Free Adventures of a Middle School Zombie by Scott Craven Page B

control.”
    Robbie stepped closer, and I could feel Ooze on my forehead. If I just leaned forward I could probably get some on his chin, and we could end this thing right now.
    He took a quick step back and stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It bobbed as he spoke.
    “Not again, ooze-meister,” he said, pulling on a pair of what looked like garden gloves covered with, uh, were those daisies? “Yeah, these are my mom’s. Any glove in a storm, I always say. You have a problem? Something to say?”
    I shook my head.
    “I know about stuff that’s uncontrollable. Anger, for example. Can’t seem to get a handle on it. Joe,” Robbie said, his eyes never leaving mine, “what can’t you control?”
    “My mom’s drinking,” Joe said.
    “Yeah.” Robbie smiled. “Bennie, what about you?”
    “What?” Ben asked.
    “Have you not been listening?”
    “No, I’m sorry, it’s that I’m trying to listen for security so—”
    Robbie’s left hand shot out so fast that, had he been aiming for me, I would have ducked about a second too late. Instead it flew over my shoulder, and I heard the sound of garden glove on flesh, followed by Ben’s yelp.
    I looked over my shoulder. Ben cupped his nose with both hands, blood slipping between his fingers, cigarette still in his mouth.
    “Jeezus, Robbie, what the hell,” Ben said. “My nose, oh my God, you broke it, damn, dude.”
    “See what I mean about stuff you can’t control?” Robbie said. He took a long drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it out against a stall, all the while keeping eye contact.
    “Ben, quit whining and grab some toilet paper.”
    Ben stepped out from behind me toward the nearest stall, kicking open the door and disappearing inside. I heard the clattering of a metal roller as it spun in the toilet-paper housing.
    My eyes went to the left, quickly, hoping to size up where I was in relation to the exit. That was enough to tip off Robbie, who grabbed my right arm.
    “Not so fast, my boy,” he said. “What you and I need to do is come to some sort of understanding. Bygones and all that.”
    He pulled me over to the sink. Joe stepped forward and grabbed my other arm.
    “Hold him,” Robbie said as he released me, his hand going back into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
    “What we need to do is shake hands and smoke on it,” he said, lighting up another cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled in my face.
    He shook another from the pack, placed it next to the one in his mouth, and produced a lighter, flicking it inches from my nose.
    “I wonder,” he said, “do zombies burn fast or slow?”
    The flame was an inch from my left eye. I didn’t so much feel the heat as sense it. I squeezed my eyes shut.
    “Now, now, what was I thinking, this is about friendship,” Robbie said. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
    The heat, the light, I didn’t sense either. When I opened my eyes, both cigarettes were lit. Robbie plucked the fresh one from his mouth and held it out.
    “For you,” he said.
    “No … thanks,” I said.
    “You don’t understand. I’m not asking. Right, Bennie?”
    “Yeah.” Ben said from the stall. His voice was flat.
    “We need to do this. Get everything out in the open.”
    He turned the cigarette so the filter was toward me, used the tip to wedge open my lips. When he took his hand away, it no longer held the cigarette. I saw my reflection in the mirror, cigarette dangling between my lips.
    “Take a deep breath,” Robbie said. “I’m real curious to see if you leak at all. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Smoke coming from your eyes? Out the top of your skull? Who knows how you’re put together?”
    I took a breath, noticed the ember burning bright from the cigarette in the mouth of the kid in the mirror. Then a plume of smoke pushed through my lips.
    That’s when the cigarette fell from the mirror kid’s mouth, tumbling end over end in slow motion.
    The rest just happened at