Bad Taste in Boys (10 page)

Then Kiki walked through the door from the kitchen, and I breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as she saw me, she dropped an entire armful of paper products on the floor and waded through them to hug me.

“Oh, Kate, I’m so glad you’re here!” she wailed, brushing hair out of her red, sweaty face—and somehow still managing to look good. “The squad was supposed to be here at three-thirty, and none of them showed. I tried to call, but no one’s answering. They all better have darn good reasons for standing me up, or I’ll bench them. I’m so … so … pissed!”

“It’s okay.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just pancakes, Kiki. We can handle pancakes.”

“But this is the big cheer-sponsored homecoming event. How does it look if none of the cheerleaders show up?”

“I don’t think anyone will mind so long as there’s food to eat. Just point me toward the cook tables and everything will be fine.”

The griddle went together easily, because I was one of those people who actually followed instruction manuals. Within ten minutes, I was ready to switch it on. I’d never made pancakes before, but I was better than I’d expected after a few practice runs. It was like following a lab protocol, a process requiring impeccable timing and precise measurements. I devised a system to keep the line moving steadily while maintaining food temperature at acceptable levels. When Kiki brought me the batter, I tried to explain it to her, but her eyes glazed over about three words in. People just didn’t appreciate my talent.

A couple of the cheerleaders finally showed up just in time to serve as cashiers, with some lame excuse about car trouble. Kiki read them the riot act; I probably would have grumped at them too if I hadn’t been having fun despite myself. We opened at five o’clock and were immediately swamped. I fired off pancakes as quickly as I did Quiz Bowl answers, but the line kept growing anyway. People couldn’t wait to fork over eight bucks for my cooking. I could probably have funded my college education with my mad pancake skills, but this money would be used to buy the cheerleaders new go-go boots. We all had our priorities.

I was so busy that the only time I saw my players was when I was filling their plates. None of them seemed sick, nor did anyone loom over me like Count Chocula on crack. I saw a lot of chalky gray skin tones, but it was mid-October in the Midwest, so I wasn’t sure whether to blame their complexions on the mystery disease or our sucky weather. Mike didn’t show.

I flipped pancakes at precisely timed intervals, and the line marched on. I took two paces to the left, squirted out six puddles of batter in row one, flipped row three, served row five, squirted out six more puddles, and so on. I had pancake making down to an art form.

Then I heard an improper sizzle.

My technique was so refined that I knew something was wrong. It was too early for row two to be sizzling, too late for row four. I didn’t have any sausages cooking right now.

I did, however, have a hand on my griddle.

It belonged to a woman with a mom bob, a vacant stare, and an athletic booster pin. She leaned across the griddle to offer me her plate, bracing herself with one hand. Palm down. Next to a bubbling pancake. I figured she must be an amputee, but I didn’t smell burning plastic. It smelled kinda like bacon, actually.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, but people were remarkably unobservant. A couple of guys from the offensive line stood behind her; they were busy discussing farts in great detail. Talk about offensive.

“Kate, you better take those sausages off the grill,” Kiki said from the toast and juice station. “I think they’re burning.”

I didn’t want to tell her it was the scent of fried hand. And I really didn’t want to embarrass this woman by drawing attention to her disability, so I leaned closer and said, “Ma’am? Could you please move your hand?”

When she opened her mouth, a trickle of black gunk spilled out. There wasn’t a lot, so the stench wasn’t totally overwhelming, but I could smell it if I concentrated. Not like I was trying to smell it, because I wasn’t that masochistic.

She said, “Uuuuuh.”

Oh bleep. It was spreading.

This woman might have been grilling her hand on my griddle, but the reality hadn’t quite hit me yet. I calmly scraped her skin off the hot metal with my spatula. Good thing I was so meticulous with the cooking spray; it came off without leaving much flesh behind.

Still. Ewww.

She kept staring at me. I held my spatula in what I imagined was a defensive posture, but she just held out her empty plate. The gesture was strangely reassuring. No way she could be a zombie, not if she wanted pancakes. Row four was torched by now, so I gave her some from row two. She shambled off peacefully.

My heart started hammering. It was one thing to know that a bunch of far-off military guys had the mystery disease, but watching it spread right in front of you was something completely different. I knew I was only hours away from some lab results, but in the meantime? I was a cardiovascular incident waiting to happen.

I was so busy obsessing about the possibility of a heart attack that I completely disregarded the possibility of a seizure. My epileptic episodes weren’t usually linked to my blood pressure, but there’s a first time for everything. I felt pretty sheepish when I came to a couple of minutes later with my head crooked uncomfortably against the wall and my feet sprawled halfway to the juice station.

“Oh my god, Kate, can you hear me?” Kiki crouched over me, her hair tickling my nose.

I sneezed. “I’m okay.” I flailed around in an uncoordinated attempt to stand up. I had to get the rest of the pancakes off the griddle before someone got a nice helping of hand flambé. “It’s just a seizure. I used to have them all the time, remember?”

“Yeah, but they’re still freaky.” She took my arm and helped me
up. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. Everyone in the room stared at me like they expected me to grow fangs and sparkle.

“I’m okay.” I shook Kiki’s arm free.

“Please sit down, Kate. You’re overdue for a break, and the line’s slowing anyway.”

“But …” There were still about ten people in line. I couldn’t let them eat anything cooked on that griddle. But there was no way for me to explain why without sounding like a total wack job.

I could only think of one way to stop the grill from being used again. I flung my arm out, knocking over the last jug of batter in the building.

It fell in a slow-motion arc, or at least that was what it felt like. “Nooooo!” Kiki yelled, and leapt for it with her arms outstretched. But she was too late. The jug hit the floor with a tremendous
sploosh
. Within seconds, we stood in a sea of batter dotted with a bunch of dust-bunny floaters.

Kiki shot me a stricken glance. So I weaved a little on my feet to illustrate how shaky the seizure had left me. Her expression instantly changed from exasperation to concern, and I couldn’t help but feel guilty for manipulating her like this, even if it was for the greater good.

“Come sit down,” she said, taking my arm. “Don’t worry about the pancakes. If anybody wants seconds, they can eat toast and sausages. Let me get you some juice.”

She parked me in a corner with a glass of oj. It did nothing to
get the image of the frying hand out of my head, but at least now I wasn’t dehydrated and freaked out. I was just freaked out. It was a minor improvement, but I’d take what I could get.

“Okay,” Kiki said, patting my leg. “You stay here while the girls take down the griddle.”

“I can help.”

I started to stand, but she pushed me back into my seat.

“Absolutely not. They need to pull a little extra weight since they were so late. You can supervise if you want.” She grinned at me before walking off.

I wasn’t so good at following orders. Besides, lounging in an uncomfortable cafeteria chair wasn’t going to make my postseizure headache go away. The best thing to do was to distract myself until the pounding subsided. So I helped Mindi and Lacey scrape down the griddle and dismantle it. I felt much better as I took the tray of cooking utensils into the kitchen to be washed. No one would accidentally ingest human flesh on my watch.

I turned on the water, and someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. I whipped around with a wet spatula in one hand, spraying water all over the place. I didn’t really think soapy water would discourage an attacker, but it was all I could come up with on short notice.

“Hey!” Kiki yelled right in my face.

“Sorry! You scared me,” I said.

“No problem.” She frowned. “I thought I told you to sit down. Do I have to yell at you for not following my orders?”

“I’m really okay, Kiki. If you’d drop the whole epilepsy subject, I’d really appreciate it. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Deal.” She picked up a towel and started wiping the water off the floor. “Hey, maybe you can help me.”

“Help with what?” I asked.

“I need someone to lock the cash boxes in the principal’s office. I’d do it myself, but …” She blushed. “Logan offered to take me home, and he’s got to leave now. Do you mind?”

“Logan?” I turned.

Logan Smith stood by the registers with his hands in his pockets. From a distance, he looked pretty good, considering that he’d recently been puking up black mucus. In fact, he looked so normal that I started to wonder if Aaron had been wrong. It put me in an awkward situation, because I wasn’t sure if I should let Kiki ride home alone with him. It might be dangerous.

Then I stopped myself. Logan was a genuinely nice guy, and Mike wasn’t. That had nothing to do with the virus. So why shouldn’t Kiki go out with him? I could see why she liked him; they were both really popular but didn’t have a stick up their butts about it. They’d make a great couple.

It was a good thing I was a quick thinker, because I ran through this entire deductive process in a matter of seconds. “Yeah, I can take care of it,” I said. “No problem.”

“Are you sure you feel okay? Because I can tell him I’ve got to stay.”

“I’m absolutely sure! Go and have a good time.”

She kissed my cheek. “You are such a doll. You deserve to be an honorary cheerleader for this.”

I suppressed my urge to snort. “Go before Logan turns into a pumpkin or something. Later, Logan!”

I waved to him, and he held up his hand. The gesture was reassuring in its normalcy. No zombie would ever wave like that.

And I didn’t believe in zombies anyway.

Once I dragged all the cash boxes to the principal’s office and locked them inside, I realized I had no way home. It was hard going back to a carless state after having one for a while.

All the cheerleaders had left. I could walk—if I took the shortcut through the woods behind the school, it only took about ten minutes. But it was dark now.

Besides, now that I had accidentally introduced the Z‑word to my mental vocab, I couldn’t get it out. And I knew what happened to pretty young high schoolers who went out into zombie-infested streets. I could only imagine that something similar happened to socially awkward, braided high schoolers.

I texted Rocky and waited for ten minutes, tapping my foot impatiently. No response. So then I called. Her phone was off. I tried her house, but no one answered there either. I wanted to call Aaron, only I didn’t know his number.

So I called home.

“Yo,” my brother answered. He thought he was street.

“Hey, Jonah. Can I talk to Dad?”

“Nope.”

“Come on. Don’t be a jerk.”

“Seriously, he’s not here. He’s got some meeting thing tonight. He called to say we shouldn’t wait for dinner because he’s going to be superlate.”

“Damn.”

“Damn” was an understatement. I didn’t want to die young in a freak zombie attack. I mean, sure, I was glad I’d had a chance to kiss Aaron before my untimely demise, but I hoped there were more kisses where that one came from.

“What’s wrong?” Now Jonah sounded alarmed. “Has that stupid jock been bothering you again?”

“No.” The pressure was suddenly too much to bear. My voice came out all shaky and teary-sounding, so I had to swallow and try again. “I’m stuck at school, and I don’t want to walk home by myself. I’m—I’m not feeling so good. I had a seizure. I know I’m being a total wuss, but—”

“Kate?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up. I’m coming to get you.”

And then he hung up. It was very dramatic and also very stupid, because he didn’t know exactly where I was. I was tempted to let him wander around the school for a while, but then I’d have to sit and wait for him to find me. Patience wasn’t my virtue. I called him back and told him where to pick me up.

Jonah was fifteen, so he only had a learner’s permit; he wouldn’t
get his license for another couple months. Frankly, he was lucky he still had the permit after he put Dad’s car into drive instead of reverse and took the whole garage off the foundation. So I was understandably freaked when he cruised up in my car. Maybe it smelled like puke and I couldn’t drive it right now, but if he crashed it, I would not be happy.

He stopped in the bus loop, and I stalked out of the school. At least I was pissed enough not to be even remotely worried I might be the victim of a bite-and-run. There’s a bright side to every situation.

He rolled down the window. “Hey, sis. Want a ride?”

“I can’t believe you took my car!” I snapped. “What did you hit on the way here? And you’d better be careful. If the cops pull us over, you’ll be in big trouble. You’re supposed to have a licensed adult in the car at all times.”

Jonah’s face fell. “I didn’t hit anything. And Drew has his license. We’re going to drop him off on the way home.”

His friend smiled at me hopefully from the backseat. His face was one big zit.

I scowled at them both. “I said ‘adult.’ ”

“Just get in the car, Kate.” He leaned over and opened the passenger door. “I came here to help keep you safe; I’m not going to wrap you around a tree.”

I got in the car.

Drew lived just down the street; we dropped him off and then
headed home. By the time we turned off Washington Avenue into my subdivision, it was raining so hard that I could barely see the yellow line dividing the lanes. Unfortunately, our neighborhood was one of those places where streetlights have been outlawed in the interest of ambience. We had cutesy little lanterns instead. The ambience would probably have been great, except you couldn’t see a darned thing.