Kiss of Life Read Free Page A

nose, and his hair looked as if it had been washed with sewage. He studied as if he'd been washed with sewage.
    But the scariest part of him was his eyes. They were like no other zombie eyes she'd ever seen. No matter how flat or glassy the eyes of the differently biotic were, there was always at least a glimmer of intelligence within. Not so with George. There was nothing in his eyes. Nothing at all.
    Holding her breath, she forced herself to hold his non-stare. Some of my best friends are dead, she told herself. This boy may be more dead in appearance, but he's no less a person than they are.
    He looked at her, or looked through her, she couldn't tell, and opened his bag. She dropped in a piece of candy, but the noise that it made when it landed was not the familiar paper on paper sound wrapped candy made. She glimpsed inside the bag and saw a round wet lump of red and gray fur, and a curling tail.
    She shrieked, jumping back.
    The dead pretended to laugh. "Can Adam ...come out ...and play?" Takayuki asked.
    Her heart was beating wildly as she looked over her
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    shoulder to where Adam sat with his back to the wall. He looked like he was trying, but failing, to speak.
    "No," she stuttered. "We're spending the night at home, thank you."
    Takayuki cracked his knuckles, making sure she could see the ones that were no longer covered with skin.
    "Someday," he said, "he will...want... to be with ... his own kind."
    "He is," she said, regaining her composure. Tak was just another bully, and she was sick of bullies. "I'm his kind."
    "Sure," Tak said as he and his companions began to fade into the night.
    "Happy ...Halloween."
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    CHAPTER THREE
    I PEAKING WITH the dead was always disconcerting, but speaking with Karen
    DeSonne was positively otherworldly. Karen's eyes were like diamonds; Phoebe swore she could see refracted rainbows in them when they were out from under the fluorescent wash of the school's lighting. Even in darkness they seemed to twinkle like far off stars.
    Phoebe started eating and was about to ask Margi if she would trade her peach for a yogurt, when she saw Karen from across the crowded cafeteria, her long mane of platinum hair bouncing with each clipped step. Phoebe looked down at her food with sudden interest, even though she knew staring into her salad would not ward off the conversation to come.
    "Here's ...Karen," Colette said, after peering into Phoebe's yogurt as if she couldn't believe she'd ever eaten anything that looked like that. "She's on ...a ...mission."
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    Even with her head down, Phoebe was aware of boys from the surrounding tables craning to get a better look at Karen and her micro skirt and high boots. At one time it was considered impolite to stare at the dead, back in the days where the term of choice was "living impaired." Impaired no longer, the differently biotic could be gawked and leered at just like any other teenage girl. Phoebe wasn't sure if Karen liked the attention or thought it perverse, but if she had to guess, she'd go with liking it.
    Halloween had been pretty much a nonevent at Oakvale High. In years past there might have been jokes about the differently biotic already being in costume, but no longer--maybe because Halloween seemed superfluous in an age where the dead walked the earth. But a subtle shift was taking place among the students in adapting to what some called "the second chance" and still others called "the undead plague"--an acceptance. There were still those like Pete Martinsburg who feared or hated the differently biotic kids, but most regarded them with no more interest than they would anyone else.
    That was the reaction they had for most db kids, anyway. The reaction they had for Karen was special, and no different than they had for any other girl as flat out hot as she was. Phoebe thought of the grisly quartet that had stood on Adam's doorstep last night and couldn't believe how far ranging the differently biotic experience could be.
    "Phoebe," Karen