Zane woke up feeling like he'd been hit by a bus. He was still in his clothes from last night, and reeked of the Mexican vomit he'd covered them in. How had he even managed to get in his car and find his way home?

He groaned and rolled over, shielding his eyes from the harsh sunlight that streamed through his bedroom window, and just in time too.

"How was your hot date last night?" Mrs. Gibson asked from his bedroom doorway.

"Awesome," he managed to say. He hoped he didn't smell as strongly as he thought he did.

"You came in pretty late," she said after a pause.

"Sorry... Time got away from me," he mumbled into his pillow.

"Just don't let it become a habit."

Her footsteps headed down the stairs. Zane rubbed his face and sat up.

"Whoa, what happened to you?"

In a flash Zane had leapt from bed and pulled Owen into the room, shutting the door tight behind them. "Shut up!" he hissed.

"That's so gross." Owen extracted his arm from Zane's grip and recoiled. "Did she finally look at your face?"

"It's my own vomit, loser," Zane said, unbuttoning the shirt.

"And I believe that is the pot calling the kettle black," Owen retorted. "Seriously, can't you hold your liquor?"

"I didn't drink anything. Have you ever heard of bath salts?"

Owen forehead crinkled. "Like that stuff Mom uses when she needs her 'me' time?"

"No, like the drug. Is it a drug?"

"Dude, I'm twelve. Haven't you ever heard of Google?" Owen reached for the doorknob. "Who was this girl, anyway?"

"Like you'd know her."

"Try me."

"Her name is Harmony."

"Harmony Gutierrez? Zane, are you crazy? Everyone knows that girl is bad news."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?"

Owen gestured to the soiled shirt in Zane's hands. "Really? You have no idea?"

"I like her," Zane said. He had a sudden memory of Harmony in the locker room. "I don't know. Last night was kind of a blur."

"Damn." Owen shook his head. "You are in way over your head."

As soon as Owen left the room, Zane tossed his shirt into his laundry bin and opened up his laptop. "Bath salts," he muttered.

Instead of the first result being some girly body lotion store, the top of the screen began with a link to a place called inhalants.org, and the third result was the Wikipedia page for "Bath salts (drug)." Zane clicked on that one.

"...effects similar to amphetamines and cocaine... users have reported symptoms including headaches, heart palpitations, nausea... hallucinations, paranoia, panic attacks, and violent behavior are also common."

The more Zane read, the more alarmed he became. Of all the drugs he had to go and try, it had to be this crazy shit. Yet this alarm was paired with a definite sense of relief. At least now what he remembered seeing the locker room made sense. Harmony eating the flesh from Coach Thompson's face? Yeah, total hallucination. Probably none of that happened. They'd probably spent all night in the hallway at Levi Marsh's house.

At least bath salts didn't seem to have long-term effects. It wasn't like heroin, which could get you addicted from trying it just once. All he had to do was not give in to peer pressure again. Maybe he could be that positive influence in Harmony's life. He could turn her around.

After a shower, Zane felt loads better. He headed downstairs to get some breakfast – he was starving – and start a load of laundry so his mom didn't find any evidence of last night. As he passed the living room, he saw that Owen was watching some kind of horror movie shot reality TV style, and checked his mom's whereabouts in the kitchen before slipping past her into the laundry room. He rotated the laundry so he could put his load in: bonus points with his mom. Lemon fresh laundry detergent had never smelled so good. He closed the lid, stepped into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

"...a home in Rolling Hills is the site of what appears to be an outbreak of an as yet unknown illness. The Center for Disease Control confirmed this morning that approximately five youths between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three have been found dead, and fifteen more have been taken into quarantine..."

Zane wandered into the living room after hearing the words "Rolling Hills." He vaguely recalled seeing a road sign with those words when Harmony was telling him how to get to Levi Marsh's house. To his horror, the widescreen television screen was showing an aerial shot of a mansion that looked very similar to the place he had been last night.

"Can you believe this?" Owen said. "A reporter on Fox News was calling it a 'zombie outbreak.'"

"That's ridiculous," Zane said, gripping his glass of orange juice.

"No, seriously. They said some of the victims had been eaten."

On the screen a woman in a blue power suit faced the camera with a serious expression. "The CDC reports that early symptoms of the illness appear to be a lack of energy and pervasive apathy. A secondary stage involves skin lesions. If you notice a loved one with any of these symptoms, please seek medical attention. Back to you, Leonard."

The news report switched to coverage of floods in the south and then to riots in the Middle East.

"That's crazy," Owen said, throwing up his hands. "There's a zombie outbreak and they think we care about Afghanistan?"

"It isn't a zombie outbreak." Zane made it sound as derisive as he could. "It's skin lesions. That might look like someone got eaten but it's just an infection."

"Sure, that's what 'they'," Owen inserted finger quotes, "want you to think. Fox News knows what they're talking about it. It's zombies. The apocalypse is here, man. And I for one am prepared!"

"Owen, stop yelling. I can hear you all the way in the basement," said Mrs. Gibson. She emerged from downstairs carrying a box of fake flowers. "Now, which one of you decided to put all of my craft supplies in the cellar?"

"Your crafts will do us no good now!" Owen cried. "The zombie apocalypse is upon us!"

Zane and Mrs. Gibson watched him run upstairs.

"That kid has way too much energy," Mrs. Gibson said.

***

While Owen pimped out his paintball gun and culled all the camouflage garments he could find still packed away in boxes, Zane finished his homework for the next week and agonized over his relationship with Harmony.

He had to deal with the fact that his girlfriend – was it too soon to call her his girlfriend? Maybe it was. But she was definitely the girl of his dreams, and he wanted her to be his girlfriend, so why not live in the now?

His girlfriend was a drug addict.

There, he'd said it. And the first step was admitting the problem.

She probably used drugs because she was bored. That was a common reason why people used drugs. He recalled her vacant stare, and how she'd dragged him to that party after their boring dinner. He just had to be more exciting than the drugs. Now, how to do that...

Maybe going to dinner wasn't exactly thrilling. Harmony looked like she came from a wealthy family, so going out to eat wasn't such a big thrill. But what if he cooked dinner for her? Girls loved guys who cooked, right? And he could find a list of icebreaker questions online, something more interesting than "What music are you into?" God. He smacked himself in the forehead. How could he be so dull?

He could even download a kooky, eclectic playlist. Interesting songs that would get the conversation flowing.

He had a plan, and a week to get it underway.