluid, so hopefully he can sing more than just a couple of songs.

I’ve got my laptop and Doug’s got some recording gear he rented from a music store—we’re going to record the show. Multitrack, too, so if the whole band sucks, I can edit out everything but his vocals and get some better musicians to overdub parts later. I don’t plan to tell the band this, though. They’d just get pissed.

As we wander into the graveyard, I look up at the house. I’ve driven past it a million times—the creepy old haunted house like the one that stands on the edge of every town. It’s just about the oldest house in town, and looks like every haunted house you’ve ever seen on Scooby-Doo. Busted shingles, peeling paint, gables, the whole bit. I don’t think it was ever a nice house to begin with, and now it’s not much more than a fire hazard.

“Have you been in here before?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I went to parties here before I was even dead.”

“So people have been partying here a long time, huh?” I ask.

“Probably,” he says. “It’s pretty well set up. There’s a stereo and everything. And the cops never get called, no matter what goes on.”

“So it’s gonna be pretty wild?”

“Probably.”

I lean in and hold his hand. “But we’ll be able to find a nice, quiet place for number seven?”

“Totally.”

I feel a tingle all through my body as I step onto the porch. Not just because I’m thinking of #7, but because this is 1518 Bartleby Way! From what I heard when I was a kid, it’s full of old bookcases, old copies of Collier’s magazine and the dead body of a woman who died of grief when she was left at the altar. Some people say her wedding cake—or what’s left that hasn’t been eaten by mold and maggots—is still on the table. And I’m actually going to see inside.

Naturally, it’s a letdown.

The only dead bodies present are Doug and Will. Will, of course, is about the last creature in the world I want to see, but I manage to avoid him while I look around the place. It’s really nothing more than a dingy old house. It’s mostly empty, except there’re a couple of card tables set up in the kitchen, a whole bunch of Styrofoam coolers packed with beer and a pile of empties from the last party. There’s a stereo that looks like it came from Megamart, and a big, boxy old TV from the 1990s in the living room (the place must have been wired for electricity at some point) with a couple of soggy-looking couches that I wouldn’t sit on for love or money. There are stains all over that I’m not asking about, gang graffiti on the walls (some kids in town like to pretend they’re in the Crips; it’s kind of cute) and a funny-smelling armchair that’s been painted black.

In other words, it’s just a party pit.

I help set up mikes and amps and recording gear in the living room, checking to be sure that I’m making two recordings: one of the whole band and one of just the vocals. The vocal mike might also pick up some other sound that bleeds into the mike, but I figure you can probably get rid of it with computers now, right?

Gradually, all the other popular people show up and start right up tearing into the coolers full of Megamart-brand beer and wine coolers. Someone puts on a CD that plays repetitive beats really, really loudly. I think they want the music so loud because they’re all too stupid to carry on a conversation. Talking is certainly out for Doug and me. I can’t hear a thing. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else, though. They’re just there to get trashed.

The “popular” people are all there, sending texts back and forth and critiquing each other’s outfits with their eyes. It’s a weird scene: all these people in outfits that they must have robbed a bank to afford, hanging around in the trashiest house imaginable.

I never, ever thought the day would come when I was relieved that the Sorry Marios started playing, but when they turn down the beats and we get about a minute of quiet before the awful “Margaritaville” jam gets started, it’s like heaven.

I suffer through “Margaritaville” and several bad Dave Matthews covers before Doug goes up to do “Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen, a song off the Alley playlist. He does a beautiful, heartbreaking job on it (despite the fact that when the band plays the right chord, it’s strictly a coincidence), but it wasn’t a good song to choose. It’s a slow, quiet song, and after a minute, all the dumbasses are just talking over it.

Doug notices this, though, and, even though he planned to do “Chelsea Hotel #2” next, he confers with the band for a second, and then they go into a cover of some recent pop song that no one at my lunch table would be caught dead listening to. That gets people’s attention, at least for a minute. Instead of talking over it, they shout “Woooo!” at the top of their lungs. It’s not a track I’ll be using on Doug’s album.

The article is coming along nicely in my head. I felt before it began like I was going to be a zoologist studying chimps, and they really do act like apes. To hear people talk about this party, you’d think it’s the most fun night of all time. Apparently, to some people, hanging out in a disgusting, trashy house drinking cheap beer with idiots is the be-all, end-all of human existence.

The weird thing is that no one actually looks like they’re having much fun. And there’s no one here that I’d really consider popular, per se. They’re just … well-known. Not well liked. I love Doug, and I could survive an evening hanging out with Nat, probably, but there’s no one else here I’ll be looking forward to seeing at the reunion in ten years.

Sigh.

Something about drunks just annoys me. Maybe it’s the memories of having to hold my mom’s hair while she puked. I only ever had to do that twice, but that was enough.

Doug sings a nice version of a Nirvana song, then takes a break. Before they can get the beats back on the stereo, I lean over, tell Doug how good he was, then ask if there’s a place we can be alone. He tells me there are some rooms upstairs, and I say I’ll meet him there. There are a bunch of well-wishers hanging around, wanting to pat him on the back, so he says he’ll catch up to me. I don’t really want to leave him behind, but I know it’s only polite for him to stick around for the “fans.” I just need to get the hell away from all the idiots.

Upstairs, there are several rooms, each of which seems to have a mattress in it. The first two I look into are occupied, but the third is available.

I wait there for half an hour before the door opens.

I start taking off my jacket, but it’s not Doug.

It’s Will.

“Good evening,” he says.

“Get lost,” I say.

“Doug is occupied,” he says. “It is best that you forget him. His kind will not soon be welcome in the city.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There has been, this afternoon … a disturbance. Zombies on Martin Luther King Boulevard.”

Martin Luther King Boulevard. That runs right alongside Doug’s cemetery.

“The zombies rose from the cemetery, crying for brains. They entered a restaurant and attempted to attack patrons.”

“I haven’t heard about that,” I say.

“For the news travels fast,” he says. “And the people of your town will not tolerate brain-eating zombies attacking them.”

“Doug’s not that kind of zombie!” I say.

He smiles at me. I can see his teeth. He doesn’t have fangs or anything, but his smile is just as scary as it would be if he did.

“The people will not care,” he says. “They will destroy all zombies. All of them. They will drive them out of town with torches. It happened sometimes in the Old Country.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But this is the twenty-first century. We’re a little more tolerant than that.”

I’m not sure that’s true, though. I mean, Iowa’s a lot more liberal than you’d think, but you can’t really expect people to tolerate brain-eating monsters, can you?

“Zombies will not be welcome,” says Will. “Vampires, on the other hand, will be fine….”

“Look,” I say. “I’m not going to become a vampire. So come off it and leave me alone. I have Mace!”

I don’t really, though, and Will just laughs.

“As if I could not outrun a spray bottle,” he says. “We will talk more.”

He turns and leaves the room, leaving me alone and scared.

I suddenly have a pretty good idea of who might be creating the new zombies. It has to be Will, or some other vampire who wants Doug out of the way. That bastard! Mrs. Smollet is probably involved, too. Both she and Will seem to think I’m one of those idiot girls on the message boards who just want to become a post-human. It’s never occurred to them that his being dead has nothing to do with what I like about Doug.

It’s his … well, his taste in music, for one.

And the fact that we get along really well.

I try to think of the rest, and I suddenly realize that I don’t know Doug all that well. I know enough to love him and all, but who knows how much we really have in common? I don’t know what movies he likes. What books he reads. These things haven’t come up yet. I don’t even know for sure who he would have voted for in the last election (if dead people had the vote in any city other than Chicago), and the wrong answer would be a deal breaker.

I sit in the corner and rock back and forth for what seems like hours but is probably only a few minutes, feeling the obnoxious beats rattle the floor. This is time I could be spending working on my article, but instead I’m waiting for Doug and getting nervous.

And the longer I wait, the more pissed off I get. Maybe he is a loser with terrible taste in movies and politics. Maybe the only reason I’m with him at all is that he happened to sing two songs I love on a night when I was vulnerable, what with prom coming up and all, and then had the decency not to use any lame lines to hit on me.

But when Doug finally shows up, all that melts away in a heartbeat. I can’t stay mad at him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say, “did you know there were more zombies rising up today?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out.”

“This is Des Moines,” I say. “You think a bunch of brain-eating zombies can attack a restaurant without it making the news?”

He sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I heard.”

“I think the vampires are doing it,” I say. “Do you think they’d do it just to get you out of the way so I could be with Will?”

“They might,” he says. “It could be any vampire, though. Vampires hate zombies.”

“But they came out of the coffin just to get you free from Megamart!” I say.

“Yeah,” says Doug, “but I think it was mostly an excuse to go public on their own terms. Keeping secrets was getting to be impossible for them. Most of them didn’t care about post-human rights at all. They just wanted us to be free so we’d crumble, and it was a convenient excuse to go public and look like good guys instead of just being outed by conspiracy theorists.”

“Really?”

“I’m not sure why they hate us, exactly. It’s some old-time prejudice thing or something. Like maybe zombies violated a treaty a thousand years ago and the vampires have never forgiven them. But they can’t stand zombies. And everyone knew that if Megamart kept making them, there’d be more zombies than vampires in the world soon. There might already have been.”

“So they got you free to get rid of you?”

“Exactly. They wouldn’t want to create more, but if there’s another attack, half the town’s going to be coming around with torches to kill any zombie still standing. And Mrs. Smollet will probably lead the parade.”

“We have to stop them,” I say.

Doug just shrugs. “All I can do is stay vigilant,” he says. “If any more zombies rise up, I’ll try to stop them. Or catch them doing it. If the Council of Elders finds out they’re building zombies, they’ll be in massive trouble.”

“Maybe you can build an alarm system or something,” I say.

“Maybe.”

I think I can actually see the wheels in his head turning. I let him think for a second, then move closer to him, put my hand on his leg and start kissing him, getting ready to do #7.

“Listen,” he says. “I think I’m exhausted from all the singing. Can we do number seven another time?”

“Of course,” I say. Even though I’m thinking You’ve got to be kidding me!

So we just kiss some more, then make our way through the crowd of drunken idiots and obnoxious beats and through the cemetery back to his car.

I try not to let it bug me. I know it’s nothing personal. He’s probably just nervous.

And once I’ve done #8 with him, he probably won’t be able to keep his hands off me.

12

By Saturday morning, any lingering resentment I have toward Doug for making me wait in that room is gone. Even though the radio is buzzing with talk about the zombie attack downtown and people are ranting about how we can’t allow zombies in our community, I’m not as worried about it. Doug is going to catch the vampires in the act, they’ll all get in trouble and off my back, and people will forget all about zombies again.

And anyway, I’m too excited to be upset. It’s prom day.

It’s also the day I’m filling out forms for Drake. I haven’t told anyone this yet, but I’ve officially decided to stick around in Iowa a little longer to be with Doug. Seattle will just have to survive without me. I should probably ask any new zombies who show up whether they can confirm that hell has, in fact, frozen over.

The first thing I do Saturday morning, even before I go downstairs and make myself a coffee, is finish the forms. It’s exciting, really. The first step toward starting to carve out a new life for myself and the guy who I can’t imagine won’t be the love of my life.

Sadie comes over at three to start getting ready. I’ve decided to take Marie’s advice and go for the zombie look. I text Doug to make sure he’s cool with it, and he texts back that he thinks it’ll be hilarious.

This really is the kind of teenage life I was promised by TV and movies. My best friend is coming over to do my makeup before I do hers, so we can both be ready for a big date. I didn’t quite imagine I’d be putting fake blood and gray eye shadow on as part of it, but, well, life is supposed to be unpredictable, not as bland and repetitive as the rows and rows of corn along Interstate 80.

We’re almost done when Sadie notices the forms on my desk.

“What the hell?” she asks. “You’re not going to Seattle?”

“It’s only undergrad, isn’t it?” I ask. “It doesn’t matter where I go. I can just go to Drake.”

“The hell you can!” she shouts. “You’ve been dreaming about getting out of town as long as I’ve known you!”

“Only so I could meet a guy like Doug!” I say.

“Gonk, you’re an idiot!” she says. “No guy is worth rearranging your life over at eighteen.”

I kind of roll my eyes, getting ready for a fight. But then I say, “It’s just an option I’m keeping open. And it’s mostly for the money. It’d be so much cheaper to do at least a year of undergrad here.”

“Still!” she says. I can see she’s disappointed in me.

“Hey, you’re going to Grandview,” I say. “We’ll still be able to hang out!”

“It’s the only school with an art program I can afford,” she says. “And we both know I’ll probably end up designing logos for insurance companies. If I’m lucky. You’re getting out! You’re, like, my proof that it’s possible!”

“It’s not definite yet,” I say. “It’s just sort of on the table.”

“You’d better move,” she says.

I feel like arguing, but I don’t want to fight. It’s prom night.

And when the doorbell rings, we both forget everything and start squeeing.

I had planned on letting my parents continue to think I was going to convert eventually, just out of spite, but I decided it would make this evening too awkward, and assured them over breakfast that I’m going to stay a regular human. I can hear them being very friendly downstairs.

“Why, there’s the man himself!” I hear Dad say.

“That’s a nice suit,” says Mom. “Is it new?”

“Yeah,” says Doug. “Just got it yesterday. I’ve only slept in it once so far.”

There’s some awkward tittering as Sadie walks down the stairs in her prom dress while I finish some last-second primping.

“Hi, Sadie,” says Doug.

“Hi, everybody,” she says. “May I now present to you, the prom-queen-to-be, Miss Algonquin Rhodes!”

And I step from my bedroom and descend the stairs into the living room, like a movie star from the 1930s making her grand entrance to a ball. In zombie makeup.

Doug is smiling so hard I’m afraid part of his face might literally break off. My dress looks awesome, if I do say so myself. Elegant, classy and just a little suggestive, since it shows off my figure really well.

“Did you rent a limo?” Mom asks Doug as we go through the hideous “posing for pictures” ritual.

I answer for him. “Hell no,” I say. “That’s just for people who use prom as an excuse to show off how much money their daddies make.”

“We’re taking my car,” says Doug.

“It’s a form of protest against extravagance,” I say. “And we’re going for ice cream instead of a fancy dinner.”

Mom shrugs. “I understand,” she says. “I imagine some restaurant owners are being pretty narrow-minded about zombies after yesterday.”

“That’s just awful,” says Dad. “No one even got hurt!”

There’s also the matter that there’s no point going to a fancy restaurant when Doug can’t really eat anything, anyway.

We pile into Doug’s car, then swing by Peter’s house, where Sadie goes inside to pose for pictures. Doug and I make out in the car. My zombie makeup gets smeared, but the more smeared it gets, the better it looks.

I feel like I could just melt into him. And I fully plan to right after prom.

Sadie and Peter come out and get into the backseat.

“How was it?” I ask.

“I’ve never seen my mom so happy,” says Peter. “I thought the woman was going to cry.”

“What for?” I ask.

“She pretty much knows I’m gay, deep down,” he says. “But I think this gives her reason to believe I’ll still be fathering some grandchildren for her.”

I turn to Sadie. “No pressure or anything, huh?”

“Hey,” says Sadie. “It’s prom.” She turns to Peter. “You realize that part of that is that you have to do me tonight, right?”

“Can you wear a Johnny Depp mask?” asks Peter.

“If you’ll talk in a Southern accent and quote The Glass Menagerie,” says Sadie.

We go to Snookie’s Malt Shop, where Doug and I went before, and make small talk and trade brilliant zingers, but all the while, I just keep thinking of how Sadie was so freaked out that I was planning to go to Drake, not Seattle.

And some of that stuff I wondered about last night is coming back. But when I look at Doug, none of it matters. There’s no fighting love. Or lust. Or whatever.

After we have our ice cream, we head out to the Science Center, which is just a couple of blocks away from Doug’s cemetery downtown. I thought it was a big joke when they announced that prom was going to be at a science museum—we spent weeks making cracks about it at lunch. I mean, is Iowa really so boring that we don’t have any place nice enough to hold a prom, so we have to go hold it in front of a pile of dinosaur bones? Instead of a band, will they have a guy demonstrating how snakes eat?

But it turns out that they host banquets and stuff there all the time. They convert the planetarium into a dance floor. I honestly can’t wait to see it.

So we park in Doug’s spot at the cemetery, which is right nearby, and walk up along the river to the Science Center. Everyone else is starting to file in, all dressed in suits and shiny dresses. For once, people actually look good. Some of them are kids I’ve known since kindergarten, but I’ve never seen them so dressed up and … well, sophisticated. It’s hard for me to think of any of these kids as sophisticated. I guess it’s hard to think of people you’ve seen eating paste as grown up.

But they are. They’ll be back to lighting farts on fire tomorrow, but today, everyone looks grown up.

Naturally, Doug and I turn heads. People look at me and grin at my zombie makeup.

Crystal comes running up to me.

“Oh my God!” she says. “You converted!”

I laugh a bit. “It’s just makeup,” I say.

“We’ll worry about that next,” says Doug.

“Maybe eventually,” I correct. “Not before I’m thirty, at least.”

He looks like he wants to say something, but dying is the last thing I want to talk about. Tonight, I’m here to live.

So I kiss him before he can open his mouth, then lead him into the planetarium. The fake stars fly on the dome over our heads, only instead of the distorted synthesizer sounds from the usual planetarium show we see at least once a year on field trips, there’s a band playing rock music. All the chairs are gone and everyone is dancing. Maybe it’s not quite like going to a glamorous hotel ballroom in the 1930s to dance to Benny Goodman and His Orchestra playing a show that will be broadcast on NBC radio, but it’s certainly the closest I’ve ever been.

I’m so glad to be here with a date, not just coming to make fun of it with Sadie.

I think I stand speechless for about five minutes, just looking at how beautiful everything is, before I turn and give Doug the biggest kiss I’ve ever given anyone.

“I … I’m not a very good dancer,” he says. “I can’t do much more than slow dancing, remember?”

I kiss him again. “Then let’s slow dance.”

“To this?”

The music is a fast, upbeat number. A big pop hit. Some people are dancing to it; others are sort of pogoing.

“Sure,” I say. And I grab him and start to slow dance. There are a lot of beats in the song, but it’s really just in 4/4. You can slow dance to it. We do, and the fast music just makes it feel like we’re moving in slow motion. I almost hope there’s been some kind of weird time-space thingamabob and we are going in slow motion, so the night will last longer.

Hey. The world has zombies and vampires in it. Why not time travel? Just because it defies all known laws of physics doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible, right? If it’s gonna happen anywhere, it might as well be at the Science Center.

I think that for the rest of my life, the smell of embalming fluid will take me back to this night, the same way the smell of cinnamon cookies and pistachio ice cream reminds me of Hanukkah.

We dance, and I’m losing track of time. Everything around me is a blur, and my head is just swimming. It’s awesome. It’s no wonder so many girls lose their virginity on prom night. I’m usually damn good at saying no, but tonight I almost feel like I’d say yes to anything.

Then there’s a voice.

“Mind if we cut in?”

I look over to the side and see Fred, Michelle and Will all standing around us. They move a bit, so that Fred and Will are on either side of us.

“Get lost,” I say.

“I don’t think so,” says Will.

And then he charges.

It all happens so fast I don’t even realize what’s happening. One second he’s standing beside me, an instant later I feel arms around my waist and then I’m moving fast out of the planetarium, and through the Science Center, and in all of a second, I’m in the room with all the giant dinosaur models.

We stop moving. I see that Will has grabbed me and carried me at about a million miles per hour or however fast it is that vampires run. An instant later Fred appears, carrying Doug. Michelle is riding on Fred’s back.

“What the hell?” I shout. “Get your hands off me!”

Will drops me on the ground.

Fred puts Marie and Doug down, zips over to the door and locks us in.

“Let us go, asshole!” Doug grumbles.

“You are not going anywhere,” says Will with a grin. He grabs me and drags me over to the triceratops and shoves me up against it.

“Sit,” he says.

I don’t have a choice.

Over on the other side of the room, Doug leans against a tyrannosaurus; then Michelle walks over to me. Will is just pacing back and forth, grinning.

“I’m so glad we have time to talk,” Michelle says. “I’ve been just dying to talk to another girl who’s converting!”

“I’m not converting!” I say.

Michelle laughs. “I sure am. You’re eighteen, right?”

I nod.

“So you can convert!” she says. “I signed a letter of intent to make Mrs. Smollet happy, but Friedrich can’t convert me officially until I turn eighteen. If they do it before that, it’s technically statutory rape.”

“Is that how they do it?” I ask. “By having sex with you?”

“Something like that,” she says.

I try to think my way out of this. Will is planning to do something to me that’s going to count as rape. I don’t want him touching me. I’d scream, but I doubt anyone can hear. And even if they can, what could they do? They can’t outfight the vampires.

My best hope is to talk my way out.

“Enough talking!” says Will, walking up to me. “We’re going to do this tonight!”

“Shut up!” I shout. “I know you can’t hurt me. The Council of Elders will destroy you if you do.”

“Oh, no one’s going to hurt you,” Will says. “See, the thing is, I have their permission to make you into a vampire, but the rule is that I have to get yours, too. You ever hear that legend about how vampires need an invitation or they can’t enter your house?”

“I guess,” I say.

“Well, this is what it comes from,” he explains. “I can sneak into your house anytime. But I need your permission to make you into a vampire. And you are going to give it to me. Tonight. Now.”

I spit at him. He just chuckles. Then he inhales.

“I can smell your blood type,” he says. “It is a very rare type. Do you have any idea how long I’ve looked for a girl such as you? Just like you?”

“Keep looking,” I say.

“I am finished with such things,” says Will. “I have found you. You will do.”

“I’m not giving you permission,” I point out.

“I think you will,” he says. “Because if you don’t … your boyfriend will crumble by dawn.”

“Don’t do it, Gonk!” shouts Doug, as loudly as he can. “Just let me crumble!” I can barely hear it, but I know he’s trying to shout. His voice gives me some measure of strength.

“You can’t kill people,” I say. “It’s against the treaty.”

“I can’t kill people,” says Will. “But no one will care if I kill someone who’s already dead. Zombies are just walking corpses. No person smells that bad!”

“You’re the one who made those new zombies, aren’t you?” I ask. “You made them to make Doug look bad, so people would drive him out of town.”

Will laughs. “You think I am afraid of your boyfriend? Or that I would create more of those disgusting creatures?”

“Hey, Wilhelm, can I watch when you convert her?” asks Michelle.

“No!” says Fred. “I don’t want you to see him doing that!”

“Quiet, Friedrich,” orders Will.

“Look, Wilhelm,” says Fred. “I thought you were just going to scare them a bit. No one said anything about hurting anyone. I don’t want the council on my back.”

I’m thinking through every insult, put-down and smear I’ve ever used at the lunch table. I might need them all. If I can just buy some time …

“Hey, Michelle,” I say. “There’s a question I always wanted to ask you.”

“What?” she asks.

“What’s the square root of nine?”

She looks at me for a second and doesn’t answer.

Just as I thought.

“That’s one smart girlfriend you have there, Friedrich,” I say. “No wonder you talked her into killing herself. I’m sure you’ll be able to spend centuries having long, fascinating conversations with her.”

“Shut up,” barks Will.

I laugh. “If you expect me to shut up, I’m not going to make such a good vampire companion for you.”

“That might be true, actually, Wilhelm,” admits Michelle. “Rhodes never shuts up. You sure you don’t want to turn some other girl into a vampire?”

“No one else I’ve found has her blood type,” insists Will. “It is very rare.”

“Boy, you sure know how to make a girl feel special, Will,” I say. “It’s not that I’m attractive, or smart, or interesting; I just happened to be born with the right blood type. Pardon me while I go swoon.”

“I grow weary of this,” snarls Will.

“I can go on all night,” I say. “As long as I don’t need a blood transfusion. I guess I’m in big trouble if that ever happens, huh? What with having such a rare blood type and all.”

Will walks over and grabs Doug’s arm. Hard. Doug cringes.

“This zombie arm probably snaps right off,” says Will. “Now, if you become a vampire, your little smelly boyfriend can stay … alive. And with all four limbs attached. Otherwise, he will have crumbled by morning.”

I have to stall. It’s all I can do.

“Look,” I say. “You think I’m going to let you do whatever it is you’re planning to do to me just because you made some threats? No flowers? No dinner? No booze? Whatever happened to romance?”

Will just sighs, then starts to look up at Fred. I realize that I’m in a hopeless situation: I’m having a battle of wits with unarmed people. It’s about as much use as picking a fight with a message-board troll. The only way I can get out of this is if I can distract them, sneak away and make it to Doug’s grave, two blocks away. They can’t get me in there.

“Stall all you want,” Will says. “By morning, your boyfriend will crumble, whether I hurt him or not. Is that what you want?”

He twists Doug’s arm a bit, and Doug winces. Obviously, it hurts him like hell. It takes every bit of strength I have not to agree to whatever Will wants just to make it stop.

“Come on, Wilhelm,” says Fred. “Blackmailing a girl into giving you permission? The council is gonna be pissed.”

“What they do not know will not hurt them,” Will says.

“You’re such an idiot, Will,” says Fred. “I’m leaving. And I’m going to report you.”

“You will stay!” shouts Will. “No one leaves! You can’t outfight me, and you know it!”

“Yeah, Friedrich,” says Marie. “Don’t be such a wuss!”

Just then, we hear screams coming from outside.

“What the hell?” asks Fred.

Fred moves away from Doug and opens the door. People are running around screaming. I wonder what the hell is happening for a second, but then I hear it.

“Brrrrrraaaaaaiiiiinnnnns!”

“Aw, crap,” says Will. “Not more zombies!”

This is my chance.

“We have to get out of here!” I yell.

“Those are feral,” says Doug. “They could kill people.”

“If people die of a zombie attack while we’re in here trying to blackmail a girl, the council will find out,” warns Fred. “We’ve got to get rid of them.”

Will scowls, but then he sighs.

“I know how to get rid of them!” says Doug.

“Very well,” Will concedes. “But we are coming right back here once those creatures are gone! You will not escape!”

At the very least, this will buy me some time. I can get help. I can hide.

“What do you intend to do?” Will asks Doug.

“They usually go toward whoever created them, right?” I say. “You guys have to get out. I know you created them! They might follow you!”

“Get me to that exhibit with all the body parts,” Doug says to Fred. “Now!”

Fred puts Doug on his back, and Will hoists me onto his. I can’t think of a back I’d less like to be on; I’d rather just run for the graveyard. But that might not be safe yet. There could be more zombies in there, just lying in wait.

Fred and Will rush us out to the part of the museum where you can find out what your tongue looks like outside of your body, walk through a giant model of a heart and stuff like that.

“There’s a brain on display in here in a big thing of formaldehyde,” says Doug. “It’s in one of these cases. We can lure them back to the graveyard with it!”

Doug, Fred, Will and I look through the museum. It’d be hard not to linger on all the weird stuff behind the cases if it weren’t for all the screams and gunshots we can hear coming from the planetarium.

“I’ve got it!” says Fred. He smashes his fist through the glass and pulls out a jar with a brain in it. It actually looks more like gefilte fish than matzoh-ball soup.

Doug grabs it from him and says, “To the lobby!”

We jump back onto the vampires’ backs and they rush us to the atrium outside the planetarium. Everyone is running around like crazy, screaming and yelling. Cops are trying to keep the zombies out, but these ones are nuts. They seem a lot crazier than the ones that attacked me a few days ago.

“These guys look harsh,” I say to Doug as we’re set down.

“If they were made into zombies the same day as the others, they’re are going to be tough,” Doug tells me. “I’m gonna need Will and Fred. I don’t have my knife. You go hide in my grave! The vampires can’t go in there. Run!”

I take off running, but not before hearing Fred yell, “We’ve got a brain!”

I run like I’ve never run before out of the Science Center, down the block and into the cemetery. I’m running and puffing so hard that I barely even notice Fred and Will race by so fast I can hardly see them. Doug is probably on one of their backs. The zombies come in hot pursuit. They’re not nearly as fast as Will or Fred, but they’re certainly faster than me. Frenzy mode at this point really does make them rough. Thank God they’re chasing the vampires, not me.

I make it to Doug’s grave and climb in. If I jump up and look over the edge, I can see a little of what’s going on. There are a bunch of people who’ve wandered out from the prom, staring at the graveyard from the outside.

Doug and the vampires are fighting with about nine really rough zombies. One of them is eating the brain from the jar; the rest are in a massive rumble. I can see that Fred and Will are kicking serious ass while Doug is trying to take on two zombies at once. People are screaming in the background.

Doug lands a blow to one zombie’s face, but the thing just keeps coming at him like a grizzly bear. I can’t take it. I jump out of the grave and rush up to help, but Fred runs away from the fight and over to me.

“Back in the grave!” he shouts.

“Help Doug!” I yell.

“We’ve got him, don’t worry. Just get down there!”

Fred runs back and rips the head right off the zombie that’s attacking Doug. I duck back into the grave and curl up into a ball. I can’t watch.

I can hear Doug grunting and groaning, but the number of zombies shouting for brains quickly drops as Fred and Will take them out.

Then, silence.

It’s over. And I hear Doug’s voice, so I know that the other zombies are dead (again) and he’s still alive.

I feel like I ought to keep hiding in the grave—if I stay somewhere public, maybe help will arrive before Will can grab me again. But I can’t help looking up.

And when I do, I start to cry.

Doug is hobbling back to his grave. He’s missing all of one arm and part of another. His face is a mess.

“Doug!” I shout.

“Alley!” he groans, hobbling toward me.

I jump to the ground and run to him. He collapses, and I just hold him.

“They’re gone,” he says. “They’re gone. But get back in my grave!”

“Don’t try to talk!” I say. “We’re going to get you fixed up. You saved my ass again!”

I lie down beside him. I can hear sirens. I’m vaguely aware that a crowd of girls in prom dresses are standing around outside the cemetery.

“God, it hurts so much,” he says.

“Don’t talk,” I say. “Don’t talk.”

“Take me home, please,” he says.

We’re not far away. I summon all my strength, pick him up and carry him over to his grave, then carefully lower him to the mattress and climb inside. Safe.

“Will won’t try to get you again tonight,” he says. “He can’t come in here. And now he can’t blackmail you by threatening me, because I’m not going to make it.”

“Don’t say that!” I say, trying to wipe all the tears from my eyes so I can still see him. “You’ll make it.”

“No,” he says.

I can hear the sadness in his voice. I run my hand through his hair and then realize that his ear is coming off in my fingers.

I should be disgusted.

But I’m just overwhelmed by sadness.

It’s true.

He’s not going to make it.

I could pour embalming fluid down his throat every four hours, but there’s no repairing him.

“I won’t get to do any of it now,” he says. “All I wanted was to have a life. Just for a while.”

I cry. I catch myself imagining that maybe my tears will have some magic effect and make him all better, but they don’t. They just drip onto his face.

“I’ll have a life,” I tell him. “I’ll have a life for you. I’ll do enough living for both of us. I have to.”

He smiles a little. “Go to college,” he says. “Have a lot of babies. Break a lot of hearts. And realize every minute of it.”

“I’ll break a ton of them,” I say over a sniffle. “And I’ll realize every, every minute of life. I promise.”

“No you won’t,” he says. “You can’t. But try your hardest. For me. And everyone else my age who’s in here.”

I cuddle up and hold him for what seems like hours. It is hours. I kiss his broken face. I try to reattach his ear, but it keeps falling off. We whisper back and forth a bit, just little nothings.

Then he’s silent, like he’s building his strength back up. I can tell he’s in pain—like maybe he’s going into frenzy mode.

Then there’s a voice above us.

“Hey.”

I look up and Fred is standing over me.

“Go away!” I shout through my tears.

“Will is gone,” he says. “Mrs. Smollet found out what he was doing, and he’s in massive trouble. He’s already being transported back to Romania to face the council. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he was going to have me … blackmail you. He said it was going to be a prank.”

“Leave us alone,” I say.

“I brought this for him,” he says, nodding to Doug.

And he hands me down a bit of something gooey. Part of the brain from the jar. He holds it above the edge of the grave, but not over it, since he can’t come in.

“Thanks,” I say, standing up and taking it.

Fred says “I’m sorry” again, then disappears.

I put the handful of brain into Doug’s mouth. He swallows a bit, then sort of smiles.

“God,” he says, “that’s the stuff.”

“Does it feel better now?”

“The pain is gone.”

He’s still weak, and still clearly deteriorating, but at least he’s not in pain. He smiles a little.

“I’m never going to forgive the vampires for making those other zombies,” I say. “The zombies saved my ass from Will by showing up when they did, but … but …”

“I made the zombies,” he says. “It wasn’t the vampires.”

“What?” I ask.

He looks embarrassed. “One night I did the zombie operation over a bunch of graves. It was stupid of me. Stupid. And I totally screwed it up, too. People could have been killed. People who weren’t already dead. I let you think it was the vampires or Megamart because I was embarrassed. I didn’t think you’d like me anymore.”

I don’t know what to say. How could he have done something so stupid? Was he trying to create his own zombie army or something? I might not have liked him anymore if I’d known he was doing something like that.

“Why did you do it?” I ask.

“Sometimes I just have to build, remember?” he says. “But building that many … it was an accident.”

“How the hell do you accidentally raise the dead?” I ask.

“I only wanted to do it to one of them,” he says. “And I didn’t know that nothing happens at first when you do the operation. I thought I heard the grave is supposed to glow or something if you do it right. I didn’t see any glow the first time, so I kept doing it over and over. I didn’t know I was doing it right every time. And I thought they were all done now. I thought those ones yesterday were the last of them.”

I should be furious. But this is no time to be mad at him. And anyway, I just can’t be mad when I look at him.

I guess you can’t help doing stupid things now and then. Especially when your brain is partially rotten.

I just kiss his face again.

Boys.

“I love you, Gonk,” he says.

“I love you,” I say back.

“Realize it,” he says. “Live enough for everyone in here who didn’t get to.”

And I hold him, even when he can’t move or talk anymore, whispering that I love him in his ear over and over again.

The sun is just rising over the cemetery when Doug starts to crumble.

EPILOGUE

You know how hearing a certain song or smelling a certain smell can, like, send you back in time?

It’s been six months since Doug went back to being dead full-time, and now it almost seems like the whole thing happened to someone else, not to me. But whenever I hear a song that he loved or smell formaldehyde, I feel like I’m with Doug again. I start to miss him all over again. And those songs and smells will still probably take me back just as powerfully when I’m a hundred years old, with a bunch of great-grandkids running around my ankles and asking to see my belly-button ring.

I thought going to school so far away from home would help me move on, but there are so many things that remind me of him every day. Practically every guy in Seattle has a record collection exactly like Doug’s: Cohen, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nick Drake. Everything except all the original cast recordings he had. So I hear the songs that take me back six months all the time, and I smell formaldehyde in the science building three days a week.

Everything that happened on prom night is sort of a haze to me now. I would probably remember it all clearly if I thought about it hard enough, but I don’t want to. I can’t. Even though I haven’t cried in weeks now, and I feel like I’ve turned a few corners, there are certain things I’m not quite ready to think about.

The part I can remember is that the sun rose, and I started hearing Sadie’s voice above me. She and Trinity and my parents and everyone else I didn’t want to see helped me out of Doug’s grave and took me home, where I just collapsed on my bed and went blank for a while.

The hardest thing for me, honestly, was doing the laundry and taking a shower. Doug had crumbled right on me. I got most of the dust into his casket, but some had to be washed off. It was really tragic.

I didn’t go to school that Monday. Or the day after that. There’s no point going to school when you’re so miserable that you can’t even stand up straight.

I got an e-mail on Wednesday from Mrs. Smollet, apologizing for Wilhelm’s behavior. She swore she’d make sure I never, ever had to hear from him again, and apologized for having helped him get permission to make me into a vampire. Apparently, she thought I was just one of those idiot girls who have a real thing for any and all dead guys. She never once said “I am one stupid vampire” in the letter, but she should have.

After the attack, there was a wave of antizombie prejudice in town for a couple of days, mostly among people too ignorant to know that any zombie that’s been out of the grave more than an hour or so isn’t the slightest bit dangerous, no matter how many talking heads on the news tell them otherwise. There were some meetings and calls to the mayor demanding that he “do something to protect us,” despite the fact that there were no zombies left in town. He pushed for new laws restricting access to cemeteries after dark, which didn’t really do a damn thing other than give the cops an excuse to shut down parties at 1518 Bartleby Way but at least made him look like he was doing something, I guess. The cemeteries did their part by locking their gates after dark, so any zombies that rose up wouldn’t be able to get out.

When a few weeks had gone by, I started to realize that what happened with Doug, as painful as it was, was probably the best way things could have ended. I mean, even if he hadn’t gone back to being dead full-time, our relationship probably had an expiration date. I could have pushed it back awhile by going to Drake instead of Seattle, but I would only have been delaying the inevitable.

I sometimes wonder if I would have actually converted. I had figured out that it was a bad idea, but, well, it’s hard to argue with love, even when it’s making you do something really stupid.

When I got back to school, everyone told me that Doug and I had actually been named prom king and queen. Sadie did some investigative reporting and confirmed that it was supposed to be Fred and Michelle (it’s all politics—Doug didn’t go to our high school when he was alive, which cost him votes), but after people realized he was dying (for good, this time), they made us king and queen out of pity. I think it was pretty nice of them, really.

My last article for the paper didn’t end up being about the party at 1518 Bartleby Way. It was about the time I spent with Michelle, talking her out of “converting.” It wasn’t easy to reason with an idiot, but I finally talked her out of dying and got her to stop hanging around on those stupid message boards. Fred understood. He never wanted her to convert, anyway. He wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.

The article ended up spreading all over the Internet. School nurses e-mailed me and told me they were going to give copies to girls in their schools who were thinking about going post-human. I started getting a lot of offers to do interviews for documentaries and TV shows and stuff, but I turned them all down.

I’m not really ready to talk about it without crying yet.

Because even though I know that Doug and I probably wouldn’t have worked out, I don’t feel like I’ll ever stop loving him.

I made up my mind, after Doug died (or went back to being dead full-time), to wear black every day for a year and a day out of mourning, which I think is a tradition in some religions or something. But everyone else already wore black most every day anyway, so no one really noticed. I only made it about six weeks before I talked myself into wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. After all, I promised him I would live. I promised to notice every, every minute of life, and you can’t do that while you’re depressed. I had to move on.

I did start going to temple just so I could read the Kaddish prayer—the prayer for the dead—for him. A few people had issues with reading it for someone who was already dead when he died, but I don’t care. He was alive to me when he was undead.

Mom and Dad were amazing. They let me mope around and cry for weeks, like I was some sort of vampire or something. They never once said, “Maybe this is for the best, Alley,” even though we all knew that it probably was. They never said, “Well, he was already dead,” or “At least this happened before you converted,” or anything else I’d imagined they would say.

Around graduation, I felt like I’d never love anyone else as long as I lived. But now that I’m away from the whole scene, living in a whole other world, I guess I have more perspective. I was so blinded by that combination of lust and loneliness that I hadn’t even realized Doug was a zombie, let alone admitted any of his other flaws. Sure, we liked the same music and everything, but how far does that really take a relationship in the end? The fact that he made those zombies and never told the cemetery people to step up security was just dumb, and that thing about leaving me waiting for him at the party was really not cool. If he’d kept up acting like that, we would have started fighting sooner or later. We never had our first fight, or anything to be all that bitter about. Instead, he’ll just live on in my heart as my first, most tragic love. The one I’ll think about every time I hear a Leonard Cohen song.

I thought it was the most tragic thing in the world when Doug died. But I guess I’ve come to realize that we were both incredibly, unbelievably, breathtakingly lucky that we even got what time together we had. I mean, who gets to have a love affair after they die? Doug is just about the luckiest corpse in history, if you get right down to it. The most tragic part is that he had to work at Megamart.

It was about a month before I could even bear to see how the recordings I made of him had come out. They turned out fairly well—and the pop song he sang at the party is actually the best one. It’s really kind of a brilliant song. If I ever find just the right band, I’ll have them add music behind his vocals. There’re enough songs for a good EP, at least. It’ll be a perfect way to honor his memory.

And now I’ve moved on to living the life I promised him I would.

It’s kind of ironic that the only place I can hang out and have some coffee between classes now that I’m in Seattle is a Wackfords Coffee, the same chain store we had on Cedar Avenue. I never went to the one in Cornersville Trace, but I’m in this one on campus almost every day when I have an hour to kill between classes. Not enough time to go clear back to the dorm, but enough time to relax with some coffee. It beats having six lousy minutes between classes.

Between classes one day I move up to the front of the Wackfords line, and the guy in the green apron behind the counter notices my book.

“What are you reading?” he asks.

Six months ago, the first thing I would have said was “What? You don’t know how to read the title on the cover?”

But instead, I tell him.

“The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,” I say.

“Is it any good?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “He spends a lot of time bragging about how great he is, though. He claims to have won every war Italy fought all by himself. It gets a little annoying.”

“Well,” says the guy, “if his autobiography is still in print, he must have been at least a little bit great.”

Six months ago, I would have said something about how some other jerk’s book is probably still in print. Maybe his attempt at a joke was a swing and a miss, but it wasn’t offensively embarrassing or anything.

“You ever read it?” I ask instead.

He shakes his head. “I’m more into modern classics than classic classics,” he says.

I can think of so many zingers and one-liners to throw at this guy. Six months ago, I would have used all of them, and as I marched away from the counter, I would have smugly thought about what a loser the guy was. About what nerve he had to hit on me.

But a lot of things have changed.

I decide to give him a chance.

I take a seat with my coffee, and a few minutes later the guy gets a break. He takes off his apron and walks around to the front of the counter.

“You want to sit down?” I ask.

He smiles and has a seat at my little rectangular table.

I can already think of plenty of things that are wrong with this guy.

But there is a crack in everything….

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Selzer was born in Des Moines and now lives in Chicago, where he writes humorous books for young readers by day and runs ghost tours by night. (If you can find two cooler jobs than those, take them!) He is the author of How to Get Suspended and Influence People, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland, I Put a Spell on You, Andrew North Blows Up the World, and The Smart Aleck’s Guide to American History, and he is just famous enough to have a page on Wikipedia.

LITTLE-KNOWN AND PARTIALLY TRUE FACTS ABOUT ADAM:

Adam was raised by wild Iowan orangutans, a very rare form of ape. They tried their hardest.

He was the inspiration for the movie Bedtime for Bonzo, which starred Ronald Reagan and a chimpanzee.

He writes true crime under the name William “Wild Bill” Griffith.

He is occasionally known to dress up as “Obi-Wan Quixote.”

He is the second cowboy from the left in the famous “Lost Thunderbird” photo.

He invented the Franklin stove.

To get the real truth about Adam, check out his Web site, www.adamselzer.com. And don’t forget to check out www.ikissedazombie.com for cool extras like a downloadable book sound track, book trailers, and more!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Adam Selzer

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Selzer, Adam.
I kissed a zombie, and I liked it / Adam Selzer. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Living in the post-human era when the undead are part of everyday life, high schooler Alley breaks her no-dating rule when Doug catches her eye, but classmate Will demands to turn her into a vampire and her zombie boyfriend may be unable to stop him.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89667-5
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 3. Vampires— Fiction. 4. Zombies—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4652Iad 2010

[Fic]—dc22
2009024052

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