Xavier shakes his head, furrows his brow, frowns at me with the exact expression Ally uses now, like I'm defective. "It's a poem," he snaps.

I don't like his haircut. I don't like his face with his new haircut. He looks like he was made in a factory. I don't know why he ever reminded me of anything else. "I have to go," I say.

He nods and turns back to his busy-work.

"Oh, hey," Celeste says, glancing away from her yearbook buddies. "Can you take your tent with you? I know it was a gift and everything, but Mom says we don't have room for it and it kind of smells."

I think for a second that she's joking. "You're giving me back my painting?"

"We really like it, Max, but we don't have anywhere to put it so it's kind of a waste."

I look at Xavier. "You don't want your birthday present?"

"It smells funny," he says without bothering to look at me.

Celeste laughs. "It really does."

I hope they're all zombified, the whole Lavigne family. I hate their dirty house and their shiny hair and their poor-but-authentic line of c.r.a.p. Mostly I hate how much I miss Xavier. I don't bother smiling. "Sure, I'll take it."

As I drag my metaphor down the peeling hallway, I feel angrier but happier at the same time. I saved my tent from being stuffed in a closet full of thrift-store clothing and stacks of useless pet.i.tions, from a future folded in on itself until there's no memory of what it ever meant to anyone. To me. This tent is my work, the finest work of my life, and it belongs to me. Besides, I might have to live in it soon.

FIFTEEN.

It's Friday, December 23, the last day of school before the holidays. Dallas is heading inside when I arrive at the high school. He holds his id card under his chin and stares straight ahead. I take my place in line, quiet and cold like the world around me.

I sit behind him in Communications, still waiting my turn. Mr. Ames hands out holiday a.s.signments on "persuasive nonfiction." Our syllabus used to list epic poetry for this term, but zombies don't care about fallen comrades. Mail delivery from ancient to modern times is a brain we can sink our teeth into.

"Yum," I say to Dallas as I read the list of topics.

He doesn't hear.

"Bring something of yourselves to this piece," Mr. Ames says. "Any questions?"

We stare blankly.

He sighs. "You children are not what you used to be."

I try Dallas again at lunch. I shuffle behind him in the lineup and say, "My mother watched a movie about zombies last night. They ate people's brains."

He doesn't look at me. His eyes follow the cheesy macaroni spreading across his plate in a yellow ooze. His eyelids are purple with fatigue, black against the bridge of his nose.

I tap his shoulder. "Did you see that movie?"

He turns to me like he just realized I exist. No smile behind his eyes. No chewing. No clue. "I used to watch movies," he says.

"I don't watch them anymore. I don't know why." He grabs his tray and sits at the nearest empty chair between two strangers.

Brennan nudges my spine. "Shake it off," he whispers without moving his lips.

I'm not aware of ordering lunch. I'm sitting at the end of a long table beside Brennan, staring at a tray of food I don't want to eata"mushy vegetable soup, cold bread, bitter grapes.

Across the room, Dallas chews and chews but never seems to swallow. Eventually he rises and stacks his plates on the trolley. His jacket stretches tight across his shoulders but his pants barely hang on to his a.s.s. He's skinnier than he was three days ago.

"Stop staring," Brennan whispers. He has a natural talent for ventriloquism. "Eat your food."

I suck a spoonful of gelatin back and forth between my teeth until it liquefies with a red squeak.

History is excruciating. We study industrial catastrophes through the ages. We leave out the suffering and death, skip who's to blame and focus on the bouncing-back techniques, every nose to a grindstone, getting the job done right.

Mr. Reese doesn't partic.i.p.ate. He shows a doc.u.mentary, a.s.signs a reading, points to questions on the screen, goes about his duties like a secretary to his former self. I hate him and all that he withstands. I hate him like I hate my mother, whom I love and wish I didn't hate but I can't help it. I hate every adult who feels bad about what they're doing and does it anyway, sighing with every breath, clinging to the notion that they're good people in bad times. I hate them for not standing up for me. I hate them for not helping me stand up for myself. I hate them for not teaching me to care about all the people they mowed down before they got around to us. I hope they choke on all their coffee-talk and tissues.

Mr. Reese squeezes down the aisles, inspecting our progress. I stick my foot out, and he stumbles, shocked and outraged but too scared to tell. I continue my work.

I'm no good at history anymore. I can't separate the past from the future.

I hara.s.s Dallas at the lockers before gym cla.s.s, stand too close and whisper, "Did you know that zombies eat brains?"

"No." He reaches around me for his water bottle.

I'm right behind him at the gymnasium doors.

Coach Emery lays a hand on my shoulder and keeps it there.

"You look tired, Connors. Do you need to sit on a bench?"

I realize I'm staring after Dallas like a kid watching his daddy leave the daycare. I take a deep breath and relax the muscles of my face.

"There's more to health than exercise," the coach says. "Did you get a proper sleep?"

"Yes, sir."

"You're all right to partic.i.p.ate?"

"Yes, sir."

He pats my shoulder. "Good boy. You don't want to be sick for the holidays."

"No, sir."

We start with laps. I can't tell if I'm imagining things or if Dallas speeds up whenever I close in on him.

"Stay as a group! This is not a race!" Coach Emery shouts.

We form small circles for basketball drills, pa.s.sing and stealing the ball. Dallas stands directly across from me, next to Brennan. His T-shirt drapes over his ribs. The veins of his arms snake along his pale flesh like a topographical map. His eyes drift over me as they follow the ball. I fumble on purpose, but he doesn't react.

"Pick it up and try again," the coach says.

I slam it straight at Dallas. Brennan ducks in reflex. Dallas catches the ball half an inch from his nose without flinching and bounces it over to Bay.

"Careful how you throw!" Coach Emery shouts. "You must remain aware of your situation and those around you."

Every time I get the ball I slam it at Dallas. He never tires of it.

Coach Emery finally grabs the ball from my hands and shouts in my face, "Spit that gum out of your mouth, Connors! You know there's no chewing gum in my gym!"

"I don't have any gum, sir."

He frowns. "What the h.e.l.l are you chewing then?"

"I don't know, sir."

He puts his hand on my forehead, like I might be coming down with something. "Go sit on the bench."

I sit out the rest of cla.s.s. I close my eyes, take shallow breaths, listen to the ball bounce off the gym floor. Boom, boom, boom.

The coach kicks my foot as he walks by, and I realize I'm muttering to myself and pulling all the hairs from my thighs.

I sit on my hands, stare at the ropes that hang off the far wall, multiply numbers in my head. Two times two is four times two is eight times two is sixteen, and on and on until the trillions jumble in my head and I have to start over and over and finally the bell rings.

Panic grips me in the shower. I can't accept the fact that Dallas has been treated just before we leave. I cannot live with that.

I adjust the water temperature. The drops. .h.i.t me like a thousand needles, freezing then scalding then freezing. The stench of chlorine fills my nose and lungs. I hear murmuring beneath the hiss of water and slap of feet. I jerk my head around, ready for a trap, but all I see are silent boys draped in towels, walking away to dress or waiting their turn in the water.

I watch Dallas from the corner of my eye, not caring if I come off gay. He faces the showerhead, moves slowly but efficiently like all the others. He rinses and towels off and walks away without looking at me once.

"Get dressed, Connors! You're lagging behind!" Coach Emery shouts from the door. I haven't even soaped yet, but I don't bother. I shut off the taps and cover myself.

The coach stops Dallas from leaving the room. "Somebody," he announces to the half-naked cla.s.s, "I'm not saying who, but somebody left a water bottle on the football field, and you all know how I like a clean field. I want two volunteers to walk the yards and check for litter." He points at Dallas, then across the room at me. "I want to see you two march like soldiers up and down that field. Pick up any garbage you find. Make sure you check around the trailer. The rest of you are free to go. Merry Christmas."

I dress hurriedly, not caring that my socks are inside out. As I tie my shoes, I notice that my hands are trembling.

Brennan drops his shoes on the floor at my feet and sits beside me on the bench. He lowers his head and whispers, "Don't ask any questions till you're away from the cameras." He wriggles his foot into his shoe and leans down to tie it tight. "Don't give yourself away to him, just in case. Let us know what you find out."

He stands up and pa.s.ses me a swift sympathetic glance. As he reaches down for his dirty sweats, he adds, "Then get out, Max. With or without him."

When Brennan leaves, I'm all that's left in the change room. I like it here. It's smelly but it smells like kids. Whatever the treatment did to them, it didn't improve their stink.

Coach Emery sticks his head around the corner. "Time is ticking."

Dallas and I drop our packs at the trailer and walk to the field in silence. I should have worn my coat, but it's stuffed in my bag and I'm not thinking straight. I b.u.t.ton my uniform, turn up my collar, shove my hands in my pockets. Dallas walks tall beside me, zipped and hooded. I can barely see his face.

The field is an expanse of dead gra.s.s fringed with skeletal trees in the west. They reach into a monotonous sky of the palest gray. The sun is a bright disk behind the clouds, already sinking at three thirty in the afternoon.

It's strange to walk this field in shoes instead of cleats. The ground is hard beneath me, the blades of gra.s.s stiff and slippery.

"We should separate and begin at opposite ends," Dallas says.

"No. We should walk together."

"It's more efficient to separate."

"Four eyes are better than two."

"No," he says. "Two eyesa""

"We're walking together."

Sixty thousand is a lot of square feet when you're walking it with a zombie. Fifty paces take us to the sideline, where we square off and head back like we're mowing a lawn. The school looks formidable in the winter light, six units of ambition stretching into the distance, a place where futures are decided behind black gla.s.s.

The students are probably walking out the front doors now, or already gone home for the holidays. The teachers are still herea"I see their bikes and Mr. Graham's car in the lota" but they don't show any sign of life. It feels like we're alone.

We reach the sideline, square off, head west again. Dallas lowers his eyes but keeps his chin up, so it looks like he's staring down his nose. I imitate him, but he doesn't notice. He doesn't care.

"What did you do after the library last night?" I ask.

"Small talk distracts us from our work."

I want to swat him. "What did you do?" I repeat.

He stops and stares at me like I'm defective. Then he furrows his brow. "I don't remember." He shivers and walks on, staring down his nose.

"Did you watch a show? Did you do homework? Did you take any medicine?"

"You should look at the football field, not at me."

"There's nothing on the football field! I can see the whole thing from here. It's clean. There is no one left in our school who would even think of throwing garbage on this field." I stumble into him on purpose, banging his shoulder. "No one except you and me."

He stops walking. "I would never throw garbage on the football field. That's wrong! Why would you throw garbage on the football field? We're lucky to have a football field. We should take care of what we have."

I want to take his head off. I want to rip out his larynx. I want to knee his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es into a useless pulp. My cheeks burn as I stare up into his eyes. G.o.d, I wish I was taller. I could kick his a.s.s when we were small. He tapped out every time. Now he could hold me off at arm's length while he picked his nose.

There's outrage in his expression, but it's the outrage of Lucas and Ally and all the other tattler zombies.

I can't stand to think of him telling on me. He never told when I broke his dad's headlight last summer, or when I loosened the lid on Coach Emery's thermos in grade nine so he scalded himself and had to go to the hospital. He never told when I ran away after Dad died and hid in our empty house overnight, or when I forgot Ally in the yard when she was two and we found her in the core an hour later. He never told on a single wrong thing I did in the past fifteen years. But now we're almost grown and he'd turn me in for a piece of garbage.

The fact that there is no one in this world who cares about me except my mother is just too much truth to bear. My face starts to tingle like I'm going to cry or throw up. I can't talk anymore. The field is under surveillance and my tongue is too heavy to move.

For ten more minutes we walk in silence side by side, searching the field and bleachers for garbage n.o.body believes is there. I pretend the kid beside me is someone else, some new kid whose name I don't know.

"It's clean," Dallas announces when we reach the end of the bleachers.