Read Online Zombified by Adam Gallardo - Free Book Online Page B

you two helping out.” Warren fixed Cody in the rearview mirror. “Next time I talk to her, I’ll set her straight, okay? Not in a mean way, just lay out the facts, okay?”
    â€œOkay . . .” Sheepish.
    â€œAnd I was serious about wanting to hang with you all,” Warren went on. “We’d probably have a lot to show one another.”
    â€œSure,” said Cody. “We could do that, right, Phil?”
    â€œSure.” I wasn’t able to read anything in Phil’s voice, but I settled back in my magic seat a little more relaxed. Whatever else he might be, Warren wasn’t coming off as arrogant. That was good.
    Something started tickling my brain. It was that part of me that was unable to allow a peaceful moment to go by without lobbing a shit grenade into the middle of it. I tried to suppress it, I really did.
    â€œLet me ask you something,” I said to Warren.
    Cody chose that moment to sit forward and offer several instructions on how to get to my house.
    I cringed as this obviously rich kid started to steer us past the ugly yards, cheap chain-link fences, and peeling paint that meant we were close to home.
    â€œShoot,” Warren said after Cody got him on track to my house. It took me a moment to figure out he meant I could ask away.
    â€œAll this past week, people have been telling me that some guy has been asking about me.” I shifted in my seat, hoping it didn’t make a fart noise when I did. “And every time I asked who it was, what he looked like. So I could identify him in the halls if I ran across him. You.”
    â€œSure,” said Warren, “and so you’d be able to hightail it if I turned out to be a creeper or a bagger.”
    It took me a second to understand that bagger meant ugly.
    â€œNaw,” I said. “Most folks, mostly girls, told me the guy was good-looking.” He didn’t have anything to say to that—and neither did the audience in the backseat, so I went on. “In all the times I asked what you looked like, no one ever said that you were . . . you know . . .”
    â€œBlack?”
    â€œRight.”
    He chuckled. “White folks,” he said like that explained everything. I waited for more of an explanation. “Most white people are raised to think it’s bad to notice if someone is a different color. They’d never say I was black. Unless they were describing me to a cop, I guess.”
    â€œWhat?” I asked. “Are you accusing everyone I know of being racist?”
    â€œNot racist, per se, ” Warren said. “Just overly sensitive. You mostly get it in people who don’t see a lot of people of color. Where I’m from, you grow up with all sorts of people, so it’s no big deal to say, ‘Oh, yeah, Warren’s a black kid,’ or, ‘Tom, he’s that Korean guy, right?’ ”
    â€œWhere’d you grow up?” I asked.
    â€œSeattle,” he said. I knew that Seattle was one of the first big cities reclaimed from the zombies. I’d never been there.
    â€œWhy the hell did you move here from there?” I asked.
    â€œDad got a new job, the family moves.” He gave an eloquent shrug of the shoulders. “I might move back there for college after high school. Or maybe I’ll go to Gonzaga. I’m not sure.”
    â€œI like your confidence,” I said.
    â€œOh, look.” Cody sprang up between the two front seats. “There’s your house, Courtney. Have to cut this little jaw session short.”
    There it was. Thank God clouds were covering the moon just then. For some reason it looked really ugly to me at that moment.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Well, thanks for the ride,” I told Warren.
    He gave this sort of two-fingered salute, like he was touching the brim of an invisible hat. But his smile saved it from looking totally douchey.
    I turned in my seat. “’Night, you guys. Sorry the Z