Generation Dead by Daniel Waters Page A

application process would work, what the qualifications were, and how many would be accepted.
    "Applications can be picked up at the front of the stage from myself or Ms. Hunter, or, if you prefer, in the office. The applications are due on Friday."
    "Well, that was still better than history," Margi said. "Too
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    bad it didn't cut into English. Phoebe ...where are you going?"
    Phoebe looked back but remained silent as she joined the few differently biotic kids walking against the tide of students eager to make their way out of the auditorium. She saw Tommy, Colette, that boy Evan who was in the woods last night, and a few others. Adam was waiting at the end of an aisle.
    "Are you going to sign up?" she asked him.
    "Yep. You?"
    "Uh-huh."
    There weren't many takers, but that fact didn't seem to drain any of the warmth from Angela Hunter's smile as she handed Phoebe an application, which looked to be three grayish sheets stapled together.
    "Could I have two?" she asked. "I'm hoping I can convince my friend to join with me."
    "Have a whole stack," Ms. Hunter said, peeling off copies. "I don't think I'll need them all."
    Phoebe passed Colette on her way back, and Colette seemed to see her for the first time since her death.
    Phoebe thought she was trying to smile.
    Pete Martinsburg wasn't smiling. He had sat through the entire assembly staring up at the hot blonde.
    He hadn't slept well since the debacle in the forest. When he did sleep, his dreams were of Julie, but not the Julie of puppy love, ice-cream cones, and being thirteen. This was dead Julie, returned to the world. He dreamed of Julie holding
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    hands, but it wasn't his hand she was holding, it was Tommy Williams.
    She might not come back , this nightmare-Tommy told him. But in the dream it was Pete who moved at half speed; nightmare-Tommy was quick in getting to his car, the one Pete had driven around all summer. The one Pete had never sat in with his father.
    Now you know what it is like ... he heard the cold, hollow voice in his head say as the zombie brought the car to life ... to be dead .
    The car lurched into hyperdrive, accelerating as it approached a brick wall that had grown from the asphalt. The car struck the wall as a yellow blur that blossomed into an explosive flame, and Pete awoke with the sound of Julie's screams and the dead boy's laughter ringing in his head.
    But of course Julie, the real Julie and not the ashen, flat-eyed Julie who walked his dreams, had not been able to scream. Good old Dad had broken the news ever so gently in his classic style, over the phone with a continent separating him from his son. He'd called at Christmastime. It was right after Pete had tried to tell him what a football hero he'd been that season, how many tackles he'd made, how many interceptions he'd caught for the Badgers.
    "Oh hey, Pete," his dad had said. Pete could remember the conversation in exact detail, the way he could recall all of the conversations he'd had with his father since he'd left them."Hey, you remember that girl Julie you played with over the summer?"
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    Played with , as though they would be playing hide-and-seek.
    "Marissa's daughter? Remember Marissa, that woman I used to date?"
    Pete remembered, with growing dread. No news was the only good news Dad was capable of providing.
    "Well, her daughter, Julie, died about two weeks after you went back home to your mother. Helluva thing. She had a massive asthma attack. They said it was triggered by a spider bite or something."
    Helluva thing .
    He watched Angela Hunter laughing with Layman and Scarypants, and the pen he'd been tapping on the back of the chair in front of him snapped in his hand, spilling a long blue bubble of ink onto his skin.
    He smeared the ink bubble onto the seat cushion next to him. Dad was utterly clueless about how Pete had felt toward Julie. Just like he was clueless that Pete would never feel that way about anyone ever again.
    The sad tale of Dallas Jones, the original