Let's Call It a Doomsday

by Katie Henry

  “Hannah’s not a hermit,” I tell Paloma. “She lives in a house. She’s sixteen, it wouldn’t even be legal.”

  Paloma puts her hand on her hip. “It started with gifts.”

  Even more evidence to the contrary. Hermits don’t give gifts, unless you count spiritual advice, which I guess I should, as a religious person.

  “There was this one coat of hers I always loved,” Paloma continues. “One day, she gave it to me. And I thought, okay, maybe a late birthday gift. Then came sweaters. And jeans. And books and DVDs and there probably would have been shoes, too, but we’re not the same size.”

  Okay, that is a little weird.

  “She must have given almost all of it away, her clothing, because eventually it was a rotation. Three pairs of pants. Five or six shirts. That one stupid Cal sweatshirt that doesn’t even fit her. She said it was simpler. And I said, is it really simpler if you have to do laundry every week?”

  Now that I think about it, Paloma’s right. The clothes I’ve seen Hannah wear could fill a single drawer. Even when she came to church with me, it was a shirt I’d already seen and her mom’s pants. And that sweatshirt. Every single day.

  “And fine, do a capsule wardrobe if the spirit moves you, I guess,” Paloma says. “But then she stopped cutting her hair. She wouldn’t go to movies, she wouldn’t go shopping, even if it was just for me. Then I see Laura Jacobs wearing the earrings I got Hannah for our six-month anniversary, and she says Hannah gave them to her. I storm over to her house after school and go into her room, and it’s all gone. Her clothes, except for a few outfits. Her books, except for, like, this stack of weird textbooks about mystics and hermits and whatever. Her room was basically empty. Like she’d just moved in.”

  No wonder Hannah wouldn’t let me go upstairs.

  “I get big dramatic gestures,” Paloma says. “But this was something else.”

  “What did she say?” I ask. “Did she say why?”

  “She said . . .” Paloma hesitates, though I can’t tell if it’s hard to remember, or just hard to say. “Hannah said she didn’t have a choice. It was the only way to make things right again.”

  “Make what right?” I wonder aloud.

  “If you’re looking for logic,” she says, “look somewhere else.”

  “Is that why you two broke up? Because she gave away the earrings?”

  Paloma stares at me incredulously. “We broke up because she wouldn’t talk to me. We broke up because she didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was wrong.”

  Hannah hasn’t told me her secrets, either. Maybe she doesn’t trust me, either. Maybe she doesn’t trust anyone, even the people she cares about the most.

  “Hannah’s not exactly attached to the world,” Paloma says, turning to go, “and that means you shouldn’t get too attached to her.”

  Fifteen

  WHEN IT’S COLD or raining Telegraph Avenue looks like any block in a college town. There’s a drug store, a bagel shop. Stores that sell branded sweatshirts and blue books. But on a day like today—bright, sunny, and unseasonably warm for early November—Telegraph comes to life. A college kid devours two slices of pizza in one gulp, like a reticulated python consuming a goat. Vendors’ carts and stands crowd the already narrow street. There’s a girl doing henna body art. A lady selling tie-dyed T-shirts to tourists. A man in rainbow suspenders and no shirt hawking bumper stickers that say THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY and feature a Cal Golden Bear hugging a Communist Party sickle.

  It smells like weed. It smells like the incense used to cover up that weed. It smells like home.

  “I still don’t know about this,” Hannah says, her hands dug deep in her pockets.

  It’s been nearly a week since she walked off without me in the Park. She found me later, to apologize for pressuring me. I didn’t mention what I’d overheard, and neither did she. And when she asked if I wanted to keep looking for Prophet Dan this weekend, I agreed, on one nonnegotiable condition: that she take the plunge and tell the world about her visions.

  “This is a good spot,” I assure Hannah. “It’s a T. We’ll get the people going up Bancroft and everyone going down Telegraph.”

  She looks skeptical. But she’s been skeptical of just about everything I’ve suggested, evangelism-wise. No, we couldn’t go door-to-door, it was creepy and we’d get the cops called on us. I told her practically every eighteen-year-old boy in my church does exactly that for two straight years and no one gets arrested, but this didn’t sway her.

  No, she wouldn’t get up and make speeches downtown, or at school, or even in the middle of the Cal campus where these things are practically expected. She isn’t good in front of crowds.

  No, we couldn’t make flyers—not even flyers—because all she knows is the date, and what good would that really do?

  And then I suggested Telegraph, where she wouldn’t be put on the spot and we’d still get to talk to lots of people. “Who knows,” I said. “We might even see Prophet Dan.”

  So here we are.

  “Are you ready?” I ask her.

  “Not really.”

  “Come on, Hannah.” I scan the crowds, trying to pick out someone approachable. “Shoulder to the wheel.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  I put on my brightest, sunniest smile. “It means buck up, buttercup.”

  Here are three of the people we talk to:

  A couple waiting for their friends outside a restaurant

  An older man shopping at the jewelry stand

  A college girl who is very and obviously hungover

  Here are the people we convert:

  No one. I still think flyers would have helped.

  I get better, as we go along. My explanation of our message is smoother, clearer. The last time, my voice doesn’t shake at all, and neither do my legs. Hannah only gets worse. Every single time, she mutters something vague about snow, and then turns her head away. Outwardly, I smile and thank them for their time. Inwardly, I’m seething at Hannah, who has to be the worst street preacher I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a few.

  “Are you okay?” I ask finally. “You seem kind of . . . off.”

  “I’m fine,” Hannah says. “A little light-headed.”

  “Do you want me to get you some water? Or maybe a bagel, Noah’s is just down the—”

  She’s already sidling away. “I’ve actually got this errand, so.”

  “We barely started!”

  “I’ve just got to drop something off. With a guy. It’s close by.”

  “What do you need to drop off?”

  She waves the question off. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I hate it when people say that. I hate that they assume it’s an option for me, I hate that.

  “Of course I’m going to worry!” I shout at her, throwing my hands up. “I’m not capable of not worrying about it. It’s built into my faulty toaster of a brain, of course I’m going to worry.”

  “Ellis,” she hisses, eyes darting around, as if anyone’s paying attention to us. This is Berkeley, we could be jousting on unicycles and we wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to stare at. “Would you please chill?”

  “No.” I fold my arms. “No. I won’t. Because there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She chews on the inside of her mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

  “Yes, you do,” I say. “There’s something big you’re not telling me, there’s something weird going on and I’m sick of pretending there isn’t, and we only have less than two months until . . .” I take a giant breath. “If you can’t trust me enough to tell me what’s going on, why should I trust you?”

  Hannah stands very still, her arms wrapped around herself. She sighs. She nods.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell you.”

  Sixteen

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE you hang out here alone,” I say to Hannah as we sit on a chipped-paint picnic table in People’s Park. “I’d be freaked
out.”

  To tell the truth, I am freaked out, even with Hannah by my side. We’re two teen girls in clean clothes. We obviously don’t belong here.

  She looks at me with a bit of pity. “Why would I be freaked out?”

  “Well.” I look around the park, at the scattered mini liquor bottles. I can’t see any needles, but I bet there are some. “They drink, don’t they? And do drugs?”

  “Some do. And wouldn’t you want something to make you forget you were living on the street? If you were cold and tired and dealing with some serious shit, wouldn’t you want a drink?”

  “I’m Mormon.”

  She shrugs. “I’m not a drinker, either. But I might be, if this were my life.”

  I’ve never thought about it like that. It’s always been about choices. We’ve all been given a body and the agency to make choices with that body. All choice takes is willpower, I thought. But maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe some choices aren’t all our doing. Maybe sometimes, genetics or bad luck or fate pushes our hand.

  “But what about, like . . . that guy.” I nod my head at an older man walking in circles around a bench, carrying on an animated conversation with no one.

  “His name’s Jerry.”

  “He’s talking to himself.”

  “He has schizophrenia.”

  “And that doesn’t make you nervous?”

  “Why would that make me nervous?”

  “Come on.” She stares at me. I wait. She says nothing. “He’s obviously really sick. He could attack you. He could be dangerous.”

  “You know, Ellis,” she says evenly, “if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s okay not to say anything at all.”

  My face burns. My spine coils.

  You offended her. You offended her and don’t even know why, which only makes it worse. You are the RMS Titanic in human form.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to—whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

  “Jerry,” Hannah says, pushing dirt off the bench seat with her shoe, “is a lot more likely to hurt himself than me. Or be attacked by someone else. People with mental illnesses are targets way more often than they’re perpetrators.” She sighs. “Mental illness is—”

  “You don’t need to explain mental illness to me.” I have one. Hannah doesn’t.

  “No offense,” Hannah says, “but no one thinks a person with anxiety is a public menace. They save that for psychosis. Or delusions.” She points at herself.

  “You’re not delusional.”

  She shakes her head. “Just because you don’t think so doesn’t mean other people feel the same way.”

  She must mean her parents. And maybe Martha, since that’s got to be why Hannah’s in therapy. But didn’t Martha tell me that dreams don’t count? Hannah’s not having dreams, though, not the normal kind. She’s having visions in her sleep. Is the only difference between a vision and a delusion whether someone else believes it? Does it take ten people believing it, or a million? Was every belief on Earth once a single person’s delusion, until enough people with enough power believed it?

  Or does it take only one person, no matter how powerless?

  Hannah shifts on the bench, looking across the park at a tall, lean man in a long brown coat. He’s older, with tightly coiled hair and a military-green rucksack. Hannah cups her hands around her mouth. “Chris!”

  The tall man turns his head. He raises a hand in greeting as he walks over to us. “How are you doing today?” he asks Hannah.

  “I’m alive. You?”

  “It’s like you read my mind,” he says, then flicks his eyes over to me. “Hello.”

  “Chris, Ellis. Ellis, Chris,” Hannah says.

  Chris nods. “Nice to meet you.”

  I start to say it back, but stop short, because the rucksack slung over his shoulder is moving.

  “Your bag,” I say, as if he doesn’t know it’s moving. “It’s—?”

  The world’s most adorable shepherd puppy pops his head out of the rucksack.

  “Oh!” I squeal, and then feel completely ridiculous. “Um. Your puppy is very cute, sir.”

  Hannah hides a laugh behind her hand. Chris sets the rucksack on the ground, and the puppy wriggles out. “You want to hold him?”

  I have never wanted anything more. “Yes, please.”

  He scoops the puppy up and places him in my arms.

  This is how I die. Of joy.

  “What’s his name?” I ask as the puppy licks my arm.

  “Frank Zappa,” Chris and Hannah say at the same time.

  “Like the musician?”

  “Like the legend,” Chris says. He turns to Hannah. “So what’s up?”

  Hannah jerks her head toward the basketball court. “Let’s talk over there.”

  While Chris and Hannah talk, I play with Frank Zappa, letting him gnaw on my hair and failing to eavesdrop on their conversation. It’s taking all my willpower and fear of divine retribution not to kidnap this puppy. I’ve never had a dog. My mom grew up rural, where dogs were meant to be useful, not pampered. My dad is allergic.

  I’d never really steal Frank Zappa, of course, but Chris doesn’t know that. Chris doesn’t know me at all, but he trusted me to take care of his most precious possession. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t choose trust over fear.

  Or maybe I just haven’t. Yet.

  Hannah and Chris head back over. Frank Zappa wriggles off my lap and bounds over to his owner. Chris pulls a leash out of his pocket and clips it to the puppy’s collar. His bag looks full.

  “Good to meet you,” Chris says to me.

  “You too,” I say, then lean forward to scratch Frank Zappa behind his soft ears. “Bye, buddy.”

  He looks to Hannah. “No promises. I’ll do my best, but . . .”

  She chews her lips. Nods. “Thanks, Chris.”

  “Call if you hear something. You’ve got my number.”

  “I couldn’t forget it,” she says, and they both laugh. They wave to each other, then Hannah starts walking to the park exit near the Christian Science church and I scramble to follow.

  “What did you mean?” I ask as we cross the street. “That you know his number?”

  “Oh,” she says, “it was my phone, first. I gave it to him.”

  I always assumed she didn’t have a phone because her parents wouldn’t let her have one, or she was taking a strong stand against modern tech. “You gave him your phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “He needed one.”

  And you didn’t? I think, but don’t say.

  “Hey,” she says, shifting her backpack, “Do you have to go home right away?”

  I told my parents I was doing a service day with girls from church. This is the perfect excuse, because Mom doesn’t like the woman in charge of my Laurels group and will therefore never ask about it. Not that she’d admit it. What Mom says is, “Sister Miller is always so well put-together.” What Mom means is, Sister Miller is a snotty jerk who never shows up for her church-cleaning assignment.

  “I’ve got time,” I tell Hannah. “Do you want to go back to campus and try street-contacting again?”

  “No. I want to show you something.”

  “Just for ten minutes,” I suggest, trying not to let my impatience creep into my voice. What’s wrong with her? Doesn’t she understand how important this is? She has information no one else has access to. People have a right to know their lives are going to change.

  “You said you wanted me to tell you everything,” she says. “You said you wanted to know.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then we’ve got to get up there before the sun sets,” she says, and picks up the pace.

  Hannah leads me up Haste Street, toward Cal stadium, toward the Greek Theatre where we’ll graduate. Would graduate. If the world weren’t collapsing before our senior year even started. The streets incline steeply as we walk, until Hannah stops at a small, paved path tucked i
n between a university building and a Mediterranean-style house.

  “Is this private property?” I ask, looking up the path.

  “It’s the fire trail. You’re never been on it?”

  “No.” We haven’t had a big fire here since before I was born. You can see it, though, in the Oakland hills. Large overgrown lots in prime locations, where a house once was. Even though the ash and char were cleared away decades ago, there’s still a hole that hasn’t been filled.

  Hannah and I arrive at the top of the path, where concrete gives way to dusty dirt and patchy yellow grass. I catch my breath and look to my left. A huge hill is in front of us, the path winding up past where I can see. I take a breath, preparing to remind Hannah that I’m scared of heights, scared of falling, scared of breaking bones, and pretty much everything else associated with hiking, but she’s already several feet in front of me. “Are you coming?” she calls over her shoulder. She doesn’t wait for the answer before continuing up.

  It’s clear that either I’m going to walk forward or I’m going to be left behind.

  I walk forward.

  Hannah sets the pace, so we’re up the hill to the first lookout point in what’s probably fifteen minutes, but feels like hours to me. My legs are sore, my lungs burn, and my shoulders ache from tensing them. But I didn’t fall.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” she says when we reach the lookout spot.

  It is. From the bench off the trail, you can see downtown Berkeley, the port of Oakland with its towering cranes, all the way to San Francisco. It’s hazy today, but if it weren’t, you could probably see the Farallon Islands, too. In the gradually dimming afternoon light, the bay shimmers and the city gleams.

  I slump down on the bench, focusing out onto the water. I don’t look past the cliff, just a few feet in front of us. I keep one hand on the bench seat and one ankle twisted around the bench leg. It’s bolted into the earth, and I will myself to feel that steady too. After a moment, Hannah sits down next to me. Her gaze is straight ahead, but her eyes look unfocused. Like she’s seeing what I’m seeing, but her mind is somewhere else entirely.