I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It

by Selzer, Adam

• ISBN13: 9780385735032
• ISBN10: 0385735030
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2010-01-26
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Summary

Algonquin "Ali" Rhodes, the high school newspaper's music critic, meets an intriguing singer, Doug, while reviewing a gig. He's a weird-looking guygoth, but he seems sincere about it, like maybe he was into it back before it was cool. She introduces herself after the set, asking if he lives in Cornersville, and he replies, in his slow, quiet murmur, "Well, I don't really live there, exactly. . . ." When Ali and Doug start dating, Ali is falling so hard she doesn't notice a few odd signs: he never changes clothes, his head is a funny shape, and he says practically nothing out loud. Finally Marie, the school paper's fashion editor, points out the obvious: Doug isn't just a really sincere goth. He's a zombie. Horrified that her feelings could have allowed her to overlook such a flaw, Ali breaks up with Doug, but learns that zombies are awfully hard to get rid ofat the same time she learns that vampires, a group as tightly-knit as the mafia, don't think much of music critics who make fun of vampires in reviews. . . .

Author Biography

Adam Selzer lives in downtown Chicago. Check him out on the Web at www.adamselzer.com.

Excerpts

Chapter One

Watching a vampire make out with an idiot is kind of like going to the farmers' market and noticing just how many farmers have lost fingers in on-the-job accidents. Even though it's kind of disturbing, it's impossible to look away.  

Right now, two lunch tables over from mine, Fred (a vampire) is making out with Michelle (an idiot). And everyone in the cafeteria is watching the show.  

"My God," says my friend Trinity. "It's like he thinks her head is a Tootsie Pop."  

"Keep watching," I say. "Maybe we can finally find out how many licks it takes to get to the candy center."   I'm not just being my usual, devastatingly witty self here. I actually think that the only thing between Michelle's ears might be some sort of chewy candy.  

"I've lost count already," says Peter. "He must be about halfway through her skin by now. You'd think he'd just bite her and get it over with. That's what I always do with Tootsie Pops."   "They don't really bite people," says Sadie. "Not anymore."  

"So what does he have to do to make her into a vampire?" asks Peter.  

"It's a secret, but it's probably nothing he can do in a high school cafeteria," says Sadie.  

They're already doing several things they aren't supposed do in a high school cafeteria, the lunchroom monitors are all too chicken to tell a vampire to knock it off, even though everyone knows they're not really dangerous.  

It was quite a scandal a few years back when it turned out that Megamart was bringing corpses back to life to work as zombie slaves in their stockrooms. When word got out, all the other post-humans (vampires, werewolves and all the undead types that turned out to have been living among us for centuries) got really offended and decided to "come out of the coffin" to lobby Congress to close all the loopholes that let Megamart get away with that.  

There was wall-to-wall coverage in the media for months. Every news station had stories of "The Vampire Revelation" like "How the Vampire Invasion Is Threatening Your Family" and "How to Protect Your Newborn from Werewolves." But after a while, everyone figured out that nothing had really changed--vampires and stuff have always been around. Now we just know about it. And they aren't nearly as scary as they'd been made out to be; they're a lot faster and stronger than regular people, and they're apparently more or less immortal, but they don't really drink blood anymore (there's some kind of vegetable compound that's more satisfying and easier to get), and they don't get their "powers" from anything supernatural (it's something to do with protein mutation or something. I forget). Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies turned out to be regular scientific phenomena, and life went pretty much back to normal.  

The teenage vampires are a pain in the ass--they never actually mature, no matter how old they get, since their pituitary glands are sort of frozen in time--but dating one has become the ultimate status symbol. Most girls in school dream of having a loserlike Fred fall in love with them and turn them into a vampire. I guess living in Iowa does make life as a corpse seem exciting.  

"Dead people have no reason to live," I say. "Shouldn't we have stopped thinking vampires were awesome when we found out they spend most of their time acting all emo?"  

"You're just jealous, Alley," says Marie. "Can you honestly tell me that if some guy rose from the grave and spent a hundred lonely years looking for just the right person, then fell for you, you wouldn't think that was totally romantic?"  
"I'd think he was a stalker," I say.  

"It's true love!" says Marie.  

"Get real," says Sadie. "It's hot, but it's just lust. Not that there's anything wrong with that

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Excerpted from I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It by Adam Selzer
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