We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

“Oh, you wish it were just a message. This was a monologue. This was an epic poem.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Hey, if I got something like that, I’d be flattered. Or disturbed. Definitely one of the two. What’s your thing with her, anyway?”

  The waitress, a matronly sixty-something with bleached-blond hair and exposed roots, dropped off Andy’s coffee. “Thanks, Claire,” he said. Anita wasn’t sure if it was really sweet or really sad that he was on a first-name basis with the Denny’s staff. He blew on the top of his coffee, sipped it. “I don’t know. Eliza’s cool.”

  “That’s your whole reason? She’s cool?”

  “Stop grilling me, yo! Anyway, I should be the one asking questions here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re the one being a weirdo.”

  “No, I’m not,” Anita said, but she was secretly pleased. It made for a nice change to be seen as a weirdo for once, instead of some uptight mega-prude.

  “Yeah, you are. Like, what are you doing here right now? Since when do you go to punk rock concerts and biker bars and spend the night at some boy’s house? That’s not the Anita Graves I know.”

  “So maybe you don’t know Anita Graves.”

  “I know the Anita Graves I had to work with on that physics project back in the day.”

  “If I remember correctly, you didn’t do much of that project.”

  “Exactly my point. You were, like, seriously . . .” He tightened his hands into fists, then shook them a little.

  “Spastic?”

  “High-strung. You wouldn’t smoke a single bowl with me that whole week.”

  “I’m not into drugs.”

  “Yeah, but even when I wanted to, like, take a snack break, you acted as if I said we should drop out of school and go score some heroin or something. And aren’t you going to Harvard next year?”

  “Princeton. Conditionally.”

  Andy laid his hands out on the table, like he’d just proven something. “There you go. So why are you suddenly spending your time with a fuckup like me? Is this just an asteroid-coming-to-kill-us-all thing?”

  Anita shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, probably. But that doesn’t make it a bad idea. You know, I think I’m the only person out there who’s actually been happier since we all heard about Ardor. It was like a wake-up call, you know? I’ve spent my whole life doing the stuff I was supposed to, and all because I thought that people like you, people who just did whatever they wanted, were the dumb ones. But now I’m thinking, who’s dumber? The guy who does his own thing, or the girl who does someone else’s thing?”

  “So what’s your thing?”

  “I want to sing,” she said, without hesitation. “That’s why I came out to your show.”

  “You want to join Perineum?”

  Anita laughed. “No! God, no!”

  “Well, you don’t have to be a dick about it.”

  “Sorry. I’m just not really much of a punk girl. But the song that you sang? That was amazing! I mean, I couldn’t believe my ears.”

  Andy smiled into his coffee. He clearly wasn’t used to praise. Anita wondered if that was how kids became slackers. Nobody ever built them up when they succeeded, so they started to wonder why they should bother trying in the first place.

  “Which song was it?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which one did I play?”

  “Seriously? You can’t remember?”

  Andy shook his head sheepishly, and then both of them were laughing. Their food came: hash browns and wavy bacon strips and flapjacks with a swirly flame of butter in a little paper cup. Anita couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten at Denny’s. It was delicious.

  “So can I ask you something else?” Andy asked, his mouth full of food.

  “Sure.”

  “Why were you crying that day, in the library?”

  Anita had never told the truth about her family to anyone other than Suzie O, but maybe that was just because no one had ever asked. “In a nutshell? Because my dad’s an asshole, and my mom just goes along with him on everything. They have these huge expectations of me, but even when I meet them, they still aren’t happy. I thought getting into Princeton would change things, but it’s only made everything worse.”

  “My parents don’t expect anything out of me,” Andy said.

  “That must be nice.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  The waitress came and refilled his mug. “I can’t believe you can drink so much coffee,” Anita said. “I get jumpy after my first cup.”

  “I’ve built up an immunity.”

  “Sometimes I worry I don’t have enough vices to be a musician. My uncle plays saxophone for a living, and I’ve watched him drink ten cups of coffee in one go. Also half a bottle of bourbon. Maybe it’s time I developed a drug habit or something. Or started sleeping around, like—” She cut herself off, but it was too late.

  “Like Eliza?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. She does have a bit of a rep.”

  “You’re not just interested in her because of that, are you?”

  “No! I like her. For real. And I just needed something, you know? I needed to need something.”

  “I totally get that,” Anita said. “I need some things too. From you.”

  “Like what?”

  “First thing, I want to make music. I can sing. You can play. Deal?”

  “Deal. What else?”

  “I need you to help me plan a party. Which means you’ll have to come to student council.”

  Andy mimed hanging himself from a very short rope. He spoke while swinging slowly to and fro. “I guess I can do that. For a party.”

  “Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “And there’s one more thing.”

  “Hit me.”

  “I sorta need to move in with you.”

  That Wednesday, Anita dragged Andy along to the eighth-period discussion group, so as not to lose track of him before student council. She worried he might act out like he had in assembly (or else fall asleep), but actually, he got along just fine. He hadn’t done any of the reading, of course, but that did nothing to diminish his passion for argument. They spent the hour debating between something called the “categorical imperative,” which said that you shouldn’t do anything that you didn’t believe ought to be a law, and “utilitarianism,” which was the theory that the best choice in any situation was the one that would lead to the most happiness for the most people.

  Andy raised his hand. “So if I, like, kicked someone in the nuts, but it made a lot of other people laugh, that might be all right?”

  Mr. McArthur considered. “Assuming that we could quantify the enjoyment versus the . . . groin pain? Then yes.”

  “And even if Ardor wiped out ninety-nine percent of the people on the planet, it could be a good thing, if the survivors and their kids and stuff ended up way happier?”

  “Yep.”

  Andy sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “That’s some fucked-up shit right there.”

  In this brave new post-asteroid world, you could actually get away with talking like that in front of your teachers.

  After class, Suzie O gave Andy a fist bump. “Anita, are you responsible for bringing this malcontent here?”

  “Guilty. He’s my end-of-the-world project.”

  “Hey, Suzie,” Andy said, looking down at the carpet, “I’m sorry about last time, in your office. I was being messed up.”

  “Don’t mention it. Emotions ran high. Anyway, I hope you keep coming to our little meetings here. You had a lot to add.”

  “Thanks. It was actually way less boring than I thought it would be.”

  “Andy!” Anita said.

  But Suzie only laughed. “From an
yone else, that would be faint praise, but from Andy Rowen, for whom almost everything is boring, I think it’s a pretty serious compliment.”

  “Exactly,” Andy said, grinning. “Suzie, you just get me.”

  After a snack break in the lunchroom (during which Andy introduced Anita to the peanut butter and Ruffles barbecue-flavor potato chip sandwich), they headed to student council. It was the first meeting since the announcement of Ardor, and the council had already shrunk from eight members down to five. Unfortunately, Krista Asahara was not among the absentees.

  “What’s he doing here?” she asked, pointing at Andy.

  “I invited him,” Anita said. “We’re short today anyway.”

  “Our bylaws say we need two freshmen and another sophomore.”

  “I think the bylaws are moot at this point. And Andy is here because he and I have put together some new ideas for Olot that we want to share with you.”

  “Olot?” Damien Durkee asked. “Are we even still doing that?”

  “Of course we are,” Krista said. “The students need it, for morale.”

  “Actually, we had a different plan,” Anita said. “The dance is scheduled for three weeks from now, but we want to hold it the night before Ardor comes.”

  Krista looked horrified. “We don’t even know when that is!”

  “We will.”

  “But how could we plan it? It’s totally unfeasible!”

  Andy leaned onto the back two legs of his chair. “Hey, Krista, no offense, but you’re being, like, super annoying right now.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a helpful comment,” Anita said, trying to hide her smile.

  “Sorry. It’s just, she’s whining so loud, and it’s, like, right in my ear. Besides, all we have to do is throw the party in a place that we can use whenever we want.”

  “Olot is held in the gym,” Krista said. “Or is it annoying for me to mention that?”

  “This isn’t fucking Olot anymore! It’s the Party at the End of the World! And it doesn’t happen in the gym, because it’s too big for the gym, yo, because everyone is allowed to invite whoever they want. Invite your whole family. Invite strangers in the street. Invite your dealer. It’s the fucking Party at the End of the World.”

  “This is crazy,” Krista said, looking to the rest of the room for support. “Peter, you can’t approve of this, right?”

  But Peter didn’t answer. He was staring out the window, totally unaware of what was going on inside the room. There was a weird pattern of red marks on his cheek, as if he’d fallen on a tennis racket strung with razor wire. Rumors were he’d broken up with his ­girlfriend this week. Maybe she’d gone at him with her perfectly manicured nails.

  “Peter!” Krista said.

  He blinked back into his body. “Sorry, what’s happening?”

  “They want to cancel Olot and replace it with some random party!”

  “Oh yeah? Right on. Olot’s the worst.”

  Krista was totally speechless, and for the first time, Anita actually felt bad for her. What was a suck-up to do when the whole hierarchy of the universe broke down?

  “Let’s vote on it,” Anita said. “All in favor?” Hands up in the air from everyone, even Krista, who knew a lost cause when she saw it. “The Party at the End of the World passes unanimously.”

  “Fine,” Krista said, already adapting herself to the new status quo. “So who’s gonna DJ this super-party?”

  Andy slammed his hand down on the table. “No goddamn Top Forty R and B, I’ll tell you that much. This party has to be more than the same old shit.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’m glad you asked—” Andy was interrupted by the plinky sound of a digital marimba. He pulled a busted-up Nokia from his pocket.

  “We turn off our cell phones in student council,” Krista said.

  But Andy was just staring at the screen, eyes wide.

  “Didn’t you hear me? We turn off our phones—”

  Andy looked up at Anita. “It’s her,” he said. “She’s calling me.”

  It was another couple of rings before Anita realized who Andy was talking about—Eliza, responding to the legendary voice mail he’d left on Friday night.

  “Help me! What do I do?” Andy was looking at the phone as if it were a magic lamp that had just offered him three wishes, only he had to decide on all of them in the next three seconds.

  “Answer it, genius! And don’t be a freak.”

  “Right.” He stood up so fast that he knocked over his chair.

  “So?” Krista said, after Andy had left the room. “If we can get back to business here, tell me—what’s our entertainment going to be if not a DJ? You have an in with the Seattle Symphony or something?”

  “No,” Anita said, and she felt like she’d been waiting her entire life to say it. “I’ll be the entertainment.”

  Eliza

  ELIZA ADJUSTED THE ANGLE OF the laptop screen, centering herself in the frame. Seeing your own face as other people saw it was a bit like repeating a word over and over again until it lost its meaning and became just a collection of sounds. If Eliza looked in the mirror for too long, she wouldn’t see a human being anymore, just some weird space alien, all bushy eyebrows and wide mutant nose and creepy pygmy ears.

  “Still there, Eliza?”

  Out from the laptop speakers zinged the super-peppy voice of Sandrine Close, editor of Closely Observed, a popular website devoted to young photographers and their work. Sandrine, a gorgeous twentysomething hipster with fireball-red hair, had invited Eliza to “appear” on the site for a live-streamed video interview on the subject of Apocalypse Already. She wore a pair of stylish emerald-­green glasses that came to points at the corners and a matching blouse that revealed a plunging triangle of pale skin, the final vertex of which was cut off by the bottom of the frame.

  “Yeah.”

  “You ready to go?”

  “I feel a little underdressed.”

  “You look great. All right, it’s six. We’re going live in three, two, one . . .” Sandrine smiled hugely. “Hello, Observers! I’m here with a very special guest, photographer and blogger Eliza Olivi. We’ve been featuring Eliza’s work for the past week, but if you haven’t visited her blog, Apocalypse Already, you can click the link farther down the page. Eliza has been photoblogging about the effects of Ardor on Seattle, using her own high school as a metaphor for society at large. And if I may say so, it’s brilliant.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “So, Eliza, you’ve certainly blown up fast. Tell us what that’s been like.”

  “It’s surreal. I mean, everything is pretty surreal these days, so I guess by that standard, it’s kinda normal.” She laughed, but was thrown off by the fact that she couldn’t tell if anybody was laughing with her. “I never expected anyone to care about what I was doing. Maybe they wouldn’t have, if not for those pictures of Andy.”

  “Andy is the boy who was assaulted by the police officer?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sandrine glanced down at a piece of paper hidden offscreen. “So do you see what you’re doing primarily as an aesthetic or a political activity?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Like, the photo you call ‘Friendly Forks.’ Some commenters are seeing it as a piece about the empty nobility of volunteerism in a world on the brink of destruction. Other people think that it’s been staged, with a handsome young model and a set, as a purely formal exercise.”

  People really thought Peter was a model? Eliza imagined he would have found that funny, though she didn’t really know anything about his sense of humor. They still hadn’t actually spoken to each other, but since the day she took that photograph, she’d felt something brewing between them—a destined collision, or a doomed one. Either way, the symbolism wasn’t lost on her; t
he only question was which of them was the world-destroying asteroid, and which the blue planet peacefully minding its own business.

  “First of all, none of my photos are staged. And as for what it all means, I try not to think about it too much. I mean, sure, I want to help publicize the stuff that the police or the government or the school wants to keep private, but that’s only a part of it. Like, people have always said that photography is an attempt to capture something fleeting. And suddenly everything is fleeting. It’s like Ardor is this special tone of light we’ve never had before, and it’s shining down and infusing every single object and person on the planet. I just want to document that light, before it’s gone.”

  “Isn’t that a lovely thought?” Sandrine said. “Moving on. With the National Guard being called in to help L.A. and New York, to say nothing of the bombings in London and across much of the Middle East, we don’t hear too much about Seattle. But your photographs show that the Emerald City hasn’t escaped unscathed. Many of your pictures feature looters and drug dealers caught in the act. My question is this—aren’t you ever scared? I don’t imagine those folks much like having their picture taken.”

  “What’s to be scared of? The world’s probably going to end in, like, six weeks.”

  “What about your parents? Don’t they worry?”

  Eliza hesitated. She was still dodging her mother’s calls, and as for her dad, he’d taken one look at the photos on her website and said that she had to keep going with the project, no matter what. And the weird thing was that a little part of her wished he’d asked her to stop. Not that she would have or anything. She’d just wanted to be asked.

  “I live alone with my dad, and he’s a graphic designer and a photographer himself, so all he really cares about is that I’m making something good.”

  “Lucky you. One last question, Eliza. Given what a beautiful girl you are, I’m sure everyone wants to know—is there a special someone in your life?”

  And what did it say that her mind flashed straight to Peter, like some kind of Pavlovian response mechanism?

  “No. There’s nobody.”

  “What a shame. Well, that’s it for me. Let’s turn things over to our listeners.”