Night of the Zombie Chickens (12 page)

A
ll
weekend, I think about Margaret's comments about my movie. On Sunday night, I open up my movie project on my computer, click on a random clip, and wait for it to open in the viewer. It turns out to be some footage of the hens I shot last summer, trying to get some zombielike behavior. First, a hen pecks at the ground. I can hear Alyssa in the background, snapping her fingers. She was behind me, trying to get the hen to look up toward the camera.

“Here, chickie, chickie,” she calls. “Chicka chicka boom boom.”

The hen ignores her.

“Hey, beakface, look over here!” Alyssa shouts. The hen skitters away. The camera is shaking because I'm laughing. Alyssa runs into frame and chases the hen, shouting, “Look over here, you stupid bird!” The frazzled hen bolts for the coop and Alyssa collapses on the ground. I stand over her, shooting down. She throws a handful of grass up at the camera and it falls back in her face. She spits some out of her mouth.

“You're probably lying in chicken poop,” I hear myself tell her.

She screams and jumps up, the camera jerks wildly, and the shot ends.

It's nothing special, but I watch it again anyway. When I feel myself wanting to watch it a third time, I know I have to snap out of it. I take a deep breath. There's nothing useable in the clip, so I make myself delete it. That little snippet of electronic memory is gone forever. It's like it never existed, like Alyssa and I never chased chickens and laughed and did silly things last summer.

What is Alyssa doing right now? Is she dreading school tomorrow? Is she begging her mother to let her stay home?

I stare at the closet. How soon should I return the wig?

I wish I could just run to the school that night, slip in, and put it back. I'm tired of the whole wig drama. I thought I would feel better once I taught Alyssa a lesson, but I don't. I feel worse. And when I wrote my plan, I didn't think about how I would return the wig. I figured it would be easy, but now I'm not so sure. What if someone catches me?

I tell myself it isn't quite time to put it back yet. What I really need to do is focus on something else. Anything else. I decide the moment has arrived to finally come up with an ending for my movie. Any kind of creative thinking requires food, so I wander downstairs to find supplies. Wilma follows me, probably hoping I'll give her a snack. As I pass the den, I can hear my dad talking on the phone again. Suddenly, he gives a low laugh. A private laugh.

The hairs on the back of my neck feel like a cold hand just brushed over them. I try to listen at the door, but it's a solid piece of farmhouse wood and all I can hear is the low murmur of his voice. Wilma barks once, trying to get my attention. My dad's voice stops short. I grab Wilma and race back upstairs, my appetite gone. I peek into my parents' room. My mother is sitting in bed with her glasses on, going over some paperwork. Waiting for my dad.

I slip away before she sees me and park myself in front of my computer. When I Google
midlife crisis
, it says that middle-aged men and women sometimes feel trapped by money worries and family problems. They crave change and excitement. They want new, more fulfilling relationships. They buy expensive toys to make themselves feel young.

Money worries and family problems. I jab the delete button. My dad probably feels like he has both. Money is tight, my mother's always busy with her hens, Derek and I bicker too much, the house always needs repairs....The list goes on and on.

I wander out to the hallway and sink onto the top stair, still clutching Wilma. My problems with Alyssa suddenly don't seem so important. I need to know who my dad is talking to every night. I can't live anymore with this fear in the pit of my stomach. I need to know if my dad is the guy I think he is, or if he's just pretending to be that guy. If only I had a pair of Extendable Ears, like the Weasley twins invented in
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
. I sigh as Wilma licks my face, trying to help.

Suddenly, I hear the door to my dad's office creak open. I bolt into my room with Wilma, shut the door, and turn off the light. He slowly climbs the stairs and, a moment later, their bedroom door clicks shut. I huddle in the dark, feeling miserable. Wilma licks my ear, and that's when it hits me. I may not have magical ears, but I have the next best thing. If I can just find a certain item, I'll be able to hear everything my dad says in his office. The problem is, I'm pretty sure my mother stored that item in the basement.

I try to persuade myself to look for it in the morning. After all, it's too late to spy on my dad tonight. I can't wait, though. Patience isn't one of my virtues. I remember seeing the item years ago, stored with a bunch of Derek's and my old toys and books. It was all useless stuff and I wondered at the time why my mother kept it. Did she finally throw that box away when we moved?

I ease open my door.

“Sorry, Wilma,” I whisper. “You need to stay here.” She gives me a mournful look as I shut the door. The last thing I need is for her to sniff a mouse in the basement and start yapping. I slip downstairs and find a flashlight.

I click on the basement light and gaze at the curved wooden stairs disappearing into the abyss. The flashlight is just in case. If the electricity goes off or Derek is secretly stalking me and decides to shut off the lights, I want to be ready. I feel like I've stepped into a weird horror flick. All I need is my own creepy sound track.

To take my mind off the cobwebs and the rats and the dead-person smell, I hum a few eerie notes as I descend step by step. I stop when I hear a scuttling noise under the stairs. Maybe I
should
wait until morning. Whatever it was, it sounded big. At the shadowy far end of the basement, I can see plastic bins stacked high. Humming louder, I jump the last few steps and streak past the water heater and the rusty oil tank. Then, the sump pump gurgles at me and I freeze. I've heard stories about people losing tiny baby pet snakes in their houses, only to have them show up years later, six feet long and fat as fire hydrants. What if there's a viper curled up in the sump pump?

I switch gears and start humming Harry Potter's theme music. If he could deal with snakes, then so can I. I rush past the sump pump, my heart jumping wildly.

Only the furnace and the cistern stand between me and the bins. The furnace is mammoth, with big metal octopus arms that reach into the ceiling. Just like in
Home Alone.
I think of little Macaulay Culkin standing up to his monster furnace, and I even manage to kick ours as I hurry past it. Bad idea. A metallic booming sound fills the basement and echoes off the walls. I gasp, sure my dad will come running. Or worse, Wilma will start barking upstairs. I listen, but there's no barking, no running feet. Sometimes, heavy old farmhouse walls come in handy.

The wall of the cistern is just high enough that I can't see over it. Anything could be in there—rats, dead bodies, vampires, zombie chickens. It's the creepiest part of the whole basement, steeped in shadowy evil. Even Macaulay Culkin didn't have to deal with a cistern. I'm trapped—cistern in front of me, and monster furnace and viper sump pump behind. My heart is pounding crazily.
It
'
s my house,
I tell myself.
It
'
s my basement. Nothing
'
s in here waiting to grab me. Nothing wants to suck my blood. Nothing wants to tear out my organ
s
....

Okay, that pep talk's not working.

I lean down, trying to think, and notice my shoelace is coming untied. My Nike shoelace. I close my eyes.
Just do it. JUST D
O IT!

I streak forward. From the corner of my eye, I'm sure I see something reach from the cistern and grab at my hair as I run past.
Just do it just do it just do i
t
....

I reach the bins and wheel around, the flashlight raised over my head like a weapon. Nothing. Still, I lift the first lid without turning my back on the empty room. Nothing's going to sneak up on me if I can help it. A quick glance tells me it's Christmas stuff. I open the next box. Winter hats and gloves. I push that box aside and open the one underneath it. Christmas again. This could take a while.

On the sixth box, I hit gold. My old Cabbage Patch doll stares up at me. I'd forgotten how cute she was. There's Derek's first pair of shoes, and my favorite cardboard picture book,
I Can Fly
. It would be nice to reminisce about old times, but I can't help thinking about that undead janitor and his time portal in
Poisoned Pie
. Suddenly, that movie doesn't seem quite so funny.

I glimpse a white cord and grab it. With a hard yank, the item tumbles out of the bin.
Bingo
. I hold it up to the light and inspect it. Derek's baby monitor. I vaguely remember listening to him scream through it. He was a noisy baby. I dig down and uncover the white plastic base.
Mission: Impossible
accomplished.

I restack the bins, then dash forward in an all-out, record-breaking sprint. I don't slow down until I am all the way upstairs safely underneath the covers in my bedroom.

W
hen Lydia's loud giggle drifts over from a nearby table, I stifle a desire to throw my lunch at her. How can one person find that many things to laugh at? She belongs in India. She would have the biggest laugh club of them all.

Next to me, Margaret peels an egg and takes a bite. Hard-boiled eggs smell even worse than fried eggs, if that's possible. I hunch miserably in my seat and stare at my sandwich. I'm still scarred from my midnight stealth operation in the basement. Even worse, now I have to spy on my dad. How low is that? I'm afraid of what I might hear, but I'm even more afraid of what happened to Lydia and Alyssa—believing everything was fine right up until their dads moved out.

Margaret dabs a yellow crumb from her mouth and brushes the eggshells into her paper bag. It occurs to me that if nature had simply given Margaret brown hair and fewer freckles, she might be sitting at a table full of girls right now. And who knows? If Lydia had been born with red hair and bad eyesight, maybe she would be the one hanging out with me and Doris. It all seems so unfair. If only there were mutant eggs that could change hair color. Now,
that
would be a big seller. Forget organic. If my mother could sell eggs like that, we'd be rich. Margaret would probably be first in line.

Just as I take a bite of my chocolate cupcake, an idea hits me with the force of a Supertronic laser stun gun. MUTANT EGGS. Of course! Why didn't I think of it before?

The ending of my movie is staring me right in the face. I don't need Alyssa at all. I'm so shocked that I can't even chew. All these weeks of struggle, all my writing and rewriting, even Alyssa's betrayal—for the moment, none of it matters. I turn to Margaret and Doris to break the amazing news, and that's when I realize my idea has one huge problem. My new ending requires a new star. Right now, my talent pool consists of Margaret and Doris. I sneak a glance at Doris. If I brushed out her hair and got rid of the glasses...

“Um, Doris...” I'm so nervous about asking that I accidentally drop my organic chocolate, all-natural cupcake. It lands on the table, frosting side down.

“You going to eat that?” Doris asks me.

I stare at the chocolate frosting flattened on the dirty, grungy lunchroom table and shake my head. She grabs it and takes a huge bite, and then she
wipes her finger along the smeared frosting on the table and pops it in her mouth
. I think I might be sick. Margaret is staring very hard at the clock on the wall. I feel a twinge of sympathy for a neat freak like her, hanging around with a slobaholic like Doris.

“What were you going to ask me?” Doris spews cupcake crumbs as she speaks, and
one lands in my drink
. I couldn't have written a better gross-out scene if I'd tried.

“Uh, nothing.” I try not to look at the floatie in my soda. Social Skills
101
may be a little too advanced for Doris.

I weakly turn and regard Margaret. Her hair glows nearly orange in the fluorescent lights. She smiles at me, showing all her crooked teeth. I smile back.
Night of the Zombie Chickens
has a new star.