zombie

Griffin Wilson, the evil genius who sat two rows behind me in Organic Chem, first proposed the theory of de-evolution. Despite what the headlines might have led you to believe, he was the first to take the Great Leap Backward.
       My classmates and I found out because Tricia Gedding was in the nurse's office with him when it happened. She was lying on the other cot, faking her period to get out of a pop quiz in Perspectives on Eastern Civ. She said she heard a loud beep behind the paper curtain but didn't think anything of it. When Tricia and the school nurse found Griffin on his own cot, they mistook him for a resuscitation doll. They thought it was a joke. His wallet was still clenched between his teeth, and the electrical wires were pasted to either side of his forehead.
       His paralyzed hands were still holding the defibrillator, pressing the big, red button. He must have taken it down from the office wall and read the instructions. He simply removed the waxed paper from the adhesive, applied the electrodes to his temples, and performed a peel-and-stick lobotomy.
       The principal of student affairs made Tricia swear to not tell a living soul. The school district was afraid of copycats, and defibrillators were everywhere in those days.
       In Miss Chen's English class, we learned "To be or not to be," but I think there's a big gray area in between. Griffin knew the upcoming SATs were just the gateway to a lifetime of insignificance—to going to college and getting married, to paying taxes and trying to raise a decent kid. And Griffin knew drugs were only a patch.
       My uncle Henry said the importance of eating a good breakfast is because your brain is still growing. But nobody mentioned whether or not your brain could get too big.
       A few months ago, you could have asked Griffin who signed the Treaty of Ghent or who invented the atomic battery, and, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he’d whip out the answer. In Organic Chem, he could talk string theory until he ran out of oxygen, but what he really wanted to be was blissfully unaware. But he didn't want to die either. He wanted to be—and not to be—at the same time. That's what a pioneering genius he was.
       After that day in the nurse's office, Griffin had never seemed happier. He was always giggling too loud and wiping spittle off his chin with his sleeve. The special ed teachers clapped and heaped praises on him just for using the toilet. Meanwhile, the rest of us were fighting tooth and nail for whatever worthless career we could get. Griffin was miserable before unless he scored straight A’s and won every chess tournament. But now, instead of being just another grade grubber, he was the life of the party. The voltage even cleared up his acne.
       It wasn't a week after he'd taken the leap when Tricia went to the gym where she does Zumba and got the defibrillator off the wall in the girls' locker room. After her self-administered procedure in the bathroom stall, she didn’t care where she got her period. Her best friend, Brie Phillips, got to the defibrillator they used to keep next to the bathrooms at the Home Depot. The next day, she started walking to school, rain or shine, with no pants on.
       After overtaking the class president and head cheerleader, the trend spread to everybody who played first string on the sports teams. It took every defibrillator between here and the Canadian border, but since then, when our guys play football, nobody ever plays by the rules. And even when they got skunked by another team, they were still grinning and slapping high fives.
       They continued to be young and hot but without the anxieties or expectations endemic to either camp.
       It didn’t help that the press wouldn't report the actual numbers. My uncle Henry read me an article from the daily paper once about a proposed change in state law. Officials wanted a 10-day waiting period on the sale of all heart defibrillators. They were discussing mandatory background checks and mental health screenings. But it wasn’t the law, not yet.
       My uncle Henry looked up from the newspaper article and eyed me across the breakfast table. He leveled a stern look at me and asked, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"
       Uncle Henry wouldn't acknowledge it, but there was a good life over the edge of that cliff along with a lifetime supply of handicap parking. What Uncle Henry didn’t understand was that all my friends had already jumped.
       Despite being differently abled, my friends were hooking up more than ever. They had smoking-hot bodies and the brains of infants. After pushing the red button, a person suffered some consequences, but they didn't know they were suffering. And once a kid underwent a push-button lobotomy, they could let themself get away with murder.
       During study hall one time, I was sitting in the lunchroom with Boris Declan. His burn marks were still fresh on his forehead, and his pants were down around his knees. I asked him if the shock was painful, and he didn't answer right away. He just took his fingers out of his underwear and sniffed them thoughtfully. He was last year's junior prom king.
       Boris said he didn't remember anything, and he grinned this sloppy, dopey smile. He tapped a dirty finger to the burn mark on one side of his face and pointed it across the way.
       On the wall was a guidance counselor poster showing white birds flapping their wings against a blue sky. Under that, printed in dreamy writing, were the words “Actual happiness only happens by accident.” The school hung that poster to hide the shadow of where another defibrillator used to hang.
       For a long time, I listened to my uncle and didn't jump, but I was losing confidence. The newspapers continuously warned us about terrorist bombings and virulent new strains of meningitis, and the only consolation the papers could offer was a coupon for twenty cents off underarm deodorant.
       By that time, so many of the cool kids at my school had elected to fry themselves that only the losers and the naturally occurring pinheads were left. Ultimately, it came to be that I was a shoo-in to be valedictorian. That was how come my uncle Henry wanted to ship me off, thinking that by relocating me to Twin Falls he could postpone the inevitable. 

We were waiting by the gate for our flight to board when I asked to go to the bathroom. In the men's room, I pretended to wash my hands so I could look in the mirror. My uncle asked me one time why I looked in mirrors so much, and I told him it wasn't vanity so much as it was nostalgia. Every mirror showed me what little was left of my parents.
       I practiced my mom's smile. People didn't practice their smiles nearly enough, so when they most needed to look happy, they weren’t fooling anyone. While rehearsing my smile, I saw it mounted there on the wall: my one-way ticket to a deliriously happy future working in fast food.
       Hovering over my shoulder and a smidgen behind me, its reflection stared at me in the mirror. It was shut inside a glass door that was primed to set off alarm bells and a red strobe light upon opening. A sign above the box said AED and showed a lightning bolt striking the heart of a valentine. The metal container was like a pristine hands-off showcase displaying the crown jewels.
       I opened the case, automatically triggering the alarm. Before any heroes came running, I dashed into a handicapped stall with the defibrillator. The foolproof instructions were printed on the lid in English, Spanish, French, and comic-book pictures. It was now or never. Defibrillators would be under lock and key soon, and, once defibrillators were illegal, only paramedics would have access.
       In my grasp was my permanent childhood.
       My hands were smarter than the rest of me. My fingers knew to peel the electrodes and paste them to my temples. My ears knew to listen for the loud beep indicating a full charge.
       My thumbs hovered over the red button like they were poised to trigger the launch of nuclear war. One push and the world as I knew it came to an end.
       To be or not to be. God's gift to animals is they don't get a choice.
       Every time I opened the newspaper I’d want to throw up. In another 10 seconds, I wouldn't know how to read. I wouldn't know about global climate change or cancer or genocide or SARS or environmental degradation or religious conflict.
       The public address system was paging my name. I wouldn't even know my name.
       Before I blasted off, I pictured my uncle Henry holding his boarding pass at the gate, waiting for me. He deserved better than this. He needed to know this was not his fault.
       With the electrodes stuck to my forehead, I carried the defibrillator out of the bathroom and walked down the concourse. The coiling electric wires trailed down the sides of my face like thin, white pigtails. My hands held the battery pack in front of me like a suicide bomber ready to blow up all my IQ points.
       When they caught sight of me, businesspeople abandoned their roller bags. Families on vacation flapped their arms wide and herded their little kids in the other direction. Some guy who must’ve thought he was a hero shouted, "Everything is going to be all right. You have everything to live for."
       We both knew he was a liar.
       Doors opened in the concourse, and Homeland Security soldiers stormed out. I felt like one of those Tibetan monks who splash gasoline on themselves before they check to make sure their cigarette lighter actually works. Instead of gasoline, I was drenched in sweat. From out of nowhere, my uncle grabbed my arm. "If you hurt yourself, Trevor,” he said, “you hurt me."
       He gripped my arm as I gripped the red button. "I'll keep loving you, Uncle Henry. I just won't know who you are."
       My last thoughts were prayers. For one, I prayed there was enough voltage to erase the fact that I'd just said the word love to my own uncle in front of several hundred strangers.
       Most people just pulled out their phones and started filming. Everyone was jockeying for the best full-on angle, which fondly reminded me of birthday parties and Christmas. A thousand memories unexpectedly crashed over me for the last time. I didn't mind losing my education or forgetting my name. But I would miss the little bit I could remember about my parents.
       My mother's eyes and my father's nose and forehead were gone except for my face. And the idea hurt to know that I wouldn't recognize them anymore.
       "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me too," Uncle Henry repeated.
         "I'll still be your nephew, but I just won't know it."
         Then some lady stepped up and grabbed my uncle Henry's other arm. “If you hurt yourself, you hurt me as well," she said. Somebody else grabbed that lady, and somebody grabbed the last somebody, and both of them said, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me." Strangers reached out to grab hold of other strangers in interconnected chains and branches like molecules crystallizing in solution in Organic Chem. Soon, everyone was holding on to someone, and everyone was holding on to everyone, and their voices repeated the same sentence: "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me… If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…" The words formed a slow wave and, like an echo, traveled away from me up and down the concourse in both directions.
       Voices from total strangers in distant places, ringing in by telephone or watching by video, all chimed in, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me…" And some kid stepped out from behind the cash register at Der Wienerschnitzel, all the way down at the food court. He grabbed hold of somebody and shouted, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me." And the kids making Taco Bell and the kids frothing milk at the Starbucks all stopped and held hands with someone connected to me across the vast crowd, and they said it too.
       People were holding hands through the metal detectors. On the televisions mounted high by the ceiling, the CNN anchor put a finger to his ear and said, "Breaking news." He looked confused as though reading something strange off the prompter, and even he said, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me." The voices of political pundits on Fox News and color commentators on ESPN then overlapped his voice, saying the same thing.
       Then the televisions showed people in parking lots and tow-away zones, all holding hands. Bonds formed. Everyone was uploading simultaneous footage of everyone, including people standing miles away but still connected back to me.
       Voices full of static crackled over the walkie-talkies of the Homeland Security guards, "If you hurt yourself, you hurt me—do you copy?"
       Eventually, we'd all have to let go, but for another moment, everyone was holding tight, trying to make this connection last forever.
       "I'm scared too," shouted a girl at Burger King.
       “I am scared all the time," shouted a boy at Cinnabon.
       To top things off, a huge voice from overhead announced, "Attention! May I have your attention, please?" It was the lady who told people to pick up the white paging telephone. With everyone listening, the lady’s voice reduced the entire airport to silence.
       "Whoever you are, you need to know…" came the voice. Everyone listened because everyone thought she was talking only to them. From a thousand speakers, she began to sing. The sound trilled and scaled the way a canary sings, notes impossible for a mouth to conjugate into nouns and verbs. We could enjoy it without trying to understand it. Connected by telephone and television, it synchronized everyone worldwide.
       Her voice filled everything, leaving no room for being scared. Her song made all our ears into one ear.
       I was on every TV, sweating so hard that an electrode slowly slid down one side of my face.
       This certainly wasn't the happy ending I had in mind, but compared to where this story began—with Griffin Wilson in the nurse's office putting his wallet between his teeth like a gun in his mouth—well, maybe this was not such a bad place to start.