Told by Pouya
Maman and Mitra-Joon were pretty mad about my unplanned tree performance. Christmas isn’t really a thing for most Iranian families. I always get a few presents though, so I’ll feel included, and my moms threatened to return every last one of them. But in the end, they caved.
I got some clothes, books, a build-your-own replica of the Star Destroyer, and a few things that looked like they probably came from a secondhand shop. Not quite the new bike, or the PlayStation and copy of The Evil Undead I’d dreamed of, but no big deal. I could play video games at Shady’s house. Plus, who needs more stuff when the end of the world is mere days away?
In fact, on the afternoon of December 31, as we counted down the hours to impact, Mr. Cook was on his way to pick me up. It wasn’t all that cold out, and I could have walked, but the Banana Bandit was still at large. Plus, I had a lot of stuff. I was heading to Shady’s for a sleepover. First, though, I bid my parents a fond (and final) farewell, which Maman mostly ignored because she was on a Skype call with Uncle Reza, and Mitra-Joon answered with “Okay, Pouya. See you tomorrow.”
I had my arms loaded with end-of-the world supplies, so Mr. Cook let me in when we arrived. I was carrying my backpack, a big bag of cheese puffs, my pillow, and all the gummy worms my life savings of $41.42 could buy. I nearly dropped it all when I saw Shady.
“Huh,” I said. “That’s different.”
He’d cut his hair. Obviously, I’d seen haircuts before, but never anything like this.
“Good different,” I added. It was just a regular haircut—longer on the top and shorter on the sides, and not only was Shady’s hair not falling over his eyes anymore, but his head must have been lighter, because he was standing different: straighter and more solid.
Svenrietta came waddling out of the living room. She was wearing a new diaper with little Santas on it.
I don’t know what Pearl Summers had fed her during the ducknapping, but when she spotted my bag of cheese puffs, she went berserk with butt wiggling. She started flapping her wings too—kind of hop-flying off the ground.
“Nuh-uh. No way,” I said. “These aren’t good for you.” But Shady’s sister, Manda, came out of the living room behind the duck.
“Oh, give her a few,” she said.
“Yeah. Look how nicely she’s asking,” her friend Pascale pointed out from behind her new video camera—a Christmas gift from her parents.
Ever since they’d started making the duckumentary again, Pascale had been over at Manda and Shady’s house a lot. I don’t really get teenagers, or girls, but Manda seemed happier again. Or maybe it was just the bright scarves she’d started wearing that jazzed up her all-black outfits and made her look less witchy.
I opened the bag of cheese puffs—not because Svenrietta was asking nicely but because I realized it didn’t matter. “Sure. Why not?” Processed grains give Svenri the runs, but what was a little duck diarrhea at a time like this? We all deserved to enjoy our last moments.
Speaking of which, Shady and I had our whole evening planned. It was going to include all the best things: The Evil Undead from five to seven. Pizza with extra pineapple: seven to seven fifteen. More Evil Undead while finishing whatever was left of the gummy worms and cheese puffs: seven fifteen to eleven thirty. And all the while, we’d be keeping in close contact with the other members of the Apocalypse Preparedness Squad in case any of them had news to report.
And then, of course, just before midnight, the special ceremony. Because the end of the world only happens once, and it’s worth doing right.
“You’re going to get the end-of-the-world ceremony on film, right?” I asked Manda and Pascale. “I mean, what could be more dramatic than capturing the experiences of a service duck as the earth explodes?” I paused, realizing the problem with that. “Not that anyone’s ever going to see it.”
Pascale tried to ruffle my hair, but I ducked away in time. “Yes, we’ll film your cute little ceremony,” she said.
Cute? Little? I pretended I was about to strangle her, but she just laughed, and really, I didn’t mind that much. I like Pascale. She’s an expert at making cheese strings into octopuses, and she keeps Manda busy, so Shady and I can do whatever we want more often.
“Come on,” Manda said to Pascale. “Let’s take a break from filming and get some snacks.”
Once the girls were gone, Shady picked up Svenri and motioned upstairs with his head. I followed, dragging along my pillow, cheese puffs, and other supplies. When we got to his room, I logged on to the group chat we’d set up with the other members of the APS: Gavin, DuShawn, Wendel, Aisha, Tammy, and Jang Hu.
How’s everyone doing?
Aisha, Tammy, and Jang were together at a sleepover at Jang’s apartment, which was directly upstairs from her parents’ convenience store. If Planet Q happened to hit the other side of the earth—in China or something—and we were all still alive, we were going to meet there to put our survival plan into action. They sent back a picture of the three of them, holding hands and looking terrified.
Then Gavin, Wendel, and DuShawn checked in separately: Prepared as possible with flashlights and bottled water, Gavin wrote.
A-OK so far, Wendel responded.
Dressed in fabulous end-of-the world outfit, DuShawn wrote, then he sent a picture of himself wearing a sparkly New Year’s hat and a really nice dress.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait—and feed Svenri cheese puffs and eat gummy worms.
“Killer move, Captain!” I said as Shady decapitated a big boss zombie whose eyeballs were falling out of her head. But, to tell the truth, the graphic of blood and guts made me a little queasy. Up until then, I’d been pretty okay with the idea of the end of the world, but I was starting to get nervous. My stomach was flip-flopping all over the place.
Before she died, my mamani always used to go pray at a mosque in Tehran. She believed in the Day of Judgment. According to the Koran, which is a really important religious book, on the day the earth ends, Allah—or God—will judge people for the good and bad stuff they’ve done in their lives and send them to heaven or hell.
I wasn’t sure that I believed in that, but would it be even worse if she was wrong? That would mean lights out for us all. Or what if she was right, and even helping out the other underducks at school hadn’t been enough to put me on the right side of good?
As we ate pizza and played hours and hours of video games, I kept glancing nervously at the clock on Shady’s bedside table. Finally it was 11:30.
“It’s time,” I said.
While I messaged the other members of the APS to remind them to start their ceremonies, Shady and Svenri went to get Manda and Pascale. They arrived a minute later with the video camera and some candles and matches. The ceremony got underway.
“This is so stupid,” Manda muttered, but she dimmed the lights for effect, then helped Pascale adjust the settings on her new camera.
“Come on,” Pascale urged. “It could be funny, at least. And if it helps us win the film competition and the trip to New Orleans, it’ll be worth it.”
Manda looked nervously across the room at her brother at the mere mention of the trip, but Shady nodded like, It’s okay, and then Manda smiled at Pascale.
“Wait!” I said. “Before you start filming, I have to scatter the flours. It says so in the instructions on the Planet Q website.”
“Are you sure that’s what they meant by flour?” Manda frowned as she watched me take a Ziploc bag of baking flour out of my backpack.
“It’s all I had!”
It was almost January! Where was I supposed to get fresh flowers? Anyway, I was pretty sure the symbolism counted more than anything.
“Okay,” I said when I’d finished making a ring of flour on the carpet. “Now we all sit and hold hands inside the circle.”
Manda lit the candles and placed them in the middle, then the three of us—me, Shady, and Manda—sat down and held hands. Meanwhile, Pascale filmed, and Svenri walked around the outside of the circle, trying to eat the flour off the carpet.
“Let us pray!” I said in my most serious voice. “Oh, mighty Planet Q. As you barrel toward us at unimaginable speeds, ready to smash the earth to smithereens, please have mercy on our souls.”
Manda rolled her eyes.
I ignored her.
“Help to guide us out of eternal darkness and—”
AAAAAAaaaaaaahhhhh!
An earsplitting scream pierced the air, and all four of us—five, if you include Svenri—jumped.
“What was that?” Manda was squeezing the heck out of my hand.
“I think it came from outside.” Pascale was already walking to the window.
“Is the world actually ending?” Manda asked with a laugh, but her voice had a thin, high edge to it.
Shady scooped Svenri up off the carpet, and we all went to look out over the street. I glanced at the clock on the way. Only 11:45! Too soon for Planet Q to make impact, and yet…
“HELP!” It was a lady. She sounded terrified. My stomach did a huge flop. My feet felt glued to the floor.
Shady ran down the stairs first, but by the time he reached the front door, his parents were already out in the street talking to the woman, who was wearing a purple coat.
“I was walking to my car, and he came out of nowhere, throwing bananas at me. He stole my purse,” she was saying. “My wallet and car keys are inside!”
Shady’s mom already had her cell phone out, calling the police.
“It was definitely the Banana Bandit,” the woman said. “He was wearing that gorilla suit. It made him almost impossible to see in the dark.”
While Shady’s mom explained what had happened to the 911 operator, Shady’s dad helped the lady inside to wait for the police. She was trembling, but when Shady brought Svenri to her and placed the duck in her arms, it seemed to distract her. We made her hot chocolate, then, together, we waited until we could hear the faint sound of sirens in the distance.
A few minutes later, two police officers stepped into the living room and shook hands with the lady. “I’m Officer Bent, and this is Officer Timone,” one of them said. “Some of our colleagues are searching the area, but we’d like to ask you some questions, if we could.”
I’d never been at a real, live police investigation before. I was dying to find out what was going to happen, but Shady nudged me and showed me his wristwatch: 11:58.
My stomach did its biggest flop yet. Only two minutes till the end of the earth, and I was definitely going to puke. I ran down the hall to the main-floor bathroom and wriggled the handle. It was locked.
“Just a second,” Pascale called from inside. “I’m fixing my makeup.”
Pascale wore a lot of makeup! And I was never going to make it to the upstairs bathroom. I ran to the front door and threw it open, with Shady following at my heels.
I only made it as far as the front steps before leaning over and releasing a torrent of rainbow-colored gummy-worm puke between Shady’s mom’s burlap-wrapped rosebushes.
“Ugh. Sorry.” I sat back on my heels. Shady rubbed my back while I took a deep breath of wintry air and got ready to get back up. Then I froze.
I’d just caught sight of something moving ever-so-slightly in the garden. A rounded shape, like the rosebushes, only different somehow. I squinted. It was hairy.
Shady saw it too. Luckily, we didn’t need words to make a plan—and, thanks to the APS, we were prepared for just such an event. I immediately thought back to a handout we’d made, “Seven Tips for Surviving the End of the World”—especially one tip we’d put in about what to do if you come face-to-face with a wild animal wandering the streets. Because if a gorilla (or a criminal dressed as one) isn’t wild, I don’t know what is.
Thankfully, Shady’s a natural when it comes to the right response for this particular problem. If they see a mountain lion or rabid dog, most people scream or run away. That’s called fight or flight. It sounds smart, but it can trigger a predator to attack. Instead, the best idea is to freeze, then move away as quietly as possible. And trust me, we froze.
Long seconds ticked by. Finally, Shady tilted his head one way—bandit—then the other—door.
I nodded and mimed tiptoeing with my fingers.
We both stood up, silent as ghosts.
“Come on,” I said out loud, so the bandit wouldn’t suspect he’d been spotted. “It’s too cold to stay out here.”
We backed into the front hall and shut the door softly behind us.
After that, things happened quickly. There was some shouting, and a chase down the street, but within minutes, Officers Bent and Timone had the bandit in cuffs and in the back of their car. In fact, it all went down so fast that I didn’t even notice the time passing until the police were done taking notes, the last cop car had driven away, and Shady’s mom said we’d all had more than enough excitement for one night and sent us up to bed.
“Shady!” I pointed at his alarm clock.
It was 12:40!
It’s hard to describe what I felt at that moment. Relief, partly, but also dread. I approached Shady’s computer, feeling sick again, and clicked on the first message. It was from Wendel. I was fully expecting him to call me a liar-liar-pants-on-fire or at least to say, “I told you so,” only…
Midnight and all is well here, he reported. You guys okay?
So relieved! Aisha, Tammy, and Jang had posted. Going to bed.
Guess the scientists were wrong! Wendel added. It happens.
All good, DuShawn had chimed in. Pou? Shady? You guys okay?
They weren’t mad at me for being wrong! If anything, they were worried because—I guessed—we were friends now? There were even a few messages after that about getting together in the new year to hang out and eat some of the canned peaches we’d stashed away. Like a party.
I’ll bring cut-up grapes for Svenrietta, DuShawn had promised.
And then, one by one, the members of the APS had logged off, leaving just me, Shady, and Svenrietta awake to talk about everything that had just happened.
“Well, it’s a bit of a letdown,” I admitted. “But at least since we’re still alive, we’ll have another chance to beat King Zombie tomorrow.”
Shady made an agreeing face.
“And the canned-peach party will be good. Because, I swear, I’m never eating another gummy worm as long as I live.”
Svenri quacked, and a splattery sound came from the general direction of her diaper.
Shady got out the supplies and started to change it, and I made a face when I saw what was inside. “I’m guessing she’s never going to eat another cheese puff either,” I said. “Not if you can help it.”
“You know…” I went on, “they’re never going to believe we helped catch the Banana Bandit when we tell them at school, right? I barely believe it myself!”
Shady nodded, then shrugged.
He was right.
“Yeah. It doesn’t matter. As long as we know we did it. Who cares what anyone else thinks, right?”
Once Svenrietta’s diaper was clean, Shady settled her into her crate in the corner, where she’d been sleeping ever since she got home from being kidnapped, then he got into bed.
I turned out the light and climbed into my sleeping bag.
“Night, Shady,” I said into the darkness.
Everything was quiet for a bit. In fact, I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard it, small but unmistakable: