Adventures of a Middle School Zombie Read Free

Because by the afternoon, its bearable lightness of being would be gone, erased by textbooks.
    Luke and I were both nervous, what with starting at a new school. But I was even more nervous. Being undead can do that to a kid.
    At my old school, the whole zombie thing was just not a big deal ever since Gemma’s eighth birthday party, when a piece of me wound up in the frosting.
    We reached the part where the birthday kid blows out the candles. In the long-standing kid birthday tradition of “Me too,” we all blew.
    I focused on a candle flickering just out of reach. I propped myself on my elbows and blew.
    Hard.
    You have to know one thing about Zs (or, as I prefer to be called since learning the term in fourth-grade Biology, the Cardiovascularly Challenged). Oxygen isn’t really necessary. I don’t breathe unless I have to talk, but my lungs work perfectly fine.
    At that point in my life, I was still adjusting to the “blowing out” part.
    I put my lips together and let it fly.
    I should say, “Let them fly,” because when the frosting splattered, hitting a few kids on either side of the cake, I knew something very wrong had happened.
    My lips were tingling, and I was looking around for a mirror as I felt near my mouth to figure out what was going on.
    That’s when I realized my lips couldn’t be tingling because they weren’t there. Which explained why the birthday girl was screaming and pointing.
    I looked where her trembling index finger was leading everyone’s eyes. There was a little circle of hamburger meat lodged in the B in “Happy Birthday.”
    Looking more closely, I put two (missing lips) and two (lips in the cake) together.
    Luke tapped me on the shoulder.
    “Uh, Jed, your mouth,” he said. “It’s bleeding. And I think you lost, well, I’m not sure. But it’s pretty awesome.”
    I grabbed a napkin from the table and plucked my lips from the cake, because I was pretty sure I was going to need them later (I was right).
    “Jed, that was pretty cool,” Luke said. “What else can you do? Wait, blow your nose really hard.”
    Luke was pretty weird that way.
    That was the day everyone knew I was different. Their reactions were less than ideal, involving a lot of vomit (deep blue, thanks to the punch everyone had been chugging). Mom spent the next week going around the neighborhood explaining my medical condition.
    “Clinically, he’s dead,” she said on one porch after another, me by her side with a big smile on my face. “But that’s just a technical term. He’s very nice, and he loves to read.”
    As soon as she said, “He loves to read,” every single grown-up said, “Oh, what a sweet boy.”
    I’m surprised that’s not a legal defense. “He robbed twelve banks, but he loves to read.”
    “How sweet. Not guilty!”
    But at Pine Hollow, there were going to be kids from a million other elementary schools. And every one of them was only going to know about someone like me from Night of the Living Dead or, more recently and way more cool, World War Z .
    I glanced at my reflection on the toaster, which still had the scent of raspberry Pop Tarts (the official breakfast food of zombies, as far as I was concerned). I brushed my hair over my forehead, frowning when a small clump floated to the counter. Great, a gap, but if I just mess it up a little this way—
    “Jed, you’re beautiful, let’s do this,” Luke said.
    “He’s right, time to board the ManVan,” Dad said as we walked out.
    Oh no. I’d forgotten all about the ManVan. Dad had dropped me off at elementary school every day, and, after a couple of years, kids finally stopped teasing me about it. Mom and Dad bought the van when Mom was pregnant, since they were about to be a family and needed “suitable transportation, something that will fit a car seat.” Which meant Dad had to sell his ’72 yellow Camaro with the black racing stripe down the middle of the hood and roof (which I know about because Dad has a photo album