Let's Call It a Doomsday
Page 22
IT’S NOT THAT I lie to Hannah about Tal. But I don’t exactly tell her. I’ve barely even seen her, after our day in San Francisco. It’s like she’s avoiding me, and now that it’s December, this is about the worst time for her to decide she needs her space. In theory, at least.
December 21 inches closer and closer, but it’s weird. It doesn’t feel like I thought it would, the end of days. The closer it gets, the more abstract it seems. And the more abstract it seems, the less space it takes up in my brain. Or maybe it’s just being crowded out.
On December 4, someone pulls the fire alarm during sixth period, and school basically lets out early. I should use that as an opportunity to post more flyers, maybe around campus. But instead I hang out with Tal, Sam, and Theo under the tree, watching annoyed firefighters check the school.
On December 10, both my parents are out of the house. I should be finding a way to stockpile more winter survival stuff. But instead, I spend the entire afternoon watching Em practice her routine for the winter recital.
On December 16, Tal asks if I want to skip fourth period and have a long lunch at his dad’s house, which is a couple of blocks from school. I say yes, without hesitation.
I like Tal’s house. It’s only the second time I’ve been, but it’s small enough that I already feel like I know my way around. It’s cleaner than I expected a home with two dudes to be. The fridge is stocked, the counters are tidy, and the floor is clean enough that even my mom would approve. I’ve never seen my dad clean in his life, and he can cook eggs and not much else. “Oh, that’s just men,” I’ve heard my mom say. My dad’s mom, too. But obviously, it’s not true. I wonder what the men in my family could do if the women didn’t treat them simultaneously like kings and children.
Tal’s house is open plan, which I love, because it means I can sit on the very comfortable couch and still see him as he digs through the fridge.
“What about a frittata?” he asks. “Or . . . we’ve got leftover vatapá. It’s a shrimp curry thing.”
“The second one.”
“Are you sure?” Tal throws me a look over his shoulder. “My dad makes it kind of spicy.”
“I can handle it.”
“Okay,” Tal says, “but if frog’s-eye salad at the ward potluck is more your style, that’s cool. You don’t have to prove anything here.”
That reminds me of something I’ve wanted to ask Tal for over a week now.
“What did you mean, that first day we kissed?” I ask. “When you said I didn’t have to prove anything?”
“Oh,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m physiologically incapable of that. What would I want to prove?”
Tal closes the fridge door. He takes a seat next to me on the couch. “That you like guys,” he says.
My stomach clenches. “What makes you say that?”
“Hannah said she thought . . .” He looks away for a moment, then back at me. “She thought I might not be your . . . type. You know?”
My stomach clenches tighter. I hold my breath. Tal notices.
“She only said that because I asked her if she thought you liked me,” he says quickly. “She didn’t say why she thought—”
“Hannah isn’t—” I interrupt him, and he stops. He waits for me to continue. And I wait for some sort of new courage to burst out, to feel like the kind of a person who could say these things out loud. The kind of person who knows who she is. I wait to feel different, to feel ready, to feel prepared. But nothing happens. I still feel like the person I’ve always been—nervous, awkward, unsure. It’s only that now, I have new things to say.
“Hannah isn’t wrong,” I tell him. “She’s not all the way right but she’s not wrong. I do like girls. I also like girls. Some girls. It’s not—” I smile, suddenly, remembering one of my very first conversations with Tal. “It’s not an either/or situation, for me.”
I exhale. It was easier than I thought it would be. And of course it was. This is Tal. He comes from the same world I do, he feels the same things, he’s said these same words to people who accepted him and people who didn’t. I might not be saying these words, if he hadn’t come into my life. I might never have realized I could.
“Okay.” Tal nods. “Okay. So you’re bi, then. That’s awesome.”
But maybe Tal and I aren’t exactly the same. If only because he’s had more time to wear these kinds of words, make sure they fit right.
“I think so,” I say. “It seems right, it seems like it fits, but—I’m not positive. I don’t know for sure. Can I wait on that, until I know for sure?”
“Wait on what?”
“Picking a label.”
“That’s chill with me. But I’ve got to tell you,” he says with an apologetic shrug, “bi girls who hate labels is sort of a cliché.”
“I don’t hate labels. I just know there’s lots of different ones, tons of them, probably ones I haven’t even heard of yet, and . . .” I search for the right words. “I only just got here, you know? Let me take a look around.”
He nods. “Take as long as you like.”
“Well.” I take his hand in mine, and draw him closer. “I like the view so far.”
We abandon lunch. And TV. And my cardigan. He doesn’t push me or pressure me. We don’t do anything I’d have to confess to my bishop, but it’s enough. Oh my gosh, it’s enough. I’m starting to understand why some people get married in such a hurry.
Together on the couch, my head against his chest, he traces a pattern on my bare arm with a warm finger.
“Your skin’s so soft,” he says. “How do you get it so soft?”
A sixteen-year beauty routine of rarely going outside and never doing anything dangerous. “Well, not playing around with a lighter all the time helps.” His hand shifts, and I place my palm on top of it. “No, don’t stop. A couple more minutes and you’ll pass the Universal Edibility Test.”
“The what, now?”
“Prepper thing. It’s how you tell if something’s poisonous.” I twist around and sit up on my heels. “First you smell it. . . .” I put a hand on his shoulder and sniff at his hair. He smells like coconut shampoo and cut grass. He smells like summer.
“Then, you hold it against your skin for fifteen minutes or so, to see if there’s any reaction.” I run my hand over his shoulder, down his arm. You’re supposed to be watching for rashes or burns, but maybe goose bumps count, too.
“Then?” He puts his arm around my waist and closes the space between us. “What’s next?” he asks, like he already knows.
“Then,” I say, “you can taste it. See what happens.”
I kiss him, gentle and slow. Time might freeze. The world might stop in its motion. I wouldn’t know. “Yep.” I sit back. “I think you passed the test.”
Tal shakes his head, the edges of his mouth quirking up. “So what you’re saying is now you feel comfortable cannibalizing me?”
Trying to Be Cute, Accidentally Implying Cannibalism: The Ellis Kimball Story.
“I’m saying I think you’re safe,” I tell him, and he grins. I settle back down against his chest and close my eyes.
“The Universal Edibility Test,” he says, after a minute of happy silence. “Who knew?”
“I did,” I say, my eyes still closed.
“True. And that’s what I like about you,” he says. “All the best parts of those survivalist reality shows, none of the worst.”
My eyes spring open. I sit up, pull back. “What do you mean?”
“You’d be the best person to get lost in the wilderness with. You’d know just what to do. I bet you’re great at first aid, too.”
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. For all the planning and preparation, I have no clue what I’d be like in a crisis. Would I be calm? Would I get hysterical? There’s no way of telling.
“You’ve got all the practical stuff down,” Tal continues. “But you’re not building a bunker. You’re not ready to pull a handcart to Missouri b
ecause some old dude told you the end was nigh. You’re not an apocalyptic weirdo, like some people. You’re not crazy.”
I yank my arm out of his hand. “Don’t say that.”
Tal furrows his eyebrows. “That you’re not crazy? Why?”
He wouldn’t say that if he knew what I really think—thought? Still think? I did believe it, maybe I still do. I’m not what he thinks I am—what I was—no, am.
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” I tell Tal.
His mouth drops open. “But—I said you weren’t—”
“You shouldn’t say it at all.”
He holds up his hands. “Okay, now I feel crazy.”
I snatch up my cardigan, coat, and backpack. “You’re not! You’re not, I’m—” I shake my head so hard it hurts. “I’m going. I have to go.”
Tal scrambles up from the couch. “Wait, wait.”
“I just remembered, I have a math test.”
“Ellis.”
“I have to go.”
Tal’s shoulders are slumped, and he’s still got one foot on the couch. He looks confused. Confused comes from Latin; confused once meant pouring together, mixing or joining. But it really meant throwing into disorder. Upsetting something delicate.
I’ve been teetering on this precipice for weeks, sitting on a cliff, right at the edge of belief and unbelief. The end of the world, just one step away, but the tug of hands on my shoulders, too, keeping me earthbound. Martha telling me I’m not a burden. The salt spray in my face at Lands End. Tal’s lips on mine, hesitant and hopeful. I wanted those things. I loved those things. I wished those things wouldn’t end, and neither would the world. I wished it wasn’t true.
But it is true. If it isn’t true, then everything I’ve done was for nothing. Every day I spent with Hannah, every lie I told my parents, every dollar I spent on supplies, every second of my life I spent thinking, planning, preparing. If it isn’t true, I’m exactly what Tal said, and worse. It has to be true. It has to be.
“I have to go,” I say again.
“I don’t understand,” he says, so simply and honestly it makes my heart split apart.
Of course he doesn’t. No one does. And no one will, unless I tell them.
“I have to go,” I whisper, just one more time, as he lets me walk out the front door.
Here are some things my high school has:
The legally required American flag in each classroom, but half of them are upside down
Substitute teachers who tell you their entire drug history, including that one time they technically died
An annual tradition called the Senior Streak, in which twelfth graders clad only in body paint run through the central courtyard
Here are some things my high school does not have:
A dress code
A debate team
A halfway decent security system
No one stopped me as I walked onto campus ten minutes after the lunch bell. No one cared when I pulled a giant stack of orange flyers out of my locker. No one questioned me as I walked through the hallways of three different buildings taping the flyers to the walls. And now I’m in the administration building itself and still, no one appears to notice me. Did I turn invisible on my walk from Tal’s house? Do I look so unthreatening everyone feels comfortable staring right through me? Does anyone take me seriously, or am I just a joke, am I just—
I shake my head and blink back the hurt. I’m not. They’ll see that I’m not.
I tack a flyer to the bulletin board outside the admin offices, a bull’s-eye in the center of the other flyers. Normal flyers, the kind that don’t urge you to start stockpiling water and nonperishable food. Flyers for softball tryouts. Flyers for the spring musical—Les Misérables, which I would have liked to see, even if no high schooler can pull off Jean Valjean. Flyers for the state Quiz Bowl championship Theo would have gone to, if the world were not ending.
Which it is. It definitely is. Because if it wasn’t, what would that make me?
I startle at the clip of shoes on the linoleum floor. I spin around and press myself against the bulletin board. It’s Ms. Bayer, one of the assistant principals, and she doesn’t even look my way as she shuts the door to her office and walks in the opposite direction down the hall, tapping on her phone. I didn’t even know that was her office. I’ve only seen her in the courtyard during passing periods, clicking around in very high heels, yelling at everyone to get to class, and conversing with the water polo boys in a syrupy voice that is borderline creepy.
I stand still, feeling the blunt side of thumbtacks against my spine. I’m here, at the right place, at the right time. It’s almost fate. The posters aren’t enough, the posters were never enough. It’s fate. I walk with purpose and quick steps around the stairs, down the hall, and straight into her unlocked office, shutting the door behind me. I fumble for the lock and turn it into place with a satisfying click.
I know exactly what I’m doing.
I run over to the phone on Ms. Bayer’s desk. I scan the laminated instructions beside it. In another time, I would have hit each button slowly, uncertainly, checking and rechecking the steps, doubting and re-doubting myself.
I punch in the code without hesitation and scoop up the microphone. I flip the switch, and the on light turns green.
I have no idea what I’m doing.
“Attention,” I say, too close to the mic, and it screeches. I pull it back a bit. “Attention, students, faculty, and administrators of Berkeley High School. Though mostly the students, because I’m guessing the adults are mad at me already. This is an announcement. It’s not about clubs, or sports, or dances, it’s about your lives. Your very lives are at stake, so listen up.”
Now someone’s at the door, shadowed and distorted through the frosted glass. The person tries the knob, and it rattles but doesn’t turn. Someone’s yelling at me to open up. Someone’s yelling at me to stop, but I can yell at myself, too, and I’m yelling, Keep going, Ellis, keep going!
“As we speak, the world is coming to an end. Before the year is through, the world you’ve always known and loved—well, the world you’ve known, anyway—is going to end. Call it doomsday, apocalypse, armageddon, the end is near. The end is near.”
I said it twice. I didn’t need to say it twice. For a second, I wonder exactly who I’m trying to convince, but my own voice drowns that thought out.
“A storm will come, snow and ice and cold, and bury San Francisco,” I go on. “The sky will turn red. Stars will fall. Get ready now, get prepared now, don’t wait. Stock up bottled water, nonperishable food, warm clothing, nonelectric heat sources. Kiss your crush. Tell your parents you love them. Don’t go out with any regrets.”
There are more people at the door now, at least three, and someone flailing their arms. There’s shouting, too, but it’s muffled. There are multiple people outside who are all furious with me, and I should be terrified. I am terrified. But I’m also grinning from ear to ear as I grip the mic and turn away from the door. Right now, I’m the one with the microphone. I’m the one with the audience. I have the voice that can’t be silenced. And I’ll enjoy it as long as it lasts.
“While I’m here,” I say, leaning against the desk, “can I just say, this school is so freaking weird. I know high school is supposed to be a disaster just by definition, but have you ever thought about what you’ll tell your college roommate? When she’s like, ‘Oh, I was homecoming queen,’ and you’ll have to be like, ‘Oh, really? I spent homecoming watching children drink grain alcohol in a public park.’ And she’ll say that’s very atypical, and then you’ll one-up yourself by telling her about Senior Streak, and it’ll be a weird conversation.” I take a breath. “Or it would be, except none of us are going to college, because the world is ending in less than a week, which I think I mentioned.”
Then I stop short, because I want to have that conversation, as awkward as it sounds. I want to have a thousand more awkward conversations, and good ones, and new ones—I
want the universe to keep spinning. But it won’t. It can’t. Or I wouldn’t be doing this.
“For as messed up as this school is, it’s the best preparation for the impending apocalypse we could have asked for,” I say. “No one here cares what you do, even when they definitely should, and that’s going to be true in doomsday, too. No one here stops you from taking risks or making choices, no matter how young you are or how terrible those choices are. You should hold on to that. When the world ends.
“What else, what else.” I twirl the mic cord, feeling oddly like a stand-up comic and also like I’m going to pass out. “Oh, well, not that I’m complaining, I guess, but what kind of school makes it this easy for me to get on the PA system, anyway? What is our campus security team for, exactly? The guard out front didn’t stop me from breaking into this office because he was playing his Game Boy. That’s concerning. Who still has a Game Boy? Also, someone should tell Ms. Bayer to stop flirting with the water polo boys. That’s even more concerning.”
There’s a click behind me, metal against metal. I spin around just in time to see Ms. Bayer throw open the door, keys gripped in one fist. She strides over to me and holds out her other hand, palm up. That’s fine. I said what I needed to. More than that, I said what I wanted to.
“Thank you, Berkeley High,” I say into the mic. “It’s been great. Fingers crossed we all survive armageddon, because I honestly think I’d miss you.”
I lay the mic in her hand.
Twenty-Three
MS. BAYER CONFISCATES my things and sticks me in an empty conference room. “Wait here,” she orders. “We’re calling your parents.”
I’m not sure if that’s intended to scare me, or comfort me. It does both.
When Ms. Bayer leaves, I don’t hear the door lock. I briefly consider making a run for it, but there’s a receptionist right outside. Even if I made it out the front door, what would be the point? As scary as this is, I got exactly what I wanted. The message went out. So why do I feel so sick?
This room is aggressive in its boringness. There’s no artwork, no wall calendar to look at, and it’s basement level, so the windows provide light and not much else. Occasionally, a person’s legs come into view as they walk by. I settle on counting the squares in the linoleum under my feet. I’ve made it up to 328 when I hear someone say: