It’s Monday and Clinton’s dragged me over to have lunch with his group of friends again. They all smile – Robyn, Enrico, Nomhle, Clinton, Baka, Renée – as they unpack their lunches. Robyn is breaking her sandwich in half and handing the other half to Nomhle, who doesn’t seem to have brought lunch today. Baka is picking out the raisins from his peanut butter sandwich, grumbling how nuts and fruit do not belong together, and handing them over to Nomhle, too.
“What about fruit cake?” Robyn asks. “That’s fruit and nuts together, right?”
“No,” Baka says. “It is wrong. Just like pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza, raisins should stay away from nuts.”
“But you’re eating peanut butter,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m taking out the raisins that my mama keeps sneaking in there.”
“But peanuts are not nuts.”
He grins wide, teeth showing. “Right, this I’ve got to hear.”
I clamp my lips together. He doesn’t want to hear.
“No, come on. Tell me,” he says.
“Peanuts are legumes,” I whisper. “Like lentils.”
“There you go,” Baka nods. “I don’t eat raisins with lentils, either.”
I turn to my lunch. It is broccoli and brown rice, leftovers from dinner last night. I’d got a sweet deal on the broccoli. Yet my father picked out every piece, dumping it back into the main dish. Then he smothered his rice in mayonnaise and took a bigger helping of chicken, which he salted heavily. That man is going to have diabetes 2 soon, and I will only be able to tell the doctors that I tried.
“So,” Renée says, “I met this guy at a party this weekend.”
Everyone looks at her.
“He asked me the weirdest question.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Enrico says.
“He said, ‘If a vampire bites a zombie does the zombie become a vampire or the vampire become a zombie?’”
“That’s a tricky one,” Clinton says.
“Stupid,” Nomhle says.
“This is easy,” Baka says.
“Yeah, what’s your answer, then?” Renée says.
“They’d become vampire-zombies. Both of them.”
“Yuck,” Robyn says. “I hope you didn’t have sex with this guy.”
Renée smiles.
Robyn looks up at the sky and sighs. “Tell me, please, you at least used a condom.”
“Of course!” Renée looking insulted. “What do you think I am, stupid?”
“Well,” Baka says, “you did just admit to sleeping with a guy who asks about things that don’t exist. Not exactly like our Wiki here, who at least talks about real facts.”
“How do you know zombies don’t exist?” Renée says. “I mean, there are vampire bats, so there must be a zombie something. Right Wiki?”
Now everyone is looking at me.
“Don’t abandon me now,” Renée says. “Help a girl out.”
“Ants,” I say.
Tell us: Renée is very blunt about her sex life and her sexual desires. How do you feel about that?