It's the End of the World as I Know It

by Matthew Landis

  “What does this even have to do with anything?”

  “Just listen.” Misty finally gets sick of eating hair and ties a real ponytail with some color band thing on her wrist. “They cry because it’s so incredible. They can’t handle it. Get it?”

  I check my watch.

  “Just google it.” She takes off toward her house. “And I am sorry. Okay? People mess up.”

  I basically break my back trying to lift the toilet in. I move some stuff around and it fits pretty good, right at the foot of the cot. I lie down and let it sink in.

  I’m actually done.

  I’m ready.

  I lie there for a while and stare at the wood plank ceiling. It could happen tonight and I’d be ready. Maybe I should start sleeping here just in case. Could probably run an extension cord out to charge my phone and stuff until the power gets cut by superstorm winds coming east.

  I get my phone out and google colorblind people seeing color. I watch a couple videos. It’s weird and pretty cool actually, seeing them open the glasses and then put them on. As soon as it happens—that exact moment, like Misty said—they cry. I thought one guy wouldn’t because he was laughing, but then he started crying.

  I hear somebody outside the shed and get up. Tommy’s standing there in his soccer stuff. The jersey is super-big on him, and he’s got this grass stain down the side of one leg. He’s holding a box of mice and Pete is chilling on the ground in his cage.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “Did you guys win?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I played pretty good.”

  “Nice.” I feel sort of sick. I look at the ground. At Pete.

  “I know the apocalypse isn’t till Friday, but I wanted Pete to, like, settle in,” he says. “Is that okay?”

  I shrug. Nod.

  We carry Pete’s cage inside and lower him into the snake box. Tommy says goodbye to him and we slide the lid on.

  “I’m still trying to find the hinges and lock,” I say.

  “Cool.”

  We stare at the box for a while.

  “How’d you carry him over here?” I ask. “The cage is pretty heavy.”

  “Brock helped me. He left.”

  “Yeah.”

  We walk outside and stand under the maple tree. Tommy sneezes three times and uses his arm to wipe it. “I was wondering if, like, the apocalypse doesn’t happen, if you could come back.”

  My throat feels like I’m choking. “Hmm.”

  “You changed,” he says. “Like, after your mom and stuff.” He sneezes again. “I thought if we didn’t say anything you would just come back. But you didn’t.”

  I say, “Tommy,” and he sneezes and then he’s sprinting to the sidewalk, faster than I saw him run at practice.

  1

  “You’re not taking the bus today.” Claudia puts a bunch of stuff in the dishwasher and starts it. “I’m driving you. Okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  “And you might want to wear something else.”

  “Why?”

  “And if anybody at school asks, you’re sick.”

  I watch her. I’ve barely seen her since Dr. Mike’s, and now she’s being weird. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re hanging out,” she says. “All day.”

  “Hmm.”

  “There’s only one rule: You have to actually be with me. No waiting in the car.”

  I think about it. “What if I don’t want to?”

  She shrugs. “Then you can hang out in that guidance office for another eight hours.”

  “Hmm.” I think some more. “Are we going far? I don’t want to be far from the shed.”

  “Twenty minutes, max.” Claudia tilts her head and says, “Deal? You come, you’re with me. No bailing.”

  I wait a couple seconds, and then shrug. “Okay.”

  I eat some cereal and go out to the shed to check on Pete. He’s just lying there looking all snakelike. I think about Brock bringing the thunder on me and put a crate of MREs on top of the lid so Pete can’t sneak out. Should probably find those hinges and a lock.

  I walk around to the garage and stop when I see our car.

  “Why are the bikes on here?” I ask Claudia.

  “It’s a real mystery, isn’t it? Get in.”

  She turns left out of our development, the opposite way of school. She’s got the pedal pushed seriously to the floor and we’re zooming with the other traffic.

  “So where are we going?” I ask.

  “I’m starving.”

  I check my watch. Mr. Killroy is probably finishing a biceps workout in his office and waiting for me to come in. “Just tell me where.”

  “Dee, trust me.”

  “Aren’t you gonna get in trouble for skipping? With colleges and stuff?”

  “If you can’t cut school two days before the apocalypse, when can you?”

  We pass the big Costco and ten furniture stores and the doctor’s office we went to as kids. Claudia turns left at a light and then makes a quick right into a tiny parking lot. The neon sign says YUM-YUM DONUTS. It’s a small building and looks a hundred years old. My stomach is knotting pretty hard.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask.

  Claudia shuts the car off and gets some cash out of her purse. “I want some donuts.”

  “I don’t want to be here.”

  “We made a deal.” She turns around and looks at me. “And I want to be here—with my brother.”

  I watch a guy go in, hear the bell on the door ding. I swallow and take big breaths through my nose. Do some fist clenching. “They have donuts other places.”

  “Not like these,” she says.

  “Hmm.”

  “Derrick.” She waits till I look at her. “If the world is ending on Friday, this would be a great time to do something really nice for me.”

  I look at the sign again. Back at her.

  “You can do this,” she says. “We’re just eating donuts.”

  I get out real slow. The parking lot smells like trash and car exhaust. But it also smells like donuts and it’s pretty amazing. It cuts into the dizziness a little and my heart isn’t going ba-boom real loud in my ears, so that’s good. Maybe I can do this.

  We walk inside and that bell clangs real loud. Ding-ding. There’s some seating along the windows, but most people sit at the big bar that runs along the front of the shop. They look at me funny for a second because of the hazmat suit. Claudia heads for two stools right in the middle by the register and we stare at the menu board.

  “I’m going to get the glazed,” she says. “They’re the best.”

  A short lady with an apron comes over. “What can I get you?”

  “Can I have two glazed donuts and a small coffee?” Claudia says. She elbows me.

  I look at the menu on the wall but I don’t really need to. “Coffee roll and Boston cream.”

  The lady writes it on her notepad and then checks out my suit for a couple seconds. “Chocolate milk?” she asks.

  I nod because chocolate milk sounds exactly right. Like of course I’d get that. “Yeah.”

  Claudia pays and we eat our donuts as other people come in and talk with the lady in the apron. This big trucker guy in suspenders calls her Maria. I knew that. That’s Maria and she knows I get chocolate milk.

  “In about two hours,” Claudia says, “our blood sugar will crash and we’re going to feel like somebody shot us with a tranquilizer dart. Also, you’ve got chocolate all over your face.”

  I wipe it with a napkin.

  “Still there,” she says, and does it for me.

  A couple minutes go by. I try not to look around because this is going pretty not horrible and who knows what cou
ld make it bad. “Sorry I yelled at you. At Dr. Mike’s,” I say.

  We sip our drinks and listen to people chatting about nothing. She side hugs me for a while and then says, “Isn’t it funny that Mom brought us here every Saturday? She would never let us eat crap like this at home.”

  My head goes up and down, but the whole motion feels a little slow, like the muscles aren’t working right. Dizziness is coming back.

  “I loved that about Her. She had rules, but built in these little windows where we could totally break them.” She wipes glaze off her fingers. “I think that was my favorite thing about Her.”

  I’m taking in these big wafts of donut shop air to try and keep things steady. Any second now that stupid desert movie is going to kick on, which would really be not good. Like now.

  Or now.

  “She used to get that thing,” Claudia says, and she puts her hand on my arm and grips it tight like Hey, remember that? and it sort of pauses everything because I do remember that thing.

  I feel my head nodding a little and I say, “Peanut butter donut with whipped cream,” the same time Claudia does.

  She squeezes my arm harder and does this really big laugh that echoes across the whole shop. It lights up something in my chest—something nice and bright and warm, a million times stronger than the Great Red Spot. Her laugh is this incredible magical thing that I haven’t heard in forever, with a hundred laughs behind it. I can feel myself smiling too and that makes Claudia laugh harder and now pretty much the whole place is looking at us like Seriously, what is happening with you two?

  “Oh man,” Claudia says when she calms down. “How did She not get diabetes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She checks her watch. “Okay. Time to go.”

  2

  We drive back toward our neighborhood but past it a little, turning up this long road that dumps into another development. Claudia winds through it to get to this big park on the other side.

  “My school is like one minute away,” I say. “Somebody could see us.”

  “I’m very concerned. Hear the concern in my voice.”

  Claudia parks and takes the bikes off the back of the car. I get the helmets. “You doing okay?” she asks.

  “I think I could take a nap.”

  “Dee. I’m serious.”

  I yawn and stretch. Look around. “I’m trying not to think about it that much.”

  “You’re not freaking out, so that’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  We ride slow, Claudia in front. The park has sports fields everywhere. Some are just regular grass fields, these giant open spaces. We stop at one of them and watch a guy fly one of those remote-controlled airplanes. He’s pretty good and does a lot of flips and tricks with it, then brings it in for a landing. We keep riding and the sugar rush fades a little because I’m sweating it out. I unzip the hazmat suit to my waist and tie the arms so they don’t get stuck in the bike wheel.

  Claudia slows at this big bend that overlooks a football field. She lays her bike in the grass and climbs onto some empty bleachers and waves me to follow. It’s hot, but at least there’s a breeze this high up.

  “Did Dr. Mike tell you to do this?” I ask. “Therapy in the wild or something?”

  “I’m just riding bikes with my brother.”

  A cloud goes overhead. For a second it’s colder—almost like fall. I look at the field and wonder who put the goalposts in, because they’re both majorly sagging.

  “Hmm,” I say. I’m remembering something. I look at Claudia and she’s watching me. “She freaked out at somebody,” I say. “Yelling and stuff. But I didn’t play football.”

  “We were just riding bikes. You were in fifth grade, I think. It was a while ago.”

  That makes sense. “A big guy. He yelled at Her.”

  “They both yelled at each other.”

  “Why?”

  “We stopped to watch because you were into football.” Claudia points to the farthest goalpost. “The guy’s son missed the extra point kick and he started yelling at him.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Mom told him to stop, and he told Her to buzz off. Got pretty heated. We rode back and She was shaking, She was so mad. I’d never seen Her like that.” Claudia pauses, and I’m watching her close because I remember now too. “She told us that a parent’s job was to build their kids up, not tear them down.”

  My throat’s all tight. “Why are we really doing this?”

  “Because you act like She didn’t even exist.” Claudia tucks some hair behind her ears. “And Dee, I really hate it.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Like how?”

  Claudia holds up one finger. “We can’t eat at the kitchen table.” She holds up another one. “You won’t sit in the front seat because of the Air Force sticker.” A third. “I had to beg you to come to the cemetery.”

  My chest goes ba-boom real big. “You don’t talk about Her either.”

  “Because every time I do, you shut down or freak out. I don’t want to make you upset.”

  I put my arms back in the hazmat suit and zip it up. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about Her.”

  “Well, I do. Have you ever thought of that?” Claudia picks at her nails. “You’re like dynamite. I tiptoe around you so you don’t explode. I do your laundry, I make your food, I drive you to school—and I never, ever make fun of your doomsday stuff.”

  “Yeah, but you think I’m crazy.”

  “I have never said that. And I do not think it.”

  “Then what?” That sounded like a yell. Ba-BOOM, my heart goes real loud. “If you don’t think the world is ending, then what does that make me?”

  She holds her hands up like What do you want from me? “You’re busted up, Dee. The same as me. The same as Dad. We’re all jumbled up and trying to figure it out. That’s what happens when people die—it blows everything up.”

  The desert movie kicks on like she slammed the PLAY button. But it starts really far along this time with those Humvees super-close to me. A couple more seconds and they’ll run me right over.

  “Dee. Listen to me.”

  I pull the hazmat hood up and tighten the strings. Can you contain the Great Red Spot? “Mmhm.”

  “Mom was awesome. And I miss Her just as much as you—but I miss remembering how awesome She was because we’re never allowed to talk about Her. Do you get that?”

  I pull big breaths through my nose and keep my eyes wide open so that movie doesn’t get to the end. “Yeah.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I get it.”

  I get off the bleachers and push the earth. I’m crushing gravity—I own it. Claudia doesn’t stop me, just sits and watches. I hit sixty and keep going, like I just started. At seventy-four my arms give out. I lie on my back and look at the clouds and take big giant breaths that my body actually needs this time. The movie stays paused, so mission accomplished.

  Claudia comes and sits next to me. I sit up and she leans her head on my shoulder and I feel her crying.

  “I love you, Dee.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too. Sorry.”

  She sniffles. Then she sniffs me. “You need to wash that thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  3

  At home, I put on a new hazmat suit and throw the dirty ones in the washer. There’s like five bottles of detergent and lots of places to put them and tons of buttons. Claudia comes in and does it for me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She leans against the washer. “If you want to just go hang out in the shed, it’s fine.”

  I do. Bad.

  But we’re T-minus two days away, and I have been sort of a Real Jerk to Claudia lately. “We made a deal,” I say.

  She look
s at me. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “What’s next?”

  “You hungry again?”

  “I’m always hungry.”

  She disappears and comes back jangling her keys. “Then get ready to eat at the one place Mom never took us for lunch.”

  It’s a five-minute drive to McDonald’s. Claudia blasts the AC but lets me hang my hand out the window, the air pushing it up and down. The radio blares this song I don’t even know, but it’s good—lots of bass and the guy’s voice is kind of relaxing. No buzzing or sweating going on. Maybe Claudia is right—maybe I can do this. Not totally freak out about Her.

  We pull into the drive-through line. It’s six cars deep and stacking up behind us.

  “She hated this place,” Claudia says.

  I see the memory in my head. “We got it on that trip to the mountains and I threw up the whole weekend. She said it was the McDonald’s.”

  “See: This is progress,” Claudia says. “We’re talking about Her. This is normal.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t order too much, because we’re getting tacos from your favorite place tonight.”

  “I can eat tons of both.”

  We inch forward in line. Claudia taps her fingers on the steering wheel and then points across the street to an Italian restaurant. “We should take Dad back there sometime. She loved it.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and feel myself smiling, because I’m watching us eat there in my head—the guys talking Italian in the back, Her asking to sit outside again on their patio, saying stuff about real pasta and homemade sauce. “Maybe tonight we could—”

  It falls off, because I can actually see Her right now, sitting outside at that table she loved, next to a guy who looks like my dad—exactly like my dad.

  Is my dad.

  They’re talking and laughing and She keeps throwing Her hair to the side, and they’re sitting really close, and the food is coming and they talk to the waiter and it’s live—it’s happening now.