I Was a Teenage Zombie

Jayna Rohslau, 22’

    He killed me on a Friday night.

    Though it’s been a long time since then, I still remember what happened so clearly.  We were driving in the van his dad got him, or he was driving, and I was in the passenger’s seat.  We were not talking, but I felt his contentment, and I was so happy. 

    Then he reached into his coat pocket, the coat from the time we went to Marshalls and there was the fight over Caroline.  He pulled out a knife from the front pocket, and it only took an instant before it was buried in my chest forever.

    “Amy,” he said to me, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is working.” He wrenched it out of my chest, but before I could breathe, he had rammed it back in.  “I like you a lot, but you’re too sensitive and clingy sometimes.” I looked down at my red peacoat, feeling woozy from blood loss. In some places, the red wool had turned burgundy, and the stain appeared to be spreading.  “I hope this isn’t too sudden or anything, but we’re probably better off as friends.”  I did not speak because I didn’t feel real, but when I turned toward his blurry face, I knew he expected me to say something.

    “Yes,” I said, feeling the words gurgle in my throat, “Uh-huh. I completely understand.”

    I did not expect the final knife twist, but it came anyway.  “Great,” Alex said as he flashed me a smile with the practiced ease of a serial killer.  How come I had never made that connection before? “I knew you’d understand.” I did not answer, I did not smile back, I did not start bawling.  For all intents and purposes, I was a corpse, and he drove me home in a silent hearse.

    How long was I in that grave?

    In all likelihood it was only a few weeks, but to me, it seemed like years.  Once Alex dropped me off at the corner, I ran home and buried myself. Not in dirt but in memories.  I opened my bedroom door and remembered hide and seek when we were seven, I sank into my bed and remembered last weekend.  I hid under the covers and tried to remember who I had been before we were Alex-and-Amy, and we were just Alex and Amy, family friends.  I couldn’t remember that, all I could remember was who we had been together.  I didn’t move on, because I thought moving on meant forgetting.

    Instead, I came back as a zombie.

    Shuffling between classes on Monday, I wandered through the halls of high school with bloodshot eyes and a stumbling gait.  My best friend Miriam fell in line beside me, cautious and unspeaking as if at any given moment, she expected me to lunge for her brains.  But other people didn’t know, and in taking in my disheveled appearance, thought I had simply stayed up late the previous night.

    “Hey Amy,” a friendly face said, “Were you at Charlie’s last night? You look tired.”

    “Where’s Alex?”

    “You’re so dumb!  He broke up with her over the break.”

    The first day back to school was always hard, but this one really took the cake.  I smiled at the crowd of people but walked away with Miri when I heard them acknowledge him. 

They were really his friends.

Inside my hoodie, I could feel the flesh rotting off my arms, and they hung so limply and lifelessly at my sides that even my teachers noticed.  “Are you okay,” asked one of my teachers who had me from last year when we were Alex-and-Amy.  The sympathy in her eyes all but vanished when after class, I told her the cause of my unhappiness. “Boy trouble,” she said, “You’ll be okay.” I rolled up the sleeves of my hoodie to show her the rotten flesh, but she just looked at me, and I knew she couldn’t see it. 

My friends definitely noticed.  As more weeks went by, Brandon and Jess and all of the others questioned why I couldn’t come hang out at the mall, the house party, Alex’s house.  They feigned sympathy and concern for my dilemma, but after I finally joined them on an excursion to the mall, they stopped asking.  “You bitch and moan like a little baby,” said Brandon, “you’re no fun anymore.” I couldn’t blame them.  While some can stomach it for longer than others, in truth no one likes the stench of a corpse.

Even Miriam eventually became sick of me.  She was in the same math class as a boy she liked, and at lunch she liked to recount all their conversations back to me.  On one particular Wednesday in February, he had asked her to the movies and she was blushing like a bride.  “I just can’t believe it,” she said as I put my lunch tray down and sat across from her, “ I thought I was going to have to wait until college for someone to actually like me back.  I mean, I know that sounds stupid but… I can’t believe the way he makes me feel.”

She clearly expected me to gush back to her, but I was incapable of gushing.  Instead, I gave her a cold, dead stare.  “He’s probably going to hurt you,” I said, “or you’ll hurt him, and one or both of you will feel like shit.”

Instead of the nod and the general air of acceptance I was used to, there was a flash of something else in her eyes. “I’ve had it with you and your moping,” she said, “Do you really have to be so negative all the time?” She rose from her seat, and gathered up her tray.  “You don’t need to get over him, you need to get over yourself. Talk to me if you ever do.”  The cafeteria fell silent for a moment as she walked away, then the chatter of the living resumed.  I gritted my teeth and looked down at my skeleton.  For the first time, I knew I didn’t want to be dead.

    How long did I haunt him?

    Probably for less than a minute, a second as he made up his mind.  We don’t work together, he probably thought when I got into the van on Friday, she’s so jealous and petty and I never know where I stand with her, unlike Caroline. We were better off as friends. He might have felt a brief moment of guilt when he saw my smile.  But I’m not happy, he thought as he reached into his pocket for the knife, but he did not see a knife.  He saw the natural conclusion to the best year of my life, and as he took me home, he saw it as a good but forgettable year.  After I got out of the van, he drove on quickly.  

    In order to move on, I went to see him.  

He was sitting on the stoop of his family’s brownstone, with his new girlfriend Caroline of the impossibly perfect cheekbones.  Even though I knew she hadn’t been his accomplice in the murder, I still hated her against all reason.  She smiled at me.

    “Amy, hey,” said Caroline, “how are you doing?”

“Yeah, how are you Amy,” Alex said, “Why have you been avoiding me? I’ve missed you.” I rubbed my bone of an arm, and noticed without caring that some of my finger bones were coming loose.  He seized my hand and yanked some of them off.  I gazed at him in horror. 

    “Alex,” Caroline laughed, “Stop messing with her.”  Alex flashed me a mocking grin, and suddenly I remembered.  I remembered all the weekends, I remembered all the fun we had together, sure.  But I also remembered what a jerk he was, all the times he had shown up late, and I remembered all the times he had flirted with Caroline and laughed it off later. Gazing into his empty eyes, I realized that he was not a murderer. No, Alex was just another stupid teenage boy.  And my fingers had never fallen off, either. I was just another dumb girl who had thought she was in love.

    I broke off his gaze laughing, and Caroline and Alex both looked at me with surprise.  “I’m okay, I guess. I just wanted to say hi.”  Without another word, I turned around and walked home. My face was wet but the sun was shining. 

It was a beautiful day to be alive.