chapter Eleven
"What a crazy day," Sybil said with a sigh. Sybil and I AZ EW had been out of school several hours and were in my bedroom. When she spoke I realized we'd been there for quite some time and neither of us had said anything. That was unusual. Normally when Sybil and I were in my room we were buzzing with chatter.
For my part, I'd been distracted ever since our meeting with Principal Taft. Something inside me was different. I knew I was excited over the prospect of living out my manifesto, but something else was going on. It was as if a door had opened inside me, and something dark within my soul had stepped through it.
"Very crazy," I replied.
"Margot, I'm sorry for not telling you I asked Dirk to go to the carnival with both of us. It was deceitful."
"If I'd gone to the carnival with Dirk I'd probably be a zombie now." My voice was somber. The thought had been on my mind for a while. Our argument had saved my life.
"I know. I saw him this morning in a pack of jock zombies
patrolling the corridor, "Her voice lowered. "Margot, I need to know we're still friends."
"Of course we're friends. Best friends. Friends have fights."
"Not us."
A smile blossomed on my lips. "I guess we can't say that anymore. Can we?"
"Guess not," she replied, returning the smile. And just like that, all was forgiven.
Despite the perk of being head lunchroom monitor-- which I didn't see as a perk at all--Sybil still felt we needed to help our fellow classmates. I no longer shared the sentiment.
"What can we do for them? They're zombies." I was surprised I felt no pity. "Besides, I'm sure Principal Taft is doing all he can to find out what happened."
"But maybe we can help, too. Maybe we can find a way to change them back ourselves."
I stared at her. I was trying to come up with a reason why I'd want to change them back, I couldn't come up with one. Some of those kids had been nothing but pains in the butt my entire time in high school. They were the ones who'd made my two years and two months at Salesian so miserable, with all their little cliques constantly reminding me of what an outsider I was. I didn't say it out loud, but I was actually happy I didn't have to deal with them anymore.
"What can we do?" I repeated. I knew what I wanted to do-- nothing.
"We can go to the carnival and look for clues to find out what happened to them," Sybil said.
Leave it to nice Sybil to come up with a logical answer to my question. She clearly lacked the mean gene.
"But suppose we run into zombies at the carnival?"
"We'll bring raw meat and wear fish oil. And we already
know how to act. Come on, Margot. You know it's the right thing to do."
So what if it is? I thought. I don't want to change them back. I want to be on the Homecoming Committee and the Prom Committee. I want to be prom queen!
The conversation was putting me in a really bad mood. I should be spending my evening thinking up themes for the homecoming celebration, not how to help my classmates out of their little zombie problem. Didn't I have my own problems? Like should the new cheerleader outfits be royal blue or teal?
Just then a brilliant idea hit me. It was as if a light bulb had actually clicked on above my head. I would go to the carnival with Sybil not to look for answers, but to keep her from finding any. If we didn't find anything, I was guaranteed our classmates would remain zombies forever--or at least until the end of the semester.
"Sybil, you're right. We should go to the carnival and look for clues that might help us change our classmates back to normal," I said with fake sincerity.
"Thank you, Margot. I knew you'd come around," she replied.
The dark thing inside me smiled.
The carnival was set up on a vacant lot at the edge of the industrial part of town. There were several rides: a Ferris wheel, Tilt-a-Whirl, and the Hammer, along with an assortment of gaming booths where people tried their hand at tossing rings over pegs, knocking over milk bottles, and bursting balloons with water pistols.
We arrived at the carnival site just after 8 p.m. to discover the carnival was gone. No tents, no rides, no booths, nothing.
The area that just last night had been lit up by hundreds of multicolored lights and teeming with excited teenagers roaming the midway was now a desolate wasteland.
"It's gone," Sybil said as we surveyed the empty lot.
"I can see that."
"But how? Nobody said last night was the last night."
"But apparently it was." With the crisis averted my mind began to shift. "You know, I've been thinking about the new cheerleader outfits," I said. "Belly shirts are so passe."
"Not now, Margot. We have to find out what happened out here last night."
Sybil's niceness was starting to get on my nerves. I thought of all the causes she had taken up since I'd known her: Save the Bay, Save the Seals, Save the Whales. Now it was... Save the Zombies.
"How?" I barked. "The carnival is gone. There's nothing to see, no one to talk to. We should thank our lucky stars there aren't any zombies hanging around." Fumes from the icky vials of fish oil we'd hung around our necks wafted up my nose. It did nothing to brighten my mood.
"We need to search the area," Sybil said, rummaging in her purse.
"It's dark out. We can hardly see our hands in front of our faces."
"I have my lucky flashlight."
"Oh. Right."
I'd given her a set of exercise DVDs for her birthday. The tiny key chain penlight was a premium that came with the gift.
"It's perfect!" she had said when she opened the gift and saw the penlight. Turns out she'd dropped an earring under her bed getting ready for the party. We went right to her bed-
room and used the penlight to find it. When we did her face lit up: "Oh, Margot, you always know the perfect thing to get me."
I secretly cursed that penlight: Who needs a flashlight to exercise? Stupid premium.
She pulled the tiny penlight from her purse and began searching the dirty, filthy, smelly lot, digging through soil and refuse. Then an even more putrid stench hit me. "Ew! Something smells like stinky tennis shoes covered with cheese and then left out in the rain."
I knew that particular stink very well thanks to my cheesy little brother.
"What are we looking for, anyway?" I grumbled, pinching my nose to shut out the repugnant odor.
"I don't know. Something... relevant."
"Let's see. Ooh, there's a corn dog stick. Is that relevant? Or maybe that mysterious soft drink cup is just what we need to save our classmates." Sarcasm flowed from my lips. "Or how about that rock? Yes, that's it! The magic zombie rock. Sybil, I do believe we found just what--"
Crunch!
Both our heads whipped around as we stared in the direction of the sound. Blackness greeted our eyes.
"What was that?" Sybil whispered.
"Zombies," I whispered back.
My heart was pounding. Every ounce of me wanted to run, but I stood by as Sybil aimed the tiny beam in the direction of the sound. Nothing. Whatever we had heard--crunch, crunch--was moving. The tiny beam of the light now slid shakily across the lot in the direction of the moving sound.
"It's time to go," I said, my voice quaking. I yanked on her sleeve.
And then the flashlight's beam discovered the thing moving in the shadows. "Ahhh!" we both screamed as the black cat zipped away into the darkness.
"See. Heh-heh. It was just a cat," Sybil said, trying to laugh it off.
"Yeah," I replied. "Heh-heh. A cat." But I knew we were both thinking that the sound we'd first heard couldn't have been a cat. It was most definitely the sound of human, or inhuman, footsteps. Someone or something had been watching us.
Later that night, I sat alone in my room contemplating the future. The darkness lounging in my soul was happy my classmates were all zombies. It told me there was nothing anyone could do about it. We have to get on with our lives. It promised me a new life where 1 was no longer the girl on the sidelines passing the time, observing the good life from the outside instead of living it. I was about to become the queen bee of Sale-sian High.
It told me to enjoy it.