This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  It’s the other thing, though, what Ringo said about knowing what my friends would want. It’s been weeks since I last saw Penny, but I’ve begun to imagine a new version of her: Penny with flawless skin, no scar on her elbow from where she cut it on a broken pool tile, an altogether even more gorgeous, more perfect Penny. Would she be comfortable with that? Because nothing about resurrections is exactly…organic.

  I haven’t been mentioning any of this to Ringo. Instead, in quiet moments, when I don’t have the distraction of the Neville posse, I scroll through the internet idly searching through various forums and opinion pieces on resurrections. The web Buddhists tend to have split views—some see it as unnatural, others as reincarnation. None of these people speaks for Penny, I know.

  I’m at home, waiting, waiting. Matt has the kind of appointment where they look at him and tell him he’s still paralyzed. Okay, I don’t actually know what goes on at these appointments, but he has one, which means that I have to wait until Mom finishes carting him back and forth from the special wing of the hospital for people who’ve had really, really bad things happen to them. Like Matt.

  At just after eleven in the morning I hear the van door slide open outside. The sounds of voices, followed by those of Matt’s wheelchair and Mom’s footsteps, filter inside. I have to admit that I’ve been avoiding Matt ever since I received the resurrection paperwork, but with just over a week left until my birthday, I can’t waste any more time, time that I truly can’t afford.

  Once I know that he’s alone, I’m patient for only a few minutes before barging into Matt’s room. “Matt, I’m opening the third clue,” I say, brandishing it.

  I expect this to elicit a reaction. What I find is statue-Matt. I’m semi-used to this version of my brother because he can go unnaturally still, but this time Matt’s chin hangs down onto his chest and he doesn’t move. He isn’t wearing headphones or playing an audiobook or even an album of classical music. He’s just sitting there. “Do we really need an announcement?” he mumbles without lifting his head.

  I walk over to sit on his bed and tap the envelope. “Still sealed, see?”

  “Lake, I don’t have time for this.”

  I hold the envelope at the edges and peer down at it. “But it’s almost my birthday,” I say.

  He squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them wide, like he’s trying to wake himself up, but he keeps staring down, down, down and won’t look at me. “Yeah, I’m aware.”

  Like everything with Matt, the words are laced with double meanings not lost on me. But I press on. “So I want to finish the scavenger hunt.”

  And the thing that’s bothering me is that Matt isn’t even bothering to be Matt. Especially now.

  “Then finish it,” he sighs.

  This makes me feel a slimy kind of cold. “We made a deal. I promised to bring you along. On every single stop. You were very specific about that part.” I tap the edge of the envelope against my palm, testing the edge. “I’m making good on that promise.” There it is. I leave an elephant-size opening for him to call me out. But he doesn’t and my stomach flip-flops like a scummy dead fish.

  “Maybe later,” he says.

  I set him up perfectly. Slam dunk. I haven’t kept any of my promises, why start now? I could write the insult for him. So why doesn’t he go for it?

  I soften my tone. “Did you get bad news at the doctor’s?” I ask. “Are you…are you dying or something?”

  A huff. “Nope, Lake. Going to live for a long time. Good news,” he says with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “My body can keep ticking along like this for about thirty more years, so…”

  “But thirty more years,” I say. “That’s not very long. That can’t be right.”

  He stares, stares, stares out the window. “It’s plenty.”

  And I’m worried by the resignation I hear in his voice. I fidget and turn the envelope over in my hands. It feels so light now. “So,” I say. “So nothing has changed, though. So, so…” Resolve tightens in my belly. “So no maybe later. Maybe now. You wanted to come. You’re coming.” I feel a burst of annoyance. What makes Matt think he can just give up? It’s not even my birthday yet.

  “Lake—” His tone isn’t even mean. Or angry. Or anything.

  My knuckles turn white, fingers clenched onto the envelope. “Matt—I—I—don’t be like this. Please.” I stomp my foot just like I’m twelve again. I’ve gotten used to the idea of Matt coming. Why is he trying to change it up on me? What gives him the right to say it’s all over?

  He looks at me for the first time. Messy hair, clean-shaven, thin, hollowed-out cheeks. We stay there for five long seconds. I watch him for signs of the old version of my brother or any version of him that I recognize. But to me he looks small and alone and sad.

  And then Matt says, “Okay.” No explanation, just “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I nod and feel a slight swelling sensation pressing out at my ribs. I swallow it down so that, without further hesitation, I can slide my fingernail under the flap and tear open the envelope.

  “‘Clue Number Three,’” I read. “‘By now you must think your boyfriend’s awfully clever. Outside of where we learn, you’ll find your next endeavor. Here we all share the spot together. Hummus, ham, peanut butter, and rye, our love’s forever.’”

  Matt lets out a long, exaggerated breath and drops his head. “Wow. Wow, wow, wow. That is so much worse than I thought it’d be. Hummus? Peanut butter? And they say romance is dead.” There is still no humor in his eyes, or any scorn for that matter, but at least Matt is still showing signs of life.

  “Don’t forget about the ham,” I say, barely registering how much easier it’s becoming to laugh at Will.

  ***

  We arrive at St. Theresa’s in search of the fourth clue when the sun is high in the sky and threatening to tip over toward sunset. The empty school is lovely at this time of day. The centerpiece of campus is a quaint chapel with a white steeple stretching up into the sky. Dozens of classroom buildings encircle it and, at the bottom of a short hill, there’s a bright-blue swimming pool.

  I know the third clue will be somewhere around the lunch table that I shared with Penny and Will during the school year. It’s been the same one since we first became friends.

  Here we all share the spot together…our love’s forever.

  The words have been playing in my head over and over. Our love. And Will had chosen our lunch table, a fact that Matt naturally found hilarious, as the third stop on the scavenger hunt.

  I’ve wandered back to the ChatterJaw thread too many times to count. There have been no updates from them. Not from the person I know to be Will and not from his nameless muse.

  No updates, though. Just the leftover words and the thoughts that sink claws into my back that I can’t shake.

  I roll Matt down the deserted pathway made of bricks that were purchased by, and printed with the names of, past St. Theresa’s graduates. Next year, I’d have a brick on the path. But would Will or would Penny?

  Or…or would neither?

  No. I stuff the thought down, down, down. Everyone wants something from me, everyone wants to change my mind. I have to follow the path I’ve laid out for myself. It’s the only way to the truth. I need to find those wishes. They’re the only way I’ll really know who Will and Penny were when they weren’t attached to me.

  I watch the back of Matt’s head. He hasn’t finished high school. He hasn’t even gotten his GED, although the state would have made certain accommodations for him had he wanted to try. He didn’t. Or more likely, he wouldn’t. Even though he’s listened to more books than are in an entire school library.

  I listen to the sound of the wheels over the bumpy surface, content to remain silent. There’s so much to think about and I know that I’m reaching the end of it all. I’m lost in my own head when Matt tells me to stop.

  His voice echoes against solid walls and glass windows. It’ll be a
nother week and a half before students return to the school. The emptiness surrounding us is eerie.

  “What?” I jerk the wheelchair to a halt. “What’s wrong?” It’s my automatic assumption now that something must be tragically wrong. This more than anything else seems to have become a constant in my life.

  “I—I want to do something,” he says.

  This isn’t what I was expecting. “You want to…do something?” If there’s one thing I’ve known about my brother in the past few years, it’s that he absolutely never wants to do anything other than die, and I’m not helping him do that, so I’m nervous to ask, but I do anyway. “What?”

  “It’s stupid,” he says. “Actually, just forget about it.” Even though my brother can’t move, sometimes I can see the motion he’d make just by listening to his tone. Usually the gesture would involve giving me the middle finger, but today it’d be more like waving me off.

  I sigh. “Matt, we are on a great, big, epically magnificent, cowabunga awesome birthday surprise scavenger hunt. How much more stupid can it get?”

  “I thought maybe it’d be cool to be onstage for just a second. You know. Just to see what it felt like to graduate. Because I never got to do that.” He spits this all out at super speed. Faster than I’ve ever heard him talk, and even then, it sounds like each word pains him. He was noticing the bricks too, I guess. I suppose we’re all feeling a bit nostalgic this week. “But it’s dumb,” he concludes.

  “It’s not dumb.” I rest my cast on the back of his wheelchair.

  “It is. Graduation’s not about the stage. I know that.” His head droops and already it’s like I’m watching the life drain from him.

  “I bet it’s a little about the stage,” I say, teasing, and I can’t help imagining Matt in a cap and gown. But the Matt I picture is walking and grinning, still tan, still my brother. Although generally a jerk and a half, Matt is still the smartest person I know. He deserves to be on a graduation stage. “Come on,” I say, standing up straighter. “I have an idea.”

  “Lake…” He protests without really protesting. I pick up speed, wheeling him down the curved path, around the outside of the chapel to a dome-shaped building marked Klatzenburg Auditorium.

  “Voilà,” I announce with a flourish of my cast-encased arm. Suddenly this seems brilliant. Matt said I needed closure. That’s why I’ve come after the clue. Now I’m not the only one searching for my bookend.

  “It’s closed, Lake.”

  “Give me a second,” I say. I then give each of the doors a quick tug. “Wait here.” Then I go around and tug on the back and side exits. They’re all locked. Determined, though, I go back around to the front, where I take my keys out of my pocket along with a couple of bobby pins. I crouch down in front of the doors and work to finagle the locks. I stick a bobby pin in one of the jagged holes. I jiggle a half-inserted house key. Each time I listen for a promising rattle. When I think I hear one I tug on the handles some more. But they don’t budge.

  Okay, I admit, I’m starting to panic. It was a harebrained plan to begin with. I thought I’d get into the auditorium, find a spare cap stashed in the stage’s wings. I imagined myself pushing Matt across the stage and moving the tassel for him and pretending to create thunderous applause. I thought I could do this and it might mean something. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I was so eager to do something that meant something to him, that might make up for…for what I was going to do—or rather not do—for him, that I pushed ahead before I thought it through.

  “Lake.” Matt’s voice is deep.

  “Just—just one second.” I bite on my thumbnail. “This always works in, like, movies and stuff.” It was so ridiculous of me to think it was that simple. This wasn’t the movies. If this were the movies, my brother wouldn’t be paralyzed and my friends wouldn’t be dead and my boyfriend wouldn’t have a secret self too important to tell me about.

  “Like, what’s the point? Like, none of this stuff is who I am on the inside.” Will’s words tumble through my head. I wish for them to stop.

  “Lake, let’s go.”

  “No!” I have my hand pressed to my forehead now and I’m pacing. “There’s got to be a janitor here or something. Hello?” I call out. “Hello? Is anyone here?” Silence. I don’t know why this matters to me. Only that it’s the one thing that Matt’s ever said that he wanted aside from my resurrection choice and coming on this stupid scavenger hunt, so I thought that at least this I could definitely give him. This one thing.

  “Lake!” This time he shouts so loud that it makes me jump and I quit pacing. “Christ, you insensitive little…” He trails off. His tongue is stuffed between his teeth, seething. Meanwhile my mouth goes dry. “Did you really think wheeling me across a stage was—going—to—fix—anything?” He drags out the words and I feel like he’s dragging me along with them. But his voice is no longer deep. It’s strained. And I have to think that maybe it would have fixed something.

  “I just wanted to try.” I sound so small.

  Out here it’s like we’re the only two people left. Birds chirp and land on a nearby roof. Shadows stretch out, trying to swallow us whole.

  “You have made me suffer for days on end with this will-she-won’t-she bull and now you are desperate to clear your conscience over it. Well, stop it. You don’t want to use your resurrection on me.” He lets the bomb land. I wait for it to detonate, to see if it still feels like the truth or if maybe it’s somehow, over time, morphed into a lie.

  I direct my words at the pavement. I don’t know what’s made it harder to tell Matt that I won’t resurrect him, not now, not ever, but saying it out loud has started to feel about as easy as tearing holes through my skin. “It’s complicated.”

  “Astrophysics is complicated. I am your brother.”

  “No, you’re not,” I snap back. “My brother died five years ago. I don’t know who the hell you are.”

  I can practically see the red outline of a hand having slapped him across the face. Never had I expected one of my remarks to land. We both know that this one has and it leaves us wide-eyed and blinking at each other.

  Matt breaks the silence first. “Go get what we came for,” he says softly.

  My forehead is blazing hot, but I obey. Behind me, I sense Matt wanting to crawl out of his body. It’s so saddled with limitations. It’s so dependent on everyone else around him. He’s a prisoner to me, to my parents, to all of us.

  I want this all to be over. That’s why when I find the fourth clue hiding underneath the lunch table I tear it open and read the contents and don’t bother waiting for him at all.

  Because, who even cares anymore? I’m already a promise breaker.

  Aren’t I?

  Lake, you’ll find your prize by light of the next full moon.

  Wait! Wait! Not yet! I promise, you’ll learn the location soon.

  This year your birthday happens to fall on a night that’s quite auspicious.

  Look out for your invite and follow the directions to uncover all our wishes.

  I don’t tell Matt that I’ve already opened the envelope. By the time I return to him at St. Theresa’s, he’s wiped his face blank again and makes a point of acting unfazed by my remark. Instead, he makes several jabs about my driving and then claims he’s too tired to have dinner. So I guess we’re both keeping things to ourselves.

  After I’ve gone to bed, Mom comes into my room and sits down on my bed. I quickly stash Penny’s journal beneath the comforter. I notice Mom doesn’t have a magazine in hand and find that I sort of wish that she did, even if only for old times’ sake.

  She has her hair pulled back in the white shell barrette. It’s not worth being mad at her any longer.

  “Lake,” she says. It’s been too long since I’ve heard a version of her other than one who’s exhausted. “What are you doing with Matt?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her fingers are long and bony and if you pinch the skin above the knuckle it takes a
long time for it to go down. I watch her play absently with the folds on her hands. “I mean that you’ve been taking him on outings, spending time with him. Why?”

  “Because he asked me to.”

  “Asked you to what?” she says.

  I sit up and use my toes to tuck Penny’s journal farther beneath the covers. I have a one-minute debate about how much to tell her and then decide that it doesn’t matter. I can tell her or not and it won’t change a thing, so I do what’s easiest. “Will set up this scavenger hunt for my birthday,” I begin. “He wanted me to get to the end of it because…because it would tell me something. Because it’s important, what’s at the end. Matt made me promise to bring him along on the hunt.”

  Her mouth twists as if she’s fishing around in there for the right thing to say. I think she finds it. “Sometimes grief makes us hold on to things tighter than we otherwise would and search for answers where there aren’t any,” she says. It reminds me of one of Penny’s Buddhist quotes, transcribed carefully in her handwriting.

  I stare down at the remnants of chipped polish on my toes.

  “When your brother got hurt, I showed up to the occupational therapy wing of the hospital every day. I would wait for doctors outside their offices. I once drove three hours to speak with a doctor who had already written me to say Matt’s case was hopeless and that he would never walk again.” It’s strange, but I don’t remember my mother doing this at all. “I held his feet and would mimic the motion of walking, praying that his legs would remember. I held on for a long time, I searched for answers, but there weren’t any. Do you know what I mean?” But I think maybe she hasn’t stopped hanging on, she’s just changed what she’s hanging on to. Matt’s resurrection.

  “Dad still bikes, though,” I say. “Miles and miles, and you think that’s healthy.”

  “Dad’s biking…it’s a coping mechanism. It’s different. He’s not looking for anything out there on the road. He just does it and then he comes back better. The answers for him are in the act itself. It’s not a crutch.”