The End is Now Page 8

  The newscast cut back to the studio where Nancy Palmer was looking concerned. Emily was impressed by how Nancy always looked beautiful and confident. Emily thought, I bet she was homecoming queen once upon a time. Then Nancy interrupted Emily’s thoughts by asking, “Sean, do we have any idea if the school is shutting down tomorrow?”

  “The school will be open for classes,” Sean answered. “Administration has guaranteed the school will be safe and assures extra police protection will be on hand. They also want parents to know that all absences must be excused like normal, should parents decide to keep their students home.”

  “Thank you, Sean,” Nancy said.

  Then Nancy looked into the camera and said, “To get a different perspective on this story we have contacted Bill Thorpe, a theologian at Goodland Community College, and Rhonda Vernon, a child psychologist at Cedar Brooks Mental Health Center.”

  The newscast cut to a split screen with the theologian on one side and the psychologist on the other. “Good evening,” Nancy said.

  “Good evening,” the theologian and psychologist said.

  “Let’s start with the day that this incident is allegedly going to take place. The student said three days, but what does that mean exactly? A full seventy-two hours?” Nancy asked.

  “I believe it means tomorrow,” the theologian said. “Prophecies are not concerned about hours nearly as much as days. Take Jesus, for instance. He died Friday at three p.m. He was raised from the dead by Sunday sometime in the morning. Many scholars believe he was only dead for a total of around forty to forty-two hours, but that still counts as three days.”

  “So do you believe the school is going to be destroyed tomorrow?” Nancy asked.

  “No. Not at all. I just think that is what the boy meant,” the theologian answered.

  “Okay,” Nancy said. “Dr. Vernon — if the school is fully guarded for the next few days and the student who’s allegedly making threats is nowhere near the school, do parents have anything to fear?”

  “Actually, they could,” the psychologist said. “In a school violence situation, the attacker often doesn’t work alone. In many cases there are accomplices, several students that work together to form an attack.”

  “Who said anything about attacking? Jeff, they’re putting words into his mouth!” Emily’s mom shouted as she jumped up from the couch.

  “I know,” her dad said.

  The newscast continued. It was almost as if Nancy had heard her mom’s objection. “Okay, but what if this isn’t an attack or a threat? There are some people who believe this prediction is religious. We talked with many in town who believe the boy’s prediction has something to do with Armageddon.”

  “Sure, that’s possible,” the psychologist agreed. “With all of the religious fears that are inherent in Goodland, it’s possible the boy had some form of a hallucination that made him believe the end of the world was coming. He could have even thought it was a vision. In this case the student would believe that he was helping by predicting the school’s destruction.”

  “I think calling it ‘religious fears’ is a bit condescending,” the theologian said.

  “Then how would you say it?” the psychologist asked.

  “I’d say the boy and many in this town have beliefs in a higher power.”

  “Semantics aside,” Nancy interrupted, “is there any chance this student actually had a vision?”

  “I suppose anything is possible, but I doubt it,” the theologian said.

  “Rhonda?” Nancy asked.

  “What is this, the sixteenth century? No, there is no chance. Visions are what we called things before we could diagnose them as psychological disorders.”

  “Well, we’ll be watching as this story develops. Thank you for joining us.” Nancy quickly moved along to other news stories. Apparently there were problems with a drainage system and some of the local livestock were getting sick.

  “Psychological disorders. Jeff, they’re making our son look like he’s a nutcase.”

  Emily was a little shocked that her mom would say this in front of Will. But he didn’t seem to mind; he just stared at the laces on his sneakers as if they held the answers to all the problems of the universe.

  “This will all go away in a couple of days,” her dad answered.

  “A couple of days!”

  “Let’s talk in the other room honey,” her dad said. Emily knew what he was doing. Her dad’s parents were divorced at a young age, so he never wanted to fight in front of the kids. Of course, they could always hear them when they were in another room. But Emily knew it made her dad feel better so she never pointed that out.

  He gave the remote to Will. “You can watch anything you want buddy. We’re just going to talk for a few minutes.” And then Emily watched her parents leave the room.

  Will started clicking through the channels. Cartoons. History. Rambo. Martha Stewart. CNN. Will didn’t seem to care what he was watching. Seeing the picture on the TV change every two seconds was all that mattered to him. Emily was sure he was upset by what was said about him in the news. All of his friends, teachers, and everyone else in town was thinking he was a freak with some sort of psychological disorder.

  “You okay?” Emily asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Will said.

  “Don’t even worry about what they were saying,” Emily said. She felt awful for her baby brother. He didn’t deserve this. He was just a kid. He’d probably never had a girlfriend. He’d never had a locker, and he’d never had to keep his own schedule going from one class to the next. You don’t have to do that until junior high. It’s intimidating the first time you have to do that, when you’re suddenly responsible for getting yourself to class on time with the right books. But it teaches you responsibility. It prepares you for the real world. Will hadn’t had any of that preparation.

  Yet tonight he was instantly thrust into the real world as all these newscasters and people in town were talking about him. They were making judgments about him without even having met him. Most of them weren’t even there when he said those things at his school.

  Will continued to stare at the TV.

  “You know those people on the news just make stuff up so everyone will watch,” Emily said.

  “I know. For sure. I don’t even care. I mean, I’ve just about forgotten what they said anyway,” Will said. Emily was pretty sure his eyes were watering up.

  Emily didn’t say anything about that. And she didn’t know what else she could say to make things better. So she just sat silently in the living room with her baby brother, watching him flick through the channels, searching for something amidst all the choices cable television had to offer.

  EMILY HENDERSON

  In one sense, Emily felt bad for her little brother. She could see the toll the rapture predictions and the town’s whispers and gossiping were taking on him. She should be doing everything she could to validate him and help him get his message out there.

  The problem was that in another much more urgent, real, and everyday sense, Emily understood that her brother’s soothsaying was creating a serious problem in her social life. There were enough real problems out in the world already. Why did Will have to be making them up? And why did he have to be doing all of this now? This was the most important week of Emily’s life. She planned on becoming homecoming queen. It was the highest honor that any girl could achieve in high school. It would be something she could always look back on proudly, something she could tell her grandchildren about.

  Now, it’s entirely possible this was a selfish goal. Perhaps Emily was shallow for thinking about how Will’s meltdown was messing with her chances of getting to wear a plastic crown from the dollar store while holding a bouquet of pink roses. If that’s the case, you just had to forgive Emily. She’d had this goal locked in her sights every day for the last six years. Emily decided that she was going to become homecoming queen after her first day in junior high. Actually, she made this goal exactly ei
ght minutes into her first lunch as a junior high school student.

  At Jefferson Elementary, Emily always ate lunch with Marsha, Tonya, and Becka. She didn’t really even remember how they became friends. They’d always been friends. But at her first junior high lunch she realized she didn’t know anyone.

  Not a soul.

  Well, okay, she “knew” other kids. But not enough to sit by them at lunch. You had to really know someone to do that. You had to know them well enough to share the same piece of chewed gum. It was that intimate.

  So she clutched her lunch tray and walked slowly through the room. She was looking for someone — anyone — to sit by. Marsha’s family had moved to Wichita that summer so that wasn’t helping. And Tonya had “B” lunch so she was out. Emily continued to search the lunchroom for a friendly face. Only now it was getting obvious. She didn’t have a friend in the room. She was looking foolish and scared standing there clutching the tray as her knuckles turned white. She had to do something.

  And then she saw Becka sitting at the popular table. The table where all the kids had clothes that looked ratty and torn even though they really paid lots of money for them. These clothes were so expensive because trendy New York designers knew just how to rip jeans, tatter hats, and give a rugby shirt the exact fade it should have. The unpopular kids would try to rip their own jeans and fade their own shirts, but it was really embarrassing. The uncool kids were such posers.

  Anyway, relief rushed through Emily’s face as she discovered the popular table. It was all so clear now. She would sit here every day with Becka. She would become part of the “in” crowd, the upper crust of the junior high school. She would get a boyfriend named Clay or Kyle or Blake. Maybe she’d get all three to be her boyfriends.

  But as she placed her tray on the table something funny happened. A guy (who was kind of hot, which made this even worse) with a brown thread beanie looked at the place where Emily placed her lunch tray. He said, “Hey, um, not to be weird or anything, but that seat is taken. I think.”

  This is what Emily hated about popular kids. They could never just be jerks. Probably because they had such a need to be liked. So even when they were shooting you down they still tried to be so cool about it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Emily said.

  “It’s cool, but you know,” he said.

  No, I don’t know. You couldn’t make a little room for me? Do you realize you’re destroying me? I have no other friends, and I try to reach out and this is what I get? Do you realize what a wreck I’m going to be because of this? And who are you to decide that I’m not cool enough? What, you really think Becka is prettier than me? Well, maybe she is, but I can get some cool clothes, I promise. Please don’t reject me like this. I will do whatever it takes to fit in. Please just change your mind. PLEASE!

  “I totally understand,” Emily said.

  Emily looked to Becka for support. But Becka was looking down at the table. No way was she going to sacrifice her spot at the chosen-kid table for her old friend. So Emily picked up her tray and found a table in the corner. It was grimy and dark and dim. Emily sat there alone eating her lunch. She wasn’t hungry at all, but she couldn’t just sit there. She had to at least try to act busy. And for the whole time she was there, she didn’t look up. She just stared into her cheese and cracker handi-pack and thought about her future. At that moment she decided to become popular. She would do whatever it took. And by her senior year she’d be homecoming queen. Becka and that stupid hot guy with the brown beanie would be lucky if Emily would even talk to them.

  So that was the plan. That was what she was going to do. And once Emily decided to become the most popular girl in school, she threw her handi-pack away, went into the bathroom, locked herself into a stall, and spent the rest of her lunch hour crying.

  Six years later, Emily had forgotten what it felt like to be unpopular. But on the day that (according to her newly crowned prophet baby brother) the school was supposed to be destroyed, it all came flooding back to her. Everyone had apparently watched the news the night before. So as Emily walked down the hall, every student in the school looked at her as if she were an alien. She was Carrie. She might as well have had yellow eyes, green skin, and the ability to lift objects with her thoughts. Emily hadn’t felt this way since that first day of junior high. One outburst from Will, one silly rapture prediction, and she was in exile. How could she have fallen from the top to the bottom of the popularity ladder so quickly?

  How was she supposed to act after what happened on the news last night? Was she supposed to just be walking around school like things were A-OK hunky-dory? Was she supposed to act like it was no big deal that her brother threatened (or claimed that some supernatural force had threatened) to destroy the elementary school? Why would anyone trust her after what Will had said? All the other kids in school probably thought she came from a long line of prophets/terrorists and there is no way you vote a prophet/terrorist to become the homecoming queen.

  Not even the Goth kids would do that.

  Emily opened her locker. Inside were pictures of fashion models and movie stars, the people she’d need to dress like, look like, and act like if she’d have any shot at becoming homecoming queen.

  “Hi, Emily,” Megan said, peeking into her locker.

  “Hey,” Emily replied. She didn’t want to talk. That meant she’d have to respond to all of this Will/rapture stuff. She was running out of things to say.

  “So, the news was crazy last night,” Megan said.

  “Yeah, hey, I’m running late to trig,” Emily said as she shut her locker. She was almost home free. She’d go to trigonometry and work the whole period on some response to her baby brother’s threat.

  But right before Emily could get away, Megan said, “Why don’t you just cut class?”

  “I can’t. Mr. Saunders is giving notes on what’s going to be on the first chapter test. He usually gives all the answers there,” Emily said.

  But she was lying. Mr. Saunders didn’t give any answers. Ever. Still, Emily knew this would be the type of class a homecoming queen would be interested in. She could get all of the answers, which meant good grades, which meant she could go to college and get into a great sorority. And she could do all of this without having to study hard. Even her popular friends could understand why she wouldn’t want to cut that sort of class.

  “No, you need to cut class. We’re all going.”

  “Going where?”

  “Jefferson Elementary.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone wants to see if it’s going to blow up like your brother said.”

  “Right.”

  “And you’d know more about all that than anyone else. So you’ve got to be there, everyone’s going to want to hear what you’ve got to say about it.”

  And that’s when Emily saw the life raft that was being thrown right at her. She was drowning in the sea of unpopularity. She could pull herself out of it, and go straight into the upper crust again.

  It was all so clear. She needed to go to the elementary school to control this situation. To control how people were thinking about her brother. To show them how misguided they’d been. She couldn’t do that in trig. And if she didn’t go down there, she’d have no way to control what they were saying. They could gossip about her all they wanted. She’d spend the rest of her high school years as an outcast. Even worse, she’d be remembered as an outcast. The last six years of work would have been all for nothing.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Emily asked. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Emily arrived at Jefferson with a carload of her friends. She couldn’t believe how many people were there; cars were parked for blocks in every direction. Everyone was lined up around the school watching. They were waiting to see if something was going to happen. They weren’t quite sure what, but they didn’t want to miss it.

  How are people taking everything this seriously? Emily thought. Will’s just a kid. He reads comic books and pours choc
olate milk on his Cocoa Puffs. He’s not a prophet. He can barely do long division, and everyone is really looking at him to predict the end of the whole world? Was the whole town actually shutting down because of what he said?

  Apparently it was.

  Businesses, restaurants, and government offices must have shut down because it seemed like most of Goodland was circled around the perimeter of the school. The actual school was a ghost town, as if there were only a few teachers and kids inside the school. It almost looked like the rapture had already happened. There wasn’t much for everyone to look at. A few uniformed officers roamed around the school grounds, but other than that there was nothing but tumbleweeds.

  But still everyone watched and waited.

  When Emily and her friends arrived at the scene, there was almost a reverence in the air. But once carload after carload of high school students arrived the reverence was replaced by rock music, booming speakers, tickling, laughing, flirting, smoking, and everything else that ruined the atmosphere for those waiting to see a sign from on high.

  Still Emily noticed that as the morning progressed, concern started to seep into many of the high school students. Their little brothers and sisters went to Jefferson. And a lot of them had grown up in Goodland and went to Jefferson at one point. They had great memories of their days as a Jefferson Mountain Lion. And now their old school was supposedly just going to be destroyed? How were they supposed to feel good about that? How could they just tailgate and flirt and giggle?

  Some students began to ask Emily this. She still had enough popularity left for them to respect her opinion, and besides, who could understand this situation better than her? Her brother had caused it. So what was she feeling?

  “What am I feeling?” Emily repeated to the group of students that was gathering around her.

  “Yeah, do you think the school’s going to be destroyed?”

  “No.”

  “No?” The students asked.

  “Not a chance,” Emily said.