“No, to go with me. To be my date. You,” he said.
“I could go for that,” I said, heart bursting into song and sunshine.
“I’ll show you that there’s only one girl I want to kiss,” he said, smoothly, calmly, delightfully.
I melted, melted—and then—hells! I stuck my hand straight out and stopped him an inch from my lips. Shoved him backward. He stumbled against the mock-orange bush. “I am so not your little idiot,” I said. But I almost had been.
Whoever he was, he waggled his fingers and grinned cheekily at me. “Four more to go,” he said.
*
I booked it to Celestial Foods. Grabbed the ever-growing list of ingredients for various spells off the metal shelves, panting. I had no idea how many oysters or eggplant the demon-loosening spell needed so I grabbed a tin of the former and ten of the latter. I desperately wanted a new jar of peanut butter so I could eat some lunch, but I didn’t have enough change. As it was I had to put one of the eggplants back.
“Another trip for your aunt?” said Celeste. Her wooden hippie necklaces clacked reassuringly as she leaned over to scan my produce. It was a homey sound.
“The weary grind never ceases,” I joked.
Celeste studied the display screen while sliding my grocery items across her scanner. “I suppose things change all the time,” she said casually. “You know, back when Alphonse was at Hal Headley they had half an hour lunch breaks.”
“Oh?” I said. I had no idea where she was going with this.
“Well, you know my boy. He’s always been an activist, always taking up someone’s cause. At that time they didn’t have a vegetarian option in the cafeteria, except for a pathetic salad bar containing wilted lettuce and soggy veg. Can you imagine?” She shook her head, graying ringlets bobbing.
“No,” I said. “They’ve got several options now. Every day.”
“That’s all Alphonse,” Celeste said proudly. “He didn’t have all sorts of time, because he helped me after school for an hour and a half each day, and he had his homework. So he had to balance school and helping his mum just like you do. But he took part of his lunch break every single day to work on it. He researched what other cafeterias across the States were doing. He took polls of students. He blogged about it. He made friends with the cafeteria workers and got their input. It was nobody’s idea but his own. It was something he was passionate about and he spent all his spare time doing it.”
“That’s cool,” I said. I didn’t know what she was getting at but I liked hearing stories of her family. “Go Alphonse.”
Celeste handed me my bag of ingredients. “I hope your aunt appreciates everything you do for her,” she said.
*
I barely made it to American history and yet another scintillating video. I tuned out and tried to decipher what Celeste was trying to say with her Alphonse anecdote. That she appreciated him? That she let him live his own life? Certainly she thought the world of Alphonse, even when they disagreed. I knew she hated the dangerous tactics he and his friends used. She was terrified that he would come to harm. But at the same time she was proud of him for standing up for his beliefs. It must be hard to be a mom in those gray situations, where nothing was black-and-white, and nobody was 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong.
I didn’t know. It was so hard to concentrate on anything without lunch. I was so hungry I was seriously starting to think about eating the spell ingredients.
By gym I was so desperate for food that I ate an airline cracker pack I found squashed at the bottom of my backpack. I shoved my feet into my gym shorts and hurried out to see if Zombie Reese had made it to gym class.
Reese was cross-eyed, but she was there. We were still doing track, so even Zombie Reese could handle a slow jog around the track, telling all her friends, “He kissed me.” They swooned.
I guess I was wrong that people would notice.
Reese jogged next to me for a while in happy cross-eyed silence. I’d been pissed at her this morning, but it’s impossible to be angry at a blissful zombie. At least she’d been taken in by a punk-band demon and not a pelvis-shaking demon.
“Soooo. How’re the plans for the dance going?” I said through my panting. “The Halloween Dance Committee has everything under control?”
“Dunno,” Reese said.
“Blue Crush still the band of choice?” I said.
“That’s Devon’s band,” she said.
“I know,” I said. It was hard to talk to zombies. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Kiss Devon,” she said.
That sounded like a hope and a dream to me, if a dumb one. “Do you remember what you used to want to do?” I said.
Reese looked up at the sky and stumbled a bit. “Um,” she said. “Be a kindergarten teacher?”
“But now?”
“Kiss Devon,” she said firmly.
“I hear you,” I said.