The Apocalypse

by Jack Parker

  Laughter sounded around the table, and Jake added, "Don't leave me out on this, Shirley. I'm telling you, I'm sick." He coughed loudly. "And I think it'd be great to tell all my friends that I became an alcoholic over Christmas break."

  "I am not an alcoholic!" Shirley exclaimed, even as she took a drink of the strong liquid. "My brandy is for medicinal purposes only! That's all!"

  "Sure it is," Jake smirked, clearly amused.

  "Do not backtalk!" Jonah snapped suddenly, as if just realizing that his grandson was present. He frowned and narrowed his eyes at Jake. "Respect your elders."

  "Why are you so late?" Elizabeth asked, frowning heavily. "We came to visit you, and you don't even have the decency to be on time for Christmas dinner?"

  "Technically, it's Christmas Eve dinner," Kyle spoke up, but his parents quickly shushed him. Hannah wanted to giggle, but she covered it by grabbing another roll.

  Jake, who had begun digging into the various bowls on the table, shrugged. "I had some last minute things to take care of," he answered dismissively, not even looking at either of his grandparents. Instead, he looked at Isaac, apparently about to make a point. "Where's your dad?"

  "Working," Isaac replied. "He's—"

  "I am not done talking to you." Jonah put his fork down furiously, staring at Jake coldly. "Where have you—"

  "Mom's not pissed," Jake interrupted easily. "What right do you have to be?"

  The look of fury crossed Jonah's face, and it made Hannah cringe. It hadn't taken her long at all to see why Isaac wanted Jake's grandparents to trip over her shoes, but she thought their behavior was entirely uncalled for, especially on Christmas Eve. Why in the world would his grandparents be invited over for Christmas if they all disliked each other so much? Jonah and Elizabeth should have just flown to Texas in Hannah's opinion; it would have kept them from dampening her holiday spirit.

  Instead of yelling, which Hannah could tell that he was capable of doing, Jonah set his mouth in a firm line. "I apologize for my grandson," he said, much to the incredulity of Hannah. If the man had had an oxygen tank, she would have been squeezing the tubing right about then.

  "Who wants dessert?" Patricia asked brightly.

  The chatter at the table continued, although Hannah remained silent. Clearly, the hatefulness from the Allen family was something everyone was used to. No one had batted an eyelash, and everyone had already moved on to cheerier conversation. It made absolutely no sense to Hannah.

  "How's that roll going for you?"

  Jumping, Hannah glanced across the table and saw that Jake was smirking at her. Next to him, Isaac was giving Hannah a funny look, and when she glanced at the dinner roll in her hand, she understood why. The roll had been mutilated by her hand; somehow, Hannah had unknowingly twisted and scrunched it into an unrecognizable ball of bread. Realizing this, her cheeks heated up in embarrassment.

  "Hannah?"

  "It's good," she answered, forcing a smile. Her hands dropped the ball of bread onto her plate, and Hannah quickly looked around for a distraction. Seeing nothing, she reached across the table and spooned herself another helping of green beans.

  "I'm glad to see your appetite's back to normal," Shirley commented. She poured herself some more brandy and smiled at her granddaughter. "I should have known not to believe Patricia when she said you weren't eating enough."

  Isaac scoffed. "She ate all the Christmas cookies yesterday."

  "Shut up," Hannah told him, though it was weak, given that she was smiling. She looked at her grandmother, who was as blonde as Patricia and plump in a healthy way. Shirley was actually quite pretty. "I think a shot of brandy would help out with my appetite though."

  "Oh yeah, that's credible." Isaac rolled his eyes. "Real logical, Hannah. Nice."

  Shirley glanced at her grandson and smiled. "Here, Hannah, dear." After making sure none of the adults were looking, she poured some brandy into her glass and offered it over to Hannah. "Your voice sounds a little scratchy. Have you been coughing?"

  Jake, Isaac, and Kyle instantly started fake coughing, which made Hannah giggle as she accepted the glass. She sloshed the liquid around, watching the near goldenness of it shine from the overhead lighting. Well aware of the guys and her grandma watching her, Hannah raised the glass to her lips and started coughing genuinely. "Oh my God, that smells like death! Like a rotting corpse."

  Jake laughed. "Oh yeah? You're turning away something edible?"

  "Drink it, Hannah!" Kyle chanted, smacking at the table.

  "Do it in honor of me," Isaac instructed, his blue eyes wide. He forced a cough. "Grandma doesn't care if I'm on my death bed. She hands the glass to you."

  Highly amused, Hannah used two fingers to hold her nose and then took a greedy gulp of the peach brandy. Instantly, she felt her mouth and face contort as the drink burned the inside of her mouth like a blaze of fire. There was no possible way to swallow that stuff.

  "Look at that face!"

  "Throw it up! Upchuck it!"

  "No, chug it!"

  The laughing and taunting from the guys encouraged Hannah to swallow the brandy, and it burned all the way down her throat, into her chest and into cavities she couldn't name and hadn't known she even had. Giving an almighty cringe, Hannah thrust the glass back at her grandmother, who drained it easily. "How was that, Hannah?" Shirley asked. "Good?"

  Hannah made another face. "Once I managed to swallow, it wasn't that bad."

  "Let me have a drink!" Isaac cried, rubbing his chest while Jake and Kyle coughed wildly. "I'll tell you how it tastes!"

  Shirley rolled her eyes, reached into her purse, and pulled out a bottle of NyQuil. "Not this year, Isaac. Hannah earned this one." She poured a dose or four of NyQuil into a spoon and swallowed it. "Talk to me when you're older."

  "You dirty liar," Jake laughed, indicating the NyQuil. "That's the reason you don't cough. And probably the reason you sleep so well."

  Shirley grinned. "You hush now. I'm really sick. It's going to take both."

  Amused, Hannah rolled her eyes but brightened drastically when her mother and Diane brought out dessert. The pumpkin cake, platter of brownies, and plate of chocolate chip cookies (a substitute for the Christmas cookies she'd stolen the day before) looked amazing and smelled even better. Eagerly, Hannah reached in, fighting with Isaac, Kyle, and Jake for the corner brownies and the biggest cookies. All of the food on the table nearly made Hannah wish it was Christmas every day, but the negative feelings she had for Jake's family made her glad that it wasn't.

  As soon as they'd finished eating, Shirley announced that she was going to go to sleep and recuperate from her illness—in Hannah's bed—and, to avoid helping clear the table, Hannah, Jake, Isaac, Kyle, and Kristin made a mad dash for the living room, where they all sprawled out. With Isaac between them on the middle cushion, Hannah and Jake took up opposite ends of the couch, with Kristin in the nearby chair and Kyle stretched out in the floor, demanding reign of the television.

  Two-year-old Kaleb then toddled into the living room, looking sleepy. He wandered over to the couch and pointed at the big screen television excitedly. "Sloopy?"

  Hannah glanced down to see her youngest cousin, Kaleb, looking up at her hopefully with big brown eyes. She thought he was adorable, but she had no idea what he was talking about. Well, she had an inkling of an idea, actually, but Kaleb was just a toddler. Surely he was just mispronouncing Snoopy, not referring to what she thought of when she heard him.

  "The song," Jake explained without prompting. He looked at Hannah and smiled a little. "Our families are crazy about Ohio State University's football team. The song 'Hang on, Sloopy' is the theme." He laughed a little and shook his head. "Kaleb's learned young—even younger than we did."

  Unable to prevent it, Hannah smiled while she imagined herself and Jake singing the catchy song as little children. "Awww, sing it, Jake!" she cooed teasingly, admiring how green his rolling eyes glittered when the light shone in them. "Please?"

&n
bsp; Jake scowled. "Not on your life."

  "Guys, A Christmas Story comes on in five minutes!" Isaac cried, jumping up from between Jake and Hannah on the couch, simultaneously interrupting Hannah's plea. "I look forward to complaining about this stupid movie every Christmas, and it's time to start my complaints!"

  "No way!" Kyle argued, hanging onto the remote for dear life. He and Isaac struggled over it, and in years past, Kyle probably would have won, but since Jake had helped nerdy Isaac get into athletics, Isaac had more power than the younger boy, and he came out of the tussle with the remote in his hand. "Cheater."

  Isaac smirked and took his seat back. "You're just jealous."

  "Oh God, do we really have to watch this?" Jake groaned, dropping his hands against his thighs dramatically. "We watched this four times last year. That should be enough of that little boy to last us a lifetime."

  Grinning, Isaac answered, "The eighth amendment promises me protection from cruel and unusual punishment that anyone tries to inflict upon me. So stop your freaking griping and watch the freaking movie. It's a timeless classic! A tradition! A movie to be treasured by gener—"

  "Then you watch it," Kristin interrupted sassily, wrinkling her nose. "He's ugly. I'd rather watch High School Musical."

  "That's not a Christmas movie!" Kyle protested energetically, even though he'd been fighting for the remote moments ago. "Shut up, sis, and watch the movie!"

  Hannah cast an amused glance at Jake around Isaac's head. Jake rolled his eyes again, and Hannah smiled. The movie was absolute torture, and, within the first fifteen minutes, Hannah was incredibly bored. So instead of watching the 'timeless classic,' she focused her attention around the room, watching her relatives. Kristin fell asleep by the third commercial, flopped across the armchair in a way that made her body look broken in at least five places. On the floor, it looked like Kyle was asleep also, but he occasionally quoted the movie, proving he was awake.

  By nine o'clock, Jake's grandparents and Diane were going home, but Jake declined going with them, even though he'd been disinterested in the movie that he was suddenly engrossed in when they were leaving. All of Hannah's relatives started retiring to bed, but her younger cousins remained in the living room, where Isaac was muttering furiously at the movie, apparently displeased with the plot. When the movie ended, he jumped up and moved to where all of the Ayers's movies were stored, and Jake flopped across the couch, resting his head on Hannah's lap.

  She smiled down at him out of habit, flicking his brown hair annoyingly. "Hey. What do you think you're doing?"

  "Using you." Jake yawned and looked up at the clock. "Move and I'll bite a hunk out of your leg." To illustrate his point, Jake flicked Hannah's thigh threateningly.

  Rolling her eyes in Jake fashion, Hannah leaned back against the couch comfortably and watched Isaac picking out another movie. He apparently was satisfied by a title, and he turned around to return to the couch, but when he saw Jake stretched out, Isaac flopped onto the floor beside Kyle, who'd gone silent.

  "I picked out a better movie," Isaac declared as the opening credits began to play. "You guys like Miracle on 34th Street? Now there's a timeless classic."

  Jake wrinkled his nose. "Chick flick."

  "Pretty much," Isaac agreed with a shrug. "But it's a classic."

  Bored but afraid of moving restlessly, Hannah watched the movie, preferring it over A Christmas Story most definitely. As she sat there, watching the screen in interest, she was dimly aware of Jake's change in breathing, and when she glanced down, she saw that he had in fact fallen asleep. Hannah smirked, wanting to disturb him somehow to keep from staring at how great he looked but not sure of how to do it. Instead, Hannah focused back on the movie, though she caught herself looking down at her lap more than she looked at the screen.

  A sleeping Jake was ten times more adorable than a smirking one.

  Imagine that.

  Chapter 10

  Canny Christmas Catastrophe

  The smell of coffee brewing caught Jake off guard, as he was usually the first one awake in his house, but what really surprised him was waking up on Hannah's lap. Jake momentarily freaked out, but— Ah. He remembered. The annoying voice of little Mara Wilson or whatever the actress's name was who played Susan on Miracle on 34th Street had lulled him into sleep Then Hannah's scent of vanilla and perhaps baking sugar cookies, which, knowing Hannah, may or may not have been perfume, had haunted Jake's dreams, and now he had to wake up to her face, which was tilted at an awkward angle. In fact, Hannah looked horribly uncomfortable in a position that would inevitably leave her with a crick in her neck. Jake's first instinct, after he stood, was to stretch Hannah across the couch, but then he decided he didn't really care all that much anyway. She could move herself if she was that uncomfortable.

  White fuzziness decorated the screen of the television, so Jake flicked it off and noticed that Kristin was shivering in a ball on the chair. She was in a rather painful position too, but Jake just dropped a blanket over her tiny body and followed the scent of coffee to the kitchen. Now he wasn't a coffee drinker, but it was refreshing to smell conventional 'morning smells' in the morning. Another surprise was seeing Shirley in the kitchen, rubbing her temples in her chair at the kitchen table.

  "Good morning," Jake greeted a little awkwardly. It wasn't her presence that made him uneasy; he'd just never seen her not bubbly and full of life. It must have been a hangover. "You feeling okay?"

  Shirley's head snapped up, and she grinned. "Of course, Jakey! You're up early. Do you want some breakfast?" She stood and moved to the cupboards. "I can whip something up for you. Care for, I don't know, some pancakes?"

  "Nah, I'm not too hungry just yet," Jake answered, sitting at the table. "But I'll take some brandy if you can spare some."

  Shirley rolled her eyes at Jake's light coughing and poured some orange juice into a glass. "You're a little underage. And you shouldn't drink on an empty stomach." She passed the glass to him and smiled at his thanks. "Hannah's not much of a drinker, is she?"

  Jake shrugged, sipping from his juice. "I wouldn't know. We don't hang out too much."

  "Exactly." Shirley sat down beside Jake, and the inquisitive look on her face made Jake want to fidget. Uh-oh. Something was up. "You two never did get along that well. That's why it's interesting that you're so…friendly now."

  While he probably should have been embarrassed or something, Jake just shrugged again, at least making him look carefree. He'd expected this conversation from the very beginning, ever since Tisha and Libby had cornered him about his treatment of Hannah, but no one had seemed to care that he wasn't expressing his hatred for Hannah anymore. If Jake had witnessed someone have a change of conduct around an enemy, he would have been suspicious, but, apparently, he was the only one that sensed peculiarity. Or he had been till now.

  "So." Shirley raised her eyebrows and gripped her mug of coffee. "Feel like letting me in on whatever you're planning? Hannah's my granddaughter, and it worries me when you guys aren't yelling at each other."

  "I'm not planning anything," Jake said genuinely, resisting the urge to smile. He leaned back in his chair easily, amused by such blunt honesty; the world needed more of it. "It just doesn't seem fair to insult her when she doesn't have anything to throw up in my face, you know? It'd be like kicking a kitten."

  "It's always nice to hear you compare my Hannah to an animal." Shirley rolled her eyes and smiled. "It's actually comforting. But you do have a plan, obviously. To make her more comfortable or to be nice to her or…or what?"

  Jake blinked. "I usually just try to avoid her as much as possible."

  "Jake." Shirley shook her head, and Jake suspected that she was amused, no matter how much she seemed to be trying to deny it to herself. "You can't straddle the fence," she said finally, firmly. "Either you're on Hannah's side, or you're not. Now I've seen you be nice to her—you slept on her for God's sake—but you say you avoid her. Now if—"

  "What do you think Dr.
Phil would say about it? Maybe he'll do a television special if we call him."

  "I hate that man," Shirley declared through gritted teeth. "Stop trying to get me sidetracked. It's too easy." She sighed and studied Jake, making him shift more.

  He reached down casually to massage his left calf muscle; it'd felt a little off since yesterday, after Brent called him about the dog—that stupid mutt that Brent and his siblings had bought their mom for Christmas that had escaped; Jake and his friends had chased that dumb dog around the block at least nine times, and it'd made him late for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe he'd strained the muscle.

  "I think it's obvious to everyone but you."

  Jake's forehead wrinkled when he looked up from his leg and at Shirley. "Excuse me?" He took a drink from his juice, not sure what else to do. "I think you're still drunk. What are you talking about?"

  "I do not get drunk!" Shirley wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "I'm talking about Hannah. You're the only one who doesn't see how much she admires you, how much she looks to you for guidance. I think she's absolutely crazy about you. Regardless though, you have more influence on her than you realize."