This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  “Nobody ever said life was fair.” I take on an authoritative voice as though I’m reciting a phrase I’ve heard a thousand times before because it is a phrase I’ve heard a thousand times before.

  Ringo sits up straight. “See, that is the garbage people say to make themselves feel better about their good luck. Your situation is balls, Lake.”

  My shoulders jerk with a puff of laughter that’s gone before it starts. “Thanks,” I say, using my fingers to sift through the sand for bits of shell. “It totally is…balls.” Maybe it’s the ocean, or maybe Ringo’s right that it does feel better to have someone acknowledge how bad I have it, but I do feel just the tiniest bit calmer.

  “Balls!” Ringo yells out toward the sea. He raises his eyebrow at me in challenge.

  I glance around. A few families dot the shoreline. I take in a long breath. “Balls!” I scream. “This. Is. Balls!” I listen to my voice as it’s carried off by the wind. The screaming has quieted my thoughts. At least for the moment.

  He lies back, stretching out his legs, and rests the back of his head straight in the sand and stares up. “You’ve got to decide somehow, though.”

  I wipe tears and snot with the back of my hand. At least Ringo isn’t someone I care about impressing. “Yeah, somehow. Any ideas how?” I consider telling him about Matt and about my plan to betray my family’s trust, but the moment passes and I let it.

  “So it’s really not just an automatic boyfriend pick?”

  I think for a moment. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I look over and catch a small but noticeable smile playing on Ringo’s skyward-tilted face. He looks more than a little pleased. Not that I’m surprised. Ever since I hit puberty, guys have been into me. I don’t think that’s cocky of me to think either. I’m not one of those gorgeous girls who doesn’t know how pretty she is. I know exactly how pretty I am, but it’s just another fact about me, like being right-handed or a decent surfer or above average on a skateboard. But maybe it’s not just Ringo that’s changed. Maybe I seem different to him too. I reach over and give him a semigentle smack in the gut with my nonplastered arm. “My boyfriend is dead, need I remind you? It’s terrible.”

  Ringo grunts and pulls his knees up. “Jesus! I know, I know. But, you know what they say, there’s no right way to mourn.” He props himself up on his elbows. There are specks of sand dotting his hair and he’s wearing the same sly smirk that he sported in the waiting room. This time, though, despite the fact that I actually had smacked him, the urge to do so is less strong.

  “Did Dr. McKenna teach you that?”

  “Yeah.” He dusts sand from his elbows, and some sprays onto me. I squint to avoid getting it in my eyes. “I really think you might need some tutoring in this whole therapy thing. Frankly, you’re way behind.” He switches to sitting cross-legged beside me. All business now. “All right, so, choosing. You need a methodology.” I look over at him, confused. “My mom was a professor,” he explains. “What I mean is, you need some sort of system. Criteria that you can use to make your decision.”

  “That sounds so…impersonal.” I call up images of Will and Penny. Will with his shaggy hair and sunburned cheeks, plus his ridiculous desire to make everyone happy in the grandest way possible. Penny, earnest and well meaning, who would get teary any time she saw either of us cry—and trust me, she’d seen it plenty. I can hardly consider splitting them up into a series of checkmarks and categories: Penny—humanitarian. Will—brave. No, that isn’t going to work.

  Ringo shakes his head. “It doesn’t have to be. Think about it for a second.” He holds up a finger. “What’s one thing you think you’d need in order to make your decision?”

  I glare at him. I might as well have lost something, and he’s the person standing there asking me where the last place was that I had it. But he holds my stare, and it’s me that breaks first.

  “To talk to each of them again,” I say at last.

  He nods. “Okay, but how about something more within the realm of possibility. I’m not a goddamn magician, Lake.”

  I close my eyes and think so hard, it hurts my brain. “Will…my boyfriend…” I say, eyes still closed, concentrating. “He was planning this thing for my birthday. I wish I knew what it was.”

  “Like a cake?”

  I let my eyelids open a sliver and peek out at him. “Will would never do just a cake. Unless it was twenty-tiered, with a conga line dancing out of it.” I take a deep breath.

  “Okay, so you think if you just knew what it was it would be like Will speaking to you again?”

  “Yes…no…I don’t know.” Geez, Ringo really has been to a lot of therapy. “He gave me a hint. He said it was a hunt. And he was talking about…wishes.”

  “So, wait, like a scavenger hunt?”

  I look up, surprised. “Exactly like a scavenger hunt.” Now that is a plan with Will written all over it. “And the wishes.” The last word barely escapes above a whisper because I haven’t phrased the two pieces in my mind like this before. But now a memory is bubbling up of Penny, Will, and me. “There was a full moon right before my fifteenth birthday,” I begin. “Penny had insisted we go camping for the night so that we could hike these trails she’d read about. We stayed near this old cougar’s den that was actually really cool and Penny forced us to do some weird friendship ritual that Will and I thought was dumb but we went along with anyway. Then at the end, we each…we each had to make a wish. For our life.”

  I run my hand through my hair. I don’t care that my fingers are sandy.

  “I’d completely forgotten about them,” I continue. “I bet that’s what would’ve been at the end of the scavenger hunt.” I scrunch up my forehead. “I don’t remember exactly what happened to them. But I think maybe one of us kept them. As a time capsule or something.”

  “Wishes, huh?” He doesn’t sound impressed. “What was yours?”

  “I…have no idea actually.” I feel my eyes beginning to dance with excitement. “But maybe, maybe if I knew what each of them wanted with their life, it would…it would be like…” I shake my head, trying to break something free up there. “I don’t know what, but it would help.”

  But all I can think of is finding this lost piece of Penny and Will, a part of them that is only rightfully mine. It feels big and important. It feels like a map back to them.

  Ringo scratches under his chin. “That’s great and all, but I was thinking something, like, more internal to you maybe?”

  “No, you were right.” I drop onto my back. The sun doesn’t feel sweltering anymore.

  “I just don’t want you to get, you know, all your hopes pinned on—”

  “No, Ringo, this is it. This is perfect.”

  He sighs and drops back next to me. “Okay, then, um, yeah, it’s perfect.”

  I listen to the crash of waves on the shore, to how the shells tinkle musically as the tide pulls them out toward the horizon. The sadness is still burrowed deep inside me, but I try for a moment to feel what it would be like for the weight to hover just above my skin, barely enough, just so that I can do what I need to do, navigate the next few weeks and make the hardest decision of my life.

  If I don’t think about it too long, perhaps it’s possible I can get through this. After all, I’ve already made one gut-wrenching decision and that was not to help Matt. The thought makes my stomach cramp in pain. I try to convince my pulse not to ratchet up, up, up again.

  I roll onto my side and stare at Ringo’s profile. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that I’d nearly killed us. Then I realize that of course it wasn’t, because the worst thing in the world already happened.

  “So, I guess it’s official,” I say. “We’re both crazy?”

  “Batshit,” he says. “But since I’m slightly less so”—he pauses to wait for a protest, which I don’t make—“you should probably let me drive.” And after a while he starts to hum again, and I listen to him and the ocean,
waiting for my pulse to return to normal and the shaking to leave my joints. “Definitely an ‘Across the Universe’ day,” he says.

  And I say, “Sure, whatever that means.”

  I let Ringo drive, but that still leaves me with the way home. I drive eight miles under the speed limit, mind the yellow lines between lanes, and jump whenever any car honks or moves to pass me—which, on account of my slow speed, is a lot. I’ve never been scared of anything physical that I can think of—new people, being ignored, social niceties, sure, but this?—and yet there’s fear coursing through my veins like the aftereffect of hard drugs and I have to keep talking myself down to rational thinking.

  By the time I do get home from dropping off Ringo and yet another near-death experience, the panic has overwhelmed the excitement over my newfound plan—my methodology—and has been replaced by a thudding headache that’s taken up residence behind my eyeballs.

  I think the weather is conspiring against me, because it’s changed too. Bits of ocean have now crawled past the shore and into the air, turning it muggy. It tries hard to suffocate me as I trudge up the steps to my front door. Many years ago, my house was pink, but now it’s the color of a used Band-Aid. It sits uncared for at the end of a narrow avenue that dead-ends into the other properties with an ocean view. Bits of stucco crumble onto the tiled porch and stay there for ages. Moss and vines grow up the trunks of slender palm trees, strangling them until the leaves turn brown.

  I stick my key in the rusty lock and twist.

  “Lake?” my mom calls before I can even shut the door. “Is that you?”

  I swallow hard, uncomfortable with how we left things this morning. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Oh good,” she says. “We’re in the kitchen. Can you head this way?” My mom’s voice echoes in the high-ceilinged atrium. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks outside booms. No matter the time of day, my house always smells like the inside of a seashell.

  I follow the corridor to the right and find Matt and my mom.

  Mom gives me an unexpected hug, patting my back and squeezing me tightly. “How was your appointment?” she asks. “You were gone a long time.” There’s a worried note hidden in there.

  “It was…fine.” I clutch my elbows to keep from falling apart. I avoid looking at Matt. Mom looks too hopeful, so I add, “It didn’t fix anything.”

  She frowns but in an understanding sort of way. I notice that her car keys and wallet are sitting out on the marble-topped island. She slides them off. “Can you please sit with Matt and feed him dinner? I forgot that we’re out of milk, so I need to run out to the store.”

  “I can run out—” I interject quickly, not wanting to be left alone with Matt. She must know that.

  “No, no.” She waves me off. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.” She’s desperate to leave me here, but whether it’s because she needs a break from my brother or because she thinks spending time with him will change my mind, I can’t tell. “There’s leftover pasta in the fridge, or some chicken-tortilla soup, if he’d rather.”

  “But—”

  I see another flash of desperation in her eyes. Like a caged animal. “Thanks, Lake. See you in a few.” She tries to say this lightly before she disappears down the hall, but we both know she’s fleeing. I could have easily picked up milk for her on my way home. Mom wanted an excuse and I feel both manipulated and sorry for her all at once.

  I turn slowly around to face Matt. His wheelchair sits near the window. He’s doing the thing where he wipes his features clean of any expression. Recently, Matt’s started to refuse haircuts. When Mom tries, he’ll toss his head, which is practically the only movement of which he’s capable, and last time, her scissors left a bloody gouge in his left ear. Since then, his hair has grown out to his chin and, without the sun, turned a dull bronze. Shaving him is the one thing he’ll let our dad do because the scruff tickles his nose when it gets too long.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Swell.” He gives up nothing. Not yet. I try not to look or, even better, feel guilty about the latest broadcast of my decision to Mom and Dad. Has he heard? Again, I can’t tell. But what he has to understand is that there’s a difference between him and my friends, the major one being that he’s alive and they’re not.

  “So.” I try to keep my voice conversational, but it comes out false and Matt’s a shark for that sort of thing. “Hungry?” I ask, determined to press on. “Would you rather the pasta or the soup?” I open the fridge and pull out two Tupperware containers. “Or both, I suppose. Not sure how well they go together.”

  “Soup,” he replies.

  I nod and put the container of pasta away. “Excellent choice.” I pull out a bowl. In go the broth and chicken and tortilla strips. I then pop it into the microwave, already wishing that he’d chosen the pasta. Feeding Matt is a messy affair. There’s the cutting up into small bites of any solids, and if liquids are involved, half of the contents are sure to wind up on his chin. At least when I do the serving. My parents are better.

  “So…” I look back. Matt’s wheelchair trips over the tile grout as he pulls closer, crowding me. Expression, voice, still blank. But the sense of foreboding grows inside me and, like a scene in a horror movie, I feel the suspense growing in the tense knot at the back of my skull. “Did the shrink change your mind?”

  A familiar edge creeps into Matt’s question and I feel an unpleasant tingle run up my spine, like I’m watching a spider slowly creep toward me.

  “About what?” I’ve decided to play dumb. Maybe I’m a chicken for it. So sue me.

  “Did you really think that Mom and Dad wouldn’t tell me about your little Lakey hissy fit?” I flinch, stung, then try to cover by gritting my teeth. Of course the three of them would have talked behind my back and called a meeting that I wasn’t a part of, and I’m sure Matt knows that this lack of VIP access bothers me.

  “It wasn’t a hissy fit,” I say smoothly. “But that’s fine. That they told you, I mean. I suppose you should know sooner rather than later.”

  “You know that’s why Mom and Dad are sending you, right? To the shrink?”

  I listen to the hum of the microwave. “She’s a therapist.” I emphasize the nonderogatory word. “It wasn’t the worst experience in the world. You should try it sometime.” It’s my own jab, but I doubt it makes a dent. “Anyway, Mom and Dad were right. It actually was kind of helpful to talk to someone.”

  Matt scoffs. “You think they really care about that?”

  I spin. “Yeah. Maybe I do.” Alarm bells are sounding in my head. Experience has trained me to appease my brother. Always pacify him. Don’t do anything to anger him. This is the code I’m used to living by and now I’m finding it harder to break than I thought.

  I turn back and stare, stare, stare hard at the microwave. At the slow rotation. At the sinking minutes and seconds until the digital clock flashes. The microwave beeps. I pull out the bowl of soup. The ceramic scalds my thumb and forefinger and I snatch it back to suck on the stinging skin. “Damn it.” I wave my hand before grabbing a dish towel and move the bowl over to the breakfast table.

  “Oh, stop being such a baby,” says Matt. “Some of us don’t even have the use of our hands.”

  I shoot him a sharp look, then push the wheelchair over to the table and sit down across from him. “Open up.” The spoon scrapes the inside of the bowl.

  Matt opens his mouth robotically and I guide the spoon into his mouth. His lips close around the silver and I slide it out while he gulps down the mouthful. His eyes don’t leave my face and I feel my cheeks heating up. “This little grieving phase you’re going through? They’re only trying to hurry you through it so you can get back on track and hold up your end of the deal.”

  I focus hard on the silverware wobbling in my grip. This time, broth dribbles down Matt’s chin and I have to dab down his neck to clean the mess. “It’s not a phase,” I mumble.

  “If you ask me, I think they’re being
entirely too delicate about it, treating you with kid gloves, sending you to see a fancy psychiatrist.” I shovel in another spoonful, hoping to shut him up. “I get it, I guess. They hope you’ll come to the right conclusion on your own. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Because you already promised, Lake,” he says, his voice flat and serious this time.

  “I know what promise I made,” I say softly.

  “Mom and Dad, they told me. You told me—”

  “Told you what?” I snap.

  “That if I lived until your eighteenth birthday, your choice would be me.”

  “As if you had another choice.” But that’s not exactly true. I remember the time before our parents cut the deal with Matt. How Dad caught him trying to drive his wheelchair into the ocean, only the wheels got stuck in the wet sand. How many attempts before he’d figure out a way to do it?

  Matt’s eyes go hard. “He was a high school boyfriend. You would have broken up anyway.” There’s a weird tingly sensation in the back of my throat. “And you would have gone off to college and lost touch with Penny. There’s a whole big world out there, Lake. Trust me, you’re not losing as much as you think.”

  He pauses to maneuver the robotic arm of his wheelchair to pat me condescendingly on the head. It’s about the only thing he’s able to do with that wheelchair arm of his.

  The heat in my cheeks transforms into something solid, a veil that creeps into my line of vision and I can hardly see except through pinhole slits to a world colored in rage. The spoon clatters to the table and I don’t know whether I threw it down intentionally or whether I lost my grip. Droplets land on Matt’s nose and forehead. I make no move to wipe them off.

  “You’re jealous.” My voice quakes. “Jealous that I loved them and that they loved me. Jealous that anybody loved me when you’re so…so…” I search for the right word but can’t find one that would cut deeply enough. I can just make out Matt’s face through my anger—and through what I realize now are tears. He’s once again mopped his features clear of expression. He’s gone unreadable again and it infuriates me. I stand up, knocking over my chair. “I…could never…miss you a fraction of the amount that I miss them.”