It's the End of the World as I Know It

by Matthew Landis

  “Lean back,” Brock says. “Lean back.”

  Misty hits the ramp straight on and flies a couple feet before her front tire slams down. It looks clean, but then the handlebars twist to the side, almost throwing her off. At the last second she leans the other way and saves herself a face-plant into a mailbox.

  I throw open the window and yell, “You’re using too much front brake.”

  Misty looks around and then sees us. Tommy waves real big like we’re picking her up from the airport.

  “Oh, hey.” She waves back. “What did you say?”

  “When you land,” I shout. “Don’t jam on the front brake. That’s why you almost crashed.”

  “Okay. Cool.”

  Misty goes back to the jump and takes the board off. She stacks the two cinder blocks on top of each other so the ramp doubles in height.

  “Guys,” Tommy says. “I think we should really call someone.”

  I shout, “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Misty yells back.

  “Why are you boys yelling?” Kelly screams from downstairs.

  We wave Misty over and she pedals to grass.

  “It’s too steep,” I say. “It’ll collapse when you try to ride up. You could get really hurt.”

  “Huh.” She tightens her elbow pads. “But I really need to get some air.”

  “You got some the first time,” Brock says.

  “Really? Both tires?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure?”

  We all look at each other.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Okay.” Misty takes off a shoe and dumps some rocks out of it. “Hey, Derrick: You think I could borrow some tools?”

  “For what?”

  “This thing I’m doing.”

  “To build a bigger ramp?”

  “No.” She puts her shoe back on. “I’m done with the ramp.”

  “So what’s it for?”

  “I can’t tell you until you say yes.”

  “Why not?”

  She looks around, like people are listening. “It might be illegal.”

  “Hmm.”

  Misty shields her eyes from the sun. Man, she is really pale for the end of the summer. Vampire pale. “So, can you help me?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. Not a chance I risk getting arrested or her breaking my stuff. Not this close to The End. “Sorry.”

  “I’d let you borrow our stuff,” Tommy says, “but Kelly doesn’t let me have access to the garage.”

  “Who’s Kelly?” Misty asks.

  “His mom,” Brock says. “She’s kind of”—he mimes big giant claws—“mama bear.”

  “Oh yeah. I got one of those. That’s why I’m doing all this down here.” Her phone dings and she checks it. “Derrick: We’ll talk about those tools later.”

  She puts all the ramp stuff back in the wagon, and pulls it behind her as she walks her bike down the street.

  “She’s so weird,” I say.

  “Maybe she has a concussion,” Tommy says. “From landing too hard.”

  “It’s probably all the cancer drugs,” Brock says.

  “She didn’t have cancer,” I say.

  “She had something,” Tommy says. “She was out the whole year.”

  I nod because yeah, she was. Right?

  Misty turns and waves before we lose sight of her. I think maybe she’s looking at me, but it’s hard to tell. I wave back and she smiles, and it’s like the other night at my house—like we’ve done this before. Her pulling that red wagon, smiling and waving.

  2

  “Tacos are ready!” Claudia shouts upstairs to my dad.

  I’m in the living room pushing the earth and watching guys from Finland pull buses on ESPN3.

  “Dinner!” Claudia yells again.

  I slide up to the island bar and start building my taco. Probably this is the food I’m going to miss the most. My MREs only have a couple of flavors and the guys on Apocalypse Soon! say they all taste the same.

  “We eat as a family,” Claudia says.

  I listen to my dad stomping around upstairs. “I’m hungry.”

  Claudia whips a dish towel at me as I take a bite—snap.

  “Jeez!” I yell.

  She’s got a smirk on her face like Go ahead, try it again.

  My dad finally comes down and sits on the other side of Claudia. He’s dressed up and smells like cologne, which means he’s meeting one of his Internet women tonight.

  “How was work?” Claudia asks.

  “Stuck in a township meeting most of the morning,” he says. “Paperwork after that. Speaking of—Derrick. I got an interesting package today at the office.”

  I swallow a chunk of taco and almost choke. “What?”

  “Gas masks. Five of them.”

  Crap. Default shipping on his credit card. Stupid mistake.

  “They were supposed to come here,” I say. “Where are they?”

  “I gave him the card,” Claudia says. “I didn’t know he was going to get five of them.”

  “It’s my money,” I say.

  “You should ask me next time,” my dad says. “Or at least tell me.”

  “Why?” I pile meat on another taco. “So you can talk about it with one of your online girlfriends?”

  Claudia kicks my barstool.

  He waits a couple seconds and says, “You should tell me because I almost had the UPS guy take them back.”

  Claudia elbows me in the ribs. Gives me a face like You’re being a huge gigantic jerk.

  “Thanks for not sending them back,” I say.

  “They’re in the garage. Just . . .” I see him lean forward and look down at me. I keep my eyes on the taco. “Just give me a heads-up next time.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I devour three more tacos while Claudia updates us all on her “very rigorous AP courses” for this semester. I stare at the shed through the back slider, counting down the minutes until Claudia won’t yell at me for leaving. I check my watch, give it two more, then rinse my plate and break for the garage.

  3

  I count the masks. All here. I put one in my go bag upstairs and haul the rest to the shed to stow in the bins.

  I do my inventory, pretending I don’t hear my dad’s giant truck start up as he heads to his eHarmony meet-up. He’ll probably tell her about my gas masks and she’ll make a face like Oh that poor, crazy boy and then order a stupid fancy coffee drink that costs like ten bucks.

  “Hey.”

  I look up and see Misty standing outside the door. She’s got the red wagon with her. Empty. “Hey.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good.”

  She lets go of the wagon handle and walks up the little wooden ramp. Taps her foot on it. “So about those tools.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t get arrested.”

  “Are you in witness protection or something?” She really needs to rub that sunblock in better. It’s all caked on her eyebrows. “And if you get caught, the cops will run your fingerprints, and the mafia will come get you?”

  “I need to finish this.” I wave my hand at the shed. “For the apocalypse.”

  She doesn’t blink or laugh or make a face like You’re crazy. She just sort of stares. “Like, doomsday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When is it?”

  “September twenty-first.”

  She frowns. “That really stinks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s my dad’s birthday.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You’re sure it’s this September twenty-first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A total solar eclipse is aligning with the si
x-hundred-thousand-year anniversary of the eruption of the volcano under Yosemite National Park—which erupts every six hundred thousand years,” I say. “There’s other signs, like weather patterns around the world and stuff. But It’s definitely happening.”

  “Huh.”

  She disappears. I hear her walking around the shed and go out to meet her.

  “So what’s gonna happen, when it blows?” she asks. “Can lava come this far?”

  “No, but we’ll be able to hear the explosion,” I say. “Anybody within about a couple hundred miles will die pretty quickly. Ash clouds will mess with the atmosphere for years, wrecking farming in most of the country.”

  “My dad is gonna be majorly bummed when I tell him. He really loves his birthday.” She looks up at the sky and all around. “I mean, this is seriously not good.”

  “Yeah.”

  Misty looks at the shed. “Why are you covering up the wood with more wood?”

  “Reinforce the walls.”

  “From what?”

  “Weather and stuff. Mainly people trying to break in.”

  “What about the tree?” She looks up at the giant maple shading us. “What if it falls on the shed?”

  “It’s not gonna fall.”

  “I’ve seen tornadoes on TV that rip up trees pretty easily,” she says. “Last time I was here, there was a couple big dead branches on the ground.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, but my brain goes Last time? Last time?

  “But that’s the kind of freak accident that would happen if it’s the end of the world, right?”

  Last time? “It’s not gonna fall.”

  Misty bangs on the plywood. “Okay, but if someone had an ax, they could probably chop right through this. Or light it on fire. Why didn’t you just build a new one with cinder blocks?”

  “You’re not allowed to build something like that here,” I say. “I tried, but the property deed says you can’t.”

  Misty walks around the whole shed again. “Not very big. Gonna be crammed.”

  “It’s just for me.”

  “What about your dad and Claudia?”

  “They don’t think It’s happening.”

  “What if they change their minds?”

  I shrug. “They can live in the house.”

  “Huh.”

  We both sort of watch the shed together. Now I’m looking at her and she’s looking at me and it’s really awkward, so I say, “You were gone most of last year.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were . . . sick.” I say it real slow. “That’s why you missed lots of school.”

  Misty watches me. Nods again.

  “Hmm.”

  “Derrick—” she says, but stops. Shrugs it off.

  My stomach knots and I say, “Where’d you get that wagon?”

  “What?”

  I point at it. “Is that like—did you borrow that from me a while ago?”

  Misty squints at me real hard. “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  The sun goes below the houses. Misty takes off her Phillies hat and says, “So about those tools.”

  “Yeah. No.”

  “Okay.” She sighs. “See ya.”

  She crosses the Mitchells’ yard to her deck that needs like a million repairs and leaves the wagon at the steps. After she goes inside I walk around the shed and give the wall a bang with my fist. It’s solid, right? Right. It is. It has to be, because I can’t lay cinder block. I’m not allowed. And what does Misty know about The End? She’s not a member of the best doomsday blog on the Internet. She doesn’t know anything about tornadoes or falling trees or exploding underground volcanoes.

  The back floodlight on her house switches on. Probably on a timer or something. I can see the tracks her wagon made in the grass from her house, across the Mitchells’, right to the shed.

  Maybe it’s mine. Did she steal it?

  1

  The fridge lights up the kitchen like one of those police helicopter beams. I dig around until I find the leftover taco meat and microwave it. I crumble some chips on top and shovel it down in the dark. The stove clock says 12:22. I’ve been up late watching YouTube videos of guys ramming stuff into plywood to make sure I’ll be safe in the shed if somebody tried that.

  There’s some mail on the kitchen table and I move it to the island. We haven’t used that table since It happened. Claudia tried to set dinner there one time and I lost it, lots of screaming and stuff. Apparently I cried. I don’t really remember it all, but I remember totally freaking out. Around then, my dad started making me go talk to Dr. Mike.

  Probably it was my dad who put that mail there. He probably sits there when we go to bed, emailing his Internet girlfriends on his laptop. I kind of want to flip the table over right now.

  Bang.

  I freeze.

  Was that from the garage?

  Bang.

  I sneak through the laundry room and put my ear to the door. Nothing for a while.

  Bang.

  It’s like someone is trying to break into the garage. Should I call the police? Maybe wake up my dad—but no. My tools. Whoever is trying to bust in could steal them and then I won’t be able to put the steel door on my shed, which would ruin everything. That buzzing is halfway up my arms.

  I go out the back slider door that leads to the deck and bolt for the shed. I dig this big heavy police Maglite flashlight from one of my bins and sprint to the side of the house, peeking around the corner. There’s a shadow crouched by the garage, small and hunched over a light. I tiptoe, still barefoot, heart pounding, ready to flick the switch and yell GET THE CRAP AWAY when I smell sunscreen.

  And see that the light is really a phone screen.

  Playing a YouTube video.

  I can hear it too: A guy is talking about garage doors. The small shadow sets it down and starts messing with the lock.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “AH!” Misty yells, falling over. Her phone skitters on the driveway and must’ve hit a button, because now a commercial is playing. Some lady is talking about a new show or something with lots of dancing. Misty dives for the phone and rolls onto the grass, laughing. She’s covering her mouth and saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you were a robber,” I whisper.

  Misty nods but still can’t pull it together. “I’m the worst robber ever.”

  “Yeah. You are.”

  “So what’s the garage code?”

  “You’re not getting in the garage.”

  “Oh right—we should use the back slider door,” she says, walking around to the side of the house toward the deck. “That way we don’t wake anybody up.”

  I jog after her. “What are you doing?”

  “You kept saying no.”

  “So you were going to steal from me?”

  “Borrow,” she says, leaping up my deck steps. “Like before. It’s what neighbors do.”

  Before.

  I beat her to the back slider and say, “I don’t even—Misty. You’ve never done this before.”

  “Yes, I have—and you never said no.” She gives me a face like Are you serious right now? “Now: Do you want in on my adventure or not?”

  Our kitchen light goes on and I duck behind the grill. “Get down.”

  Misty knocks on the glass and waves.

  The door opens and Claudia says, “Are you okay?”

  “Oh—yeah. I’m fine.” Misty points at my hiding spot. “Derrick said I could borrow some tools.”

  “Oh,” Claudia says, and she sounds all relieved. “Wait—he did?”

  “Okay, not really true. I tried to break into the garage using this YouTube video. Bad idea. It led to my capture.”

  “I didn’t capture you,” I say, ditching my hiding s
pot.

  Claudia lets us in and does a lot of yawning and eye rubbing and then goes back up to bed. Misty marches to the garage like she owns the place and stares at the workbench with all the tools and stuff hanging on a giant pegboard above it. “This is intense.”

  “What do you even need?”

  Misty grabs one of my dad’s big drills. “Whoa.”

  “You need that?”

  “No, it’s just pretty cool.” She puts it down and starts opening plastic containers where I keep screws and bolts. “I need a key.”

  “A what?”

  “The guy on YouTube called it a key. But not like a door key.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “Like a painter’s key?”

  “Not sure.”

  Ugh.

  I go over to the shelf where my dad keeps all the paint supplies and dig out a painter’s key. It’s a four-inch piece of metal that has a tiny hook on the end that pries open paint can lids. “Did it look like this?”

  Misty takes it from me and starts trying to pry up random stuff on the workbench. “How much weight can this hold?”

  I shrug. “Probably not much.”

  “Okay.” She hands it back and says, “Then I’m gonna need a crowbar.”

  “Oh jeez,” I say. “No way.”

  “Why don’t you just help me?”

  “Could one of us get hurt?”

  Misty thinks about that. “Probably not.”

  “This is all not good,” I say, and try to beat her to the big crowbar hanging on the pegboard, but she’s too fast and snatches it. I try to grab it, but she pulls it away and almost hits me in the face with the hook end and I say, “What are you gonna do with that?”

  “Okay, okay, okay: You know those big metal circles in the road? The metal things that lead to the sewers.”

  “Manhole covers?”

  “I want to pop one open and see what’s down there.”

  I watch her face to see if she’s kidding.

  Not kidding.

  “Why?”

  Misty smiles real wide. “You’re not curious what’s down there?”

  “I know what’s down there. Poop.”

  “Like, flowing by?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”