I can't move. I'm too depressed. I'd rather be a zombie than feel like this.

My mother is suddenly all over me, looking for wounds. I shift onto my a.s.s and let her take me apart.

"He has a very bad sprain," the coach tells her. "Could be broken, judging by the pain."

"I'm a nurse," she says.

The princ.i.p.al walks up, hands on his hips, bald head glistening. "This is a strange situation."

"A very bad sprain," Coach Emery repeats.

Meanwhile I'm sitting like a stone while Mom prods my extremities. Mr. Graham stares down at us, unhappy. Mom pinches my Achilles tendon.

"Ow!" I pull my leg away.

"Yes, it's badly sprained," she says. "But the bone's not broken."

"Are you telling me he screamed like that because of a sprained ankle?" Mr. Graham asks.

Coach Emery chuckles. "These tough kids. They tackle each other all day without complaint, but pull a muscle too far and they cry like little girls."

"Should that happen?" Mr. Graham asks. "I didn't think that was supposed to happen."

"With purely physical pain, yes, it can still happen," Mom says like she's being interviewed. "But, as you can see, it's very short-lived." She points to me, quietly slumped in the mud.

"Brennan! Richmond!" the coach calls. "Help Mrs. Connors take her son off the field!" Mr. Graham surveys me as Coach Emery helps me stand. "Right now!" the coach shouts. He turns to Mom. "He'll have to take a break from football until this heals. No Halloween dance either. Have him study from home this week and keep him off his feet."

Brennan and Dallas close in on either side of me. They sling my arms over their shoulders and wrap their hands around my waist. I fall short between them, childish and broken.

"Don't put any weight on your right ankle," Mom says. She stares at my feet, firmly planted on the ground. I lift my right heel and lean into Dallas.

"You'll be all right, Max," Mom says.

"Of course he will be," the coach says. "Just give him time to heal."

Dallas squeezes my ribs and I hop along between them. Brennan doesn't say a word, doesn't even glance at me. For all I know, he's a zombie. It's getting hard to tell us apart.

"I can borrow a car from work tomorrow," Mom tells me. "We could take your canvas for cutting."

I look up from my RIG. "I'm going to keep it as a tent."

She frowns. "Campsites are so unsafe, Max, and it's an ancient tent. We'd need a stove and a coolera""

"I mean for my art exhibit. I'm going to paint the whole tent."

"That will take weeks."

"Nah. It's mostly tags and bombs. They don't take long."

She hovers in the doorway of my bedroom, shifting from leg to leg. "You mean graffiti?"

"Yeah. Layers of it in different styles."

"Do you think that's wise?"

"It'll be glorious, Mom. It's all coming together." I return to my homeworka"five hundred years of dates to memorize and half the animal kingdom to cla.s.sify.

Mom leaves the room, biting her lip.

"I thought you hurt your ankle," Ally says as I walk her to the park.

"I'm a fast healer."

"So you're going to school tomorrow?"

"No. Next week."

"Did you get suspended again?"

"No way. I've been good. I'm just supposed to stay off my feet for a few days."

She stares at my shoes, so I tap out a dance. She giggles and hops. I twirl her on the pavement like a princess. "Stop," she whispers.

A woman watches us from her living-room windowa" a vague pale shape in an unlit room. She could be anyone. We continue in silence.

The reformed gladiators, Zachary and Melbourne, are at the park again. Their mothers stand behind the swings, chatting, pushing their children through the air.

Ally walks to the oak tree. I shield her from view. Peanut darts down and devours the seeds while Ally whispers soothing words, "You're such a pretty girl, such a good little mama." She chats and giggles and blows kisses and gives this squirrel all the love she would have spent on friends if they hadn't been turned into zombies.

"What on earth are you doing?" a woman shouts behind us. Peanut scurries up the tree. Ally drops the seeds on the ground and covers them with her skirt.

I turn to meet the angry eyes of Melbourne's mother. She's young and plain, with shapeless clothes and brown hair pulled back. She stands with her hands on her hips, waiting for an explanation. "We're not doing anything wrong," I say.

"You can't tame these animals! There's a disease going around spread by these creatures."

"It's spread by mice," I say.

"What's the difference? They're all the same species!"

"No, they're not." I stare at her zombie-style. "They're not even the same family. Mice and squirrels have been evolving separately for forty million years. They're in different suborders of Rodentia."

She huffs. "Just stay away from them! Don't be training them to come near my child."

I glance at her little zombie on the swing. He wouldn't care if a hundred squirrels took a dump on his head. "Like that would be so awful," I mutter.

"What did you say?" she yells, her face ugly and twisted.

"I said that would be awful."

She looks me up and down, scowling, before she leaves.

Ally brushes off her bottom. "Let's go now."

"Sure. Peanut will find these seeds later. She'll know they're from you."

Ally nods, takes my hand, walks home without twirling once.

Dallas comes over on Sat.u.r.day for Halloween fun at the Spartan. "I can stay till eleven! I told Dad we're working on science." He smiles with all his heart and dances with his arms above his head.

"How was the dance last night?" I ask.

"The dance? Oh my G.o.d, the dance. How was the dance?" He laughs, sighs, collapses on the couch.

"Yeah. How was it? Did you dance with anyone?"

"Think about it, Max. It was a dance full of zombies dressed in costumes. What do you think it was like?"

I shrug. "I don't know. That's why I'm asking."

He leans forward and clasps his hands together. "How can I describe it? It was like wading through a river of s.h.i.t, Max. No, actually, it was like standing in a gymnasium of s.h.i.t for three hours while people flicked elastics at my head and stuck thermometers up my a.s.s and I asked for more. That's exactly what it was like. That's what you missed." He leans back, smiles. "It was glorious. I can't wait till the Christmas ball."

"Whoa. Are you okay?"

He laughs. "Am I okay? Am I okay?"

"Seriously, Dallas. Take it easy."

He spreads his legs and slouches into the couch cushions, lays his head back and stares at the ceiling. He mutters a string of senseless curses, laughs hysterically, then closes his eyes in a state of bliss. "Man, it's so good to be here. You don't know what it's like." He turns his head toward me, cracks an eye open. "For you it's a job. You go to school, put in your time, come home and relax. For mea" He closes his eyes, shakes his head, breathes deeply. "It never ends, man. It's every f.u.c.king second."

Ally hops into the room. She's been dressed like a rabbit since ten in the morning. Celeste painted her face and gave her whiskers. "Hi, Dallas! You said a bad word. Where's your costume?"

He sits up and smiles, tweaks her bunny ears. "We're going to make our costumes." He turns to me excitedly. "Unless Celeste would do us. I'm not above begging."

"I already asked. She's at a party with some guy."

"What are you going to make a costume with?" Ally asks.

Dallas smiles. "With my imagination!"

Ally takes a step back. "My teacher says imaginations get us into trouble."

Dallas laughs so long that I just leave him there and make some lunch.

Twenty minutes later we're eating fries at the kitchen table, swallowing the fact that we have no imaginations. "What should we make?" I ask for the tenth time.

He shrugs. I shrug. I look around the kitchen. He looks around the kitchen. I hum. He whistles. I pick up the salt and pepper shakersa"boring silver and gla.s.s cylindersa"and shake them to my tune. He snaps his fingers and says, "Excellent. But I'll have to borrow something gray."

We wear gray T-shirts, gray pants and gray ski caps with holes cut out of the crowns. "This is a waste of two good caps," Dallas says. "No one is going to see the tops of our heads."

"Speak for yourself. Half the building is taller than me."

He paints a big S on his shirt and wears it with his white skin. I paint a big P on mine and wear it with my black skin. We show Mom. "Ta da!"

"That's it?" she asks. "S and P? Is that a product?"

"We're Salt and Pepper!" I whine. "G.o.d, Mom. We're shakers."

She laughs. "Salt and Pepper. That's what your dad used to call us when we were first dating. He was so white." She stares us up and down and shakes her head. "We were real salt and pepper. You two are more like cinnamon and garlic powder. Have you looked in a mirror?"

Dallas and I pose in the bathroom, trying to look cylindrical and spicy. "We look like recalls," he says at last.

"It's the hats."

"We look way too old for trick-or-treating."

"If we had masks, we could at least act like ourselves."

"So we're not just defective salt and pepper shakers, we're defective zombie salt and pepper shakers."

We slump out of the bathroom, ready to call off the whole adventure.

Ally hops away from the window and shouts, "Hey! Salt and Pepper! What a great costume!"

And we're back on the scene, giant candy bags in hand.

We head down the hallway, knocking on doors. "Is Xavier trick-or-treating tonight?" I ask Mrs. Lavigne.

"No, he's still not feeling well."

"Still?" I let slip a note of concern. Dallas jabs me. "That's a shame," I say. "It's important to feel well every day. If we don't feel well we should see a medical pract.i.tioner."

She closes the door in my face.

On the second floor, we run into Lucas. He's alone, dressed like a box of cereal. Dallas eyes his costume and mutters, "We could have done that."

"h.e.l.lo, Maxwell. h.e.l.lo, Alexandra," Lucas says. "I like your costumes." He stares from me to Dallas like he's trying to figure it out.

"Thank you," Ally says. "I like yours too. I'm going to trick-or-treat at your house."

"It's that one." Lucas points to the apartment directly under ours. There's a wreath on the door made of dried vines and pine cones. "I'm going upstairs. Good night." He doesn't ask to join us. He's perfectly happy to walk the halls in a cardboard box without a friend in the world.

After we tap every door in the Spartan, Ally looks in her candy bag and says, "I have enough. It's heavy."

We drop her at home, where she dumps a feeble collection of chocolate and candies on the kitchen table.

"Let's visit the rich houses," I say.

"Better goodies," Dallas agrees.