The End of the World As We Know It

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  Evan strode out of the food court toward King Clothing and stepped inside. The air felt cooler, and charged techno pulsed in his ears. The store was pretty empty, most shoppers not prone to picking up Saturday night’s outfit on Saturday night. No sooner had Evan approached a display of jeans than a stocky guy he recognized as an outfielder from St. Albert’s, one of the Catholic schools farther east, approached him. His silver name tag read DAVID.

  “You checking out the Royals?” The guy gestured at the piles of jeans, pulling out a thirty-two-by-thirty-four, Evan’s size. He unfolded them, draping the fabric carefully over one of his arms like he was showing Evan Jesus’s shroud. “This is a good jean.”

  Evan reached out tentatively and felt the fabric of the “jean.” It was soft and felt lived-in, nothing like the stiff denim his mom brought home from Kohl’s, where she always bought Evan and Godly Jim matching khakis and polos. Evan peeked at the price tag on the waistband. Seventy-nine dollars.

  “They’re expensive,” he commented, watching David’s expression change from cocky to annoyed.

  “You’re that dude who pitches for Ermer, aren’t you?” he said with a fake smile. Evan could almost see the gears working in the guy’s brain as he tried to make a sale. “Brighton, right? You’re good. Look, you seem like a nice kid, but you’re never going to get to second base in clothes like that.”

  Evan looked down at his glaring orange long-sleeved polo and compared its unflattering cut to the way David’s tissue-thin T-shirt and V-neck sweater clung with the right tightness to his arms and abs. That is so gay of me, Evan thought. But it was like David had read his mind. He could afford the jeans, with money he’d saved from giving private pitching lessons. And they wouldn’t do him any good with an old-man polo shirt. “And how much is that sweater in the window?” He pointed to a light gray sweater. He could practically hear Teena cooing, “Oooh, that’s so soft.”

  David perked up a bit, a dimple appearing in his olive skin. “There’s a sale on all slim-cut cashmere blends. Buy one, get one half off. You can get that and a backup for seventy-four ninety-nine.”

  It was a lot of money, but Evan had started to feel like he was taking the mound on a day when he knew he couldn’t lose. “Okay, I’ll take it all,” he said decisively.

  Twenty minutes later, Evan emerged from the store with the jeans, two sweaters, and two new soft tees like David’s. The clothes in his bag symbolized Vanity, Greed, and probably Pride. Not a bad Saturday night for a goody-goody.

  He looked up across the mall concourse, where the sin of Lust was taken care of by the window-filling posters of a platinum-blond Victoria’s Secret model. As he stared a little too long into her deep cleavage, the model’s face was replaced with Teena’s. Evan gulped.

  “What’d you buy, Evan?” he could almost hear poster-Teena saying. “Something to make me think, When did Evan Brighton get so doable?”

  Evan felt blood rushing away from his face and arms and legs, like he was dying and coming to life simultaneously. An old lady clutching a tiny Hallmark bag tottered past him, muttering, “Pervert.”

  Evan sped toward the exit, his legs still wobbling. He was just feeling guilty. He’d spent a lot of money, and now he was going to lie to his mom and Jim to go to a party. But it was worth it, whatever happened tonight. I need this, he thought. Using a pitching tactic, he reminded himself that what mattered was the game, not the individual opponent. And tonight, he reminded himself, was not about Teena, even if it was about Teena.

  He tossed his car keys up in the air, catching them on their way down. He had about an hour to find a safe place to change clothes and call one of the guys in his all-male, overnight Bible study to claim the flu and account for his absence. It wasn’t the best of plans: Every Sunday, Evan always had to stand outside the church, flanked by his mom and stepdad, posing like a happy family as they sent worshippers on their way. He had to hope that none of his Bible study classmates would stop after church tomorrow to ask him if he was feeling better. Jim would probably love to end his world, Old Testament–style.

  But for right now, he couldn’t be bothered thinking about the future. The game was about to start, and he had to play.

  3

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  Leo Starnick, 7:29 P.M. Saturday, Phat Phil’s Pizza, Orland Ridge Mall

  Leo Starnick inhaled deeply, wondering if he could pop a blood vessel in his brain if he sucked in enough of the dank skunk weed he’d just spent last night’s tip money on. His usual dealer, Tommy Philbin, had been busted by mall security for loitering outside the Hallmark store, where all the cute girls worked, so Leo had had to buy his stash off the zitty thirty-something dude who still hung out at City Arcade, aka Shitty Arcade, in the recesses of the mall basement.

  He held in a cough until his eyes watered and stared past the mall Dumpsters up into space. Just as the vein in his temple started to pulse, he exhaled, the warm smoke from his lungs rising in white plumes against the cold, dark March sky. “No blood vessels were harmed during the making of this picture,” he muttered to himself, watching the smoke vanish into whatever was beyond.

  Leo leaned against the chain-link fence as a horsey blonde clip-clopped toward her car, chattering on her cell. “I just bought a totally boobalicious top for Teena’s tonight. Adam is going to wish he never met that flat bitch he’s with.”

  “She’s a goner,” he said, again to himself, with a roll of his eyes. It was a little game he liked to play while high, and bored, and not eager to return to his shit part-time job at Phat Phil’s Pizza. He listened to mall patrons talking on their cells or to each other—and they always talked, pointlessly, endlessly, never shutting up—and decided who aliens would vanquish when they landed in Tinley Hills.

  It was fucked-up fantasy gamer shit, he knew, but for some reason, Leo couldn’t not think about aliens when he was alone with his thoughts and under the influence. They had to exist, and he had no doubt that—when they came in not-peace—they’d land here. It wasn’t just stoner wish fulfillment. He’d really thought long and hard about this theory, and Tinley Hills was the place. With its 63,000-plus residents, it was just small enough for an alien race to overtake, but just big enough to be a worthwhile target. And the people made it easier. Most Tinley-ites thought that this nothing suburb was the center of the universe. Tinley Hills’s motto was “Now this is the life,” and tons of these morons believed it couldn’t get better than this. Teena McAuley acted like just because Tinley wasn’t Bumpkinville, she was two steps away from being “totally LA”—but better, because the crime rate was lower and everyone here had car insurance. Hell, when the aliens landed and told Teena’s crowd anal probes were really hot in Hollywood, they’d line up to go first.

  Leo would never be so dumb—low-quality marijuana or not. His brain was always going, even though everyone at S. H. Ermer High took him for nothing more than a garden-variety burnout. No matter that he played first-chair cello in the string ensemble, or that he’d gotten a near-perfect verbal on his SAT. His classmates focused on his other activities. Namely, getting stoned and sucking face with S. H. Ermer’s sluttiest students (or, if things were going particularly well, the tramp-stamped, fake-baked, slightly older chicks who took classes at Cameo Beauty Institute in the mall). True, maybe he did think with his dick a good part of the time, but his dick was still smarter than the majority of Tinley Hills’s residents.

  Leo twirled the joint between his thumb and forefinger, watching as Evan Brighton exited the mall, clutching a black lacquered King Clothing bag and scanning the lot for his car. The kid looked lost in his own thoughts and seriously damaged, his eyes wide and his hair standing up in points. “Evan might make it,” Leo said aloud. Back in grade school, they’d been friends. He was a good guy.

  Leo pulled the joint up to his lips. Suddenly his pot was batted away, sending an arc of orange sparks into the air. Leo spun around on his faded black Doc Martens and found himself looking into the eyes of his boss, t
he aforementioned Phil, who was far more fat than phat. Phil’s fleshy face glowed green under the lamplight, every pockmark and too-long nostril hair illuminated. His tiny eyes were engulfed in flesh. It was a wonder he could see.

  “Talkin’ to yourself again, Starnick?” he rasped. “And where’s your hairnet?”

  “Your mom’s hair was in her face when she was servicing me last night,” Leo deadpanned, running his hand over his messy mass of dark brown curls.

  Phil’s deep wheezy laugh went on for far too long. Phil loved “your mom” jokes, even if they were about his own mother. Especially if they were about his own mother.

  “You’ve been requested,” he said when he finally calmed down. “A Teena McAuley just ordered a dozen pies and specifically asked for you to deliver them.”

  Leo raised an eyebrow. In the middle of last summer, when the heat got so oppressive that the only place to get comfortable was the air-conditioned environs of the mall, Teena had succumbed to Leo’s burnout charms. All he’d had to do was slide a free slice of Phil’s veggie pie across the counter to her, smirk while glancing at the sheen of perspiration around her nose, and then turn his back on her. She’d stalked off, but returned later that night as Leo closed up, in a new outfit and makeup freshly applied by the professionals at Macy’s. Leo had finished closing without speaking to her and then asked, “Wanna go somewhere?” to which Teena nodded with an irritated expression. They’d made it no farther than the parking lot of the Hot Cup Coffee Shop. Her friends didn’t know: They’d all been vacationing or in the throes of their own summer flings. And her parents had been at their lakeside cabin in Traverse City, enjoying the spoils of Mike McAuley’s still-thriving-against-all-odds real estate empire.

  The sweaty affair had carried them all the way to the beginning of September, even though Teena wasn’t particularly nice to Leo and Leo thought she had all the layers of a cupcake. They kept off each other’s nerves by making sure they seldom conversed. Leo put an end to it the week after school started, not picking up when she called, or heading out to the Dumpster whenever she approached Phil’s counter. She’d have ditched him anyway, Leo figured, and they certainly weren’t going to find out they were soul mates. Back at school, Teena seemed to have no trouble treating him like he didn’t exist.

  But now she wanted him to drop by. Her stubborn pride was less intense than he’d thought. He could give her one night of summer redux, Leo decided. Wouldn’t Casimir Pulaski want it that way?

  Phil lumbered behind him, breathing heavily. “I swear, Starnick, if this by-request business is you delivering weed on the side, I want my cut.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Leo was steering away from the mall toward Diamond Isle Estates, a subdivision next to the Ruby Shores Golf Course and Country Club. The smell of pepperoni, onions, and cheese permeated his car, mingling with the sweet, stale aroma of Leo’s prework joints. He was driving his favorite stretch of LaGrange now, through the forest preserves, the only section of Tinley Hills not touched by a prefab McMansion or Applebee’s. He rolled down the windows and let the crisp air whip against his skin as he inhaled the clean quiet.

  He weaved down the curvy road, getting closer to Teena’s house. He wondered how they were going to steal away from the crowd that had inevitably shown up for her annual Casimir Pulaski Weekend bash. It was the biggest party of the year. Sad, considering only a handful of Ermer students even knew who the dead Polish dude was. Sadder still that, on that count, Leo couldn’t even feel superior to his classmates. To him, Pulaski was just a street that ran through Lawn Grove, two towns over. But probably every school in Illinois had a long-weekend party like Teena’s, so hopefully somewhere the Polack bastard was smiling.

  Leo’s phone vibrated. He looked at the screen. Teena.

  “Wow, you really can’t wait. Don’t worry, I’m on my way,” he said by way of a greeting.

  “Whatever, Leo. The pizzas are for the party. And you’re not invited,” Teena sniped. She’d started handing out her invitations a few weeks in advance, so that the buzz would grow. She was the only teenage girl on Earth to handwrite summonses to her party instead of using a mass Facebook invite.

  “So why’d you ask for me, then?” Leo said, turning down Emerald Cove Drive. Every street in Diamond Isle Estate was named for a precious gem.

  “I just wanted to see you,” Teena said, her voice picking up a breathiness that Leo couldn’t resist. “But come to the back door.”

  “Back door?” Leo grinned before hanging up.

  He took a left onto Sapphire Ridge Avenue, following it as it twisted onto Diamond Peak Lane, where Teena’s house was the centerpiece of a cul-de-sac. It was the biggest house in the whole subdivision, sprawled across three lots like a Southern plantation, with ample parking. It had been specially designed by the developer for Teena’s father. To Leo, it looked like someone was trying to overcompensate for a small dick with a lot of white columns.

  Cars were lining the street, and people flowed into Teena’s front door clutching bottles of hard lemonade and Goldschläger. It showed Teena’s power over her followers. Tinley Hills was a dry town, and yet all her guests took the trouble to head outside the town borders to pay alcoholic tribute to her. That was part of why Teena’s annual bash was such a big deal; it was guaranteed to be the drunkest Ermer party in Tinley Hills for the whole year.

  Some Miley Cyrus song poured out the door, and a few already-drunk girls stripper-danced shoeless on the lawn, skipping between patches of grayed snow that still hadn’t completely melted. It couldn’t have been more than thirty degrees outside.

  Leo pulled into the side drive, the brakes on his 1995 Honda Civic creaking like a door in a haunted house. He was a little annoyed with himself for following Teena’s instructions but knew it probably killed her to have called him. He could play along.

  He pulled out six pizzas from their red insulated case and walked up to the back door, which opened into the laundry room. He knocked and waited for a solid minute before Teena’s face appeared in the window.

  “I ordered twelve,” she said when she opened the door, a touch of something strawberry and alcoholic on her breath. Her lean frame was displayed in a red halter dress that hit mid-thigh, baring what seemed like a mile of taut, tanned leg, an impressive feat considering she couldn’t have been more than five-three. While she wasn’t much in the chest department, her breasts filled the halter nicely, seeming to defy any need for extra support. Leo’s eyes scrolled up toward her pillowy red lips, ski-jump nose, and wide-set dark brown eyes, curtained by soft, pale-blond waves. She took the pizzas from Leo and set them on top of the dryer.

  “They’re in the car. I was wondering, why did you order twelve?” Leo asked sarcastically, wondering if he was an idiot for being so easily seduced. But one look at Teena’s lips and he accepted his fate. “You know, in pornos, the guy only brings one. It keeps things simple.”

  “You wish.” She leaned her head out the door so they were almost nose-to-nose. Then she laid one hand on his chest and gave him a little shove backward toward his car.

  “All twelve it is, then,” Leo said, smirking, as he hopped down the concrete stairs. “If you’re lucky, I’ll give you a discount.”

  Teena extended her middle finger out the door, but Leo pretended not to see. He jogged to his car and grabbed the other sleeve of pizzas, looking up at the sky. “What am I thinking, right?” he said to no one. “Just vanquish me already.”

  Leo stepped into the laundry room. The first stack of pizzas and Teena were gone. He set down the next six pies and leaned against the cool metal of the dryer as he waited.

  Teena sauntered back in a minute later, brushing by his body. Leo did his best not to react. He reminded himself that he wanted her, but he didn’t like her. And he refused to treat Teena like a princess, like every other guy at Ermer did. He knew better.

  She leaned against him and reached behind him, hefting up the pizza boxes with her toned arms. “I’ll go put these
in the other room for my invited guests,” she said. “Why don’t you meet me by the wine cellar?”

  Leo’s eyes widened. On one of those excruciating summer days, they’d sought the coolness of her dad’s weird wine cellar and ended up having the hottest hookup known to man.

  “You’re not worried about being cold?” he asked as Teena tottered toward the door on her black high-heeled boots.

  “Never with you,” she said with a wink.

  Leo wondered if tonight would surpass that sticky summer day. As soon as Teena was out of sight, he rushed out of the laundry room and down a narrow hallway to the big metal door that marked the entry to the wine cellar.

  If you could call it that. Teena’s dad hadn’t just been thinking about his Beaujolais when he built the cellar; it was some end-of-the-world, protect-the-rich-dude shit. To access the door from the outside, your thumbprint had to register on the recognition pad. You also had to have a keycard—which Teena’s dad reprogrammed each week—to get both in and back out again, which seemed intense and unnecessary to Leo. Beyond the racks of wine was a gun case, holding all of Mr. McAuley’s totally-unnecessary-for-the-suburbs weaponry.

  Teena’s heels clicked down the hall, and Leo tried to put the Glocks and Uzis out of his mind; they were not exactly turn-ons in the moments before planned nudity with their owner’s daughter. Especially if you were still a little high and a lot paranoid. Teena grinned and neared him, sipping from a fresh tumbler of some strawberry vodka girlie drink.

  “Nothing for me?” Leo asked, closing the gap between them. She shook her head and pressed the thumbprint recognition pad, sliding her keycard into the metal slot. Leo watched as the door swung open with a groan, the light next to the slot turning from red to green. It’s go time. She led him down the stairs.