All the Ways the World Can End

by Abby Sher

  “What if I took your car for a joyride into the city so I can find out what’s going on?” I asked Julian before fifth period.

  “What if you give it a few more hours and I’ll drive you in after rehearsal?” he answered. “You do know that if you skip out on this shitshow, I will cut you out of my will.”

  “You wrote a will?” I honestly thought it was possible.

  “Don’t get excited,” he said. “The only stuff I’m leaving behind is my Ken doll collection.”

  There really was nothing I could do except wait. And look at my physics quiz cluelessly. And then write a letter to my physics teacher, Mr. Monroe—(no relation to Marilyn)—that I’d tried to look at our velocity-time graphs but I’d had a family emergency and I did take his class and our approach to kinematics very seriously because I thought there was a lot at stake and way too much social inertia. Plus, had he noticed that we were on average two degrees warmer this spring and there was so much fog we lost the moon for a week straight?

  Mr. Monroe took the note and my mostly blank test without saying a word.

  After that, I called Mom two more times from the bathroom and chewed twenty-four pieces of gum, trying to chomp out my anger and sense of foreboding. Then, just as the final bell rang for the day, Mom texted: How was school sweetie? Still waiting for results. Brb, C U l8er.

  She was big on using text abbreviations, even if they didn’t make sense.

  I was big on blaming her for everything wrong with this moment.

  “I’ll take that ride,” I told Julian as we stepped into the auditorium for more VaGeorgia lunacy.

  “Five o’clock,” he said. “Don’t be late.”

  The invocation of the day was for another victim of honor killings in Pakistan. This was why it was so hard to be truly upset at Marty for all her touchy-feely warm-ups. They were actually meaningful and I could hear her hiccupping back emotion as she spoke. Of course, to the left of me I could hear this profound conversation in whispered response:

  “Are you wearing my lip balm?”

  “No, am I?”

  “You totally are.”

  “Ew, sorry. I’ll get you a new one.”

  “It’s okay, I have like a gazillion. How’s that thing on your toe?”

  “You wanna see it?”

  “No! Well, actually, yes.”

  Marty was oblivious to the chatter. She had us improvise movement while she chanted a Pakistani folk song, followed by a game of duck-duck-goose using the words trapped and free. It was already past four when the loading-dock door swung open backstage and rattled so loudly there was a collective jolt.

  “Sorry,” said Oscar as he came in with a huge framed canvas that he laid next to the back curtain. He went back out and the same thing happened when he returned with a second canvas. “Freakin’ vortex,” he muttered. I had to give him credit for putting at least a Pause button on Marty’s circle games. And he probably didn’t know it, but the crazy winds we were dealing with were caused by a leaking arctic vortex and a melting southern hemisphere. So that was a nice vortexional shout-out.

  Oscar brought out three more canvases. They were each at least seven feet long and covered with gorgeous O’Keeffe-esque collages. It looked like a mix of paint, photographs, tissue paper, and a few large unidentifiable objects.

  “Are those bones?” asked Sylvie Ditmas.

  “Please say they’re not tusks,” squeaked Lindsay McAden.

  “That’s … incredible,” said Becca Dinger. The Prophet had spoken. The rest of the girls oohed and aahed. Oscar shrugged off the compliments and said something to Marty in what sounded like Dutch. Then he disappeared back into the light booth to collect more bones or study the art of being odd some more.

  Marty clapped her hands, invigorated. She turned back to the stage and said, “Okay, I think we should spend today working on the overall shape of this showcase. At the end we can hang these spectacular pieces Oscar has rendered. Now, who has something they’d like to present?”

  The a cappella group was missing its soprano.

  The two monologists were feeling shy.

  “Becca has an awesome song that she wants to sing,” offered Sylvie.

  “Stop it!” Becca said, standing up, obviously pleased. “Only if you guys do backup,” she demanded. Sylvie, Lara, and Madison were immediately in line behind her. There was a good five minutes of giggling and nail biting while they huddled to iron out the specifics. Then Becca turned toward the rest of us with a fluttery flourish and sang in a raspy voice,

  I …

  have …

  but one …

  desire …

  and that is you.

  Her backup dancers echoed, That is you, while wagging their hips slowly.

  Sylvie jumped up and down shouting, “Yes! We nailed it!”

  Becca rolled her eyes and then bent forward in a deep curtsey.

  “Oh … kay,” Marty said. It was hilarious to watch her face try to wriggle its way out of dismay. “Okay,” she said again, more definitively this time. “Thank you for using the title so prominently and for exploring what it means to desire. Is there more in development, perhaps?”

  Becca shrugged. “I guess. But I dunno. I have like no time to do anything between now and the show. My boyfriend, Kevin, is working a double shift and I swore I’d keep him company.” Marty opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. “Plus,” Becca said, “this is really emotional work, you know?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was full of it or truly attached to these two lines of drivel, but that was the answer Marty was looking for. She nodded solemnly and mouthed, I know, to Becca before turning back to the rest of us.

  “Who else?” she asked pleadingly.

  Julian pulled me by the wrist up to the center of the stage.

  “Wait,” I whimpered.

  “For what?” he answered. His cheeks were fiery and his hair was matted into sweaty spikes. There were few things that made Julian more wrathful than bad art.

  I tried to speak to him without moving my lips so we could have a little privacy. “I just didn’t know we were performing in front of everybody today.”

  “Now you know,” he said. Then he turned to the rest of the class and instructed them where to sit in the audience.

  “Oscar,” he hollered toward the lighting booth, “can you bring up L5, M3, and O2, please?” He pointed to the lights above as he named them. When they actually came on, Marty hooted.

  Julian ran down to the locker room and got the Pretty Petunia Princess doll, apron, and turkey baster while I stood dumbly onstage, waiting. We had to play the ballerina music from his phone, which made it sound more tinny than haunting. I felt my skin quivering while I did my waltz of solitude and I stared at the exit sign in the back of the house so I could forget where I was. The music was taking forever to end. I bailed early and dropped to the floor. The only redeeming moment was hearing a few hushed voices:

  “Is she okay?”

  “I dunno.”

  “She meant to do that, idiot.”

  “Whatever. I do want a new lip balm.”

  Julian walked on slowly, glaring the audience into silence. Then he added a stunning leap-lunge combo, picked up Petunia, and walked off.

  Disturbed silence. Very disturbed.

  “Thanks, you can cut the lights there, Oscar,” Julian called. I just stayed lying on the stage floor. I was considering lying there for the rest of human existence.

  “Mmmmm,” Marty said. “Mmmm-hmmmmm.” She sounded like she was impersonating a moped or channeling a ghost. “This is the end of the piece, yes?”

  Julian nodded. He offered me a hand so we were standing up facing the class together.

  “I see,” Marty said in a very measured tone. “I am really intrigued but I don’t want to project my thoughts on it before I hear yours. Do you want to tell us how this relates to Georgia O’Keeffe or the theme of desire?”

  “Do I want to?” Julian repeated. “Not
really.”

  “Right,” said Marty. “There is so much here. What I like about the first part is that, Lenny, you are not particularly graceful or even coordinated but you lift your neck in this exquisitely vulnerable way.” She smiled at me.

  “Thank you?” I said, even though it sounded like the opposite of praise.

  “Damn,” I heard from the crowd.

  Marty spent another ten minutes analyzing Julian’s physical choices and the use of a turkey baster as a symbol of reproductive and creative prowess. She asked more questions about the possible links between Georgia and the doll or the purpose of my “distressing stumble.” She mentioned again how I lacked poise, which added to the impact of the piece. Julian didn’t say a word. He’d been through so many auditions and critiques in the past few years that I was sure this bored him more than anything else. For me, though, it felt like I was being publicly spanked. Repeatedly.

  At some point that wasn’t soon enough, Julian interrupted to say, “Thanks so much. Maybe we should see what else is show-ready?”

  Marty agreed. Of course, nobody had anything else to present, so then she said everyone could pick an instrument from her duffel bag and we would improvise a group composition.

  “No,” cut in Julian again. He was done with the shenanigans. “You can’t make us bang on drums and toot recorders for an hour and a half next weekend. We have posters up, tickets sold, and Rice Krispies treats for intermission. We have so much potential here. I can teach a group number right now. Just think about it.” He narrowed his eyes for effect before speaking again. “Is this really how you want to honor Georgia?”

  For the next hour, Marty handed the reins over to Julian and he worked us hard. He improvised a tricky but energizing dance combination for us all to try. He even figured out a way for us to make these human sculptures that looked like O’Keeffe’s hollyhocks and rams’ heads. I was really awestruck. Especially because whenever someone got lost or complained it was too complicated, Julian stayed calm and focused, repeating each move and counting the beats. When Marty tried to butt in, he literally leapt over her and kept going.

  But when five o’clock came and went and Julian didn’t stop rehearsal, I got peeved. I tried to bulge my eyes out at him and point to the ancient clock over the stacked folding chairs in the back corner. He either ignored me or was too impassioned to notice.

  It wasn’t until Oscar appeared again and asked Marty loudly, “Are we hanging the collages tonight?” that anyone dared to stop Julian’s flow. Marty was diving into Julian’s choreography too, and somersaulted over toward her son.

  “My dearest,” she said, “I did tell you we’d do that, didn’t I?”

  Oscar didn’t care either way. “It’s fine. But I’m gonna get going because I have a six o’clock call to Prague.”

  “Six o’clock?!” Marty laughed. “How could it be almost six?”

  “Oh my goodness that is so not okay,” Becca gushed. “Kevin’s gonna be so concerned. I have to go.” She ran down to the locker room, with Sylvie, Lara, and Madison in tow. I wondered what it felt like to never have to be alone.

  “Sorry to keep you late,” Julian said to the rest of us. His eyes found mine. “Really sorry.”

  “Yes, but I think this was so fruitful and expansive, right?” Marty said.

  “Please go home and memorize this. Do it ten times in front of a mirror and have it clean and ready to go for tomorrow,” Julian instructed.

  Everyone collected their stuff and started heading to the locker room. I couldn’t handle the idea of listening to the girls compare boob size down there even though I did want to change my tank top and pee. So I said to Julian, “I’ll be outside. Waiting.”

  “Gotcha. Two minutes,” he answered. I pushed open the side door, slid my back down the brick wall by the bike racks, and closed my eyes. I guess I appreciated the arctic vortex at moments like these, when I needed a blizzard to clear out my brain.

  “I don’t want to project my thoughts before I hear yours, but do you really want your neck to be that exquisitely vulnerable?” someone asked in a grumbly voice. I thought it was Julian trying to make me laugh.

  “Nice one,” I said. “Can we just leave? That woman needs a lesson in social graces and maybe a new vibrator.”

  “Wow. I’ll mention that to her.” That was definitely not Julian’s voice. I blinked my eyes open and found Oscar standing over me. He was holding a copy of some thick book in another language.

  “Oops,” I said. “I mean…”

  “Yeah,” he said, smirking. I’d never seen him up close like this before. He had Marty’s light gray eyes, like deep-set marbles. A thin nose with a smudge of moss-colored paint on it.

  “Sorry, I was just…”

  “Huh,” he said. He opened his book and sat down next to me, uninvited.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Moby-Dick. In Portuguese.”

  “Shut up,” I said, because it sounded like a joke. Oscar just smiled. His smugness made my skin crawl. “Okay,” I said. “Then how do you translate ‘dick’?”

  I immediately regretted that one. Oscar started cackling softly under his awning of curls.

  “Fine. You know what? Didn’t you say you have some phone date with someone in Prague? Maybe she’ll appreciate your language skills. You think you’re so smart and worldly and you can just float all over the globe and nothing will ever affect you. Go ahead. And you can breastfeed until you’re eighty-nine for all I care. But one day … one day we’re all going to die.”

  I stood up to go, even though I had no idea where and I really wanted him to leave because I got this spot first.

  Oscar kept staring at me. He wasn’t amused or sneering anymore. Just studying me as if I’d come from another planet. Maybe I had. Maybe I was the only one who knew how dark and doomed we all were.

  “What are you looking at?!” I screamed.

  “Nothin’,” he answered. Then he closed his book slowly and stood up. He walked over to the bike rack, unlocked a dented blue mountain bike, and peeled off.

  Oversanitizing

  According to a recent World Health Organization report, our fanaticism with germ killing has resulted in antibiotic-resistant bacteria all over the globe. Especially because of supersize sanitizing agents like triclosan and triclocarban.

  Someday soon the surgeon general is going to announce that hand sanitizers are the leading cause of cancer.

  That will be hilarious. Cancer always has the last laugh.

  Chapter 10

  IF YOU’RE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO

  Julian and I didn’t get on the road until six thirty, which pissed me off royally. Julian said, “I understand that you’re mad and that I effed up. But hopefully we just beat all the rush-hour traffic?” Then he gunned his Jetta’s motor and did get us down to the hospital in record time.

  Still, it was dark when we got there. We had to walk through a steady stream of people in scrubs coming out of the lobby—hailing cabs, eating potato chips, returning to life. The only person I recognized on the tenth floor was Smile McNoSmiles. I could tell from the stacks of half-eaten cafeteria trays that even Washington had already come through and left for the day.

  When I walked into Dad’s room, there was a pigtailed pixie in front of his bed doing starlight jumps in a hot-pink sweat suit. For a split second, I thought someone had sent my dad a stripper.

  “Excuse me, what’s going on?” I asked sharply.

  The sprite whipped her head around with an ear-to-ear smile glazed onto her face. It was my mom.

  “Helloooo!” she sang, as if Julian and I had come over for a cocktail party. She drew us both into a lung-crushing hug. When I wriggled free I saw her outfit also had hearts bedazzled onto her chest and BAD in rhinestones on her right thigh.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  Mom laughed loudly. “Dad and I were freezing in here last night, so I went out to pick us up something warmer to wear. All I found op
en was a Victoria’s Secret two blocks away.”

  Dad held up a sweatshirt that was black with a pink sequined cat in the right bottom corner and ears on the hood.

  “I’d rather freeze,” Dad said.

  “I think both of you look fantabulous,” said Julian. “May I?” he asked, pointing to Dad’s feet.

  “Why hello, Julian,” Dad said. “And of course you may.” Julian sat on the end of the bed and started massaging Dad’s feet through the covers. Dad smiled and closed his eyes. This was their routine. Julian had taught himself acupressure online to help with an old Achilles injury and he’d used me as his guinea pig for a while so I knew how comforting it could be.

  “Inhale one, two, three, four,” Julian said softly. Dad breathed serenely, following his lead. I had to forgive Julian in that moment. I was so grateful that he could bring this kind of tranquility to my dad. I knew I couldn’t. I was too scared to rub Dad’s feet that way, or to trust his deep breaths. Within seconds of coming in, I’d started pacing and rearranging the little mouthwashes that the staff seemed to bring in every few hours for Dad. I also refolded the spare blanket and gown in the corner and dusted the windowsill with a few alcohol pads.

  Meanwhile, Mom was doing slow-motion jumping jacks, followed by something that looked like dry-land breaststroke.

  “Mom is teaching me some new ways to keep my body limber in bed,” Dad explained. He quickly poked his arms out in a T and started mirroring the swim lesson.

  “We’ve learned a lot about vowels in the past twenty-four hours,” Mom said. “A—adrenaline. E—endorphins. I—intimacy.”

  “Catchy,” Julian commented.

  “These are all tips we picked up from Chelsea Diamond. Did you watch that too, Julian? And did I tell you both that she got back to me?”

  “No,” we said in unison. I didn’t even know that Mom had been trying to get in touch in the first place.

  “She’s very sought after—as she should be,” Mom said. “So sadly, the answer was ‘Not at this time,’ but I thought she worded it so sweetly. Even her font is lovely. I’ll show you.”