This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  But so am I.

  It has been an overwhelming taste of what I can expect to be dealing with for the next few weeks. Penny or Will? An impossible choice to begin with, and I’ve only been focused on how it affects me. On my eighteenth birthday I’ll be giving one family back their child and the other…nothing.

  I now know with sinking certainty that the family whose child I don’t choose won’t be in my life anymore and I’ll have lost not just one of my two best friends but another set of parents as well.

  The burden bears down on me like a heavy meal sitting undigested in the pit of my stomach. I push the door to Will’s room closed behind me with a quick snap and collapse onto his bed.

  There, I take several deep breaths into the fabric of his comforter—sucking in the scent of coconut suntan lotion—before pulling my face from it so that I don’t cover the whole thing in snot.

  My chest rises and falls in shallow puffs as I stare down my nose. I’m in Will’s room. For a boy’s room, it’s clean if not neat, and it’s clear Ms. Bryan hasn’t done anything to tidy it up in the last couple of days. I’m in Will’s room. I pull myself up into a sitting position. I’m blinking, eyes wide now. I scurry off the edge of the mattress. The turn of conversation has chased all thoughts of the scavenger hunt from my mind, but here I am. Will’s great, big, epically magnificent, cowabunga awesome birthday surprise. For a second, it feels almost too easy, too fortuitous, and I imagine Will up here leading me to the answer, because surely this must mean that I need to find the wishes, that they’ll work their magic somehow. Why else would Will have chosen a scavenger hunt? Of all years, why this one?

  If only I’m smart enough to figure out the trail to where he wanted me to go.

  I cross the room and let my fingertips trail along the length of his desk, which is crammed against the window. There’s a paperback lying facedown. I put my thumb in the spine to hold the page and flip it over. The book is a copy of an old Joe Hill novel called The Heart-Shaped Box. The open page is three-quarters to the end. Quietly, I read the last few lines that Will must have read before he died, searching for some clue as to what he was thinking.

  I quickly set the book aside and lean back against the desk. I haven’t gone a day without speaking to Will in over a year, and now I’ve gone two and it’s like he’s simply been lifted out of the world and I’m struggling to pull him back.

  After fifteen minutes of checking in drawers, under the bed, in his closet, in the dirty-clothes hamper, and between the books in his shelves, I’m no closer to finding the hidden wishes or to figuring out the first step in how to get them. I’m frustrated, hungry, desperately sad, and borderline angry when a knock sounds on the door. “Lake, are you in there?”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, close my eyes, and count to three.

  “Come in!” I say and try to rearrange my face into something suitable for the parents of my dead boyfriend.

  In the last ten days I’ve become a Will and Penny anthropologist. Maya asks me to eat lunch with her and I do, but we don’t have much in common, given that she’s kind of a tech-nerd and has a weird obsession with playing Dragon Con 6 on her phone. Most of the time I zone out and watch Will and Penny.

  I can’t figure them out.

  They aren’t dating, but they do act like a married couple. From afar, I see Penny snatching a Snickers bar from Will’s lunch, hiding it, and trying to slyly replace it with something unappetizing, like carrot sticks. They argue. Penny usually wins. It’s…confusing. I’ve never been friends with a boy aside from my brother, and I’m aware that totally doesn’t count.

  On the surface, Penny and Will don’t even seem like they’d hang out, let alone be inseparable. Everyone loves Will, teachers, students—upperclassmen, lowerclassmen, it doesn’t matter. He tends to make small talk while using expressive gestures and I even witnessed him remembering the janitor’s birthday with a card and candy from the vending machine. Penny is confident and unbothered, but she tends to keep to herself unless she’s making signs for Greenpeace or recycling or endangered animals.

  The two of them just have this aura. People listen to them. For instance, Peng and Harrison haven’t bothered me since Penny shut them down.

  Neither of them has spoken more than two words to me at a time since my first day of school. Short of stalking—okay, a little stalking—I have spent my free time searching for my opening, hoping they would invite me to sit with them or hang out after school.

  I realize I could make the first move, but I don’t want to be an intruder, I want to be part of them. The desire to belong within a friendship that close fills me with a longing I didn’t know I had until I stumbled on it between the two of them.

  That’s why I’m surprised to find Penny alone. It happens so fortuitously, I’m half convinced that I should take it as a sign. Class is already in session, and I’m headed back from the office, where I’ve been wrestling with a school administrator once again over the details of my schedule.

  I’m walking through our school’s breezeway when I notice Penny a short distance away, kneeling beside a clump of trees. I slow down to study her, one of my new favorite hobbies, and it’s then that I hear the telltale sniffles of crying.

  Crying.

  I glance around, thinking Will must be nearby before realizing that he’s not and she’s alone. I take a deep breath, unsure of what I’ll do or say. I’ve never been exactly good with girls my age. I think that’s why I’ve tended to gravitate toward physical activity—if it involves a thrill that makes talking either impossible or irrelevant, that’s even better. I mean, I don’t even talk to my previous best friend, Jenny, anymore, and when I did, it’s not like we shared big secrets or I’d tell her when I was sad or anything. Those things had been reserved for Matt or my mom.

  I step off the path, cutting across the crunchy grass toward Penny.

  I gently call her name. “Are you…Are you okay?”

  She turns to look at me. “Oh, hi, Lake, it’s you.” She doesn’t seem either surprised or disappointed. Instead, she looks like she’s had pinkeye for three weeks straight. Her nose is dripping two slimy rivers that fork off over her lips. I’m instantly fearful. Something is deeply, deeply wrong.

  “What happened?”

  She is toying with the braided leather necklace and amethyst charm that dangles from her neck. “It’s dying.” She looks away from me and her eyes flood with new tears.

  “What is?” But I see the spots of pink blood on Penny’s fingers and try to stave off the rising panic. “You’re bleeding, Penny. God. Here, I’ll help you to the nurse’s office.” I hold out my arm. I’m not sure where she’s hurt or what’s taken place, but she is clearly a girl in distress.

  She shakes her head, then bends down to the ground. When she stands back up, she’s cradling a small bird in her hands. I flinch. The bird’s feathers are twisted—some pulled out to the stem—and coated with blood. Its head hangs limply against Penny’s fingers, an oozing gash in its throat. The bird’s membrane moves slowly and horizontally across its eye like it’s blinking, and the needle-thin beak appears to chatter.

  “He’s a sandpiper.” Penny holds the bird close to her chest, her chin tucked to her collarbone, staring down at it. “I don’t know how it got over here.” She strokes the bird’s brown speckled wing. Tears dribble off the tip of her nose. “A cat must have gotten it. Or maybe a fox…or a lawn mower.” Penny chokes. “I don’t know what to do.” She sobs.

  I try, but I don’t think I feel as badly for the bird as I do for Penny, who seems almost broken over a tiny animal that has never loved her back, not even for a day. “We could take it to a vet?” I suggest because I want to add something.

  But we both stare at the bird. It’s opening its beak methodically now, staring into nothing. The breaths are labored, wings still.

  “It’s in pain,” she whispers. “It’s in so much pain.” Penny gasps for air between silent sobs, and again, it’s her pain that I feel,
her pain that I want to go away.

  This girl with her bangles and her quirky braids and inner confidence is completely flattened out in the face of the bleeding bird.

  Penny’s eyes seem to plead with me. “I texted Will,” she says, voice still quiet. “He’s not responding.”

  I close my eyes because my throat has started to get all tight the way it did when I used to have asthma. “I could…” Then I shake my head furiously. “No, I’m sorry, I was just thinking out loud and—”

  She looks at me, eyes bright and intense. “Please, Lake?”

  The bird is pressed against her and Penny is crying, crying, crying. “It’s in pain,” she says.

  I don’t even know what to do, not for sure, but I reach out for the bird and scoop it from Penny’s breast. There’s a spot of blood on her crested sweater vest. “All right,” I say. “I guess I can.”

  I have never been a person that scares easily. I remind myself of that as I feel the barely there weight of the dying bird in my hands. I lay it gently on the ground. Penny turns away, dropping her head into her hands. My pulse slows. There’s nothing in my head. Loud silence. As I take the heel of my shoe, balance my weight, pause to focus and aim for what I know has to work—must work—on the first try. Then I bring my heel down hard and fast and without hesitation on the bird’s head, where at once it stills underneath my foot.

  The sound comes rushing back into my skull. I’m dizzy to the point of nausea, but Penny buries her face in my shoulder and hugs me. Will shows up as if out of thin air, though I imagine it was actually from the hallway.

  He sees me. He looks down at the ground. Frowns and nods. He wraps his hand around Penny’s back and then another grips the back of my neck, giving it a gentle squeeze. And eventually the roaring in my head slips down into my heart, where it turns into something much warmer and simpler and good.

  When I wake up, my sheets are doused with cold sweat and my heart is pounding against my ribcage. The last thing I remember is falling. My eyes are peeled wide open, but I’m not seeing anything in the real world. I’m still hovering somewhere amid the in-between.

  And then I’m remembering the dream. It had started with a crash or—no—maybe the crash had come in the middle, after Matt had begun climbing the tree. I thought it had started with the crash, with the crunch of metal and blood, but now that I’m awake and breathing again, I’m getting my orders mixed up. I can see a hazy Matt, scaling the tree—tan arms, blond hair—but when he falls, it’s not to the ground, but into a raging gray sea. And then the blood returns. From the car crash.

  I pry myself from the soaking mattress and kick the blankets off my legs. There’s nothing more boring than hearing about another person’s dream, but I have this insatiable urge to tell someone the whole sequence of events, as though by telling, it might relinquish its weird hold on me.

  Then I realize the person who I’d tell—Penny—is dead. And here I am, fully awake and queasy. The start of the fourth day since the accident.

  I crawl out of bed. My neck’s still sore from the crash. The bone beneath my cast throbs and the skin itches. I try sliding a fingernail under the plaster, but can’t reach the spot, so I work on ignoring it, the same way I’m working to ignore the ragged hole in my chest where my heart used to be and the growing sense of dread.

  Without bothering to check the mirror, I slip on the pair of flip-flops stowed beneath my bed and tread through the quiet downstairs hallway. I don’t know exactly why, but before I know it, I’m outside in the glaring sun where the sweat on my back dries almost instantly. None of the neighbors are outside to bear witness to my embarrassing pajama attire. My drawstring pants are baggy in the backside and have Santa-clad pigs on them.

  I shuffle down the driveway to stand beneath the oak tree in our yard and do something I’ve never done before. I stand directly underneath it and stare up into the branches. When Matt fell, I thought that my dad swore he’d have it chopped down, but now I can’t remember if I had been the one who asked him to do that. Or maybe it was my mother. I’m not sure.

  The branches’ leaves are brown at the edges where they’ve been baked in the summer heat. I trace the limbs sprouting from the trunk and look for the stub of the one Matt fell from. All these years, I thought I remembered exactly where it was. But it’s not my memory. I wasn’t there.

  I walk up to the base of the trunk. The first real branch, one that would hold the weight of a person, is a few feet above my fingertips, which are stretched over my head. Matt was only a couple of inches taller than me at the time of the accident. Wasn’t he? And I’ve grown since then. I frown and remember that the tree too must have grown. It seems like an awful lot for a tree to grow in a few years, though. In the messy tangle of twigs, there are several shoots of baby leaves and branches sprouting from the trunk. But none looked as I imagined the remnants of the terrible broken branch would.

  I stare down at my toes, at the worn grass carpet at my feet, and try to imagine Matt lying in it. A prickle works its way up the length of my spine, notch by notch.

  I look up at the house and see a subtle brush of movement in one of the first-story windows and feel someone there, watching me, behind the sheen of the glass. Perturbed and unsatisfied, I turn my shoulders away and trudge through the oppressive heat back to the house.

  Inside, the air-conditioning smells mildew-y as it blows through the vents. I retreat to my room, feeling dazed, probably the end result of days of crying that have turned me into an emotional prune. I am no closer to choosing between Penny and Will, except that yesterday I felt that I’d have to choose Will and then today I’m furious with myself for not giving Penny a fair shot.

  I have nothing to show for the days since the accident and I’m beginning to feel the constant nothingness like an ulcer drilling a hole through the lining of my gut.

  “Well…” I jump at the voice and then at the warm body occupying the back corner of my room. “Have you figured it out yet?” Matt sits in his wheelchair, eerily still, as always.

  I wait for several heartbeats, my knuckles boring into my chest as the organ underneath drums, drums, drums furiously. “Christ, Matt, you scared me half to death.”

  The sun pours through the window, turning my brother into a silhouette. “We wouldn’t want that, now, would we? Not the golden goose, the holder of the magical ticket to Wonderland.”

  Matt likes to make odd references, allusions to books that he listens to—hundreds of them—in his ample spare time. Often the literary connections are mismatched. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

  I glare at him, keeping the bed between the two of us. “Have I figured what out?” I ask, in no mood for his riddles, but my mind flits back to the oak tree and its tall branches and the tough sandy dirt barely hiding underneath the grass there.

  With Matt, every question doubles as a test. I already feel as though I’m failing, but it’s important not to step on any land mines, especially the kind that will leave you without a foot or a hand.

  I tuck my hands deep into my armpits. I seriously wish I’d thought to put on a bra.

  More proof of how much has changed. I remember when Matt and I used to come down for tea in the morning and drink it out on the beach, both of us with hair still a mess, teeth not brushed. But now I hardly ever see Matt unless I’m fully dressed for the day. He feels too much like a stranger and I have the sense of needing to put on my armor before dealing with him.

  I take a step closer, just so the light shifts and I can see him clearly. The toes of his socks are stretched out and they hang awkwardly down past the wheelchair stirrups. A pang of guilt knocks me in the stomach as I think about how I’d left him hungry in the kitchen. I bet Mom’s angry.

  “The hunt,” he says, matter-of-factly.

  My attention snaps into focus. “What are you talking about?”

  His grin is wolfish. “Okay, so you do know about it at least. I wasn’t sure. I don’t know if you’re a
ware, but your good looks have made you painfully slow. Mentally.”

  I grit my teeth. Be quiet. Don’t engage. That’s what he wants. “But—” I say, thickly, not doing myself any favors in terms of refuting Matt’s point.

  He cocks his head and his dull-brown hair obscures his eyebrows. “But—but—but—” he mimics. “How do I know about the hunt? Lake, really. What kind of big brother would I be not to involve myself intimately in the love life of my little sister?”

  I narrow my eyes. “The kind that I’ve been living with for the last five years?”

  “I’m hurt.”

  “Spare me.”

  I feel sorry for Matt. Of course I do. But it’s hard to have a relationship with someone who wants me to be as miserable as he is. Does he not remember the dozens of times that I tried to forge a new relationship with him? Does he not recall when I bought us tickets to see a marathon of all the Tolkien movies? Or the time when I bought us that high-tech version of Trivial Pursuit, even though I’m terrible at trivia? He wanted nothing to do with me. Nothing.

  And I moved on because I had to move on, and we got on with the inevitable business of not liking each other.

  But now here we are. Speaking. Sort of. My head feels swollen. Maybe it’s a belated side effect of the accident. I’ve heard of whiplash pain not revealing itself until days or even weeks after a car wreck.

  But I fight the sensation and instead give in to his game out of sheer necessity. “Yes. I know about the scavenger hunt. And I know what’s at the end of it. What I don’t know is how to get there.”

  “Then I imagine it’s going to be hard to get very far without the first clue.”

  “Yeah, thanks, I’ve figured that much out too.” I sound peevish and hate that I’ve so obviously allowed him to get under my skin. Again. God, it could be so different between us. If only he’d tell me how sorry he was that I’ve just lost my two best friends. If only he told me what I did to make him hate me. But the truth is I’m not sure what’s on the other side of those “if onlys” anymore. Maybe nothing. “Why are you so interested anyway?” I say, wishing he’d get the hell out of my room and leave me alone like he has been for the past five years. “You don’t even care that they’re dead.”