This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  “What it was like?” I finish for him.

  His teeth are set on edge, but he jerks his head yes.

  “Right, um…” I scratch the back of my neck. “You really want to know?” I squint. “You do realize I’m your sister.”

  “Yes, we’ve met,” he says, flustered. “But I don’t have a ton of people to ask these things to. Unless you count Mom and Dad, in which case I think sister seems preferable, don’t you?”

  I sweep the confetti bits of polish from the bed. “Okay, yeah. I guess so….It was…” I search for the right words. Magical? Meaningful? A regular after-school special in terms of protection? “Short,” I confess. Matt snorts. “But really sweet.” I toss a pillow at him. It misses.

  “Sweet?” Matt wrinkles his nose.

  “Yeah, I mean, I think you have to wait for the sweep-you-off-your-feet, animalistic-desire kind until you’re at least in your twenties.” I am only sort of joking. “But it was with someone who cared about me and cared about how I felt about…about all of it.” I know this alone was more than a lot of girls in my school got. The truth is, though, I’d never thought about it much. It was something I knew was going to happen eventually. Will and I loved each other. So if it didn’t happen that night, it would have happened the next month or the month after that. Will and I were inevitable. “It only hurt a little. At first.”

  “Was it all it’s cracked up to be?”

  I frown. My heart has hurt so much, I don’t think it knows how to hurt anymore. Everything’s gone to shit. And not just for me. Matt’s asking his little sister about sex. And I’m actually wishing he could get to have it.

  “I think it could be,” I say honestly. “Eventually.”

  Matt’s lips twitch. “Okay, then, that’s, um, educational.”

  He clears his throat and I realize I’ve fallen silent. I look away. I can’t stand to feel what I’m feeling, which is sorry for him. “Matt,” I say, lowering my head to peer down to him at his level. “Are you sure that you can’t, you know, have it?”

  He closes his eyes and I watch the swell of his chest. In. Out. In. Out. “It’s complicated.”

  My eyebrows lift. “So, that means not a no then.”

  He smirks. “It means it’s complicated.”

  I dig my front teeth into my bottom lip and embrace half a smile. “Matt Devereaux. You’ve been holding out.”

  His mouth is pursed, dark hair hangs around his chin. There’s a sparkle to his eyes that I haven’t seen there in a long, long time. “Shall we find that next clue?” he says.

  “Yeah.” I clap my palms onto my knees. “Let’s do that.” I crawl off the bed and survey my surroundings, trying to think strategically. If Will were to hide the clue here, where would he hide it?

  I know Will would have expected to be here, helping me find the clues. I imagine him saying “Colder, colder—no, warmer” like I was a toddler and gleefully clapping his hands when I got “hot.”

  He would have hid it somewhere, though, where the staff wouldn’t clean or look, somewhere a scavenger hunt clue could go unnoticed. Finally, I open the mini fridge, run my hand through the freezer tray, and feel a hard square resting inside a plastic baggie.

  I slide it out and hold up the envelope: Clue 3.

  “What do you wear to a death party anyway?” I ask, tugging open Penny’s dresser drawers. I begin pulling out clothes and dropping them on the carpet beside my bare feet. Soon, the floor is littered with sarongs, long gauzy dresses, and tribal pants, none of which I could appropriately wear to a party.

  Penny lowers her rear end from the downward dog position. “I was planning on wearing this.” Penny’s sporting a long printed skirt and a white knit sweater that hangs off one shoulder. I stare critically at her.

  “What?” Penny demands, flipping the magazine closed. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  I blow my bangs out of my eyes. “Nothing, it’s fine. It’s just…very you. Which of course I love.” I put my fingers to my lips and blow Penny a kiss. Aside from her favorite pair of yoga pants and a bathing suit, Penny has absolutely no form-fitting clothes.

  “Okay, I’m going to stick to black,” I say, pulling the outfit I brought from home off Penny’s bed and stripping my shirt off to replace it. I duck to view my reflection in her vanity while I braid my hair in a long plait down my back. “It just seems on-theme, doesn’t it?”

  “We’re not going to a funeral, Lake.” Penny pushes her feet off the ground and raises them in a headstand, revealing a pair of bright-blue underwear. The top half of her forehead turns red. “We’re going to the part before the funeral.” I shudder at the reminder. My first death party, an “underground” gathering where someone agrees to die on the eve of someone else’s eighteenth birthday in order to be resurrected the next day. It’s supposed to be a rush for the resurrection holder to have the experience of ending a life, and some death groupies believe that they’ll actually come back more spiritually connected with their killer once resurrected. Since suicide and assisted suicide are strictly taboo, death parties are always hush-hush and the deceased’s untimely demise must be presented as an accident. I can’t believe I’m really going to one.

  “Besides, black is so boring,” Penny finishes.

  “Gee, thanks.” I fasten a few wisps with a bobby pin. A black cut-off T-shirt skims the waist of my black jeans, exposing my belly button whenever I lift my arms too high.

  “Scratch that,” Penny says. “We’ve only got five minutes before Will gets here. You look great.”

  Penny returns to upright and comes to stand next to me in the mirror.

  “Okay, seriously.” She holds the edges out on her sweater. “Is this not okay?” She turns to the side. “I picked it out kind of specifically for—I just picked it out special,” she finishes in one breath.

  I spin from the mirror to face her. “Seriously. You could wear a potato sack and still look like a Sports Illustrated model. Minus the boobs.” I grin wickedly.

  Penny crosses her arm protectively over her chest. “Hey!”

  I lean over to apply blush to the apples of my cheeks and glance sidelong at Penny. I know that’s not how she meant to end her sentence.

  I take a few extra minutes at the mirror knowing that I’ll see Will Bryan any moment too. We both freeze at the sound of a running engine outside. Penny rushes to the window, opens the blinds with her fingers, and peers out. “He’s here,” she says.

  It’s just Will, I remind myself. Will is your friend.

  But I can’t contain the guilty smile that’s creeping up the corners of my lips. What’s more, I’m horrified when I turn to see Penny wearing a matching one. We both swallow our smiles at the same time.

  Penny shakes out the pleats in the long, flowing fabric of her skirt. She turns to me with a now serious expression. Her delicate hand wraps around my wrist. “Lake, are you sure we should be going to this thing?” I can feel my pulse beating fast against her fingers. Because I’m not at all sure.

  Outside, there’s the scuff of footsteps on the sidewalk, followed by the doorbell chime. “I don’t know,” I hedge. “But…I think we already are.” I squeeze her shoulder. “Come on. It’ll be fine.”

  Together, we traipse to the front door. Standing on the doorstep is Will Bryan. “Your chariot awaits, my ladies.” He grins. A wad of gum is stashed between two rows of perfectly white teeth. A kind of electric energy causes Penny and me to shift our weight too much and knock elbows. He tucks his hands in his jeans pockets and rocks back on his heels, chuckling softly.

  Our Will Bryan. My stomach turns itself into a pretzel each time I see the gentle bump at the top of his nose and that sandy-blond hair that hangs down over his ears. My heart tugs. The problem is, I don’t know how Will stopped being just Will and started being Will Bryan, boy whose full name I like to repeat in my head over and over.

  Penny takes shotgun in Will’s old Pontiac and I convince myself to feel only the smallest pang of je
alousy when I have to crawl into the backseat. I can hardly hear their conversation over the roar of his engine anyway, and after ten minutes or so I tune out and stare through the window at the straight line of dark ocean horizon as it passes.

  Finally, Will’s wheels land off the paved road with a thud and I jolt to attention. I sit up straighter now and lean forward to peer through the windshield. Ten minutes earlier we left the coast behind and headed inland, where the terrain quickly shifted from cute beach town to country.

  The night sky is black as an ink stain out here. Will guides the car through a grass lot. Bugs dart in and out of the beam of his headlights. At the edge of the line of parked cars, a two-story house sits beside a thick, crooked tree that bends over the roof like a broken finger.

  Some kids are streaming into the house, while others mill on the wraparound porch. The closest house appears to be half a mile away.

  “This,” Penny says, “is kind of creepy.”

  Will leans into the steering wheel to peer out the windshield. “It’s a party.”

  “Where someone dies,” I say. I can’t believe the three of us are doing this. On the one hand, I feel a thrill to share the experience together. Our first grown-up party. A death party, no less. It’s wild and dangerous, the kind of thing we’ll be talking about when we’re adults and looking back on our crazy teenage years. On the other hand, the thought of seeing someone die up close is terrifying. What if I get sick? What if I have to look away?

  But then my eyes land on the back of Will’s head and the strong arch of his shoulders where they slope up to his neck and I know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

  He finds an empty patch of lawn beside a pickup truck and parks the Solstice. The rumble of the engine stops and we pour out of the car. There are more people here than I thought there’d be. We pass cars double-parked in places as we walk toward the house.

  As we mount the porch steps, the music shifts from a dull pounding beat to an actual melody. A large boy with a shaved head and skin folds on his neck that resemble a bulldog’s sticks out his arm, blocking Will’s chest as he tries to enter.

  “You on the list?” he asks.

  Will’s face pales. “What list?” It was Will’s idea to come to the party tonight. I cast around, noticing all the kids who look at least two or three years older than us.

  The pseudobouncer performs a once-over on Will, Penny, and me. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Just then, though, a red cup held high makes its way through the crowded doorway. “Hey, hey, hey.” Jeremy crashes through. His cheeks are slack even when he smiles. Will’s mom has never kept a tight rein on her basement tenant, even if he is technically family. He slings a sloppy arm over Will’s shoulder. “Ronny, this is my little cuz. And his friends.” He sweeps his free arm to encompass all of us and, in the process, sloshes beer on my shirt. I jump back, but Penny keeps me from toppling off the porch.

  “They’re cool?” Ronny’s long forehead, made longer by the shaved head, wrinkles and he lets his lower lip hang out in a tough-guy pout that really does make him bear a striking resemblance to a dog. I thumb the toothy scar on my hand and decide that I dislike Ronny on principle.

  Jeremy leans over Will to get closer to Ronny. “That’s Matt Devereaux’s sister,” he says in a stage whisper. I bite my lip and try to blend. Why had he said that?

  “Matt, the-kid-that-got-paralyzed Matt?” He squints at me as if he’s trying to see the resemblance. He shakes his head. “Shitty luck,” he says. “Matt was cool. Tell him I say hi, will you?”

  I nod and look away without saying anything. I will most definitely not be telling Matt anything of the sort.

  Jeremy’s eyes brighten again and he waves us in. “Come inside.” He tugs Will’s head into the crook of his armpit and tousles his hair. “Look at you.” He glances back in our direction. “Two dates. You’re such a pimp.”

  My stomach clenches. I don’t like that Jeremy—or anyone—might see Penny and me as Will Bryan groupies. It had never occurred to me until this moment that this might be the public perception.

  Will doesn’t correct his cousin, and Jeremy’s feet swerve as he snakes through the crowd of people playing Beirut in the living room and Flip Cup in the kitchen. Will steadies him.

  Jeremy points out the keg sitting on the kitchen counter and tells us to help ourselves before mercifully wandering off in the direction of the patio. Will watches him go and once he has disappeared returns his attention to us.

  “Shall we?” He reaches for a stack of red plastic cups.

  Penny holds up her palm. “Not for me. I seriously doubt the beer here is gluten free.”

  Will fills cups for the two of us like he’s a professional bartender. He sniffs the contents, then knocks back several large gulps. “Okay, that’s actually disgusting,” he says. “It’s like drinking horse piss.” This isn’t surprising since the last and only time we’ve had anything to drink was when we paid Jeremy to buy us a six-pack of wine coolers, and those tasted like lemonade.

  I cautiously dip my tongue into the beer. “Gross. Maybe we can just use them as props.” Most of the people in the crowd are holding identical red cups. “Helps us fit in.”

  Will takes a few more cautious sips and then scrapes his tongue against his front teeth.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Penny says, bobbing on her toes.

  “Already?” I ask.

  “I can’t help it,” she whines. “I drank a whole bottle of iced green tea before we left. Lake?” Penny asks. She’s already starting to walk away. “You coming?” Her brows pull together expectantly and my palms go instantly clammy.

  I look to Will. “I—uh—” I love Penny with all my heart and what I’m about to do is a total violation of girl code. Even though we haven’t said it, I am almost 100 percent positive that we both like the same guy. It hurts even more because I know Penny would never do the same to me, but I can’t help it. “I don’t want to leave Will alone,” I blurt. “I think I’ll just wait for you here.”

  Penny’s frown lasts only a brief moment and I wonder if she’s rethinking how badly she needs to speed off to find a restroom, but she drops it and disappears into the thick mass of people.

  After that, Will and I are alone. Well, alone plus twenty-five or so strangers. Relief washes over me. My gaze flits over the crowd. “So who do you think it is?” I ask.

  Will leans in close, our ears grazing each other, to hear. “Who do I think what is?”

  “The one who’s going to…you know…die.” A chill races up the length of my spine. I’ve never seen a dead body before.

  Will now follows the line of my vision purposefully. Off to the right in the kitchen, near a dormant fireplace, stands a girl talking with grand hand gestures to a gaunt-looking boy. Will points directly at her. “That one.”

  I hush him and push his finger down. “Don’t point!” He laughs and now takes a real swig of the beer. “Okay, why her?” I ask.

  “She seems like she’s in desperate need of attention. I mean, look at all that arm waving about.” He mimics her gesticulations. “It’s so me, me, look at me. I figure a girl’s got to be attention hungry to go through with something as ridiculous as a death party.”

  I bite the rim of my cup. The floor is sticky against the soles of my shoes. Suddenly, the music cuts off. The crowd stills. Where’s Penny? I search for her multicolored skirt, her silky blond hair, but I don’t see her anywhere. A bell chimes three times and a voice whose source I can’t locate says, “It’s time.”

  Will checks his watch. “Eleven thirty,” he says. He looks at me head-on. I can feel the color slowly draining from my face.

  His chest rises and falls in deep breaths. “Lake?” he says, holding my shoulder in place with a tender grip. “I wanted to say, I’m sorry about earlier. About not saying anything when Jeremy…you know, said that. It was stupid. I don’t think of you—of us—like that and—”

  I’d nearly forgotte
n about Jeremy’s offhanded comment, but the fact that it had been bothering Will since we’d gotten to the party fills every inch of me with longing. Will’s been extra sensitive since his dad left them. He’s dead set on not turning into him and I respect that.

  I lightly punch him in the arm. “Don’t worry about it. That’s what family is for, right?” My hand falls awkwardly to my side and I shrug. “It’s fine.” After all, no one’s family is as dysfunctional as mine.

  He nods. “Okay, then.” And after another nod for good measure, he seems to have returned to his normal Will self. “Shall we?” We both turn toward the door. Sweaty bodies are being herded up the stairs to a second story.

  Will and I fall in line. Trudging in silence, we pass a gallery of family portraits. I realize I have no idea whose home this is. Once upstairs, I crane my neck and see that the upstairs seems to have two bedrooms and a bathroom accented with frilly yellow-trimmed curtains. I doubt the adults of the house envisioned their home being used as a place to die.

  A cold, emptied-out feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. I don’t even know how the death will take place. Is there a standard, and if so, what is it?

  I try to imagine how I’d choose to go. Overdose maybe. Then I shake off the thoughts as too terrible to process.

  We’re led away from the bedrooms to a large room that must be used as a game room or some other shared space for the family. Even though it’s nighttime, the windows are blacked out with cardboard. Will and I shuffle to the side and, once settled, I scoot closer to the warmth of his arm.

  In the center of the room, a petite blond girl with stringy hair sits on a couch. It’s not the one Will predicted. This girl’s eyes are unfocused. She stares off into the center of the crowd, looking at no one in particular. It’s almost like having her ghost already in the room.

  My heart bangs in my chest. A boy separates from the crowd and leans down to kiss the girl. She responds only by lifting her chin and kissing him hard on the mouth, letting out a slight moan as she does it. When their lips part, he hands her a bottle of vodka. She takes it by the handle and downs a big gulp.