by Katie Henry
“The street kid?”
Hannah’s brother, who’d die to protect her. His parents’ oldest child. The kind of person who’d bring muffins to lonely old ladies and leave secret gifts for the sister he couldn’t talk to.
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard it tastes like metal. “His name is Danny.”
“He’s stable.”
Relief floods me. Or, no, that’s not right. Relief does not drown me. Etymologically, relief means something raised, something rising, and that’s right. Relief lifts me.
“When can Hannah go see him?” I ask.
Officer Harris looks past me. “Looks like she’s going now.”
I whirl around. They’re packing Hannah into the ambulance, closing her up inside. I dash away from Officer Harris and back over to her.
“I want to ride along,” I tell the EMT.
“Not a chance,” Officer Harris declares before the EMT can even blink, heading our way. I climb into the ambulance next to Hannah anyway.
“You were right,” I whisper.
She blinks at me. “What?”
Officer Harris is behind me now, and I grab Hannah’s hand.
“You were right,” I tell her again, louder. “Everything you said was going to happen did happen, Hannah, you were right.”
She frowns, and I hope she’s thinking of the city disappearing in the snow, the red sky at night. And there are things she doesn’t know about yet, things she didn’t even see, like the star falling from the sky.
“It didn’t end,” she says. “The world didn’t end.”
“Come on, kid,” Officer Harris says to me, but I’m betting he won’t physically drag me away from a sick girl in an ambulance, so I stay.
“Maybe there are more worlds than we thought,” I say. Hannah only frowns harder.
“I’m giving you ten seconds,” Officer Harris says, like my mom used to when I was a kid. Unlike her, I hope he’s bluffing.
I squeeze her hand tightly. “You found Danny. Danny is stable. Danny is safe.” She inhales sharply, unsure whether to believe it, wanting to believe it.
The world might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or it might just be a giant metaphor.
Maybe it’s a Gettier problem, where nothing is quite like it appears, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find something true.
Or maybe the world is a small, solid block in a vast universe, part of a larger story than we can hold in our hands. Something bigger and greater than anything we can see with imperfect, human eyes. But that doesn’t mean the world we can see isn’t a miracle.
I lean in. “It’s a brand-new world, Hannah.”
Officer Harris has his hand on my shoulder, and I think he’s tugging, but I barely feel it through all the layers of clothing, all the layers of fear and dread I’m just now ready to shed. With one last squeeze, I let go of Hannah.
I climb out of the ambulance and allow Officer Harris to think he’s pulling me away. Everyone has their own reality. Far be it from me to disturb his. From a distance, we both watch in silence as the EMTs close the ambulance. In the sliver of the light in the closing doorway, Hannah looks back at me. I raise my hand. She smiles.
The door shuts. The engine starts. The ambulance turns the corner.
She’s gone.
I look up at Officer Harris and straighten my neck, then my shoulders, then my spine, just like my mother taught me.
“I’m ready.”
Twenty-Eight
THERE ARE SO many ways a world can end.
A nuclear war.
An underground volcano in Wyoming.
A city that vanishes for only a second, a brother who’s missing until he isn’t, two girls standing together on a hillside because the universe wanted them there.
It could end in fire. It could end in flood. It could end with me dying of embarrassment up at the pulpit, before I can even finish my testimony.
As I start to get up from the pew, Mom touches my arm. I stop. After a moment of hesitation, she reaches toward my ponytail and tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “So they can see your face,” she whispers. “I want them to see you.” I smile back at her.
I walk to the front of the same church where I was blessed as a baby, and just before I reach the stairs to the podium, I hesitate. In front of my whole ward and Lisa Holley Kimball herself, I touch my fingertips to my head, to my shoulders, to my waist. I let my hands fall. I go on.
At the podium, I adjust the mic. Before, I might have just hunched over. But this is my testimony, and I shouldn’t crouch just because the last person was shorter.
“I don’t know the church is true,” I say. I hear someone take a sharp breath in through their nose. I understand. This is an atypical script. “I don’t know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. I don’t know that I’ll be with my family for all eternity. I don’t know that. Not a single person on Earth knows that, and not a single person on Earth knows those things aren’t true, either. I can’t tell you I know those things, not honestly, and I’m trying to be more honest. So instead of the things I know, I’d like to tell you the things I believe.”
There are some things I do know, though I won’t say them out loud, here. Some things are mine to keep.
“I believe in grace,” I say. “I’m grateful for every little of bit of grace I receive. I believe in trying to give it back. I believe that miracles can happen.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever be the perfect daughter my mom saw in her dream. I don’t know if I’ll embarrass Em again, or make my dad sick with worry again. I don’t know if I’ll ever fit into my family like a puzzle piece.
But I do know they love me. I know that they’ve never been happier to see me, or more furious with me, than when Officer Harris brought me home. I know they’ve never been more baffled by anything than the story I told them about the end of one little world. And I’m lucky, because I know they believe in miracles, and you don’t have to understand a miracle to accept its existence.
“I believe in goodness, which isn’t the same thing as niceness. I believe in choosing what’s right, and sticking up for it, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
I don’t know if Tal and I will be together forever, eternal companions in this life or the next. I don’t know how many days, or months, or years we’ll sit under oak trees and debate the afterlife, or challenge each other to Five-Word Books, or kiss in his bedroom, close enough to see ourselves in each other’s eyes.
But I do know he showed up to today, to support me, because I asked. I spot him in a pew near the back, his little sister on one side, and on the other—
I nearly whisper her name into the mic. Hannah.
I haven’t seen her since that first day after, in the hospital. And I didn’t expect to, not until her brother is a little better, and her family is a little more healed. Her world is re-forming after the Big Bang, primordial ooze settling and growing into something strange and new and scary and hopeful. I’m not the center of her universe right now, not even close. I didn’t ask her to come. But here she is.
“I believe in . . .” I have to search for the word, because I didn’t practice this. I didn’t plan it. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. “Loyalty. I believe in loyalty, and being a good friend, and choosing friends wisely. That doesn’t mean choosing friends who are the same as you, though it could.”
Sam. Theo. Hannah, who made sure I met them. Hannah, who knew I needed them just as much as I needed her.
“It means choosing friends who love you for who you are, who see who you could be even when you can’t. It means loving yourself just as much as they love you.”
But then I stop again, because I wonder: If Hannah sees me better than I do, what does she see? Who does she see standing on this platform? Does she see the girl who saw who she was, under all that grief and pain? Does she see the girl who came back for her, crossed mountains for her, faced every fear and more for her?
Hannah wasn’
t my savior. I wasn’t hers. I don’t think there’s a word for what we are to each other, and I don’t need one.
“It means loving yourself just as much as you love them,” I say, and for a moment, there is no one in this room but me and Hannah. It’s hard to see through blurry eyes, but I think she’s smiling at me. I think she understands.
I look up at the ceiling and try to get myself under control. I’ve got more to say. Just a little bit more, and there’s nowhere I’d want to say it but here, beneath the same rafters I’ve spent every week of life. Under my own roof.
“I believe in the Gospel, and I believe in being the kind of person the Savior wants us to be. I believe that this place is my home. I believe I’m the person I am because this has been my home.”
I don’t know if I’ll stay in the church, the community, the culture that created me. I don’t know if I’ll live the kind of life my parents and ancestors did, or if I’ll forge my own path in the dark. I don’t know if I’ll stay or go, though I want to stay. I want to stay just as much as I want to live happily inside my own soul. I’ll stay as long as I can do both. I do know that if I’m ever forced to choose, I will choose myself.
“Belief is different from knowing. There are so many things in the world we don’t know, and I used to be scared of that. I used to think I needed to know. But I don’t, and I can’t, and I never will. And that’s okay.” I take a breath. “I think belief might even be better, because belief is choice. It’s something you give to yourself.”
I look out into the audience. To my parents, my sister, Tal. And Hannah.
“I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ . . . and in my own name, too. Amen.”
I step back from the mic, and hold myself still as silence buzzes in my ears.
In this pause, time seems to stall. My brain is ready and waiting to cycle through everything that could go wrong. Bishop Keller could faint. The Relief Society ladies could gossip about me for all eternity. Lia Lemalu could never speak to me again. But then again—Bishop Keller could applaud me. The Relief Society ladies could tell my mom they liked my testimony. Lia Lemalu could smile at me and tell me I said just what she was thinking. I don’t know which scenario, one among thousands, will play out. I am in one singular moment, lived from one singular perspective, and I don’t know what’s ahead.
I give myself over to the not knowing, because it feels right, and I believe in the things I feel. I trust in the things I feel. I trust myself.
There are so many ways a world can begin. And here is one.
Acknowledgments
Or, a Brief List of People I’d Want on My Side in the Event of Apocalypse
Ben Rosenthal, my brilliant, insightful editor, who saw the heart of this book from the very first draft. I can’t wait to tell more stories with you.
Sarah LaPolla, my amazing agent, who is always there to answer my questions, talk through a problem, and support me every step of the way.
The entire team at Katherine Tegen Books, especially Mabel Hsu, David Curtis, Liz Byer, Bethany Reis, Tanu Srivastava, Aubrey Churchward, and of course, Katherine Tegen. Thank you for making this book a reality.
My writers’ group: Emily Helck, Brian Kennedy, Siena Koncsol, and Michelle Rinke. Thank you for every single piece of feedback and every single moment of friendship.
My early readers: Cindy Baldwin, Caroline Davis, Sam Galison, Naomi Krupitsky, and Michelle V. I’m eternally grateful for all your comments, expertise, and encouragement.
The Electric 18s, the Class of 2k18, and all the other wonderful, talented authors I’m lucky enough to call my friends.
The entire population of Berkeley, California. Thank you for making me the person I am today. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else.
My family and friends, who have always supported my writing and generally tolerated my fear of heights, needles, flying, fire, small spaces, the sound chalk makes, asking salespeople for help, the basic concept of eternity, and mice.
Leah, who has made me a better and braver person since the day she was born.
Rob, who read this book before anyone else and sees me better than I see myself.
And most of all, my parents, who have been by my side through every little apocalypse.
About the Author
Photo credit Chris Macke
KATIE HENRY is the author of Heretics Anonymous and lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a published playwright, specializing in theater for young audiences. Her plays have been performed by high schools and community organizations in over thirty states. You can find her online at www.katiehenrywrites.com.
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Books by Katie Henry
Heretics Anonymous
Let’s Call It a Doomsday
Izzy Takes a Stand
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
LET’S CALL IT A DOOMSDAY. Copyright © 2019 by Catherine Henry. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art and design by David Curtis
Cover photo by Sascha Burkard and Kamyshko/Shutterstock
* * *
Names: Henry, Katie, author.
Title: Let’s call it a doomsday / Katie Henry.
Other titles: Let us call it a doomsday
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2019] | Summary: Ellis Kimball, sixteen, whose anxiety disorder causes her to prepare for the imminent end of the world, meets Hannah, who claims to know when it will happen.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018034313 | ISBN 9780062698902 (hardback)
Subjects: | CYAC: Anxiety disorders—Fiction. | Mental illness—Fiction. | End of the world—Fiction. | Emergency management—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Mormons—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H4646 Let 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034313
* * *
Digital Edition AUGUST 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-269892-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269890-2
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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