Living with the Dead

So now I have my very own login and password, courtesy of Mr. Tommy Williams. I asked him if he wanted to post anything and he said that he didn't really feel like it.

"Really?" I said. "But what about being the voice of the Dead Generation? What about all the people that supported you in your trip to Washington? Don't you want to update them on your, ah, life?"

He just stared at me. Whatever you do, don't try and win a staring contest with a zombie. Ain't gonna happen.

Some of you have asked about Phoebe posting as well; I wish I could give you an update but she's kind of not speaking to me because of my last post. I'm sure she already regrets giving me her password (remember kids: don't give out yer passwords), just as I'm sure Tommy will regret it in a couple days, too. Oh, well. She'll get over it. If I can't be me, I can't be me.

Colette is still talking to me, of course. She dyed half of her hair metallic blue and it looks super cool. I'll stick with pink, though.

Oakvale High Update: Classes are way way over-crowded now that the db kids have come back. There's got to be over thirty of us packed in a class now. And I get to sit next to that charmer, Popeye, in one of those classes. His real name is Chad, can you believe it? Chad Doyle. He absolutely flipped out when Mrs. Rodriguez called him Chad, though. He took off his sunglasses and everything. And his shirt, which was not a pretty sight, believe me, because he's done some really disgusting things--bodifications, he calls them--to himself. Like removed layers of skin right down to the muscle and stuff like that. Too nauseating to write about, really.

"Please put your glasses on, Popeye," Mrs. Rodriguez told him.

"Why?"

"You know why. And your shirt."

"I don't get it. Pinky Tuscadero over there gets to do whatever she wants to her hair, and gets to wear like three thousand bracelets, but I can't..."

"The school has a shirts and shoes policy, Popeye," Mrs. Rodriguez said, interrupting him. "And pants, before you get any ideas. It's all in the handbook."

"Oh, well, if it is in the handbook," he said. "That's like being in the Constitution itself. Or the Bible. The handbook. What about the sunglasses, Mrs. Rodriguez? I bet 'the handbook' has a policy on those as well, doesn't it? And the policy is that they need to come off."

He's such a jerk sometimes. He didn't even seem to notice that Tori Simmons was crying, she was so scared of him.

Mrs. Rodriguez sighed. "We're willing to make an exception for you," she said.

"Maybe I don't want to be the exception. Maybe I want to be the rule."

She told him that if he didn't sit down, put his glasses and shirt back on, and spend the rest of the class with his mouth closed and his hands neatly folded in front of him, she would make certain that he was suspended from school.

He complied, taking his time about it. I don't think he really cares about being suspended, but I think he wouldn't want to miss a few days of getting in people's faces and offending them.

He's in trouble all the time and the weird thing is I know he's trying to get into trouble. I think I'm pretty close to telling him off.

All You Zombies

Hi everyone--Margi here. This blog is more cob-webby than the Haunted House, isn't it. It will say "posted by PhoebeKendall" at the bottom of this post but that is just another example of how the Internet is a total liar. And why is Internet always capitalized, anyhow?

I asked Phoebe if I could post something here and she said sure go ahead here's my password. PSA: Kids and kid-like people,never ever ever give anyone any of your Internet account passwords. Or your wallet, your favorite stuftie, your ATM card, your mojo, or your car keys if you are old enough to drive. You wouldn't want some creeper getting a hold of that stuff would you? Luckily for Phoebe, I am not a creeper, I am her best friend. And besides, she says that she is never going to post here again, anyhow. She doesn't want me to get into it, but she was a bit embarrassed by Tommy's last post. You'd think that maybe she'd be over it and all now that Tommy is back home from his trip and back in school, but I guess it is more complicated than that.

But um yeah I'm not supposed to talk about that. Next topic, please?

So yes Tommy is back in school. And Colette! And we're having a blast every day except when she's being all mopey about missing DeCayce and everything (he's back in New Jersey with his band but they get together like every other week so I don't know what she's complaining about; at least she has a boyfriend), and Adam, and Melissa, and Cooper, and Tayshawn and Jacinta and Popeye (yes! even Popeye!). Pretty much every zombie kid I know in town is back at school, except for Tak.

Tommy, you see, was pretty successful. Politically,at least. Although Prop 77 didn't go through exactly as it was written, a number of limited rights were granted to the differently biotic, including the right to get an education. So the zombies are all back, shambling through the hallways, moving just a little faster than Phoebe before her morning coffee. Which is great! Yay, zombies!

Except, now our school is really, really crowded. Really crowded. And there's um, conflict. Not bullying exactly, at least not the same sort of obvious bullying that was happening back when Tommy was first starting to speak up. More like...intimidation. I don't know how to write about it yet so I won't. Soon, maybe.

Anyhow, I'm going to try and get Phoebe and Tommy to post eventually. But not until I get to have some fun first! I'll be answering questions, too, so post lots.

Bye!

--Margi Vee

Open Letter to Phoebe

Phoebe, I lost my cell phone in Texas, which is why I haven’t called.

But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve been thinking about Evan and Texas and what happened to Karen and more and more I’m coming to the conclusion that life is short. Even differently biotic life is short, it seems. Some of us—zombies, I mean, but I guess trads too—act like we’re immortal. Nothing could be further from the truth. We disappear a bit more every day. I’ve been thinking a lot, Phoebe.

I’ve been thinking of you.

I know you’re with Adam now. Adam is my best friend in Oakvale; he’s the first trad guy to stand up for me and I’d never do anything to hurt either of you. He gave his life for you, and I will always owe him for that.

But Phoebe…things weren’t over between us. You know it and I know it. I may have stepped aside, but I was lying to myself. I was lying to you. I thought that time and distant would change the way I felt but if anything my feelings have only grown stronger.

I think you know what I’m talking about. I think there’s a part of you—and maybe, right now, it is only a tiny, fragile part—that feels the same way.

When I’m done here in Washington I’m going back to Oakvale. I’m going back to Oakvale because there’s a lot that I have to say to you.

Please listen.

T.

What Happened to Karen?

WHAT HAPPENED TO KAREN?

Memphis

We rolled into Memphis the day after a week of heavy rains. The river swelled against its banks, and again I had to fight the urge to leave the van, to leave my friends and just start walking towards the river, and keep walking until the muddy water covers my head.

“What’s with you?” Ty said, just after slapping me in the back of the head. “You look like a zombie.”
I turned towards him just as he lets loose with a manic giggle. Truth be told, Ty is the one that looks like a zombie. He’s been driving for the last six hours, a during which time I watched him consume two cans of red bull and eat two large Snickers bars. There’s only three living kids still traveling with us, and all three of them seem to regard ferrying the rest of us around the country as some sort of holy mission. There’s an odd sort of symmetry among the three—Ty, Chris and Kyle all wear hats or bandannas, all three have tattoos on their mountain-bike hardened calf muscles, muscles which are always visible because all three wear cargo shorts constantly. All three are addicted to the new Stone Sour CD (Ty, when the others are asleep, will sometimes put Hendrix’s “Valleys of Neptune” on the dashboard. They are the sort of athletic, easy going sort of guys that you can totally picture running two dozen miles over rough terrain to get medicine to an injured party lost in the woods. They are the guys you’d want with you in a fight.
“Sorry,” I said to Ty. “I’ll try and look more alive.”
Ty laughed his jangly laugh and tapped me on the back of the head again. Affectionately, I think. Ty was a basketball player; that’s what basketball players did on their way to the bench, tap each other on the head. Before my one-play football career with the Oakvale Badgers, I’d been a baseball player. I think the basketball guys had the better idea.
“We going to try and find Elvis?” Ty said. “I hear he's dead like you.”
“Funny,” I said. “I think his followers believe he never died, which is a little different.”
Ty shrugged. Kyle and Chris were helping our dead friends out of the van—for some reason they thought stretching was as beneficial for us as it was for them.
We made a few stops. Most everywhere we went people were supportive and kind. A girl gave Chris her phone number. An elderly couple brought three dead kids to us and asked that we take them with us, which we were glad to do. The girl who gave Chris her phone number painted a hot pink heart on the side of the van and I started thinking that the world had possibilities again.

We went to the Lorraine Hotel before we left town for D.C. The hotel is a museum now, and if you don’t know what it is and what happened there you need to look it up on Wikipedia. Hard to believe that happened within my mother’s lifetime.

On to Washington. Wish us luck.

Companions

I know it has been awhile since I've written last. Texas...things happened in Texas. I can't even put them into words yet that's how terrible they were. The images are there in my head, like they were etched there by a ragged fingernail, but my body and my hands resist pressing the keys that would turn those images into words.

Our first few stops in Texas were pleasant...but nothing had prepared us for what was going to happen. Nothing. The look in their eyes...

That was weeks ago. We--those few that remained--stopped in New Orleans afterwards and although that city opened its heart to us we really couldn't enjoy the hospitality. The news never reported what happened; the story was squelched. When we tried to explain no one could really understand what it was like. Not unless you were there. I called Phoebe, and told her as best I could what had happened. If I don't find the strength to write about it soon--or if something should happen to me--I've asked her to help me get the story out. But without Karen to help her, and with everything that is happening in Oakvale, and don't know that anyone would listen.

All I'll say now is that the little caravan that we had has now been reduced to one vehicle, our hand painted van. There's only a few of us still traveling; some went back to where they were from, others we had to leave in Texas. We had to leave them in Texas and they won't be returning.



"I'd almost forgotten what it was like to not exist," Darius, one of the guys who'd joined us in Denver said when we were miles away from the attack. It was the first thing that any of us had said in a few hours.

We're on our way to Memphis now, a stop I swore we'd make to help three of our brothers and sisters who need our help. We're doing almost all of our traveling now at night, and during the day we have to be careful where we park so that our living drivers can get some sleep in the van. The miles roll past and I'll think about people I thought I knew and then I'll wonder if they were ever really there at all.

I feel like my whole life right now is staring out a car window, looking for something that that I'll never find.