Author’s Note: Guess how many times I re-read this chapter? Just guess.

Not very many? Good guess. I really need to start doing that.

Sorry this chapter (entire story) is rather iffy. I’ve decided to stop holding back and just make the rest of the story as unbelievable as possible. It’s for the best.

So thank you, people who read. I love you guys.

&

What does one say in such awkward situations as these?

Well, being dead is good, but let’s look at this with a more analytical approach.

I think it’s a fine thing to have dead people around.

What the hell just happened?

I pondered this greatly while driving down the highway. Each option wavered around in my head, and I weighed them based on a certain level of tact. I mean, the last choice seemed to sum up my feelings, but I do like tact.

“Um,” Sydney said, leaning over me to jerk the steering wheel in the right direction. The car swerved back into the right lane, and we were safe again.

“Hehe, sorry,” I mumbled.

“You’re eyes were completely rolled up just now. It was…”

“Awesome?”

“Sure.”

He looked very sad just then, or maybe confused. Conflicted, I suppose. He had his legs up on my seat—those dirty flip-flops—and he was fiddling with a lose string on his shirt. He seemed kind of far away.

I decided on a different approach to getting to the bottom of all this. “Yarg! So you tell me, how did they let you into the fair with that big hole in your face?”

He looked up at me, sad.

“I mean, it looks like a scarily communal, flesh-eating bacteria or something.”

“Flesh-eating bacteria?”

“Flesh-eating bacteria,” I smiled.

Sydney did not look amused.

My antics had failed me. I went back into my head, scrolling through a new set of options. So, what’s up with those dead people?

“Stop. Stop it right now. Stop the car!” he shouted. My eyes rolled back downward and I slammed on my brakes. The only other car on the road was quite a bit behind me, and passed around my car easily, honking the horn. Virginia drivers—bleh.

“What? What do you want? What’s wrong?” I initiated a startling surveillance of my surroundings, looking for Ash Vronsky or a terrifying pterodactyl or something.

Nothing.

“Pull over,” Sydney said, looking tense.

I let the car roll to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, then put it in neutral. Sydney was out the door before the car came to a complete halt.

He jogged up a little ways, and I noticed little beads of rain starting to drop on my windshield. Of course he wants to get out of the car the second it starts to rain. Of course.

I shifted the car’s gear to park and hoped out myself, slightly peeved. Why wasn’t he telling me anything?

Sydney was already a little up the highway, inspecting the territory. It looked like he was looking for something. I walked towards him slowly.

In the wild life of Tuonela, the male species will often act in spontaneous and outrageous bits of wild behavior, dragging the female specimen along with him. Such behavior includes jumping out of a car in the soon-to-be pouring rain to go dance or whatever Sydney was doing.

He had his back to me, but from his profile, it looked like he was smiling. He had his hands on his head, stretching like a bear. When I came up closer, I could hear him laughing maniacally.

“Alright, strange boy. I can handle running around at a lame county fair, and I can understand—,”

Sydney did not even give me a chance to finish my snappy remark. He turned to me and continued laughing, with a strange expression on his face. Like he might cry as easily as he might just spontaneously explode.

“Heh,” I started. “You’re scaring the children.”

He laughed some more. I didn’t say anything, but inched towards him very cautiously. His scab lurked on his face, like an ominous beacon. Yes—and ominous beacon.

“Guess what,” he said, when I finally put my hand on his shoulder. “This is where it happened.”

It took a moment for that to register in my noggin. “The accident?”

He nodded, then smiled at me and laughed through his teeth. “I almost expected a wreath or a cross or something. You know, like they usually put at the scene of an accident.”

“They only do that when the person dies—oh.” I suddenly remembered the whole John-Doe-is-dead thing.

“Yeah,” he sniffed, and the rain started to drizzle down heavier, but not too heavy. Still very light. “Sorry if I made you panic.”

“Well, I kind of figured there would be a terrifying pterodactyl, but the scene of your accident works too.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t a very convincing smile.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked.

He shrugged, so I sat down on the pavement and a truck passed us on the highway. Sydney stayed standing, staring down at me like I had lost my mind. “Should we talk about it in the car?”

I shook my head furiously. “No. Sit. This spot is symbolic of your accident.”

“This place is my accident,” he sighed, and grudgingly sat down beside me.

I looked at him contemplatively. “Alright, tell me everything you know, Mr. Amnesia. I know you have to remember some of it.”

He sighed once more, then put a hand through his invisible hair. I say it was invisible, because it wasn’t there. The tiny sparks of new hair were just popping out of his scalp. He looked cute with a crew-cut, but I was overly interested in seeing what his hair looked like when it was actually in existence.

“I really don’t remember too much,” he started. “It was raining, I was on a motorcycle—,”

“I forgot! You drive a motorcycle?”

He looked at me for a moment, then smiled wryly. “No, and I believe that’s why I became road kill.”

My eyes went wide, but I nodded my head once. The rain was getting even worse.

“Um. And then I remember getting hit by a car. Or, well…”

“Well?”

“I think it was me who crashed—into the other car, that is.” He had been looking at the gravel for the past few seconds, picking at a pebble, but now he looked up at me.

“Heh,” I said, blinking.

“Can we get back to the car?” He made a mock umbrella with his arms. “It’s raining.”

“Yeah, okay,” I smiled, trying to show Sydney I was reassuring and supportive. He would definitely need to add more detail to his sob story if he wanted to get published or anything.

I waited for him to stand up so he could, in turn, pull me up by my arms. I shook off the rain gathering in my hair and dusted the gravel off my butt.

“So what did A.V. say?” I asked.

“A.V.?” he looked at me skeptically. “Ew, you’re gross.”

“Fine,” I rolled my eyes. “Ash Vronsky. What did he say?”

“Want a piggy-back ride?” Syd asked, hunching down for me to hop on.

“What? No! You’re avoiding the subject. Tell me—yeah, aright.” I hoped on his back and hugged his neck until I was sure he couldn’t breathe. I thought he’d take it slow, what with about one hundred and twenty pounds on his back, but he took off in a run. In the rain, on the wet cement.

“Ekk! Ekk! May-day! It’s slippery! Slow down!”

He slowed to a vaguely low-speed dawdle.

“Better,” I choked, still holding on for dear life. “Now on to the subject of—,”

“You know what else I remember?” he asked, still avoiding my Ash questioning. “The hospital. And all those doctors and nurses and other technicians. I don’t exactly remember the EMS ambulance ride, but I remember being on a stretcher and having a needle stuck in me, and having people prodding my broken limbs.”

“Broken limbs?” I asked.

“Well, they might not have been broken, but they felt broken. And they gave me a blood transfusion or something along those lines. And they had to stitch me all up.” One of his fingers brushed the black stitching circling his arm.

“Oh, well perhaps giving me a piggy-back ride is not the best of ideas. You’re still recovering, after all, from what happened, like, a week ago and stuff…”

“And you know what else I remember?”

I started to wiggle around, trying to free myself from his piggy-back death grip. “I really, really probably should get off, Sydney.”

“You.”

I froze, mid-wiggle. “What?”

“I remember you. You saw me; I know you did.”

“How could you remember that?”

“I’ve wanted to tell you, but it’s just never come up.”

“No, no, no. How can you remember that? Put me down.”

“I don’t know—I just do. Remember you, that is.”

“Put me down, Sydney.”

“We’re almost there.”

“Put me down before I have an epileptic seizure!”

He conceded, letting me slip off his back gently to the ground. My pink sneakers made a squeaky noise on the gravel.

“I didn’t know you had epilepsy,” he said, turning to look at me.

“I don’t,” I walked past him, closing in on the distance to my car.

“Where are you going?”

I didn’t answer, merely got to my car and opened the driver’s door. Sydney stayed at my heels, catching the door in his hand and slamming it closed. “Ugh!” I cried.

“What the hell, Miller?”

“How can you remember something if you were dead?” I asked. The rain was no longer a drizzle, but a real rain. A heavy rain.

“I don’t—look, haven’t you even thought about this?”

“Thought about what?”

“Why I’m alive? People don’t just die and wake up feeling great a few hours later.”

“Medical miracle,” I scoffed, trying to open my door again. Sydney shoved in front of me. Another car passed us on the highway, but my back was facing it. My eyes focused on Sydney, and the dark scab on his face.

“Are you that…dense?”

“Dense? Dense?! I wanted to get you medical help but you told me not to!” I shouted.

“And you just listened to me?

“Well, I’m sorry. We can’t all be perfect. Want me to take you back now? I’m sure they’d love to see you down at the hospital morgue.”

It was pretty intense, with all the yelling and drama and deadness. It’s not like I was dense—I knew whatever was going on was weird. Really weird. I just…

“It astounds me a human being would respond to this all the way you did,” Sydney sneered.

Didn’t comprehend. I didn’t want to, either.

“I’m sorry,” I huffed. The rain was pouring now, and I felt all the symbolism crushing me. Rain? In the middle of a fight? How could my day get any better?

“Mildred, I’m dead, okay? I’m dead, and so is Ash and so are those two kids from the park.” He was breathing in and out very heavily, and it looked sort of disturbing. Like he was trying to calm down, but he couldn’t. Like he had asthma.

Another car passed us, followed by another. They splashed through the rain water as they roared though the highway. Headlights beamed from the distance, and I knew the crowd at the fair was reeling in because of the storm.

“Dead? What do you mean dead?”

His face became very calm—calm as a mask. Raindrops dripped from his eyelashes, but I could still see his eyes. He seemed placid. And then he started to laugh.

“Dead,” he said. “It’s only has one denotation.”

"What?"

"I understand your confusion," he laughed. "To be honest, animation after death is a pretty vague notion."

I cursed. I pulled him out of my way. I got in my car and I waited for him to get in on the other side.

He did, after a moment. The cars were flooding by now, pulsing through the highway as the rain got worse.

“Dead,” he squealed. I might not have laughed if he hadn’t had squealed. My mood wasn’t really calling for laughter.

But it was so funny—the high pitched little squeal. He sounded like my sneakers in the wet gravel.

I started to giggle.

Sydney’s laughter was infectious—almost as infectious as a flesh-eating bacteria (but slightly less potent.) We laughed for a few moments, completely soaked, and I pulled out onto the highway.

I was cold from the rain, and I was kind of sure Sydney was too. His shirt was so soaked, you could see through it. I became acutely aware that we were wearing a shirt made of the same flimsy material and scowled bitterly.

&

The next week was awful.

Not because of Sydney’s new found dead-ness, or the fact that Ash Vronsky, apparently, wanted to “keep in touch”—according to Sydney. It was because I had exams. Exams that I had barely studied for.

Who’s fault was that? Ash. Ash Vronsky is the root of all evil in the world, I am quite ineffably sure.

Work sucked too that week. I could easily evade Hannah, but Ellie and Marie and even scatter-brained Doll were after me, saying I looked terrible and I was missing so much work. I blamed it all on exams. Their such a great red herring.

Sydney was pretty calm about the whole thing. He stayed at home, watching television and getting fat on gourmet food. Apparently he could cook. I realized this Sunday night when he asked me to get a bunch of random things from the grocery store. He ended up making lasagna. It was better than what my mother use to make, and my family is hardcore Italian-Cajun. No two ethnicities can cook like the Italians and the Cajuns can.

And yet, Sydney surpassed. The little rebel-rouser.

I was pretty sure I failed my Chemistry exam that Thursday, but I knew I must have gotten at least a B in Biology. So it wasn’t all bad. Well, the chemistry was pretty bad, but I got an A in English. That’s always a positive.

I took it easy Friday morning, having finished everything. Sydney made me to get him more donuts, and then forced me to eat three. I felt pretty fat.

It was during the middle of the day when I was just walking around the apartment, with nothing better to do. It was nice to relax, but I was getting kind of bored and Sydney had the television on La Vida es Sueño, his favorite soap opera. So I read a book. Or at least, I went into my room to read a book when I thought of something…

I busted out of my room with a trashy romance novel under my arm. I walked up to Sydney, stood directly in front of the television, and shoved the novel in his face.

“What gives?” he looked completely uninterested, despite the fact that I was having an epiphany.

“I figured it out,” I said, lowering my voice like a conspirator, “You’re a vampire.”

He looked at me, dumbfounded by the wisdom of my words. “I don’t…think so?”

“I think you are. It’s the only thing that explains this.” I gestured to him and then to the trashy romance novel. He took a step closer and I pointed out the muscle-man’s fangs on the cover. “See? Vampire.”

“Miller, if anything, I qualify as a zombie.”

“Wrong—vampire,” I held up the book and did a little vampire dance.

“Zombie,” he sighed, almost giving into defeat.

“Vampire!”

“When I begin to crave human brains,” he said, and patted my head appreciatively, “I’ll let you know.”

I turned back to my room, dejected, re-shelved the book, and went immediately back to the living room. The spot next to Sydney looked comfy, so I plopped down next to him and swung my legs over his, rudely enough.

“I’m bored,” I whined.

“I’m not.”

“Want to do something tonight?”

He kept staring at the television, but lifted a single brow. On the show, two women—one with blonde hair and one with black hair—were bickering back in forth, and the blonde one had tears in their eyes.

“The local university’s having a rave tonight,” I nudged him in the stomach. “It could be fun.”

“Meh.”

“You could wear a costume. In fact, I was thinking the other day I have something for you.”

I jumped up to pillage my grandmother’s junk-closet, shouting as I moved crap out of my way. The hanging light bulb turned on resentfully when I pulled the chain.

“What are you up to?” Sydney asked, no longer interested in La Vida.

“When I was real little,” I said, hackling around on the bottom shelf of the storage closet. “My grandparents were still alive and kicking, and my family would always come up here at Easter. I always hated it because we had to drive all the way from Alabama with my big brothers in the car, but there was always one good thing to look forward to…”

“What?” Syd peered inside.

“Eureka!” I shouted, holding up my find. “The Easter Bunny, of course.”

&