Free After Me by Joyce Scarbrough

out just like he’d done so many times in the past.
    As he felt the familiar warm trickle run down his leg into a yellow puddle on the floor, he sobbed and twisted one of his nipples mercilessly. When his tears stopped, he went back to the computer and logged in to his favorite Sugar Daddy chat room.
    WETNWILD16 was online.
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    W hen we got off the school bus at Annalee’s stop, she said, “Did you let your foster mom know you were coming to the library with me?”
    “Crap, I didn’t even think about it,” I said. “I’m not used to having anybody who cares what I do.”
    I knew she thought I was talking about living on the street, but that’s not what I meant. Vanessa had always been too busy scaling the corporate ladder to worry about what her whack-job daughter was doing. And I reminded her too much of my womanizing drunk of a father for her to stomach looking at me for very long.
    “You don’t have a cell phone?” Annalee asked as we walked.
    I shook my head. “Brad and Karen said they’d get me one after my first report card if I had at least a B average.” I knew better than to ask if she had one after the computer episode. “Maybe they’ll let me use the phone at the library.”
    She nodded. “There’s one they let people use to call for a ride at closing time. I’m sure they’ll let you use it.”
    As we walked further down the sidewalk, I noticed how rundown the area looked compared to Coconut Grove. Karen and Brad lived in one of the modest sections where the houses were older, but their place still looked like a mansion compared to the low-income housing complexes separated by empty buildings or trashy-looking businesses in this neighborhood. And was that a drug deal going down on the corner across the street? I started to say something about it, then I saw the embarrassed look on Annalee’s face.
    “Reminds me of home,” I said instead. “Hope we don’t run into any of my former colleagues.”
    Her relief materialized in a smile. “Or any of my relatives.”
    “No worries there for me,” I said. “All mine are either dead or doing five-to-ten.”
    Two guys leaning against the burglar-barred front of a barbeque joint yelled something filthy at us. I flipped them off and Annalee pulled my arm down.
    “It’s better if you just ignore them and keep walking.”
    “That’s not how I roll,” I said. “Don’t worry. I got your back.”
    She shook her head. “The guys around here are a lot worse than Dougie. And neither of us are bulletproof, you know.”
    Speak for yourself, girlfriend.
    Since I couldn’t argue with her without revealing my zombie powers, I said, “Yeah, okay. I keep forgetting that I actually want to live through the day now.”
    We made it past the store without getting assaulted by anything worse than more obscenities, which made me feel both relieved and a little disappointed. I entertained myself with a mental viewing of what it would be like to teach the scumbags a lesson for disrespecting women. Maybe I’d come back sometime when I didn’t have Annalee as a witness. Midnight shenanigans for Zombie Girl.
    The library was only two blocks away, and the neat little building stuck out like a sore thumb in such a crappy area. Annalee pointed it out to me then stopped abruptly.
    “What’s wrong?” I followed her gaze and could tell her attention was on a red Corvette parked by the library’s front door.
    “That’s Lew’s car,” she said. “What’s he doing here?”
    “How do you know for sure it’s his?” I noticed the tag read CHKMATE and said, “Oh, never mind. Okay, let’s go find out why he’s creeping on us.”
    I managed to keep from sprinting up to the library entrance, but I still arrived way ahead of Annalee and had to wait for her to catch up. Apparently, she noticed my eagerness.
    “Hey, maybe you should go in the front door and I should go in the back,” she said. “You know, just to make sure he doesn’t get