Free Passing Strange by Daniel Waters Page A

noticed a rack of Skip Slydell’s “Zombie Power!” T-shirts beside a display of zombie hygiene products, the top shelf of which was a large black bottle of Z, the body spray “for the active undead male.” There was a separate line of Lady Z products, which differed mainly from their male counterparts in that they were in smaller, curvier bottles.
    Kaitlyn’s next words made me laugh out loud in a way that I didn’t even have to think about, like I do most of the time when I’m trying to laugh.
    “He’s a bad spider, Caring. I have to squish him.”
    Still laughing, I left Katy to her squishing and drifted over to look at the other products on the display. There was a perfume called Endless , in a slender purple-lacquered bottle. I chanced a spritz on my wrist from the sample bottle. The scent had a hint of incense beneath a floral base.
    “Isn’t that just the best?” a way perky voice called out, nearly making me drop the bottle.
    “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the perky girl said.
    Scare me, I thought. Funny.
    It was a revelation that I could be startled, actually. We—the dead, I mean—aren’t exactly famous for our reaction time; most of my reflexes are no longer reflexive. You could tap my knee with a hammer all day and not get a movement, unless I wanted you to.
    I saw a girl who looked like a taller, slighter version of Margi, except her hair spikes were purple over brown, and she’d shaved one side of her hair down to her skull. She had a wide silver ring through her nose, and an ascending column of silver studs curving along her ear. She was wearing a black T-shirt from the Zombie Power! line, which had the words “Open Graves, Open Minds…” across the chest in a Day-Glo green script. I had one just like it in my dresser at home.
    “No worries,” I said, turning away, but not before I saw a Celtic braid tattooed on the inside of her arm. I set the bottle back on the shelf and rubbed my own arm through my denim jacket.
    “What do you think?” the girl said. “Different, huh? I think it’s the new patchouli, I really do. I wear it all the time. I bought the Z for my boyfriend, Jason.”
    Katy was still squishing spiders. The clerk didn’t seem to mind.
    “You date a zombie?” I asked.
    “Naw,” the clerk said, smiling in a way I thought conveyed a trace of disappointment. “We don’t have any zombies at Winford High; they all go to Oakvale. Mostly it’s trad kids that buy the colognes, anyway. We don’t sell much of the skin stuff. But a zombie once came in here to buy some Z, and he was with a trad girl. It was great!”
    “Great?” I said, now looking at the girl. I didn’t see a name badge.
    “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, that was really brave of him, you know? And her, too. I so love your hair. How do you get that blond-y, silvery color?”
    “It’s…natural,” I said. I was hitching in my speech a bit, something I only do when I’m emotional. Most zombies have trouble speaking at a normal pace, but big-mouth me usually speaks without pauses.
    I guess I was a little emotional. My hair is even blonder than when I was alive, but the blond is all natural. Or all unnatural, if you prefer, since it happened when I died.
    She reached out toward me, toward my hair, hesitating a moment for a sign from me that it was okay. I told her it was with a flicker of my eyes. My bright blue eyes.
    She let the long threads run through her fingers. “It’s so soft,” she said, “God, I’d die to have hair like this. It’s just the best.”
    Irony! She doesn’t know, I thought. She really doesn’t know I’m dead.
    “Thanks. I like the purple, too. And how you made it look wet. Very cool…What did you say your name was?”
    “Tamara,” the girl said. “But not Tammy. I hate Tammy.”
    “I’m Karen. That’s my sister, Katy, destroying all your spiders.”
    Tamara turned back, laughing. “She can’t hurt anything; they’re stuffed,” she said. She