MrNepathy's Blog

Breanne tipped her head down as she pressed her hand to the cafeteria door and pushed it open. Noise erupted all around her as the various cliques scattered towards their tables. Maybe it was her imagination, but everyone seemed to turn to her to check out the new girl. Time to pick a clique she thought to herself. She felt like a gazelle going for a drink of water only to find itself surrounded by lions, cheetahs, jackals and vultures.

The lions… class presidents, soccer captains and cheerleaders. The kings and queens of any high school. She was a newcomer, there was no way she could go there.

The cheetahs… made up of every team but the soccer players. Players in terms of athletics and social habits. Fast and quick they took their prey back to their dens, then discarded them.

The jackals… easy to find in any high school. They were the geeks and the counter culture art students. Poets and their more modern counterparts, bloggers. They traveled in packs to keep safe and spoke their odd dialect of science fiction references, indie music and internet jargon.

The vultures… those that picked over the unwanted leftovers. The burn outs and soon-to-be dropouts. The kid that always smelled like old oatmeal, and the one that wiped snot on his sleeve.

And here she was, a gazelle, waiting to be plucked up. Her stomach started to clench and she tightened her eyes as if to strangle the tears about to escape. That’s when it happened. When he happened.

There was a bump against her and she tumbled towards the floor, her books raining down on her. Her palm slammed into the dirty cafeteria tile, jamming her hand at the wrist. She took a breath and was about to scream to let out her frustration at the entire day but as she looked up towards the person that had bumped into her, she was staring into deep blue eyes. If puppies about to be put to sleep could write poetry, they would have these eyes. The only thing more sunken and deep was the Titanic, but that old ship held less treasures.

Her scream came out a whimper and her swear came out a greeting. “Hi,” she said as she pushed back her hair.

“Hello,” he said in a voice that reminded her of James Dean, or how she imagined he would talk. She had never seen any of his movies.

As they began to collect their books, they reached for the same one. It was Songs of Innocence by William Blake. Their hands touched briefly, but he pulled his back almost as if repelled.

“I believe that’s mine,” they said in unison.

“I don’t think so,” she said, “It’s not a text book I’m just reading it because I like poetry.”

“And I’m reading it because I like innocence,” he said with a devil-may-care smirk, his pouty lips quivering at just the right tempo.

She flipped open the book cover, “My name should be written right here see… Derrick Swanson…” the words trailed off.

He smiled and held out his hand as she offered him the book. His head tilted and he found her copy under his lunch tray, “Here you are, Ms. Swanson.” When he winked, she began to name their yet increate children. She was partially fond of Whitney for the girl, Jack and Clover for the boys.

“It’s Tilden actually… Breanne Tilden,” she said in her suddenly even-more-meager voice.

“Bree,” he said as if her very name were a promise.

“Well, I should… go,” she said as she stood up. He was quicksand personified.

He sank back into a small crowd of very pretty, very pouty people.

As she turned towards the cafeteria again, she spotted a friendly face in the crowd. It was Tyler, the son of her dad’s best friend. She waived meekly to him and wandered over his way. Tyler had short, dark hair that always looked wet or gelled. As she approached she caught the hint of chlorine that seemed to surround him and his brothers. Every year for ten years had included a Dunmire brother on the swim team.

Tyler tilted his head towards an empty chair, “Join me.”

She slid into the chair and breathed a sigh of relief, “Thanks Ty.”

“Tough day?” he asked.

“Yes, but… it had some highlights,” she said as she glanced over at Derrick’s table.

Tyler poked a plastic spoon into his Won Ton soup which consisted almost entirely of seaweed. He shoveled it up greedily and then pointed his spoon at Derrick and his group, “Stay away from the Swansons. They’re… weird.”

“They’re all related?”

“Kind of. Dr. Swanson took them all in, sort of a wayward home for displaced weirdos. They do everything together, and none of them take physical education. They say it’s because they’ve all had too many concussions from working on the horse farm.”

“Horse farm?”

“The doc owns a ranch on the outskirts of town.”

“What kind of doctor is he?”

“Neurosurgeon…which fits.”

In her mind Derrick was riding through a rippling field of wheat, his purposefully messy hair barely moving even in the stiff wind. His blue eyes matched the sky on the horizon, and were just as expansive.

* * *

The next day as Breanne was combing her hair, she noticed it looked a little shorter in places, which gave it a slightly more layered look. While this troubled her, she still went about her day. Amazingly it did not make her cry, as most things did: wet puppies, kittens who lost their sunbeams while trying to nap, coffee commercials around the holidays, mint, when the Trix Rabbit can’t enjoy his cereal, when people disobeyed the “right of way” rules, when bacon curled so that the one part did not cook properly, the fact that people even ate bacon (the poor pigs!)…

Her day was uneventful and she found herself always glancing around for Derrick, but she couldn’t find him. Her heart sank with every hour. As she was leaving school she cast one look back, but the only place she saw him was in her daydreams. So distracted was she that she didn’t notice the homecoming float that was about to hit her. It was a giant paper mache echidna and therefore not the best way to die. That would end up on YouVid for sure. As she screeched out in horror, she heard the crumpling of paper, was flung to the ground and then the sound of popping, which she only assumed was her skull cracking.

But she opened her eyes and there beside her and holding back the heavy float was Derrick Swanson. Somehow he had stopped the brightly colored spiky animal. He smiled down at her and as she looked at his wrist, she saw a bracelet made of brown strands. She reached up and felt along her hair and he blushed a deep red before scooping up her hand and leading her away from the scene.

“Is… that a bracelet made of my hair?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Yes,” he admitted shyly, “I cut it off while you were sleeping.”

“That’s…” she started. Creepy? Weird? Physical evidence of breaking and entering combined with perverse assault? These are what most people would say. “… romantic,” she concluded. She was not most people. This was not most people’s love. This was extraordinary. Clover would write the most wonderful Indie music.

He took her to the woods, as one is prone to do when one doesn’t want to seem creepy or threatening… if one lives in Opposite Land.

“Your hand is moist, like thawed chicken with the skin still on it (those poor chickens!),” she said when she realized she had been holding it for a while.

“…” his soulful eyes seemed to say.

“And how are you so strong? The Elmbrook Fighting Echidna would have killed most people.”

“I have a secret. My family we’re not normal…”

She brushed his cheek, which also felt like sticky wet chicken, “You can tell me anything Derrick.”

“There’s a reason we Swansons don’t take gym class, it’s because we’re… we’re…” He turned away quickly, “I can’t. You’ll hate me, you’ll run away, you’ll fear me.”

“I would never,” she said as she began to cry.

As he turned back, he wiped her tear away with his thumb, “I’m a zombie Breanne.”

She gasped and for a moment they held each other, then she looked up into his big, watering eyes, “And if you get hit in the head in gym class, you’ll die, because that’s what zombies do according to every mythology about them ever recorded and going against them would be a blatant disregard for the mythos?”

He laughed, “Don’t be silly… if we get hit in the head, something hideous happens… It’s not natural.”

“What is it?”

Derrick picked up a log, “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“I can handle anything, anything but losing you!” she cried with big thinking-of-mint tears.

He smacked the log against his head and did not die as one would expect zombies to do because according to science, the encyclopedia, C-Span, the Library of Congress, the Vatican and eons of history, zombies die when hit in the head. Instead a halo of colors formed above his head and rotated slowly. From seemingly nowhere a butterfly flew out of the sky and perched on his shoulder. A rabbit hopped out of a hole and nuzzled against his ankle. It was ridiculous. Ridiculously beautiful.

“It’s splendid,” she said as she ran her hand through the light. She thought she smelled tapioca.

They spent the rest of the day together, hiking through the woods. At the end of the day he kissed her hand and asked for another strand of her hair. He would floss with it later, because flossing is important, especially when one is the walking dead and rotting. Or should be rotting.

* * *

The next day Tyler visited her.

“Are you okay Breanne?” he asked her.

Without warning she began to cry, “Oh Tyler, I’m in love with someone I can’t possibly love, shouldn’t love…” She fell against his shoulder and he braced her with his hand. The tears ran off her cheek, splashing onto his fingers. Fortunately she had her eyes closed or she would have seen the webbing grow between his fingers when the water touched. For Tyler was a sea monster, the natural-born enemy of the zombie.

(Dun-dun-duh!)

(Don’t get too excited, if I keep the parody up, the whole thing will end in a 70-page bake sale. Keep reading for Chapter Two: The Swansons Family Dinner… I swear I didn’t name the family that with this title in mind, but, dance with what brought you as my mom never used to say)