In the morning, the sunlight slants on the living room ceiling and I realize I’m not in my bed. I hear four other bodies, close and breathing, and I remember what we’re doing there, what’s happened. My parents are gone. I know then it will always hurt—I realize that if I let it, their absence will turn into something I’m constantly remembering and forgetting and remembering. A new flash of pain every time, like pressing down on a bruise. I get up quietly and walk upstairs to my parents’ bedroom. It looks exactly as it did when I entered yesterday, except for a single green leaf that has fallen through one of the holes in the ceiling. I check the drawers of their bedside tables—empty now, except for the Books of Frick they’d kept there. I examine my father’s dresser—bare but for a comb, a stick of deodorant, and my kindergarten school picture, in which I am close-lipped in a pageboy haircut. He loves this picture of me. He loved it. Time to start thinking about them in the past tense. If I have any resentment over the fact that the version of myself my father thought of each morning is one from twelve years ago, it’s easy to let go of once I examine the mirror of my mother’s vanity. It’s so covered in pictures, you can’t see your own face in it. And all of the pictures are of the two of them. I am nowhere to be found.
“They’re gone,” I say out loud to myself. A little shakily, because I don’t want my friends to hear me downstairs. But then I say it louder, and more firmly. “They’re gone.”
I go into my bedroom to find my diary. Actually, it’s more of a mess than a diary. I’ve kept records of the last few years on loose-leaf paper which I’ve stuck in any number of hiding spaces—between my mattress and my bedspring, in the lining of my winter coats, in the pages of the Book of Frick my parents gave but never expected me to read. I collect them now and staple them together. Then, on a fresh piece of loose-leaf, I start writing.
“My Parents,” I begin. Then as a sub-heading, “Mom.”
Mara Apple, née Pederson, DOB: June 28, 1968.
Hair blondish red; long.
Favorite food lasagna.
Once in the second grade, I told her I had a crush on a boy and wanted to send him a secret admirer note. She helped me write it; even drew a sketch of him and me to include in it, then at the end of the night she took it away, saying she wanted to check it for spelling errors, and never gave it back. Thus saving me mortal embarrassment, probably.
One summer at the beach. I was eleven, maybe. She lay in the sun, one arm thrown over her eyes, while Dad and I sat under the umbrella and read. Dad looked up, nudged me. She wore a purple and white one-piece bathing suit. She looked like a teenager. Dad said, “Your mother is the most beautiful woman in the world,” and I saw her smile, so I know she heard him.
“Dad”
Edward “Ned” Apple, DOB: February 14, 1969.
Short, dark brown hair, thinning slightly. Brown eyes. Once he looked at me and said, “I’m afraid you’ve got the Apple body,” but I didn’t know what that means.
Used to look at stars through his telescope. Used to track meteorites and comets.
He signed me up for soccer in kindergarten and on the first day cheered me on louder than any other dad as I ran the length of the field during a scrimmage. Afterwards in the car, I cried and said, “I hate it,” and he never made me go again.
Last year, he said, “No daughter of mine will go to hell,” and I said, “Don’t be an idiot.” He lifted his hand like he was going to hit me, but didn’t. He walked out and Mom said, “Never speak to my husband like that again.”
Once in the car (how old was I?), Mom said, “You know your dad saved my life, right?” and I said, “Yes,” but she didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask questions.
I stare at my notes. What does any of this add up to? Who are these people I’m describing? My parents loved each other. They protected me from harm. But they’re like stick figures in my memory, with no substance. Who were they, actually? Now that I’m an orphan, I guess I’ll never know.
What I need is an adult, someone who cares about my well-being. I do still have some living—and, as far as I know, Non-Believing—family out there. There are my grandparents in New York, my mother’s parents, whom I hardly know and haven’t seen since I was nine. There’s Aunt Leah, my father’s sister, whom I’ve never met, who lives all the way out in Salt Lake City. I consider calling one of these people, though my parents have long been estranged from all of them. But then my eyes fall on my backpack, and I think of Wambaugh—my old history teacher, and one of my favorite people on Earth. If anyone could point me in the right direction today, it’s her.
I slip on my shoes and go downstairs. Raj and Dylan spoon on a mess of couch cushions. Molly is awake, sitting primly on an armchair, leafing through a book she’s brought with her. I wave at her, and shake Harp gently. She rouses slightly, half-opening bleary eyes.
“Viv?” she mutters. “Is it locusts?”
“What? No. I’m going to school; you want to come with?”
“School? Are you fucking kidding me?” Harp pulls her pillow over her head and her voice becomes muffled. “No, thank you, crazy. I’ll just stay here and nap it out.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I’m taking the sledgehammer.”
I slip it out from between Harp’s sleeping bag and mine, and head for the door. It’s still hot out, but a nice, dry heat now; it reminds me of a few beautiful days last June, when the end of the world still seemed pretty hypothetical. Lara had just converted, the last of my friends to do so, and it was still a month before Harp and I started hanging out. On those sparkling late mornings, I’d pack a lunch and a bunch of books and trudge up to Schenley Plaza, to lie in the grass, considering my options. I thought about running away, or even converting, but only a little and never seriously. And then one day in July, Harp called me over to her front yard, where she was sunning in a bikini to the shock and consternation of the newly converted Harrises across the street, and said, “Please tell me you’ve still got all your marbles, Vivian?”
There was something innocent about those lazy days, sitting in the sun until my skin went pink. I felt like I had choices then. Right now I feel like I’m surrounded by blank space. Like I could go in any direction I choose, but not a single one would yield anything.
It takes me half an hour to walk the mile to my high school. I’m slowed down by the weight of the sledgehammer on my shoulder, but I don’t see a single looter. In fact, Pittsburgh seems relatively normal, nothing like the nightmarish hellscape Raj and Dylan led me to expect. A few cars pass as I walk, and their drivers wave with manic smiles plastered to their faces. I know we’re all putting on some kind of a show for one another. A we-will-form-a-stronger-community-in-the-wake-of-this-loss show. A life-can-go-on-after-tragedy-no-really-we-swear show. It’s not convincing; in a way, it makes everything worse.
I pull open the doors. For my first two years of high school, there was always an ineffective security guard sitting at a folding table in the entrance hall, but when attendance dropped as low as it did last fall, that guy disappeared, as did many of the teachers. I want to call out, hear my voice bouncing off the walls; I want to hear someone call out in return. This is how it felt at the end. I was one of the few who even showed up at the start of junior year. Between the tornadoes and bomb threats and distrust sneaking its way into everybody’s view of the world, plus the Church of America’s well-known stance on public schools (“harbingers of secularist terrorism,” announced Adam Taggart), everyone sort of fell out of the habit of showing up. Life took on the dreamy, structure-less quality of an eternal snow day. When I stopped bothering to attend, right after Christmas, I missed it—ringing bells, pedestrian gossip, cheesy breadstix in the cafeteria. I missed the sense that we were all working, however inefficiently, towards something. Most of all, though, I missed Wambaugh.
She was my freshman year World History teacher, the woman standing by the blackboard in the first high school classroom I walked into. All the usual nerves about what high school would be like had been compounded by the recent calamities—I saw many kids, that first month, bursting into loud tears in the middle of the hallway, or pulling out clumps of hair in their stress. Wambaugh did everything she could to calm us. She led breathing exercises; she played loud music and made us get up and dance the fear away; she drew a timeline of all the varied doomsday predictions in the whole of human history, and assured us that our world would keep turning. Somewhere along the way, we dropped the “Ms.” from the front of her name. She was more than that, more than some average teacher. She’s the adult I wish I had the moxie to become.
Now, walking through the deserted hallways, I wonder if this trip wasn’t a waste of time. The schools have been empty since the fall, and surely Wambaugh has found some better place to lend a hand. I imagine her in one of the hospitals, draping a blanket over a shock victim, handing them juice. But when I’m within a yard of Wambaugh’s classroom door, it opens, and her familiar blonde head pops out.
“Vivian Apple,” says Wambaugh, a grin spreading over her face as she sees me. She opens her arms and without even thinking, I rush in for a hug. “I never took you for one of the damned. Your grades are too good.”
I laugh weakly. I’m trying not to cry. Wambaugh lets go and brings me into the classroom, which turns out to be full. There are people from my class, plus sophomores, freshmen, and seniors; there are even, scattered throughout the room looking a little embarrassed, kids I know to have graduated last spring. They sit two to a chair, they line the shelf by the window; some have pillows and sleeping bags and baby brothers; some have baked goods and twenty-four packs of plastic water bottles. Everyone chatters nervously and no one seems surprised to see me. I see one or two nods of welcome. Cheerleaders talk to chess club members; chess club members talk to lacrosse players; lacrosse players talk to stoners—the Rapture has shaken us out of our cliques and brought us together here, helpless, to the only sane adult any of us know.
“Okay,” says Wambaugh. She claps her hands together and conversations break off; everyone sits up straight. There are no empty desks, so I sit at the feet of Melodie Hopkirk, a girl who has never before acknowledged my existence on this plane, but who now smiles warmly at me—a fellow survivor. “What were we talking about before Viv came in?”
“Nuclear disarmament?” B.J. Winters offers.
“Right,” Wambaugh frowns. “That was getting grim. What else?”
She picks up a piece of chalk and I take in what has been evolving all morning. At the top of the board, Wambaugh has written I BELIEVE THAT CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE in chalk letters, and now, ballooning below it, is an apparent list of ways we can save the world. It’s like a crash course in liberal do-goodism: recycle, conserve water, charity, etc. Maybe I’m missing some key element—specifically, what does this have to do with anything? Wambaugh points at a raised hand behind me.
“I think one important thing is, like, not making assumptions about people based on what they look like and who they hang out with?” Melodie says tentatively.
Wambaugh nods. “End prejudice.”
“For sure,” says Melodie. “And that goes for, like, racism, too.”
Wambaugh finds an inch of empty space between “Support unions” and “Carpool” to write down this new entry. When she turns back, she catches my eye.
“Viv? Anything to add?”
“What is this?” I say. I realize I sound angry. If Wambaugh is surprised, she doesn’t show. I know I’m surprised—questioning a teacher’s lesson plan, even when I’m not enrolled, even when the school is not technically functioning, constitutes full-on anarchy for me. Wambaugh just leans on her desk, arms folded, waiting for me to continue.
“What I mean,” I say, “is what does any of this have to do with anything? How are we”—I wave my arms around a little to represent something or other, the huge and im-penetrable world—“How are we supposed to … ?”
“We went over this before you got here,” Wambaugh explains. “Does anyone want to explain to Viv what we were talking about? About compiling this list?”
She points to a hand raised in the crowd behind me. Grayson Wagner, who probably would have been valedictorian had he been given the chance, stands. “Ms. Wambaugh led a discussion on the futility of spending the coming months anticipating catastrophe,” he explains. “Instead, we should consider this a time to start re-shaping the world in our own image.”
“Exactly,” says Wambaugh. “And I want to stress, I’m not saying that’s easy—we just went through something traumatic. Each of us has lost somebody; some of us have lost just about everybody.” She looks at me searchingly, and I nod to answer her unasked question—they’re gone. She gives me a quick, sad look. “All I’m saying is, we need to move forward in the spirit of rebuilding. Because your world’s not going to end. No way. Not any time soon.”
“But that’s the thing I don’t get,” says Melodie. She sounds as frustrated as I feel—much as I love Wambaugh, I’m skeptical of the certainty in her bright smile, the perky way she bobs up and down on her heels. “Before it was, like, what evidence does anyone have that the world is going to end? And now it’s like, what evidence do we have that it won’t? My grandmother”—her voice gets shaky, and I remember that Melodie’s grandmother was a vocal Believer, infamous for walking the length of Murray Avenue in blistering heat or freezing cold to knock on doors and hand out literature she’d typed herself on an ancient word processor—“she’s gone. She told us she’d be gone, and she is. So she was right, wasn’t she? She was the one who was right.”
I hear an uneasy shift as everyone nods and murmurs their begrudging assent. “Plus,” someone cries out, “it’s so hot out!”
From the back, it sounds like someone has started crying. Someone else adds, “And it’s March!” like that seals the thing, and now there are a handful of people talking, about missing friends and last month’s blizzards, the antibiotic-resistant strains of flesh-eating bacteria ravaging South America.
Wambaugh holds up a hand. “It’s been hot in March before,” she says.
Everyone starts shouting at her at once and I can hear my own voice among them. “Come on, Wambaugh!” I yell. All I want is for someone to tell me the truth.
Wambaugh holds up a silencing hand. “Listen,” she says. “The world is ending. Not in your lifetime, not in your children’s lifetime, not in their children’s lifetime … Maybe in their children’s lifetime, though, let’s face it. And it’s our fault. The way we live our lives is not sustainable. I don’t just mean recycling and turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth. I mean the way we treat each other. The way we pick and choose whose lives are important, who we actually treat as human. There is nobody on this Earth whose life is not of value. And that includes those of us who have been Left Behind. I don’t know where all those people went. Maybe they did go to some Christian heaven. But what I’m saying is, we’re good people, too. We’re worthwhile people. I’d vouch for every last one of you. So what I don’t want is for you to lie down now and wait for it to happen. I don’t want you to write off the rest of your lives, just because someone else’s God didn’t try to save you. Because you know what? The fact that he didn’t means that he’s a bad God.”
Her voice trembles on the last note, but Wambaugh stares down at us, a pillar of blonde fury, righteous in her convictions. Maybe she’s waiting for someone to question her, but no one does. Melodie sniffles behind me. I reach behind me, without turning around, and take her hand. Wambaugh picks up her chalk and finds a small space of empty green on the chalkboard. She turns to face us.
“What else?”
I’m trying to stay positive. I’m trying to be more like Wambaugh’s dimples. I believe that children are the future, I sing to myself on my walk home. I guess it’s encouraging, how seriously Wambaugh takes the idea. That she showed up at school the Monday after the Rapture, ready to teach all these motherless kids, an undaunted ball of energy. But that’s not me. It never was. At the end of my block, I can see my house shimmering in the heat, and I think of my best friends inside it. When I get home, I’ll assign rooms to each of us, and I’ll make us lunch, because the world is still turning hotly on its axis and the grocery stores are still open and there’s nothing for us to do now, really, but live. It’s like Wambaugh said: we’re good people, too. It was the main thing my parents failed entirely to convince me of, as they worked to convert me—that I was not good, that I needed to change to be good. Because good is all I’ve ever been.
When I open the front door, I see the sleeping bags abandoned, the sheets in tangled disarray. Harp’s not in sight, so I open my mouth to call for her—she’ll roll her eyes when I tell her what Wambaugh said, but she’ll appreciate hearing it just the same. But my voice dies in my throat. A man has stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room, into my line of sight. He’s tall and imposing, with gray at his temples and a white toothy smile he smiles at me. The man comes towards me with his arms outstretched and I flatten myself against the wall, because I don’t know what this is. My parents warned me of ghosts and zombies, of pestilence, of darkness—but they didn’t tell me what to do, how to protect myself, from a living, breathing adult male, standing in our living room like he wants something from me. My only thought is that he’s from the Church—they’ve taken my parents and now, for some reason, they’ve come for me.
“Vivian,” he says. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”