As soon as I saw the room he’d found, I knew two things: first, Wyatt wouldn’t be winning this game either; and second, he’d read my journal, and he believed me. Wyatt had taken over the attic of the chapel, a room that was too small for five people, let alone a party, something he must have known when he made the decision. The attic was almost all windows, with multiple skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows along the walls. During the day I imagined it was at least as beautiful as the chapel downstairs, despite the lack of stained glass; the sunlight would sweep from one end of the room to the other as the day progressed. I understood Wyatt’s outfit now; the windows didn’t provide a lot of insulation, so it was freezing.
More impressive was how Wyatt had set up the place. He too had replicated our tree, but he’d gone literal and bought a big plant and then set up a blanket next to it, along with some cushions for us to lean on. He’d brought in shelving filled with some of my favorite snacks; another shelf held books I loved. In a corner was a small desk with two chairs where we could read or use our computers as long as there was power, and on the desk was my journal.
He’d made this room for us.
“Methinks someone missed the point of the assignment,” Chloe said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jo said. “Methinks someone might have bigger concerns than winning this game. Right, Romeo?”
So that nickname would stick. Wyatt lifted one shoulder and then let it drop. “You asked how we would thrive after the apocalypse. This is what thriving looks like to me.”
I wanted to kiss him in front of everyone, but that would be totally embarrassing and completely unnecessary. Except for how I didn’t care. I walked over to him, lifted my hand to his cheek, and pulled his face down toward mine. “Thank you,” I whispered afterward, though he might not have been able to hear me through all the hooting.
“Get it, Wyatt!” Hunter said.
“Ugh, sexist. Get it, Amina!” Chloe said.
“All right, all right, enough of this romantic crap,” Jo said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got this one locked down. Let’s go confirm.”
I lingered with Wyatt for one last kiss before we followed Jo out of the chapel, more relieved than I could remember being. I was almost tempted to pull him away, to skip the rest of the game and the parties so we’d have one night alone together before break. But Eucalyptus was his baby, and we had to see this last game through.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Jo led us to a place I’d never have expected, since the only consistent thing about Jo was her ability to surprise. Still, I’d never have pegged her for a drama geek, and yet not only were we in the drama building, but Jo had a key that allowed her entrance over the weekend.
“Another facet of Jo’s secret life revealed,” Chloe said. “Couldn’t have planned this game better if I tried.”
Jo glanced back at her and pushed the door open. “You know, if you people are interested in my extracurricular activities, all you have to do is ask.”
“Okay, I’ll start,” I said, still giddy with relief and happiness. “Hey, Jo, why do you have the key to the drama building?”
“Because I’m the stage manager for next semester’s show,” she replied. “I was the assistant this fall, and I got promoted because I killed it.”
“I don’t recall getting invited to see that show,” Chloe said.
“Aw, are you sad there was a party that wasn’t for you, Princess? I’m sorry.” Jo did not sound sorry. She did sound excited, which was rare for her. We followed her down several hallways until we reached a stretch that seemed to go on forever, with a door at the end. “Go in and hang out for a minute and then I’ll do some explaining, okay? Just go with it?”
We nodded, and then she let us in and shut the door behind us. Immediately we were thrust into complete and total darkness. There was no light anywhere, and even as my eyes grew accustomed to the change in light, I could see nothing. It was completely disorienting and I started to feel dizzy; I felt behind me and took small steps backward until I found the wall so I could lean on it. This was awful. What was Jo thinking? And how could she even stand it, given how she felt about the dark?
I’d just barely found the comfort of the wall when the room filled with twinkling lights that looked like stars against the blackness. At first the lights stayed still, as if we were under the night sky; then they started swirling around the room, moving like the reflections of Chloe’s disco ball. Instrumental music began to play from speakers all around us, slow and steady with a prominent but not-too-thumpy bass line, and the lights turned from sparkles to spotlights, one for each of us, but only briefly. Then each spotlight turned a rainbow color, swirling in the same pattern the stars had, making the room look like a kaleidoscope. It was beautiful and intense, and as soon as the song ended, the lights went out again and we were thrust back into darkness.
Jo turned the lights on, and I blinked a few times before I saw that we were in a large room painted entirely black. She’d dressed to match the room too, in all black from head to toe. She’d even swapped out the rainbow laces on her Docs for black ones. “This is what’s called a black box theater,” Jo said. “I convinced the school to let me set one up, so I have to turn it over after the party. You can stage shows here in any configuration you want; it’s just a matter of where to put the chairs.”
“I don’t see any chairs,” Hunter said.
“Turn around, wise guy,” Jo said. “The walls are all closets—if you look closely you can see where they open. One wall has the chairs; the other closets have food and water and the stuff we’d need if this were really a shelter.”
Chloe looked skeptical. “You’re basically saying you painted the room black?”
Jo groaned. “Yes, I painted it black, and I built the closets myself, and I convinced the school to start a black box theater group so we can have smaller, weirder shows and not just the overproduced junk the drama club is doing. You asked how we’d thrive after the apocalypse; I’m bringing us post-apocalyptic art.”
Now Chloe was starting to get it, as were the rest of us, and I felt stupid. Everyone but me had created the future they wanted: Jo had made a space for theater, Hunter for sports, Chloe for dancing, and Wyatt for him and me. I’d tried to please everyone else, as if a fake sun could stand in for any of the things we really wanted. Did I even know what I’d want, just for me, if the world were going to end? Why did all my friends seem to know themselves better than I did?
“That’s a pretty good story,” Chloe said. “It just might be enough to win. But we’ll have to see what the others think, after the party. Wyatt, I’m sure you won’t be offended when I say you disqualified yourself—we can hardly have a rager in a church.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “I had other goals in mind.”
Jo snickered but didn’t say anything. That left me free to say what I suspected everyone else was thinking. “I think we should just have the party here. There’s enough space, and we can go back and get our food and drinks and stuff.”
Chloe frowned, but come on, she’d made a discotheque in a bathroom. People weren’t going to want to actually hang out in there.
“We could get some of the decorations from your room, too,” I added. “And we could all bring music.”
“Works for me,” Hunter said. “We can play mini-golf anytime.”
“Just tell everyone to get their drink on somewhere else,” Jo said. “I don’t care if they come here wasted, but I’m not about to get in trouble.”
“The people who require social lubricant can pre-party in my room,” Chloe said. “I’ll gather the troops, and we’ll meet back here whenever.”
Jo shut the lights just as Chloe flounced out of the room, and the music started up again, this time with some singing. The stars came back and did their dance along the walls, and I decided I’d rather hang out here with Wyatt than go get stuff I’d bought for the party. I pulled Wyatt into the middle of the black floor and we began to dance.
Neither of us were very good, but the blackness made us feel like it didn’t matter, and the stars glittered on our clothes, on our faces, in our hair. We got so into dancing we didn’t even pause to kiss, and yet I couldn’t imagine feeling any closer to him.
I don’t know how much time passed before other people arrived, but it must have been late because lots of them seemed drunk already. I saw Tamara and Avi and a bunch of the Hillel kids, Ken Zhang and his party friends, lots of kids from my classes. So many people from so many different social groups, all hanging out together. The room was packed. We danced to techno, to rap, to pop music, and just when I thought I would collapse, sweaty and exhausted, someone yelled out, “Turn out the lights and slow this thing down!”
Wyatt and I looked at each other and laughed. Someone wanted to hook up, and I was happy to take advantage of the darkness. The opening chords of the music began, a strummed guitar soon joined by an electronic piano riff, and I recognized a song I must have heard on some TV show or something. It was old, like really really old, and it wasn’t all that slow, and I couldn’t remember the name until the chorus rang out: “Run-run-run-run-runaway.”
“What is this crap?” The person who’d asked for a slow song was not happy with the choice, and whoever was in charge of the stereo was paying attention, because another song began. This one wasn’t any slower, though, with rapid-fire synthesizers blaring right away. Once again we only just made it to the chorus, and that’s when I knew something weird was happening. “She’s a little runaway.”
“THIS IS NOT BETTER!” the guy screamed over the guitars.
A slower song this time, acoustic guitar, male singer with a growly voice. “Runaway train, never going back . . .” Now more people were screaming for the music to change.
Fast-forward again. This time there was just the plink of a single piano note, over and over again, until after maybe fifteen times it dropped to a lower note and we got some variety. By the time the fake drum set kicked in it was clear to me there was a problem, because I knew this song. Kanye West. “Runaway.” What was going on here?
We didn’t make it to the chorus. The lights came on, the music stopped, and Jo’s voice rang out over the crowd. “Everyone get out. Right. Now.”
15.
Now I was sure Jo wasn’t behind the pranks, or whatever we were calling them, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t think of a single person who wasn’t in Eucalyptus who knew us all well enough to know how to hurt us, and we’d all been hurt, and badly. I didn’t know what about the music had set Jo off, but I could tell it had hit her hard. I felt awful I’d even considered her a suspect, and I hated to think how she must be feeling right now.
Are you okay? It was the first text I’d sent just to Jo; the day I’d tracked her down at lunch to ask how my game was going was still the only time we’d ever hung out alone. But I didn’t want to just show up at her dorm, especially if she was freaked out. Who knew if she’d gone straight home? I’m around if you want to talk, whenever.
It was already past midnight, so I didn’t expect to hear from her right away. But the buzzing of my phone woke me earlier than I expected; I’d planned to sleep in, since I was taking a bus home on Tuesday to avoid the Monday rush. That would be good. Off campus? I could use some time away from here.
We agreed to meet at the campus bus. She was waiting when I arrived, wearing the same clothes she’d had on last night. Her eyes were swollen and red and her short hair was matted around her face. I wondered whether she’d slept. I wasn’t sure what to do—she looked like she needed a hug, but neither one of us were huggers, and now didn’t seem the time to start.
“Can we just not talk for a while?” Jo asked, as the shuttle approached. “Is that something that could happen?”
I nodded to show I was starting right away. She sounded angry but not at me, and she’d agreed to come, so whatever she needed I could do. She hadn’t even called me by a nickname.
We sat in silence as the campus bus puttered its way on gravel roads and then main roads, and then we walked quietly to the coffeehouse. It was nearly empty when we got there, and the few people sitting at tables were townies, not kids from school, which was a relief. I got my usual milky tea and Jo got black coffee, and we went to the back room and sat at a corner table.
Jo didn’t wait for me to ask any questions. “You want to know what happened last night, and I’m going to tell you, because you’re the only one who checked in on me,” she said.
That was surprising—I would have thought Chloe would be on top of it. But maybe she was scared of an angry Jo. I was too, but I was going to have to get over myself, especially if we were ever going to be real friends. We had two and a half years of school left; it wasn’t too late.
“This isn’t something I like to talk about,” she went on, “so let me get through it, okay? No interruptions. This is the truth, just enough so you understand.”
I nodded again, the living embodiment of that smiley-face emoji with a zipper across its lips. I could follow orders.
“Okay, then, here we go. The short and illustrious life so far of Josephine Reed.” She let out a noise that sounded almost like a snort, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of her opening or because she’d said her full name. “Everything was pretty normal at first—my parents loved each other, they loved me, we lived in a nice house in Chicago, I went to a great school and did well, and blah blah blah, drunk driver hits taxicab, and tada I’m an orphan.”
Way to blow through the hardest part, I thought, but I’d promised not to speak. Or maybe this wasn’t the hardest part. I shivered, though it was warm inside.
“Obviously that complicated matters.” Jo sipped at her coffee. “My grandparents hadn’t been in the picture up to that point—my mom’s family, the Korean side, was horrified she’d married a white guy, and my father’s family goes back to the Mayflower so they weren’t having my mom either. My parents had told them all to piss off early on, but they hadn’t planned on dying so young, so there was no one else to take me in. My grandparents weren’t exactly thrilled to have me, either—you can probably imagine I was not exactly what they’d had in mind for their retirement.”
I kept my mouth shut, holding my tea in front of my face with both hands.
“My dad’s parents lived in this enormous house in a Chicago suburb called Lake Forest—it had a gate where I got locked in when I wasn’t at school. They sent me to my Korean grandparents every few weekends, which was the complete opposite of being with the Reeds. They lived close to the city and didn’t care what I did, so I could roam around wherever I wanted. And for a while, having that much freedom was enough to make up for feeling like I was in a giant cage most of the time.”
I felt nervous. This story was not going to a good place.
“I wanted desperately to get out of there, but I’d asked my dad’s parents about boarding school and they weren’t having it. I dreamed about college, getting as far away from Chicago as possible, and I really thought I could make it until then. But one night I woke up in my room in Lake Forest to the sound of the knob turning. I saw my grandfather standing there, watching me in my bed.”
I wasn’t sure I was breathing anymore. I was starting to understand Jo’s fear of the dark.
“At first he just stood there in the doorway, and I stayed quiet, staring at him as he stared at me. Then he came closer to the bed and shut the door behind him. I couldn’t even see him walk across the room, but I felt him sit down, and I smelled his breath as he leaned over me. Whiskey, though I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned over and pretended he wasn’t there, pretended I was still asleep, and finally he left. But I knew I’d gotten lucky. The next time he wouldn’t leave.”
Now I got why she hadn’t wanted me to talk, and I was grateful. I had no idea what to say.
“I couldn’t wait to get to my other grandparents’ place, so I skipped school the next day, snuck into my grandfather�
��s office, and stole the gate code. I got their driver to take me to an outdoor supply store and bought a backpack, a sleeping bag that rolled up to fit, a Swiss Army knife, and a case of energy bars. I went back home and got some clothes, and then I took off.
“At first it was an adventure—I slept on park benches in the suburbs until the police chased me off, and when the energy bars ran out I went freegan and got my food from dumpster diving. In the burbs, that wasn’t so bad. But the cops were everywhere, and I was worried they’d start to recognize me and send me home. So I went to Chicago, where I wouldn’t stand out as much, and I figured out how to make it there.” She paused now, and I knew she was thinking about the things she’d had to do to survive. She wouldn’t tell me the worst of it, but then again, I probably didn’t want to know. That was most likely how she’d learned to identify Ken Zhang as a drug addict.
“Long story short, I made it a few months until a group of kids figured out I was stashing money and jumped me. I’d gotten my black belt in tae kwon do as a little kid, but that can’t save you from a gang of five people. I woke up in a hospital room with a few broken ribs and no spleen. The nurse told me I’d fought back, that two of the others looked worse than I did, so that was something, I guess. I was in so much pain it didn’t matter.”
This was one of the most upsetting stories I’d ever heard. It was killing me not to talk, even if just to say how sorry I was, how glad I was she was okay now.
“The hospital let my grandparents in not long after I woke up. The Reeds, the ones I didn’t want to see. My grandmother laid into me for making them worry, and I was two seconds away from telling her the whole story when my grandfather told me he’d pulled some strings and gotten me into Gardner. I had to recuperate at home, but then I got to leave, and I swore I’d never go back, and that next time I was on my own I’d be better prepared.” She drank down the rest of her coffee, which must have been cold by now. “Maybe you understand now why I can be a little prickly. I get that I’m not the easiest person to have as a friend. But I’ll never forget what it was like waking up in the hospital in that much pain, and what led me there. So yeah, the surprise ‘runaway’ playlist did not sit well with me. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. Now I’m getting more coffee.”
How to Pack for the End of the World Page 20