Backwards. Part 2

"I can't," said Dan.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to be on the team anymore."

"Dammit, Dan. If you blow this, you won't get a second chance. It will haunt you for the rest of your life. Understand?"

Dan slumped on his bed. "Yeah."

"You're smart enough to know better. Stuff like this goes on your transcript. It stays with you. Financial aid is very compet.i.tive. Even little things can mean the difference between being accepted into a good college and being rejected."

"I know."

"You can't afford to mess up."

"I know."

"You're better than this."

Silence.

"So will you call your coach?"

"I guess."

"Good," said his dad. A kid's high-pitched squeal in the background turned to crying. "I should get going."

"Okay." Another long pause. "Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah?" The hollow reply sounded just like Dan's own. No mystery where the zombie had gotten his gift for communication from. The kid's cries grew louder.

"Nothing," said Dan. "I just wanted to say good-bye."

"Bye, Danny."

Dan ended the call and stared at his computer. I could hear his mom leaving for the grocery store. A few minutes later, Dan snuck into the garage. He pulled a dusty toolbox off the shelf and rifled through a mess of screwdrivers, scissors, and other tools until he found a yellow package of single-edge razor blades - like the ones I'd seen in the bathroom after he slit his wrists.

All at once, things started to make sense. The events I remembered and the events from today began to shift and fall into place. It wasn't that Dan's death hadn't happened. It was that it hadn't happened yet.

Dan pocketed the blades and turned to his car - an old two-door coupe that was supposed to look sporty but with its faded paint job and rusty wheel wells just looked sad. He started the engine. The garage door was closed, which made me think he might asphyxiate himself. Part of me hoped he would, so I could be free of this whole mess. But after a couple minutes, Dan turned off the car and pulled out the keys. He pried them off the key chain. They were the same two beat-up keys I'd seen on the sticky note with FOR TEAGAN written on it.

Dan popped open the hood of the car. He stared at the engine for several seconds, then did what he could - checked the fluids, dug out a dirty funnel from a box on the shelf and added a quart of oil, touched a few belts, and wiped some grime off the battery with a rag. Satisfied, he let the hood fall shut.

In that moment, I almost liked him. I think he wanted to do something good, and in his mixed-up mind, I suppose leaving his sister his car was that. Granted, she'd probably never drive the d.a.m.n thing. She'd probably even hate looking at it and remembering that he'd given it to her, because now I knew, with complete certainty, that tomorrow - my yesterday - Dan would kill himself.

When night closed around me again, I didn't want to be stuck in the zombie a moment longer. Since his eyes were shut and he seemed unconscious, I couldn't sense much physically - there was just the gray, indefinite expanse I'd been stuck in before. But I refused to let that stop me. I walked into the darkness, picturing myself getting farther from Dan. Each time I got ten or so steps away, something tugged me back. It felt like a million rubber bands were tied to my being, and the farther I stretched from Dan, the harder they pulled. I tried again, only this time, when I reached my limit, I summoned all my will and threw myself into the abyss.

Something ripped. It felt horrible - like tearing out every hair on my body all at once. Then I tumbled into moonlight.

Looking down, I saw the zombie turn in his sleep. I quickly backed up so I wouldn't get drawn into him again. Before I knew it, I was running across the front yard.

Once I crossed the street, I slowed. No alarms went off. Nothing tugged me to Dan. No one even seemed to have noticed that I'd gone. I was free!

A whoop of joy nearly escaped my lips, but I swallowed it down. No sense in pushing my luck.

I checked my surroundings. The street looked empty, and most of the houses appeared dark. A silver half-moon illuminated the crisp fall sky. From what I'd observed of the town earlier, when I'd been trapped in Dan, it wasn't very large. I tried to get my bearings. Several of the trees lining the street had either changed color or lost their leaves already. I followed the sidewalk toward where the glow of streetlights over the rooftops appeared brightest. After a couple blocks, I turned onto a wider street. A car waited at the intersection, but other than that, there wasn't any traffic.

I headed toward a cl.u.s.ter of two-story brick buildings that looked like the main drag. A drugstore, a clothing store, and a couple of bars lined the street. Two women staggered out of one bar, followed by a large man. They ambled to a pickup truck.

"Excuse me," I called, but they didn't look at me.

I raised my hand - partly to signal to them and partly to prove to myself that I was there. My fingers were slightly smaller than Dan's, and my nails seemed better taken care of than his, but I appeared every bit as real as him. And I certainly felt real. I took a deep breath and tried again.

"Hey! Over here!" I shouted.

Still no response.

"Hey, b.u.t.t face!"

Nothing. Not even a scowl.

Frantically, I searched for someone else. A couple guys in their early twenties lingered in front of the bar across the street, smoking cigarettes. I jumped in front of them, but they kept talking as if nothing had happened.

My stomach sank. Perhaps I should have expected this. When I'd floated above Dan my first day here, no one had seen me. Still, I couldn't help feeling disappointed. I'd thought that if I escaped the zombie, I'd be just like everyone else. I'd get to live my life. But this was almost worse than being stuck in Dan. At least during the day, people saw him and reacted. Now I felt utterly invisible.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" someone said. I zeroed in on the voice, discerning a large, round-shouldered guy standing by a lamppost. He appeared hazy at first, but the more I looked at him, the clearer he became.

"d.a.m.n, man! You heard me!" he said. "I thought you might. You're not like them." He pointed to the guys smoking in front of the bar. They looked heavy and rigid compared to him, as if they were sculpted out of bra.s.s. "You're like me, aren't you?" he continued. "A rider."

I glanced over my shoulder to see if he might be talking to someone else. But there was no one else. "A rider?"

"Dude, this is sweet! How long have you been here?"

"Not long. I . . . just arrived."

"Yesterday or today?" he pressed.

"I'm not sure."

The guy leaned closer. He had a soft, slightly pudgy face. "Or tomorrow?" he added, lowering his voice. "Did you get here tomorrow?"

The two guys who'd been smoking stubbed out their cigarettes and went back into the bar.

"Are you moving backwards?" continued the guy. "Riding the corpse in reverse?"

What he was saying sounded crazy, even to me. It also sounded right. I looked around, checking to see if anyone else might be listening in. Then I nodded.

"Yes!" He pumped his fist. "I knew it. For three days, I've been freaking out, but I knew I wasn't tripping. Weird, isn't it?"

"I guess."

"This is cool. You're lucky I found you."

"I am?"

"Yeah, dude. I can show you things. Besides, it sucks being alone." He veered into the street. "I mean, watching chicks undress is fun," he said. "But after a while, it's like that joke about the guy who gets shipwrecked on a tropical island with a supermodel."

I had no clue what he was talking about. "A supermodel?"

The guy didn't slow down. Apparently, not speaking to anyone in three days left him eager to get some words in. "So they're shipwrecked there," he continued, "and at first it's rough, but after a few months they get to know each other, and they have this perfect life together, eating coconuts and living in a bamboo shack. Until one day this suitcase washes ash.o.r.e, and it's full of some dude's clothes. So the guy asks the supermodel to put them on. He tells her it's the one thing he really wants. She thinks it's kind of kinky, dressing up in some dude's clothes like this, but she does it. And once she's all dressed up in the shirt and pants and baseball cap, with her hair tucked under the cap and everything, the guy turns to her and says, 'Dude! You'll never guess who I've been sleeping with.'" The guy looked at me and laughed - a high, giggling sound like a chipmunk. "Get it?"

The thought that he might be insane crossed my mind.

He paused in the middle of the road. "Hey, look! A quarter!" he said, stooping to pick up the coin.

"There's a truck coming," I warned.

"It's like stuck here," he said, refusing to leave the coin. The truck rushed closer, not even slowing down.

"Watch out!" I yelled.

Too late. The truck smacked into him and kept going, leaving him flat on the road.

I rushed over to the guy's body. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, and his arms and legs splayed out at odd angles. He wasn't moving. "s.h.i.t!" I said, not knowing what to do. I didn't even know the guy's name. "s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t . . ."

"Dude!" he said, sitting up. "You are a newbie!"

I jumped.

"Man, you should see your face."

"The truck -" I stammered. Had I hallucinated the whole thing?

"You thought I was road jerky, didn't you?" he said, grinning.

I felt sick.

"Sorry, dude. Just messing with you. They go right through us. Everything goes through us," he added. "It doesn't even tickle. Sure is a rush, though."

"Yeah," I muttered, leaving the road. "Some rush."

"I'm TR," said the guy, falling in step beside me. "It's short for Terc's rider, because that's the name of the corpse I'm stuck in. Terc. Or Tercio. So the next time I get flattened by a semi, you can call me TR instead of 's.h.i.t.'" He laughed. "I totally got you, man."

Although I wanted to curse him out, there was something harmless and good-natured about the guy that made him hard to stay angry at. "I need a cup of coffee," I said.

"Sure." TR started down the block to a brightly lit diner. "I'll buy."

On the way, TR told me about how he woke up. His first memory was of his corpse getting his head cracked open on a steering wheel. "It was like an egg," he said. "I mean, his head was seriously cracked with stuff leaking out." He looked at me and shrugged like it was no big deal, but I could tell it bothered him.

TR continued talking, not waiting for a response. He described his first night, which sounded pretty similar to mine - a gray, indefinable emptiness. Then, when he woke, he was stuck in the corpse, only the guy's head was back together again. "Like Humpty Dumpty," he said, "except not, because no one could put Humpty Dumpty together again."

It took TR three whole days of riding around in Terc before he figured out that he was going backwards. From what I gathered, it hadn't been easy to spend all that time alone. Despite his jokes and laughter, I think he felt just as lost as I did.

"I call him Waster," said TR, referring to his corpse. "The guy is seriously wasted all the time. It's no wonder he got scrambled." He smiled at his joke. "Man, I'm glad I found you. I was bored off my flipping rocker. So what about you? What's your corpse like?"

"He's a zombie," I replied.

"A zombie!" TR bellowed. "That's good!"

We stopped at a diner with a neon-pink sign above the entrance: THE COFFEE SPOT. I tried to open the door, but I couldn't grab the handle. My fingers pa.s.sed through it three times while TR watched.

"You're one funny dude," he said. Then he walked straight through the gla.s.s into the bright interior.

I debated following him, only the thought of intentionally stepping through gla.s.s made my skin crawl. I decided to wait for someone else to open the door so I could slip in. After a couple of minutes, though, I began to worry that TR might wander off. Already things felt a little too quiet without him. Tentatively, I pushed my hand through the gla.s.s. Then I closed my eyes and stepped forward. TR was right - it didn't hurt, but that didn't mean it felt okay.

I spotted TR messing around behind the counter. "About time," he said. "Watch this." He leaned his head into a pot of coffee. "Argh! It burns!" he yelled, barely able to keep from laughing. Next he put his hands in the fryer. "I'm bacon!"

It freaked me out to watch him, which was probably why he kept doing stuff. I scanned the diner for a place to sit.

"Get it, man?" TR called. "I'm bakin'."

The diner wasn't very big. A few middle-aged guys sporting flannel shirts occupied the counter, while students chugging coffee and cramming for tests took up several booths. A waitress nearly shoved a pie cart into me. I stepped aside, but she didn't so much as glance in my direction.

"Takes some getting used to," said TR. "It's like they're not even there, isn't it?"

"Or we aren't," I said.

"Speak for yourself," he answered. "Anyhow, no point waiting to be seated." He walked through the counter toward a booth near the back.

I dodged the waitress and hurried after him. Several high-school students had taken over the back section of the diner. I recognized a few. In one booth sat the heavyset girl, dressed all in black, who'd been standing next to Teagan before school. Next to her slouched a skinny punk guy with facial piercings. And across from them sat Cat. Her back was to me, but there was no mistaking her purple hair and slender neck.

"What's up?" asked TR.

"I know her," I said, pointing to Cat.

"You know her?" asked TR.

"I mean the zombie knows her."

He nodded and strode over to Cat's booth to get a better look. "She's cute - if you like weird chicks," he said. "I'm more into fake blondes with a lot of love, if you know what I mean."

I drifted closer to her table. Cat poured powdered cream into her coffee, letting it form a tiny white island that gradually sank into the brown liquid. The skinny punk guy and the girl in black talked about what they might do that night.

"Hi," I said. If anyone could hear me, it would be Cat.

Her head tilted slightly, and she tucked her hair back behind her ear. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I felt like she wanted to look at me, only she didn't know where to find me.

"Hi," I repeated.