No Parking at the End Times

by Bryan Bliss

  DEDICATION

  To Michelle, Nora, and Ben. Of course.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Before

  One

  Two

  Before

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Before

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Before

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Before

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Now

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  BEFORE

  MY KNEES ARE NUMB, BEGINNING TO BRUISE. NEXT TO ME, Aaron holds my hand—he’s barely even here anymore. Mom clings to both of us like we’re still little kids and in a crowd. The only things I hear are Dad’s prayers, whispered to the ceiling like a secret.

  I try to focus on how it will happen.

  Will the room tilt?

  Will everything fast-forward in a flash of light, sending us up, up, up?

  Ten minutes. Five. Right now. It could happen anytime, in the blink of an eye. The trumpets will sound and then we’ll all be done with the troubles of this world. Troubles we crossed the entire country to leave behind.

  We’re waiting. Almost thirty people kneeling on the tile floor of what used to be a convenience store. Every one of us has come from far away, swayed in some way by Brother John’s promises.

  I’m supposed to be happy because we are bound for a better place. For the promised land. Our true home.

  I squeeze Mom’s hand and then Aaron’s. If I could, I’d reach for Dad, too. I squeeze until I think I’m going to break their bones, adding my own prayer—the only one I know anymore—to the hum of the room.

  I’m not scared. I’m not scared. I’m not scared.

  I hold on, I pray, and I wait.

  ONE

  WE WASH OURSELVES IN THE SINK OF A PUBLIC BATHROOM at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Beside me, Mom brushes her hair without a word. I button my shirt. We don’t talk about last night, or anything really. When we parked at the base of the bridge just before dawn, I watched it, lit in warm yellows and reds, and listened to the soft whisper of waves rolling into the bay.

  This morning was cold and none of us talked. Not as we got dressed, or shuffled to the bathrooms. Not even now as Mom and I stand in front of the mirror, scrubbing our faces and trying to make it look as if we aren’t living in our van.

  “Did you sleep okay?” Mom asks.

  I can barely stand to see her this way. Deflated, leftover.

  “Yes,” I say, but the truth is I spent the night waiting for Dad to start the van and take us home. To save us in the way God was supposed to.

  Mom stares at my reflection as she tucks the brush into her purse. When she pulls her hand back out, it’s holding a five-dollar bill. “I want you and Aaron to do something. Have some fun.”

  She offers me the wrinkled bill, our last for all I know. Before I can object, she puts it on the sink and looks away from me.

  “Just take it.”

  I follow Aaron, trying to keep up with his long legs. Before, he’d be the one sucking air, but I haven’t run in weeks. And these hills. The entire city seems designed only to go up. For a moment, I can’t help but think about home. Track practice will start in a few months.

  We could be back by then.

  I skip every few steps to keep up with Aaron, trying to push any thoughts of North Carolina out of my head.

  Dad wanted us to go with them, back to the church for prayer and maybe an answer. I was holding the five-dollar bill in my hand when he said it and I felt guilty for choosing an hour in the city over him. Mom pulled him aside and winked at us and now we’re out walking by ourselves for the first time since we got here three weeks ago, the city alive and refusing to stop on all sides. North Carolina always seemed to be asleep. Here people yell and push by me and Aaron—we still aren’t connected to whatever invisible current moves everyone around us.

  We walk past a restaurant, its doors open, and the smell of food spilling out onto the sidewalk like an invitation. The windows are decorated with bright Christmas lights, chasing themselves around the rectangle of glass in an endless loop. If Aaron’s stomach comes to life, if he’s thinking about Christmas and how it passed with hardly a mention, I can’t tell. He ignores the sounds of people eating brunch, the guy offering us a flyer—two T-shirts for twenty dollars—and keeps moving down the block as quickly as he can.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  He stops but doesn’t turn around. He never looks at anyone anymore.

  “You can go back to the van if you want.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the van,” I say. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Well, talk.”

  I almost ask him where he’s going at night. If only to make him turn around, surprised to learn that I know how he slips away from the van once Mom and Dad are asleep. But he refuses to look at me, as if I’m some stray dog following him down the street.

  “Did you see Dad last night?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Dad. Or that. Okay?”

  It’s the way he says Dad, like he’s spitting something out of his mouth.

  “They didn’t know this was going to happen,” I say.

  The laugh is sharp and mean. “You think?”

  “They made a mistake, Aaron.”

  At this, he turns around, but his eyes almost immediately drift past me, above my shoulder. Like he’s seeing something coming down from the sky. His face hardens and he says, “Jesus Christ.”

  High above us, emerging from the fog of the city, is one of Brother John’s billboards, a shocking black banner.

  THE DAY OF CHRIST’S BIRTH WILL BRING JUDGEMENT

  TO THIS LAND OF SIN.

  THE WAY HAS BEEN PREPARED.

  ARE YOU RIGHT WITH THE LORD?

  CRY MIGHTILY UNTO GOD —JONAH 3:8

  Brother John’s website, along with the local radio station for his broadcasts, are just below the Bible verse.

  I cried the whole way to California, looking away whenever we saw another one of the billboards lining the highway, encouraging us every mile we drove. Every time Dad would look in the rearview mirror, I’d hide my face. I didn’t want him to see my doubt or my fear. And when we got here—when I saw Brother John for the first time, shaking Dad’s hand and smiling—I forced myself to believe everything he said. But now the date has passed, and all those guarantees feel like cheap plastic silverware in my mouth.

  This time I don’t cry, though. I turn back to Aaron. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I start walking away from the sign. He doesn’t move.

  “Doesn’t matter?” Aaron says, his voice quiet. I can’t tell if he’s angry, sad, or maybe disappointed. He points at the black billboard and says, “That guy took everything from us and you think that doesn’t matter?”

  Things were already falling apart before Brother John. Dad lost his job and pretty soon he and Mom were borrowing money from Aaron and me. The first time Dad asked, I made a big fuss about it. I reminded him of all the babysitting I had done. It was close to five hundred dollars, and I wanted a car. That was before we got rid of cable and Internet. Before the yellow late-payment warnings began showing up at our front door and we started getting bags of groceries from our church. The whole time, Aaron never said a word. But when we got in the van, when we watched everything disappear out our ba
ck window, something inside of him broke.

  “I’m just saying, don’t let a stupid billboard ruin our day.” Aaron looks at me, and then up at the sign one more time. “Let’s go do something. Okay?”

  We’re wedged into a small table in the corner of the shop, spooning cookies and cream out of paper cups. There’s barely enough room for the line of people, let alone us. But for the moment I feel normal, just a girl eating ice cream.

  “This is good,” I say, licking a piece of cookie off the plastic spoon. When was the last time we had ice cream? The church’s end-of-summer picnic, maybe. Dad was in the dunking booth, daring Aaron to knock him into the tank of cold water while I finished my second cone.

  “Like, really good.”

  Aaron nods, checking his iPod, plugged into the only wall socket. He eats slowly, like he always has, and stares out the window as if he were sitting here alone. It’s so obvious he’s upset and I hate the silence between us, enough that I provoke him.

  “I’m not stupid, Aaron.”

  He looks up at me and says, “I know you aren’t.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  He stabs at his ice cream and laughs. “Whatever could you mean?”

  “Stop it. Don’t be like that,” I say.

  “Maybe this is what I’m like now,” he says.

  “Oh, right. You just changed overnight. That makes total sense.”

  He laughs again, that same short burst. “Nothing changed last night. Including me. But if you want to talk, fine. Let’s talk about how Mom and Dad have gone way off the deep end.”

  He stares at me, a taunt. No different than the ones he’d dangle in front of me when we were kids. Back then I’d go running to Mom, crying and yelling. As we got older, I learned to leave the room. Ignore it and him until he stopped acting like an idiot. Because I know exactly where this leads. But it’s not like I have a room to leave anymore.

  “Just enjoy the ice cream,” I say.

  He slams his cup onto the table and waves his arms around at the room, his voice rising enough to make the other people in the shop stare at us. “Are you serious? We’re not on vacation here, Abs. We’re living in our van. So you take a good look around and grow the hell up.”

  Before I can say anything—and I don’t know what I’m going to say, but something—he goes on, “We need to start taking care of ourselves because—news flash!—Mom and Dad aren’t up for the job anymore. We might as well be alone.”

  But we’re not alone. We’ve never been alone, and that’s the point. Mom and Dad have always been constant, and I want to shove that right in his face. Have it kick his memories to life like a smelling salt. Because we never had a lot, but we always had each other. They always tried. Always. And that has to still count for something.

  He can see all of this on my face—I know he can—but it doesn’t bring an apology. Instead he says, “And giving us five dollars of gas money so we can go eat ice cream doesn’t change a damn thing. Not even close.”

  I have no idea where I’m going when I stand up. But I’m out the door before Aaron can scramble around the table. He calls for me, yelling my name louder and louder as I begin to run.

  Mom and Dad aren’t perfect. I know this. They’ve made mistakes before, even if they weren’t as big as moving across the country. Even if they didn’t involve selling our house and everything we couldn’t fit into the van.

  I get it.

  There have been days when the reality of what’s happened to us hits me like a truck. I don’t want to go to church every night. I didn’t want the world to end. But no matter what happens—what will happen—Mom and Dad have never been in question for me. And he should know that.

  I dodge people, trying not to worry about Aaron or why he’s stopped yelling my name. For a second I think I’ve lost him. But on my next turn, I glance back and he’s still shuffling forward, a block behind me. When I near the park, the people sprawled across the grass slapping hands and laughing, I slow down. By the time I reach the stone fence that marks the entrance, Aaron is next to me, doubled over and breathing hard.

  “Jesus, what was that about?”

  I still don’t want to look at him or talk to him. But now that I’ve stopped, Aaron jumps in front of me and forces eye contact.

  “Get out of my way,” I say, trying to walk around him.

  He steps in front of me again. “What are you doing?”

  We’ve always fought, even before we were born. Mom said there were times when she couldn’t move because of the way we’d be carrying on inside her. But we’ve also always come back together. It might take an hour, or even an entire day, but somebody would crack. And then it was as if nothing had happened between us.

  That’s how it works. We laugh it off. But I can’t.

  I look away, at some kids our age sitting against the stone wall. Beside them, a man holding a trumpet is yelling, stopping every few seconds to play a few notes on his horn.

  “No chilling winds! No poisonous breath!” Berrnnnn!

  Aaron ignores him, as does everyone else.

  Trumpet Man plays another loud note and yells, “I am bound!”

  A few teenagers appear at the bottom of the hill, laughing. When Aaron looks at them, I make to slip past him. He sees me a second too late and tries to grab my arm, accidentally knocking me to the sidewalk.

  It loosens something.

  “You don’t think I’m upset?” I’m crying, and I don’t want to be. I’ve spent the last month keeping everything inside, smiling, trying to pray—pretending everything is normal. But him thinking he’s the only one who is angry, who misses what we used to have, brings up words I’d normally swallow.

  “You don’t think I want to go home?”

  “I want—”

  “It’s always what you want! You act like you’re the only one who’s allowed to be mad. Don’t you think I’m mad? Do you think I like being here?”

  He drops his head and won’t look at me. Of course. Because that’s his answer for everything now. He unplugs.

  I get up, touching the growing spot of blood on my knee.

  “And now my jeans are ripped. My only pair. Great.”

  When Aaron tries to help me, I push away his hand. I really want to push him to the ground, to make him feel something I can understand. Anything close to what’s inside me. Fear and anger. Guilt. The inescapable feeling that I can’t control a single moment of what’s happening to all of us.

  “Abs . . .” His voice is soft and apologetic, but I’m going back to the van so I can close my eyes and forget everything from last night, today—all of it. Even if only for the next hour.

  “Leave me alone,” I say.

  I walk past him, not turning around to see if he’s following.

  Mom and Dad aren’t in the van, and I climb all the way to the back. When Aaron enters a few minutes later, he looks surprised to see me sprawled across the backseat—his seat. But he doesn’t say anything. He settles into my captain’s chair and puts in his earbuds.

  I turn over and face the back, my nose almost touching the worn stitching that zigzags up and down the cushion. I trace it with my finger, trying to hold on to the last gasps of anger. But it fades, leaving only regret and the hopelessness that comes with not being able to go back in time. Even if that were possible, when would I stop? Fifteen minutes? Five years? At what point in the past could I actually change what happened?

  The day we sold everything—the house, all of it—people showed up early, lining up on the sidewalk and knocking on the door like they might miss their shot at the best stuff. Neither me nor Aaron could be in the house. We walked around our neighborhood all morning, barely saying a word.

  When we got back, everything was gone.

  I wished I believed the house and our stuff didn’t matter. That was what Brother John promised every night on the radio—a new beginning. The End Times. It was what Dad said at dinner, to every person he saw at the grocery store. Bu
t when we walked back into that empty house, an undeniable piece of me was missing. Of course, Uncle Jake came and took most of the pictures, the important stuff Grandma and Grandpa gave Dad. Jake tried to stop him, too. They talked on the porch until the sun died behind them, Dad standing with his arms crossed as Uncle Jake got mad and started yelling.

  That’s the day I’d go back to if I could. I’d go outside and tell Dad we shouldn’t go. I’d cry and scream—anything it took for him to see how big a mistake we were making. If I’d been brave enough to do that, maybe it would’ve worked.

  Aaron clears his throat and I’m immediately brought back to the cold van. To him, sitting only a few feet from me. We no longer have the privilege of slamming a door, of being angry with any sort of distance. Of holding a grudge.

  I say his name and he whips around like he’s been waiting for me to make the first move. I can see the relief on his face, the regret. I could make him apologize to me right now and he would. Make him swear he’ll stop being so difficult. But I don’t want an apology. I want him to be normal: sarcastic, talkative. The way he’s always been.

  The door opens and Dad climbs inside the van. As soon as Aaron sees him, all the emotion falls from his face.

  “Hey there, Gabby-Abby,” Dad says. I move past Aaron and climb into Dad’s arms, burying my head into his chest. I smell his aftershave, the cheap drugstore kind we were always able to afford, always with weird names like Tusk or Gentleman’s Choice. Another reminder of who we were in North Carolina.

  “All right now,” Dad says, squeezing me tightly. “Careful. I’ve got those old bones.”

  He’s always been full of words and sayings that never make sense to anyone other than him and—whenever he was around—Uncle Jake. Dad always said they were thick as thieves, and then they’d both laugh.

  Dad still has his arms around me when Mom climbs in, too. She notices the tear in my jeans immediately.

  “What happened? Is that blood?”

  They both bend down to study the ripped material, the red scab settling across my knee. All I can think about is: this shouldn’t matter. We should be able to throw these away, or at the very least buy a patch. But we can’t. We have to worry about the only pair of jeans I own getting ruined.