So I do. I tell her about the Life Force and Buddy Holly and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I point them out in the sky—lined up three in a row—before the clouds eat them up. Then I tell her about the Back Room and about my favorite records, and how I finish each listening session with “It’s Now or Never.” For some reason, she giggles at that last part, and she keeps catching herself and then giggling again, catching herself and giggling some more.
“What?” I ask, a little annoyed.
“It’s funny, picturing you alone, listening to Elvis. My mom loved him. Maybe that’s why it’s funny.”
“Because I remind you of your mom?”
“Maybe,” says Stella. She’s stopped giggling.
“Elvis is a great musician,” I say, as my blinking tic shows up.
“Well. He’s a great performer. Music-wise, I’d say he’s mediocre.”
Indignation curls inside me. I turn a hard gaze to the field.
“Hey.” Stella touches my elbow in that barely there way. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It’s your opinion,” I say, blinking. “In my opinion, he’s the best.”
“When he dies, does he go up there to join the others?”
I shake my head. “When Elvis dies, I don’t want to be around. I hope I’m dead by then.”
“Wow. You really must like him.”
We’re quiet a while longer, and then Stella starts to giggle again.
“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. But you know Orion has been around for a while, right? His belt buckle was up there before Buddy Holly ever died.”
I glare harder at the darkened cornfields, blinking rapidly. “Yeah, I know.”
I’m mad at Stella. I shouldn’t have told her anything, because now she’s making fun of it. She’s treating me like I don’t know what stars are actually made of.
But then . . . I don’t have a right to be mad at her. She’s the one who has a right to be mad at me. And she would be, if she knew the truth. My eyelids move without ceasing—open and shut, open and shut. My tics have a really sick sense of timing.
“Hey.” She touches my elbow again, sounding really apologetic, which makes me feel even shittier. “Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, really. I know what it’s like to love things other people think are stupid. Things you know they’d laugh in your face about if you told them everything. I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”
I look at her this time. “It’s fine,” I say, and I mean it.
“I have a question for you, though,” says Stella. “It’s not making fun, I promise. I’m only curious. Jimi and Janis and Buddy—they’re your gods. But . . . they lived on the Outside, right? They made their music out here.”
“Yeah?” I say, not seeing Stella’s point.
“Well, isn’t that hard to reconcile?”
I frown. “No. It’s not hard at all. They gave their all to the Outside, but what did they get out of it? The Outside killed them too soon. Think about how much better things would’ve been if they could’ve had a Red Sun to keep them safe and foster their growth. In Red Sun they could have lived longer, done even greater things. Red Sun would have understood them. It would have . . .”
I trail off, because I’m telling Stella something I’ve believed for years, without question. Only now, just now, I’m realizing something: I don’t know if I believe it anymore. Would my gods really have been better off within the commune’s walls? What if they’d been told that they weren’t resident-artist material? What if Janis had been ordered to ten years out in the fields, or Jimi had been assigned to cook a decade’s worth of green beans?
Where would my gods have been then? What kind of music would they have made?
I never finish my sentence. I fall silent, and from Kim’s car David Bowie keeps singing, this time over the rattling keys of a honky-tonk piano. A breeze pushes on our backs and rustles through the cornstalks.
“You want to know something interesting?” Stella asks. “Something you might not have heard about on the inside?”
“Sure,” I say, nonchalant, as though I didn’t bike out with her hoping for a moment exactly like this.
“All right. So, NASA’s big project right now is the Voyager missions. They’ve made two probes, and they’re sending them into space in the next few weeks. It has to be around now, because there’s a favorable alignment of the outer planets. And they’re sending these probes out to pick up data and take pictures of the planets. Maybe even beyond the planets. They’re going to go farther than anything we’ve ever sent out before. Though maybe not as far as your gods.” Stella smiles a bit here. “That’s pretty great, right? That we can make something that will fly that far? Farther than any of us could ever go.”
Stella’s eyes are wet and shining, and her voice grows thinner the longer she talks. She waves her hands, animating each of her points. And I get it. This is Stella’s thing. The thing she’s written Craig/Phoenix/me about for two years. It’s the thing other people would laugh about. That’s why she’s telling me. She’s trying to even the playing field, make me feel better.
“No people?” I ask. “Just probes?”
“They haven’t found a way to support people in space that long. Anyway, it’s a one-way journey. Those probes aren’t coming back. Who would sign up for that?”
“I dunno. I might.”
Stella turns to me with her whole body. “Seriously?”
“I dunno,” I repeat. “It might be worth it. To be the first human to ever see the planets, in person?”
“It would be so lonely, though.”
“Says the recluse.”
“I told you, I live with my family. That’s different. I can’t imagine leaving them behind.”
“I’d miss people, sure,” I say. “But . . . once, J. J. told me something. It was when I first started working in the kitchen. He said I was lucky to have a job at the commune, because they understand me. They make allowances, you know? But he said I couldn’t make it on the Outside. With my tics. He said people out here wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t even give me a job, and it was fate that I was born at Red Sun.”
I’ve never told anyone this, though my memory’s replayed it plenty of times. Mentioning my tics has caused them to show up again, and I open my mouth for its long unyawn. I don’t want to know how Stella’s reacting, so I drop my head and study the concrete. An ant passes by, and then another.
“Your dad told you that?” Stella’s whispering. “He said you couldn’t make it?”
I unyawn again, and my jaw jerks to the right. “Out here, yeah. And I think he’s right. People don’t seem to be that understanding.”
We’re quiet for a while, and my tics continue, and I know Stella’s feeling sorry for me, and I feel the shittiest I’ve felt all night. I try to shake it up.
“Did your parents like space too? Is that why they named you Stella?”
“Oh.” Stella huffs out this tiny laugh. “No, actually. It’s a town—Stella, Missouri. It’s not even a town, more of a road. It’s where my mom grew up. Then she met my dad, and they got married. She wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.”
“But she named you after it.”
“I guess she liked something about it.”
We get quiet again, and then Stella says, “I’m sorry about what happened at the party. People can be awful. A lot of them grow out of it, though.”
“Sure,” I say, my jaw twitching, my eyes blinking fast.
“For what it’s worth, I think you could make it out here. Considering you lived your whole life in that commune, I’d say you’re pretty well-adjusted. All you need is some orientation.”
“I don’t know . . . what’s the point, though? I mean, isn’t it better to be alone than in bad company?”
Stella’s smiling at me like I’ve told a joke. “That’s something Craig would say. I mean . . . Phoenix.”
My body ices over.
I’ve said too much. I’ve gone too far. I can’t slip up again, or Stella might find it less than funny. I rack my brain, trying to think of every personal thing I’ve written her under the name of Phoenix. Not details about my personal life, but personal things—thoughts and opinions and reactions to her books, adages and philosophies and every meaty topic we’ve ever touched upon by mail. There is no way I can remember it all. But then, there’s no way she would suspect me.
Suspect me. Like a criminal. Like a liar and an impersonator.
Buddy Holly, help me. I am well and truly fucked.
I clear my throat with all the force inside me.
There’s a sudden spattering sound around us. It’s raining, and while we’re shielded under the drive-in awning, the raindrops splatter an inch from our feet, on the edge of the concrete.
It takes me a second to notice. Or maybe I notice right away and simply can’t figure it out.
Because the rain hitting the concrete isn’t clear.
It’s blood red.
16
Stella
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10
Kim drives through the downpour, toward Red Sun.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she says—one long, sibilant string. “I don’t even know if it’s going to wash off. Stell, can you tell? Is it eating away at the car? Is it staining the paint, can you see?”
I find this funny, though not the kind of funny I would ever laugh about. It’s only that Kim seems more fixated on the state of her car than the fact that we are driving through blood rain.
Though . . . I cannot be sure it is blood, and I cannot tell if it is doing permanent damage to Kim’s Gremlin. All I can do is stare, mesmerized, as bright red liquid runs down the hatchback window. The car is a two-seater, so I sit on the rear floorboard, jammed next to Galliard’s bicycle. We could barely close the hatchback with just the one bike, so Kim begged her Ferrell’s friend, Janet, for some utility rope to secure my bike to the roof rack. Now I am thinking we should have strapped both bicycles topside. A pedal is rammed against my back, and since there’s no room for me to readjust, I can only wince through the pain.
“Sure you want to be let out in this?” Kim asks Galliard, even though she already asked him three minutes ago, when he first requested to be driven back to Red Sun. Now we are pulling into the Moonglow Café’s empty parking lot.
“It’s almost curfew,” Galliard tells Kim. “I’ve got to get in there.”
“Sure, okay, but don’t you think staying alive is more important than beating curfew?”
“It’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s acid.”
“Blood,” says Kim. “It’s blood.”
“No, it’s not.” Galliard sounds impatient, and I am annoyed that I cannot make out his face from the back seat. I only catch angles of his chin and cheeks in the rearview mirror.
I am about to tell him he should stay in the car, and we should wait it out. I do not get the chance. Without warning, he throws open the passenger door and steps into the rain. Kim doesn’t scream at him. Neither of us does; I think we’re too stunned. We both watch in hushed suspense as Galliard straightens to full height. He turns his face to the sky and opens his mouth. This, at last, solicits a response from us.
“The fuck, man!” Kim shouts, as I simultaneously yell, “Don’t!”
Galliard closes up his mouth. He pauses, assessing, then speaks. “It’s just water. Water that’s red.”
“Or it’s arsenic,” I say. “Or some tasteless toxin. You wouldn’t know the difference.”
“It’s water.” He moves around back and opens the hatchback.
Kim shrieks. “No sir! No sir! Don’t drip that fucking freaky rain in here.”
“It’s water,” Galliard growls, reaching in and hauling out his bike. I help, shoving at the front wheel.
“My baby,” Kim mutters, shuddering as Galliard brings the bike down in a less-than-gentle descent. “My poor baby.”
I start to laugh. I can’t help myself; this is what That Stella would do. I laugh at the strangeness of it all, the sheer absurdity. I laugh at Galliard’s bravery and that feeling of freedom trembling inside me. Yes, the rain is red. Why shouldn’t it be?
Galliard doesn’t question my behavior. He grins as he slams shut the hatchback window and then, through the glass, he asks, “Next Wednesday?”
“Yes,” I say in between giggles. “Now get inside before you melt.”
He throws a wide wave into the air, and I cannot tell if it is intentional or one of his tics. He wheels his bike to the commune gate, toward a wall of darkness. Then he is gone, and then so are my laughs.
Kim pats the passenger seat and says, “Get up here. I’ll drive you home.”
I climb over the gearshift, and Kim doesn’t wait for me to fasten my seat belt before speeding out onto Eisenhower.
“That commune, man,” she says. “Gives me the creeps. He does too, a little. Sorry.”
“Why ‘sorry’?”
“Don’t you like him? Why were you hanging out?”
“It’s . . . complicated.”
“But he’s not that Phoenix guy you’re writing?”
“No.”
“Damn, Mercer. You’re starting your own Red Sun harem.”
“We weren’t on a date.”
That sounds wrong coming from my mouth—fake.
“Okay, okay,” says Kim. “Say no more.”
I like this about Kim. She might read private letters, but she knows when to let things alone. Tonight, I think some of that disinterest is due to the fact that we are facing a more pressing concern: blood rain.
Kim turns up the radio. There is no special broadcast on 580 AM, no mention of our predicament by Kansas City DJ Jim Goddard. “Hotel California” plays serenely on. I shut my eyes, losing myself in the minor melody. This red rain is wrong—bad, even—but it doesn’t scare me any more than the pink lightning did. It’s one more apocalyptic happening, which means one more excuse to live my life as I want to, as That Stella.
Then, as Kim turns onto my street, the rain stops. It simply stops—the tapping on the car hood, the crimson rivulets running down the windows. The wipers screech against a dry windshield. Everything is calm.
Kim puts the car into park outside my house. She leans over the wheel, head cocked toward the sky.
“That all you got up there?” she shouts.
“Hey.” I knock my elbow against hers. “Don’t encourage it.”
I’m not afraid of the rain, but I’d rather not get soaked on my way to the front door.
“C’mon!” Kim keeps shouting. “Isn’t this the part where the earth opens up and swallows us whole?”
I wonder. I hope that part doesn’t happen quite yet. I’d like a little more time to live as this version of myself. I’d like as much time as the countdown on my closet door has to offer.
Kim settles back in her seat, shaking her head. She jams in the cigarette lighter, then points to the glove compartment. “Cancer stick.”
If I were a closer friend, I would lecture her. I would tell her that cigarettes are bad for her health and that—unlike our parents—she has no excuse to light up, because she knows how toxic they are. I would tell her that secondhand smoke hurts my head. I am not Kim’s close friend, though. I’m no one’s close friend. So I open the glove compartment, find Kim’s pack of Kool Super Lights, and tip out a cigarette. She grabs it, lights it, and then takes a long, deep inhale.
“Jeez,” she says on the exhale. “Fuck this.”
She cranks down her window an inch and adds, “Seriously, what’s happening here?”
“I have no idea,” I say. But I think I like it, I want to continue. I think it’s beautiful.
Kim flicks her cigarette against the window’s edge. Golden-orange bits of ash explode into the night, then scatter. She takes another inhale, and I crank down my own window, in need of fresh air.
“You get it, though, right?” Kim says. “The winds, the lightning, the storms.
The animals acting weird? The goddamn countdown over town hall. And now this: fucking blood rain. That’ll finally bring out the news crews.”
The countdown. I could tell Kim about my own countdown. I could, but I don’t, and for the same reason I didn’t tell her about Craig: It’s a little too private to say out loud.
“What do you think it is?” I don’t know when I began whispering.
“Uh. The apocalypse, obviously. Man, the preachers must be eating this up. The end of days! The last judgment! The four horsemen! They’ll have a field day on Sunday. If we make it that long.”
“There has to be an actual reason, though. Some logical explanation that connects all those things. Maybe it’s something to do with chemicals, or . . . or . . .” I try hard not to think of extraterrestrial life. Instead my thoughts bring me to Gayle Nelson, of all people. “What if something happened at the plant? Something they’re not telling us?”
“At Slater Creek? Oh, no doubt. I’m with the hippies on that one: Humans shouldn’t be screwing around with nuclear anything.”
I frown. “Well, we wouldn’t have a lot of scientific advances if—”
“Whoa. Whoa. You don’t need to go there. I’m just saying, I feel kind of accepting of the whole thing. We humans fucked it up. I guess we’ve had it coming.”
“But . . .” I search for the words. “From what we can tell, it’s only happening in Slater.”
Kim shrugs. “Why not? I’d say Slater deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth about the same as any other town.”
I smile. “You don’t mean that.”
“I dunno. Guess not.”
I look out at my house. For the first time, I realize the den light is on.
“Oh no.”
“Hmm?”
I crank my window up. “My sister’s awake, and she never stays up past her bedtime. She must be freaking out.”
“Huh. Well, probably a good idea to head in anyway. Don’t know when the death rain is gonna start up again.”
I throw open the door. “Sorry,” I say. “And thanks for everything. I’ll see you around, okay?”
The Great Unknowable End Page 17
