There was a crowd in the main hallway.

"Uhhhh-uhhhh." The kids passing from room to room sounded like a moaning symphony.

"Is it always like this?" Jo asked Kendall, shouting above the racket.

"Always," Kendall replied in a loud voice. "You'll get used to it." Just then, Kendall took a deep breathe and let out a huge "Uhhhh."

"If you can't beat them," Jo said with a laugh, "join them."

As they worked their way through the crowd, Jo saw a girl drop a piece of paper. The girl didn't notice. She kept walking, the frills of her fancy blue dress swishing as she continued down the hallway.

"Hey, wait!" Jo called out. "You dropped your—"

The hallway was so packed and the groaning so loud, the girl couldn't possibly hear her. "No worries," Jo said to herself as she bent to get the paper. "I'll get it." By the time she stood up and looked around, the girl was gone.

"What's that?" Kendall asked, raising an eyebrow, eyeing the page in Jo's hand.

"I don't know," Jo said. She looked down to see loopy handwriting on yellowed stationery that was crinkled at the edges as if it had been read over and over again, "It's a letter from someone's mom," she reported to Kendall. "I'm sure whoever it belongs to would want it back, E-mail is fine, but I love getting real mail."

"Tell me who its to," Kendall said. "It'll be easy to return. I know everyone."

Jo was careful not to read the letter—that would be rude. She only checked the beginning and the ending. "'Dear Gertrude.'" And "'Love, Mom.'"

"Who's Gertrude?" Kendall asked.

"I thought you knew everyone," Jo countered with a wink.

Kendall shrugged. "So did I."

"I got this one covered," Jo said."I saw who dropped it." Jo held the pages carefully so she wouldn't add any more crease.

As they reaches the classroom, three girls huddled in front of the door, whispering to one another. The girl who dropped the letter has short dark hair cut in a bob. Her oversize cobalt blue prom dress might have been nice if someone hadn't run over it repeatedly with a car.

Jo rushed forward. "Gertrude?" The girl didn't turn around, so Jo tapped her on the shoulder and shouted over the moans echoing through the hall. "Gertrude?"

A few kids nearby quieted down and stared Jo with wide eyes.

The girl turned to face Jo. Her friends stood beside her, no longer in a tight circle, but in an imposing line, like a wall.

"You're Gertrude, right?" Jo held out the letter.

"No." She looked at the letter, but didn't reach it out to take it.

"But, I—" Jo was confused. She'd seen the girl drop it.

"She said that's not her name." A blond, super thin girl with skin so white it was see-through stepped forward.

"But—"

"It's not her name!" The veins in this girl's arm popped red and blue as she put her hands on her hips.

Jo looked at the letter. "So, are you Gertrude?" she asked.

"I'm Brooke," the pale girl said.

"Oh." Jo squinted her eyes at the third girl.

"Don't even think about it." She pushed her palm in Jo's face like a stop sign. "I'm Betsy." Betsy had caramel-colored skim, and was pretty enough to be a model.

Turning back to the first girl, Jo said, "I saw you drop your letter, Gertrude. Don't you want it back?"

"I'm Brenda," she sneered.

Brooke, Brenda, Betsy—these were the Bs who lived next door to her and Camille. If Gertrude wanted to call herself Brenda, who was she to argue? "Okay, then, sorry to have interrupted you. I'll just take this is Mr. Jones and leave it—"

Brenda's hand shot out and snagged the letter from Jo. She ripped it away.

Jeers and cheers of "Gertrude" filled the hallway.

Brenda spun around, fire in her eyes. "If anyone ever, ever calls me that...they will be sorry." She glared at Jo. "My name is Brenda."

Brenda gathered her friends close and the three of them turned and stormed into the math classroom. The door slammed shut, leaving Kendall and Jo in the hallway.

"Wow," Kendall said. "Your first day at school and you've already annoyed the Mean Ghouls. Good work." Kendall opened the door to let Jo inside the room. "Most people take a lot longer to get their attention."

"I thought I was doing a good thing," Jo said feeling baffled by what had just happened. "And what's with the name Mean Ghouls?"

"I call them Mean Ghouls because that's what they are. They dubbed themselves the Zom-Bs when they realized that all of their name starts with the letter B." Kendall showed Jo where to sit and plopped into the desk next to her. "Brenda must have picked a new first name when she came to ZA." He paused before saying, "Zom-G just doesn't have the same ring."

"Yikes." Jo was glad that she was with same at the front of the room, while the Mean Ghouls sat in the last row. She glanced over her shoulder and was met by three Ghouls casting nasty looks at her.


When math was over, it was time for English. The class was taught by the teacher Jo has met at the nurse's office, the one with the knee-locked legs. Her name was Mrs. Yarrow.

The bell rand and Jo checked her schedule. She had PE next.

Kendall showed her where the locker rooms were, and once they changed, they headed out to the ball field. Jo soon realized that PE at Zombie Academy was anything but typical.

Taking a scrunchie out of her pocket, Jo tied back her hair.

The coach was another fully transformed zombie.

"He played in the Olympics," Kendall told her. "776 BCD, He was a wrestler."

"I'm supposed to believe that he's more than twenty-five hundred year old?" Jo asked.

"Zombies are immortal," Kendall reminded her. "He's the same age now as when he got the disease."

"This is all very strange." Jo said.

Kendall chuckled and said, "Come on. Follow me." Using a hand-drawn map, Kendall helped Jo dodge around several deep holes dug in the field.

Coach Ipthos divided the kids into teams and then threw out a soccer ball.

"Soccer!" Jo said.

"Something like that," Kendall said. "We call it shuffle ball."

Jo and Kendall were on opposite teams. He grinned, challenging her go show what she could do.

"If this is anything like soccer..." Jo muttered to herself, checking out the field. "He has no idea who he's up against."

The game was similar with a few new rules.

No bending knees. Even if you could, bending was a penalty. The deep holes in the field were traps. If you fell in, you're out. Coach would rescue the fallen players at halftime so they could rejoin the game.

Turned out, Kendall was as good as Jo. Maybe better, but she'd never tell him that.

As if the holes weren't enough, the Bs made the game more difficult. They refused to get sweaty so they didn't play. The three of them stood in the center of the field, blocking the way for both teams.

Kendall said that Coach Ipthos like adding another obstacle So he never forced them to play.

Avoiding the Bs, Kendall and Jo dueled near the sidelines. By the end of class, Jo's team won, 3-2.

"That was fun!" Jo said, she went to give Kendall a high five, but he kept his hands behind his back.

She thought he was being a sore loser until he said, "Smacking is a bad idea. I'll lose a finger for sure." Kendall grinned and very carefully put his hand out for a loose shake. "Good game."

Jo lightly touched his hand.

"Let's go." Kendall immediately closed his fingers around hers and held on. "This way." He took out his map and led Jo around the deep field traps and into school.

When they reached the locker rooms, Jo was reluctant to let go.

"See you at lunch," Kendall told her with a wink, casually breaking the hold.

"Okay," Jo replied, glancing down at her war, empty palm.

As he went into the boy's locker rooms to change for lunch, Jo quickly headed to the girl's and searched her backpack for her phone. "Darn." Rachel was in class.

Not wanting to forget, Jo made a note in her spiral to call Rachel.

She couldn't wait to tell her best friend all about Kendall.