Peter snorted. “I don’t think you care about anyone.”
He disappeared into the gloom between the rows of beds, a gloom that seemed to grow deeper and darker as Eliza stared at it, as if every single shadow on Earth were converging on this very spot, blotting out the light layer by layer, like shovelfuls of dirt tossed onto a coffin. They came from him and they came from her and they came from way out in space and they came from everything that drew breath. She gulped down the rest of her drink, then went back for another.
In the lot behind the barracks, Eliza walked the flaking paint line of an old basketball court as if it were a sobriety test—one that she was failing miserably. A few other people were outside, but they all stood under the eaves of the building, out of the rain, smoking. All she could see of them was the occasional golden flare of a cigarette. It was only drizzling now, but in the distance, lightning built huge electric blue sculptures in the sky, ephemeral trees that nevertheless left tenacious marks on the retina. Her skin didn’t feel like skin, but an insensible little force field around her body. If the rain fell any harder, it would melt her down like the Wicked Witch of the West. She wondered what her death would be like. Would it happen fast—a lightning flash of pain and then nothing? Or would it be slow, choking on dust or starving to death under some collapsed building? She felt dead already; Peter had blown a hole in her pride and her faith and her hope all at once. What had gone wrong? Hadn’t he come looking for her at Cal Anderson Park and held her hand tight as a mousetrap as they ran through the haze of tear gas? And why had he brought up Andy? Andy was just a friend. And as for that other boy, sure, they’d hooked up. But it wasn’t as if she had a boyfriend or something. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since . . .
I haven’t ever had a boyfriend, she realized, followed by an even more terrible revelation: And now I never will.
There were a lot of countdowns that had haunted her over the past few weeks, from the totally mundane (how many breaths she had left to breathe) to the whimsically specific (how many more times she’d get to watch Pitch Perfect), but this was definitely the most depressing statistic of all: Between now and the end of the world, there would be no one else who would love her, and no one else she would love.
Thunder rolled across the flat expanse of Magnuson Park. Any second now, the real rain would come. That was Seattle all over. A goddamn perpetual drizzle, with occasional breaks for pouring rain. Just like life. Perpetual shit, with occasional breaks for pouring shit. And then, at the end, a big rock lands on your head.
She walked through a cloud of cigarette smoke and back into the barracks, then followed a hallway into some derelict dormitory, all rusted bed frames and moth-eaten mattresses. The room, like any place where lots of people used to be and now nobody ever was, felt haunted. Eliza would have been afraid, only she was floating a couple of feet behind her body now, a ghost herself, watching some faraway Eliza open a random door and walk into the darkness beyond, like that character in a horror film that you want to yell at—Don’t go in there, you dumbass! She banged her knee against a table, then hurt herself even worse kicking the thing in anger. The heavy dubstep beats from the party melted away, exposing the quiet plinking of a distant piano. At first she thought the music was only in her head, but it got louder as she moved deeper into the room. Another door, and on the other side, the music expanded into presence. There was a bit of light from the red glow of an exit sign above the door. It bloodied the edges of a foosball table, a pool table, a couple of old pinball machines, and all the way in the corner, someone seated at an upright piano.
Eliza tiptoed across the room and landed softly on a scratchy couch. Her eyes began to adjust, just enough for her to make out Andy’s slouched shape on the piano bench, tapping out a half-familiar tune—one of the songs he and Anita were always practicing, preparing for the Party at the End of the World. As if that were really going to happen.
When he stopped playing, Eliza gave a single loud clap. Andy’s silhouette jumped.
“What the hell?”
She laughed. “Encore, maestro!”
“Eliza? You scared the shit out of me.”
“And hello to you, too.”
She stood up, almost tripping over the leg of her chair—even worse, almost spilling her drink. She gave a little bow in celebration of her superior balancing skills, then stepped gingerly across the room. The floor was a precarious log afloat in a rushing river.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked.
“I couldn’t find you,” he said. His voice was a drunken lilt. “I figured you were off somewhere with Peter.”
“Nope. I’m right here, with you.”
“So you are. Feel like a duet?”
She bent down to place her glass behind the piano bench.
“Little old me? Nope, nope. It’s all you. Let’s hear one of your favorites.”
“All right. I’ll hit you with some Flaming Lips.”
Andy began to sing, his sweet little voice floating on top of the heavy piano like the scoop of vanilla ice cream on a root beer float: “‘Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?’” After the first verse, Eliza sat down next to him, letting her hip touch his. If he felt it, he didn’t give any sign. But she wanted a reaction; the urge was still there, even stronger now with the exaggerating effect of the alcohol and the bitter taste of rejection in the back of her throat. As he started into another chorus, she let her left hand find the small of his back, ascend the ladder of his spine, and come to rest gently on the knob at the base of his skull. She watched her index finger wrap itself around a lock of his hair, spinning it like a strand of bubble gum. He choked on a syllable, choked on desire, though his hands kept playing the accompaniment.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing.”
“Something, nothing. What’s the difference?”
“I can’t sing while you’re doing that.”
“So don’t sing.”
When he hesitated, she turned his head to face her and kissed him with all the rage and appetite she had in her, finally putting a stop to the music. His hands slid up her hips, found the zipper of her jumpsuit, and pulled. Cold air on her skin, then his warm fingers, tingling, as if they were especially alive after playing. She pulled his hoodie and T-shirt up and over his head, scratched hard down his chest, felt at his jeans for the sign that she was wanted. He kissed her neck as he fumbled with the clasp of her bra.
Eliza allowed her eyes to drift open. Over Andy’s shoulder, she could see where his hoodie had landed, in a narrow rectangle of gray light in the middle of the room. Strange—it had been completely dark in here a second ago. And now the silver line was stretching out, as if someone were taking a highlighter and underlining the floor. The line became a wedge, reaching toward them like a pointing finger. The shape of a person in the doorway, then darkness again.
Andy was facing the other way, so he hadn’t seen it. But as Eliza felt his hand drop down between her legs, as she unconsciously ground against him with her hips, she felt the wrongness of what she was doing crash like an asteroid against the planet-size need to connect with someone, with anyone, and she pushed him off her with a fury that she knew he wouldn’t understand, that wasn’t even about him, so hard that he fell backward off the piano bench onto her cup, and then she was up and out of the room without saying a word, just in time to watch Anita throw open the door to the outside world as it exploded with lightning and thunder, like the warm-up to an apocalypse.
Andy
ANDY KNEW THE FAMOUS SAYING “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” But he’d always thought Morrissey’s take on things made a whole lot more sense: “See the luck I’ve had can make a good man turn bad, so please please please, let me get what I want.” Getting what you wanted, as far as Andy was conc
erned, was pretty much the most awesome thing in the universe.
For years, he’d imagined what it would be like to hook up with Eliza. To feel her arms around his shoulders, the warm pulse of her body curving into his, the soft skin of her breasts against his palms—innumerable hours had passed in contemplation of such wonders. By a standard like that, the event itself should have disappointed. But it hadn’t. He felt as if he’d simultaneously nailed the groove of a new song, landed a sick jump on his skateboard, and snorted a line of coke (a drug he’d tried only once for fear another go would kill him—it made his heart want to go for a run outside his body).
Of course, it was hard not to read something worrying into her sudden exit, but Andy figured there were three possibilities, only one of which was truly terrible: (1) Eliza totally regretted what she’d done and now she hated him and wished they were both dead (the F possibility); (2) she was totally wasted and needed some time and space to clear her head (the C-minus possibility); or (3) she was so overwhelmed by her desire for him that it scared her (the A-plus possibility).
Andy couldn’t solve the riddle on his own; he needed another girl to give him insight into the mysteries of girlish behavior. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find Anita anywhere. Back in the dormitory, the revelry had reached a fever pitch. More than a few couples could be seen moving in slow rhythms under bunk-bed covers, and the dancing in the middle of the room was as close to sex as dancing could be. Andy grabbed a bottle of tequila from the unattended bar and went looking for someone else to talk to. He finally found Bobo and Misery grinding against a bunk bed just off the dance floor.
“Dude!” he shouted, slapping Bobo on the shoulder.
Bobo detached his octopus sucker of a mouth from Misery’s. “What is it, man?”
“It’s that I’m gonna get that grand, yo! I just made out with Eliza!”
“For real?”
“Swear to Baby Jesus.”
Bobo put up a hand. Andy leaned back and prepared to land the most explosive high five of his eighteen-year-old life. But his palm got nothing but air; Bobo had pulled a too-slow on him.
“You do realize that making out isn’t sex, right?”
“Yeah. But it means she’s into me. The rest is, like, inevitable.”
“Inevitable? Then why aren’t you hitting that right now?”
“Well, that’s actually why I’m here. Miz, I need your advice.”
“You’ve got it,” she said. Her face was red from rubbing up against Bobo’s stubble.
“So Eliza and I were just getting into it, and then she jumped up and ran out on me. What does that mean?”
“That you suck at making out,” Bobo said.
“I’m not asking you, asshole.”
Misery laid a hand on Andy’s shoulder with a drunkard’s weight. “She’s confused, man. She’s not trying to be a cock tease or something.”
“Yeah,” Bobo said. “If there’s one thing Eliza is not, it’s a cock tease. More like a cock lover, right?”
“Dude,” Andy said, but he still laughed.
Just then, some overexuberant dancer bumped hard against his back, sending him spinning. A black blur of movement, a meaty thunk. Bobo was suddenly bent over, holding his hands to his stomach. And there was Peter, appearing out of nowhere, like some kind of superhero.
“Did you just punch my boyfriend?” Misery said.
Peter knelt down low so he could look up into Bobo’s eyes. “That was for being disrespectful.” He turned on Andy next. “And you oughta be ashamed, letting someone talk about your girlfriend like that.” Finally he addressed his sister. “Enough, Miz. It’s time to go.”
“Can’t we at least stay until the end of the party?”
“No.” He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.
Bobo finally caught his breath, straightening up with a wince. “That fucker.”
“No, he was right,” Andy said, mostly to himself. “I shouldn’t have laughed. If I want Eliza to be my girlfriend, I have to stand up for her and shit.”
But Bobo wasn’t listening. He’d begun to stumble back toward the dance floor.
“Where you going?”
“To find Golden.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Andy grabbed hold of Bobo’s sleeve. “Just hold up a sec.”
“You wanna let Peter get away with that? He assaulted me, yo.”
“It’s not that.” Andy wasn’t sure how to defuse the situation. A bad joke at Eliza’s expense didn’t give Peter the right to slam Bobo in the gut, but it also wasn’t worth getting Golden involved. That dude was straight-up nuts. “I’m just saying we can take care of it ourselves.”
Bobo smiled. “Now that’s the Andy I like to hear! And I know just how to do it. Follow me.”
He led Andy to an empty bed near the windows. Underneath the pillow were a couple of blocky plastic guns. Andy recognized them from television.
“Tasers?”
“For real. I found them in that gatehouse thing outside.”
“You really think we need them? It’s two on one.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Bobo said, handing him one of the guns.
Outside the barracks, the rain was falling in sheets. Peter had already made it halfway across the tarmac. Misery wasn’t fighting him anymore, but they were still arguing loudly as they walked. The chill air combined with the downpour sobered Andy up just enough to make him wonder exactly what he was getting himself into. He didn’t really have a problem with Peter, especially now that they were all tied up—one brief hookup with Eliza in a dark room to one brief hookup with Eliza in a darkroom. And as for the sucker punch, Bobo had been acting like a dick.
“Hey!” Bobo called out.
Peter turned around. “What now, man?”
“Misery doesn’t want to go with you.”
“Back off, Bobo. She’ll see you later, I’m sure, whether I want her to or not. We’re just going home to see our parents.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Bobo raised his Taser and fired.
Nothing happened. The two tendrils of wire hung loosely from the barrel of the gun, like a couple of dead vines. They’d landed a good five feet shy of Peter.
Peter looked back and forth from the barbs of the Taser to Bobo, incredulous. “You stupid shit,” he said, and began to close the distance between them in angry athletic strides. “I was holding her arm, you moron. You would have shocked her, too.”
“Andy!” Bobo said, backing up.
“What?”
“Fucking shoot him, man!”
Andy had forgotten he even had the Taser. He found it now, like a tumor bursting suddenly from his skin. He didn’t want to shoot anyone. But in another few seconds, Peter would be close enough to knock Bobo’s teeth out.
“Stop there,” he said weakly, pointing the gun, but Peter either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. Bobo threw his Taser at Peter’s head and whiffed entirely. Only a few seconds left. If Andy didn’t do something right now, it would mean the end of his friendship with Bobo. He didn’t have a choice.
There was barely any recoil. At first, Andy thought Peter was playacting—quaking and quivering like a fish just pulled out of the water, little grunts coming out of his slack mouth. Then his knees buckled and his forehead collided with the pavement. His body went still. Andy dropped the Taser.
“What did you do?” Misery shouted, falling onto her knees next to her brother.
“That’s what he gets,” Bobo said. “Now come on. It’s pouring out here.”
Misery pulled hard at her brother’s shoulder and managed to turn him over. She wiped away the hair plastered like tar across his pale white forehead. A rivulet of blood ran down from his scalp and was diffused into a bloom by the rain. “Just leave us alone, Bobo. This is all so fucked up. Everything’s so fucked up.”
“What, you’re angry at me now? We only did this because he was trying to kidnap you!”
Misery didn’t answer.
“Whatever,” Bobo said, and headed back to the barracks alone.
Andy was still holding the bottle of tequila in his left hand. He set it down next to Peter’s head, then looked to Misery for some sign of understanding or forgiveness. But she only blotted at the blood with her sopping sleeve, over and over again, waiting for her brother to come around.
Anita
THE DOOR SWUNG SHUT BEHIND her. Anita broke into a sprint, each slap of her sneaker like a tiny little gunshot against the wet pavement. She hid behind a big black Dumpster, then peeked out through shimmering curtains of rain.
“Anita! Talk to me!” Eliza was running so fast that she slipped, going down hard on her bony ass. So much less than she deserved. Anita had never approved of the way people described Eliza—that one word that somehow spelled shame for a girl and prestige for a boy: S-L-U-T. And yet now, she found herself muttering the epithet into her palm, like a curse.
Eliza rose shakily to her feet. “Fine!” she shouted. “Don’t talk to me then!” She staggered back toward the barracks.
Anita realized she was crying, though the storm washed every tear away as soon as it slipped free of her eyelid. She was also intensely, unprecedentedly drunk, having imbibed most of a bottle of bourbon over the course of the last hour. The Earth turned perceptibly beneath her feet, revealing the vertiginous uncertainty underpinning reality itself. As if Ardor weren’t evidence enough that there was no safety to be found anywhere on this doomed, malignant planet, she’d just walked in on Andy and Eliza making out, already half-undressed. Did that mean they were some kind of couple now? And would they end up sleeping together? Probably, given that Eliza was such a total, shameless, nasty-ass slut.
This was all Peter’s fault, really. If he weren’t so goddamn nice, he would’ve already confronted Eliza, confessed his undying love, and revealed Andy’s deception. Didn’t he realize this was the end of the world? There was no time left to be nice.
We All Looked Up Page 21
