There are few things that qualify as a girl's worst nightmare, but you can bet the zombie apocalypse is one of them. I know, dramatic and cliché, but true. Second on that list is exams, and third is boys. Just the idea of them in general, being there and making everything feel awkward and then what if there’s brains on your shirt or something? Like I said, nightmare. But then if you combine the zombies with the exams...ugh. Now that is what I call a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions. 
The whole zombie apocalypse started out pretty slow about the end of my sophomore year of high school. Thankfully we didn’t actually have final exams. No, they were canceled when the entire country went on red alert and a state of crisis was officially declared. Now that it’s all quieted down, lots of things have changed. Mostly, I’ve changed. I mean, seeing the horror of the living dead? Even when you have a friend like Jasmin to have your back, it’s hard. So I hardened up, and so did Jasmin. The entire world changed along with us. Thankfully, we pulled ourselves back in time to keep the infrastructure we had worked so hard to build, but it went worse for the smaller countries, the poorer ones, and the more crowded ones. China’s been completely quarantined, still is. They think everyone inside’s been turned. At least America dealt with the crisis well enough in the end. There’s still zombies of course, I mean, you can’t find them all, but now that school’s back in session, zombie survival class helps a lot.

Oh yeah. School. See, after we went through about a year of panic and plague, the Zombie Defense Teams, sort of like vamped up SWAT guys, deployed all over the country and escorted survivors back to their homes if they were clear enough and to the nearest relocation center if they weren’t. That was back in April. Now life has started its steady march back to a level of relative normality, and normality means school. So when a ZDT found Jasmin and me and brought us back home, they informed us that we had four months until we were expected to return to our high school and resume our education. That meant junior year in the middle of an apocalypse.

Of course we were expecting the same old droning school days as before, teachers and homework and stuff like that. But instead we found Practical Sciences for Survival classes, Wildlife Survival classes, Zombie Survival classes, and a handful of other "necessary to survival" courses. Gone were the days of humiliation in P.E., the hours of math problems, the in-class essays, and standardized testing we had spent ten years dealing with. Now, school is a live-or-die kind of deal. They bring in live zombies to fight and practice on, anatomy is the subject with the most AP options available, and detention consists of clearing the fields of crawling corpses.

I told you it was a big difference.

I guess the point of telling you all of this is so you understand that life wasn’t always this way. There weren’t always zombies on the subways, we used to have foreign language electives, and yes, we walked around without battle armor.

I think how life used to be got lost in the translation from then to now. Sure, they managed to get the Internet back up, and there's still cable tv. I mean, it's been a year, not long enough for the entire world to crumble. But this reminiscing isn't really moving the story along. I'll start with the beginning of the school year, because that's the easiest place to begin.

It's September first, and another night of reruns on the tv. Jasmin and I should be thankful that the house wasn't looted and we still have a functioning television, but mostly, we're just bored of watching the same old shows. There's a few of them that are still coming out with new episodes, since either most or all of the cast miraculously survived, but it's not like we have the patience to watch them. Both of us are dreading tomorrow, when we'll have to get up at five just to bike all the way to school. At least we're allowed to bring weapons to school now. The zombies on the road can be a serious annoyance, and without weapons, we'd both be lunch. Or breakfast. 
"So...do you want to get up early tomorrow? Make sure we can get there in time?" I'm unsure about my suggestion. Jasmin just shrugs.
"What if we just didn't go? It isn't like we can't give them an excuse. 'Oh yeah, sorry I missed school the other day, it's just there were a whole bunch of these things called zombies, you might have heard of them.' Do they honestly think that all the kids in the district are just gonna find their ways to the school building, in the open, with zombies in the woods?" What she says could be funny, but Jasmin is angry. She's not saying it ironically, she's angry at the people who are putting a whole group of teenagers in unnecessary danger. 
"I don't think we have a choice." Truthfully, I really don't. I remember the ZDT captain who left us at the house. The way he had said "you will return to school on September second to continue your education" didn't really leave a lot of doubt in my mind that we would be in some severe trouble if we didn't show. 
"But why not? We survived for months on our own. It's not like we can't go on without school. The least they could do is treat us like adults capable of making our own choices." Her teen-justice tirade is one she slips back into frequently. I understand completely where she's coming from. There was an apocalypse. You'd think the people who were left would let go of petty surface disagreements, since there aren't many of us. But no, whenever an adult finds a teenager who's been living on their own and doing perfectly fine, they try to pull rank and tell the "kid" what to do. 
"I don't know," I say at last, and that's that. We lapse into silence, and there's something painful about it, not because I wish Jasmin would try to keep talking, but because it should be filled with the voices of my parents or the barking of my dog.

That's one of the many things the apocalypse took away; my family. Both of my parents turned early on, and when I left home, I had to turn my dog loose. I couldn't kill him, but bringing him with me wasn't an option. Before, I had thought mostly about the people I cared about, not the animals. And then, after I lost everything, giving up my dog was one of the hardest things to do.

I suppose you need to know how my parents died, in the end. When my mom was bitten, my dad and I were inside. She was out working in the garden when something banged on the door.
By the time I got there, there was nothing. I thought it was just a trick of the wind, went back to the kitchen, and then, a few minutes later, my mom screamed. By the time my dad and I got outside, both of us were terrified. Put yourself in that situation and tell me you wouldn't be. The thing that really got me was that it was just a little kid. He had brown hair and a blue and green striped shirt, and he was covered in my mom's blood.

Pause the picture right there. My dad and I have just walked outside to find my mom struggling with this little kid. She's screaming, the kid has his jaws clamped on her arm and is taking out a chunk. My dog is whimpering and crying, huddled by the greenhouse corner. You'd think that, after years of zombie lore and horror flicks, I would understand what was happening. You'd think I would understand that I could not save my mom, no matter what I did. You'd think I would realize someone would have to put her down.

But basically all I did was fall right on my ass, staring in disbelief. Dad stepped forward, and I couldn't say anything, couldn't warn him, as he reached for the kid's head and tried to pull him away. That was when I saw the kid's eyes, like curdled milk. The kid unclamped his jaws from my mom's arm and instead slammed them down on my dad's hand.

The difference between that state of panic then and my cold acceptance now frightens me every time I give myself a moment to think on it.

"All right, I can't take this anymore. I'm gonna go upstairs and get to sleep." Jasmin looks over at me, then nods. It's funny, but going upstairs alone frightens me now more than ever. The pictures on the wall are the worst part. Jasmin stands, and we both head to the separate doors and windows, throwing bolts and turning locks. As I get to the back door, I hear a whine and look out.

Small miracles mean everything now, and as I look at the very much alive and terrified face of my dog, the way life used to be floods back into my brain. I open the door immediately and let him in, ignoring his happy licking and checking for bites in his bedraggled fur. When I find none, I shut the door behind him, bury my face in his neck, and try not to cry.

This happens a lot, I won't lie. It happened less when Jasmin and I were on the road, simply because there was no time for it, but I burst into tears at a lot of simple things now. I sobbed for hours when we were brought back to my home, when I opened the door to my parents' room, when I found all three of my cats eating birds, and when I curled up in my bed with a teddy bear I hadn't held since I was ten. Being on the road had meant no memories, but going home meant everything would be there, both good and bad. This sounds stupid, but it feels like I had a family again.

And that scares me, because in every single story, the pet always dies.

"Are you headed up or what? You said you were," Jasmin asks. I wipe my eyes and turn to face her.

"Just a sec." The deadbolts click into place, the perimeter turns on, and I grab the dog bowl from the counter. My dog follows me upstairs, wagging his tail softly as Jasmin and I go up to the second floor and then the attic, which we insulated and finished as a sort of summer project. The zombie apocalypse does have its boring moments. When I fill the cat dishes with food, all three of the cats come running. I hurry back down and shut the hallway door, and then the attic door at the bottom of the steps, and then the one up at the top of the steps.

Doors are nice. Doors are safe. So are steps. If you go up as far as you can and then destroy the steps, the zombies can't come up to eat your flesh. That's why they're still finding so many people on the top floors of high rises, and this is why Jasmin and I finished the attic and made it into an apartment. The attic is where everything we need goes, everything we treasure. The generator is up here, and so are the seeds for the garden, and so is the water filter and all our weapons. All the books are here, all our clothes, even a tv.

I put the food out and shut the doors, locking us in. I watch a stray wander around for a minute on the security camera, and then fall back onto my bed. Doubts about this "brave new school" start forming in my head. I was good at school before, but it's been almost a whole year without algebra. What if I suck? What if I go from the top of the class to the bottom? And what are we even going to school for, anyway? To go to college? It's not like we can really do much with education until the world gets back on its feet. There could be another reason for this, like in every single Dystopian YA novel where the government goes after the kids through the education system. Okay Laura, now you're just being stupid. After I think about it just long enough to worry myself, I'm distracted by my dog whimpering and licking  happily at my dangling hand. I pat the bed beside me and he jumps up, then curls up on the sheets. 
For a few minutes, I just pet him and wonder if maybe I should call to check up on my cousins in North Carolina, but then decide against it. They still think my parents and my sister are alive, and how can I tell them the truth? I still haven't been able to tell myself that it was justified, that I did what I had to do. It still feels like a lie. The hard-trained sarcastic inner armor cracks for a moment, and I think about every person I've had to kill. I feel simultaneously five and a million years old. There were my parents, my sister, the three families left on my street, the desk clerk at the CVS, several of my friends, and then the nameless hordes who I will never know. They were already dead, stop making yourself more than you are. But I can't, and that's the problem. Sometimes I look at my hands and I can't help but think these are the hands that have killed hundreds of people.

"We don't talk anymore." Jasmin's voice startles me, and I look up. She sits on the edge of her bed, already in her sleep tank and shorts.

"What?"

"I said we don't talk anymore." She's right, but how do I agree with her? I can't just say 'yeah,' because that's about as antisocial as it gets.

"I guess we don't quite know what we should say." At least that's true for me. I was never very good at the whole social thing before all this happened, and having most of your friends turn into living corpses that then try to, you know, eat your flesh kind of takes away all of your connections. "It's not like we can talk about the old world, mostly because it makes both of us depressed, and we can't really talk about school, because when we go back, half of the people we knew won't be there, and that will probably depress us more."

Not to mention that one of those people was my boyfriend. It wasn't like we knew we were 'in love' or anything stupid like that, but he was still my boyfriend. Not only that, Andy was one of my best friends. He knew me, he knew how to make me laugh, how to make me happy, how to read me. The thing is, I don't know if he's dead. I don't know if he's been brought back home by the ZDT, or if he's still out there, searching for family, or if he's out there looking for brains and a juicy arm. He could be at school tomorrow, but then again, he could not.

Andy leaving was one of the things that haunted me for a long time. He stayed with me for a while, him and two other kids from our school who I found on a supply run. Then there was an attack, and the two kids were bitten. We put them down, and Andy decided he had to find out if his relatives out of town were all right.

We argued about that. We shouted so loudly that a whole herd surrounded the house. Even though we could hear them moaning and groaning and slamming on the boarded up windows, we kept at it. I didn't want to leave. I told him he was insane and he was going to get himself killed. He told me that I was just bitter that my family was gone and his might still be there for him.

That was when I lost it. I had been the one to kill both my parents. In fact, I had had to put down most of my neighbors. When Andy told me I was bitter, I snapped. Not because it was untrue, but because it was true, and he didn't get it. He didn't get that I needed the people who I loved to be safe and stay that way, and how could I have told him then? If I had only swallowed my pride, he wouldn't have packed a bag with food and water and left the next morning.

And that was how I was when I met up with Jasmin, and words weren't necessary at first. But now, with the world getting back on its feet, words are more important than ever before, and we can't seem to find them.

"We could pretend," Jasmin barely whispers. "We could pretend that we're still going to go back and see Annie Behre as drunk as a frat guy at a keg party, or Carrie already studying for some AP, or Rutledge terrifying the freshmen, or anything." The idea made me smile. Pretending sounded innocent and sweet, like a kid playing make-believe. I bent over the edge of the bed and pulled out a board game, and Jasmin smiled. We spend the next hours playing monopoly and bashing the popular kids we had grown up with, and finally, when we fall asleep, life feels normal.

The next morning still feels saturated with that normality, and as I hurriedly shower, Jasmin goes downstairs and takes care of the few crawlers that worked their way into our yard last night. With my hair still wet and falling in front of my eyes, I stand in front of my closet, wrapped in a towel. Part of me wants to dress like a normal teenager, like some fashion obsessed girl who has never had to bash a corpse's skull in. The other part of me, the rational part, knows that not wearing combat gear could kill me.

The rational part wins, thank god, but when I fasten my belt and hook on the duct tape stockings of my leg armor, I still wonder what it might be to go outside without armor again. Okay, never mind, that would be stupid. It might start off "freeing" and all that crap, which would be great. Then it would rapidly turn less freeing if my blade got stuck in some zombie's skull and another one chomped through my pants before I could pull it out. A few layers of duct tape slow down teeth, and slowing down those teeth could save my life.

It might not look that cool, but living looks cooler. Socks are next, and then I pull on my boots. Okay, boots are pretty badass looking. Thick-soled combat boots are one of the apocalypse's great fashion statements. Steel toed boots are even better, because you can crush a zombie head with one stomp. I fasten my knife to the outside of my boot, put on my wrist guards, snap on my thigh sheaths, and cross my katanas behind my back.

"I had no idea we were going into battle," Jasmin says. Her voice startles me, and I jump. Of course, she's wearing standard gear too, so it's not like she thinks it's unnecessary. Standard gear for her is black everything and a whole lot of guns. There's the sniper rifle on her back, the two antique revolvers by her side (they look badass, but are more use as clubs than guns), the .99 millimeter on her hip, and the 64 cal strapped to her shin. The only thing different is that she's actually taken the time to find earrings and braid her hair to the side, which, given the side-cut she has courtesy of some overly grabby zombie hands, looks pretty metal.

"Don't you dare tell me you never wanted to look this badass for school, because that would be a lie." For a minute, she tries to keep a straight face, but it slips into a grin with ease.

"And we both know I never lie." I roll my eyes at her sarcasm, snap a loop of cable onto my belt, and pull on my gloves.

"Let's just get to school before we get ourselves killed."

The bike ride there is pretty uneventful. Only a few zombies, and Jasmin takes care of them, making sure to use her silencer, because it is a goddamn Monday morning and neither of us want to deal with a herd this early. And there I had been, thinking the apocalypse was the end of school forever.

A lot of the houses are still swarming with ZDTs. We pass some pretty huge bonfires, all lighting the morning with the blaze of the finally-dead undead. I want to stop when we pass Andy's development, ask the ZDT cleaning up if they know anything, but Jasmin keeps pedaling, so I keep up with her. She doesn't look when we pass her old development. The things was so big, so full of people who turned, that instead of going and individually bagging and tagging and identifying, the ZDT's just burned the whole thing. Jasmin and I knew from unfortunate experience that no one alive was still in there. That included Jasmin's parents and sister.

We expect just a fence around the school building, but when we get to Bridge Street, we see something different entirely. An entire military blockade, complete with sandbags and fortifications, secures the street. There's swarms of ZDT's and regular soldiers, and Jasmin and I are greeted with claps and cheers.

"The first female members of the Junior class!" someone shouts, and another voice says "If they didn't learn half their moves from Res Evil, I'll eat a whole herd." Jasmin and I look at each other, smile a bit, and then pedal through a gap. Some of the guys hold out hands to high five, and the positive energy is infectious. The two of us are both laughing and smiling by the time we get to the school doors, where we're stopped by a severe looking man in uniform.

After we lock our bikes up and are subjected to a whole barrage of tests (no blood tests, thank you god), we are ushered through into the lobby of the school. Mostly, it looks the same as it always has. There's still the windows to the library, the office is still there, but the glass is thicker, stronger. Jasmin and I look around. With us in the lobby are about thirty other kids, and for a minute I think they're staring at the soldiers behind the two of us, but then I catch a guy from our grade ogling Jasmin.

We are, indisputably, the most badass looking people there, besides being the only girls. Not only that, we're cleaner and better fed than a lot of these people. Spencer, a baseball player, a guy who was in great shape, is gaunt and skeletal. George, a kid who used to be a major pothead, is hardly recognizable. And they're all looking at us.

"It's good to be back."