A bored janitor holds the gate open as a herd of local theater students jerk and spazz their way through. Kylie watches the zombies from a nearby bench. Some of the kids are excellent undead, congealed blood at the corners of their mouths, grimy yellow teeth, dragging feet, clothes that look like they’ve seen the underside of a graveyard. Others, not so much. One girl has a perfect line of black eyeliner on her cue stick blue lids and bright red lipstick on her groaning mouth. The makeup job resembles Kylie’s own day look. But that’s goth, not zombie.
Corpses of leaves flit to the ground from the branches of potted birch trees, where they are then crushed under Chuck Taylors and Michael Jordan High Tops. Kylie palms another handful of popcorn. The bag tips as she withdraws her hand, spilling kernels all over the concrete, but she’s too busy looking for the blonde to bother picking it up. No doubt a Six Flags Park Cleanliness Technician would be along shortly with a broom and dustpan anyway. The park owners wouldn’t want anyone to know trash had been on the ground. The fallen leaves are not swept away though, maybe to add to the ambiance of Scream Fest ’93.
The blonde finally clears the gate right behind a palefaced kid with dredlocks and a chain wallet. She is easy to spot because she’s one of the crappy Zombies. Her skin is powdered to look two shades paler. Her eyes rimmed in hazy grey. Her golden hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, thick as a sapling tree. Her canvas shoes are pure white, a shade unattainable by the real undead. In a real world zombie situation those shoes would be muddy and crusted with pieces of intestines. You would not be able to clearly see the blue Keds label on the back, sitting there like a tiny preppy license plate. Kylie rolls her eyes. The girl isn’t even walking right. Zombies don’t hold their arms stiff out front like a mummy. Mummies hold their arms like that because they are wrapped, their elbow joints constricted. Zombies’ arms hang limp at their sides. They don’t have the triceps to hold them up that long. Everyone knows that.
Kylie reaches into her bag for a cigarette. She uses the hard corner of the pack to itch the tattoo on her chicken bone forearm. SKANK. The gothic script letters are still rimmed in puffy red skin, like the word is angry. The ink is only a few weeks old, needled in by a guy who lives a few doors down from her with a set up in his detached garage. He traded Kylie a free tattoo for a couple nights babysitting his kids. When she told him what she wanted he’d snorted and said, “It’s your arm, babe,” and the tears that formed in her eyes did not have anything to do with the needle piercing her skin.
Laurel Benson, the cheerleader, had been the first one to call her that name all the way back in eighth grade, after she found out her boyfriend Billy Van Dickhead felt Kylie up out on the football track during gym class. “Felt her up” was Billy’s way of saying, “Pushed her against the bleachers and shoved my hands inside her gym shirt.” Mr. Brown had found them there and, mistaking Kylie’s grunts of protest with gasps of pleasure, sent them both to all day detention, where she’d heard the assistant principal murmur something about girls without fathers. She’d been skank ever since.
She heard the word so many times it had shaken loose its husk and become something else, like when you repeat the name of a common object over and over until it melts into something foreign, something that sounds strange to your ears and feels odd in your mouth. Before that word she’d been the quiet one, the one who played clarinet in concert band, read R.L. Stine books and listened to Debbie Gibson on a second hand pink tape player. But after, it was like the word had cast a spell on her. Pink turtlenecks gave way to ripped jeans and safety pins in her eyebrows. Her black curls were pulled into a tight ponytail, her bangs brushed forward and hairsprayed into a frozen waterfall that hid her eyes. Debbie Gibson was edged out by Morrisey and the Cure. The clarinet rolled under the bed.
The zombie herd approaches Kylie’s bench, most of them acting more drunk than undead. They look ridiculous stumbling past colorful containers of mums and stalls where caricature artists wait for customers. Over their groans can be heard vendors selling hot apple cider and Journey playing through the park’s speaker system. All around, people laugh, eat, play impossible games for cheap stuffed animals. Boyfriends hang jackets over girlfriends’ shoulders. Masked park employees prance around scaring people. A few of the zombies hiss in Kylie’s direction but she ignores them and lights her cigarette. She only cares about the blonde. That walking dead bitch. Kylie wants to spit on her perfect little shoes and yank out handfuls of her shining blonde hair until there’s nothing left but raw, red scalp.
It’s been almost a month since she found out about her and Ryan. Lola called and told her she’d seen them holding hands at Scream Fest, both in full make up. Kylie asked her how she knew for sure the zombie was Ryan and Lola said it was him because his Tazmanian Devil tattoo showed through a tear in the sleeve of his plaid shirt. Kylie was with him when he got that tattoo. He’d cried like a fucking baby. She’d been embarrassed for him, whimpering while a Vietnam vet carved a cartoon character on his bicep. Afterward they’d gone back to his house. He laid his head in her lap and she gently urged him not to poke his bandages while they watched Night of the Living Dead. The quiet domesticity of the memory nearly brings her to tears.
And after Lola delivered the news about the blonde, of course, Kylie missed a period. Ryan hadn’t been returning her calls or the notes she slipped into his locker at school. She waited for him in the cafeteria but he must have switched his lunch hour because he was never there. Nor was he in his usual parking spot by the dumpster, the one they snuck behind to smoke cigarettes before school. He wasn’t home either, she’d gone by almost every day, Ryan’s mom giving her haughty looks and saying he was out “with friends” before shutting the door in her face.
So she started coming to Scream Fest every night, even though the month pass had cost her an entire summer’s worth of waitressing tips. It was worth it if she could grind the lit end of her cigarette into that whore’s eyeball. She’d made Lola describe the blonde girl in minute detail and then studied every single zombie walking through the park until she was sure she had the right one. Now the blonde is shuffling past the log flume with arms outstretched and wrists hanging limp at the ends. Her fingernails are shell pink, Kylie notes, an impossible shade for a flesh eater.
A woman works her way through the herd with a giant chicken leg. The zombie kids pretend to snap and grab for it. They don’t touch her because they’re probably not legally allowed to make contact with anyone. Grease drips over the foil wrapped bottom and runs in rivulets down the woman’s chin as she clamps her teeth around flesh and muscle and bone. The smell hits Kylie’s nose so hard she thinks she might pass out and throw up at the same time. She presses her forehead to her knees and takes long, slow breaths. By the time she looks up, the undead are rounding the corner into Cooter Canyon. A girl screams and then laughs as one of the better zombies jumps at her, snapping his muddy teeth. Kylie stands to follow. She pulls on her jacket and shrugs her Tazmanian devil t-shirt away from her stomach. Then she thinks differently, she pulls it tight across her belly, still flat, but if she pushes her hips forward just so, it almost gives the impression of a swell.
The covered wooden bridge into Cooter Canyon is plastered in spider webs and huge black arachnids with pulsing red eyes. Kylie blows out puffs of smoke as she lumbers after the zombie pack, dragging the back of her knuckles along a wooden beam as she walks, daring the splinters to pierce her. At the end of the bridge loom the steel arcs of Coal Miner’s Revenge. Every few minutes the coaster rattles past, trailing the screams of the riders. Kylie had ridden it for the first time with Ryan over the summer, she’d dug her black nails into his arm the whole ride. When it was over he’d kissed the top of her head and said, “You were so scared, baby!”
There was no sign of Ryan at Scream Fest tonight, nor any other night she’d been there. She’d hoped to catch them together, to make a scene like on those daytime shows where people throw chairs at cheating spouses. She would shove that blonde bitch to the ground and tell them both she was carrying his child. The blonde girl would look indignant. Ryan would say, “Oh my god, baby, why didn’t you tell me?” and run to put his arms around her. Then the blonde would stomp her foot and huff. But it wouldn’t matter, Ryan would be so concerned with Kylie that he wouldn’t even see the blonde anymore. He would drive Kylie home in his old blue pickup truck, she’d give him the silent treatment for a few hours, and they’d be back to normal, watching old horror movies on the couch in his parents’ den.
Except she’d be pregnant, but even that didn’t matter. Lots of people wanted to adopt babies, whitebread types who lived in nice houses in Lincoln Village and Swiss Valley. Kylie imagines her and Ryan’s baby growing up in a house with brand new carpet, attending dance classes, going to college. When the time came, Ryan would hold her hand while she pushed the baby out, and then they’d both cry semi-sweet tears while an older couple carried it away to a rich neighborhood where it would have the best of everything.
Unless of course Ryan wanted to keep the baby. He might. They could move into the city like they always talked about, live in one of those little brick houses with the square of grass out front and big elm trees by the road. Kylie would waitress and Ryan would fix cars. On Halloweens they would dress like characters from Japanese comic books and go from house to house collecting candy in a pillowcase. At Christmas they would put a Douglas Fir in the front window and string popcorn on a thread, drink hot cocoa.
The zombies migrate out of Cooter Canyon, through the Haunted Forest and across the Misty Mountains. Mostly they just inch through the park making breathy noises at people waiting in line for rides. Every once in a while one of the better ones rushes after someone. Each time the victim screams, throws their popcorn/cotton candy/giant chicken leg, and then laughs hysterically. Kylie trails them the whole way, a graveyard groupie. Her feet and back ache horribly. Her boobs feel like they’re full of hot needles. And she is so, so tired. She fell asleep again in Mr. Noonan’s World History Class and he pulled her aside and gave her a lecture about cooperative courtesy or some bullshit. Whatever. She is tired in a way she’s never experienced tired before, as if every bone in her body is leeching energy and sucking it through a drain in her middle. She pulls another cigarette out of her bag and lights it to stay awake.
Soon it is eleven o’clock. The Zombie herd makes its way back to the gate near the log flume. The same bored janitor pulls the fence open and holds it while the risen dead amble through. Some of them stay in character until they are fully out of sight, others, like the blonde girl, are already walking with a normal gait and laughing with their friends.
The sight of Blondie’s laughter makes Kylie grind her teeth. Usually this is the point in the night where she pivots on her heel, makes her way back to the train station and goes home to her mom and whichever of her mom’s boyfriends is sleeping over that night. But tonight she snuffs her cigarette in a pot of orange mums and follows the pack through to the employee area. The janitor doesn’t even glance at her as she passes through the gate. The actors file into a grey cinder block building labeled “wardrobe.” Past the building, Kylie sees a sign for the employee parking lot. She decides to wait there. She and Blondie will have a little conversation. Or maybe Kylie will just key her car and slash her tires. Or she could buy one of those novelty baseball bats in the gift shop and smash the windshield in.
The chain link fence to the parking lot is threaded with green plastic strips for privacy, so Kylie doesn’t see that Ryan is waiting on the other side until she is through the gate. He is leaning on the bumper of his sky blue pickup truck, legs crossed at his Doc Martens, hands in his pockets. She almost doesn’t recognize him. He cut his hair. It is no longer a scraggly brown shag hanging over his collar but a neatly combed helmet, like a Ken doll. He’s wearing his green and blue flannel shirt, the one he had on when they went to see The Crow at the drive in theater out on Route 41. She remembers how soft the fabric felt on her cheek and how strong his bicep underneath, the way he smelled like Stetson Cologne and french fries. Instead of hanging open over a Slayer World Tour ’91 t-shirt, the flannel is tucked into his jeans. His patchy black mustache is gone. He looks fastidious.
He rises a little when he hears the gate open, and at first he doesn’t recognize Kylie. He is smiling and expectant. But his smile drops and his eyes close the moment he realizes it is her. They stand there for a minute like that, five feet apart, staring at each other. Kylie’s heart is beating fast. All the words she’s been waiting to say have left her. She stands there looking at this guy who once was her familiar but now, somehow, is not. It is him, but not him. It’s as if another soul had taken over his physical body, trimmed and scouring and shaved it.
Around the corner people stream out of the park from the guest exit. A Van Halen song blasts through the speakers. Kylie crosses her arms and pulls her jacket tighter against the wind, suddenly wanting to hide her Tazmanian Devil shirt, her belly, herself.
“Kylie—” he starts. He looks over her shoulder, looks for the blonde.
“I’m pregnant,” Kylie interupts. “You’d know already if you’d stop avoiding me.”
He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “Fuck.” There is a long pause. Ryan stands looking alternately at the black sky and the staff exit behind her. Minutes earlier she’d been nurturing her well practiced anger toward the blonde girl. Now, her wrath was directed squarely at Ryan. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
His shoulders slump and he rubs his temples. “I’ll pay for the abortion. Okay? I’ll send you the money. Just tell me how much it is.”
“I don’t know.” Kylie huffs. “Tiffany Boswell got one over the summer and it cost her like three hundred dollars.”
He looks up at the sky again. “Fuck, Kylie, I don’t have that kind of money. Can’t you just, I don’t know, give it away?”
Sure, Kylie thinks, but I have to give birth to it first asshole. She didn’t care about being pregnant as long as Ryan was with her. But without him, there’s no way she’s going to finish out senior year with a basketball sized bump under her Brandon Lee t-shirt. Tears sting her eyes and her throat tightens. Her bottom lip starts to quiver and no matter how hard she tries she can’t stop it. Ryan doesn’t move.
People start coming out of the employee exit. They flow around her as if she were a tree in a river. A couple of them hold their hands out to Ryan for high fives (which he gives). Some of them glance back at her. Some don’t. She wipes her tears on the sleeve of her jacket. Ryan is still planted on the hood of his pickup. He doesn’t come to her.
“Ryan? Is everything okay?” It’s her, the blonde girl with the perfect ponytail and white shoes. She comes through the employee gate and walks right up to put her arm around Ryan’s waist like he is hers. “Hello.” She says. “I’m Jennifer.” She looks right at Kylie as if there is no shame, as if she hasn’t stolen her boyfriend and destroyed her entire happy universe. “Oh god, are you okay?” Her voice is tender. She walks over to Kylie with outstretched arms, like they are old friends. She’s warm and smells like Love’s Baby Soft. Her eyes are no longer covered in grey, and up close Kylie can see they are a striking green. Her brow is creased with concern. It takes Kylie a moment to realize that the blonde girl is not teasing her, that she is sincere.
Kylie crumbles into her arms. She begins to sob so hard she can’t breathe. She cries the kind of tears that come when you know you have utterly lost and before you lies a bleak and dreary road that you have no choice but to travel. Jennifer guides her to Ryan’s bumper and sits down beside her. “Is there someone we can call for you?”
We, she’d said, like they were a unit, a team, a couple. As if Kylie were the outsider, other, wrecker of worlds. Kylie feels the prickly hot horribleness of reverse peristalsis. Her ears buzz, the ground lurches and her head swings in a wide arc. Liquid heat burns up her esophagus and erupts a sticky white mess of regurgitated popcorn all over Ryan’s Doc Martens.
That makes him move. “What the fuck, Kylie!”
Jennifer looks from her boyfriend to the sobbing girl and then calls to someone walking by. “Can you get us some paper towels please?”
Jennifer and another girl hold Kylie’s hand and help her wipe herself off. A third woman brings a glass of water. A small crowd gathers, wondering what is wrong with the sobbing, spewing chick in the parking lot. Guests stream out of the main exit, laughing, chatting, swatting each other with long glowing plastic tubes. Kylie looks at Ryan, who is still kicking vomit from his shoes. She gives him a pleading, lovesick look that if she saw it on anyone else’s face would make her barf all over again.
“Ryan?” Kylie says.
Jennifer looks at them both again. “Do you know each other?”
Ryan pauses. “She’s just a girl I know from school.”
Kylie stands up then, looks at him, thinks about the little vampire growing inside her that sucks all her energy away, that makes her belly roil with nausea and her back ache every second of every day. She thinks about the whispers and rumors and “what did she expects” floating around the hallways at school. She thinks about the stretch marks and labor pains and the body that will not be wholly hers again for some time. She thinks about all this until it ravels itself up in a tiny needle prick that settles deep in her chest. She turns to Jennifer. “Thank you.” She says. And then she walks away. She doesn’t look back as she weaves through the crowds leaving the park and heads toward the train station at the front entrance.
On the train is an advertisement, a picture of a rosy-cheeked brunette with a creased brow looking at a plastic stick. Someone had carved the word SKANK over the model’s face. The points of the K are daggers stabbing her blue right eye. “Pregnant?” the ad read, “We Can Help.” Kylie digs a pen from her purse and writes the phone number on her forearm, underneath her tattoo.
