My Zombie Girlfriend

Chapter 10

After very nearly flunking the quiz (he was probably going to get a B, but he was still stressed out about how much that would affect his grade point average), Zane now had an additional thing to stress out over: his lack of black clothing.

"Meet 8 PM Rolling Hills West St. Wear black."

This crumpled note, which Wilson passed to him in the halls before English class, didn't give Zane anywhere near enough information about the night's activities. Where exactly on West Street were they meeting? Did he need to bring a weapon? And how the hell was he supposed to sneak out of his house at 8 o'clock at night? His parents weren't super strict, but they did actually care about where he might be going that late on a school night.

As for black clothing, Zane's options were some dress pants he'd worn to a great aunt's funeral and a black thermal t-shirt. He wasn't even sure why he owned a thermal t-shirt when he'd always lived in places where palm trees grew. There had been a family ski trip to Colorado one winter, but Zane had no memory of wearing that shirt on the trip.

He'd almost forgotten Tamiko was in this class. She spotted him and took the empty desk to his right. "I hear you guys are sneaking into Levi Marsh's house," she said.

Zane glanced around to see who had heard, and Tammy laughed. "Everyone knows," she said. "Wilson's in charge. He couldn't keep a secret to save his life."

"Great," Zane said, sliding down in his seat. "We're totally going to get arrested and I'm going to go to jail, and then I'll never get into Princeton."

"Princeton? Really? I'd pegged you for a Cornell boy, myself."

"My grandfather went to Princeton," he explained. "My dad didn't get in, so he's riding all his hopes on me."

"I know how that is," Tammy commiserated. "My parents want me to get into Juilliard. I don't think they have any concept of how hard that is. I'm not a saxophone prodigy or anything."

"My dad's expecting me to get a football scholarship to Princeton. I mean... I might be able to get something, but that's asking a lot."

"Plus, it's not like the saxophone is my reason for living. I want to design video games."

"Really? That's awesome. My brother Owen plays a lot of video games."

"Not you?"

"Not really. I spend most of my time studying."

"Ah."

There was an awkward pause in the conversation. Up until this point, Zane had been marveling at how easy conversation with Tammy was. As opposed to when he tried to talk to Harmony. He shook his head to dismiss the thought. It was mean to compare the two. They were different people. Individuals.

"How are things going with Harmony?" Tammy asked.

Zane let out a huge sigh. "Oh man. Terrible. It's so hard to talk to her, you know? She has so many walls. I know there's a wonderful person under there, but I don't know how to reach her."

Tammy blinked at him. "Yeah. I'm sure there's a totally great person under there. I guess I just have a hard time seeing past the person responsible for destroying my entire seventh grade experience."

He looked at Tammy. Behind her sarcasm, he could tell she'd been really hurt by the girl he wanted to get with. "What happened?" he asked.