Decaying leaves crunched underfoot and a soft breeze stirred the late October air. A horde of zombies shuffled past the playground at the community park. The more devoted zombies were moaning and limping along as zombie children screeched and chased each other down the edges of the gruesome parade. A little zombie with a massive pink cast on her leg and a hospital gown in a wheelchair was being pushed along by an Abe Lincoln zombie. A few paces away, a young doctor zombie, with a plastic stethoscope and a blue surgical cap, was pointedly ignoring her patient.

     Helen tugged at her stethoscope as her mother, wearing more of a generic zombie look with impressively grotesque facial gore, pulled Helen aside into a yellowing grass. She adjusted her daughter’s surgical cap and squatted down next to her. 

     “What’s wrong, honey?” She said, “You’ve barely spoken to Maxine all day.”  

     Helen was quite aware of this. She hadn’t seen Maxine, her best friend, since Maxine broke her leg last week. She could not believe Maxine had done that. She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, turning away from her mom.

     “Helen,” her mother said, her voice hardening. “You need to be the one pushing Maxine in the wheelchair. Otherwise, it ruins your costumes!” Helen’s mother looked behind her. Two superhero zombies, Helen’s little brothers, were hitting each other with sticks. “Boys!” she shouted. She grabbed Helen’s hand and pulled the two of them back into the moaning, oozing crowd. “Cut that out right now! Zombies don’t fight each other!”

     All around Helen, people wearing fake blood, latex skin grafts and prosthetics, green makeup, and torn-up clothes staggered through the park for the annual Zombie Walk, all in the name of charity: the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It was something Helen and Maxine’s families had participated in each October for the last few years. The night was crisp but the mass of bodies radiated a collective warmth, and they all seemed to be getting too close to Helen. Too warm, too real. 

     Usually, Helen wasn’t bothered by the zombies; she knew they were fake, after all. But this time something was different. The more realistic makeup, torn flesh oozing blood and pus, skin peeling away to reveal sinewy shreds of muscle and white bone, eyes clouded in milky white and darkened by gaping shadowed sockets, made Helen shudder and look away. She smelled decomposing leaves, wet grass, Elmer’s glue, and burnt plastic. The air was conflicted between the actual rotting of cyclical life as winter approached and the feigned deterioration of the zombie people, imitating death and decay around their true blood-pumping bodies.

      She could see Maxine swiveling her brown-haired head around, no doubt looking for Helen. But Maxine’s sight was limited by the margins of her chair and the blockage of her father, Abe Lincoln zombie, who was pushing her. Helen strategically walked a few steps behind them. She hadn’t even signed the cast yet! In the flickering hazy lamplight of the park, Helen could see signatures and drawings scrawled all up and down Maxine’s leg. This was just an added wrongdoing, Helen thought. It wasn’t right. Certainly, Maxine had taken things too far. It made Helen feel sick. She felt sick like a real virus, a real, infectious, degenerating illness was taking root. It seemed as if Maxine’s secret, the real pain she hid, was now encased in the pink cast around her broken leg, all the way from her hip to her toes. This was something ominous and unknown to Helen, and she was afraid.

 

      Helen was in fourth grade and Maxine was in fifth, which meant it had been nine years since Maxine’s family moved into the small blue house on East Walnut Street, just down the block from Helen and her family. Both the oldest siblings, they reigned above the littles together. They learned to read together; they joined, and eventually quit, ballet lessons together. Every holiday and birthday they spent together, every summer chalking sidewalks down the block and running back and forth between garage sales, every zombie walk, every new milestone. Now, Maxine went to private school and Helen went to public school, but they still saw each other almost every day.

      In September, Helen had been at Maxine’s house after school. They sat together in Maxine’s bed. The room Maxine shared with her younger sister was cluttered and cozy and bright. There was a pink plastic vanity with sparkly chapsticks and waxy play eyeshadow, purple pillows and fuzzy Ariel and Cinderella blankets strewn across the bunk beds lined with plush bears, elephants, and frogs. Colorful bins full of Legos, action figures, Barbies, and the little cloth clothes that belonged to them were a constant source of argument. A pile of comic books, “Teeny Titans” and “Bone”, were stacked next to the wooden dollhouse, plastic wands and mesh-lined fairy wings lay against the bottom bunk, and a half-built Lego house, green and yellow and blue blocks mixed together, sat on the table in the corner of the room. 

      Maxine and Helen had grown tired of that little kid stuff, and while the younger siblings were upstairs having a snack, they perched in the top bunk with blankets pulled up to their chins, whispering secrets. They had just finished giggling about the boy in Helen’s class who could run really fast when a veil drew over Maxine’s face. She became very still, very quiet.

     “Helen,” Maxine said. “Can I tell you a secret?” She pleaded with Helen, brown eyes wide under the thin strands of hair that fell across her face.

      Helen tugged her blanket over her head like a hood, leaning closer. “Yes.”

     “You have to promise not to tell anyone,” Maxine said. 

     “I won’t. Cross my heart.” Helen said.

     Maxine was wearing a black long-sleeve shirt with a pink sequin heart in the middle. She pulled her sleeve all the way up to her elbow, revealing her pale skinny arms. She twisted her arm wordlessly.

      On Maxine’s inner arm near her elbow, were two scabbed-over wounds. Cracked red crust drew stark lines against Maxine’s white skin, like a warning. “I did this,” Maxine said after a moment.

      “What?” Helen did not understand. Why was Maxine showing her these scrapes? She must have fallen on the blacktop at school or something. She squirmed under her blanket.

      “I did it. I don’t know why.” Maxine stared into Helen’s eyes. “Sometimes, I feel like I need to. Like maybe it helps, to hurt.” 

      “Need to? But why?” Helen said. She reached out slowly and touched Maxine’s arm like it might fall off or bleed at her touch. Maxine’s skin was warm and smooth.

     “I told you, I don’t know. I use my nails. At night sometimes. I scratch and scratch and scratch until it bleeds.” Maxine looked down at Helen’s hand, then drew her arm away, tugging her sleeve back down and looking away. “But you can’t tell anyone. You promised.”

      Helen nodded slowly. She felt a gnawing deep in her stomach, like this was something bad, something dark. But she didn’t understand what it meant. 

      Helen was aware that there were things about Maxine’s life, Maxine’s family, that she didn’t know. They were best friends forever, of course, but some aspects of Maxine had always been hazy and far away to Helen. Maxine was always the one getting in trouble, always the one making the littles cry. She listened to angry music and read weird books and sometimes messaged strange faraway people online on the computer in the office when her parents weren’t around. Sometimes there would be yelling and slamming doors and afterward, Maxine would hiss and stalk around the house like a caged animal. But she never fought with Helen. All Helen knew was that a promise was a promise, and she loved Maxine.

      They didn’t talk about it anymore, and the days and weeks went on as normal. September gave way to October and the humming of life outside began to slow down, the leaves began to fall. Helen didn’t think about Maxine’s secret much. Of course, sometimes Helen would stare at Maxine’s arms when her sleeves were rolled up. She followed Maxine like a shadow after she fought with her parents, just to check. Sometimes at night, Helen lay awake and wondered what could be happening down the block in the small blue house on East Walnut Street. 

      But then, weeks later, Helen’s mom told her that Maxine broke her leg at school and had to get a cast and a wheelchair. The secret was suddenly red hot and burning in Helen’s mind, telling of Maxine’s injury. Why would Maxine break her own leg? That surely hurt far worse than any scratch or scab. Now she couldn’t run or play, she couldn’t walk down the block to come over, and what about their plan for the zombie walk? They hadn’t even chosen which zombies they were going to be yet! Now it was surely ruined. Helen’s mom said Maxine had tripped at recess and cracked her femur on a concrete step. Maxine had taken it too far, Helen thought. She was so beside herself that she refused to talk with her mom about it at all. 

 

      On the day of the charity walk, everyone transformed into zombies at Helen’s house. When Maxine’s family had arrived, everyone rushed at her. Helen’s parents cooed and clucked, and her brothers tapped on the plaster that wrapped her leg and took turns propelling themselves about on the crutches she used to go to the bathroom. Everyone signed the cast, even the adults, except for Helen. “I’ll do it later,” she said. She ignored the hurt that hung in the air around Maxine after this.

      The mothers bustled around, pulling out costumes and paint and makeup. They made each of the children put on warm underlayers, despite their protest. “Undershirts will ruin the costume!” Maxine’s sister cried. They did the makeup for the fathers first. Abe Lincoln zombie and pirate zombie emerged from the bathroom groaning and asking for brains, chasing kids around the house, shrieking and giggling. Fresh cookies cooled on the counter under a dish towel. The Nightmare Before Christmas played on the tv. Helen was stoic on the couch. One thing about Maxine’s wheelchair, it made her slow and her movements awkward. It was easy for Helen to escape when her friend tried to start conversation.

     “Hey Helen, Drew M. signed my cast. Come look!” Maxine said, turning her chair with her hands on the wheels to face Helen.

      “I’m going to get a cookie.” Helen said. She had left the living room before Maxine could reply. 

      After the dads, Maxine and Helen were up. Everyone said making them doctor zombie and patient zombie was an excellent idea. Very fitting, with Maxine in her cast and wheelchair. 

      Helen had still barely spoken to Maxine. The neon pink cast offended her, taunted her. Helen sat on the bathtub ledge as the mothers turned her friend into the undead. Maxine tried to say something, searching for eye contact with Helen in the reflection of the mirror, but the mothers hushed her swiftly. She had to be still, they said. They created dark circles around her eyes, smudging the eyeshadow with purple and red and yellow around the edges, caving in her cheeks with contour and darkening her lips. 

      Helen watched Maxine bruise. She wondered if Maxine’s sister had noticed her scars. What about Helen’s brothers? She didn’t want them to see. She didn’t want them to know.

     Then they dabbed Elmer’s glue onto Maxine’s cheeks and neck, and as it dried it flaked off white and crusty. They painted thin blue and purple lines across her face, blending them with a sponge. 

     Helen watched Maxine’s skin peel and bubble with popping veins, peeling like the scabs on her arms. Were there more underneath her sleeves? How many times had Maxine bled in the night? How did she clean up the blood under those teal princess blankets?  

      Lastly, the mothers procured the fake blood, the red eyeliner, the liquid latex, and began carving out gashes and cuts, a slit in her neck. They ran clear lip gloss over all the red, making it glisten and shine in the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom. Boxes of makeup and paint cluttered the green tiled counter, the mothers wielding brushes and sponges as they transformed Maxine. A sharp chemical smell filled the enclosed space, but was that the makeup, or was that what blood smelled like? Was that an eyeshadow brush, or a fingernail, digging lacerations into Maxine’s skin?

      Helen watched Maxine turn bloody and grotesque and distorted. Helen watched Maxine turn dead. Is this what will happen to her? Is this what she wants? Maxine stuck out her tongue and scrunched up her now horrible face, looking at Helen in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. Maxine giggled.

      “Maxine! Sit still.” her mother said. Maxine’s silly face was gone. She seemed to be waiting for Helen to make a face back, to crack a joke, to do something, say anything. Helen stood up and ran out of the bathroom. 

     Helen was scolded for not sitting still and for throwing a tantrum. She refused to let the mothers do her makeup until zombie girl was wheeled out of the bathroom. 

 

      That night, they reached the halfway marker of the walk, a little sign in the grass. Helen looked at Maxine in the chair, half her normal height and completely dependent on the people around her. The body that hid her secret was vulnerable to everyone’s pity, everyone’s curiosity. Who was Helen, to leave her like that? It wasn’t like Maxine had a contagious virus. Anyway, they always spent the zombie walk together. Helen marched up to Abe Lincoln zombie. “I’ll take it from here, Mr. President.” Maxine’s dad smiled and stepped away. Helen took hold of the push handles. She was struck by how light Maxine felt in the wheelchair. She had imagined it would be more difficult to push her forward.  

      “Helen! Where have you been? What’s wrong? You’ve been ignoring me all day.” Maxine turned her head, her haunting face scrunched up, painted eyebrows furrowed.

      “Did you do it on purpose?” Helen said shortly. 

     “What?” Maxine said, struggling to twist around in her chair. Her voice was loud and rough.

      “Your leg. Did you break it on purpose?” Helen said. Maxine looked so small within the bulk of her cast, leg bound pink and thick and prominent for everyone to see.

      Maxine paused. “What? No. That’s dumb. I just tripped! It really sucks cause now I have-” 

     “Promise?” Helen interrupted before Maxine could finish. She saw her hands quivering on the rubber handles of the wheelchair.

     “Cross my heart.” Maxine’s voice was quiet, now. 

     Helen sighed deeply. She imagined the vow moving through Maxine’s arteries, making her real human heart glow with a seal of promise. Zombies aren’t real, Helen thought. Zombies aren’t real, and Maxine was going to be ok. She wasn’t decaying, and she was going to be ok. 

     Helen looked at her own hands again. They were stained with fake blood. She had forgotten. She, too, was a zombie tonight. 

     “Doctor Helen?” Maxine said. “Will you sign my cast?”

     “Yes,” Helen said. 

     “Ok.” Helen could not see Maxine’s face as she pushed her along amongst the groaning undead, but she could hear the smile in her voice. 

      They continued along, Helen pushing Maxine like she should have all along. Helen knew that a promise was a promise, but she also knew that a crossed heart was no good if Maxine was hurt. She didn’t understand Maxine all the way, but she could try, and maybe trying meant telling someone who could help. For now, she could be a zombie girl with Maxine and not let go of the rubber handlebars.

      Darkness shrouded the horde of zombies as they shuffled past the gazebo at the community park, nearing the end of the walk. They were dreadful, their bodies feigning ruin, but they were alive. A little zombie with a massive pink cast on her leg and a hospital gown in a wheelchair was being pushed along by a young doctor zombie with a plastic stethoscope and a blue surgical cap.