Let me explain something to you, because I’m taking basic physics this year, so I know. Aporia is one mile-wide and more dense than iron. Nukes will crack her, but at this point, she’ll hit Earth no matter what. Only, if she breaks into pieces, she’ll be more democratic about impact. She’ll slide into the President’s bunker in Omaha, or the shelters in Rio, or the Sino-Canadian stockpiles under the glaciers. So what do you think? Do you think that’s the plan?
Or do you think President Brickerson and all the other world leaders are lying, and there is no nuke rocket? Do you think the governments and corporations joined forces, and built escape shelters? Do you think the pipelines are heading straight for those shelters, for use after the apocalypse, for the lucky survivors with tickets to the show?
Thanks, Mr. President.
Thank you, too, dear reader.
No, wait. Scratch that. Fuck you, dear reader. Seriously, Fuck you.
So, yeah, back to the militia and pipeline scabs. What kind of morons suck the oil from a dying civilization’s veins for a few worthless pounds of gold? They show up at high school parties and screw girls thirty years younger. Screw guys like me, too, when they can get me loaded enough. How many prisons did they crack open to staff this operation? How many pedophile dormitories did they raid? You think I’m kidding, but seriously, who else do you think they could get?
So yeah, I read my Faulkner. But did that dude ever live in Pigment three days before human annihilation?
I used to be so into the zombie apocalypse. I figured I’d be this hero in a society risen from ashes. Me, the phoenix of the new world order. But the real thing sucks. Because I’m going to die, and I can’t figure out which is more cowardly; resigning myself to that fate or fighting against it.
At my locker, glittering Jules grins. It’s eerie. Why’s she happy? “Last night. After you left. Here’s what happened,” she says, then lifts her fuck finger at me, holds it. Then her index and thumb rise as she mouths: one, two, three.
“What?” I ask, but I already know. Jules is such a wreck.
“A three-way,” she says. “One of ’em stuck a rifle up my cooter!”
“I guess you can scratch that off your bucket list.”
“Right on the dance floor. Everybody was clapping. Don’t give me that concerned dad look, Crawford, he shot it empty first…”
“Discharge.”
“Vocab king!” She winces, lowers her voice. “I think Colby was there… Like, clapping.”
“He’s not worth you.”
“Jeaaa—lous?” Jules grinds me in her gauze-thin cat-suit.
“Don’t,” I say. She grinds even freakier, which means she’s pissed off. Because a machine gun up your hole probably sounds okay when you’re high, but not the next morning when your female parts and what-have-you probably hurt. But there’s no point talking about it. Aporia’s hitting in less than three days, so who wants to spend the time crying over sexual violation by blunt object?
I realize I’m mad, too. At myself, for leaving her alone with those scabs. At her, for being so stupid. At colony fourteen, for buckling so easily. At everybody. Especially the people on the other side of my crank-phone, who won’t tell me where they are, or how I can find them, or even if my baby sister—whose stuffed bunny they forgot—survived the trip.
“Faggot,” Jules sneers. She’s gone completely radioactive. It’s about the machine gun. It’s about the asteroid. It’s about her denial-blind mom and sister who think Aporia’s a hoax. Mostly, it’s about me. Because I love her in every way but the way she wants.
“Don’t be mean to me,” I tell her. “You’re my only friend.”
“I’m not mean; I’m honest! You’re a faggot orphan and once your family got their tickets, they threw you away,” she shouts with veiny-necked rage.
“You’re trash. Your sister’s a stripper. You’re dumb as… toast?” I shout back. This last part isn’t true. She’s one of the sharpest people I know.
Nobody’s listening, not even the militia or my old gym teacher or Colby Mudd, who trifled with Jules to make another girl jealous, and she’ll never see that, because she uses men like spikes to stab herself against.
“They’re not trash. One of ’em said he’d marry me!” Jules flashes her hand. She’s wearing a small, yellow-gold engagement ring. It had to have come from a dead body. Some salt-of-the-earth old lady, a suicide pact with her true love after fifty good years.
“God, Jules.”
The homeroom bell rings. The halls clear like mopped-up jimmy sprinkles. Front and back door militia in desert fatigues bang the butts of their guns against cinderblock. They’re like orangutans at mealtime.
“It’s jewelry from a man,” Jules says, and I can tell she hates it, and the hand that wears it, and herself.
“Throw it away, Jules. It’s garbage!” I tell her.I’m so upset about all this that I go a little crazy. I imagine cutting her up. Peeling her skin off and poking out her eyes.
Jules squeezes out a pair of tears. “You’re just mad because someone loves me, and nobody loves you.”
And the guns are banging, and my homeroom teacher is waving for me to come in. Only it’s my gym teacher, because my real homeroom teacher is gone. Faces keep dropping away. No one knows what happened to them. It’s like a visual representation of Alzheimers. “That’s an awful thing to say,” I tell her.
Jules starts laughing.
I’m walking away. The sound of her gets louder as it echoes.
“Hospital tonight?” she calls.
I hate her.
“Sorry, Tom Crawford,” she calls. “I suck, literally. I’m a spooge-whore-bitch.”
I keep walking with these iron-heavy feet, imagining the whole world on fire. I am the asteroid. Dense and without feeling. I am the destroyer of all in my path.
She flings the ring so it skates past me down the hall. I turn back and there’s Jules. She fluffs her hand out in pretend-pompousness as she bows, then blows me a kiss. “I’m your dumb-as-toast best friend.”
I pretend-twist a gear along my temple. “Forgotten. Forgiven. Everybody but you is dead, you big skank.”
Mr. Nguyen is the only real teacher left, and he’s taking it seriously. He passes out a physics quiz, which he’s written by hand because there aren’t any crank printers. We’re supposed to convert joules and calculate work. There’s only four other students here, and none of us have pens.
I crank, then send a text on my phone: Where are you? Is Cathy OK? If you only have two tickets and she’s not allowed in, I’ll come get her. Does she need Baby Bunny?
Nguyen hands me five ball point Bics and gestures for me to pass the rest around. The guy’s relentless. He wears dirty polyester button-downs and his parents were refugees from Vietnam. Last plane out and all that. He probably wishes he was still there.
“Focus,” he says. But I can’t. My paper’s black letters on white. They could scramble and rearrange, and then what would they be?
Nguyen perches on the edge of his desk. He’s got three small kids at home. His wife is fat. Not like Orca. Happy, well-fed Hobbit fat. “Young ladies and gentlemen,” he says. “What if it’s not the end of the world, and you’re still accountable for your actions? Did you think of that? Take your test.”