We Are the Ants (38 page)

“Don't forget about the tooth.” Audrey chuckled. “Their darling boy tried to rape another boy at a high school carnival. It's not the sort of thing his parents want to draw attention to.”

“Did Diego give you a number?” The hospital had a pay phone for patients to use, and I wanted to call him so badly. I didn't expect things to go back to the way they were, but I was hoping he'd still be my friend.

Audrey shook her head.

I'd figured as much. Even though Diego had risked being locked up in juvie for me, I wasn't sure I could fix the damage I'd done.

“Just focus on getting better, Henry. That's what's important.”

On my fifth day in Quiet Oaks, Dr. Janeway took me on a field trip. It was my idea, but she agreed without hesitation. It was one of those nice Florida days that makes you forget about the months of steamy air teeming with blood-hungry mosquitos. A salty breeze blew in from the ocean, and it was cool even in the sunlight.

Dr. Janeway remained in her car, giving me enough distance to feel like I was on my own.

Jesse Franklin's headstone was simple and uncomplicated. I think maybe people thought that's how Jesse was, but there was so much under the surface that no one, not even I, knew about. I wish I had.

“Now that I'm here, I don't know what to say.” I stood over Jesse's grave, my hands folded in front of me. “Apparently, letting the world end is sort of the same as wanting to kill myself, so I guess I'm just as screwed up as you.”

It hurt to imagine Jesse all alone under the ground. I wasn't sure whether I believed in heaven or hell or reincarnation. All I knew was that Jesse was gone and that I'd loved him.

“Dr. Janeway says I'll never really know why you took your own life. I hope you knew that I loved you so fucking much. Maybe we don't matter to the universe, Jesse Franklin, but you mattered to me.”

  •  •  •  

Mom and Charlie visited me yesterday, but I think it was difficult for Mom to see me in the hospital. I think blaming ourselves for situations we have no control over must be genetic. Maybe the sluggers should pay her a visit.

Zooey was waiting for me when I returned from the ceme­tery with Dr. Janeway. It hurt to see her without her round belly. Part of her was missing, but only those of us who knew her could see it.

“Hey, Henry.”

“Checking in?” Zooey didn't laugh at the joke. “You look good.”

I didn't know what else to say. The truth was that she looked tired, worn-down, and worn-out. Maybe she knew I wasn't being entirely honest, but she said thanks, anyway.

“Where's Charlie? Did he find the fridge? The nurses count those Jell-O cups.” I looked around for my brother but didn't see him.

Zooey shook her head. “Just me.”

I led her to a threadbare couch, ignoring and ignored by the other patients.

She said, “I had class yesterday and couldn't come with your mom and Charlie. I just wanted to see how you're doing.”

“I'm good, I guess.”

Zooey seemed as at a loss for words as I did. She'd hidden herself away after New Year's, and I felt guilty I hadn't visited her. “That's good.”

“What about you? How are you holding up?”

As soon as I asked, Zooey's bottom lip began to tremble. I didn't want her to cry in the crazy hospital, for fear they'd never let her leave. “I shouldn't have come.”

She tried to stand, but I took her hand and pulled her back onto the couch. “I'm glad you came,” I said. “This place gets super boring.”

Zooey smiled a little. “Can I ask you something, Henry?”

“Sure.”

“Do you still want the world to end?”

I wasn't kidding about the hospital being boring. No TV, no books, just a lot of time to write and think. And I'd spent a fairly huge chunk of that time thinking about the sluggers. “No. I don't think so.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Honestly?” I said. “It wasn't any one thing.” I looked at Zooey—into her eyes, into the deep pools of amber. I recognized what I saw there. The emptiness, the grief. I could have been looking into a mirror. I could have told her something inspirational, something to hang her hope on that would help her through the long, lonely nights where she wouldn't be able to think about anything but the little life that might have been. Instead I told her the truth. “Jesse's still dead, Diego might end up back in juvie. The world pretty much sucks. But the bad shit that happens doesn't cancel out the good. I mean, a world with people like you in it can't be totally crap, right?”

I wasn't sure if anything I'd said had helped. Zooey's eyes were wet around the edges, but she wasn't crying. Not really.

After a moment she said, “I'm considering changing my major.”

“Oh yeah? What to?”

“Premed,” Zooey said. “I think I want to be an obstetrician.”

“That's pretty cool. But you'll definitely have to trade up from Charlie.”

That made Zooey laugh. A real laugh. Beautiful and alive.

“Hey, Zooey?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you tell me about her? About Evie?”

It took her a moment to get started, but once Zooey began talking, she didn't stop until visiting hours ended.

On the seventh day, Dr. Janeway released me from Quiet Oaks under strict orders to continue taking my antidepressants. I also had to meet with her twice a week at her office for therapy.

I expected Mom to pick me up, but Charlie and Zooey were waiting for me instead. Zooey hugged me fiercely, and Charlie slugged me in the arm. They weren't there to take me home, though. They had a different destination in mind.

Mom and Nana were waiting for us at the county courthouse for Charlie and Zooey's wedding. I stood beside Charlie as his best man, and Mom fussed over a radiant Zooey. Nana filled the courtroom with stories about the time she caught a shark off the coast of Key West, and the time she single-­handedly uncovered a plot to murder the pope. When the judge finished, she took a group photo of us, and Nana played Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Denton out on a little keyboard that was stashed in the corner. She didn't miss a note.

The ceremony was brief but wonderful. We had dinner afterward at Neptune's because Mom couldn't take the day off, not even for her son's wedding. That's how life is; it just goes on.

  •  •  •  

Diego's painting from the winter carnival was leaning against my bed when I finally got home. Charlie said he'd found it outside the door the day I was admitted to the hospital. A note was taped to the frame that read
This isn't a painting; it's a mirror.

The smell of popcorn filled the living room, and Charlie and Zooey wouldn't stop kissing on the couch. It was pretty disgusting. Mom and I had a bet on how long it would take before they were pregnant again, though I thought it was gross for Mom to be wagering on her eldest son's sex life.

I was emptying popcorn into a plastic bowl while Audrey prepared our drinks, when the doorbell rang.

“Get that will you, Henry?” Charlie yelled from the living room.

“You're closer.”

“
Bunker
's already started.”

I sighed and set the popcorn bag aside. “Ten to one, it's Charlie's friends.”

Audrey poured the root beer too quickly and it overflowed. “Shit!”

“Smooth.” I laughed as I walked to the door. When I opened it, Diego was standing on the step, dressed in gray shorts and a black sweater. I hadn't seen him since the winter carnival, and I didn't know he'd returned from Colorado. I was too stunned to speak, so I stood there like a moron.

“I really hope you're the one who ordered the nude model, because the last house I went to let me strip down to my underwear before telling me they weren't.”

I threw my arms around Diego, accidentally knocking the back of his head with my cast, but I didn't care because he was here and not in jail and I'd missed him so much.

“Why didn't you call me?”

“I can't help it; I love to make an entrance.” He grinned so big, it hurt to look at him.

“Everything cool, Henry?” called Charlie.

“Yeah,” I said. I pulled Diego outside. “What happened to you?”

Diego filled me in on the hearing and how he almost ended up in juvie again. “It was pretty close. The judge was ready to toss me back in, but my lawyer argued that since Marcus wasn't pressing charges, there was no one to refute my story that I'd been acting in self-defense.”

“I don't know what I would have done without you.”

“You would have been just fine, I think.”

Once the shock of seeing him wore off, I remembered all the things I'd said to him, the things we'd said to each other, and I wasn't sure where we stood. That he was at my house was a good sign, but I was uncertain how to act. I tried to cover my awkwardness by telling him about Quiet Oaks and how I finally made my peace with Jesse.

“I've still got a lot to figure out, but I like having choices.”

Diego rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands in his pockets. “I'm seeing a therapist about my anger issues. Apparently, it's not okay to beat the shit out of anyone who hurts someone you love. Go figure.”

“I still think Marcus deserved it.”

“Maybe.”

“And I love you too, you know?”

“I know.” I kissed Diego. We floated free and unfettered. Maybe love doesn't require falling after all. Maybe it only requires that you choose to be in it. I wasn't sure what was going to happen with us or how much time we had left, but I wasn't going to waste a second of it.

Audrey joined us outside, and we walked to the beach together. It was a clear sky full of stars with a bright moon overhead, and we passed the time naming the constellations.

“Did you ever press the button?” Diego asked.

We sat in the sand at the water's edge. Audrey on my left, Diego on my right. The rest of the world didn't exist. “The sluggers haven't abducted me in a while. I would if they'd give me the chance.”

Audrey checked her watch. “There's still a few hours left until the twenty-ninth.”

Diego leaned his head on my shoulder. “What do you think's going to happen?”

I'd imagined dozens of ways the world could end, but I still wasn't any closer to an answer. I watched the sky and wondered where the sluggers were. Why they hadn't given me another opportunity to press the button and whether they were ever real at all. I didn't know if the world was going to end tomorrow, nor did I care.

“Honestly? It doesn't matter.”

I know this isn't what you had in mind when you assigned me this extra credit project. You probably expected a thousand words on gravity or the four laws of thermodynamics, not a journal recounting the last 144 days of my life—­possibly of all life—interspersed with crazy doomsday scenarios. It's entirely possible we won't even be alive to discuss it. The world will probably end in a flood that cleanses the stink of humanity from the face of the planet. No, strike that. It's the acidification of the oceans that'll do us in. Climate change causes the glaciers to melt, which causes the acidification of the world's oceans, resulting in the death of most sea life. This triggers a worldwide food shortage, which leads to wars and the end of mankind.

Or maybe robots rise up and murder us all. Gamma rays from deep space blanket the earth and annihilate all living creatures. A supervolcano erupts or aliens invade or a genetically modified virus is released by a terrorist organization that kills 99.99 percent of all humans, leaving the remaining .01 percent to die slowly of starvation and loneliness.

It doesn't matter.

Rising temperatures could trigger the release of massive amounts of methane trapped beneath the ocean; a scientist could create a strangelet, which would immediately begin converting all matter it comes into contact with into strange matter, including our planet and everything on it. It doesn't matter.

Famine, war, nuclear winter, black holes, or coronal mass ejections. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, because one way or another we're all going to die. A blood clot could lodge in my brain and kill me ten minutes from now; a car could hit you while you're walking your dog. It doesn't matter. We could all die, the world could end, and the universe would simply carry on. A hundred billion years from now, no one will exist who remembers we were space boys or chronic-masturbating alcoholics or science teachers or ex-cons or valedictorians. When we're gone, time will forget whether we swapped spit with strangers. It will forget we ever existed.

And it doesn't matter.

We remember the past, live in the present, and write the future.

The universe may forget us, but our light will brighten the darkness for eons after we've departed this world. The universe may forget us, but it can't forget us until we're gone, and we're still here, our futures still unwritten. We can choose to sit on our asses and wait for the end, or we can live right now. We can march to the edge of the void and scream in defiance. Yell out for all to hear that we
do
matter. That we are still here, living our absurd, bullshit lives, and nothing can take that away from us. Not rogue comets, not black holes, not the heat death of the universe. We may not get to choose how we die, but we
can
choose how we live.