Coming of Age at the End of Days

by Alice LaPlante

  “When you lose a parent, you grieve. But the world, although changed, is still recognizable,” Ms. Thadeous tells Anna. “But when you lose your second parent, you lose your way, and you never get it back. Not completely.”

  “How do you know this?” Anna asks, but Ms. Thadeous ignores the question. Anna is perched on the corner of one of the sinks, Ms. Thadeous is at her desk, grading lab reports.

  “You see a shadow fall across the face of a ninety-five-year-old woman in a wheelchair,” Ms. Thadeous says, “you know what she’s thinking? That she misses her daddy. It never goes away, that particular ache.”

  Ms. Thadeous says there are really only three types of people in the world. People with both parents, people with one parent, and people like Anna. Orphans. This marks the most important difference between individuals. “Not whether they are male or female, or Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish, or rich or poor, or what country they were born in,” says Ms. Thadeous. “No. The single most important thing is whether they still have two parents, one parent, or none.”

  Anna feels shy, but she asks anyway. “Which category do you belong in?”

  Ms. Thadeous says she belongs in a special fourth category, so small it doesn’t bear mentioning. Then she changes the subject. “What’s up with you and Lars?” she asks. “You don’t talk. You hardly even look at each other.”

  “There’s just no need,” Anna says. “Nothing’s wrong. There’s simply nothing to say. We understand each other. We have an understanding.”

  “It doesn’t feel like that kind of quiet,” Ms. Thadeous says, but lets the subject drop.

  Anna doesn’t mention the real reason. She’s confused about it herself. Seeing Lars at her parents’ memorial party, his fear. He failed some essential test.

  Besides, Lars doesn’t seem to need her. Now, in the cafeteria, Anna sits alone. She quietly consumes what little her stomach can take and goes to the library for most of the lunch hour.

  Ms. Thadeous says, “Can I ask a basic question?”

  “Of course,” Anna says, but she is nervous. Ms. Thadeous has a way of sneaking up with questions you’re not prepared to answer. It serves her well in the classroom: She can smoke out fakery among students in a heartbeat.

  “Why are you in such a hurry for it to happen—­whatever you call it, the Apocalypse, Tribulation, End Days, whatever?” Ms. Thadeous asks. “Why can’t you let everyone enjoy themselves a little longer? Allow them to party themselves into oblivion without all the Sturm und Drang? Or maybe just lead quiet, decent lives until the supposedly inevitable happens?”

  “Because the sooner it happens, the sooner we can see His face.” Anna repeats what she has said many times, to others. But here, in this room of science, to Ms. Thadeous, her words sound false. She thinks of the Bosch painting, of the bloody fight ahead, but feels only a pinprick of her former longing. Her parents. Their earthly bodies burned and discarded—she never asked Martha what happened to the ashes—and Anna feels a rare stab of uncertainty. It is quick, but goes deep, and she feels a twinge of terror.

  “I don’t buy that,” Ms. Thadeous says. “No. For Lars, maybe. For the Goldschmidts, definitely. They genuinely want to rise up to heaven and the rest of that twaddle. But you? You’re after something else.” She gets up from her seat and goes over to her wall of clippings. She tears off a piece of paper, crumples it, throws it in the garbage can.

  A moment of silence. “Then, of course, on some level I understand perfectly,” Ms. Thadeous says. She is staring at her wall but doesn’t appear to see it.

  “You do?” Anna asks. Ms. Thadeous tears down another article, one with a complicated diagram. Nuclear fusion. The wall underneath glows a purer white than the rest of the room. Ms. Thadeous rips off another, this one from Science, an article about the Australopithecus sediba. Then another. She is dismantling the evidence of the old Ms. Thadeous, the one that Jim Fulson remembered. Anna understands that she is in the presence of an unstable element, one that could react in a number of different ways depending on the stimulus. She gets that feeling, which she often gets with Ms. Thadeous, of ground shifting under her.

  “Who doesn’t want to be a hero?” Ms. Thadeous asks as she steps onto a chair to reach the clippings higher up on the wall, pulls off a paper illustrating the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. “Most people don’t take their fantasies to the length you have, of course. I had my dreams, too, you know,” she says. “If anyone told me I’d end up in a chemistry classroom in a suburban high school I would have been appalled.” She pauses. Her dark hair pulled back in a tight chignon, she could be a heroine herself: fierce, straight-backed, unyielding. “Actually,” she says, “I am appalled,” and indeed she sounds so stricken that Anna tips her head back to see Ms. Thadeous’s face. On it: shame, deep and raw.

  Later, in her room in the Goldschmidts’ house, Anna recalls Ms. Thadeous’s words. They resonate. They sting. She is lying on the floor in the dark. She has taken the sheet off the window to welcome the moon in. Occasionally, the headlights of a car flash through the room. Otherwise soft ambient moonlight. And suddenly Anna gets one of those sharp aches of grief that are so piercing she has to hold both hands to her chest with as much pressure as she can, like pressing on a wound that will bleed out without a tourniquet. And for the first time she questions the mission she has chosen: to help Fred Wilson bring a pure Red Heifer into the world, to bring about the end of everything. Why is she doing this? Why would she want anyone else to undergo this type of loss? Why would she actively work to make millions suffer the way she is suffering? My God forgive me, for I know not what I am doing.

  32

  ANNA GETS IN THE HABIT of going to the science room even when Ms. Thadeous isn’t there. If Ms. Thadeous had made overly aggressive overtures to deepen their intimacy Anna would have stayed away. But she has somehow made this a safe place.

  Ms. Thadeous is careless: she left the lab while still logged in to her PC. Anna sits at Ms. Thadeous’s desk, goes through her computer files, sees the grades she’s giving the other kids, what she’s saying about them in her reports. She doesn’t look at what Ms. Thadeous says about her, Anna. She doesn’t want to know. Her online search history is unremarkable. No news. No blogs. Overstock.com. Amazon.com. Drugstore.com. She demonstrates no obvious curiosity about the world. More telling are the letters she composes and stores in a folder called Never Send. They are variously addressed to Dear Mom, Dear Ted, Dearest Janice, Dear Grandad.

  Dear Mom,

  Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

  Clara

  Just at this moment, an email arrives from Jim Fulson. It takes two. What does this mean? Praise or condemnation? Affection or criticism? Anna answers it. Yes it does. She waits, but no reply comes. Anna goes back to the Never Send folder.

  Dear Megan,

  It is true we have unfinished business. But I am currently starting other business that I do intend to complete. You will have to be patient and wait your turn.

  Clara

  There’s a tentative knock at the door of the chemistry lab. Lars, poised delicately in the doorway as if loath to enter without her permission.

  “Hey there,” he says, “I thought I’d find you here.”

  “And here is where you found me,” Anna says.

  It comes out sounding hostile, although Anna doesn’t intend it that way, not much anyway. They are rarely alone these days, despite living in the same house. In school Lars and Anna have tacitly agreed to go their own ways. Death has separated them.

  Lars has changed his tactics, has decided to go native. He applied, and was granted by the school administration, the right to form a legitimate club for the Pre-Rapturists. He calls it The End Days Committee and now has the official use of an empty classroom after school on Wednesdays where he carefully arranges his leaflets and photographs on a desk and attempts to interest whoever wanders by. He’s man
aged to attract a small but growing band of followers. All male. A freshman who blundered in looking for the chess club and discovered much more interesting mental puzzles were to be found in Revelation. A sophomore clearly more enamored by Lars than by His message. A pair of Seventh-day Adventists looking to do a little converting of their own. Lars even sets up a card table with information and pamphlets outside of the gym during basketball games. He and his disciples are in fact surprisingly successful at engaging people in what look like serious conversations. Lars is no longer teased or tormented. The world has matured in the last three weeks. Everyone is suddenly more reasonable. Except Anna. She has lost her bearings.

  Lars sits himself on the edge of Ms. Thadeous’s desk. He has grown taller and gained weight. His jeans, previously loose, are snug around his hips. His hair is longer and curls around his ears, reaches his collar. Lars is coming into his own. Anna sees with a shock that he may grow into a handsome man.

  Anna passes her hand down the back of her neck, restrains herself from scratching. She hasn’t shaved her head since the night her parents died. Her hair is perhaps half an inch long and her scalp itches, a constant irritant.

  A flash of movement on Ms. Thadeous’s computer screen catches Anna’s attention. An IM has popped up. I’ll be there.

  No, Anna types back, and hits Enter.

  “This isolation isn’t good for you,” Lars says.

  “What isolation?” Anna asks. “I live with your family. I go to school. I’m a productive member of society.” Again, her voice is rougher than she intended. Anna is unsure where this hostility toward Lars is coming from, is dismayed at how little control she has over her emotions.

  “Anna. Look, what happened to your parents was a tragedy . . .” Lars begins.

  “It was God speaking more directly than usual,” Anna says. She doesn’t realize the truth of this until the words are out of her mouth. God was speaking to her. Pushing her in His direction.

  Another message pops up. Jim Fulson again. Why are you being so difficult? Why now?

  Anna replies again, simply, No, and sends it.

  “I don’t believe you are following the path God wants you to take.” Lars’s words so closely mirror Anna’s thoughts that she is startled.

  “You are no longer my guide in that way,” Anna tells Lars.

  “Nevertheless,” he says. “You’re off track. You should see Reverend Michael, talk to him.”

  Another message pops up: Is this about last night? I thought we’d settled it.

  No, Anna types. We did not settle anything.

  Another message, quicker this time. I’m coming there—now.

  No! Anna types.

  Just as rapidly the reply comes. Yes. Signing off now.

  Anna is thinking of Jim Fulson, barreling over here in his red truck. She is thinking of the secrets between him and Ms. Thadeous. She is thinking of her night ghosting, and how she misses seeing Jim Fulson start off on his daily runs at dawn. She looks for his truck out the window every morning, but more often than not, these days, his truck is not there. His room is dark. Words rise in front of her eyes. She speaks them aloud: “And the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

  Lars allows himself a smile. “You’ve kept up with your reading at least. That wonderful memory. You should make better use of it.”

  “A habit,” says Anna.

  “More than that. A gift. Don’t waste it.”

  “You sound like my parents,” Anna says. She can’t help it. The words just come out.

  Lars has nothing to say to this.

  The bell rings, and students begin to file into the room. Anna gets up from Ms. Thadeous’s desk, grabs her backpack, and moves toward the door.

  “Don’t you have English now?” Lars asks. “I’ll walk there with you.”

  Anna doesn’t want this. Spending time with Lars these days makes her feel unwholesome. She shrugs. “I don’t think I’m going,” she says, trying to sound casual. “I don’t like the book. It pretends to be profound, and misses the mark. But fools some people.”

  “Sounds like what you think of me,” Lars says, and his smile isn’t pleasant.

  Anna doesn’t comment, and her silence hangs heavy between them. “I’ve got to talk to Ms. Thadeous,” she says. “You go on.”

  Ms. Thadeous wanders into the room at just that moment. Her hands are free, her step light. She is not in a hurry although the second bell has rung. She seems irritated to see Lars and Anna. “Get to class,” she says. “Both of you,” but her glance is mostly directed at Lars.

  Lars gestures to Anna to come with him. She shakes her head. She doesn’t belong in the class that is about to begin, yet takes a seat at the back of the room anyway. A couple of students look at Anna curiously, but no one challenges her.

  Ms. Thadeous stands by her desk, picks up her attendance book, begins calling out names. Every thirty seconds or so she gazes out the window into the parking lot, then continues taking roll. She makes it to h when she spots what she’s looking for outside. Anna realizes with a shock how beautiful Ms. Thadeous is, how very very beautiful. How could Anna not have noticed? She is too much. The next time Ms. Thadeous turns to glance out the window, Anna slips out of the room.

  Anna isn’t sure what she intends to do, just that she can’t bear sitting in Ms. Thadeous’s room, watching her grow more desirable the longer Jim Fulson waits outside. Her first thought is to join him in his truck, break the connection that is causing Ms. Thadeous’s loveliness to blossom. But at the last minute Anna turns in to the girls’ locker room, opens her locker, and dresses in her gym clothes even though she doesn’t have PE until next period. When she emerges, Ms. Ingels nods at her benignly and gestures for Anna to get in line and rotate into the volleyball game in progress. Like everyone else, she’s cutting Anna a lot of slack.

  “Hey, Anna.” Paulina and Joan. Nice girls, Anna sees now. Two years ago, when she was more tuned in socially, she wouldn’t have been able to get past the one’s lumpy bottom and the other’s underarm hair. Three weeks ago, she would have nurtured a malevolent secret satisfaction that the two most popular girls in school, making fun of Paulina and Joan, would be eternally damned for their trivial ways. She finds herself simply grieving for them, for everyone.

  “What is it, Anna?” asks Paulina. Anna must have made a noise. She seems genuinely concerned, is holding out a tentative hand, as if she’s going to put it on Anna’s shoulder.

  “Nothing,” Anna says, backing up slightly to avoid the touch, but in fact she’s feeling peculiar. She’s worried that she’s about to suffer an episode. She hasn’t had one since her parents died. Anna makes a smile for Paulina, puts her hand against the gym wall for support. It is reassuringly solid. Yet the vermillion aura slowly materializes, begins tingeing the edges of the gym, blurring Anna’s vision. The smell. The dizziness.

  “Paulina!” calls Ms. Ingels. “Get in there!” Paulina gives Anna one slow last look and runs to take her place in front of the net.

  The floor begins to roll beneath Anna’s feet. The wall she is leaning against undulates against her shoulder. Is this it? Did her father miss it by less than a month? Is this the Big One? There will be much rejoicing in Parkfield tonight. Anna falls to her knees, places her palms flat against the hard gym floor. Nothing is solid, nothing is still; like this she can’t keep her balance. She carefully lowers herself all the way to the floor, onto her belly. No one else seems affected. The game is proceeding, an intense volleying back and forth. Girls on both sides of the net leap high into the air, swat the ball. The gym reverberates with violent slaps. Boom. Boom. Outside, the sun disappears behind a cloud and the rays dim through the small windows high above. In the dull light the girls’ skin seems to glow. But their movements slow, and the noises of the game begin to
fade. A mist forms over the volleyball net. No one else notices, they continue to leap and slap. Yet it is growing and spreading, putrid and dark. Something is terribly wrong, something is coming. The volleyball is practically suspended in the air, inching upward, peaking, and then moving down toward the adoring faces that are worshipping it. And now the walls of the gym disappear, blown apart by dark clouds that continue to expand, and Anna can see that the grasses of the football field and the track and the yards of the houses surrounding the school are scorched and brown. In the distance, from the west, rising from the sea, appears a giant wave, arcing higher and higher, towering over the Santa Cruz Mountains, hundreds of feet high, a terrible and beautiful wall of deep green-blue water. When it breaks, it will engulf all of Silicon Valley, turn the former Valley of Heart’s Delight into a giant churning whirlpool.

  Anna is lying on her back, surrounded by faces. Ms. Ingels is bending over her.

  “Anna,” she is saying. “Anna, wake up. Gaby, get a wet towel from the locker room. Quickly. Beth, run to the office, get the nurse. And you, Jenny, go get Ms. Thadeous, tell her Anna’s had some sort of fit.”

  “Not a fit,” Anna begins, but a rough damp cloth is being pressed onto her face. For a moment she can’t breathe, begins to panic. She struggles to sit up, is restrained, keeps trying. She finally manages to pull the towel off her face and can again inhale.

  “Just lie there,” says Ms. Ingels. “You’re not well.”

  The cloud is still there, hovering above Ms. Ingels’s head. Cracks are appearing in it, dark tendrils dropping down, writhing and twisting.

  “My God,” Anna says.

  “What?” Ms. Ingels asks. “Anna, I can’t understand you. Speak up.” Then, as the bell rings, Ms. Ingels calls, over her shoulder, “Everyone! To the showers!” She turns back to Anna. “Anna? Are you okay?”