How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back Read Free

didn’t like me or who saw only what they expected to see—high school dropout, former felon, and recovering drug addict. In other words, a loser. Most of the time I had no problem blowing it off when I got the stink-eye. In the past year I’d worked my ass off to leave my loser self behind, and if there were some people who couldn’t see it, well, screw ’em.
    Allen’s barely hidden contempt hadn’t really bothered me until last summer when I’d accidentally sliced my hand open right here in the morgue. If Dr. Leblanc hadn’t been in the room it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I couldn’t exactly say, “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll slurp down a baggie of brains and my zombie parasite will have me fixed up in no time!” I was forced to play it out like a normal person. To save me the hassle and paperwork of the emergency room, Allen stitched it up—and not only was he vaguely decent to me while he did so, but he let slip that he tended to use his vacation time to go on Doctors Without Borders missions. Admirable shit. And in a flash I went from not giving a rat’s ass that he hated me to being bugged by it.
    That’s
his
problem
, I told myself for the billionth time. So what if he and I weren’t BFFs? He couldn’t fire me without cause, and I did my damnedest not to give him any.
    I removed the brain and set it on the scale while Allen peered at the body. A few seconds later he made a mark on his clipboard, then turned away to inspect the body bag Sarah Lynn had occupied. Checking up on me, I knew. Several months ago there’d been a stink about missing jewelry, and ever since then Allen had instituted spot checks like this one to make sure personal property was removed and properly logged.
    Keeping my face expressionless, I continued my work. He had yet to ding me for a single screwup, real or imagined, and I intended to keep it that way. Head down, do my work, don’t make waves. Be a good little Angel.
    â€œAllen, did you hear Angel’s news?” Dr. Leblanc suddenly asked as he set a kidney on the scale. I dutifully recorded the weight on the white board on the wall behind him, while I wondered what the hell the pathologist was talking about.
    Allen’s eyes narrowed ever so faintly. “News?” His gaze swung to me, and I noted a hint of curiosity in his eyes. Probably wondering if it was something he could add to his Angel Shitlist.
    Dr. Leblanc removed the kidney from the scale and began to section it. “Angel passed her GED last week,” he announced with a broad smile. “The sky’s the limit for her now.”
    Yep, I’d finally managed to scrape out a passing grade on the GED—after hours and hours of free tutoring from my coworker, Nick, along with quite a few more hours of not-free tutoring that focused on my recently diagnosed dyslexia.
    I braced myself for some sort of eye roll or dismissive snort from Allen, but he managed to force a smile—for Dr. Leblanc’s benefit, no doubt. “Congrats, Angel,” he said with as much enthusiasm as a garden slug. “You’ll be heading off to college soon then, I take it?”
    Heat crawled up my face at his tone and the unspoken
No fucking way will you make it through a real school. This is as far as you’ll ever go in life.
    â€œActually, I’m going to register for a couple of classes at Tucker Point Community College next term,” I shot back before my brain could engage itself. Crap. I’d toyed with the idea and even made it as far as checking out the college website, but I’d been too . . . well, okay, I’d been too chicken to do anything more. I’d passed the GED by the skin of my teeth—by one damn point, to be exact—and only managed that because I was allowed extra time because of my dyslexia. How the hell could I make it through
college?
    Yet I’d gone and said it, which