Let's Call It a Doomsday

by Katie Henry

  I’m surprised he knows this much about it, and my face must show that, because he shrugs. “My mom’s a social worker. And I’m a good listener.”

  “Are you?” Sam asks.

  “Yeah, and I’m also good at nonverbal communication,” Theo says, holding up both middle fingers.

  Hannah wanders back over, her nose buried in the newspaper. For a moment, I think she’ll take it up in the tree with her, but she walks a few feet past me and plops down on the grass, her back to us. The boys either don’t notice or have decided it’s best not to bother her. I go over and sit down next to her. She doesn’t look up, but meticulously combs through each page. “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask as she reaches the last page, then shakes the newspaper like she expects something to fall out.

  “I thought maybe he’d left a note.”

  “Prophet Dan?” I ask, and she nods. Why would she think that, though? He doesn’t even know we’re looking for him.

  Does he?

  “I’m sorry we haven’t been able to find him,” I say to Hannah. “But we’ve done so much already, to figure out your dreams, maybe we don’t . . . need him.”

  “We do,” Hannah says. “Trust me, we do.”

  “Hannah,” I say tentatively, “I don’t think he wants be found.”

  Hannah’s face tightens. She buries her head in her hands. That’s not the reaction I was expecting, and I have no idea what to do. I touch her shoulder as gently as I can.

  “It’s okay,” I assure her. She doesn’t move, and I hear myself start to babble. “It’s okay, okay? We’ll keep looking, I’m sure someone’s seen him. He’s got friends, right? We’ll find his friends, and we’ll find him. He’s a nice guy, of course he has friends, I mean, he brought that lady at the library muffins every week—”

  Hannah perks up instantly. “Muffins? What muffins?”

  “Yeah.” I dig back in my brain. “Carrot zucchini muffins. That doesn’t even sound like a pastry, right? It sounds like a salad. . . .” I trail off. Hannah’s jumped to her feet. She zips up her backpack.

  “Are you okay?”

  She spins around to me. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “I know where we need to look,” she says. “Come on.”

  I scramble to my feet without hesitation, then feel immediately annoyed with myself. How can she do that, get me to change my plans with two words? It’s like those magnets we used in middle school science. How some were strong enough that you could feel them pulling in the smaller ones. You could actually feel the draw.

  It’s obvious, but I never really thought about it before: that’s what “magnetic personality” means.

  “Me and Ellis are hungry,” Hannah says to the boys. “We’re going to get something to eat.”

  “I’m in,” Sam says, even though she didn’t invite him. Theo follows suit.

  “Yeah, why not.” Tal shrugs. I glance over at Hannah, my eyebrows raised. She looks less than thrilled.

  “We’re going kind of far . . .” she says, rubbing at the back of her neck, but they’re on their feet and have started a new round of Five-Word Books. She sighs. “Fine. Whatever.”

  “Where are we going?” I whisper to Hannah as she sets a brisk place up the block, the three of them behind us.

  “The only place that would sell carrot zucchini muffins,” Hannah whispers. “Berkeley Bowl.”

  Berkeley Bowl is not, as the name suggests, a bowling alley. It’s a grocery store. It’s the kind of place that lets you grind your own peanuts into butter. It’s the kind of place that has kombucha on tap. It’s the kind of place where just to get in you must brave three separate ponytailed men wielding petitions.

  “Do you really think Prophet Dan shops here?” I whisper to Hannah. “It’s kind of pricey.”

  She looks at me like I’m six years old. “They throw out food. Or give it out. At the end of the day.”

  “Why are we here?” Sam complains, and Hannah looks away from me. “This is the worst place to get free samples. One time, my mom bought nutritional yeast here. Nutritional. Yeast.”

  “Was it good?” Tal asks.

  “Does it sound good?”

  Suddenly, Theo stops. “Hold up a second. Yo, Ravi,” Theo calls out. A young man down the aisle wearing a red T-shirt turns, and grins broadly. He walks over to us, and he and Theo fist-bump.

  “Hey, Theo.”

  Theo turns to the rest of us. “Our parents go to temple together.” Then, back to Ravi: “What’s up, man, when did you get back?”

  “August,” Ravi says. “I’m doing post-bac stuff at Cal. I have to get my science GPA up or the MCAT’s not even going to matter.”

  “That blows. So you picking up study snacks or something?”

  “Oh, no, I’m working here,” Ravi says. “Just a few shifts, in the bakery.”

  Next to me, Hannah goes very still.

  “Sweet,” Theo says. “Any free samples?”

  “I think there are some chocolate éclairs over by the customer service counter,” Ravi says. “Tell them I sent you.”

  Theo and Ravi say goodbye, and all three boys walk off in search of the éclairs. I’m about to follow them, but Hannah’s hanging behind. As Ravi passes her, she turns and taps on his arm.

  “Excuse me?”

  Ravi stops and turns around.

  “Sorry to bother you, but . . . at the bakery, do you ever . . .” Hannah pauses. “You guys ever give out food? Maybe to the homeless?”

  Ravi shrugs. “I’ve never closed up, but I mean, what doesn’t get sold . . .” He narrows his eyes. “Why?”

  “Could you maybe take me back there?” Hannah blurts out. “Maybe I could ask your coworkers?”

  Ravi takes a long pause, then a longer look at Hannah’s tense, desperate face. “Okay. Come on.”

  He leads her away, and I head in the direction of free dessert. I stop when I find Tal wandering the canned food aisle.

  “You didn’t want an éclair?” I ask, meeting him in the middle.

  He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t actually like chocolate.”

  That’s practically blasphemy for someone raised Mormon. Sugar is our only vice.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea you were secretly an inhuman cyborg.”

  “If I were a robot, I wouldn’t be this cold. God, it’s like an icebox in here,” Tal mutters, rubbing at his arms.

  It is, but I appreciate that. It tells me they’re committed to food safety standards. I’d rather be cold than get staphylococcal food poisoning from overheated chicken.

  “That’s why I love layers,” I say, hugging my cardigan closer. “You never know when you’re going to need something extra, especially if the fog rolls in.”

  “You’re like an onion.”

  “Uh,” I say. “Because I smell, or because I make people cry?”

  “Oh my God,” he says, horrified. “No, because you like layers, onions have—oh my God.” He looks up. “Why would I say that?” he appears to ask the giant ceiling fan.

  I bite the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. “It’s okay.”

  “For the record, I like onions,” he says. “I make a kickass salada de cebola, that’s all onions.”

  “You cook!” I say. “That’s a surprise. Who knew you had so many . . . layers.”

  He looks back down at me. He narrows his eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”

  I shrug, with a smile. “Just a little.”

  He smiles back, and then we’re smiling at each other, and if the silence goes on, I might say something inappropriate in the middle of a supermarket aisle. So I clear my throat and turn back to the shelf.

  “Don’t ever try canned onions, though,” I say, rummaging through the cans with suddenly clammy hands. “They’re the worst.”

  “Does anything canned taste good?”

  “Some things are better than others.�
� I pick a can off the shelf. “Pretty much any fruit is good. But you’ve got to be careful with meat.”

  Tal looks revolted. “No one buys canned meat.”

  “I’ve got a bunch of ham in my personal storage.” And then, because canned ham probably deserves an explanation: “It’s important to have lots of different kinds of foods so you don’t get appetite fatigue. If you eat the same things every day, you’ll get sick of them and that’s just as bad for you as whatever disaster you’re trying to survive.”

  “A disaster,” he repeats, slowly. “Your personal storage?” I pick at my cardigan collar. He’s going to find out eventually.

  “Yeah. I’m sort of a . . . prepper.”

  “Like for doomsday?” he asks, even more slowly this time.

  I hesitate. This is a lot all at once. Doomsday can wait another day. “Like for any kind of natural disaster. Floods, earthquakes.”

  Tal stares at me for a moment, like he’s trying to solve a riddle. “Is it your parents?”

  “My parents?”

  “Did they get you into it? Is your whole family a bunch of weird preppers?”

  “No,” I say, resenting the implication that I’m a weird prepper. I’m a normal prepper, as far as that goes. When you spend practically years of your life browsing the forums, you see what weird really looks like. You meet the really hard-core survivalists, the ones with bunkers in the woods and bullet magazines to last decades. In comparison, I’m the picture of normalcy. June Cleaver with freeze-dried casseroles. Betty Crocker in a gas mask.

  “My parents aren’t into this at all,” I say. “They hate it. They blame it all on my anxiety. As if my anxiety caused the tides to rise, and erratic weather patterns all over the world, and potential economic collapse. Like my personal anxiety did all those things.”

  “They don’t even have food storage?” Tal asks.

  Every family in our church is supposed to be prepared for a minor disaster—bottled water, nonperishable food, space blankets and lamps with extra batteries, that kind of thing. But it’s not enough to make it through something big, not nearly enough to stretch through an endless winter. It’s about self-sufficiency, not surviving a destroyed world.

  “That doesn’t count.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe it does.”

  “You sound just like them,” I say. “‘Oh, Ellis, we’re prepared. Oh, Ellis, you don’t need another pocket water filter. Oh, Ellis, don’t tell us a turkey wishbone could be whittled into a fish hook, you’re ruining Thanksgiving.’”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then, what?”

  “It’s the mind-set, you know? Be on alert. Be ready. Be afraid.”

  Maybe LDS people care more about emergency preparation than most people. But not everyone’s ancestors spent years on their feet, getting kicked out of Missouri and Illinois, watching their prophet murdered by a mob. They were on alert because they had to be, I remind Tal.

  “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Don’t oversell it. There were a lot of people way worse off than our pioneer ancestors.”

  “I know that.”

  “Like, for instance, all the Native people they trampled along the way.”

  “Oh my gosh, Tal, obviously,” I say. “It doesn’t come close. But it did happen. There really was an extermination order against Mormons in Missouri. They really did get massacred at Haun’s Mill.”

  “Yeah, and then they turned around and slaughtered a bunch of random people at Mountain Meadows and stole their kids.”

  I throw up my hands. “It’s not a competition!”

  “I’m just saying, if it were, you would lose.”

  “And I’m just saying they had good reasons for staying prepared,” I say. “But I don’t do this because I’m Mormon. I do this because I’m me.”

  He shakes his head. “You of all people shouldn’t be afraid.”

  “Of the apocalypse?”

  “Not if you believe it’ll end with Jesus coming back to rule over Earth for a thousand years of sunshine and joy,” he says.

  And he’s right. That’s what the scriptures say. After years of pain and suffering on Earth, after natural disaster, war, and plague has ripped the world to shreds, Jesus Christ will return in glory and usher in the Millennium, a thousand years of perfect peace throughout the universe.

  But not for everyone. Not for you.

  “We all still have to live through it,” I counter. “There’s no Rapture, you know Mormons don’t believe in that. There’s no avoiding what the world could become. We could all still die.”

  “But what’s it matter if you die in a nuclear bombing or a flood or a zombie attack?” Tal presses. “What’s it matter if you’ll just be resurrected, perfect and whole, with your perfect forever family in the Celestial Kingdom?”

  “Because maybe I won’t!” I burst out. “Because maybe I’m not worthy. Not worthy enough. Maybe I won’t make it there.”

  Too much. Way, way too much, even for a friend, and he isn’t your friend.

  “You don’t think you’re worthy?” Tal asks quietly.

  I knew it was too much. “I don’t know. Never mind.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be worthy?” I look away, but Tal moves so he’s in my line of vision again. “Why not?”

  I don’t know. I should be. I follow the rules, I pray every night, and I almost never fall asleep during early-morning seminary class.

  Your family is worthy. Your family is good and kind and holy, true believers, effortless believers.

  I believe. If I doubt, I doubt my doubts. I turn cartwheels to fit myself into my faith. I stay in the boat even though the water is rough and the shore looks so peaceful. I work to believe, and that alone should make me worthy. So why don’t I ever feel like I am?

  One day your doubt might be stronger than your belief. One day you might not fit into your faith. One day you might not be able to live the life your family wants for you.

  There’s a nagging, clawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, and sometimes it feels like it could slice me open entirely. And it can’t, I can’t let it, because who knows what would spill out?

  A faceless man with a crew cut, you in a white wedding dress.

  A baby, or two, or three, who look like angels to everyone but you.

  Lia Lemalu’s hair in the sunlight.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just not. I need—”

  “What?” Tal prods.

  “Time. I need more time.”

  “To do what?”

  “Become someone different.”

  “You don’t need to be different, you’re perfect,” Tal says. My eyes widen, and so do his.

  “Um,” I say.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he says quickly. “That’s not—”

  “I know,” I say.

  Of course he didn’t mean that, you’re the opposite of perfect, the anti-perfect, everyone knows it, and if you thought Tal would be different you’re wrong.

  “You’re not perfect. I’m not perfect, no one is, no one has to be. You don’t have to be.”

  “But that’s the whole point!” I say. “The entire point of being on Earth is get to a body, make good choices with it, and be as close to perfect as possible.”

  “God,” Tal says. “Someone has done such a mind-fuck on you.”

  “Tal!”

  “Is that really worse? Is me saying ‘fuck’ worse than someone beating you down with ‘perfect’? Is it worse than you thinking that if you aren’t perfect, you’re worthless?” He shakes his head. “No one expects you to be perfect in this life, not even those old dudes in Salt Lake City. I’m not a fan of the church. You know I’m not. But that’s not even doctrine.”

  “I can be closer, though, I need to be closer, because that’s what a person gets judged on. How close they came. That’s what determines if you go to the Celestial Kingdom with your family or—”

  Then I stop, because I don’t want to say it. Mormons don’t believe in
a binary heaven-or-hell situation. There are levels to the afterlife, different kingdoms that spirits are sorted into, and good people don’t suffer eternally in a lake of fire. The highest level is the Celestial Kingdom, where families get to be together. When you’re sealed together on Earth, you’re sealed for all eternity. Families can be together forever—people say it all the time.

  That’s the key word, though—can. Not will. It won’t happen if someone’s unworthy, and certainly not if someone leaves the church and never comes back. Like Tal.

  But as I’m standing across from him, I realize I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the God I love would separate a person like Tal—someone funny, and kind, and only sometimes prickly—from his mother or his half siblings, I don’t believe He’d ever do that to one of His children. I know it like I know that the sky is blue and my name is Ellis. There’s doctrine, and then there’s belief.

  Maybe my belief is stronger than I thought. Maybe it’s different than I thought.

  “You are worthy,” Tal says. “If there were a Celestial Kingdom, you’d get there. I believe that.”

  Tal, who doesn’t believe in so many things. Tal, who questions and doubts everything. Tal believes that.

  “Thank you,” I say, and it’s almost a whisper.

  “No big deal,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  “You’re worthy too,” I tell him. “You should get to be there too. With your family, I believe you’ll get to be there—”

  He smiles thinly. “It’s a relief, really. I don’t want to become a god and create worlds. I didn’t even like building dioramas in elementary school.”

  That’s a pretty flippant way to describe deep doctrine, and I almost say that. But then—maybe there’s a reason he talks about it that way. Maybe it makes the whole thing hurt less. Everyone deserves to hurt less.

  “Well,” I say, and find myself stepping closer. “If I were creating a perfect world”—I swallow—“I’d want you in it.”

  “You don’t have to wait, you know,” Tal says. “You shouldn’t have to wait for that.”

  I close the gap with another step. “For what?”