by Amy Brashear
“Sex is good. Sex is fun. That’s what Judy Blume says,” I said.
“Who’s a virgin? Raise your hand,” Freddy said.
Only a few of us raised our hands. Sometimes it’s easier to say you weren’t even if you really were. So I didn’t raise my hand.
“You’re not a virgin?” I asked Terrence, who didn’t raise his hand.
He shook his head.
“He’s had sex with quite a few girls. Your friend Dana was one,” Rodney said.
“Dana?” I said. “She never said. When?”
“At prom,” Terrence said.
“Prom?” I went to prom with the boy who barfed on me in the second grade. There was no sex.
“And Kathy,” Rodney said.
“Kathy? ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ Kathy?” I asked.
Terrence nodded.
“That promiscuous whore.”
“They’re not whores,” he said.
“I wasn’t talking about them.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Impotence is a symptom of radiation. We won’t have to worry about our sex lives,” I said.
“Is that why it won’t—never mind,” Rodney said, sitting down on the cot next to Terrence, who scooted closer to the wall.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Day Three
December 8
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
What We Miss:
Laura: breathable air
Terrence: basketball
Max: homework
Astrid: teeth
Owen: sight
Freddy: two-ply toilet paper
Rodney: girls
Dylan: hair
Tyson: deodorant
Bus driver: television
Mr. Edman: giving orders
I’d like to point out that no one mentioned a person.
“Who wrote homework?” Freddy asked, looking over my shoulder. “Because honestly, of everything in the world, you miss homework?”
“It was me,” Max said, raising his hand. “I miss a routine.”
“Routine I get, but homework?”
“Yeah, that’s a little insane,” Terrence said.
Max walked toward me and tried to take the composition notebook out of my hands.
“No, you can’t change it. So it is written. So it shall be done,” I said.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Day Four
December 9
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
Famous Last Words:
“I remember this one time at camp, we would sit around the campfire and sing songs,” Max said. “I’ll start—”
Hi, my name is Joe
And I work in a button factory
I got a wife and two kids
One day, my boss, says, “Joe, are you busy?”
I said, “No.”
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Terrence found the tape player, batteries, and a tape rack. He didn’t even look at the title or the artist. He just stuffed the tape into the slot, closed the door, and pressed play.
We sat in silence, humming, and eventually singing along with Levon Helm and The Band to their hit “The Weight.”74
We rewound the tape and sang again. And again. The Band was home. We eventually put in another tape and sang to that. You could tell a teacher put this fallout shelter together. It was full of ’60s and ’70s music.
For five minutes and fifty-five seconds, we forgot we were in whatever mess we were in and sang, matching pitch with Freddie Mercury.75
Was Beelzebub punishing us? We were probably reading too much into a song. Into all of this. We weren’t at war. We weren’t dying of anything. Maybe we all had the same bug. We were sick, that was it. Nothing bad happened, minus the explosion that made everyone . . .
Skeet outdid himself. That was it. That was all. Skeet was a master at the pyrotechnics. He was a master of the over-the-top game. We were fine.
We belted out “Bohemian Rhapsody”76 like life depended on it. We even air guitared. And danced until we all puked from dizziness. Because we had a bug. That was all. A bug.
We dug for more and more music. It was hard to find something from this decade. But when we did, we rocked it hard. “Thriller” was appropriate. Even if we weren’t exactly zombies, we were as close as we could get to the walking dead.
* * *
74 The Band, Music from Big Pink, Capitol Records, 1968. The Band is a staple around my house. The group formed in Canada, but Levon Helm is from Turkey Scratch, so yeah, we claim them.
75 One of the greatest singers of all time. He’s the lead singer of Queen. And the greatest showman ever.
76 Queen, A Night at the Opera, Elektra, 1975.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Day Five
December 10
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
No one could stop complaining. Everyone was bitching and bitching about anything and everything. It smelled in here. The food was awful. Why didn’t we risk it and open the door? What was the point? We were all probably going to die anyway. That was the consensus. Apathy. I had heard of it when it came to the Hogs, but to life? But we had it. We were apathetic.
We talked about whether or not government officials had been whisked away to Mount Weather. If there was a designated survivor in place. It was funny thinking about that. We spent so much time practicing for drills under our desks. Making bomb shelters under the ground. Making sure we had supplies to last us days, months, years, until it was safe to go outside after the fallout. But how do we know it’s safe? We don’t test thermonuclear weapons on each other. We do it in the sea—or underground. We don’t know the effects. How do we know Mount Weather will even work? They could all die.
We weren’t talking. We were sitting on our own cots, staring at everyone but not saying a word. We were going to snap. We didn’t have that much longer in here.
What the hell would we find after that?
To-Do List:
Slap Astrid across the face.
To-Do List:
Slap Astrid across the face.
Chapter Fifty
Day Five (later)
December 10
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
“Shut the hell up, you wanker. Your voice is, like, so bloody annoying,” she said. Her British accent was like a caricature at that point.
Everybody was getting on everybody else’s nerves.
I was glad I slapped her across the face. But after I did, I noticed that her beauty mark was gone. I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want my head chewed off. I rubbed my palm. I slapped her harder than I’d been aiming to. But I did notice a brown mass on my middle finger. It wasn’t there before I slapped her.
She coughed again in her hand, and blood smeared on her palm.
“Astrid,” I said, getting down on my knees in front of her.
She spat on me, and a tooth flew out of her mouth and onto my dress.
“Oh, I don’t feel so good,” she said, leaning on Max.
I picked up her tooth and held it in front of her.
She laughed, taking it from me. “Did you know the tooth fairy teaches us to sell our body parts for money?” she said, throwing the tooth across the room.
“What happened to your mole?” I asked, straining to point out her flawless face.
She touched the spot where her mole once was. “It fell off,” she said.
“Is that normal? Because that doesn’t sound normal.”
She sighed, kicked at my legs, and sat beside me and whispered, “It wasn’t real.”
“It wasn’t real, okay?”
“Again, what?” I asked.
“I was discovered in a department store—”
“By one of those you-can-be-a-supermodel-if-you-pay-me-a hundred-bucks people?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Sure.”
“Hey, Cindy Crawford was discovered picking corn, so anything’s possible.”
“So the mole was fake?” I ask, poking at her face with my finger where the mole once was.
“Yeah, it was fake, and I prefer the term ‘beauty mark.’”
“Call it what you want; it’s still a mole. Witches have moles. Are you a witch?” I asked, laughing.
“Not a witch, but you’re one with a B.”
“Nice comeback,” I said. “So why the mole?”
“It was chocolate.”
“What?”
“I was eating a chocolate bar, and a piece of chocolate got stuck to my upper lip. My mum was with me, and she didn’t tell me until it was over, but the damage was already done. The talent scout was super into Cindy and wanted another one just like her, beauty mark—”
“Mole.”
“Beauty mark and all.”
My stomach hurt from laughing so hard. “So you had to keep up the charade?”
“Every day since I was discovered in that department store.”
“Every day you get up and put on a fake . . . beauty mark?”
“Every day.”
“Tedious.”
She nodded.
My mind was blown. To go that far for “beauty.” I mean, I got it; it was a trademark look. Cindy Crawford wouldn’t be Cindy Crawford without her mole. Madonna wouldn’t be Madonna either.
“Now it won’t be so tedious,” I said. “Be you. Embrace the demolition.”
She laughed. “I can’t. It’s my trademark.”
“You’re a good actress,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Yeah, I’m being honest. I’ve seen everything that you’ve been in.”
“That’s sweet,” she said.
“Why are you such a bitch?” I asked, something in me snapping.
“What? You can’t talk to me like that.”
“Oh, please forgive me for speaking the truth to you. I forgot that you live in a different world where people sugarcoat everything for you,” I said. “Wait, didn’t I already say this to you? No, no, even if I did, it still applies.”
“Words cannot describe how unfathomably little I care about this—or you,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m not saying I hate you, but if you were on fire and I had water, I would drink it.”
“Go to hell, you ingrate hick from Arkansas,” she said, pronouncing Arkansas like “Ar-Can-Saw” in a southern twang that was so overly exaggerated that only a two-bit actor from Hollywood by way of London, England, could have mustered it.
I screamed at her. And she screamed back at me.
“Go to Arkansas, they said. It will be fun, they said. Well, they lied,” she said, crossing her arms.
“I know aid workers who don’t take their lives as seriously as you do,” I said, glaring at her.
“Ugh, you are—”
“I am what?”
“Why are you two fighting? You were getting along so well,” Freddy said, sitting down beside me on the cot next to Astrid’s.
“She started it,” I said, remembering a solid elementary school comeback.
“Oh, how lovely,” she said, snapping her fingers at Max for help getting up off the cot.
“Leave my sister alone,” Terrence said, leaving out the word step.
“And,” she said, looking at Terrence and Freddy, who was standing right beside him, “stay away from me, you mean vigilante justice squad.”
“What?” Terrence said, taking off his jacket. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”
“No, it is hot in here,” Freddy said.
They started removing their clothes. So did Astrid. And so did I.
“Watch out, Owen, she’s probably signing her name ‘Mrs. Laura Douglas’ on her secretly ordered stationery with her married monogram, like good southern girls do,” Astrid said, holding on to Max.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My head hurts.”
Max led her to the other side of the room, but that didn’t stop us from arguing.
“Laura, you’ve already gone to second base with Freddy,” she said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I’m Astrid Ogilvie. I know everything,” she said.
“But she made out with Freddy up on the mountain,” Max said.
“Shut it,” I said, glaring at him.
Astrid started laughing. “Who haven’t you made out with?” she asked in between breaths.
“I was drunk,” I said.
“Yeah, we were drunk,” Freddy said.
Max nodded. “His lips touched yours.” He smiled.
“It was a drunken moment—”
“Of passion,” Max finished for him.
“No, of stupidity.”
“Hey—” I started.
“We’ve all been there,” Owen said.
“But it was nice, and Laura, of course I would do it again,” Freddy said with a wink.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“A love connection,” Max said.
“No,” Freddy and I said in unison.
“Okay, not a love connection,” Max said.
“But I do blame Max,” Freddy said.
“Excuses, excuses,” she said.
“Hey!” Max screamed. “I didn’t force you to drink it.”
After that, we were quiet.
I was still angry with Astrid for bringing up Freddy. It was my own damn fault for drinking Max’s family moonshine and making out with him. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t like kissing Freddy—because I did. He was a good kisser. Ugh. What was wrong with me?
“I think I found your mole,” Max said, picking it up from the floor. He tried handing it back to Astrid but she swiped his hand away.
“It’s a beauty mark,” she said. “It’s a bloody beauty mark.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Day Five (later than that)
December 10
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
Max sat on a cot, picking at his teeth. He was crying so hard that snot was coming out of his nose. He had just realized that he was going to be stuck with braces for the so-called apocalypse.
The joke was on us, though.
Astrid and I got our periods. Thank God for the teachers who remembered to put tampons in the fallout shelter.
“How can you tell?” Freddy asked. “We’re all bleeding from down there.”
“But they’re hemorrhaging from the vagina,” Max clarified.
“I’ll cut off your dick, and you won’t have anything to beat on during the night. Yeah, we hear you, all night long,” Astrid said.
Freddy retreated to the corner.
“No. She’s got her period.” Terrence nodded.
Once upon a time there was a scientist who wanted to kill millions of people. And the only way for the scientist to accomplish his plan was to come up with a capable invention.
Eve of Destruction, Book, page 1.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Day 6
December 11
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
Everyone took another dose of potassium iodide. We couldn’t tell if it was working or not. But did it matter? Everyone drank a Coke, and we toasted t
o our last night here—our last meal. We thought it was night. But for all we knew, it could be day. We picked out a can of food for each of us and took turns using the can opener that we’d found on the second day. And while we ate, we finished Eve of Destruction. The ones who had never read it wanted to know how it ended. It was bleak. Boudreaux Beauchamp did not write uplifting inspirational stories. The ending, though it gave hope, wasn’t exactly a happily-ever-after tale. Rodney wanted a sequel.
We wanted to believe that there would be one for us—a sequel. Though it was undeniable that it would be different.
Dylan talked about the footage and how no matter what, he was going to put it together in some edit room and make it a movie. Even though it wasn’t his job. He was a cinematographer, not a film editor. But we all would have to adjust.
Astrid wouldn’t be on the cover of any magazine, unless it was for a medical journal. Freddy and Owen wouldn’t be the leading men they hoped to be. Rodney, Max, Terrence, and I probably were the graduating class of 1986. All four of us. But Director Edman was the one who was adamant that his future wouldn’t be so much different from what he had always lived. He was so sure that he would have a little gold statuette, an Oscar, in his future.
“We will be at the Academy Awards,” he said. “Our names will be read.”
“Yeah,” Freddy said. “In the ‘in memoriam’ part of the show. They’ll put our pictures and our profession.”
I hoped that they wouldn’t use my Jostens school picture.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Day Six (late)
December 11
Who knows the time?
• • • • • • •
It was quiet. Most were passed out. The director and Dylan were going over final scene shots like this movie was going to get an ending. I sat by myself on a cot writing a letter to my future self. Mrs. Martin brought it up in the meeting when I got suspended—the second time in the last couple of weeks. She thought it would be therapeutic to put down all my feelings about what I thought would be the forthcoming apocalypse, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Now seemed like as good a time as any.