Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 3) by Brent Hartinger

I hadn't intended to. We'd just been walking aimlessly. But my skin wasn't aware and tingly anymore. And remember when I said I felt all weightless and giddy? I felt the pull of gravity again. I suddenly wanted more than anything to get away from this place.
    "What is it?" Otto said, sensing the change in me.
    "Nothing," I said, stepping away. "Let's just keep walking, okay?"
     
    *   *   *
     
    The next day, Thursday, I had Thanksgiving with my parents (and some relatives) early in the afternoon, but I barely ate. I also pretended to be all miffed and sullen (which wasn't hard). So when I said "I'm going over to Gunnar's," my parents were perfectly happy to see me go.
    When I got to Gunnar's house, he and his family and Otto were just starting dinner. Min and Em had also stopped by. Gunnar's mom put us all at this table by ourselves in the kitchen, along with Gunnar's bespectacled, eleven-year-old cousin Myron. For the first time in my life, I didn't mind being at the "kiddies' table." Even with Myron there, it was like my friends and I were having our own Thanksgiving meal, complete with all the fixings. We even had our own little turkey, but I was sitting facing the hollowed-out end where the stuffing had been, so it felt a little like I was being mooned.
    "Gunnar," I said, dishing up the cranberry corn bread stuffing, "this is great! Thanks for having us."
    "Thank my mom," he said. "All I did was make the papier-mache cornucopia out on the grown-ups' table. And that was back in the sixth grade."
    We all laughed and started chowing down. The turkey was moist, and the gravy had a creamy rosemary flavor.
    But as we ate, we talked—about everything under the sun.
    For example, I told everyone an idea I'd had a few months before, when I was weeding in our yard.
    "There should be something called National Dandelion Day," I said. "On one day, every person in the world goes out and digs up all the dandelions in his yard at the very same time. Then there'd be no dandelions to go to seed and send their little evil parachutes out into the world. It would solve the dandelion problem forever. No one would ever have to weed again! Assuming everyone got the roots. You have to get all the root, or the damn thing grows back."
    "It wouldn't work," Min said.
    "Why not?" Gunnar asked. "I'd be into it."
    "Yeah," said Myron, Gunnar's eleven-year-old cousin. "Why not?"
    "Well," Min said, "there'd be plenty of jackasses who wouldn't do it. You know, all the idiots who rant and rave about how they don't want anyone telling them what to do with 'their' land? So they wouldn't weed their yards. And they'd sit on their porches with their shotguns to make sure no one else weeded their yards either. So their dandelions would keep growing, and then they'd go to seed, and they'd screw the whole thing up."
    "Min's right," Em said. "Some people have no idea about the common good. They bitch about low-flow toilets and they go out and buy a huge, expensive SUV and then flip out about the three-cent gas tax that's needed to pay for all the pollution and congestion they're causing. It's like they think they're the only people in the world."
    "I used the bathroom on the plane over here," Otto said. "I went in right after this hotshot businessman-type. But when I got in there, I saw he'd peed all over the toilet seat. It was completely disgusting. He couldn't even have bothered lifting the seat. It never occurred to him that women were going to use that thing, and old and disabled people who might not be able to bend down and clean it first. Or maybe he just didn't care."
    "They need a new sign in airplane bathrooms," Gunnar said. "Rather than the one that says 'As a courtesy to the next passenger, please wipe down the basin after each use.' It should say 'As a courtesy to the next passenger, please don't piss all over the damn toilet.'"
    It was funny, and everyone laughed except me. I wasn't sure why I didn't.
    We kept eating, and eventually we moved on to