“They’re coming.” She straightens a picture frame on the wall that I’m pretty sure was already straight and then leaves.
“I will heckle the coach if he tries to take you out,” Brock says. He grabs an Xbox controller and unpauses the FIFA game he and Tommy were playing. Kelly got it so Tommy could work on his soccer strategy. “I will tell him that you have a ball python developing a taste for people, and that we’re not afraid to use it.”
My phone buzzes. I check it and see a UPS shipping alert.
Your package will be delivered Tuesday.
Oh.
Man.
The steel door.
It’s coming.
This is amazing.
“What day is the scrimmage?” I ask.
“Tuesday,” Tommy says.
Crap.
“What’s wrong?”
“That steel door I ordered is coming Tuesday. I need to be there for it.”
“Can’t they just leave it there?” Brock asks.
“Yeah, but I need to check it and stuff. Make sure it’s not damaged.” Mostly I want to put it on right away.
Tommy bites his nail and says, “Yeah yeah yeah, it’s fine.”
“Maybe the next one.”
“Cool. Yeah.” He goes down the hall to the bathroom.
Brock gives me a flat face like Dude, come on.
“I have to be there,” I say.
“Yeah.” He dribbles his guy down the field and crushes the ball past Tommy’s goalie. “You said that.”
3
Kelly makes dinner, so Brock and I leave because her food makes our insides hurt. We ride our bikes side by side but don’t say anything except “See ya” when he peels off to his street. I don’t really have anything to do right now on the shed, so I just ride around. The air feels kind of nice going this fast.
“Hey,” Misty yells, pedaling up behind me. Got all the pads on again, shin ones too. “Where you going?”
“Just riding.”
She catches up with me, so I guess we’re riding together now. We cut down a dirt path that goes behind our neighborhood into this tiny patch of woods. It’s pretty twisty back here with lots of roots and you can’t see the trail that well unless you know it. I swerve around some mounds that kids use to dirt-jump and park behind this big fallen tree. Misty stops by the mounds and I see her eyeing them like Hmmm, I should maybe jump this.
“You will definitely get hurt,” I say.
“I bet I could do it.”
I sit on the fallen tree. “Yeah, but you’re not allowed to play contact sports. If you fall you’re going to make contact with the ground.”
Misty leans her bike against the tree and sits next to me. There’s some Velcro ripping as she takes off her wrist guards. I don’t even know how she grips the handlebars with those things on.
“Tell me a joke.”
“What?”
“You used to say funny stuff,” she says. “They were burns but not like mean. You just liked to make jokes.”
“You say it like we used to hang out all the time.”
“Not all the time,” she says. “But sometimes. I mean, if I was outside and you were outside I’d wave and you’d wave back. Or if I threw something in the Mitchells’ yard sometimes you’d see it and go get it for me.”
I try to find that in my brain.
“That was like one time,” I say.
“No. It was more than that.”
A plane flies overhead. I think about all the people who will be flying near Yellowstone in two weeks and hope they lose their tickets or get stuck in traffic and miss the flight. “Do you think I’m a big jerk?”
She looks at me. “How big?”
“So you do.”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
Misty takes her helmet off and loosens the strap. “A big jerk is somebody who’s mostly mean all over. More than fifty percent of them is mean. That’s a big jerk. A Real Jerk.”
“So what am I?”
“Maybe twenty percent.”
I grab this big stick and poke at the dead tree’s roots. They look so weird out of the ground like this. “How come it’s always me who’s the jerk? Maybe other people are jerks and I’m the normal one.”
“Like who?”
“My dad is a jerk. He’s way over fifty percent.”
“He seems pretty nice.”
“Yeah, that’s because he’s got a secret life you don’t know about.” I’m smacking the tree roots and getting lots of dirt to fall off. It feels amazing. “He thinks I don’t know, but I know and so, yeah, he is a gigantic jerk.”
Misty comes over and looks around for a stick. She finds one and starts hacking at the roots too. Her aim is off, but when she lands one it’s serious. “What did he do?”
I go at the tree roots like a construction worker doing demo. I’m actually wondering if I could maybe clear this whole stump of dirt. Misty picks up the pace too and we’re just going wild, whacking and smacking and watching the dirt fall into the big hole where the roots used to be buried. When most of it is off, I toss my stick in the pit and get some water from my bike.
“He goes on these dates with women from the Internet,” I say.
“All different women?”
“Maybe just a couple of the same ones. I don’t know.”
“Huh,” she says. “That must be weird for you. That stinks.”
“Yeah.” I slap at the air to try and set an example of what will happen to other bugs who come near me. It doesn’t work. “And then last night he wrecks movie roulette because he’s already seen the one we watched with her and is texting her funny scenes during the movie.”
“What’s movie roulette?”
“It’s this thing my—” I shake my head. “It’s this stupid tradition we used to do. And I didn’t even want to do it and then he wrecks it. Like, what’s his problem?”
Misty’s phone dings. She checks it and then starts putting her wrist guards back on. “You should tell him you hate him going out with Internet ladies.”
“Like it would matter.”
“You should still tell him.” Misty buckles her helmet. “And I don’t think he’s a Real Jerk.”
“What?”
“I mean, he’s hiding it. He knows it might really make you mad. A Real Jerk would do it and not care what anybody thought.”
“It’s still messed up.”
We get our bikes and walk them back through the woods. At the road she stops and says, “So.”
“What?”
“That thing I wanted to ask you. To be continued.”
“Oh. Right.”
She grins and says, “I would like to be your official apocalypse assistant.”
I blink. “What does that even mean?”
“I’ll help you finish the shed and stuff. Give you suggestions to make it better. I think we’d make a good team.”
I look at her for a couple seconds and then at the road. My throat hurts, like it’s swollen. I swallow, but it still feels weird. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? I can be pretty helpful.”
“It’s just a lot of specific stuff,” I say. “I gotta do it.”
She frowns. “You think I’ll mess it up.”
“It’s just—I have to make sure it’s exactly right. So I’m ready.”
She watches me a couple more seconds. I look back at the road. She takes this breath and I think maybe she’s going to ask again, and my throat hurts again, and I think maybe I should just nod and let her, because really the help would be kind of great.
“Okay.” Misty gets on her bike. “Wanna keep riding?”
“Yeah.”
We ride around the neighborhood for a while, talking about stupid stuff like Mr.
Hines’s giant beard and how much homework we have for just starting school. Misty doesn’t tighten her helmet right, so it slides forward and blocks her eyes and she almost crashes into me. Maybe it’s good she’s not helping me finish the shed.
I just need to get that door on.
1
“Asteroids,” says Mrs. Baker, my science teacher. “Meteorites. All sorts of space junk. It’s all careening toward us right now—and now.” She snaps her fingers. “They cross in front of Earth’s orbit daily, with little to no advance warning. Are you tracking with me?”
I nod. I know this stuff by heart.
“Even if we could know ahead of time—say, a few months—the geniuses at NASA aren’t sure we could do anything about it. If an asteroid is coming at us, it’s coming at us.”
“Did one ever hit us?” Misty asks. Science is the only class we have together, but she’s way up at the front.
“Hands, please,” Mrs. Baker says.
Misty raises her hand real slow at first, then shoots it up. Some kids laugh and I smirk because Come on, Mrs. Baker. “Has something ever hit Earth before?”
“Yeah,” I say. Mrs. Baker swings her head and I raise my hand normally. She nods and I say, “The Manson Crater, in Iowa. A big meteor hit and killed everything within a couple hundred miles.”
“Correct. And a larger impact site known as KT was in Mexico, near a region called the Yucatan. Scientists think that’s the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.” Mrs. Baker brings her hands together really big like an alligator chomping down. “Kaboom!” she yells. “Just like that. You tracking with me?”
Mrs. Baker starts going over the project guidelines, something about picking another planet to colonize. It’s blah blah blah to me because I’m back millions of years ago at the Manson Crater impact, seeing the ash and debris turn five states into a fire pit. Then it explodes across America and scorches everything up in seconds just like the supervolcano will in eleven days and I feel my fingernails stabbing in my palms ’cause I’m making these crazy fists to stop the buzzing.
I get up to grab a laptop from the cart and it sort of goes away until I start googling stuff. Every article is about giant space junk pulverizing Earth and then I’m just back at the Manson Crater and the supervolcano. The End.
My student email dings an alert.
NEW MESSAGE FROM: MERCEDES KNOLL
I look up and see her turn back around like she wasn’t just staring at me.
I click on the email.
Subject: Why I should be your assistant
Derrick,
Here’s a list of skills that prove I’m the best candidate for the job of apocalypse assistant. Remember that I’m the only candidate, which makes me even better.
I have good attention to detail. Ask my sister Brynn about how I used to always beat her in those memory games where you have to pair two cards from a giant set.
I am a good conversationalist. That means I’m good at talking (I looked it up). This will help because you’re not good at talking (you usually don’t talk but get this blank look like you’re mad or sad or both) and things might get boring while we work. Ask my parents about a road trip we took and they will back this up.
I never give up. Obviously this email is proof of that but also I survived a pretty serious kidney disease. I mean, that sounds like bragging but it’s true. You can ask my doctors and nurses and this girl named Tanya who I shared a room with at CHOP. She got a new pair of lungs and moved to Arizona but we text so I could get you her number.
I am clever. Catching Pigeon is probably the best example. You were there so you don’t need to ask Brynn, which would be a bad idea anyway because she’s having nightmares where birds attack her.
Hatchet accuracy. Maybe there will be some wood chopping or something. This could come in handy I think.
Summary: From all the apocalypse movies and shows I’ve seen, these are good qualities to have. I hope you will consider my application and respond ASAP (as soon as possible) because you really don’t have time to waste (lol lol).
Sincerely,
Misty
2
“You saw me throw that hatchet,” Misty says. We walk around a blob of seventh graders jamming up the hallway. “You know I’d be a good sidekick.”
“I’m not fighting crime.”
“Just saying that when things get ugly, you might want somebody who knows her way around a hatchet.”
I duck out a side door to the courtyard. The library is on the other side and when it’s hot out, our librarian, Mrs. Kimble, keeps the door open. She also lets me eat in there and read Apocalypse Soon! message boards instead of going to the cafeteria.
“I don’t need any help,” I say. And I mean it this time—not like yesterday. All that asteroid talk in science was a wake-up call. No way I’m leaving my safety up to anybody but me. “I’m almost done, anyway. My last thing is coming tomorrow.”
“What is it?”
“A rolling steel door.”
She jumps ahead and puts a hand out. “If I can think of one serious thing you forgot about—and offer a good solution—you have to let me help.”
“Why do you even want to help?” I ask. “You don’t believe It’s happening.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you didn’t ask me to make room in the shed. If you thought it was the Real Deal, you’d want to get in.”
She nods. Thinks about it. “Okay. You’re right. But I don’t have to believe you to help.”
“I don’t want any help.” I walk past her. “I have to survive in it, so I’m gonna be the one to build it.”
I’m at the library door when she shouts, “Poop.”
It echoes around the courtyard. A couple rooms have their windows open and I hear kids laugh.
I turn around and say, “What?”
“Remember last year when we did the Civil War? Mr. Carrow said most soldiers died of disease and diarrhea. Do you really want to be killed by your own poop?”
“I have a system figured out.”
“What is it?”
“None of your business.”
“That joke stinks.” Misty slaps her knee really hard like she knows that was the dumbest pun ever. “What is it?”
I check my watch. Five minutes of lunch already gone. “I’m going to take it out at night and bury it. Like when you go camping.”
“But what about the smell, during the day? It’s going to attract flies. Flies lead to disease.”
I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach. “You go in a bag and sprinkle it with kitty litter. I bought one of those compost bins to put it in during the day. They hide the smell.”
“What if you knock it over? It’s kind of a small space.”
“I won’t knock it over,” I say.
“If a bunch of people are trying to break into your shed, and it’s the middle of the night, there’s a good chance you kick that thing over. Poop everywhere.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“As your doomsday assistant, I would recommend you consider the worst possible scenario and plan to avoid it.”
“You’re not my assistant.”
“And if you keep ignoring my advice, I won’t be.”
“Good.”
And then I turn and walk into the library.
Right into Mr. Killroy.
3
I slouch way down in his office and stare at the watermark on the ceiling. I think it’s leaking into the next tile. Definitely getting bigger. I look outside the office and see Mr. Killroy standing with Misty. He’s saying stuff and then he’s writing her a pass.
“Am I in trouble?” I ask when he comes in. “Because I didn’t scream poop in the courtyard. That was Misty.”
“You’re not
in trouble.” He sits down. “I was looking for you anyway.”
“Why?”
“Just wanted to chat.”
“About what?”
Mr. Killroy folds his hands. “About Thursday.”
I’m looking at him, but doing that thing where I zone out and make his face all fuzzy. I’m thinking about the stupid heart Claudia drew on my calendar. “Did my dad ask you to do this?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Did he?”
“Yeah.”
I slouch back down. Zone out at the ceiling and turn the watermark into a black puddle.
“So how are you feeling?” Mr. Killroy asks.
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I blink, and I’m in the desert movie. Ground shaking, dust storm building. Humvees barreling toward me and now there’s a black hole opening up in the sky—that’s something new. It morphs into the watermark, like this big giant black hole that’s—
The phone on Mr. Killroy’s desk rings and jolts me out of it. He hits a button and it stops. Looks at me real close and says, “Derrick.”
“I’m fine.” I wipe my forehead with my hand. Wet. “I’m fine. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Mr. Killroy watches me for a couple seconds and then leans back. “Tell me about Misty. You two close?”
“Not really. Just live near each other.”
“You were hanging out today.”
“She was following me,” I say. “Which is what she usually does. Just shows up, does weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
I tell him about the hatchet throwing and the dangerous bike ramp making and the Pigeon catching and her Life Is a Buffet That Closes quest. He’s smiling, which I didn’t think he could do.
“She sounds like a lot of fun,” he says. “And from talking to her, she seems like a good friend.”
I look at him real quick. “What did she say?”
It's the End of the World as I Know It Page 6