The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World Read online

  “No,” Lydia says. “It’s where they first had meaningful eye contact.”

  “Oh, I think you’re right,” Larry says. “I can’t believe you remember. I loved when we used to talk about that.”

  “Now’s not the time to get sappy, Larry. We have people to save.”

  Just then, what looks like a dragon and two unicorns run by, way larger and way faster than anyone in costume could possibly be.

  “Those were really good costumes,” I say.

  I look at Larry. He’s bug-eyed and pale. “I don’t think those were costumes,” he chokes out.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lydia says. “Focus, people.”

  “Grandma!” I yell when I burst through the front door. The first floor is already under a few inches of water. All that Hoarder Heaven cleanup was for nothing.

  I splash into the living room, her bedroom, her bathroom. She’s nowhere to be found.

  “Did you find her?” Caleb says as he comes out of the kitchen.

  “No,” I say. “Maybe she was at the office. Maybe she got a ride to higher ground with one of her friends.”

  “But her van’s outside,” Caleb says. “I’m going to look upstairs.”

  “She won’t be up there,” I say. “She stopped going up there after you pushed her down the stairs.”

  Caleb flinches. The sky booms directly overhead, and the house shudders so hard a window in the living room cracks. And then another window cracks. And then another. And the house keeps shaking, and things keep cracking, the wallpaper starts peeling off, the ceiling starts crumbling, and plaster rains down on our heads.

  “We have to get out of here!” I yell above the sounds of the dying house.

  “I’m getting Ma,” Caleb says, and bounds up the stairs, and of course I follow.

  The floor of my bathroom has completely caved in. The toilet fell through to the kitchen and is now lying on its side on top of the smashed stove, and water is spraying everywhere. Caleb goes to check the other rooms. I find him in our old bedroom, looking at Grandma’s exhibit of the son she never had.

  “This is nuts,” Caleb says. For a moment I forget that we’re in the middle of trying to outrun the apocalypse, and I just now notice how drenched we both are, how our clothes are sticking to our skinny, shivering frames, how we look a lot like wet cats.

  “People eat it up,” I say.

  “People are fools.”

  “Yeah.”

  The house groans. The floor tilts a couple extra feet in the direction it’s always tilted, enough to make me stumble. “Come on,” Caleb says, and he rushes out the door and starts climbing the stairs to the attic.

  My cave is still there. And inside it, bundled up in the decade’s worth of mismatched secondhand blankets she bought and hoarded like her life depended on it, even sometimes when we could barely afford food, Grandma is curled up in a big, soft ball.

  “Grandma, you went upstairs!” I say.

  Even though I should be busy worrying about dying, I can’t help being proud of her.

  “What choice did I have?” she whimpers.

  It’s amazing what survival instincts can make a person do.

  Caleb steps out of where he was hiding in the shadows. “Hi, Ma,” he says.

  And then Grandma faints.

  The house sinks even farther. I can hear beams snapping inside the walls. The floor buckles. The ceiling crumbles.

  Caleb kneels next to Grandma and gently shakes her shoulder. “Ma,” he says. “Wake up. We gotta go.” He starts pulling the layers of blankets off of her.

  Grandma’s eyes flutter open and slowly focus on Caleb. “Are you a ghost?” she says.

  “That’s a complicated question to answer,” he says.

  “You came back,” she says.

  “It’s time to go, Ma.” Caleb stands and reaches out his hand to help her up. “I’m sorry I pushed you,” he says. Grandma just sits there staring at him. I have no idea what she’s going to do. I don’t think she does either. It’s like she hasn’t woken up all the way yet.

  She doesn’t get angry. She doesn’t start laying into him. She doesn’t start complaining or blaming or any of the other things she usually does. Instead she says, very softly, “Can you ever forgive me?”

  The house shudders again. Something big smashes downstairs. The one attic window shatters. “You guys, we have to go,” I say. As much as I’m enjoying this tender family reunion, I’m really not ready to die.

  “I’m trying to forgive you,” Caleb says, and Grandma starts crying.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Caleb’s face is blank, emotionless. “It’s not for you,” he says. “It’s for me. I don’t want you taking up space in my head anymore.”

  She sniffles, looks at him in confusion.

  “It’s my intention to forgive you,” Caleb says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to trust you again.”

  He reaches out his hand again. This time Grandma takes it and lets him help her to her feet. The floorboards crack under her weight.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and Grandma and Caleb follow me to safety.

  They follow me.

  LYDIA

  LARRY AND I ARE SITTING out here in the van, staring at Billy’s house, pretending like this isn’t the most awkward silence in the history of our awkward silences. I’m still in my modern costume, which is basically just a bra and underwear, and even though I’m wrapped in a musty moving blanket, I’m pretty sure I’m going to freeze to death. The emergency siren blares in the distance, but the street is eerily silent and empty. Even the die-hard fans who have been camped out here for weeks have given up and moved on to higher ground. All that waiting, and they missed Caleb by a few minutes. I almost feel sorry for them.

  “I’m proud of you, honey,” Larry says from the front seat, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “You’re a wonderful dancer.”

  “Now’s not the time, Larry,” I say. “The world’s about to end.”

  “Seems like the perfect time, if you ask me.”

  Maybe I’m crazy, but it looks like Billy’s house just tipped several feet to the left.

  “I’m sorry you missed the festival,” I say.

  Larry shrugs. “There will be more festivals. Looks like I didn’t miss much, really. But it’s a shame about the bar. It really looked nice. Paul texted and said he had to close down because the river crested and the whole place is under two feet of water. Once the tsunami comes, goodbye, everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I watch the reflection of Larry’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He looks sad for a moment, but then his eyes crinkle in a smile. “You know what?” he says. “I think this may be exactly what I needed. I can use the insurance money to start something new. It might be nice to do something a little more life-affirming than serving beer to drunks.”

  “I feel the same way about tacos,” I say.

  It suddenly hits me that the only clothes I own are the glorified underwear I’m wearing right now. My phone and coat are still at the theater, which will soon be underwater. I have nothing.

  Just then, there’s a knock on the van door. I slide it open to find a small, pale girl around my age, dressed head to toe in black under an umbrella, rushing water up to the middle of her shins.

  “If you’re looking for Caleb,” I say, “scram.”

  “Who’s Caleb?” the girl says.

  “Never mind.”

  “Are you friends with Billy?”

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “I’m Ruth.”

  “Are you friends with Billy?”

  “Yes. Are you waiting for him?”

  “Why?”

  “Can I come with you?” She lifts an old suitcase into the van.

  “Don’t you have your own family?”

  “My dad’s on his way to the state forensic psychiatric hospital. My mom ran off to join a new cult in southern Oregon.”

  I sigh. Can this day get any weir
der?

  “Sure,” I say. “You’ll fit right in.”

  The girl climbs into the van and sits quietly in the backseat with her hands folded on her lap. Billy sure knows how to pick friends.

  I can see cars stalled up the street where there’s a dip in the road full of water that must have flooded their engines. People pour out of the vehicles, walking this way like slow, awkward zombies as they move through the brown river rushing down the street. Billy and company better get their butts out here soon, or I’m pretty sure we’re going to get pummeled to death by the tsunami while Caleb signs autographs.

  “The water’s gotten higher,” I say. “Will the van still run?”

  “We’ve got some height on those guys,” Larry says, turning on the ignition. I never thought I’d be grateful that he spent what could have been my dance class money to put a suspension lift system on his van and giant off-road tires that he never uses for off-roading.

  “I’m going to go in and get them,” I say. But just then, a news van pulls up. “Oh shit.”

  A burly guy hops out of the driver’s seat and splashes around to the other side with an umbrella. That Seattle news lady Ronda Rash jumps into his arms, and he carries her to Billy’s front porch.

  “I have an idea,” the girl named Ruth says. She hops out of the van with a splash and goes back into her house while I basically swim to Billy’s front door in my underwear.

  “Hey!” I shout to Ronda Rash, who’s standing on Billy’s front porch while the big guy goes back to the van. “You’re trespassing.”

  “Is this your house?” she asks me. How is she still so dry? How is her hair so fluffy?

  “No, but—”

  “Then I really don’t think it’s any of your business.” Her smile is sickly sweet. “Brian, hurry up!” she shouts to the guy in the van.

  The zombies are getting closer. Their sweatpants are drenched with dirty floodwater. Larry starts honking, as if that’s going to scare them away. If anything, it makes them go faster.

  Then a door bursts open across the street, and Ruth emerges carrying a shotgun that is almost as big as she is.

  “What the fuck?” Ronda Rash and I say at the same time.

  Ruth climbs on top of Larry’s van and aims the shotgun at the zombie fans, who have now reached the intersection just a few doors down from Billy’s house. “Stop right there or I’ll shoot!” Ruth yells, and they stop, stunned. Ruth keeps the gun pointed at them as she slides down the front window and hops onto the street like a goddamned superhero.

  “Wow,” Ronda Rash and I say in tandem.

  Ruth slinks through the street-river, pointing the shotgun at the crowd the whole time. She sidesteps to the porch and says, without even looking, “You too, lady. Scram.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, young lady, but I think you need to put the weapon down. It’s not civilized to—”

  Ruth turns around and points the muzzle of the gun in Ronda Rash’s face, just inches away from her nose.

  “My God,” she gasps, her eyes crossed as she stares into the barrel of the gun. “You people are crazy.”

  Then the front door flies open, and out come the Sloats.

  “There he is!” the cameraman says as he hoists a giant camera onto his shoulder. The mob at the intersection starts screaming and splashing toward us. A few people fall and start floating downstream.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Ruth orders as she spins around and shoots into the water just in front of the crowd, and water sprays everywhere like a fountain, confusing everyone for a few seconds while she guards us all the way to Larry’s van.

  “Ruth!” Billy says as soon as we’re all safely in the van. “You’re a badass!”

  “Thanks,” she says calmly as she wrings the water out of her hair.

  “You’re, like, really good with that thing.”

  “I got it for my tenth birthday. You never know when you’re going to need to hunt your own food.”

  “Your dad’s gun was different.”

  “My gun’s a tool. My dad’s gun’s got no use but killing people.”

  “You saved us,” Billy says, his eyes beaming, awestruck, and Ruth looks at him and smiles and maybe even blushes a little, and I feel my heart burst into a million tiny warm stars. Billy’s a goner.

  “Hey, do you want some clothes?” Ruth says to me, and only now do I realize I’m shivering and my nipples are poking through the thin fabric of my top.

  “Sure,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. Ruth starts pulling some stuff out of a suitcase.

  Caleb still hasn’t sat down. He’s crouching by the van door like he’s thinking of opening it back up again. “Ma,” he says, “where are your car keys?”

  Billy’s grandma is sitting in the front seat next to Larry, crying, and he’s patting her knee, and I think that’s probably the most action she’s gotten in a couple of decades.

  “Ma!” Caleb says. “Keys!”

  She whimpers as she fishes them out of the pocket of her sweater. Caleb slides the van door open and throws the keys in the direction of the fans. “Take that white van and get to higher ground!” he yells at them.

  A girl cries, “Oh my God, he talked to me!” and everyone starts screaming and stumbling toward us. But then Ruth aims her shotgun through a slit in the window and shoots just above the crowd, and they all stop in their tracks.

  “Say goodbye to our home,” Caleb says as he slams the van door closed, and the house shudders one last time. Billy’s grandma emits a strangled sound as the roof caves in, the remaining windows all shatter, and glass rains into the street, some of it getting in Ronda Rash’s hair before the cameraman whisks her to safety inside the news van, and then the whole house crumbles to the ground in a cloud of dust that mixes with rain and instantly turns to mud.

  The crowd surges forward into the ruins and starts tearing apart the wreckage, looking for artifacts. Even the zombies climbing on the van get distracted and change course.

  “Vultures,” Ruth says, her gun still pointed out the window. I think I like this girl.

  “I guess we’re officially homeless now,” Billy says.

  “Is that Pete?” Larry says.

  I look where he’s staring, and there’s the soft, green lump of Old Pete, more moss than human at this point, in a rowboat in the middle of the street, rowing in the direction of the ocean. And there, sitting in the back of the boat, is the nine-year-old version of myself, in her little pink ballet outfit, finally ready to leave.

  “He’s going the wrong way,” Billy says.

  “No, he’s not,” I say.

  “Why are you crying?” Billy says.

  “I’m not,” I say. But who am I kidding? I’m someone who cries now.

  The little girl’s work is done.

  BILLY

  HAS THE EMERGENCY SIREN BEEN blaring this whole time? It fills the air as we drive to the hills. Seals and otters try to race us there. I see a bald eagle catch a fish at the gas station.

  Larry has the radio on full blast, and we’ve got all the windows down so people can hear it. “This is the Emergency Alert System,” a calm voice keeps repeating, followed by instructions to get to higher ground. Between that and the siren, I’m pretty sure I’ll be deaf by the end of the day, if I survive that long.

  Fans still in costume from the Unicorns vs. Dragons festival are helping people out of stranded cars. A small dragon paddles a kayak full of pet cats and dogs.

  “Wait!” Caleb shouts. “Stop the car.”

  “We have to get to higher ground,” Larry says.

  “What is that dummy doing on the roof?” Grandma says. Larry found her some beef jerky and trail mix in the glove box, so she’s feeling much better and started talking again.

  I look out the window, and there’s One-Armed Gordon sitting on the roof of his house, clutching an old soggy teddy bear to his chest with his good arm. Caleb opens the van door even though we’re still moving and jumps out. Larry stops
the van.

  “If we drown because of that loser, I’m going to smack some chins,” Grandma mutters.

  We all look out the window as Caleb climbs a ladder leaning against the house and crawls across the roof to where Gordon is sitting in the pouring rain. Gordon’s face when he sees Caleb is pure joy, like he was waiting there for him all this time, waiting for his one and only true friend to save him.

  “That’s sweet and all,” Lydia says as they embrace, “but we so don’t have time for this right now.” She’s wearing a polyester skirt and a button-down shirt that Ruth gave her, and she kind of looks like she should work at a funeral home. “What could they possibly be talking about?” Caleb and Gordon seem to be having some kind of serious discussion on the roof.

  After a couple of minutes, they finally start climbing down the ladder, but then Gordon splashes next door and starts knocking on the neighbor’s door, and Caleb makes his way to the van through the river of the street, his eyes clear and full of determination, his drenched T-shirt revealing all kinds of new muscles I never noticed, all heroic and puffed up like a soldier in one of those old war movies.

  “Gordon’s taking that side of the street,” he says when he gets to the car. “I’ll take the other. You guys take the side streets. Knock on every house with a light on or a car still in front. We’ll make our way toward the hills while Larry keeps broadcasting the emergency message.”

  Nobody questions his orders. We get to work.

  I have never been so focused in my life.

  We go door-to-door and tell the few remaining people what’s going on. How they heard the siren and did not think to check the news, I have no idea. Caleb has to give a few autographs along the way. Lydia stops a passing car that still has room in it and shames them into letting a homeless guy ride with them. Gordon throws a stray chicken into the back of a passing truck. Ruth has her own strategy involving intimidation tactics and sticking her shotgun in people’s faces when they open the door and ordering them to vacate.

  We run into a few old folks who try to refuse to leave, but Ruth convinces them with her gun. Caleb has to throw one guy over his shoulder who kicks and screams and hits him with his cane and calls him a commie while Caleb carries him over to a car that’s just about to take off and opens the door, getting pummeled the whole time.