The End is Now Page 18

  “We were worried,” her mom said.

  “Very worried,” her dad echoed.

  “I thought we needed food.”

  “But not at the cost of something happening to you. What if something would have happened to you, son?” her dad asked.

  “Nobody hurt me.”

  “But if they did, then how would you feel?”

  “I guess I would feel hurt,” Will answered.

  “Exactly. You would feel hurt.”

  Emily watched the conversation circle around like this for most of the way home. Her dad insisted that what Will did was dangerous, her mom said that giving his prophecy in the store was poor timing, and Emily decided she’d heard enough. “I think you guys should lay off him,” she said.

  “We’re not laying on him,” her mom said.

  “Don’t you think he’s been through enough?”

  “Yes, I think he’s been through more than enough. He must feel awful,” her dad said.

  “Could you guys not talk about me like I’m not here?” Will said.

  “My point is, I think we’ve all been through more than enough. That’s why I don’t want us running around and making prophecies or going on the news or anything else. Why would we put ourselves in harm’s way?”

  “That makes no sense, Jeff,” her mom said.

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No, we’re already in harm’s way. Have you ever even read Revelation?”

  “Amy, don’t get started on this.”

  “On what? The fact that there is going to be fire and plagues and wars and you want to keep us out of harm’s way? This is too big, too important, Jeff! Will is too important to just tuck him away because people are going to say something bad about him. He has been given a gift and he has a responsibility! HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT?! ”

  Emily watched her mom scream this. And it looked like she was a lunatic. Insane. Emily remembered that when she was a kid, her dad loved Terminator 2. And he’d let her stay up late at night and watch it with him, but she had to promise not to tell her mom about it because it was rated R. But in order to be a good father, he told her to close her eyes at the really scary parts like when the T – 1000’s arm becomes a giant sword and stabs the guy through the mouth while he’s drinking milk. Anyway, in Terminator 2 John Conner’s mom was crazy, like mental hospital crazy, because she’d been so consumed with the fact that he was going to be this great, important leader. And that’s what Emily thought her mom seemed like. She was so consumed with Will’s role as prophet, so consumed with the rapture and the end of the world, that she was willing to do anything to prepare herself, her family, her friends, her neighbors, and her community.

  And, in a way, Emily could understand why. After all, when put against the end of the world, most other things seem trivial. How do you worry about what people are saying when lives are at stake? Why would you even really worry about a shortage of food and supplies when everyone is just going to be whisked away? Why even worry that much about safety? After all, it isn’t this life that matters. This life only has weeks or days or hours left in it. The only thing that matters is where everyone will spend their eternity. Because an eternity lasts forever — right? So, in a way, Emily could understand why her mother would discard everything in the present for the greater eternal good.

  There was just one problem.

  The world wasn’t coming to end. Not in Emily’s lifetime, and probably not her kids’ lifetime either. The world and Goodland would go on just like they always had. And this presented a problem. Because it meant that her mother was lying. (Actually, maybe lying was the wrong word. Her mother had been lying about things like the Easter bunny and tooth fairy and Santa Claus. But the rapture did not fit into the tooth fairy category. Her mother actually believed in the Goodland rapture. Which made it much worse than lying. It made her mother delusional, or at the very least, extremely naïve to believe in something so quirky and odd and paranoid.)

  For the first time, Emily began to wonder what else her mother had been delusional and/or naïve about. Politics, sex, religion, the origin of life, the meaning of life — was it possible that her mother had been wrong about all of these topics as well? Of course it was possible. Anything was possible. But her mother had always seemed so sure. She always seemed so dead set in her beliefs. There had never been any room for doubt.

  That might have been part of what made Emily realize her mother was wrong because no one could be right about everything. Emily wondered what she should do now that she was beginning to fear that so many (if not all) of the beliefs that had guided her life up to this point were hollow. She was like Charlton Heston pounding his fist against the wet sand and staring at the Statue of Liberty, realizing that the planet of the apes was earth all along. She was Alice taking her first steps into Wonderland. Everything was backwards. Right was wrong and wrong was right. Things that were always rock solid suddenly felt like shifting sand.

  “Don’t you think so, Emily?” her mom said. Her parents had been talking about something, debating and fighting about Will or the rapture or the prophecy or the face, and Emily hadn’t heard a word of it.

  “I don’t know. I just… I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Emily said. And even though her mom was looking back at her, she just stared at the floor mat. She couldn’t look at her mother. And she couldn’t face all of this. Not right now.

  “Okay, honey,” her mom said. “Jeff, you need to understand, all I’m saying — ”

  But Emily stopped listening. For the rest of the car ride home she tuned out the argument about Will and the prophecy, and she simply stared out the window feeling completely alone and overwhelmed.

  Emily had to get away from her family. She decided to call Curtis because she felt such a connection to him that day when everyone was gathered around Jefferson. And right now she needed to talk with someone she felt connected to. So she called him and told him she wanted to meet at the field out by the fairgrounds.

  “You know, it’s kind of cold outside,” he said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather go to the mall?”

  “Too many people at the mall.”

  “I thought homecoming queens loved malls.”

  “They do. But not right now. Can we just meet at the field?”

  Emily got to the field before Curtis was there. She parked her car in the empty lot and stared at the abandoned fair grounds. In the summer they were always bubbling with life and Emily loved going there. She could walk around for hours, and laugh, eat cotton candy, funnel cakes, and giant turkey legs. She loved the fair-grounds because it was like Neverland there — life seemed to stop and there were no problems like homecoming dresses and dates and family problems and crises of faith. At the fair the only thing that mattered was how long the line to the Tilt-A-Whirl was.

  And even today, looking at the fairgrounds helped melt her problems away. It was beautiful. Icicles hung off the Ferris wheel, making it look like an enormous spider web; frost covered the windows of the funhouse; and the road into the fairgrounds was coated in ice, creating an endlessly welcoming white path. She’d never been out here after an ice storm and she wondered why not — the fairgrounds looked so magical this time of the year, like something out of a Tim Burton movie. So she resolved that in the future she would visit the fairgrounds whenever it got icy just so she could get a mental break and contemplate things like family and faith and the meaning of the universe.

  Curtis pulled his car up and Emily hopped outside to meet him. The two stared in the cold for a moment until Curtis said, “Hey yourself.” Emily looked at him a little puzzled. Then Curtis stammered, “Normally I say, ‘Hey,’ and you say, ‘Hey yourself,’ so I thought I’d just preempt all of that by saying, ‘Hey yourself.’ ”

  “That’s cute,” Emily said in a tone that implied it wasn’t cute even though she actually though it was cute. These are the types of mind games teenage boys and girls play when the
y’re attracted to each other.

  “I thought so,” Curtis said. “So how are you doing?” His nose was already Rudolph red from the cold. It was adorable.

  “My family’s crazy,” she answered.

  “All families are crazy.”

  “My family believes this town is about to come to its end.”

  “A lot of people believe this town is about to come to its end.”

  “My family caused everyone to believe that.”

  “Touché.”

  “Why haven’t you asked me to homecoming?” Emily asked. Then she was a little embarrassed for having asked. It was kind of an abrupt subject change. But she could not go on any longer until she knew the answer. And besides, she shouldn’t be nearly as embarrassed as Curtis. He should have asked her by now. How could he not see how lucky he was? She was willing to go with him. She was putting herself out there. And she never put herself out there.

  “Two reasons I haven’t asked. One, I thought you didn’t want to go with me,” Curtis said.

  “Even if I did, I couldn’t act like I did,” Emily said.

  “Okay, well then, I’ll be honest and say the second reason is that I don’t want to go with you anymore.”

  “You don’t what?” Emily said. It was all she could manage. She suddenly felt like that girl in junior high again — the girl she vowed she’d never become — the girl who was crying and alone in the bathroom. That girl was the whole reason she wanted to become homecoming queen, so she could put all of that behind her. Only now she was morphing into that pathetic, crying girl right in front of Curtis’ eyes. How was this happening? He was supposed to be her backup and he was rejecting her.

  But it was worse than that.

  She needed a boy to like her and care for her and hold her right now. Her family was falling apart. Her parents didn’t understand who she was anymore. Her entire belief system up to this point was a sham. She’d been dodging calls from Derrick and Philip because she thought it would be so much more adventurous to go with Curtis, only now Derrick and Philip had other cute, smiley blonde girls who’d wear bubble-gum pink dresses to homecoming. Curtis was her last chance. And he was ditching her, which meant she had absolutely no chance of becoming homecoming queen — and that meant since sunrise that day, every ounce of meaning she’d attached her life to in the last seventeen years had now crumbled into nothing.

  “I should probably leave,” Emily said.

  She fished her keys out of her pocket. She was already picturing her ride home where she would blare love songs and cry and scream when Curtis said, “I don’t want to ask you to homecoming, but I do want to ask you something else.”

  “What? What could you possibly want to ask me right now?”

  Curtis got on one knee. His designer jeans were getting ice and dirt all over them, but he didn’t seem to notice as he grabbed Emily’s hand and asked, “Will you marry me?”

  Emily ripped her hand away. “You are a jerk. You reject me and now you’re making fun of me?”

  “How’s asking for someone’s hand in marriage making fun of them?”

  “Let me get this straight, you won’t ask me to homecoming but you want me to marry you?”

  “Why waste time with homecoming? What if everything really ends? I know it won’t, but what if it does? Wouldn’t it be nice to be married? To have our own little place that we could decorate however we wanted, a place where we could invite friends over for Rummy tournaments and wine parties and where we could play whatever music we wanted to play anytime, day or night.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re being serious,” Emily said.

  “All I’m saying is there’s some weird stuff going on in this town. It’s got me thinking that I don’t want to watch it end all alone. I mean, two days ago I was scared about asking you to homecoming. I was actually scared that you would say no. Now today, there are much bigger fears like the town being sealed off, storms ripping buildings apart, and the apocalypse taking us or killing us or doing something to us all. That should scare the freaking daylights out of me. But it doesn’t. Because do you know what actually scares me? This could all end and I could have wasted all my time being so worried about being rejected that I didn’t ask you out. It scares me that things could come to an end, which would mean I’d never get a chance to get to know this amazing girl that I’m staring at right now.”

  This is going to end badly, Emily thought. She just wanted a nice boy to take her to homecoming. She didn’t want to actually fall in love with him. She didn’t want to start caring about him and thinking about him for every waking moment. That was the last thing she needed. And getting married? Did she really want that? No, but then again, Curtis was right. Everyone was doing whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. It might as well have become the mantra of Goodland: If it feels good, do it because we’re all just going to be raptured anyway.

  If my family’s going to act crazy, I might as well join them, she thought.

  Emily looked at Curtis and smiled. He smiled back, waiting for her to say something. She didn’t say a word — she just lunged at Curtis, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. She could feel his ice-cold Rudolph nose mashed against her face, but she didn’t care. She was feeling warmer already.

  GLENN DAVIS

  Glenn Davis hated being cold. Even in the dead of summer he liked to have his heater blaring. He liked to walk around his house in shorts, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt in the middle of January because it felt like he was beating nature. He felt almost godlike when he set his house at whatever temperature he wanted despite what was going on outside.

  He wasn’t sure what he thought about all this rapture stuff; he didn’t know if he should side with the Realists, the Prepared, or if there was some other third party he could side with.

  But he’d been standing in the freezer aisle with everyone else just trying to get some TV dinners when that Henderson boy walked in and proclaimed that the power was leaving. As soon as that boy left, everyone was yammering away about what “the power is leaving” meant. Everyone in the grocery aisle quickly decided the boy was talking about electricity, running water, and natural gas.

  All of that would soon be gone.

  And Glenn thought that even if it didn’t go out, one of the fanatics would make sure it went out just to prove a point. The thought of no power petrified Glenn. It was freezing outside. He wasn’t ready for winter and now ice was everywhere. Having to face that without a heater was nearly enough to drive him insane.

  So while everyone else was debating the nuances of what the boy’s prophecy meant, saying things like, “Why did he say, ‘The power is leaving’ instead of, ‘The power will leave’? Does that mean it’s leaving right now?” Glenn darted out the door of the Super Mart.

  He jumped in his car and sped down the road thinking of everything that was suddenly at stake. Soon microwaves, hair dryers, televisions, iPods, toaster ovens, laptop and desktop computers, coffee makers, lamps, electric razors, Crock-Pots, and cell phones would be rendered useless things of the past.

  He realized how used to technology the people of Goodland had become. He’d been around Goodland for forty-seven years, and it was always a town that prided itself on resisting the change that technology imposes on all of us. They wanted to be old-fashioned. They wanted to churn their own butter and farm their own vegetables and slaughter their own organic chickens.

  When he was a boy, everyone hung their laundry outside with clothespins even though everyone else in the country had a device cleverly called “a dryer” that would dry their laundry for them. And when technology finally crow-barred its way into their lives, Glenn watched as everyone tried to cling to the old technology even when new and better technology was in its place. They clung to Beta tapes long after it was clear that VHS had won the war, and right after they switched to VHS, DVDs appeared on the scene. They tried to avoid the digital age like the plague.

  But they lost every battle.

>   Glenn didn’t care about all of that. He wasn’t much for gadgets. But living without heat was unthinkable. So he knew he needed to get a generator as soon as possible. And besides, he realized that once the power went out, all those who had generators would become kings. They’d be like cavemen who’d discovered the secret of fire.

  Glenn smiled as he realized how important he was about to become. For once in his life he wouldn’t be inferior. He had no idea what it would feel like to be important. He wasn’t smart enough, so he didn’t get into the right college. He wasn’t good-looking or charming enough, so he could never find the right girl to like him, and by the time he was ready for any girl to like him, it was too late. He was too old and never got married. He didn’t have any of the things that society thought were valuable. The only thing that he could control was how hot it was in his house during the winter or how cool it was during the summer.

  But things were about to be different.

  He would have power when everyone else did not. He could hire bodyguards to watch his generator and supermodels to hang around his house and the best chefs to cook him meals. And they’d all be willing to because he’d be the only one with a working TV. Not to mention that the only alternative would be hanging around a bonfire in the middle of some street trying to stay warm and cook a meager amount of food.

  Throughout history there were always equalizers in society. The printing press, the first handgun, Model T cars, the television, and internet stock trading all changed who was powerful in society. With all electricity leaving, the totem pole was about to once again get reshuffled and I’m going to end up on top, Glenn thought as he walked into the supply store.