by Katie Henry
“For the afterlife. Whatever comes next. You deserve to be happy on Earth, too.”
Does happiness just come to a person? Does it arrive in a package labeled and addressed? Or is it something you have to want, something you have to take rather than ask for?
An inch away from Tal’s body, eye to eye, I think about how I could take it.
That’s how we’re standing—almost touching, barely breathing—when Sam rounds the corner and crashes straight into Tal.
“They were out of éclairs.” He holds out something that looks like beef jerky, only flatter. “You guys want some dehydrated fruit leather?”
When I get home, all the living room furniture is pushed up against the walls. Em is standing in the middle of the rug in leggings, a T-shirt, and socks. She stares, unblinking, at the far wall, then throws herself into a spin. I’d call it a pirouette, but the last time I did, she patted my arm and said it was a fouette, actually. Her left foot doesn’t even touch the ground as she spins once, twice, three times. Em is even more spectacular in practice than in recitals. In recitals, they have to make it look effortless. In practice, you can see Em’s clenched teeth and razor-sharp focus, the ache in her legs she’s pushing past. You can see how hard it really is. You can see how good she really is.
She drops out of the spin with a sigh.
“That was amazing,” I say, leaning against the doorframe. She startles and turns to me.
“I wish you’d tell Miss Ostrevsky,” Em says. “She says my spotting needs work.”
“Your spotting?” I doubt you can spot anything under those blinding stage lights.
“Spotting the wall. It’s something you have to do when you turn.” She points. “You pick a spot. You focus on the spot. And you keep your eyes on that spot as you spin.”
That makes zero sense. “But you’re turning. At some point, your head’s the other way. How can you keep your eye on something you can’t see?”
Her face lights up. “I’ll show you. That’s the best way to get better, right, teach someone else?”
Em takes my arm and guides me to the center of the room. She puts her hands on my shoulders, which requires standing on her tiptoes. She points at the wall. “Choose a spot, right at your eye level. Focus on it, really hard, and don’t take your eyes off it.”
I struggle to find a spot. The wall is just one vast, perfect ocean of light blue. Eventually I find an almost minuscule dent. Em takes my hands in hers and lays them gently on my shoulders. “Keep your hands here.”
I do, even though it reminds me of Mom correcting my posture.
“Start turning to the right,” Em commands. “Slowly. Slower. Keep your head still and your eyes on the spot. Your body moves, your head doesn’t.”
This is unnatural. My head wants to turn with my body; they’re attached. Ideally. I’m starting to feel for those Barbie dolls I decapitated as a kid.
“When you absolutely have to, whip your head around and find the spot.” I attempt that, but stumble and lose the spot. I look over at Em and shrug.
She tilts her head. “That’s supposed to prevent you from losing your balance.”
“Well, you tried.”
She wrinkles her nose. “You’re doing it again.”
“That’s okay.”
“Ellis, you’re doing it again.” She folds her arms. “Did you expect to be good at it instantly?”
It’s not that. I’m good at so few things, and terrible at so many. That’s fine when I’m on my own, in my room, but not with someone else’s eyes on me. I don’t like people seeing me fail. But Em looks serious, and I don’t have anything better to do, so I fix my feet, find the spot, and try again.
I fail again. I fail a third time. But I fail with more grace.
“Miss Ostrevsky says that usually, we know exactly where our bodies are in space,” Em tells me as I whip my head around again. “That’s how we keep our balance without trying. But when you’re spinning, your body gets confused. It thinks it’s free-falling. It can’t figure out where it is.”
“Proprioception.”
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called. A body’s unconscious spatial orientation.”
“Proprioception!” Em says with triumph, like I’ve given her a treasure hunt clue. “So if you don’t have that, you need something else to help you stay upright. You need your eyes, and your eyes need to stay where you put them.”
When she puts it like that, it feels scientific. It feels like a fact. I stare at my spot on the wall. I imagine myself as a horse with blinders. I imagine myself looking through an old-fashioned telescope. When I twist my head around, my eyes zero back in on the spot, and I remain upright.
“Hey!” Em says. “There you go.”
It wasn’t beautiful like hers, and I doubt I’d be able to do it in a real spin, but I stayed upright, and that’s a victory. I failed, until I didn’t. I kept my eyes ahead and my feet solidly planted. I kept my balance as the world around me tilted.
Em’s grinning like that creepy cat clock Grammy Kit had. “I knew you could do it,” she says. I should be annoyed by such self-satisfaction from my baby sister, but I’m not.
“I’ll let you practice,” I say. “Thanks for the lesson.”
“Wait, can you braid my hair first?”
I nod, and she places herself in front of me, shaking out her long hair, blond with the occasional ribbon of chestnut. I separate the top layer. For all of Em’s absurd flexibility, she’s never been able to French braid her own hair. Mom can do it, but I’m better, with both Em’s hair and mine. It’s never seemed like a skill, something to brag about. But as I plait and fold, I reconsider. If not a skill, maybe it’s a gift. Not a gift of mine, but a gift for Em. She can gift me with dance lessons and grit, and I can gift her with new words for her thoughts and beautiful hair.
I’ve nearly finished when I notice an odd twist in the braid, halfway up. And a strand I missed, near Em’s ear. The left side is slightly uneven, now that I look closer. I almost let the braid go, almost run my hands through her hair, almost start over. But then I don’t. Em can’t see that it’s imperfect. She probably wouldn’t care that it was. It’s imperfect, but that doesn’t mean it’s worthless.
I slip my own hair tie off my wrist and finish the braid.
Fourteen
TEEN MOVIES HAD led me to believe homecoming was about football and maybe a dance, but two years of real high school have clued me in: it’s Mardi Gras for teenagers. At least at this school. We don’t even call it homecoming.
“Why do you think they named it Rally Day?” Sam wonders aloud during lunch as he rolls a joint. The Park is packed with kids in face paint, school colors, and varying levels of intoxication.
“I think we’re supposed to be rallying the football team to murder our rivals,” Theo says.
“Wait, who’s our rival?” Tal asks.
Theo shrugs. “Sobriety?”
“No kidding. This place is lawless,” I mutter as two boys I half recognize from AP US History drink out of a water bottle I’m certain is not filled with water. “It’s like a Roman bacchanalia.”
“Fewer goat sacrifices,” Sam points out.
Behind Sam, on the other side of the Park, Hannah sits on a bench, something small and gray in her hands.
“Be back in a second,” I tell them. Tal frowns, but doesn’t stop me.
I slide down next to Hannah on the bench. She looks up and smiles, but it’s thin and tight.
“What’s that?” I peer over her shoulder at the small package in her lap. It’s badly wrapped, in what looks like a thicker kind of newspaper print.
“I think it’s a present,” she says.
“From who?”
She clears her throat. “Prophet Dan.”
I feel a stab of betrayal. She finally found him, after all this time, and she didn’t come looking for me?
“When did he give it to you?” I ask. “What did he say? About your visions, wi
ll he help us?”
Hannah shakes her head. “It was in my tree, this morning. Tied to a branch.”
She’s been carrying it around all day, unopened. Maybe she’s scared to see what’s inside. I touch the package.
“Do you want me to?” I offer.
Hannah shakes her head and unwraps. She’s going painfully slow, pulling at each piece of tape instead of tearing, until finally, we can both see what’s inside.
“Oh,” she whispers, like she’s just gotten a paper cut. Surprise and a little bit of pain.
All I have is surprise. “It’s . . . a fish.”
Not a real one. A stuffed toy, the kind you’d give to a little kid. When Hannah picks it up, its fins and tail flop.
“I liked fish,” Hannah says softly, rubbing her thumb against its plush blue scales. “When I was little. I knew all the kinds.”
How would Prophet Dan know that? Did he see it, just like Hannah sees the end of the world? I almost ask, but Hannah’s curled into herself, her eyes welled up, holding the fish in her hands like it’s breakable. Maybe this isn’t the best time.
So instead, I pick up the wrapping paper. It’s crumpled, torn, and taped back together out of order, but the print’s still visible. Not that it makes much sense. Half of it seems like a menu, with words like lentils and eggplant and cashew ricotta. The other half is random adjectives.
“Giving. Evolved. Humble,” I read. “What is this?”
Hannah, who has been focused on the fish, looks over my shoulder. With a gasp of recognition, she plucks the wrapping out of my hands.
“Thanks Café,” she breathes out.
“Huh?”
“Thanks Café, it’s this vegan restaurant. All the food is called something positive.” She points. “See, the tempeh Caesar salad is called Glorious, so you have to tell the waiter, ‘I am Glorious’ and then when he brings it to you, he says, ‘You are Glorious’ and it’s supposed to be affirming, or whatever.”
Sometimes, this city is a parody of itself.
“We have to go,” Hannah says. “It’s on Shattuck, it’s not far.”
I don’t understand. It’s not a clue, it’s just wrapping paper. Weird wrapping paper. “Why?”
“He’s been to the restaurant. Where else would he have gotten it?”
“I don’t know, from their trash?”
“Pretty sure they recycle.”
“But so what if he has been to the restaurant?” I ask. “I doubt he’s still there.”
“He might be a regular. They might know where he hangs out.” She scrambles to her feet.
“Wait,” I say, because I still have so many questions. Why did Prophet Dan send you this? Why does it seem like he’s hiding from you? How many things aren’t you telling me?
“Come on,” Hannah says, holding out her hand to help me up.
Now? She wants to go right now? “I have class.”
“Like anyone’s really teaching today.”
“I have a test in English.” Not that my grades matter at this point—I just don’t want my teacher to think I skipped it because I was drinking in the Park. It might be the end of days, but I still have standards.
“You can make it up,” Hannah says. So casually, so definitively, like she’s already seen the future and the future is me following her around like a puppy on a leash. Like I always have.
No. I don’t want to trot along at her heels anymore, I don’t want her to assume that I will. I don’t say No. I only think it. But I don’t move, either.
“Come on,” Hannah repeats, but it isn’t commanding, like before. It’s more of a beg. “Come with me.”
“After school,” I say. I want to help her. I do. But this isn’t a beehive, and I’m not a drone. “We’ll go after school.”
“It’ll be fast. You’ll barely miss fourth period.”
Not every language has a singular word for no. Even in English, I wonder how often people actually use it as a full sentence. A straight refusal. I wonder if I can do that, say no without caveats or explanation. Not just to Hannah, to anyone.
My feet stay on the grass. I literally dig in my heels.
Hannah reaches closer. “Ellis. Please.”
“Hey,” Tal says, appearing out of nowhere at Hannah’s side. I didn’t even see him walk up. I wonder how much he heard. “Can I talk to you real quick?”
Hannah frowns. “We were just about to—”
“Real quick,” Tal says again, then steers Hannah a few feet away. Purposefully out my earshot. I don’t try to eavesdrop, exactly, but I do watch them. Hannah’s got her arms folded across her chest. Defensive. Tal’s talking with his hands, and he’s talking a lot. Word by word, they’re getting louder, and I don’t think either of them realize it. Finally, it looks like Hannah’s had enough.
“You know, Tal, you don’t know everything!” she shouts.
“I know you have her completely snowed,” Tal says, matching her volume.
“She’s helping me.”
“I know you think this is helping, but—”
“Which is more than I can say for you.”
I’m far away, but I think Tal flinches. He runs a hand through his hair. “Hannah.”
Their voices drop, or maybe I can’t hear over the pounding in my chest. Are they talking about me? I am helping Hannah, and I think I’m the only one. But the way Tal’s saying it, it’s like he thinks I’m not smart enough to have chosen that for myself. Like I’m helpless. It prickles my skin like hives.
“You don’t know what’s best for me,” Hannah says, her voice rising again. “And I know you think you’re her . . . knight in stoner armor, but you don’t know what’s best for her, either.”
“She doesn’t even know who she’s looking for!” Tal shouts. It’s loud enough that for the first time, Hannah looks away. And straight at me. My heart flops into my stomach, because now I’m certain. The she is me.
“Well?” Tal throws his hands up. “Does she?”
Hannah is silent for a long moment, eyes still on me. She spins away from Tal and stalks back in my direction. I open my mouth, ready to tell her I’m not going. To actually refuse when she asks. But she doesn’t ask. She doesn’t say anything. All she does is scoop up her backpack and walk away from school as the end-of-lunch bell rings, without a word.
Without me.
My afternoon classes pass by in a blur. I can’t stay focused on anything, and not just because of the Rally Day chaos.
She doesn’t even know who she’s looking for.
I know Hannah hasn’t told me everything. But I know who we’re looking for—we’re looking for the only person she believes can help us survive the end of the world.
But then again—what has Hannah done, to prepare people, to warn them? Not enough. Maybe she doesn’t know how. And maybe I haven’t pushed her hard enough. I’m not nearly as helpless as Tal thinks I am. Maybe it’s time for me to stop following Hannah around and make some decisions of my own.
I’m the last one out of the locker room after PE, and by the time I’m dressed, the field hockey girls are starting to change for their away game. I go to my locker to retrieve my backpack, and find Paloma Flores in the same bay. I’ve had at least four classes with her over the past two years, but I know almost nothing about her. She plays field hockey. She wrote the best opinion piece our school paper ever printed, in which she called the all-male Barbecue Club “a school-sanctioned cult of toxic masculinity.” And she dated Hannah.
“Hey,” she says.
I smile back. “Hi.”
We watch as a senior girl walks by, glassy-eyed and cradling a half-empty water bottle like it’s her infant child.
Paloma shakes her head. “This day is always such a shitshow.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
“All my classes were basically free periods,” she says. “We watched The Godfather in chemistry. That’s not even about science.”
“My Spanish teacher at least tried. But have you ev
er seen someone try to play Scrabble Español drunk?” I ask. “It’s painful.”
“Yeah, my tito Carlo, every Christmas. Just replace Scrabble Español with Pusoy dos.” Then, off my confused look: “Card game. Filipino thing. A little bit like poker.”
As she stuffs her bag in her locker, I realize this is an opportunity to learn more about who Hannah was, before I knew her. Another piece of the puzzle. Another part of the truth, since I clearly don’t have it all.
“You and Hannah Marks,” I blurt out, but then don’t know what else to say without sounding creepy.
“What about her?”
I steer into the skid. “You two were together, right?”
She closes her locker. “We dated for almost a year.”
“But not anymore.”
“That is what dated means.”
I decide to power through the skid and over a cliff. “What happened?”
Paloma leans against the locker bank. She folds her arms. “Are you interested in her, or me?”
My cheeks burn. “Neither.”
She laughs. “Well, I’m taken, sorry, and if it’s Hannah, save yourself the trouble. Or maybe just save yourself. In every sense.”
I take a step back. “Hannah’s not . . . dangerous.”
“Of course not,” Paloma says. “She’s funny, and sweet, or at least she was, before she got so—” Paloma puffs up her cheeks with air.
“Weird?”
She blows out. “Beyond.”
“Because of her dreams?”
“The one about all her teeth falling out? Lots of people have that dream.”
Hannah never told Paloma about her dreams. Hannah never told her own girlfriend about her visions. Why?
“I’m only telling you so you don’t get too invested,” Paloma says. “Friendship or otherwise. Hannah got really into—what’s it called, when you go and live in the desert because the world is evil?”
It takes me a second to locate the word. “Asceticism?”
Paloma shrugs. “Probably. Hermit bullshit. Beyond weird.”
It’s more than that. An ascetic isn’t necessarily a hermit, though they could be. An ascetic is anyone who practices self-denial or purposefully detaches themselves from earthly pleasures. Some of it is simple stuff, like living frugally, but it can be hard-core and scary, too, like fasting for days or sleeping on a bed of nails.
