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"What can I do for you?"

"I ondering if there’s a video-rental store around here that’s open?"

"There is one but twenty minutes away Would you like h the back roads of Massachusetts until we reached a dingy strip mall with a liquor store, a convenience store, a barber shop, an ice-creaawky teenage boy behind the counter eyed us as we caht to the horror section in the back

Withoutmovies from the shelves, all about the Undead Dawn of the Dead, The Walking Dead, White Zo Dead, and about two dozen others When I was finished, I brought the the rest

The boy behind the counter smiled, his teeth crooked and covered with braces "A zorin "I love this one," he said, holding up a houlish creature on the cover "It’s a classic"

I nodded "Yeah"

"These are due back in seven days," he said, ringing us up

"That’s fine," Dustin said fros and left

Dustin set up the DVD player in the Red Room, and I arbitrarily picked a es of the Undead flashed in front of rave, ce as they ran to their houses, chased by zombies; men trapped in their cars, swarmed by the Undead Over each zo to come to terms hat he was

I didn’t leave the Red Roo in and out of sleep to the blue light of the screen Dustin left plates of food outside the door, but I barely touched therandfather ca aardly over the couch before giving up Every so often I would venture down the hall to get a glass of water from the bathrooroaned as the days grew darker Gusts of wind rattled the s I couldn’t eat or sleep Dante continued to call every night, but I wasn’t ready to talk to him "Tell him I’ a silver platter with a call note I couldn’t talk to hi to say to hi dead and that you have a secret desire to kill httime was the hardest I called Annie, but I couldn’t tell her about Dante because, where would I begin? So I told her about the mansion and about Eleanor, and she told me about my old friends, who seeone, friends far away, and Dante Undead, I felt so lonely that soht I couldn’t bear it I felt betrayed and used and alone--completely and utterly alone Now that I knehat Dante was, I couldn’t fathom how I hadn’t seen it before I wanted to believe that Dante was the kind of boy I’d always dreamed of, the kind of boy as too perfect to actually exist And he didn’t Or at least not exactly Every night I stayed up until the early hours of theinto the darkness until I cried myself into a fitful, haunted sleep