End Times (28 page)

She read it yet again, a fifth time and then a sixth, struggling to decipher its meaning. Only one thing was clear: that if it was a hoax, Doug hadn’t planted it. The language was too sophisticated, the nuances too delicate, to have emerged from his thick skull.

Another thought poked at her, unwelcome yet persistent. What if, in spite of everything, the tablet was real?

The ghosts of Elk Mountain swirled around her, and her mind came to rest on the man in the rough-hewn robe, an image blurred and indistinct as a watercolor: a golden beam of light streaming down from the heavens, a bearded man with a rock and a chisel receiving the urgent message from above.

Daphne climbed hurriedly from the pit, brushing the earth from her jeans as she tried to chase the vision away. She was careful to shake out each wrinkle from the tarp as she drew it back over the hole, to leave it looking exactly as she’d found it.

The message haunted her as she started up the jeep and went rattling down Elk Mountain Road. Pastor Ted had mentioned a prophet, and so did the tablet. Were they related somehow . . . and did that mean that the prophet on the tablet was also Janie’s unborn child? Was the Great Divide on the tablet the same as the Great Change that Pastor Ted was always talking about in his sermons?

I sound like Janie
, she thought with a wry smile as she parked the jeep in the Global Oil lot and returned the keys to their hook. She was making wild assumptions, seeing signs and omens where there had to be a logical explanation, and practically taking Pastor Ted’s sermons as fact. If she kept this up, she’d be greeting everyone in town with “I believe” before she knew it.

She fell into bed, the words from the tablet still thundering in her head. But as soft as the pillow was under her head, and as much as her body ached for sleep, it still wouldn’t come. The message blared in her mind, incomprehensible and disturbing. As she tried uselessly to untangle its meaning, four little words played over and over in her mind, a drumbeat underscoring her thoughts:

What if it’s real?

THE motocross track buzzed with Friday-night activity, bikes zooming and leaping over the jumps and berms, careening around curves and kicking up plumes of dirt until the riders were brown from head to toe. Dust and exhaust hovered in the floodlights like striations on a layer cake, leaving a thin coat of grime on Daphne’s jeans and the tang of metal and grease on her tongue. High above them, a crescent moon grinned a pale and sickly smile.

“Who are all these people, anyway?” Janie asked, looking out at the dozens of riders dipping and churning around the track as more waited on the sidelines, pawing the dirt with leather boots. Even the bleachers, which had once belonged strictly to Janie and her friends, were scattered with stubble-cheeked men cradling forty-ounce beers and smoking Marlboros, politely trying to blow the smoke away from the ladies.

“Uh—you noticed the giant new oil rig in town, right?” Hilary set down her half-empty can of Coors Light. “’Cause, trust me, these guys aren’t here for the culture and nightlife.”

“I guess you’re right.” Janie was bundled in an old fleece pullover of Doug’s, the sleeves bunched in her hands to ward off the evening chill. “Maybe they came to see the tablet, though. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, like old Vince would let them anywhere near it,” Hilary scoffed. According to the rumors whirling around town, Vince Varley had installed a twenty-four-hour guard to protect the tablet, which he was planning to get authenticated and sell for millions to the highest bidder. But despite all of Hilary’s prodding over the past few days, Janie refused to admit whether the gossip was true.

“I just wish those experts would hurry up and finish their conference,” Janie sighed, snuggling deeper into the fleece. “I’m dying to know what it says.”

“It probably says,
Haha, suckers, this thing is as fake as Deirdre Varley’s Louis Vuitton handbag
,” Hilary said.

Janie gave her a sharp look. “How can you even joke about it? It’s another sign from God. Personally, I think it’s going to tell us all about how my baby will lead us through the Great Change so we can get our Eternal Reward.”

Hilary shrugged and picked up her beer. “It is weird; I’ll give you that. Especially with all the other stuff that’s been happening around here.” She turned to Daphne. “What do you think it says?”

“I think we should wait and see what the experts say,” she replied coolly. It was her standard answer, the one she’d given to her coworkers, Uncle Floyd, and just about everyone else who asked. She wasn’t ready to admit that she could read the tablet, or to share its strange and disturbing message.

A roar came from the track, and the girls leaned forward, watching a rider below emerge from the knot of color and noise. He coasted off the jump with air to spare and kicked his legs out behind him, grabbing the back of the seat so he looked like Superman flying through the night. A cheer floated up through the dust as he landed smoothly back in the saddle, wheels as straight as if he’d never left the ground.

Hilary let out a long wolf whistle. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Owen,” Daphne replied automatically. She’d been following his red bike frame and glossy black helmet, marveling at the fluid way he took each turn and jump, like a fish darting effortlessly through water. It was clear to her that even with the influx of newcomers, he was still the best rider on the track—and equally clear that he wasn’t doing a great job of not showing off in front of Doug and his friends.

“Oooooh!” Hilary nudged her in the ribs. “Look who’s been checking out the new guy.”

Daphne blushed. “We’re just friends,” she insisted.

“That’s not what it looked like at the wedding,” Hilary teased. “Before . . . I mean, never mind. Crap.” She snuck a sidelong glance at Janie, who had drawn the fleece up over her chin like a turtle retreating into its shell. Talk of the wedding still made her eyes go dark with terror, and despite the Varleys’ prompting she still refused to open her gifts or look at any pictures from the day, insisting they all reminded her of God’s terrible sign.

From the top of the bleachers, a voice like tarnished silver bells called Daphne’s name. She turned to see Luna descending the bleacher stairs like mist, trailing the jagged ends of a moss-colored robe. Beneath it she wore skintight leather shorts and a cropped macramé top, revealing a glowing moonstone that seemed magically embedded in her bellybutton. She carried a hula hoop over one arm, wrapped in blue and silver tape that was worn away in places.

“How’s it going?” Luna flopped down next to Daphne, swinging the hoop around to rest on her knees. Daphne felt every pair of eyes on the bleachers clinging to Luna’s back, could almost taste the prospectors’ longing through the dusty night.

“Fine,” Daphne croaked. Luna must have been aware of their gazes, but she ignored them and turned to the cluster of girls, fixing them with her sea-green stare.

“I’m Luna,” she said.

“Of course you are,” Hilary muttered, loud enough for Luna to hear. But instead of shrinking into herself or finding an excuse to leave like Daphne would have, Luna opened her mouth wide and laughed like a pocketful of change falling to the floor, her teeth sharp and white.

“You got me,” she admitted. “Hippie chick, hippie name. Who’s winning?” She squinted at the riders zooming around the track.

“It’s just a meet,” Janie explained. There was something hard in her eyes that Daphne had never seen before, a new line of distrust across her forehead. Daphne wondered if it was simply that her cousin didn’t like having another girl on her turf, or if there was something else about Luna that made her uneasy, some quality radiating off of her that made her normally bubbly cousin cagey and territorial. “They’re just messing around and stuff—it’s not a competition.”

“Gotcha.” Luna leaned forward, eyes sparkling with interest. “Which one is Owen?”

Daphne pointed him out, amazed that Luna had never bothered to watch him ride. They’d arrived in town together, were sharing an apartment, but beyond that their relationship was as inscrutable as frosted glass.

Janie reached over and gripped Daphne’s knee hard. “He’s going for it,” she said through clenched teeth. An engine thundered below, accompanied by encouraging bellows from the crowd, and a rider in a green helmet approached the high jump.

“Doug?” Daphne asked.

Janie’s head bobbed. “That trick Owen did earlier—he’s going to try it. I can just tell.”

Doug yanked hard on his throttle, sending a cloud of exhaust billowing behind him as he gathered speed and roared toward the jump, gunning over the lip. At the height of the ascent, he launched his body behind the bike, kicking his legs like a novice swimmer trying to make it back to shore, determined to emulate Owen’s Superman move.

But his weight and inexperience made the bike wobble dangerously, dragging the rear wheel down. He’d waited a moment too long—gravity was already pulling him back down to earth.

Doug realized his mistake in midair and flopped frantically, trying to flail his way back into the saddle. Both he and the bike tumbled to the ground, rolling in opposite directions until they came to a stop in two identical mounds of dirt.

Doug was on his feet in an instant, brushing billows of dust from his jacket and staggering to his bike. Janie’s hand still gripped Daphne’s knee, fingernails dug in like a claw. She made a small mew of distress, and Daphne put her own hand over her cousin’s in a belated gesture of comfort.

“It looks like he’s okay,” she ventured.

“I hope so,” Janie said, shaken.

Doug righted his bike and scrambled into the saddle, crossing the track in a plume of dirt and injured pride.

“He the one who did that to you?” Luna asked Janie, pointing at her stomach.

Janie gave her a look that suggested the question wasn’t worth her time and turned to Daphne. “Should I go see if he’s all right?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t,” Daphne replied. The riders were already back in action, swerving around corners and jiggling over the whoop, engines whining like a pack of wolves. “I doubt going down there would be good for the baby,” she added.

“I guess you’re right.” Janie pouted. She cupped her chin in her hands, her lower lip drooping. “I just hope he gets over it quick.”

“I’m sure he will,” Daphne said, not sure at all.

They watched the rest of the meet in relative silence, interrupted only by Hilary’s sarcastic asides and Luna’s gleeful exhalations. As the moon crawled higher in the sky, the guys tired and dropped off the track one by one. Bryce swung by the bleachers to grab Hilary, and eventually Doug, red-faced and scowling, appeared for Janie. Luna went off to find a beer and never came back, and before long Daphne found herself alone in the bleachers, watching the final rider swing around the track in dazzling circles.

It was Owen, of course. Alone on the track, he rode like a dark horseman on the wind, whipping through the curves and flying over jumps. He torqued and spun, levitated off the seat and gripped the handlebars with his toes, guided the bike in swoops and swirls until it seemed like he’d be airborne forever, like his wheels would never touch the ground. Back in the parking lot the party blossomed, squeals and laughter underscoring a driving rock song, the bonfire twisting knotted columns of flame into the sky. But Daphne barely registered any of it. Alone and unwatched, she no longer had to stop herself from staring at Owen. She could bask in his untamed energy and let her imagination roam as freely as his bike on the track, to a place where she didn’t have to keep pushing him away.

Eventually someone turned off the floodlights, plunging the track into a silky darkness punctured only by Owen’s headlight and the silver sparkle of the stars. Owen turned his bike toward the trail, and Daphne listened to his motor putter up the hill and disappear into the party’s cacophony. She stood, surprised at the stiffness in her knees, and headed toward the party. She’d been watching him for longer than she realized.

• • •

THE party filled the parking lot and spilled out into the scrubby trees beyond. Smoke from the bonfire mingled with the tattered vapors floating from dozens of cigarettes, and the night was ripe with cheap beer and liquid courage, electrified by the influx of prospectors and rig workers who liked to play as hard as they worked.

Daphne noticed Janie and Doug clustered by the tailgate of Doug’s truck in a tight knot of Carbon County locals. They were outnumbered, she realized, surrounded by prospectors and guys from the rig. It was true that the track was no longer just “their” place, and the harder she looked the more she could see the sadness and confusion hovering in a cloud over their group.

The newcomers, on the other hand, seemed pumped with energy, larger than life. They’d formed a loose semicircle around the bonfire and were greedily watching Luna dance with her hoop, sliding it across her chest and undulating her hips to meet it, rolling it over her shoulders and around her waist, her lips parted and glistening. Her robe lay in a heap on the ground, and firelight danced on her skin, giving her a molten quality that burned lava red from deep within. Her eyes flickered over the crowd, and she flashed a wicked smile.