Return of the Jed (25 page)

“Dr. Armendariz called,” Dad said.

“When?”

“An hour or so ago. Luke and I were in the middle of eating.”

“So Luke didn’t hear a thing?” I asked, though it was more a statement of fact.

“He was involved in his third order of fries when my phone buzzed,” Dad said. “What do you think?”

“But he knows now,” I said, recalling my friend’s awkward exit.

“Not the details, but enough to know it’s important.”

I wanted to know right away, and I didn’t want to know at all. My thoughts raced at a billion miles an hour. Dr. Armendariz could have reached any number of conclusions about my “condition,” none of them any good:

—Repeated removal of limbs has been known to cause cancer in lab rats.

—Daily exposure to near-death experience has been clinically proven to shorten life spans in seventy percent of undead males ages thirteen to fifty-five.

—Zombies who drink more than two
aguas frescas
a day are subject to health complications involving the liver, spleen, kidney, and other internal organs operating at less than twenty percent capacity.

I’d never been concerned about my health before. When you can take off an arm and hit someone over the head with it, or swim ten lengths of a pool without taking a breath, or actually swallow a sword until it pokes out your belly, you rarely worry about mortality.

All that had changed in an instant. I took a huge, unnecessary breath.

“Spill it,” I said, looking straight into Dad’s eyes with the death stare only a zombie could master.

Dad sat on the edge of the bed. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“That’s how this is going to start? Really?”

Dad nodded.

“Fine, let’s switch things up. I’ll take the good news first.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“The good news is that the restaurant didn’t charge us for Luke’s third and fourth order of fries.”

“Seriously?” I said. “The good news is that you saved a few bucks on sides? When a mad scientist is messing around with my DNA gel?”

“Son, relax, I’m pulling your leg. But not too hard because I know what happens.”

I couldn’t believe I sat here Oozing all over the place, and Dad was cracking jokes. He always resorted to humor at the worst times. Mom told me that when I was two, I ate a can of wallpaper paste as if it were ice cream. As they rushed me to the emergency room Dad said, “At least his diapers won’t spring a leak for the next few days.” Mom was not amused.

“I could really do without the jokes, Dad. That just tells me it’s so bad, you can’t even tell me.”

“Jed, son, it’s not bad. It’s just … unusual. But let me start at the beginning.”

Dad said his phone had vibrated just as he was getting ready to pay the bill before Luke could order something else.

“In the time it took me to get the phone, Luke ordered more fries,” he said. “It’s a shame there’s not a restaurant Olympics. That kid has the speed of a gold medalist.”

“So, the call?” I asked, getting Dad’s one-track mind back on the only route I cared about.

“Right, Dr. Armendariz. He was the one on the phone.”

“I got that. I also get the distinct feeling you’re stalling.”

“Because I am. Remember that carnival in the Value Circus parking lot?”

“I remember the store. It had that huge clown sign that said ‘Three rings of savings.’ Only at night most of the lights were out so it said, ‘Thing sings.’ We always tried to guess the thing that sings.”

“Right, until you got old enough where I was this close to washing your mouth out with soap. Anyway, a carnival appeared one day, and each time we drove past, you pointed to one of the rides.

“Wheel of Death.” I remembered. “It spun so fast it pinned you to the wall, and the floor dropped out. And I still have no idea what this has to do with your phone call, unless the floor’s about to drop from beneath me.”

“No, although that’s not a bad analogy.”

“Dad!”

“You pestered me enough that you, Mom, and I went one night. You raced past the bumper cars and the funhouse and the train ride, right to the Wheel of Death, a name that sounded scary to everyone but you. We lined up, and I noticed a sign at the ride entrance. Kids about your size stood next to it, a few standing on their tiptoes. Nearly all of them left with disappointed looks. They were too short to ride. I knew you’d be, too.”

I thought back to the carnival and remembered going on the ride. Was I mistaken? And why were we wasting time talking about some stupid carnival?

“I knew how much you wanted to ride the Wheel of Death, and I had an idea. I whispered in your mom’s ear, and she thought we could give it a try.

“Mom said she had to go to the bathroom first, so we got out of line. I spotted exactly what I needed outside the Stick-O-Squid Shack—a sturdy-looking canopy. I lifted you and told you to hang onto the metal bar because I wanted to see how strong you were.”

I knew where this was going. I remembered that night, waiting for the ride, Mom having to go to the bathroom. Then hanging with my feet a few feet off the ground, gripping that metal bar for as long as I could to show Dad how strong I was. And how I refused to say how it hurt when he pulled on my ankles.

“You weren’t testing my strength.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Dad said. “I was testing your elasticity.”

“You stretched me.”

“Probably a good three or four inches, and I worried because you looked like you just stepped out of a funhouse mirror, all long and lean.”

“We ran back to the ride,” I said, more details coming back. “Mom was already there. You lifted me under my armpits, and I asked you to drop me because I was still sore, and all you kept saying was ‘This ride is going to be awesome.’ I wondered why you kept ignoring me. Now I get it. You didn’t want me to shrink.”

“Then when we got to the sign—”

“It was a zombie sign,” I said. “Bald head, jaw flopping loose, one arm, grotesquely swollen feet sticking out from torn green pants. Flies buzzing around his head. Yet another undead stereotype.”

“I hoped you wouldn’t remember that, but yes, the sign was very culturally insensitive to zombies. More importantly, you were tall enough to ride. I worried you might stay that way, but you were back to your normal height after the Wheel of Death. Maybe even a little shorter due to the centrifugal force.”

The carnival, the sign zombie, the spinning. It felt as if it had happened yesterday. But that was four or five years ago. Why was Dad telling me this now?

“You’re wondering what any of this has to do with today, Dr. Armendariz, the call,” Dad said. “Jed, I want you to know I always want what’s best for you. I hope only good things for today, for the rest of your life. Sometimes that may mean some odd decisions, some fleeting pain, or awkwardness. But in the end, I want for you what any dad wants for his son. A better life.”

Ooze gathered along my forehead, pooling on the sides. It tickled as it slid toward the corner of my eyes.

Dad wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. He showed his love for me all the time, wrapping his arms around me when I needed reassurance, and staying away when I needed space.

I’d never seen him look so nervous, so … torn. As if what was best for me was also going to be very painful.

I stood and walked into the bathroom. I snagged a towel and pulled, the force pulling the bar from the wall, the metal clattering on the tile floor. I wiped Ooze from my forehead and looked at the towel, surprised at the amount of gel caught in its folds.

Ooze was keeping me together, but not in the way I needed at that moment.

I threw the towel in the tub and picked up the towel bar, flipping it end over end like a baseball bat. I placed it gently, soundlessly, across the sink and returned to the room.

“Dr. Armendariz said he put the Ooze under the microscope and found nothing unexpected,” Dad said as if I’d never left. “There were some bacteria floating around, and he noticed some cell division. He said it was typical of any organic fluid.

“He then experimented with it, just as he had with Substance Z. He said if you read his journals by now, you’d know what happened. Ooze acted just like Substance Z. It didn’t seem to react with anything. And then he decided to take the next logical step. Mix equal amounts of Ooze and Substance Z just to see what would happen. It’s what mad scientists do.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said matter-of-factly. “He created a super-being that defends New York when he’s not eating brains.”

Dad stood, took a few steps, and knelt in front of me.

“If you could change one thing about you,” he said, taking my right hand in his left, “what would it be?”

I knew what he wanted me to say. And maybe it was what I wanted to say, too.

I squinted through the eyepiece, feeling like I was back in science class. Dr. Armendariz hovered over my shoulder like my former lab partner, only he smelled like cologne instead of spicy ground beef and nacho cheese (everyone at Pine Hollow Middle School smelled like that after lunch on Taco Day).

I turned the black knob on the microscope until the slide’s contents came into focus.

On the right, irregularly shaped specks rotated slowly in the same spots. The tiny black dots on the left floated as if on an open sea, directed by an unseen current.

“That’s Substance Z on the right,” the voice behind me said. “Ooze is on the left, but you probably already knew that.

“Only by deduction,” I said.

“You don’t recognize it?” Dr. Armendariz sputtered.

“Can’t say that I do since Ooze never has introduced itself to me on a molecular level.”

“You tell me that after all these years, you’ve never looked at it under a microscope?”

“No, and I haven’t put my spit or snot on a slide either, in case you were wondering.”

“Kids today, I just don’t understand,” Dr. Armendariz said. “Where is the curiosity? The drive to put bodily fluids under a microscope just to see what they look like?”

“I guess the thrill was lost when you could Google, ‘Why we have gas,’ and spend an hour watching videos of people farting,” I answered. “Takes the mystery out of the human body.”

“A sad state of affairs,” he muttered. “The Internet has robbed us of so much.”

I stared at the blobs on the right and the dots on the left, waiting for something to happen. They refused to mingle, retaining a respectful distance. It reminded me of a seventh-grade dance.

The night before, when Dad told me all about Dr. Armendariz’s discoveries, he swore he only wanted me to think about it. That we still had a week before I made a decision.

I didn’t think I could make such a choice, but indecision in this case would still be a decision.

“Dr. Armendariz invited us to his lab tomorrow so you could see exactly what he saw,” Dad had said. “I think it’s a good idea. Let’s find out exactly what we’re looking at and go from there.”

So here I was, back at Dr. Armendariz’s lab, my undead life in the balance. If I squinted, I could see it, right there between the blobs and the dots.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, followed by a whisper. “Dude, let me see what makes you tick.”

Luke shoved me aside, stepped in front of Dr. Armendariz, and put his eye to the microscope lens. He twirled the focusing knob, forward, then backward, then forward again, as if trying to tune in a station.

“Luke, that’s not a radio, it’s a finely tuned scientific instrument,” I said.

“I know what it is,” he said. “All I see is static.”

“No, that’s an extreme close-up of what I’m sure you’re about to call Zombie Juice.”

“Zombie Juice, that’s awesome. Why didn’t I think of that, oh, maybe five years ago?”

“Move over,” I said, butting his hip with mine. “You have no idea what you’re looking at.”

Luke stepped aside. “What I know is that you are just as boring on the inside as you are on the outside.”

“Thanks, but I already knew that,” I said, taking another look. Instead of blobs and dots, I saw fuzzy splotches of ink. I twisted the focus knob and watched as the splotches reformed into their familiar pattern.

“Keep turning that thing all you want, you’re never going to get 3D,” Luke said.

“And I’m OK with that.”

“Yup, still boring. Continue.”

I lifted my head and turned slightly to the right, where Dr. Armendariz still hovered. “When I mixed Ooze with Substance Z, they didn’t seem to do much,” I said, recalling how the two shared little more than a handshake, acquaintances but not friends. “Why was that?”

“The problem occurred when an infinitesimal amount of Ooze encountered a sizeable measure of Substance Z,” Dr. Armendariz said as he continued to shoulder-surf. “Imagine meeting your girlfriend’s extremely large family. It’s overwhelming, and then you spill wine on Aunt Myrtle, and suddenly your girlfriend isn’t answering your texts anymore. It just wasn’t right.”

“What does that have to do with Ooze and Substance Z?”

“It’s just that the two needed to mingle in equal amounts, be given time to mix. They introduce themselves, so to speak, and engage in small talk. Perhaps chat about the weather, or how things are going with the family. But they need a social lubricant, something that will really get them to open up and embrace one another. Pretty soon they’re taking selfies. They friend each other on Facebook and follow each other on Twitter, and don’t even get me started on how they begin sharing way too much on Instagram like they’ve been best friends forever, well, aren’t they just so special, and—