I couldn’t even begin to imagine what his life had been like before Gardner. Given his background, he was way less socially catastrophic than I’d have been. I wanted to ask him about what it was like for him here, and about the books, but it seemed intrusive, and I didn’t want to ruin the easy conversation between us.
“How about you?” he asked. “I know you’ll tell us more when it’s your turn to set up the game, but I’m curious—what are you afraid of?”
“Maybe I should just go next and you can find out,” I joked. I did not want to go next.
The words had barely escaped from my mouth before Wyatt pounced on them. “It’s so great of you to volunteer!” He started bouncing again. “I can be patient, I promise.”
I hadn’t meant to make him wait; I was fine with telling him whatever he wanted to know. But I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. What had I gotten myself into?
The buzz of my phone distracted me. Hunter had sent a group text. How’s everybody doing?
I took that to mean he’d gotten separated from Chloe and Jo, and sure enough, Chloe wrote back that they were heading to find us at Greenpeace. Still hammering away?
Hunter sent a thumbs-up emoji. “You should go find him,” Wyatt said, after reading the texts over my shoulder. “It sounds like he could use the help.”
“I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.” But he was right that I was itching to go.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye out for Chloe and Jo and we’ll see you soon.”
I didn’t wait to ask whether he was sure; I just started walking, texting Hunter as I went. Where are you?
There’s a guy with a clipboard ordering people around, he wrote. Go stand by him.
It took me a while to figure out who he was talking about; the throng of people had gotten a lot bigger since we’d arrived, and more and more of them were moving up toward the pipeline. From the snippets of conversation I could overhear it sounded like the shoveling had gone slower than expected because of the rain but there was finally a big enough piece of pipe unearthed for ELM to start trying to do some damage. I had to ask a couple of people for help before someone was able to point me to the clipboard guy.
All the ELM people were wearing bright yellow T-shirts with pictures of a monkey holding an enormous wrench. The clipboard guy stood in the middle of a cluster of them, which was why he’d been so hard to see, but I made my way to where he stood and hoped Hunter would get there before the guy started asking me any questions.
I waited there for five or ten minutes, feeling awkward and impatient but relieved no one seemed to think it was strange for me to be there. Then there was a tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see Hunter, smiling as broadly as I’d ever seen him smile, hair wet and matted to his head, clothes covered in mud. “You’ve been busy,” I said.
“Isn’t this amazing? I’m so glad you decided to come see it up close. Wyatt’s okay?”
“Yeah, he’s going to meet the others,” I said. “I take it you’ve been shoveling?”
He looked down at his muddy jeans, his dirt-crusted hands. Blisters had formed on his palms. “What gave me away?”
“And yet you’re ready to go back in and start hammering? Aren’t you exhausted?”
“Actually, I was thinking maybe now that you’re here we could work on a little side project,” he said. “It’ll have the added benefit of keeping you out of trouble if the police shut things down, which I’m thinking will happen pretty soon now that the pipeline’s exposed.”
“Sure,” I said. “What’s the project?”
“We’re going to try and find my brother,” he said. “Remember when I said I hadn’t seen him in a while? I’m hoping the ELM people might know where he is.”
Hunter led me over to the clipboard guy and waited until the crowd around him thinned. “Hey, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
Clipboard Guy held up a finger as he jotted down some notes, then turned his attention to us, looking us up and down. “Oh, no way,” he said, shaking his head. “What are you two, twelve?”
I opened my mouth to tell him not to be a jerk, but Hunter stepped in. “We’re not looking to get close to the pipeline.” Apparently he was going to pretend he hadn’t just spent an hour right next to it even if it was obvious just from looking at him. “I wanted to see if you could help me out with something.”
“Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re pretty freaking busy,” Clipboard Guy said. I wanted to punch him.
“It’ll only take a second. I’m looking for someone.”
“Aren’t we all.” Clipboard Guy was bored with us already.
“No, I mean my brother works with y’all. With ELM. I’m trying to find him. His name is Caleb Fredericks.”
Now we had his attention. “You’re Caleb’s brother?”
“Yup. He took me to a couple of these things with him.”
“You were at Standing Rock?” Clipboard Guy seemed impressed.
“Nothing that big,” Hunter admitted. “But I was there when he got arrested, and I haven’t seen him since. Family stuff, you know. I was hoping maybe he’d be here.”
Clipboard Guy shook his head. “Nah, he’s gone off the grid. Bad stuff went down a few months ago at a protest in Louisiana and a bunch of people got arrested. They almost got Caleb but he took off. There’s a warrant out and he’s been ducking it. But he checks in from time to time. He’s doing all right.”
Hunter exhaled beside me. “Thanks, man.” His disappointment was so palpable I could practically touch it, but he also seemed relieved.
“You must have been really worried,” I said as we headed away from Clipboard Guy, away from the pipeline.
“You have no idea. Caleb’s been in trouble before, but he usually keeps in touch. I just needed to know he was okay.”
“How about we round everyone up and get out of here?” I asked. “I’ll text them.”
“Can we just—maybe we could wait a minute?” His face was pale under the dirt and freckles.
“Do you need to sit down?” I asked. He looked like he was about to pass out, so before he could answer I dragged him over to a tree. “Give me your rain poncho.”
He frowned, confused, so I grabbed his backpack and went through it myself. The rain had stayed light enough most of the day that he hadn’t bothered with it, and now the sun was starting to come out, though the ground was still soaked. I spread the poncho on the ground and pulled Hunter down to sit next to me. I felt the cold, wet dirt underneath, but it wasn’t seeping through the poncho, so that would have to do. From my own backpack I retrieved two Kind bars and a bottle of water, and I waited until Hunter had eaten one bar and drunk half the water before I asked how he was feeling.
“Better, I think.” His skin was less pasty, so that was something. “I just—I really thought he’d be here, you know? The game was an excuse, a way to come here and have y’all with me when I found him. I wanted you all to meet him. I wanted him to know I was willing to do everything he was, despite what happened before.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I wasn’t about to interrupt.
He started talking again, and it was like he’d been saving up all these words for so long they were spilling out in whatever order he could remember them. “We haven’t talked much about our families, have we? Like I know about you and the dad jokes, and that Wyatt’s parents split up and Jo’s are gone, but that’s about it. And it’s been okay so far, because I came to Gardner to get away from my parents, and maybe everyone else did too, and so we don’t have to say anything. But sometimes I want to say things, you know? Sometimes I want to tell someone how awful it is to actually hate my parents, to know that my dad is a genuinely bad person and my mother chooses him over us every single time. I’m here because they would pay any amount of money to separate me from my brother, who is the only person in the world I want to be like. And I miss him so much I can’t even stand it.”
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br /> The tears had started when he said he hated his parents, but they didn’t turn into real sobs until he started talking about Caleb. “Come here,” I said, and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close so he could cry into my shoulder. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t want to look at me while he was this upset; I’d be the same way, and in that sense we were a lot alike. It was why we were friends.
I held Hunter until he stopped shaking and then gave him a Kleenex from my bag. “You’ve got everything covered,” he said, wiping his nose. “Maybe it’ll be enough to win the game for you.”
“Unlikely,” I said. “But I’m glad to help anyway.”
Once Hunter was all cleaned up I texted the group. Chloe wrote back immediately. We’re out of Kind bars and water but we’re all bonding. Come find us! Greenpeace has a tent now.
We headed toward the tent until we saw Jo’s bleached-blond hair right up next to Chloe’s honey-and-caramel bun, Wyatt’s curls not far off. “Hello, everyone,” Hunter said, his voice all chipper and fake.
“Welcome back, Red,” Jo said. “Or should I say Rusty? The dirt has dimmed your hair’s auburn glow.”
Hunter shook his head back and forth, causing drops of dirt to flick onto us. “Gross,” Chloe said. “Sometimes you’re such a dude, Hunter. And that is not a compliment.”
“Clearly,” he said, but he sounded genuinely happy now. “Come on, let’s just call this one an apocalyptic failure and get out of here.”
“What are you talking about?” Jo asked. “This was great. Princess here was a hero of the revolution. The cops tried to breach the people barrier but one of them fell and cut his forehead and she got him all cleaned up with her little first-aid kit. Totally distracted him and gave me time to squirrel our boy Shaggy right out of there. Then the guy with the clipboard promised the police we’d get out of here in an hour and they left. Can you believe it?”
“Sounds like we have our winner,” I said.
Hunter glanced over at me. “You think?”
“No question,” I said, and everyone else agreed.
Game two to Chloe.
8.
I don’t know what I was thinking, agreeing to go next and plan a game when the election was happening in a week and first-quarter finals would be starting soon. I had only the vaguest hint of what I might want to do, and it was way more elaborate and time-consuming than what Hunter and Wyatt had done so far. “Seriously, the tension is coming off you in waves,” Chloe said. “You need some sort of outlet. What do you do for exercise?”
“Exercise?” With everything else I had going on, exercise was the last thing on my mind. Not to mention that I was a slug anyway—I hated to sweat. The most I’d ever done was take some long walks, just to clear my head. Maybe that’s what she had in mind. I couldn’t remember if I’d even brought sneakers with me other than Converse. “Um, nothing?”
“We’ll just have to change that.” She was getting excited, but I knew I had to shut it down.
“There’s no way,” I said. “There’s no time.”
“We’re going to make time,” she said. “I get that you’re busy, but you really need something to take your mind off everything. Trust me, you’ll feel better. What kind of stuff do you like to do? I know you’re not into group sports and all, but how about running, or yoga, or tennis?”
They all sounded awful. “I’m not into any of that.”
“Well, I’ve got some ideas. No Eucalyptus meeting this week, right?”
“Right.” I’d bought myself a little time—we wouldn’t be playing my game until after finals, just as second quarter started.
“You’re mine Saturday morning, then. And I still get Tuesday night. We’re going to find something you like if it kills us.”
I was worried it might, but I knew not to get in the way of Chloe and her plans. “Fine.”
I had more important things to worry about anyway, like making sure I aced my finals and figuring out my own game. For finals I had a plan: Hunter and I were now studying together at least twice a week, and it was helping both of us. At first I hadn’t been sure us working together was a good idea. I tended to be better prepared, and he needed more help, not to mention that being around him made me so nervous I left the study room each night thinking I might barf. But over time, the swarming insects in my gut flew away, and we developed a rhythm that made sense. We ran our study sessions almost like a class, with me as the teacher and Hunter as the student, and that way I got at least as much out of them as he did. As I got less nervous we grew more natural with one another, and by the time finals came around I realized we really had become good friends. I still thought we’d make a good couple too, and I still hoped maybe it would happen, but I also knew it would be okay if it didn’t. We’d work well together on student council, and I told myself that was what mattered the most.
“Are you worried at all? About the election, I mean?” I asked. It was our last session before the election, which would take place the following Thursday. Chloe had strategized our meetings well, I realized; she’d picked the times I was most likely to be freaking out.
“Not really,” Hunter said. “I’m too busy worrying about Caleb. I thought getting more information would make me feel better, but it’s not working.”
That didn’t surprise me. Hunter’s search for his brother had made me think about Shana, and I was now talking to her on the Sunday family calls even more than my parents. But no matter how much I missed her, I was starting to realize I didn’t want to come home anymore. I’d found my people here, and even if I was still fixated on how terrible the world was, I didn’t have nightmares about the temple anymore, or anything else. I was happy here, or as happy as I was going to be anywhere. Though perhaps that would change if we lost the election. Or if I lost—there was always the chance one of us would win and not the other, and if that were the case, the winner would be Hunter.
Ugh, I was stressed out, more than I wanted to admit, so much so that I was actually looking forward to Chloe dragging me off to do who knew what, just to get out of my own head for a while. When Saturday morning rolled around I scraped together as much of a workout outfit as I could find (my normal leggings and sneakers with a ratty T-shirt usually reserved for sleeping and my hair pulled into a ponytail), and I went to meet Chloe at the campus bus stop, as per her instructions.
To my surprise, she wasn’t there alone; she’d brought Wyatt with her. He was wearing baggy basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of Gardner’s cross-country team and his last name, Christiansen, on the back. I hadn’t realized he was a runner. Chloe, of course, was wearing a perfectly matching raspberry-colored workout ensemble. “Good job following directions, you two!” She’d timed our arrival perfectly, and we got on the bus and sat in the back row together.
“Are you going to tell us where we’re going?” I asked.
Chloe ignored me. “You may be wondering why I dragged the two of you out with me, and I’ll tell you, but before I do, I have a question: Has either one of you ever thrown a punch?” She looked at Wyatt, then at me, then back at Wyatt, who practically shrank into himself.
“No, I’ve never hit anyone,” he said.
“No siblings? Other kids who got on your nerves? Didn’t you live in some kind of cult camp?”
Wyatt seemed unfazed by Chloe calling the commune a cult, which fed my suspicion. “Well, the commune was all about peace and nonviolent resistance and stuff? Like, we talked a lot about the world ending but also how that would end war. And we had to share everything.”
I found it hard to believe a bunch of little kids never got into fights, but then again, my sister and I hadn’t done a lot of fighting either, other than yelling. “I’ve never hit anyone,” I said. “I might have wanted to, but I’ve never done it.”
“Are either of you opposed? Wyatt, are you going to get all pacifist on me?” She sounded almost flirty, but Wyatt looked terrified.
“What are you going to make me do?”
We’d reached downtown, such as it was. The town consisted of a general store, a bar that had seen better days, an ice-cream parlor, a post office, an independent coffee shop, and a small gym. Chloe led us over to the front window of the gym, where we could see women in outfits like Chloe’s punching and kicking tall red bags. The bags barely moved. “Those look really heavy,” Wyatt said.
“They are,” Chloe said. “It’s harder than it looks.”
“It” turned out to be kickboxing. Chloe had arranged for us to take a self-defense kickboxing class. “You both need to let off some steam, I think, and besides, learning self-defense is good prep for the end of the world. Are you with me?”
Wyatt nodded enthusiastically, as he always did. I was already here, so what did I have to lose?
The self-defense class wasn’t nearly as well attended as the one we’d watched through the window, but Chloe explained that it was because the class was a one-off—most classes depended on repeat customers who came in at the same time every week, or even every day. The self-defense class was only on the schedule once a month, and you didn’t need any previous experience to take it. As we waited, the room half filled with a mix of younger and older women, most of whom were wearing workout clothes that looked more like mine and Wyatt’s than Chloe’s. “This class is more for our people, huh?” he asked.
“It’s for people new to boxing, sure, and people who are more into the self-defense aspect than fitness.”
Wyatt looked as relieved as I felt. He wasn’t the only one who thought those bags looked heavy.
At precisely eleven o’clock, the instructor began speaking. “Welcome to Kickboxing for Self-Defense, everyone. My name is Candace and I’ll be showing you some easy techniques today. You’ll each be in front of a bag, but we’re not going to use them for a bit—the early lessons will just be to show you form. First off, everyone should pick a partner.”
That would be awkward, given that there were three of us. But Chloe immediately attached herself to a woman standing nearby who she had met in another class, leaving me with Wyatt. That was fine. We were both clueless, so we’d be clueless together.
How to Pack for the End of the World Page 10