Until the End of the World Box Set

by Sarah Lyons Fleming

  “I can’t wait,” Adrian replied.

  He smiled at my mom and she beamed back. My dad brought up some problem he was having with the solar, and once they started talking about inverters and arrays, I zoned out. I knew I should pay more attention, but there was always something else I’d rather be doing, like eating peaches.

  “Eric really wanted to come, but he couldn’t get away,” my mom told me. While I would have liked to see Eric, I thought maybe it was good that Adrian wouldn’t be on Forrest family overload right away.

  “I spoke to him yesterday,” I said. “He keeps mentioning one girl in particular. Sounds like she’s a tough broad. Kicked his butt climbing some mountain. I think he might like her for real.”

  “Is her name Rachel?” I nodded. She clasped her hands together. “We met her at parents’ weekend, with a group of his friends. She seems like a nice girl. One of those girls that reminds me of horses, you know?”

  She saw that I had no idea what she meant. It’s no secret that I inherited my flaky side from my mom.

  “She doesn’t look like a horse, nothing like that,” she continued. “She’s actually quite pretty. She’s like a thoroughbred: all tan, muscular flanks, strong, white teeth and long, thick mane of glossy, dark blond hair. She looks like she just came in from some sort of adventure, even if it was just a walk to the store.”

  The funny thing was that I knew exactly what she meant. I’d always felt like those girls were a different species from me, with their rosy cheeks and unbridled enthusiasm. I burn in the sun, and even the millions of freckles on my arms have never joined forces to create a tan. My hair isn’t a naturally shiny mane; it gets frizzy and puffy from waves that don’t quite make it to curls. My thighs tend to wobble and no one has ever said that I look like an outdoorsy girl, even though I do outdoorsy things. In the wilderness I tend to look like something the cat dragged in, not an L.L. Bean ad. But I liked Rachel already; anyone that could kick Eric’s butt was great in my book. He could be insufferable; he was just so competent at everything. But he was also impossible to dislike because of it.

  Dad and Adrian glanced furtively at us as my dad attempted to draw some electrical thing on a pad.

  I shook my head sadly when they looked my way again. “You’re both itching to get out there, aren’t you? You can barely stand it!”

  “Well,” my father said, “it would be easier to show him.”

  I pretended to be defeated, but really I was glad they had something in common. “Go. Shoo!” I flapped my hands dismissively. “You can have the tour later, Adrian. We’ll clean up.”

  Their chairs screeched as they jumped up and left through the sliding glass doors on the back wall. Mom looked fondly after them and began to stow the insane amount of food in the refrigerator.

  She came to stand next to me while I washed dishes. “You love him,” she said.

  Mom was the one person who could always get me to talk about my feelings. I kept my eyes on the sponge and smiled. “I do.”

  She squeezed my shoulder. “I’m so glad.”

  Afterward, I wandered around and stuck my head into all the rooms, saying hello to all the familiar books and pictures. Being there after an absence was like a reunion with old friends. My bedroom smelled of the wildflowers my mom had put on the dresser, and I sat on the bed and played with the single ear of an old, ratty stuffed dog I’d won at a carnival long ago.

  I looked out to the backyard. Off to the right of the house was a stand of trees, the hammock underneath practically begging me to come and read. The little barn was right behind it, shaded by fruit trees. There were no animals in it; my parents were waiting for retirement to get some goats and maybe a pig for bacon. The chicken coop was full, however. In the fall they would give the chickens to our neighbors, John and Caroline, who were happy to take them.

  Blueberry bushes and a huge bed of strawberries sat before the wood and wire fence that surrounded the vegetable garden.

  I strolled outside and raised my face to the sunshine, listening to the bugs that tease you with their calls that cut off when you get close. We could never catch them when we were kids, no matter how stealthily we crept. I let myself into the garden. The zucchini that had escaped attention were over a foot long, and the earliest tomatoes were almost ripe. I fingered the tomato plant leaves and breathed in the green, almost minty smell.

  I heard laughter and headed for the shed that housed the batteries for the solar. Adrian and my dad were bent over a metal box, nodding. I knocked on the top of it, like a mechanic does on a car, and pretended I had any sort of inkling of what could be going on.

  “So, boys,” I said. “Any luck?”

  They stood. They were so different. Where my dad was broad and pink, Adrian was lean and dark. My dad couldn’t tan on a bet, but Adrian was bronzed by the sun. It struck me that they were very similar as well. Not only their interest in self-reliance and insanely boring electrical systems, but they both had infinite reserves of patience. They were solid. Always ready for a laugh and full of kindness. But under that was a core of steel. If provoked, they were a force to be reckoned with. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that revelation, but I was.

  Adrian looked mischievous. “Yeah, I think we figured it out. It was the flux capacitor. You guys need a new one.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know, I have seen Back to the Future. Nice try, though.” They laughed. “Mom and I are going down to town. Getting some peaches and there’s a sale on canning jar lids. You need anything?”

  “More canning lids? That woman has enough lids for a hundred years!” My dad exclaimed, although he didn’t mind, really.

  “Hey, those lids are what bring you peaches all winter. Pea-ches,” I reminded him.

  His eyes twinkled. “You’re right, Cassafrass. Tell her to get enough for two hundred years, then.”

  I kissed them both and left them to their flux capacitors.

  That night our neighbors, John and Caroline, came over for dinner. You could walk a straight shot through the woods to get to their house. Over the years we’d worn a trail.

  While my parents were liberal hippies, John and Caroline were religious libertarians, which made for interesting dinner conversations. People thought it strange they were such good friends, but they were like family.

  John sat at one end of the table, spooning pie past his beard. “If you think that FEMA is going to be there when the stuff hits the fan, well, I can’t imagine that’s always going to be true. Look at the places they’ve dropped the ball so far.” He turned his attention toward Adrian. “What do you think, Adrian?”

  Adrian nodded. “I guess I never really thought about stocking up with food for any particular reason. But it would be a by-product of the kind of farm I’d like to live on. Meat stored on the hoof. Preserving the harvest and keeping food until the next planting season.”

  “Exactly,” John said. He knocked his fist on the table. “People think it’s crazy to store food, but it’s not a recent phenomenon. It was the way things were done up until fifty years ago. You planned ahead for tough times.”

  “What’s crazy is relying on a complex chain to bring food to you, and to believe that every link in that chain will do its part unfailingly,” my dad agreed. “So far, it’s worked, because any time there’s been a problem it’s been localized and other areas pick up the slack. But it would only take several areas in the United States to be hit at the same time. A cascading series of events.”

  “And then you’re standing on the FEMA food line, praying there’s enough so you can feed your kids,” John finished.

  It was pretty heavy dinner conversation. I was used to it by now, of course, but I wasn’t sure if Adrian wanted the Preparedness 101 lecture on his first visit, even though he seemed interested.

  “You know, I think you’re preaching to the choir,” I said, smiling. I changed the subject. “How are Tom and Jenny?” We had spent our childhood summers playing with their kids. Car
oline filled me in.

  “I think we’re going to sit out on the porch a bit,” I told my parents, after Caroline and John had left.

  My mom yawned and hugged us both. “We’re heading to bed.”

  My dad was at the stereo. “You guys want this off? Any requests, or can I put on a couple more tunes for you?”

  “You choose,” I said, and gave him a kiss goodnight. “I love you, Daddy. Until the end of the world.”

  He smiled. “And after, Cassie-Lassie. Good night, Adrian. Thanks for the help today; in two hours you solved what’s been stumping me for a week.”

  “No problem,” Adrian said. “It was fun.”

  “Fun? You’re both hopeless,” Mom said, and winked at me.

  We headed out into the summer night. The air was still warm up on the hill, so it must have been a scorcher in town. We rocked on the porch swing as we listened to the music through the window screens. “This Magic Moment,” by Jay and the Americans, began.

  I squeezed Adrian’s hand. “It’s official. My dad loves you.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “This is my parents’ song. He wouldn’t share it with just anybody. It’s Dad code, he’s saying we can have it.”

  He laughed. “Dad code?”

  “Yeah. I can read him pretty well.”

  “I like him.” He sounded wistful. “Both of them.”

  Adrian’s dad split when he was young. From what I’d heard of him it was probably a good thing, but that didn’t stop him from missing what might have been.

  “I can share,” I offered. “Lots of people use my dad when they need one.”

  He squeezed my hand. “What was that you said to your dad when you said goodnight? Until the end of the world?”

  “Yeah, it started when I was little. You know, like I love you more than the stars in the sky?” Adrian nodded. “Like that. One day I said, ‘I love you until the end of the world. And after.’ It stuck.”

  We listened as the music swelled. Adrian looked down at our hands and rubbed his thumb in circles over mine. “So, do you think you’ll ever say that to me?”

  We’d said I love you, but I wasn’t very good at expressing my emotions without feeling flustered. I didn’t have a lot of experience being in love. Actually, this was my experience being in love.

  “Say what?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.

  “That you’ll love me until the end of the world? And after?”

  I watched his thumb stroke mine. I couldn’t look up. All of this came so easily to him.

  I forced the words out. “I already do. I just don’t say it out loud.”

  His mouth moved to my ear. “Cassie Forrest, I love you. Until the end of the world.”

  I shivered, not sure if it was his breath on my neck or his words. I wondered what we both did to deserve this, to have found each other so easily.

  I smiled as I met his eyes, and my next words came easily. “And after, Adrian Miller.”

  His hands were tangled in my hair as I pulled him closer on the creaky porch swing. The end of the song surrounded us, a gift from my dad, and in that magic moment the song became our own.

  “I can’t remember, is this the turn?” Nelly asks.

  I start, feeling like I’ve just fallen out of that swing. “Oh, um, yeah.” He turns up the dirt road, which means we’re almost there. I pump an imaginary accelerator with my foot. I want to be there so badly, yet I’m afraid, too. I wonder if my parents’ ghosts linger there, if they’ll haunt me as I walk the rooms.

  Here’s the tree with the reflector on it, where I would start playing the song. I sing softly to myself, thinking that in the passenger seat no one will hear. Nelly does, though, and he joins in. It forces me to raise my voice, too.

  “Oh, great,” Ana says. “A sing-along.”

  Penny squeals. She’s an old hand at this song, having spent much of her summers here, at what she called her “country estate,” and I feel selfish for having denied her access these past years.

  Penny’s voice is sweet and clear and purposely directed right at her sister’s ear. James gazes at her with a look I recognize. Adrian used to look at me like that. Then he opens his mouth and sings, and my jaw drops at the voice that comes out. It’s smooth and low and we look at him in surprise.

  James flushes and shrugs. “Middle school chorus.”

  I remember the last time I drove down this road, and my voice deserts me. I couldn’t play this song. My mom and dad were in the backseat, mixed together in a box. Somehow I had thought their ashes would be like cigarette ashes, but they weren’t. A little chunkier, a little more there, they didn’t disperse into nothing the way cigarette ashes do. They settled on the ground and worked their way into the soil. Once I got over my initial surprise it seemed fitting.

  Penny and James sing the end in perfect harmony as we turn into the driveway. I can almost hear the music backing them up. They’ve left me and Nelly in the dust.

  “Show offs!” Nelly throws to the back, before he takes my hand and we pull up to the house.

  50

  It looks forlorn. The porch furniture has been put away, and the swing is off-kilter. Eric may not have made it here all winter. He doesn’t tell me, because I haven’t wanted details, although I do like knowing he comes here.

  “Ready?” Penny asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Gravel crunches under my feet. My mother’s flowers have fallen victim to neglect. I should have been here, weeding and trimming, keeping it tidy. Small patches of ice linger in the shady parts of the yard. Spring comes a bit later up here, but the crocuses and daffodils are sending up their tiny green fingers anyway.

  My hand trembles. It’s just a house. I open the door and step in. Everything’s the same, layered with quiet like it would be when we’d come up after an extended absence. All it needs is people filling its spaces. And it isn’t just a house. All this time I thought I would be haunted by memories here. Maybe even by ghosts, if you asked me after a particularly bad nightmare. But the memories aren’t haunting. There’s the wood stove where we would make popcorn on movie nights, the table where we ate countless home-cooked meals, the quilt on the couch that I’d wrap up in on cold, damp days, the shelves full of books, my mom’s knitting basket. It’s all just stuff, like this is just a house, but it all means something, too.

  I’m irritated suddenly, as I realize I’ve wasted three years that I could have been here, taking comfort in this place. It seems to have become a habit of mine, to refuse the things that would give me comfort.

  “This is really nice,” James says.

  His breath fogs in the air. We need a fire. I feel like we haven’t been truly warm for days and days.

  “Thanks.”

  Everyone mills around, touching things, peering out windows. For now this is their house, too. I want them to like it. I’ve given some thought to rooms, but I want to check with Penny.

  I motion her into the kitchen. “So,” I whisper, “bedrooms. Are you and James going to sleep in the same room, or should I put you and Ana together for now?”

  She fingers the knives that sit in a block on the counter and doesn’t look at me. “Um, I think we’ll be in the same room.”

  “Okay.” I kick her foot and try to keep from smiling. “Is there gonna be a home ru—”

  “Cassie, I swear I’ll kill you if you make a comment that has anything to do with baseball bases,” she cuts in, and pretends to grab a knife. “But, if you must know, yes, I’m planning to hit one out of the park as soon as possible.” We dissolve into giggles.

  “What’s so funny?” James asks from behind us.

  “Oh, nothing,” Penny says. We grin at each other.

  I clear my throat. “Okay, guys, I was thinking Penny and James in my parents’ room. Peter,” he looks up from the bookshelves, “you can have Eric’s room. When he gets here, we’ll figure something else out. Ana and Nelly, one of you can sleep with me in my room and the oth
er can have the office-slash-guest room. Or, since there are two twin beds in Eric’s room, one of you can sleep in there with Peter.”

  Nelly and Ana look at each other. It’s clear Ana wants the room to herself, and Nelly capitulates.

  “Looks like we’re bunking together again,” he says to me. “You’ve proven you can keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Ha ha. I’m going to the basement to turn on the breakers.”

  I flip the switches, but nothing happens. Thankfully, the water is gravity-fed, and the solar water heater is separate from the rest of the power. That means hot showers. I sniff my hand, it still smells like puke. I survey the rest of the basement. It’s warmer down here than upstairs, above fifty degrees, and light filters in from the ground level windows.

  My dad was the electric guy, but Mom was the carpenter. Wooden shelves full of home-canned jars line the walls. There are tomatoes, peaches, green beans, jams of all colors, applesauce and countless other things that were first grown, then harvested, and then preserved by them both. The summer and fall were times of canning jars and giant boiling pots and hot stovetops. It was hard work but worth it, my mom always said. And it was, come January.

  Cans and large buckets of food line two walls. They contain flour, wheat, oats, sugar, rice, popcorn, beans, and dehydrated foods, amongst other things. Mom had it down to a science and rotated things out so nothing ever went rotten. She knew what it meant to be hungry; wasting food was anathema to her. Another shelving unit holds canning lids, candles, wax, batteries, lanterns, flashlights, a tub of medicines, shampoo, soap, conditioner, razors, and all the things we used to just run by the drugstore and pick up. I’m used to this abundance, but when I hear a gasp I remember it’s not normal to see this much food in one place.

  “It’s like a warehouse,” James says. He runs his hands over the buckets. “There’s got to be thousands of pounds of food down here. I’ve always wanted a basement like this.”