The Great Unknowable End Read online

  I don’t answer any of them, but they don’t stop asking. My heart’s beating fast, and my blinking tic is in full force, and my skin is suddenly way too small for my body. To make matters worse, I haven’t seen Archer for the past five minutes.

  Then there’s a heavy weight on my shoulder. A hulking guy with a buzz cut and rancid breath is hauling me into a corner. He rams me against the wall.

  “Okay, don’t fuck around with me, man,” he snarls, spittle flying from his lips onto mine. “I know you’ve got it in that hippie paradise of yours. No way you fruits can be that naturally happy. So c’mon, tell me: How do I get hooked up with the stuff?”

  Drugs. He’s talking about drugs.

  But what does he want from me? I can’t think of a single possible answer that’s going to make this guy happy.

  I’m quiet too long, blinking fast, and this guy is beyond normal levels of intoxication. He grabs my tunic and wrenches it in his fist.

  “I SAID DON’T FUCK WITH ME, MAN.”

  “Christ almighty, Brian, lay off him.”

  The girl sounds so bored, I don’t think she can possibly be directing her words at us. But as it turns out, my assailant reacts. He wrenches his head around, affording me a view of a dark-eyed, deep-tanned girl with a buzz cut to match his—only hers is bleach white. She’s puffing half-heartedly at a cigarette, and she looks as bored as she sounds.

  “Stay out of it, Kim.” Brian’s words slur, the consonants sloshing around.

  “I said lay off him,” Kim says in as disinterested a voice as before. “Go lie down, huh? You don’t look good.”

  For whatever reason, the girl’s droning seems to be working on Brian. He glances between me and her, torn. Then he lets go of my tunic, though not before ramming me once more into the wall. He points a finger in my face, looks ready to say something. In the end, nothing gets said. He lurches away, and the last I see of him, he’s stumbling up the basement stairs.

  I let out my first full breath in minutes and smooth down my tunic.

  “All right there?” The buzz-cut girl comes in closer. She puffs out a cloud of smoke, and I try not to cough. Fighting that urge seems to set off another one, because my waving tic sets in.

  Kim watches the first of my waves. Then another. On the third, she seems to get it. Only I don’t see the usual pity that shows on most people’s faces when they get it. She keeps on smoking, unperturbed.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Kim shrugs. “Yeah, Brian’s wanted in my pants since junior year. At this point he’s a well-trained puppy. But hey, that happens again, you got to shove back, okay? And don’t come to any more parties dressed like that.” She disdainfully waves a hand over my whole body. “Good as walking around with a ‘kick me’ sign taped to your ass.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that.”

  Kim raises a brow. “This your first time out?”

  “Good as.”

  “And how’re you liking it?”

  I feel fine being honest with this girl, so I say, “Right now? Hating it.”

  She laughs at that, surprising me. She doubles over and cackles hoarsely.

  “Oh God,” she says, straightening. “Good for you.” She gets lost in a round of coughing, then says, “I’m Kim, by the way.”

  “Galliard.”

  “Mm-hmm. And you find nothing about tonight to be likable, Galahad?”

  I wave. “It’s Galliard.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Well.” I look around the room, as though searching for some heaven-sent blessing that will change my bad opinion. Then a new song starts to play on the speakers, and I realize something. “I’d like the music, if I could hear it. I mean . . . I’d like listening to what’s popular now. I haven’t heard anything new since 1970.”

  There’s an actual expression on Kim’s face, and I’m pretty sure it’s surprise.

  “What?” she asks. “Nothing since 1970. Man, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard about your cult. And believe me, I’ve heard a lot of crazy shit.”

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that, so I just kind of shrug. Then I wave again.

  “Uh-uh,” says Kim. “Uh-uh. That’s not cool. I tell you what, next time you come Crossing into town, you stop by my work, okay? The Exchange, on Vine Street. Your buddies will know it. You come by any day between nine o’clock and three, and I will give you an education. You dig me?”

  “Um. Yeah, I dig you.”

  “All right.”

  Then she’s gone, sucked back into the crowd. I’m actually disappointed. She’s the one outsider I’ve met tonight that I haven’t wanted to flip off. I was kind of hoping she’d stick around.

  Now that I’m thinking about music, I try harder to concentrate on what’s playing. I inch closer to one of the speakers, from which a man is singing something about playing funky music.

  “Groovin’ beat, man, huh?” shouts a bare-chested guy who’s camped out beside the speaker and pumping his fist in the air in time with the bass line.

  I nod, offering no other musical critique. I’m scanning the crowd for Archer and coming up empty. It’s not easy, given that he’s a whole foot shorter than me. I push into the crowd again, away from the speaker and toward a quieter corner of the room where a long-haired girl is playing guitar, and a boy beside her slaps his knees, singing, “ ‘Suicide is painless . . . it brings so many changes.’ ”

  Holy shit, I need to get out of here.

  Voices crowd in on me from every side, none of them friendly.

  “. . . what I’m saying. Jackie swears to God that’s why she was gone in April. She got it done at some clinic in Kansas City.”

  “. . . motivation do I have to drive?”

  “. . . it’s a dump there, I warned him.”

  “. . . failed out his first semester, so the rooming is back to square one.”

  It’s too much. It’s too close. It’s pushing my bones to the snapping point, threatening imminent implosion.

  I’ve got to get out of here, whether it’s with Archer or not.

  I push against bodies, rougher than necessary. All I can think of is surfacing from here and dragging down gulps of fresh air. I make my way to the stairs, and I rise and rise until I reach the foyer and the front door and—suddenly the wind is knocked out of me. I’m reeling back toward the staircase, and I barely manage to grab the basement door’s handle and right myself.

  “I dunno what you think you’re doing, hanging with Kim, but you steer clear, man. Y’hear me?”

  It’s Brian again. My favorite guy.

  Janis, Jimi, and Buddy above—show me mercy in my hour of need.

  “Sure thing,” I say, putting as much distance between myself and Brian as possible. Which is unfortunate, as he’s blocking the front door. “Sure thing. I don’t want to fight.”

  “Yeah, you don’t, because I would DESTROY YOU.”

  Yep. No one’s arguing with you there, Brian.

  But for some reason my mouth opens wide.

  “What?” Brian demands.

  With difficulty, I drag my lips shut. It doesn’t help. The tic shoots into different muscles, different nerves. I blink hard, and my chin jerks to the right.

  “What the hell?” says Brian.

  I can’t get the tics to let up. They’ve never been this bad—this rapid and violent. I’m blinking every second on the second. My jaw won’t stop jerking.

  “Seriously, man,” says Brian. “What the hell is your problem?”

  I want this to end. And thanks to Brian’s most recent movement, I’ve got a clear shot at the front door. It’s as I’m about to make my move that everything goes black.

  The blaring music cuts out. There’s a second of still, silent darkness. Then screams from the basement. The sound of glass breaking. Confused shouting. A voice on the stairs shouts, “Calm down, people. It’s a blown fuse!” No one seems to be listening. Everyone down there is either too drunk or stoned to hear reason. As for
Archer and the rest of the crossers, I’ve given up on them. If this is how they usually spend their summer nights, they’ve got to be used to this kind of thing. Me, though? I’m leaving.

  My eyes now adjusted to the new dark, I shove past Brian and throw open the door. I’m running when I leave, and at first I don’t understand why it is that I’m suddenly cold and dripping.

  It’s raining. Raining hard. In only a few seconds, I’m drenched through, my tunic clinging to my body like little more than paper. It’s enough to make me stop and look up.

  The party was so loud it drowned out the sounds of rain and thunder. Now all that sound crashes down on me. There are a million raindrops smacking into the pavement, full force. Lightning slices across the sky.

  “Holy shit. Did you see that?”

  “What’s going on?”

  More people have joined me on the lawn, confirming that I’m not hallucinating. The lightning really is pink. There’s too much of it, and its bolts are too long, uncoiled rope thrown across the sky.

  I’ve never seen a storm like this, and a stupid part of me wants to explain it away by saying this is how storms are on the Outside. But that makes no sense, and even if it did, the stunned reactions from the partygoers would be enough to tell me this isn’t normal.

  Something’s wrong.

  I search the sky for any sign of stars, but everything is clouded over. My gods are in hiding.

  14

  Stella

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 7

  When I wake Sunday morning, the storm is over—no more thunder or strange lightning—but the rain is still coming down hard, slanted with wind. The ceiling fan in the den is whirring, which means the electricity must have come back on sometime in the night. I’m surprised to find Dad awake and in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. He tells me that Gayle left an hour ago. She attends Saint Stephen’s Episcopal, the church where we held my mother’s funeral.

  Jill appears soon after me, woken by our voices and determined not to be left out of our conversation. She demands we go to Ferrell’s, despite the rain. It is tradition, after all.

  The route to Ferrell’s requires us to pass by our old church, First Baptist. Jill is the first to notice the steeple. Tower and belfry remain, but the spire is gone, and in its place is a jagged, black hollow.

  “My God,” whispers my father, slowing the car and straining toward the windshield to better see. “It’s been struck by lightning.”

  “Does that mean God’s angry?” asks Jill.

  “Who knows, Jillie,” says Dad. “Though I’m sure Pastor Barkley will make the most of it.”

  There are many reasons why we Mercers stopped going to church, but Pastor Barkley is the biggest one. After my mother’s death, he refused to hold the funeral at First Baptist. He claimed he could not commend my mother’s soul to God, because to take one’s own life is to despair, and despair is the one unforgivable sin. Many of the congregants disagreed. Mrs. Hume was in an absolute rage about it and even shouted in Pastor Barkley’s face during a church financial meeting. In the end, my father’s Sunday school class and most of the women’s committee helped us plan and pay for the funeral at Saint Stephen’s.

  We arrive at Ferrell’s, and we order our malts, tater tots, and Coney dogs. Station 98.5 is playing “You Made Me Believe in Magic” by the Bay City Rollers. When the song fades into the hourly news, Dad turns up the volume. The local reporter comments on traffic and a marathon being held in downtown Kansas City. The weather report mentions rain, but not the strong storms from last night. I take this to mean that Kansas City did not experience any of the pink lightning we did in Slater.

  The reporter goes on to mention the Son of Sam situation in New York, and Jill turns rigid beside me until the report ends and Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” fades in. Then life returns to her limbs, and she begins wiggling back and forth to the beat, waving her plastic malt spoon and singing “ ‘They can feel it all ooover.’ ”

  “Those chops!” shouts Dad.

  I am less impressed and more bemused by how Jill can move seamlessly from a state of petrification to silliness. It’s clear the news of the New York killings is affecting her. Perhaps it’s that it is a real-life manifestation of her favorite mysteries—a mystery that cannot be solved by Nancy Drew or Frank and Joe Hardy over the course of twenty-five chapters. Whatever the reason, I can only hope the police catch the killer soon and that the news will move on to less traumatizing topics, like the energy crisis and new political scandals.

  I worry about Jill. When I was her age, I was not consuming mystery books and asking questions about murders. I was obsessed with rocket launches and my new bike. Then again, when I was nine, I had not lost a mother and a brother. I had not been fed eight years’ worth of subpar dinners by my older sister. I had not sat at a table with my father’s girlfriend and tried hard to make do with the new situation. So it could be that Jill’s behavior is perfectly normal for the kind of nine-year-old Jill is. I only wish she didn’t have to be that kind of nine-year-old.

  She cannot help that she is far younger than me and Dad. She cannot help the reality that he and I talk about things above her head and behind her back—like now, when we get home. After Jill’s disappeared to her bedroom, Dad pulls me into the kitchen and asks what I thought of Gayle.

  It’s a difficult question to answer. Had he asked me right after last night’s dinner, I would have replied with unreserved approval. Things have changed since my conversation with Gayle in the bedroom, though. I don’t know why I told her the things I did. I’ve never shared them with anyone—my memory of Marooned and what those sketches and equations mean to me and that I would even consider college in my future. It must have been the familiar way she spoke. She made me feel more comfortable than I should have. Then she made me feel wrong for not attending college, even when there clearly is no other option. For a moment she made me forget the distinction between This Stella and That Stella, and I’m upset with her for that.

  Last night I thought I liked her so much. This morning, after the thunder and lightning and cannoli, I am thinking better of it. My mind is clearer, and I decide Gayle Nelson is a decent woman, and I do not mind her dating my father, but she is much too prying, and I need to be on my guard the next time she comes over.

  “She’s fine,” I tell Dad. “I like her just fine.”

  • • •

  Usually, I find the sound of rain to be soothing. Tonight it keeps me up. Something about the way it hits my windowpane is uneven—too loud at times, so soft at others. Then the thunder starts back up, and the lightning, too, pink as it was last night. Every minute, it flickers against the windowpanes, filling my bedroom with rose-colored light.

  Though I cannot make out the drawings over my desk, I stare in their direction. When I created those blueprints, I was filled with feverish inspiration, and with hope. Those blueprints are precious to me, the most personal of my projects. Now I feel as though they have betrayed me. Perhaps I should blame the wind that blew them up, forcing me to tack them in plain sight. At least the wicker bin wasn’t out, because I can only imagine the questions Gayle would have asked had she seen the walkie-talkies. And at least she didn’t see the back of my closet door.

  I’ve kept the door closed since Gayle’s overnight stay, but now, in the dark of my room, curiosity burns inside me. After minutes in silence, I cannot stand it any longer. I get out of bed and, with jittery force, fling the door open.

  The numbers are still there, projected across the wood panels. I stare at the violet markings: 11:01:39.

  I believe in coincidences. I do. But the fact of the matter is, there is a glowing countdown in my bedroom, which matches exactly the countdown over Slater’s town hall. Those are strange facts, and they cannot be denied.

  I suppose I should be frightened. I’m not, though. I’m something else. “Excited” can’t be the right word, but it is close. As I think on it more, there in the dark, I come to a realization: I am
feeling now the same as I did when I drew those shuttle designs. I feel inspiration, mixed with hope. I feel . . . freedom.

  If the worst is true, and these numbers are counting down to the end of the world, that means all futures for myself are equally unlikely. And if I look at that a certain way—well then, all my futures are equally likely. If there is an apocalypse around the corner, it doesn’t matter which version of myself I choose to be. If the end is coming, I might as well live as That Stella in the here and now.

  I find myself imagining what Craig would think of Gayle Nelson. What would he make of her? Would he approve of this new trajectory for us Mercers? I wish I could ask him, even if it would be too much of a personal question. I wish I could ask him every kind of personal question, face-to-face. Then I tell myself, this isn’t something That Stella would wish; it’s something she would do.

  A fresh flash of lightning fills the room, casting a rosy hue on all I see. I take this as confirmation of the decision I’m making. I take it to mean that my future, however short, will be rosy from here on out. I will make it so.

  I will meet Craig before this countdown ends. On Wednesday I will go back to Red Sun, as the boy named Galliard instructed. I will see my brother.

  It’s what That Stella would do.

  • • •

  The rain does not clear. It pours down all Monday and straight through Tuesday. The storming lets up during the day but returns every night, with more of the bizarre pink lightning. We receive several cancellations at the salon—women who call in to say that their drives are flooded and they cannot get out to Vine Street. The Dreamlight is shut due to the inclement weather, so I spend my nights at home with Jill. We eat dinner together, and we play games of dominoes, Connect Four, and—Jill’s favorite—the Happy Days board game. Mostly, though, we keep reading. She finishes two Hardy Boys and a book called The Witch’s Buttons. I finish The Cosmic Connection and begin Riddles in Mathematics: A Book of Paradoxes, which contains more than two hundred brain teasers. I check them off one by one, using the lightest of ticks with my pencil since, unlike the Carl Sagan, it’s a library book.