Never Slow Dance with a Zombie - By E. Van Lowe Page 0,13

that I wouldn't give it to any of the other girls. At home, I spent an entire, miserable summer in the house, away from my three friends.

I healed over the summer, and by the time school started in the fall, I was no longer under quarantine. That's when the real misery began. Something had changed between me and my friends over the summer, something I knew nothing about. I couldn't wait to see them, but on the first day of school Amanda and the girls gave me the silent treatment. At first I thought it was a joke.

"Come on, guys. Enough!" I said during lunch. Not one of them looked at me or responded. They just moved away.

For days after, I racked my brain tiying to figure out what I could have done to deserve this. I tried calling each of them to find out, but they wouldn't take my calls. I told myself not to panic: This kind of snubbing happens in middle school all the time. 1 figured I'd wait it out. I knew that eventually the snubbed friends usually made up with each other and things got back to normal. But by Halloween I realized that wasn't going to happen with us.

I lay in bed at night in tears over the loss of my best friends.

What could I have done that was so wrong?

By the end of eighth grade, Jen and Brandi had moved away. It was the perfect time to ask Amanda what I had done to deserve the snub. But by then she had the Twigettes, and I had joined the ranks of those who were derided or laughed at.

It had happened a long time ago, but the thought of it in that moment stung as if it was happening right then. I buried the pain back deep inside, where it had lived for so long.

"Forget about Amanda, and Baron ... and Dirk," said Sybil. "We always have a good time together. We don't need them.

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All we need is you, me, and Tom Jones. Hey, maybe we'll even meet boyfriends at the carnival. That'll show them."

I stiffened. "What are you talking about?"

"Us going to the carnival, of course."

"Let me see if I'm getting this right. Since I can't go to the carnival with the most gorgeous boy at school, it sounds like you're suggesting that you and I should be dateless freaks and go to the carnival alone"

"Well..."

"How does that solve anything?"

''It's better than going with Baron Chomsky," she charged.

"No, it isn't. It's the same thing!"

She winced when I compared her to Baron.

"Well, you were going to the carnival with me and Dirk. It's just one less person."

"No. I was going to the carnival with Dirk alone. Me and Dirk. No you."

"Oh."

There was something not right with that oh. It had an odd, distant quality to it. "What, Sybil?"

"Nothing."

I tried looking her in the eye, but she wouldn't let me. "You did ask Dirk to go to the carnival with me, right?"

"Well..."

"Sybil!"

Words tumbled out of her. "I was going to, but the truth is I want to go out with Dirk as badly as you do, and since I was the one doing the asking, I didn't think it would hurt to ask him to go with both of us."

My temperature began to rise. "Your Dirk Conrad was supposed to be a benchmark!"

"I know. But I really like the benchmark."

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'Then why was I the one who was supposed to talk to him on the phone last night if we're both going to the carnival with him?"

"You know how shy I am around boys." She was babbling away, not making any sense. Then all of a sudden the pieces began falling into place.

"Wait a minute! No wonder you had Dirk's daily schedule. You've been scouting Dirk for yourself all along, haven't you?"

Her eyes dipped to the floor. "Well... I figured it would be easier for him to accept our offer if it wasn't an official date. And everyone would see him with you and me, and nobody would be able to tell whose boyfriend he was. Of course he wouldn't be anyone's boyfriend, but nobody would know

that It would be a win-win. We could both claim him. And who knows, maybe by the end of the night he'd choose one of us " More words spouted from her like a leaky faucet. I

stared at her in disbelief. Sybil really was from another planet. No Earth person in their right mind would think her plan made any