We Are the Ants (15 page)

Inside, though, I was already broken.

“What's the matter, Space Boy?” came the hideous whisper. I didn't look at them. I just stood by my desk, willing the mask to disappear.

“Henry? Is there a problem?” Ms. Faraci's voice sounded scratchy and distant, like a faded recording. “Henry?”

I yelped when she touched my shoulder. She saw the mask and reached past me to grab it. “Who put this here?” The rest of the class stared at me, at their desks, and no one spoke up. The attention made everything worse. I should have brushed the stupid alien mask to the floor. But I hadn't, and now Ms. Faraci was going to wave that thing in the air until someone copped to leaving it on my desk.

“Tell me immediately, or I will simply fail you all for the semester.” Ms. Faraci was trembling. I should have been flattered that she cared, but I hated the feeling of every student in the classroom looking at me, despising me. I doubted she'd actually flunk everyone, but there was a chance, and they would blame me.

“Adrian did it.” Audrey Dorn spoke loudly and clearly. She turned to look Adrian in the eyes. “I saw him put it on Henry's desk.”

“Bitch!” snarled Adrian, but Ms. Faraci rounded on him.

“Get your bag and report to Principal DeShields's office at once.” She towered over Adrian as he gathered his belongings, glaring at me and Audrey and Ms. Faraci.

“I need a pass,” Adrian said in a voice resembling a growl.

Ms. Faraci shoved the alien mask at him. “Here's your pass.”

Adrian elbowed me on his way out, likely already plotting his revenge.

Even though he had gotten into trouble, and Audrey had handed Faraci his head on a platter, I was the one people would talk about. The one they'd laugh at between classes. My skin began to itch like I'd been sunburned and blistered, and my stomach filled with bile. Ignoring Ms. Faraci's concerned shouts, I fled the classroom for the restroom. I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from puking until I reached the toilet. It wasn't food that made me sick; it was knowing that I was Space Boy, that I would always be Space Boy. That poison infected every cell, and I vomited so hard that I felt my muscles tear from my ribs. It wasn't enough.

“Henry?”

I recognized Marcus's voice and threw my shoulder against the stall door. My nostrils burned with snot and bile, and I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“I told Faraci I forgot my book in my locker, but I wanted to make sure you're all right.”

“Get the fuck out!” I was shaking, scared of what he might do. “I know it was you.”

Marcus's shadow floated back and forth across the tile floor, but he didn't try to open the stall. “It was only a joke.”

I wasn't sure whether Marcus was talking about the mask on the chair or The Incident. Not that it mattered. “That wasn't a joke, Marcus; it was felony assault! What's next, acid in my face? I hear hot tar and feathers is a real crowd pleaser.” I was trembling so badly, the door rattled, but my rage was the only thing keeping the terror at bay.

I imagined Marcus standing in front of the sinks, trying to figure out the right thing to say to make me see he wasn't to blame. Telling himself he was a good guy, and it was my fault if I couldn't take a joke. I wished it were Audrey on the other side of that door. I wished I'd forgiven her and that we were friends again, because without Jesse, I was alone. I got my phone out of my pocket and began typing a text to send her, begging her to rescue me from Marcus, but I deleted it and put my phone away.

“For what it's worth, I'm sorry,” Marcus said after a few moments of silence. I'd begun to think he'd left. “Are you going to tell anyone?”

“Don't worry, Marcus, I'll keep your secrets. All of them. I don't want people to find out about what we did any more than you do.”

  •  •  •  

Diego found me during lunch, sitting on a bench beside the library. The weather was too warm to eat outside, but I couldn't endure the cafeteria with all those people looking at and talking about me. I didn't have an appetite anyway. “I texted you a couple of times.” There was coldness in his voice, a distant calm. I was sure he knew about the attack, had probably seen the pictures, but he was being maddeningly blasé.

“More like thirty.”

“I was worried.”

“I wasn't in the mood to talk.”

Diego nodded and sat beside me. He was wearing flip-flops that exposed his flat feet and hairy toes. “Who attacked you, Henry?”

“I already went through this with the cops.”

“I'm not the cops.”

“Just drop it, all right?”

“I've told you about my sister, right?” Diego didn't wait for me to answer. “Viv was wild when we were growing up. She's got her shit together now, but when we were kids, I didn't think she'd make it out of high school without a felony record.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “She was great, though. When I was seven, I think, we had this storm come through that knocked out the power for hours. Our parents had gone into town, and I was so scared. Viv found a bottle of champagne in the back of the fridge and made us champagne ice cream. We played penny poker until our parents got home. My pop whipped us both pretty good, but it was worth it.

“Another time, when I was nine, Viv was climbing this huge cottonwood in our backyard. Dad had told her a million times not to, but that was probably exactly why she did it. She slipped and fell, smacked her face on a branch coming down. Came screaming to me, all bloody and purple. Thing was, she wasn't worried about her nose being broken; she was scared of being grounded for climbing that stupid tree. Mom lost it when I took Viv inside. I told her I was playing ninja and had tackled Viv and accidentally broken her nose.

“When my pop got home that night, he beat me so hard, he ruptured my spleen.” Diego chuckled like a ruptured spleen was hilarious.

I looked for self-pity in Diego's eyes, tried to figure out why he'd told me. “Did your dad really do that?” Diego lifted his T-shirt. A faded scar ran down his stomach to his navel, marring the smooth tan skin. Another scar, jagged and more fresh, cut across his left side above his hip. He dropped his shirt back down before I could examine it further. “I'm sorry that happened to you, but what's your point?”

Diego clenched his fists, took deep, even breaths. He said, “I protect the people I care about, Henry.”

“It doesn't matter who attacked me.”

“It matters to me.” For a moment I considered telling him it was Marcus, and probably Adrian and Jay, who'd attacked me. Maybe he would have turned them in; maybe he would have beaten them bloody. All I know is that he wouldn't have done nothing. Which is why I didn't tell him.

“The sluggers—”

“Who?”

“The aliens,” I said. “I call them that because they look like slugs. Well, they told me the world is going to end soon.”

“How soon?”

“January twenty-ninth.”

Diego arched his eyebrow. “That's pretty specific.”

“It's the end of life on Earth. Specificity matters.”

“Did the . . . sluggers tell you how?”

I shook my head. “But they told me I could prevent it. All I have to do is press a red button on their ship.”

“Strange. And sort of anticlimactic.”

“I thought so too.”

Most people would have written me off as a delusional lunatic, but Diego treated me like he believed what I was saying, or at least believed that I believed it. “So at Marcus's party, when you asked me about saving the world, you weren't speaking hypothetically?”

“Not so much.”

“Did you press it?”

“Not yet.” Admitting that to Diego, telling him about the button and the end of the world, made the burden slightly more manageable. It was still my decision, no one could make it for me, but I didn't have to carry the weight of it alone.

“It'd be easier not to,” Diego said. “Wouldn't it?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Because you miss Jesse.” The muscle along Diego's jaw pulsed, and it was a while before he spoke again. “You've already made up your mind, haven't you? That's why you won't tell anyone who attacked you. The world's going to end; why rock the boat, right?”

“No. I don't know.” I'd admitted more to Diego than I'd meant to. “Do you want me to press it?”

“I think I want you to want to press it.”

“Oh.” It wasn't the answer I'd hoped for. I didn't want to be responsible for the fate of humankind. I could barely be respon­sible for myself. We sat in silence, each roaming our own thoughts until the bell rang and the walkways flooded with chatty students on their way to classes. The one good thing to come from being attacked was that Principal DeShields transferred me from gym to study hall. Diego escorted me to my new class without asking, and I didn't tell him how grateful I was.

Before I went inside, Diego tugged my sleeve and said, “So, I know it's still a couple of weeks away, but my sister's having a Thanksgiving barbecue. It's absolutely going to be lame, but it'd be cool if you dropped by.”

The suddenness of Diego's invitation confounded my ability to speak. After what I'd told him, I was sure he'd want to distance himself from me. “We usually do family dinner.”

“I figured, but you could come before . . . or after.”

“Why me?”

Diego cocked his head, looked at me with his green-brown eyes before he said, “Because I can be myself around you, even if I don't know who I am yet.”

“Oh.”

Diego broke into a welcome grin. “Anyway, you've got to try Viv's potato salad before we all die.”

“It's that good?”

“No,” he said, “it's terrible. But you can't believe how bad it is until you taste it.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “I'll think about it.”

“Good enough for me.”

I leapt out of bed at 5:16 a.m., awakened by Chopin's Sonata no. 2. I knew what time it was because I stubbed my toe on my desk, knocking over my alarm clock, which fell onto the cord of my lamp and dragged it to the floor, breaking the bulb into a hundred invisible pieces that I was sure I would step on later. By the time I steadied myself and made certain my toe wasn't broken, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my veins that it was like I'd snorted a cup of coffee grounds.

Bleary-eyed and ready for war, I stumbled into the living room, but I wasn't the first to arrive.

Nana sat at the piano, which she hadn't played since her memory began to fade. Her bony back straight, her fingers swept the keys delicately, then hard, alternately caressing and torturing music from them. Mom stood behind her, arms rigid at her sides. I was about to ask what the hell was going on, but Mom held her finger to her lips before I could interrupt. A moment later Charlie and Zooey joined us. The little parasite bulged in Zooey's belly, and she rested her hands on it. Mom didn't need to tell them to remain quiet.

As my anger faded, Nana's song consumed me. I'd grown up listening to Nana play the piano—she had even tried to teach me when I was little, but gave up because I had clumsy fingers—and I'd heard stories of the concerts she'd played in her youth before she married and had my mother. This was different. These notes were raw. They rose and fell, soared as the chords were layered atop one another. They ached and bled, and we bled with them. This was every fear and horror her mind could conjure. The music showed us what she couldn't say. All her emptiness and despair. The hollowness of her mind without her memories. The way she saw the world as a cold, dead place. She'd tried to tell me, to tell us all, but I hadn't really heard her until that moment.

Abruptly, Nana stopped. Her fingers paralyzed, arched over the keys. She tried to continue, searching desperately for the right chords, but the notes were discordant. She banged the piano, her frustration mounting. “I can't remember how it goes!”

Mom rested her hand on Nana's shoulder. “Mother, it's the middle of the night—”

“What're you doing in my house? Get out of my house!” Nana didn't see us. She saw people, but not us. She fixated on the song, her arthritic fingers hunting recklessly for the next note.

“Nana—” I tried, but she screamed, “Leave me the hell alone, all of you!” and slammed the keys. Mom's shoulders shook. I stood helplessly, unsure what to do. I was worried Nana was going to hurt herself.

Charlie brushed past me and sat on the bench beside Nana. Without speaking, he began to play. Haltingly at first but, as his confidence grew, each note flowed from the one that preceded it. Charlie's song, though different from Nana's, stoked her memory, and she began again. He played a joyful counterpoint to her plaintive dirge—his notes light and hopeful to drive back the desolation of the future. I've never heard anything like it and doubt I ever will again.

Nana sighed as the song ended—the final note lingering in our ears—stood, and shuffled back to her room.

I'm not sure whether we were more stunned by Nana's behavior or Charlie's. Zooey kissed his cheek as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “We're going back to bed. I have to work early.”

I can't help thinking that if we live long enough, we'll all eventually forget the lives we've lived. The faces of people closest to us, the memories we swore we'd hold on to for the rest of our lives. First kisses and last kisses and all the passion between the years. We have to watch Nana's life slipping away from her like a forgotten word. I thought I understood what's happening to her, but this isn't like being robbed a penny at a time. Memories aren't currency to spend; they're us. Age isn't stealing from my grandmother; it's slowly unwinding her.

“I can't do this anymore,” Mom said.