The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

by Davina Bell

  And then she was gone. The screen went blank.

  In the emptiness of her study, I leaned back in my mother’s chair. I picked up her paperweight bluebird. I threw it hard against the wall.

  Its beak broke off. The hole in its face gaped like a ghoul.

  I remembered a man with a white mask from a bad dream. ‘It felt real, didn’t it,’ my mother had said as she’d sat on my bed. ‘But there’s a way you can tell if it’s all just a nightmare. You say to yourself three times: Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan. And then you wake up. Easy as that.’

  Summer

  Huge chunks of rock were being tossed to the ground, landing with thumps I could feel in my bones, and then ribbons of pale light started to shine through and I could hear his breathing, not that different from the sound made by the guy who had followed us through a park in Boston after dark when we’d taken a cheeky shortcut after watching people skate at the ice rink that played Buddy Holly songs on a tinkly old loudspeaker.

  And then suddenly I could feel air against my skull and I realised there was something sticky dripping through my hair, trickling down my face, but do you think I minded? Hells no. Hoo boy, what a roller-coaster this whole trip had turned out to be. Suddenly I was completely and utterly High on Life, and as the rocks slid away around me, I flicked out my limbs and pushed, like a caveman breaking through a block of ice in an old cartoon. I didn’t even care about that bear—would put up with him, whatever—because in 3.5 seconds I would see Winter’s scrawny little face again, and that was Enough.

  Here is the best part, and you’re probably not going to believe it, because I didn’t either. When my head popped up, meerkat style, Edward wasn’t there—wasn’t anywhere.

  ‘Winter! Boy, is it good to see you. Hey, where’s the bear?’ I asked as I wrestled my shoulders free, and then my hands.

  Winter just looked at me, confused. She held my backpack out to me and said nothing as I took it, which should have annoyed me, that continuing silence, but it didn’t. Because as I watched she grabbed a rock the size of a netball with her not-busted hand and threw it to the side, and it dawned on me that this time the bear was Winter. The bear was inside her.

  I squeezed that backpack tight against my chest with all the love I had for the world. Boy, were we survivors. Pops would have been proud—Walter too. I hoped wherever they were, they were watching with hot, buttered popcorn, cheering us on.

  I don’t know how to explain it, but maybe once she’d barfed up that gunk, Winter felt better—maybe she’d been feeling nauseated that whole time, and once it was out, she was back on form. Or maybe it was something to do with Bartleby being gone—with being free. Perhaps butterflies really hate cocoons. How would we even know? She had a real spring in her step; she had found that ridiculous pillowcase among the rubble, the swelling in her wrist seemed to have gone down, and even though she still wasn’t speaking, Winter’s face shone a little, and I like to think it was something to do with me being around and alive because of her.

  Even though my body was bruised—hoo boy! Was it ever—I was keen to get moving quickly, and as I pondered the best way to go forward, I made a splint for her arm from a flattened condensed-milk can and ripped-up bits of my shirt, and I combed my fingers through her hair, trying to work the matted bits out of it so that when we eventually hit civilisation, we’d at least have some scraps of dignity left. The section of wall above us had fallen down in a neat slope—like a wheelchair ramp that led straight up to the next section of path, curving ever higher towards that snowy old summit. As I was hoisting my pack back onto my back, Winter was already scampering up that rubble, eager and coltish.

  ‘Wait—water,’ I called, my mouth claggy with thirst, and immediately she skipped back to me, went round to the back of my pack and found that big old sheet of silver that was scrunched at the bottom. She trotted over to fill it up at the stream. I watched her the whole way, willing myself not to fixate on that gruesome gap between her thighbones. ‘Just choose not to see it,’ I told myself. ‘Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.’

  Once the water was in, my pack was so heavy, I even considered ditching those fairy lights, but of course I decided against it—we’d come so far together, that rope of love and me. Those first steps, first minutes, I was sore in a deep and profound way, as if I had aged centuries. The air smelled of factory smoke, of tar. Though I was queasy with hunger, I was saving the milk for when we climbed higher—surely we’d need it more up there, where the air would be thinner, colder? But as we set off, I made a special effort to trot alongside Winter, just chatting away as if everything was how it had been in the spring. I brought the chat around to books, which had always been where we felt safe.

  ‘You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ramona Quimby,’ I said to Winter, and I knew that would get her attention because the Ramona books were her favourite growing up and, boy, did we spend a whole lot of summers, back when we had a yard, acting out those stories. No prizes for guessing that I played feisty, impulsive, misunderstood Ramona, and so Winter alternated the other parts: Ramona’s big sister, perfect old Beezus, curmudgeonly Howie, her best friend who refused to get excited by anything, and his sticky, bratty little sister, Willa Jean. We loved Ramona the way we loved fairy bread and cartoons—because her world felt like a secret cubby that adults couldn’t climb into, not even with their minds.

  ‘I’ve been wondering what she did when she grew up, Ramona—like, what did she study at college, or whatever? And I reckon it was probably textile design, because remember how she was mad for drawing cats? And how excited she was when she got her own room? So I’m thinking textiles and interiors—haberdashery, or whatever you call it.’

  And, boy oh boy oh boy, I kid you not, Winter actually smiled—that smile you smile when you’re trying not to smile—and my heart soared like a drone flying over the White House washing line.

  ‘And Howie,’ I went on, ‘this is controversial, but I’ll bet he ended up being a spy for the Russian space program, based in Florida, secretly beaming shit back to Eastern Europe. Nobody would ever suspect Howie, those blond curls and his unimpressed affect, am I right? As soon as I get to heaven, I am hunting down that author to ask her, that sweet old Beverly Cleary. And Beezus, well, that’s easy—a paediatric oncologist who had a stress-related breakdown at thirty-five and became a Pilates teacher. It was written in the stars from Day One, I’m telling you.’

  She laughed. That pretty little twig, she laughed out loud, and it was husky from coatings of silence—husky like her laugh had been the time we’d caught laryngitis on the plane back from the International Maths Olympiad, but it was laughter all the same. How I beamed. And I tell you what, I may have been slightly high from being wrestled out of the Jaws of Death, because the sunset felt like a sunrise, all hope and glory, and I swear I could hear the golden hum of bees. I looked across at Winter and suddenly it dawned on me: for the first time in forever, we were so very happy.

  All was so definitely, completely Not Lost, and though the path was narrow, and at some points you had to hug the wall as you scooched around bits where it swelled and bulged, and though the fall over the side was pretty monumental, suddenly life was peaches, because she was coming back to me, little by little, and so was my hope. And so was my heart.

  ‘You know what I’ve got in my backpack?’ I asked a while later. ‘Actually—I’m not going to say. I’m going to save it for the summit, and mark my words, Winter, you are going to go batshit crazy for this, I just know it. We can read it in the plane when we—aww, man! I just gave it away. It’s a book, but I’m not telling you which one. No way. Wild horses couldn’t drag it from me.’

  I should have remembered that Winter is the patient one—that I’m the one who is always gagging to know how things turn out—because she just smiled even more, and looked up at the sky, down the mountainside, out at the sea, and I could feel it rising in me, that Need To Tell, and even at the best of times
I’ll admit that my impulse control is, like, zero. As I followed her gaze, I licked my lips and I opened my mouth and I said, ‘It’s The—’

  But I didn’t get any further than that, because there was a flash, a green flash—a flash so bright you could see the bones in your hand. A whistle like the screech of torn metal. Something rose up, like an electric green bird, and hovered right where the moon should have been.

  Winter

  As I went to shut down the computer, I remembered the audio file that had sat on the desktop forever. Could I somehow bring it with us? It was a recording of the moment they fell in love, my mother and father. You can hear it—the whole interview. Forty-three minutes, twenty-six seconds. We must have listened to it a hundred times, Summer and I. A thousand. Over and over and smiling.

  ‘With me today is the man of the moment—the world’s favourite scientist, affectionately known as the Coffee Cup Bandit,’ she begins. ‘Here to explain the vision behind his bold invention, it’s—’

  ‘Pops!’ we would say together.

  When he says good morning, he sounds the same as always. Gruff and clever.

  My mother sounds so young, but her voice still twinkles big. You can hear that her soul is bright. You don’t even have to listen hard.

  ‘Truthfully?’ she says when he’s explained the whole coffee-cup wi-fi thing. ‘The science seems complicated to me,’ she says. ‘Though I must admit to being distracted. Dear listener, this man is handsome.’

  They never get around to discussing his bold vision. They talk about his childhood, which was spent on a moor. How he skipped two grades of school because he was so clever. How he earned seven different degrees. They talk about the absence of tin-can stilts these days. How my mother loves the stages of the moon. They talk about a breed of dog that belonged to a carpenter in a TV show they both watched when they were young. How they both loved that dog; how they always dreamed of owning one like it. They talk about deep-fried shallots as a garnish. They talk about their favourite seasons before there was us.

  ‘Tell me again,’ I would say to my mother some nights as she tucked me in bed. ‘The feeling you had when you met.’

  She would kiss me on the forehead, smooth the sheet. ‘I felt as if I had always known him.’

  ‘And it made you feel safe,’ I would prompt.

  She would smile. She knew that this was my favourite part. She nodded as she stroked my hair. ‘It made me feel safe. Like leaning back onto the wind.’

  Summer thought the best bit was the ending. ‘And now for the question I ask all my guests, because, let’s face it, it’s a classic,’ says my mother. ‘What are your hopes and dreams?’

  ‘Great question,’ Summer would say. ‘Nailed it.’

  He pauses. He says, ‘My hopes? My hope is to make the world a better place—for all humanity.’

  In my mind, I can see my mother lean in with excitement. Summer does that, too. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, how is that different from the answer given by every beauty pageant contestant ever?’ she asks.

  My father laughs—he actually laughs. A deep, husky laugh. And when he is finished, he gets serious again. ‘I’m talking about making a difference in a real way. In a practical way.’

  ‘But what you’re talking about here…’ My mother pauses. ‘It seems risky—doesn’t it? Freedom, yes. But at what cost?’

  Pops goes kind of quiet then—or maybe just thoughtful. ‘So much of life is sacrifice,’ he says. ‘Think of everything that has been given up in the name of freedom. Even love is a sacrifice. When we fight for our freedom, we are fighting for love.’

  You can hear my mother stop in wonder. Like a bucket’s worth of rose petals have been dropped from far above her head.

  So my father continues. ‘And my dreams? I only have one. It’s to take you to dinner.’

  This time my mother laughs. I hear the scrunch of folded newspaper hats. I hear the crunch of honey crumpets. The tinkle of Christmas ornaments. So much of my life was that laugh, my childhood. But it is gone and she is gone.

  ‘Dear listener, I’m really—I’m blushing,’ she says. ‘It’s not often you can make dreams come true.’

  Summer

  ‘But if Edward has the flare, what the hell is this map for? What’s even up on the mountain? Winter, do you know? Look at me.’

  But she wouldn’t. And so I shoved my face in her face, my eyes up to her red-rimmed eyes. I grabbed her broken wrist in my fist and I squeezed. I hissed, ‘What else did you give him?’

  Winter gasped with the pain. But she did not speak.

  Instead, with her free hand, she reached inside her shirt slowly, trembling, and pulled out something tiny—a tiny bag on the end of a long piece of string, and I wondered how I had missed that, old Eagle Eyes that I was, and then I looked over at the flare, suspended in the sky like it was hanging from a wire, and I almost laughed with all the things that I’d missed.

  She handed me that tiny pouch, and I knew what it was, but I opened it anyway, tipped it up, and it was just as I remembered, that little freezing vial, filled with droplets of incandescent light, like liquid fireflies. ‘And the notebook?’ I whispered, when I had finished gazing.

  Winter shook her head, and the only word I can think of to describe her face is destroyed. The worst part was, I had seen it before, that expression, twice before, and I should have expected it, because don’t they say that bad things always happen in threes?

  And, yes, yes, yes, I knew everything she’d gone through—had lived them with her, the mistakes she had made—but I was still Mad (capital M).

  So the loud, raw thrum of the chopper that came over the horizon at just that moment, towards the green blob of suspended light—well, I’m not going to lie: it felt good, the way it battered my ears, shook right into the gaps between my organs. And when Winter watched it drop down to the beach, her misery felt just right.

  Winter

  Whoever we had been hiding from knew we’d come back. That we would return to Tokyo eventually. That’s when they gave my father twenty-four hours to choose.

  My mother in exchange for his secrets.

  A soul you loved in the place of nine billion souls, most of whom you’d never know.

  Big Tech knew he had been making something to attack the cables under the sea. He’d suggested it back when he worked in their labs—that someone might try it. That they should be ready. At a long, glossy table he talked through his modelling. Possible outcomes: a fast-catching sickness, the world half in shade. Someone had laughed, then. His boss rolled his eyes. A ridiculous notion. Impossibly hard. An improbable feat. They moved to the next point.

  Years later, in Guam, on the banks of a river, my father was spotted. Then followed. Then bugged. In the cool stone lobby of a hotel in Rajasthan, his old boss made an offer.

  My father claimed he’d given up. There was nothing to sell. That he’d never been able to get it right. That he couldn’t live with himself if it all went wrong. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. It’s my daughter’s tenth birthday. The answer is no.’

  As the Resistance grew, Big Tech grew uneasy. People withdrew all their money from banks. They met to throw their phones in large pits. Then they met to lay themselves down in larger pits so they wouldn’t drain what was left of the world.

  Suddenly it wasn’t so ridiculous. If it existed, Big Tech needed to get it before it got out. And if it got out, they needed Pops alive to come up with a plan in case there were consequences.

  So they took my mother instead. Nothing meant more to my father. He would cave. They were sure.

  ‘What would you have done?’ Summer had asked me. ‘Same as him? I would’ve—I just know it. It was right, what he chose.’

  ‘But…but she wasn’t just a soul,’ I said. ‘Words made coloured fireworks in her mind.’

  And people loved her—which was the bonus. Publicly, on the radio, she never took sides. ‘But her whole vibe was truth,’ Summer would s
ay. ‘She was, like, the least fake thing on the planet.’ When it became impossible to tell truth from lies, real people speaking from their digital clones, her voice became the symbol of the things you could still believe in.

  I thought about the video, the first to be seen simultaneously on every screen around the world. How hot it looked where they’d taken her. The stains on her orange jumpsuit. How her eyes were closed, as if she were dreaming.

  But if you look very closely, you’ll see her lips move.

  There is no sound, but I know what they’re saying—the same thing three times.

  Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan.

  My father knew it too.

  He saw it for the first time in the back of a car—the screen on the back of the taxi driver’s seat.

  And that, for him, was the end of the world.

  Summer

  So I shackled Winter to me. With rage through my veins, I threw that string of fairy lights around her in loops, round her waist, round her shoulders, and knotted it viciously, so that she couldn’t lift her arms, even to scratch her nose, and especially not to write in that stupid fucking notebook, and the cable was digging in enough to cause a burn.

  ‘You think you’re so pretty,’ I spat as I bound her, ‘all tiny now. But you’re not—you’re disgusting. I can’t hardly stand to look at you, rotting away like a zombie corpse. And holy fuck, you smell.’ As if that wasn’t a pot calling a kettle black or whatever, but mad doesn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling—Does. Not. Even. Begin.

  Holding the two ends like reins, I whipped them up and down so that they smacked against the back of her prison-bar ribs. And I was almost disappointed that she didn’t fight against me, didn’t scratch and hiss but instead just dropped her head and closed her eyes and stood, the fairy globes winking in the half-light, like the shimmer of tears on a sad midnight car trip away from home, and boy, had we done enough of those.