Goliath grins around at us with his perfectly straight teeth. He reaches out and takes my right hand, clasps it between his two thick ones. He is at most eighteen, yet he handles this interaction with the confidence and geniality of a middle-aged CEO. He’s dressed as though he’s about to attend a board meeting, in pinstripe suit pants and a red tie, his white sleeves rolled up. None of us know what to say to him. He is ridiculously good-looking.
“I’m Vivian,” I begin. “This is Harp, and Peter, and Edie. We—”
“Vivian,” says Goliath, looking into my eyes. Then he takes a step to Harp, and grasps her hand as he has just done mine. “Harp.”
Harp giggles, bats her dark eyelashes at him. He’s Harp’s type exactly—she always goes for all-American boys with confidence to spare; it’s what had me so worried for months that she’d be Magdalened. Goliath must note her interest, because he gazes in her eyes an extra second before moving on to greet Peter and Edie. When he finishes, he sits behind his desk, and leans back in his chair with his feet propped up.
“Please,” he says, waving his hand in our general direction. “Take a seat.”
There are no chairs in the immediate vicinity. Gallifrey and Daisy scramble into the common room to get us some. We edge slightly closer to Goliath’s desk.
“We came here to see if you could give us some information,” Peter says.
“I can try!” Goliath says pleasantly.
“We were—we’re heading to California,” continues Peter. “We’d heard … well, we know for a fact that at one point, Frick had a personal compound there, north of San Francisco.” He waits a moment, but Goliath just watches him. “We want to go there and see what we can find. Maybe see if anyone there was Left Behind. Anyone important.”
The head of the New Orphans makes a steeple of his fingers and peers at us from behind it. Meanwhile, Gallifrey and Daisy have set up a half-moon of folding chairs. Goliath waits until we’ve sat, and then he waves his hand, dismissing Gallifrey and Daisy from the three-walled room. He stands and walks over to a small cart, on which sit a few half-empty bottles of alcohol that I can only assume he procured from his parents’ liquor cabinet after they were Raptured—Scotch, amaretto, Bristol Cream. Goliath pours some amaretto into a glass, and then mixes it with some orange Gatorade. Peter catches my eye and makes a face.
“I’m sorry, gang,” says Goliath, turning to us, “does anyone want anything to drink?”
We all decline except for Harp, who takes an amaretto-and-Gatorade and drinks it down like water. Goliath leans against his desk and regards us again. I have an urgent, anticipatory feeling, like he’s about to tell us something big, something we’ll really be able to use.
“Peter, I’d be interested to hear who confirmed the California compound to you,” he says finally. “Only if you’re willing to reveal your sources, obviously.”
We look to Peter. “My father was Believer for many, many years,” is all he says.
“A lot of people’s parents were Believers,” Goliath replies. “But I’ve never heard any of them state with confidence that Frick had any connection to California.”
Peter stares ahead and doesn’t elaborate. Goliath raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t push any further. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve heard whispers. A few tweets coming out of the San Jose airport claiming the simultaneous arrivals of small groups of Believers over the last year. One flight attendant told me he had at least a dozen of them on Rapture’s Eve, but when we tried to get more information out of him, he played dumb—a Second Boater. Then I had a barber over in Point Reyes Station DM me to say he cut Frick’s hair every month and a half for the last twenty years, so he doesn’t understand why Frick says he lives in Florida.”
Peter takes out a small notebook. “Point Reyes Station, you said?”
“Yeah,” Goliath says, frowning at the sight of Peter jotting this down. “But again, Peter—nothing confirmed there. For months, the rumors were he was living in some mansion in a forest in California. Someone gave me the name of a road once … I can’t remember it. King Arthur Lane? But anyway, it’s all myth and legend. Right before Rapture Day, the live feed from the Church of America website showed Frick praying, constantly, at his home in Florida.”
“I mean,” I say as he pauses to let this sink in, “is it possible the feed was, you know, lying? That they were trying to bait and switch us? If we think Frick’s in Florida before the Rapture, and then after the Rapture he isn’t …”
“Then surely he must have been Raptured,” Peter finishes for me.
“I guess it’s possible, Vivian,” Goliath allows, sounding dubious. “But like I said—they were always just whispers. No one ever came forward with any proof that Frick spent any significant time there. The truth is, you get all kinds of nutty theories thrown at you when you run a network as extensive as this one.” He winks at Harp. “Once I got a really long, involved e-mail claiming that Frick was actually the Pope, and the whole thing was a scheme to bring more people into the Catholic church. To me, that claim and the one you’re making about California hold the same amount of water. The only proof I’ve got is that someone’s saying it.”
“Have you ever considered sending people out there?” Peter asks. “Recruiting your San Francisco chapter to try to track Frick down?”
Goliath shakes his head, smiles at Peter a little sadly. “Peter, I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t. And I’ll tell you why. Maybe at first, the New Orphans were about trying to take down the Church. I had a lot of former Believers giving me all the dirt they could give on their local pastors. Lots of weird sex shit going down. I mean, I was the one who started the hashtag #beatonfrickisadipshit, which was trending worldwide for a week back in February, so trust me when I tell you that I feel you on that nihilistic impulse. Back then, I was mad. But the more people who contacted me, kids our age, whose parents were about to trade them in for eternal splendor, I began to realize we were dealing with something different than just an Us vs. Them scenario. We’re trying to rebuild here, guys. The Church of America is in the past. We’re the future. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“But they aren’t in the past,” says Peter. “They’re still active. It feels like there are more people in the Church now than there ever were.”
“It does feel that way out there, Pete,” Goliath nods. “I definitely agree. But I think if you spend a little time with us, you’ll begin to find that the Church no longer feels like a concern. We have a great community here. We feed each other, nurse each other. We provide emotional, spiritual, and—sometimes, if necessary—financial support. I know some other chapters of the New Orphans have destructive goals in mind—the New York one was planning a violent takeover of the NASDAQ building before the hurricane, and earlier this week, the Chicago New Orphans took the mayor’s family hostage in an effort to get the Church of America megastores in the area permanently shut down. It didn’t work out; the mayor’s wife and three New Orphans were killed in the process—” Goliath stops, bows his head briefly as if in prayer. “I have never been a violence guy. I have never called for that. I’ve said from the beginning, we can change this thing peacefully. We’re young; we’re smart—we can figure out a way. Here in Keystone, we’re content to move on. Put the Church behind us. Love one another. See, this community I’ve created? It would’ve never been possible without the Church. You know? I’m saying that in its own way, the Church created me. And I know a lot of people around these parts who are grateful for that. So let’s not focus on destroying. Let’s focus on building something, together.”
What he’s describing sounds impossible. You’d only have to take a few steps beyond the fence and into the Believer mecca outside to know that it is. But Goliath’s confidence is weirdly magnetic. His focus on us now is so razor-sharp, so friendly and warm, that I feel like he may be on to something—like all it would take to change the world is a bunch of young, smart people who care about it. Goliath stands then, and claps his hands together
“Did Gallifrey and Daisy give you the full tour? Why don’t we take a walk around?”
Goliath takes us on another loop around the building, this time introducing us to each individual New Orphan, all of whom scramble out of bed, put down the dishes they’re washing, their laptops, their video games, to talk to us. They tell us stories, not unlike our own, of mothers and fathers and friends disappearing into the ether, of having nowhere to go. They love it here. They love Goliath. Always their stories end with declarations of where they would be without him and the New Orphans—lost, they proclaim. Dead. There are young children, who hug Goliath around the knees as he approaches like he’s a favorite uncle. Goliath takes us out back, where once there was a mini-golf course but now there is a reasonably functioning greenhouse and a small, struggling garden. “Any green thumbs among you guys?” he asks us, and when Edie tentatively raises her hand, he pounces excitedly, pointing out the various crops they’re trying to harvest in the dry Dakotan soil, asking her advice. She seems flustered, but pleased.
Everyone here is happy, and—they all assure us—safe. The fence and the guards are nothing but a precaution. The Believers who swarm to Keystone with increasing frequency are not interested in sacrificing rebellious teenagers to get to heaven; they’re on expensive vacations with their families, trying to get the Sacred Sites checked off before the next Rapture comes. Once, Goliath remembers, a few Believer dudes got wasted at the All-American Christian Family Restaurant, and came over to the commune looking for a fight, but almost immediately they got sick at the feet of the guards, and crawled back shamefaced to their hotels. Otherwise, the Believers barely acknowledge that the New Orphans are here.
By the end of the tour, I can feel it all around me—the New Orphans have managed to turn an abandoned presidential wax museum into a real, vibrant home. I’m suddenly achy with a longing I’ve been burying for months. All I want is to stay still in a single place for a while, and feel like I belong.
When Goliath says, “Will you stay with us tonight?” and Harp looks at me with pleading, mischievous eyes, I don’t look to Peter for his assent. I tell him yes, and we do.
I think it will be a night, and then I think maybe it will be two. I think we’ll stay just through the weekend, and then we’ve been in Keystone for three weeks, with no sign of leaving. It’s easy to be there, to no longer feel like we’re on the run, like we’re racing against a clock. It feels like what I imagine a college dorm must feel like, when you first get there and are settling in. All of us are on our own but for each other. I can spend every second of the day surrounded, and not get tired of them. In the mornings, we eat breakfast together, then split up to perform various delegated chores. Afternoons, we’re left to our own devices, until the evening, when we gather together in the community room to make dinner together. Goliath always makes a little speech before we eat—like grace, but more rehearsed. I’m grateful to him for this place, but sometimes it’s a little hard to take him seriously. At a certain point he begins to seem like one of those ambitious kids I went to high school with, back when ambitions were something worth having. I watch him gaze around, at the ecstatic nightly after-dinner parties that everyone but the very young kids and Edie attend, and imagine he’s seeing this community he’s built through the eyes of the admissions board at Yale.
But maybe I’m just jealous. On our first night, after a few shots each from somebody’s Raptured dad’s tequila, he and Harp began to make out sloppily against a wall in what used to be the Unelected Presidents exhibit. They went at it so hard that Harp didn’t even notice or care when the drum circle started up shortly thereafter. It feels like they’ve been attached at the mouth ever since. Every night, after she thinks I’m already asleep, Harp slips out of the bed we share in the Gorbachev exhibit, and wanders off to wherever Goliath’s bedroom is.
“Do you call him Goliath when you guys are having sex?” I ask her one morning while we’re brushing our teeth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harp sniffs. I suspect she’s trying to keep their hook-ups as private as she can, that she likes the shroud of mystery about him. The Orphans don’t know where he sleeps, have never seen him wear anything but a suit, know little about who he was before he was Goliath. I get the sense she likes having a secret to keep, that she still feels the need to play the rebellious child around me.
Edie, meanwhile, is having a much better time than I would have expected. Despite the constant partying and everyone’s giddy adoption of Woodstock-level free love principles, she seems to get happier by the day. She watches after the younger New Orphans, makes sure they’re eating vegetables, reads them the few storybooks they’ve packed, and when they run out of those, she writes new ones. Every night, she’ll come out into the community room, sleepy-eyed and huge in her striped pajamas, and sweetly ask us to turn the music down. The first time she did, I worried about the New Orphans turning on her, resenting her for the maternal pall she casts, but they all did as they were asked, anxious to please her. One of the guys here, Estefan, turns out to be a registered nurse from Wyoming, and he’s at Edie’s side day in and day out. He’s assured her when it comes time for her to give birth, he’ll be there to take care of her. Edie glows here, happy and useful and beloved by all.
And if Peter is anxious to get back on the road, he doesn’t show it. He proves himself to be an excellent cook, contri-buting to every meal—he makes sweet potato chili, pumpkin bread, pizza dough, tacos; one night he makes a blueberry pie from scratch. In the late afternoons, he sits out back with Gallifrey and the others, who are trying to teach themselves basic carpentry from YouTube videos, but usually just end up whittling small animals out of firewood. Goliath is the New Orphans heartthrob, but there’s a small group of girls, not unlike me in their shy, desperate awkwardness, who flock to Peter when he’s strumming his guitar in the Andrew Jackson exhibit down the hall, who sit around and worry each time he volunteers to leave the compound for supplies. Our first night, as Harp made out with Goliath at the party, Peter slipped in beside me at the table where I sat with Gallifrey and the others, and handed me a beer.
“You know,” he said into my ear, “I really think at some point someone should tell him that Goliath dies at the end.”
I said nothing. The warmth of his breath on my ear made my whole body seize up with desire, but I was taking Harp’s advice and saying nothing. I smiled weakly and sipped.
“Viv,” Peter said then. “Are you upset with me?”
I looked at him. He looked like he was genuinely hurt, like I had hurt him.
“Of course not.” I should have apologized; I could have just explained: it’s hard to be close to someone I like, who I know likes me, and not be able to have him, for reasons dramatically noble. But it was, easier, of course, to say nothing. The nearby Orphans got louder then—they’d been having a conversation about science-fiction television shows, but now they were discussing what they would do if they could travel through time.
“You can’t just go back in time and kill Beaton Frick as a baby,” Gallifrey scoffed at a pixie-haired New Orphan named Eleanor who smoked a clove cigarette.
“Why not?” she asked. “Since when are there rules about time travel?”
“Since always!” Gallifrey replied. “You can’t interfere with the past in any way—you have no way of knowing the impact. It’s called the butterfly effect.”
“I’ll tell you what,” an Orphan named Kanye interrupted. “I wouldn’t go after Frick. If I could kill any of them, I’d kill Adam Taggart.”
“Is no one listening to me?” said Gallifrey incredulously. “You’re all going to theoretically rip a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum!”
Peter cleared his throat. “Why Taggart?”
There was a challenge in his voice. He sounded a little like he did during our conversation on Rapture’s Eve—thoughtful and curious and controlled.
“Because Adam Taggart was the fucking worst, man,” Kanye said. “Frick was all myth and bluster and crazy-ass stories. Taggart was the dangerous one.”
I’d never thought of it that way, but I nodded when I heard Kanye say it. Adam Taggart was always more visible than Frick; the Church website sold T-shirts imprinted with his image, and the words “The Enforcer” printed beneath. My mind flooded then with some of the disturbing assertions Adam Taggart made in the three years preceding the Rapture. “The cup of God’s wrath has been poured out on a nation whose women demand abortions and applaud infanticide,” was his statement on behalf of the Church on the most recent anniversary of 9/11. Harp and I read the quote online repeatedly to memorize it, and then we’d say it out loud at random moments to make each other laugh. Sometimes all I had to do was pick up an empty cup and pretend to pour to send Harp into a spiral of Adam Taggart hysterics.
“Who would you kill, Peter?” asked Eleanor, exhaling a plume of sweet-smelling smoke.
Peter shrugged, took a long sip of beer. “Nobody.” He glanced at me quickly and then stood up. “I don’t want to be the one to fuck up the space-time continuum.”
Since then, he’s avoided me as much as one can in a small renovated wax museum filled with approximately thirty-five other people. Sometimes I can feel him just on my periphery, hesitating as if to speak to me, but I can never bring myself to turn my head and smile. At this point, it feels as though the hole I’ve dug myself into is just too deep. It would be too embarrassing to approach him now, to act as though nothing has happened. And anyway, in the last few nights, I’ve noticed Daisy edging ever closer to him at the dinner table, on the couch where he usually sits during the parties. I’ve seen them sitting together, their heads bent in conversation, and last night, I saw Peter throw his head back and laugh.
I start to get lonely. After the newness of the New Orphans has worn off, once I’ve become acquainted with each of them and their individual dramas and tragedies, I begin to feel restless. One day I borrow Gallifrey’s laptop, and spend a few long hours searching for infor-mation on all the people I’ve lost. My parents. My grandparents. Dylan and Molly. Nothing. Too many people are missing now; I find long lists of their names on blogs and in newspapers. Nobody is looking for anyone’s family but their own. Wambaugh’s name and e-mail is still listed on our high school’s website, but that might mean nothing. All I know is that I’m back to waiting. I’m sitting here in South Dakota with the New Orphans, waiting for the world to end or not end. I send Wambaugh an e-mail:
Wambaugh,
I hope you’re safe. I don’t know if you’re in Pittsburgh or someplace else. I’m with Harp Janda at a New Orphans commune in South Dakota. Do you know about the New Orphans? I think you’d be into them.
I know you made it seem like the world isn’t actually going to end in September, but be straight with me here: do you think it is? If it is, is there anything we can do to stop it? Or should I just stay here? It’s nice here; there’s food; we’re safe.
I’m sorry to bother you but you’re the only adult I know anymore.
Viv
After I send it, though, I remember it isn’t true. There’s still my father’s sister in Salt Lake City, my Aunt Leah. I’ve never met her or Uncle Toby, but whatever kind of people they are, they’re further west than here. Closer to California. I search what I believe to be their names—Leah and Toby Meltzer—and I find a Salt Lake City address that can only be theirs. I write it down, and stick it in the pages of my diary so I won’t lose it.
One day after the two-week anniversary of our arrival in Keystone, I decide I want to see Mount Rushmore. I put on my Believer clothes and ask Edie to come with me, because I can’t find Harp anywhere and I don’t have the guts to ask Peter. Edie’s delighted to come, of course; there is still, after everything that’s happened, a little Believer in her, and she’s breathless on the drive over. When she catches sight of the faces on the way up the mountain, she actually gasps.
We pay the entrance fee, and follow the crowd as they shuffle through the stone entrance and closer to the Holy Terrace. When they find themselves as close as they’re going to get to the rock itself, they drop to their knees, start swaying and praying. I see one woman tear off a bonnet and start gesticulating wildly, screaming gibberish—the people around her don’t shrink away, but instead flock to her like she’s imparting wisdom. We kneel with the crowd on the granite terrace. Everyone around me is weeping, holding their hands to their chests and gazing up at the mountain with wide, shining eyes. Beside me, Edie murmurs under her breath, trying not to let me hear her praying. I look up at those faces. Excepting those late-adopting Believers, those who are play-acting at being born again so as to not miss the next trip to heaven, everyone around me can stand in this place and feel something good. They feel love. They feel awe. They feel like they are not alone in the universe. There’s nothing I can think of that makes me feel as at peace at this. The best I can hope for is the occasional moment of loose happy freedom—found usually with Harp but once or twice on this trip with Peter—that tells me it’s okay. That if I was put on this Earth for any particular reason, it was to experience love and joy, just like anybody else. That nobody gave me life only to destroy me.
We walk the trail that brings us to the foot of the rock. At the bottom of the trail Edie stands with her head lolled back on her neck, staring up, mouthing wordlessly, and I stay to the side, trying to look demure. Without meaning to, I catch the thread of a conversation two Believer dads are having nearby, while their wives try to wrangle the kids together for pictures.
“… bold as brass! Sitting out there right off the highway.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“But they’re killers! You only have to check the Church’s feed to know that. They’d sooner kill you than look at you. Lots of Believers have died at the hands of the Orphans—martyrs gone to their reward, yes, but—”
“That’s in other cities, brother. You’ve just come to Keystone. My family and I, we’ve been here for a month now. Waiting for the Second Boat. And I can tell you, those Orphans, they aren’t a threat to anybody.”
“No?”
The second man laughs. “You think we’d let them stay if they weren’t? A bunch of dumb kids, that’s all. Scared of their own shadows. Don’t trouble yourself, friend. The New Orphans aren’t a threat to us.”