CHAPTER THIRTY
AUGUST 22: BEFORE THE FIRST STORM
Family dinners have become few and far between. It’s not my fault, though. Mom says that she’s tired of cooking all the time if we’re not going to appreciate it. I also think she’s tired of our nihilistic dinner conversation. Dad is working longer hours, although I’m not sure if it’s for the money or so that he can avoid Mom. Avoid talking about Alaska. I think it’s a combination of both.
I know that Dad is going to go to Alaska anyway, with us or without us. He’ll let us make our decision when it’s time to come home for winter break, assuming the world hasn’t gone to shit before then. He left the email chain with his sister open on his computer once when he went to the bathroom. I had come in to steal some of his printer paper, and I saw his screen. I don’t think it’s snooping if the person leaves it out like that.
Mom insisted on having a family dinner tonight, however, because she wanted to do something special before we send Thea off to college in Ohio. Still, the special occasion doesn’t change the fact that none of us want to be here. I don’t even need to be in Alaska; I just want to be far away from here.
I leave for college in two weeks, which is later than most schools but works for me. Two more weeks at the bookstore, two more weeks to figure out what to pack, two more weeks to figure out how I’m supposed to act like an adult. It feels weird to be going to college when things are continuing to get worse everywhere. It feels weird to ignore what’s happening and act like this is the new normal. That this is just how it is now.
My school sent out an email last week about storm shelters and flood insurance, just to prove that everything was absolutely fine. Even if anything happened in Vermont, I’d be safe, and classes would continue, because that was obviously my biggest concern.
The anxious energy at the dinner table is palpable. Mom insisted on eating outside, “under the open sky.” I think that it’s just an invitation for bugs to bite me and take a swim in my water glass. Still, I know better than to complain. I’m not foolish enough to think that spoiling Mom’s special dinner is a good idea.
Thea decided on hamburgers for her final meal, which I appreciate. They’re one of my favorites, and Mom is able to make them well. No one says anything as we eat. The entire world is silent except for the clicking of silverware on our plates.
At first, I don’t notice when it starts to drizzle. I hadn’t even noticed that there were clouds in the sky in the first place. The darkness helps to hide them, and I never expect to see an abundance of stars in New Jersey. One day, maybe in Alaska, I’ll go to the middle of nowhere, armed only with a feeble flashlight, and then turn it off. Then it will be only me and the stars. All of them, in all their glory. In Alaska, the world will all fade away into nothing.
Mom wants to ignore the drizzle, I can tell. She worked hard on this dinner, and she wants us to sit here and finish, even if that means soggy hamburger buns. No complaints.
We continue to eat, until I can’t take the quiet anymore, swiftly standing from my place at the table and grabbing my empty water glass, the skin on my hand starting to itch slightly.
“Is anyone going to say anything?” I ask. “Or are we going to eat in silence, because I can do that inside.”
“Liz…,” Dad warns, placing his knife back down on the tablecloth.
“Thea leaves tomorrow, and you and Mom hate each other so much that you can’t even pretend that things are okay?”
Thea rolls her eyes. “Don’t make your tirade about me, Liz.”
“Or how about don’t go on a tirade at all,” Dad says. “This is supposed to be pleasant.”
“That’s easy to say when you’re leaving us soon,” I snap, something foreign possessing me. “Are you guys going to get a divorce?”
“Don’t say that,” Mom says. “Don’t say things like that.”
I’ve gone too far to turn back now. I might as well dig my grave. “Why don’t I get a say in anything?” I ask. “Why don’t we get a say in anything? You and Dad argue about everything and don’t even include us in the conversation!” Mom opens her mouth to speak, but I keep going. “Dad, I want to go with you to Alaska. I don’t want to go to college, and I don’t want to stay here to rot.” I somewhat enjoy the shocked look on Mom’s face, but before she can say anything, I turn and stride toward the back door.
“I’ll be inside if you care to include me in your next conversation.” I make my way up the back stairs, my sneakers pounding against the wood. It takes a couple of tries to get the door open, but then I slip inside and shut it behind me, locking it.
I sit down at the kitchen table and revel in my glory. I can hear thunder rumbling above me, but I don’t pay attention. If my rant didn’t ruin dinner, the rain certainly will.
I set my empty water glass down on the table as the rain begins to pour down. It’s torrential, the type of rain that’s nice to get caught in when you’ve been overheating under the summer sun. I just shake my head as I play with my empty glass, pushing it back and forth on the wooden table. It’s like a hockey puck, gliding precariously from one hand to another.
I stop only when I hear screaming.
It’s not uncommon to witness a fight between my parents. They like to pretend that we can’t hear them if they fight outside, but they forget that our house is old and the walls are thin. At this point, everyone in the neighborhood has heard one of their fights. I’ll let them squabble on their own. I’m sure that Thea will join me eventually.
But the longer I listen, the more I realize that this doesn’t sound like a normal fight. Neither voice stops to make room for the other. Instead, they shout together, the sound raw and rabid.
Something is wrong.
It’s like there’s something static in the air, the hairs on my neck standing on edge. I abandon my glass, moving toward the door. Something has to be wrong for them to be fighting like this.
When Thea’s voice joins their shrieked chorus, I hesitate. Thea doesn’t yell. Thea never yells. Something is terribly wrong.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Thea appears at the kitchen door, her figure illuminated by a flash of lightning. My heart begins to pound as I stumble forward. What is happening?
As I get closer, I get a better look at Thea. Only it doesn’t look like Thea at all.
Her face is bright red, blistering as the rain pours down. Her clothing barely clings to her figure. Her pale skin hangs off her body like it’s been melted by a blowtorch, turning to liquid before my very eyes. Small threads of tissue graft larger pieces to the bloody meat that dwells underneath. At her shoulders and elbows, the places where there’s no barrier built by fat and muscle, I can see glints of white bone, cartilage still gripping the joints. The skin on her forearm bunches around her wrist like excess fabric as the rain bites moth holes through her stained shirt. My heart drops as I stare, motionless, unsure if I’m looking at a human being or a ghost. This can’t be real. This can’t be real life. This is the type of monster that haunts my very worst nightmares.
All I can do is watch, my feet suddenly rooted in place, as Thea pounds on the glass with a bloody hand. She fumbles with the doorknob, her raw skin unable to grip the cold metal. I can hear her wails through the glass, even if I can’t see the tears in her eyes. The rain, she gasps as she braces herself against the door. Please, Liz. Help.
But I don’t move forward. I can’t. I can’t even breathe as my heart seizes up and my insides turn to stone. Instead, I stumble backward, my feet tripping over one another and sending me tumbling toward the ground. I fall with a thud, biting my lip so that the taste of blood fills my mouth. A crash echoes through the house.
I struggle to get back onto my feet, my limbs shaking too hard to function. My hands clench and quiver as my nails dig into my skin. I’m paralyzed by fear, by confusion, by a million thoughts racing through my head, making it impossible to think. Nothing computes. Nothing makes sense.
But I shove myself back onto my feet and take a few staggering steps toward the door. I feel like I’ve never moved my body before, each muscle made solid by years of stagnation. My fingers reach out for the lock, the lock I turned when I returned inside.
Thea’s screams echo on the other side of the glass as I try to twist the lock and open the door. But the metal doesn’t move, no matter how hard I push, my fingers turning white from the amount of force they’re applying. Again and again I use the heel of my palm to shove against the lock, praying for it to give. Maybe if I had a few more seconds, I could get it open. Maybe if there were just a few more moments, the lock would budge. But it doesn’t.
All I can do is watch as Thea’s knees buckle and she falls to the ground, the back door still shut. All I can do is watch as her chest stops rising and falling. All I can do is watch as she stops moving completely.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tonight I dream of death. I can practically taste it on my tongue. I dream of darkness, and cold, and nothingness.
The dream is like an amalgamation of every doomsday movie I’ve ever seen, replayed in my mind, ricocheting off the sides of my skull. My dream disobeys the rules of physics, buildings warping, streets bending upward to meet the sky.
When I was little, like really little, I read a book about the end of the world. I think it was my first. I guess it was sort of a gateway drug, and then fiction gave way to real life, and here we are.
I checked the book out from the library, its cover worn and slightly stained. It was the last book in a companion series to an original series, which I loved. Even though my favorite characters were gone and the plot was starting to get questionable, I kept on reading.
The end was near for our intrepid heroes, and I read page after page after page in the way that only kids on summer vacation can. The characters raced against the clock, attempting to stop members of a rival family from becoming immortal as the sky turned yellow and all hell broke loose. Nine-year-old me vowed to notice if the world was ending, and to never ignore my gut instincts if the sky began to change color. Surely that was the telltale sign that everything was going to shit.
It makes sense, now, that the sky in my dream is yellow, even though the clouds rolling in over the actual horizon are a sickening gray. In my dream, the ground is covered in soot. Volcanic ash descends from the sky, piece by piece by piece, never lasting long enough that it sticks.
The dream continues to twist and turn, thunder rolling in the distance, and as the sky turns from yellow to red, I start to fall. Straight through the road and the abyss that lurks underneath it. Straight through the open sky. I fall, holding nothing and picking up speed, until I jolt awake, cold sweat on my brow.
Dim sunlight has just begun to trickle in, at least whatever sunlight can make its way through the foreboding clouds that cover half the sky. In the back of my mind I know we can’t have more than twenty-four hours left, if we’re lucky. I know I have to get up and get to work. As much as we can do before it comes.
I throw off my covers and pile them at the end of the mattress. Quickly, I tug on my socks before turning toward Maeve.
“C’mon, sleepyhead. Time to seize the day.”
I expect a groan from her direction. I expect her to tell me to never call her sleepyhead again. I expect her to remind me that I’m normally the one who sleeps in late. But there’s no reply.
I walk over toward her, the floorboards creaking underneath me with each and every movement. Stooping down to nudge her awake, I realize that something’s wrong.
She’s gone, blankets piled up where she used to be, leaving an empty space in the shape of her sleeping bag. Just like in one of those corny ’80s comedies my dad used to make me watch on the weekends.
And then I remember what I said last night. What I told her and the way her face looked as the words sank in. Leave. When I wake up, I want you to be gone. She did it. She really did it, and I told her to.
Fear knots in my stomach, and I start to sweat. I rush out of the bedroom, half expecting Maeve to be sitting in the well-worn armchair, laughing about how panicked I am, just another teen-movie cliché. But Maeve is nowhere to be found. All I find is my notebook sitting on the kitchen counter, a piece of paper and a pen draped carefully across the cover.
I take a step forward, willing my legs to move even though they don’t want to. I reach out with a shaky hand and lift the paper, unfolding it. Anything would be better than this. Even my not-quite-a-nightmare of a dream would be better than this. At least I know that’s not real.
Curving letters slope across the page, black ink slightly smudged in some places. It looks like it was written in a rush.
To Elizabeth Swann,
To Liz.
I’m sorry that I had to do this. I know that you told me to, but I’m still sorry.
It’s my fault that the woods are off-limits. It’s my fault that you’re still here, because I didn’t try hard enough to persuade you to come with me. I’m sorry.
But I’m not going to let myself die with you. No matter how much you like your books, and your tragic endings, I’m not willing to go out like that. This isn’t one of those romances where one of us has to die for the plot to progress. My life is worth more than the fate of a building. Yours is too.
If you come to your senses, there are directions on the back of this paper.
I will remember you for the rest of my life. No matter how long it is. I can only hope that yours is just as long.
Don’t forget me.
Love,
Maeve
As I fold the paper and stare out the window, I realize that once again, the cycle has repeated itself. Once again, I’m alone. Once again, I have no one else to blame but myself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
There’s this thing someone with too much time on their hands made up called the butterfly effect. I don’t know why they decided to call it the butterfly effect, because that seems like false advertising to me. The whole idea is that each moment affects every other one, and that the smallest occurrence, like a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, can set off a domino effect that could change everything. It’s like when you miss the traffic light by milliseconds, making you miss your train. Maybe waiting on that train was your one true love, and maybe, now that you’re stuck waiting on the platform for the next train, you end up meeting your archnemesis. The dominoes keep falling. When you’re born everything is perfect, and you’re headed down the path called destiny without a care in the world. And then, with every shitty occurrence, things just get a little bit worse.
Some look at the butterfly effect and marvel at how lucky they are to avoid a downward spiral of small tragedies. I have a philosophy of my own. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Some call it Murphy’s Law; I call it being realistic. And my lifetime of adherence to Murphy’s Law has led me to this point. No butterflies, just poor life decisions.
Maybe it all went wrong when I allowed Maeve to stay. Without her, I would have two functional arms. I wouldn’t be hurting so much. I wouldn’t have let my guard down and allowed everything to get so out of hand. There wouldn’t be anyone marching toward me with knives and guns and who knows what else. There wouldn’t have been anyone to leave me. No one there to lie to me. I’d just stay here, unbothered. It would be my choice alone.
But maybe my worst mistake was fighting so hard to survive. Outlasting everyone I knew or loved or cared about. Because maybe if I’d never tried, it wouldn’t hurt so hard to fail. Because when you survive this long, you start to wonder if it will ever be worth it. I’m starting to think that it may never be.
I fold up Maeve’s letter and place it on the kitchen counter, hoping that it might just burst into flames from the sheer anger radiating out of my eyeballs. It’s my fault that I seem to attract the worst of the worst. It’s my fault that I’m such a mess that nobody stays. Everyone leaves. What can go wrong will go wrong. I would get that tattooed somewhere on my body, but I’m sure that with my luck I’d probably get an infection and die.
When I was fifteen I gave myself a stick and poke with a slightly bent sewing needle and Sharpie ink, taking inspiration from a ’90s punk-rock song about tongue piercings. If I was metal enough, it wouldn’t hurt, right? Well, it hurt like a motherfucker, and I was doing it to myself, poking the probably hazardous Sharpie ink into my skin over and over until a poorly drawn infinity sign was permanently affixed to my upper arm. It was sloppy and I hated it, but I had done it to myself, so I couldn’t complain. Soon enough it was faded and gone, all except for a few dots.
That’s what I’m thinking as I head back down the stairs into the bookstore. I repeat it over and over in my head like a mantra. You did this to yourself, Liz; you can’t complain.
And my brain is right, like it normally is, so I do the only thing I know how to do when the people I care about are gone. I do what I did after my parents and after Thea. After Eva. And now I’ll do it after Maeve. Just keep moving on. Take one step and then another, wondering if it’ll ever be worth it.
Before I can wallow in my mushy feelings for just one minute longer, I turn my attention to the front door. The front door that cannot and will not lock. The front door that seems to have something personal against me.
I decide to take my one-handed rage out on the door, like people used to do at those overpriced rage rooms comfortably nestled in dying malls. Just ten dollars to shatter five beer bottles with a baseball bat, like you couldn’t do the same thing for free in your garage. I tuck the rejected wood planks under my good arm and collect the leftover nails in the palm of my sweaty hand. I tend to get sweaty when I’m nervous, but why would I be nervous right now? It’s not like a group of bloodthirsty and grudge-holding individuals is headed my way.
Maeve said that the woods people would be here before The Storm. In and out before the rain comes. So we’re going to go about this Les Mis style. If I keep them out long enough, they’ll run out of time. They’ll have to leave as The Storm inches closer.
I place a square of wood above the doorknob and use the dead weight of my nonfunctioning hand to hold it in place. The pressure sends a searing shock of pain up my arm, but I ignore it. I’m sure dying via woods gang or burning alive in acid rain would hurt quite a bit more. As they used to say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or what doesn’t kill you right now helps ensure that you will not die a slow and painful death later on.
I shove a nail between my unmoving knuckles in a maneuver that would probably cause my high school carpentry teacher to die from shock. Then, with a few haphazard swings of a hammer, the nail is in place. Hopefully, it will hold better than the dysfunctional lock would have. It will hold. It has to.
• • •
The bookshelves were hard to move, but I did it. Sure, it wasn’t an elegant or graceful process, but it’s done, and two shelves now lie horizontally across the front windows along with two reading chairs, a cash register, and a fake woodburning stove I found in the basement. As ridiculous as it seems, I didn’t want to use the books. Hell, maybe they’ll all get destroyed anyway, but it seemed sacrilegious to use them as barricade material. I doubt they even stooped that low in Les Mis.
I walk over to the Science Fiction shelf and select a book. A Canticle for Leibowitz. Seems like the right time. As the sky continues to darken outside, I lean against the counter, flipping through the pages. It’s not as bad as I expected, even though it’s all about monks and takes place over thousands of years. They’re trying to preserve parts of humanity, which is something I can get behind. It’s not as bad as my dad told me it was, however many years ago that was, although I’m sure it felt scarier to him when the apocalypse was still something to prepare for. It all feels unreal, like my life before never really existed in the first place, like one of those oversaturated prologues in rom-com movies. The family is so smiley and happy that you know they’re going to get into a car accident before they do. Except my family was never smiley and happy. They’re just gone.
The wind howls outside and metal scrapes, a trash can being pulled down the road. My eyes shift to watch, and I place my book back down on the counter, dog-earing the page. As I look out the window, a hazy figure appears in the distance, emerging from behind the hardware store, details obscured in the semidarkness. The clouds barely let enough light in for me to see my surroundings inside the bookstore. There’s nowhere near enough sunlight to discern what’s going on outside.
As the figure inches closer, my stomach drops. I can feel my hands begin to sweat once again as I stare out the window, not daring to move. If I don’t stand my ground, I’m weak. If I run and hide, maybe I deserve to die. My mantra just repeats itself in my head. What can go wrong will go wrong. But it can’t. Not this time. This time it has to go right.
Eventually, I realize that it’s not just one person I’m seeing; it’s four. Of course it is. I’m sure that they think Maeve is still here, lurking somewhere inside the bookstore’s walls. She stabbed someone for me. Surely they’d assume we would stick together after that, right?
But the woods people are wrong. It’s just me in here, with one good arm and only a fraction of the strength required to fight off four adults. Maybe ten years down the road I’ll think this whole thing is funny and be able to laugh, but right now it feels like a poorly timed joke. I adhere myself to the wall, allowing the shadows to swallow me entirely, until I’m certain I can’t be seen from outside.
What can go wrong will go wrong, my brain reminds me.
The figures inch closer, maneuvering around the debris in the roads around the town square. The shortest can’t be any taller than five two, with sleek black hair all tied up into a ponytail that sways as she walks with a slight limp. I recognize her immediately, a wave of guilt simmering in my stomach. Becca. My eyes zero in on her, blocking everything else out as the seconds pass. Becca. Here. Now. I don’t have time to fathom how she’s well enough to be here right now, after I saw her bleeding on the ground nearly a week ago. But I should know better than to think anyone is dead if I haven’t seen their breathless body. It’s the oldest trope in literature. Now she’s back, and this time it’s personal.
She crosses her arms and turns to the man next to her, who’s almost as short as she is. A knotted beard makes its way down his neck, and he scratches a scruffy mustache with a stocky finger. Her friend from the woods, Tristan, I’m sure. The other man, or boy is probably more accurate, is thin and tall like a beanpole, a mess of unkempt hair making him look like he’s halfway between human and Q-tip. He stands behind the other two, hands in pockets as he kicks at the debris in the road. Benji. The final member of their party, muscular and broad shouldered, steps out from behind the tall boy, her braids tossed behind her back.
As her blond hair comes into view, her bright red sweater becomes more vibrant in color. I retreat, backing away from the front door, away from her. As if out of impulse, my eyes flick over to the blade sheathed at her hip.
She looks away from her traveling companions and into the store as if she’s peering into my soul. As if she can sense me looking at her.
And I say it even though there’s no one here to hear me. It’s more of a prayer than anything else.
“Eva.”