This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  At the door of my bedroom I listen. The house is quiet. Safe. I tread carefully into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of milk. The house is so silent, it sounds like there’s static electricity buzzing in my ears. Through the window I see that outside the day is bright and windy. Gusts whisk the ocean into frothy whitecaps. The rocks spout white, as if the jetty were a giant whale.

  Is Ringo right about me? Am I sick?

  On the beach below, half of my sandcastle wall is still intact, but only the back section. The tide has eaten through the center of the sand wall and swallowed parts of each of the towers, which now stand lopsided, ugly, and sad, the roofs caved in on all of them.

  My boyfriend is dead, Penny is dead, my brother is paralyzed. Will and Penny’s families hate each other. Harrison’s uncle is a lunatic. Ringo’s mom is alive but not living. My parents can’t hold on to two ropes that are pulling in opposite directions and they can’t get over what happened to Matt, maybe not ever. I have a choice that’s unfairly huge. I am not God. Hell, I’m not even class president. I’m just a seventeen-year-old girl and I didn’t sign up for this.

  I try to retrace the steps to the first moment when my life started falling apart. Looking back now makes my current circumstances seem all but inevitable. For five years, I’ve been breaking too, just like Matt. From the first moment I woke up and I wasn’t in the same family as my family anymore and I quit talking to Jenny and I skipped soccer practice and changed schools and Matt hated me.

  I repeat that again in my mind. Jenny. Soccer. Changed schools.

  And again.

  Jenny. Soccer. Changed schools.

  And Matt hated me.

  My gaze collides with the jetty and I start to add a few things.

  Asthma—poof!—gone. The summer I turned hot. The way Coyote Blue looked at me.

  My brain feels like it’s trying to walk through drying cement. Sludge, sludge, sludge. But I have to keep going.

  I turn my hand over and study the silver scar from where a dog bit me when I was fourteen and a half years old.

  My fingers carve through my hair, holding it back in a makeshift ponytail and then releasing it. No, I think. I start doing the math in my head. When I was thirteen Matt was seventeen. Seventeen years old.

  My mouth and ears tingle. No, no, no.

  I set down the glass of milk gently so as not to make any noise. In the living room, I scan a gallery wall of pictures of our family. “She needs to know”; I hear the memory of my mom’s shrill words. I replay the dreams of the car crash, the ones that had morphed into something more, something real, something to do with Matt.

  Our photographs look like those of any happy family. I lean in to study a group of pictures from when I was in seventh grade. There is a close-up shot of me smiling from the stage of our winter choir concert. I have a bumpy complexion, not unusual for a seventh-grader, but by my fourteenth birthday, just over six months later, I look like the fresh-faced “after” picture of a teen acne commercial. I had always thought that I’d just gotten really lucky in the puberty lottery, but the shift in perspective makes me look harder. Any clue. Any confirmation.

  And then it’s there. At least I think that it is. I take the first photograph off the wall and squint hard at it. On the right side of my neck, there appears to be a slight discoloration, a shade darker than my skin. A blotch that could nearly be mistaken for a shadow. I could be imagining it, but I really don’t think that I am. Not this time.

  I yank another photograph off the wall and I see it, in a picture of me where I can’t be any older than fourth grade. I have a very faint birthmark. I feel a sensation like someone sliding an ice cube down my back as I walk, nearly in a trance, to the bathroom mirror, turn my chin to the side, and peer closely at a perfect patch of skin on my neck with not the faintest mark to be seen no matter how hard I look.

  “Tell her, Peter. This is on you.”

  Jenny says I can’t go to high school without having had my first kiss. I don’t even know if I like Jenny. Mom says friendships will change as I get older and I think she’s talking about Jenny. She had the first boy-girl party when we were in fifth grade. Mom wasn’t a huge fan of that idea and wouldn’t let me go. Things are different now, though, because I’m thirteen.

  I’m thirteen and there’s a boy in my room. Not just any boy, either. Isaiah Fox. That’s his real name. He’s only in eighth grade and he already sounds like a movie star.

  I’m not stupid. I know he doesn’t want to study geometry. If he did, I don’t think he would have shut my door when he came in. Or sat on my bed.

  It’s entirely possible that I’ll have a heart attack in the next five minutes.

  He’s sitting on the foot of my bed looking exactly like a boy named Isaiah Fox should. Honey-brown skin. Eyes the color of dark chocolate. Hair cut thick and close to his scalp.

  Rain is splattering against my bedroom window, drowning out the sound of the ocean.

  Isaiah’s missing the ragged rope bracelet that he wears on his right wrist, the one I’ve always admired, but that’s because he tied it around my wrist yesterday during fourth period.

  I tug on the frayed bottom edge of my shorts, wishing that Jenny hadn’t convinced me to cut an inch off them, since they’ve started to ride up into my crotch.

  “I don’t bite,” says Isaiah, patting the spot beside him. I sit down but leave a small space between my leg and his. “Cool room.” He makes a show of looking around, even staring up at the ceiling fan. Given that this is probably the least cool part of a not very cool room, I’m starting to suspect that he might be nervous too.

  This revelation does me no good and I just stare at my lap.

  Over the course of the school year, Isaiah and I have said very little to each other in terms of actual, out-loud words. We pass notes in class. Mainly games of tic-tac-toe, made-up mazes, and hangman. In groups, we stand near each other. Sometimes he pokes me, or steals one of my books and makes me pretend-wrestle him to get it back. Then there was the one time he called me and I had to tell him dinner was ready even though I’d already eaten, because the silence on the line was so deafening, it made my skin crawl.

  Still, it is physically impossible for me to be anywhere on my school’s campus without keeping one eye out for Isaiah. And now here he is, in my room, because he said we should study for our geometry test together.

  “I’ll get my book out,” I say.

  He grabs my wrist before I can stand. “My sister taught me how to tell fortunes,” he says. I stare at my hand cradled in his larger one. “Want me to tell yours?”

  Our hands are touching, our hands are touching, our hands are touching.

  “Sure.” I tentatively look up and meet his eyes. Dead on. No pretending that we aren’t two inches away from each other’s faces. His breath smells like cookies.

  “Hi,” he says quietly.

  “Hi,” I say back.

  And that’s when it happens. He kisses me. His lips press into mine and his tongue is cool and rough as it wiggles its way in a circle around my own. He is still holding my hand, but neither of us moves anything but our mouths. And I’m thinking this is actually kind of fun. Weird, but fun.

  Then the door behind me flies open. “What is this door doing shut?” My mom’s voice has a You’re in trouble! edge.

  I startle. Who can blame me? My mom has just walked in on my first kiss, but it all happens too fast. I make a strange choking noise that comes out as a snort while at the same time clamping down with my teeth and pulling away.

  “Ouch!” Isaiah jerks back, his fingertips pressed to a red spot on his lip. On his chin is a disgusting, gooey wad of saliva that I’m pretty sure was hocked from my throat as a result of the great snorting fiasco.

  “Lake Marianne Devereaux.” The edge remains in her voice as she enunciates each syllable in my name. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”

  Isaiah has stood up. He’s wiping his mouth and then he swipes his fingers thr
ough his hair. His shirt rides up so that Mom and I both get a view of his stomach peeking over the edge of exposed boxer shorts.

  Congratulations to me, because I must be setting a world record for the reddest face in the history of the planet.

  “I’d better be going.” Isaiah angles his body so that he doesn’t touch me when he passes on his way out. “I rode my bike.”

  Mom slides over to let him past without a word. It’s raining—pouring, actually—and she doesn’t even offer him a ride. I guess that’s because his house is only a couple of blocks away, but still.

  “Sit back down, young lady.”

  Hot tears are already soaking my cheeks and I’m not entirely sure whether they started before Isaiah left or after. “Screw you.” I shove past her.

  I have never, ever spoken to her that way and I feel feverish with shame. The shame only fuels me, though. I want to get away from her, from this house, from myself if I could.

  “Are you okay?” My brother, whose legs are slung over one arm of the couch, looks up from one of his fat books with tiny print.

  I don’t answer. I head for where I always head when I’m upset—the jetty. The rain is screaming down from the sky, leaving craters in the beach. My feet don’t sink, since the storm is turning the sand hard. I’ve always loved the beginning of hurricane season for the afternoon thunderstorms and now, even more so, since the rain serves as the perfect camouflage for my stupid, embarrassing tears.

  The sea is a moody gray as I kick off my sandals and pick my way onto the jetty rocks. Whitecaps dot the seascape, and the ocean crashes through the rocks, sending up plumes like flare guns.

  The rocks grow thicker together the farther out I get. There’s no longer beach on either side of me. The seaweed smell disappears and what remains is a purer, saltier scent that latches onto my skin and soaks through my shirt.

  The wind whips around me. Anger and embarrassment still surge through my veins, pushing me out toward the lamppost. I watch it, aim for it. The storm blows a wave sideways into the jetty and my foot slips. I catch myself with my hands, now crawling on all fours. Nearly to the tip now.

  The foundation of rocks has narrowed.

  “Lake!” I turn back to see my brother waving his arms. He’s saying something else, but the wind is blowing in the wrong direction now and the words get lost.

  Shut up, shut up, shut up. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly. I bit Isaiah Fox. I spat on Isaiah Fox. And my mom used mom-voice in front of Isaiah Fox. I had the worst first kiss in the history of first kisses and now all I can think is, Leave me alone.

  Everyone, just leave me alone.

  This is what I’m thinking the moment I see the swell. But by then it’s already too late. The ocean looks like it has a monster moving underneath its surface. As it grows closer and closer the monster’s back rises, pushing the sea into a mountain of water. I’m frozen on the jetty for a second too long before I move, scrambling over the rocks on all fours. The monster wave rears up, bucks, and crashes. The force rips my hands, stinging from the salt, off the rock.

  My ribs drag over the edge of the jetty and I’m plunged back first into the water, with time for only a short drag of breath that fills my lungs no more than a quarter of the way. I can’t tell which direction is up.

  I’m being dragged down by an invisible current. Down, down, down. My arms and legs beat wildly. I force myself to count.

  Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds without a breath. Push, Lake. Push and stay alert.

  I quit counting.

  I keep thinking I’m close to the surface, but just when I think I should break free, I don’t. There’s only more water. More and more and more. The undertow is fierce and wild, tossing me around like a marionette.

  There’s a darkness creeping into my vision that has nothing to do with the ocean.

  I am such an idiot. So stupid. What was I trying to prove?

  This is a strange thought to have while drowning, but there it is. I will my legs to keep kicking, but I can already feel them becoming soggy and slow. Then my arm sweeps against something. My fingers grasp and I feel it. Skin, fingers, slippery. I reach for it again and again; there’s hair and bone and muscles.

  Please, please, please.

  I’m wrenched out of reach. My mind screams with alarm. In that last moment, I can’t stop my mouth from opening. I can’t stop myself from sucking in a deep breath. And I can’t stop water from pouring into my throat and tearing through my windpipe.

  I can’t stop anything. Because I’m dead.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I imagine how I must look standing in the doorway to my brother’s room, arms limp at my sides.

  My parents and Matt are huddled together. My dad leans on the window seat, wearing regular, non-Spandex clothing. Meanwhile my mom perches on the edge of a chair pulled closer to the group. Dad straightens and positions his hands under his armpits. “Tell you what, Lake?” There’s the flash of a lie there.

  “I remember…” My breath trembles audibly. “Dying.” The three of them are speechless. The funny thing is, I always thought my parents were secretly on my side. Like they knew Matt was unreasonable, but they had to take care of him because he was their son and that’s what parents did.

  Wrong. They were never on my side. The three of them had their little secret club. Keep-away from Lake. Just like Penny and Will.

  I swallow hard and take a step into the room. After all, I ought to be invited now. I know the secret password.

  I was dead.

  “Is it how you…” I start to ask, “how you became paralyzed?” I’m speaking only to Matt now. My big brother. “It is, isn’t it?” I nod quickly, almost frantically, for him to confirm.

  Matt’s gone expressionless.

  “Stop it, Matt.” My volume is beginning to rise. “Stop it. Don’t go blank like that. Answer me! Is this”—I point insensitively at his wheelchair—“because of me?”

  The tension in his jawline gives him away. “Anyone care to explain what’s going on here?” he asks, boxing me out again.

  My dad remains sitting back, studying me with his arms crossed.

  “I didn’t tell her,” Mom says defensively.

  “Why? Why would you tell me Matt fell out of a tree? Why would you let me do all of this?” I think about how I’ve been traipsing around with Matt, solving idiotic scavenger hunt clues, and I feel sick. There is one day standing between me and my eighteenth birthday. What if I had found out after?

  Dad speaks first. “What happened the day of your accident happened.” My accident. It hasn’t sunk in yet. Not Matt’s accident. Mine. “Matt wanted you to have a normal life. He didn’t want what happened to him to be for nothing. He made the decision that he didn’t want you to feel guilty.”

  I narrow my eyes. “He must have had some help getting there.”

  “It was me, Lake,” Matt interjects. “Don’t blame Mom and Dad.”

  I know everyone expects me to gush this big apology, to thank Matt for trying to save my life and for giving it back to me when he couldn’t, but that’s not what I feel. That’s not at all what I feel. “You wanted to hate me,” I say. “And you made me hate you.”

  Because now all I can see is what could have been. He could have told me. We could have accepted it and then my dad’s words would have been true maybe. Yes, I would have felt deep pain that I’d caused this accident, but we would have had to accept what happened and we would have had to deal with it head-on. Instead of one big hurt, we let it fracture into a million pieces with sharp points and razor edges. Would Matt have hated me if I had known? Would I have grown to resent him? It’s too late to ever know what it would have been like to have the chance to heal.

  Matt’s eyes turn sad in a way that I haven’t seen since we were kids. “Not at first. Maybe a little. I don’t know. But don’t pretend you didn’t cut me off too.”

  “I did not.” But when I look to my parents I can see that they both think there’s some truth t
o what he’s said. “How?” I demand. “How did I cut you off? I tried to read with you. I tried to watch movies with you. I researched outings. I reached out to you over and over and you wanted no part.”

  “I needed time,” Matt says, calmly.

  “I gave it to you.”

  “You made a new family, Lake. You had Penny and Will. After that you didn’t need much else,” Matt says.

  The memory of Matt and the movie times and the way I left him hanging to be there for Will sits heavy and undigested in the pit of my stomach, but that doesn’t stop me from attempting to shove it all the way down to where it will never be reachable. “And what about this new family?” I point at the three of them. “What was I supposed to do? Be alone forever?” I scream. “Excuse me for wanting someone to want me. For wanting something just a little bit real.” I tug at the roots of my hair. “Joke’s on me, it’s all just one big freaking façade, it turns out. You guys. Will. Penny. All of it. Even me!” I am shouting into faces that don’t understand me. I am shouting at myself because I don’t understand me. Not anymore. How can I be one of those people, one of those things, like Coyote Blue. How can I have been dead?

  No wonder everyone abandons me, hates me, doesn’t care about me.

  “But whatever it is I am, it’s because you made me this way!” I shriek. Matt winces. “I wish you’d never resurrected me.” I pull at the collar on my shirt, stretching it out on the neckline. “And you know what I think?” I am seething now. I want to hurt things, and why not? I shouldn’t even exist. “I bet you wish I were dead too, don’t you? Because you only resurrected me so that I would resurrect you. Bet you’re regretting that now, huh? You think I don’t realize now that I was only good for one thing to you people and now I’m not even good for that?”

  It’s only when my mom starts crying that I stop yelling at them.

  “Matt’s going through with it, Lake.” Dad says, wrapping his arm around Mom’s shoulder. I’d already known this, deep down, that nothing would change my brother’s mind. He’s paralyzed and it’s because of me. “It’ll happen tomorrow night. At a death party.”