Zombie Pink (17 page)

Shielding her eyes from the piercing beam, Daniella yanked open the door of the medicine cabinet and retrieved the Ibuprofen bottle. She shook out two pills. There was no point
even taking
her temperature. She knew it was soaring
and the actual number would probably panic her.

Oh my God, this
nausea!
Daniella thought
.
How will I
keep these pills down?

Daniella gagged just thinking about it
.
Then she closed her eyes and willed herself not to be sick to her stomach.
She didn’t want to throw-up since she knew how much Byron hated it.
Even when she threw up du
ring her pregnancy with Brooklyn, her husband would run away in disgust...afterwards, spraying Febreze everywhere.

Daniella heard the mattress creak slightly as Byron moved
around on the bed. She flicked off the
offending light.
With teeth chattering, she quietly went
downstairs.
Then Daniella slowly padded
into the kitchen. The tile floor was freezing cold on her bare feet.

Freezing cold in the middle of summer?

She poured herself a cup of tap water, avoiding the porcelain frog in the dim orangey glow that the night light gave off.
She thought she saw the frog make an obscene gesture at her, but high temperatures can do funny things to the brain.

"Wait a minute...." Daniella said.

She quickly swallowed the Ibuprofen, so she wouldn't have to think about what she was doing. It was important to keep these pills down to get rid of the
fever that was so
dangerously high. Daniella gagged
but stopped herself from hurling, once again, with mind control.
Then she shuffled over to the flowered couch
in the living room and flopped down on its hard nubby surface.

She wished they had a more comfortable couch. This one
was expensive and looked good, but it wasn't very comfortable
, that's for sure.
The rock hard texture was definitely not conducive for laying down on when you felt like death warmed over.

"I have the flu!" Daniella's hoarse voice announced to the semi-dark room. "
The flu!
In the middle of the summer!"

Not meningitis or a parasite or Ebola or a brain tumor
, she thought.
And I'm not going insane
. I just have the flu. The plain old flu
!

Daniella had never gotten a flu shot even though Byron got one every year and always urged her to do the same
. Byron
would do anything in his power to prevent sickness.
But Daniella was always worried about side effects of the shot
... her "out of control paranoia," as Byron labeled it, rearing it's ugly head once again.

The flu.....the plain old flu
...she kept thinking, wrapping the afghan tightly around her weak shivering body.
The flu
.....

Maybe she should have gotten the stupid shot, after all...

Daniella fell asleep shortly after that, vaguely aware of the darn mosquito bite on her shoulder, which was creating the most infuriating itch
. She
was just too damn sick and tired to scratch it
. She woke up to Byron shaking
her itchy
shoulder and staring down at her with a what-the-hell look.

"What's up, hon?" he asked in his fake overly concerned voice.

It was getting light outside. Byron was already out of his Old Navy sleep pants
and dressed for work.

"I let your sleep cause you looked so cozy," he said, showing off his pearly whites in an "I'm such a great hubby aren't I?" expression.

"I'm sick!" Daniella informed her husband. "So sick you wouldn't believe! I have some
weird flu to beat all flues!
I swear, I've never felt this bad before in my life!
"

Daniella coughed, making a ghastly hacking noise that sounded like she was choking.

"WHOA!" Byron shouted
, jumping back from the couch. "That
is weird! Nobody gets sick this time of year.
Maybe you got it at that club house... being around all those little kids
, ya know?"

"Yea..." Daniella said, still hacking away. "I don't think we can do that barbeque any time soon."

"Well...there’s no rush!" Byron proclaimed.

Byron stared at his wife for just a fraction of a second longer
. But
it was long enough for Daniella to see the distaste in her husband's eyes before his handsome face arranged itself back into its customary charming mask
.

Oh my God, s
he must look awful! She sure felt awful. She was so weak and
her mouth was so dry. She
felt like she
had been sucking on cotton balls all night. Thankfully, her fever was down and at least she
didn't feel so hideously nauseous any more.

Daniella quickly turned off the water and whipped out of the bathroom. She marched purposely into the master bedroom and slipped her bare feet into her black flip-flops with the sequins that she'd been so thrilled to buy because she thought they
made her look “rich.”

Growing up in New Jersey, she’d only worn plain rubber flip-flops in red, yellow, or blue...standard cheap flip-flop colors.

She
also tossed on her new fake hipster glasses that Byron hated. She had bought them
on a whim at the dollar store
, just for the fun of it. However, fun was probably the wrong word to use in relation to the glasses.

The first time she put the glasses on, Brooklyn burst out crying and Byron informed her that she looked like those annoying women on the news who try to look super smart, but end up looking like angry feminists
. So Daniella had removed the glasses and promised never to wear them again.

Still wearing her plaid pajama pants and a light blue T-shirt, Daniella marched downstairs. She grabbed her cell phone on the coffee table and shoved it into the pocket of her pajama pants.

Then, without even leaving a note, Daniella marched right out the front door, slamming it behind her. After that, she just forged ahead, like an automaton, marching up Lamplighter Avenue.
She didn't see anyone. She didn't even care if anyone saw her, which a few people did.

Nancy Blanchard was one of them.

Nancy lived four houses down on Lamplighter. She spotted Daniella marching by in her pajama pants, looking
like an absolute mess - except for the nice pajama pants that Nancy had admired at Maybelline's, the only problem being that they didn't come in her size, which was twenty-four.

But Daniella's hair looked all dirty and stringy, and she was walking in a very unattractive way; sort of shuffling along
like those zombies on that show....what was it called again? Dead Heads. That was it!
Her skin looked all nasty; sickly and discolored.
Plus, she had
weird over-sized glasses on with thick black frames.

The site of this normally attractive put-together
woman appearing so disheveled was incredibly intriguing to Nancy.

So intriguing, that Nancy was willing to put her recorded episode of The Real Housewives
of Orange County on hold. I
t was a really good episode, too. Shannon, one of the new housewives this season,
just had a big blow-up at Lizzie's dinner party.

However, Shannon and Lizzie would have to wait. Real life trumped the
plastic and fake overly made-up ladies of Orange County, any day!

Nancy picked up the phone and called her friend Shelby, who lived a block away.

"Her hair was all dirty and messy and she had this weird rash all over her skin!" Nancy reported
with relish
. "And she was wearing pajamas!"

"Really?" Shelby asked, sipping tea and trying to picture the scene her friend was describing. "You mean the one from New Jersey? The one with the long black hair who lives in the really nice house? That doesn't sound like her at all.
"

"I know!" Nancy agreed. "Isn't that weird?"

"Maybe she had a fight with her super cute hubby," Shelby suggested, slurping her mint peppermint tea.

"I bet he's cheating on her!" Nancy declared. "I swear, he was giving me the eye
at the pool the other day.
Maybe he's getting tired of
little miss skin and bones and wants himself a taste of a real woman!"

"Oh my God!" Shelby said, almost choking on her tea. "
Nancy, you are too much! But seriously, y
ou can never trust guys who look like that."

“Yea,” Nancy said, sighing. “Almost makes me glad my hubby’s such a blob.”

This made Shelby laugh so hard, she really did choke on her peppermint tea.

"You okay, hon?" Nancy asked.

"Oh yea," Shelby said, clearing her throat and sputtering out a few more weak coughs
. "Keep me posted if you find out anything
."

Sandy, Daniella's new friend from The Mommy and Me Club, also saw Daniella shuffle by
. S
andy had just popped in a Veggie Tales DVD for her daughter when she caught site of a woman with long dark messy hair and big glasses slowly making her way up the street in a very erratic fashion
.

Sandy walked over to the window to confirm what she thought she had seen, and sure enough, she was right. It was her new friend Daniella, from the Mommy and Me class.

D
aniella was all alone....
in pajama pants
?
W
here was her daughter? Sandy hardly ever saw the two of them apart during the day
.
And why was she wearing those
weird glasses?

Sandy, however, wasn't one to gossip. She just hoped her friend was okay because something about the whole situation did
n't
feel right. Sandy vowed to call
Daniella in a little while, to make sure nothing was amiss.

As if a homing pigeon was planted inside of Daniella's sick brain, she robotically marched out onto Heathcliff Avenue, then over onto Country Club Lane...past the guardhouse and out of the development, all the way onto Route seventy-six
.

After that, she just kept on marching without a single conscious thought in her head, in the direction of Maybelline’s.
She had no clue where she was going or why she was embarking on this odd sojourn
. She never once thought the words "Maybelline’s" or "highway" or "maybe I should get some help."

It was as though Daniella's thinking brain had shut down and she was simply operating on instinct, which at least seemed to dictate that she walk on the side of the road and not in the middle of the street.

People driving by noticed Daniella
. It was hard not to. But they quickly looked away, feeling pity. They thought she might be someone who was not quite right in the brain...or maybe she was sick
with cancer or some other terminal disease
and she was depressed about it. Too depressed to take care of her hygiene.
Some even thought she might be a homeless person...

The drivers witnessed a few other strange looking people shuffling along the side of the highway and lurking aimlessly about in the words; people who also sported limp greasy hair and oddly mottled skin
. Most of the passerby's didn't think too much
about it. They just wrinkled their collective noses in distaste and went about their way.
A few did mention that the town seemed to be going downhill...rapidly.

"What's with all these losers today?" one smug tween girl sporting a wrist full of friendship bracelets pondered.

The girl was on her way to Maybelline’s to buy some cool new clothes for school, which was starting all too soon.

She popped her gum and wrinkled her nose at Daniella shuffling along by the side of the road.
To this tween girl, looks were everything. What else was there?

The girl's mom, who was preoccupied with current financial issues, just shrugged and scratched an incredibly large mosquito bite on her forehead.

"Don't be so quick to judge!" she admonished, squinting against the bright sunshine that was pouring through the windshield of their green Ford Freestar
minivan.

The woman closed her eyes for one brief moment. When she opened them, she could swear she glimpsed
a giant see-through ballerina in the middle of the road doing a plié.

The woman screamed, which made her daughter scream, and then the two of them drove off the highway into a soybean field.

When Daniella reached the strip mall with the Maybelline’s, she shuffled around the back of the buildings;
straight into a
heavily wooded area. The customers, only into themselves and their purchases, did not seem to notice her.

As soon as she was cloaked in trees and no longer visible to anyone in the parking lot, Daniella
collapsed onto the hard ground and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.