The Last Place on Earth (2 page)

Now I had to wonder: Were they as crazy as we'd thought? Or had they known something all along?

“I'm worried about Henry,” I told my mother, back in our red-and-white kitchen. She had just come in from her day job and was scarfing down a cup of soup before she headed off to teach a jewelry-making class.

“I'm sure he's fine,” she said when I told her about the newspaper. “The universe will look after him.”

That was one of my mother's favorite sayings, right up there with “Everything happens for a reason” and “Things have a way of working themselves out.”

Peter wandered into the kitchen. “We're out of toilet paper again.”

“Did you put it on the shopping list?” my mother asked.

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “Last time I went to the store, I forgot the list.”

*   *   *

The next morning, my mother agreed to swing by Henry's house on the way to school. There were now two newspapers in orange plastic sitting in the driveway.

“I'm sure there's an explanation,” my mother said.

I was, too. But I was terrified the explanation would be something awful.

By second period, AP European history, I was in such a frenzy that I broke down and spoke to Gwendolyn Waxweiler. “Have you heard from Henry?” I tried to sound casual, but my voice cracked.

Gwendolyn, sitting on the other side of Henry's empty chair, dropped her gaze to the ends of my hair. Bored one day last summer, I decided to see whether cherry Kool-Aid really works as a hair dye. It really does, especially if you have previously lightened your hair with Sun-In. And the color doesn't come out. So now I know.

She said, “I haven't tried to make contact with Henry.” That was the way Gwendolyn talked, as if she were from outer space and hadn't quite figured out normal human speech. She had known Henry for longer than I had—they had gone to the same small, private elementary school. Their parents were friends, and the families did stuff together. Like barbecues! And campouts! And … killing defenseless animals!

No matter what I said, Henry would defend man's right to hunt: “At least these animals had a good life until they were shot. Unlike the cow that died for your hamburger.” (Perhaps it was growing up in that In-N-Out kitchen, but as much as I wished I had the inner strength to go vegan, I loved nothing more than a Double-Double and fries.)

Still, whatever Henry's arguments about man-versus-animal, he seemed to fall suddenly ill every time his parents scheduled a hunting trip.

“He's just got a cold or something, correct?” Gwendolyn said, as our teacher, Mr. Vasquez, began his daily PowerPoint presentation.

I shrugged and turned my attention to the first slide:

THE BLACK DEATH

“The Plague”

1347–1351 first struck Europe

Death estimates: 1/3–2/3 of European population

Bacterial infection: now curable by antibiotics

Henry found history fascinating, but even though Mr. Vasquez was cool, I always left his class feeling slightly depressed, and not just because it involved a good two hours of homework a night. If our lesson wasn't about disease, it was about war. The kings and queens may have had a good time (as long as they kept their heads), but for the rest of the population in medieval Europe, life was miserable, and death came early, often, and in a whole bunch of disgusting ways.

Two seats away, Gwendolyn took notes with one hand. With the other, she fiddled with her thick braid. Gwendolyn's hair was strawberry blond. It would take Kool-Aid really well.

Usually, Gwendolyn ignored my existence entirely, but she kept glancing over at me. Finally, a few slides later (
“Forms of the Plague”
), when Mr. Vasquez paused to let us copy down some more depressing facts, she leaned over Henry's desk. “Does he not respond to your phone calls?”

“Phone's disconnected.”

I copied the first line from the slide:

1. Bubonic Plague: Most common variant. Carried by rats; spread by fleas. Swellings (buboes) on neck, armpit, and groin. Mortality rate 30–75%. Typical life expectancy: one week.

“Have you been to his house?” Gwendolyn whispered.

I paused. Should I tell her about the newspapers? No. I wanted someone besides my mother to tell me that I was overreacting. That everything was going to be fine. Gwendolyn's family was just as bat-crap-crazy paranoid as Henry's. She'd tell me that the abandoned
OC
Registers
were a sure sign of calamity.

“Yesterday afternoon,” I said. “No one answered the door. But it was kind of early—his parents wouldn't even be home from work yet. And Henry could have been sleeping or listening to music or something.”

She nodded, looking less than convinced.

I copied down the next line from the slide.

2. Pneumonic Plague: Attacked respiratory system. Spread by breathing infected air. Mortality rate: 90–95%. Typical life expectancy: 1–2 days.

“When did you last talk to him?” she asked.

“Night before last.”

“And everything was normal?”

That was a weird question. Especially since Henry was so
not
normal the last time I had seen him. But how could Gwendolyn know that? Oh no. Now I was getting bat-crap-crazy paranoid. Maybe it was spreading, like the plague. Were there any flea-bitten rats around?

“Sure,” I said. “Everything was normal. I guess.” I copied down the third plague variant.

3. Septicemic Plague: Attacked the blood system. Mortality rate: near 100%.

“I'm sure everything is fine,” I told Gwendolyn, willing my words to be true.

She didn't say anything, just twisted her strawberry-blond braid with renewed vigor.

“The universe will look after him,” I added.

At that, she dropped her braid. “Are you kidding me? The universe looks after no one. We're all on our own.”

*   *   *

Peter's beat-up little car, pale yellow with gray doors, was waiting in front of the school when I got out. Most of the time I walked home—it was just over a mile—but if it was hot outside, my mother would tell my brother to get me.

I grabbed the handle and pulled hard. The door creaked open. I slid into the bucket seat, which was black vinyl laced with pink leopard-print duct tape. The duct tape had come with the car, as had the Jesus stickers on the rear fender. Henry and I had spent a lot of time trying to visualize the previous owners.

“Need to stop for coffee,” Peter mumbled, pulling away from the curb. His eyes were puffy. He needed a shave.

“Did you just get up?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not
just
just, but—whatever.”

Another one of my mother's mottoes (there were hundreds) was “I trust my children to make the right choices.” That worked okay for me. I chose hard work and responsibility. Which sounds incredibly boring, but there you go. Then there was my brother. After finishing high school in the spring, Peter had mostly chosen to binge on Netflix and sleep through lunch.

I stayed in the car while Peter ran into the grocery store, emerging with a large cardboard cup and a four-pack of toilet paper.

“That TP is not going to last long,” I said.

He smirked. “Mom'll buy more. It's on the list.”

As we approached the turn to the Fortress, I said, “Can we drive by Henry's house?”

Peter gave a single-shoulder shrug (when it comes to conserving energy, Peter is a master) and flicked on the blinker. We turned off the main road and wound around to Henry's mean-looking house. Peter stopped the car.

I was prepared for the two orange bundles still sitting in the driveway. Still, when I saw them, a fresh stab of disappointment hit me in the stomach.

“You getting out?” Peter asked.

I shook my head. “Let's go home.”

In my bedroom, I unloaded my books and notebooks. I booted up my laptop, an old model that my mother had bought for next to nothing when her office updated the equipment. I meant to research some stuff for English but wound up checking my messages instead (nothing from Henry). I stared at the wall. I stared at my laptop screen. Finally, I gave up. I had to go back to the Fortress. Maybe I'd missed something. Maybe there were clues to Henry's whereabouts.

I let myself out the back gate and hurried down the dusty horse and jogging path until I reached the pond. It was usually busy here during the day. Today, a mother walked near the edge, a toddler clutching her skirt. A bicyclist zipped past several old men in camp chairs, fishing rods in their hands, tackle boxes by their feet. Coots and mallards paddled across the green-black surface, while dragonflies hovered among the reeds like tiny helicopters.

I would never again pass this pond without remembering that last night with Henry. He'd known something was up, I was sure of it. He'd known he was going away.

But where? And why?

 

Three

IT WASN'T UNUSUAL
for Henry to show up at my house on a school night, but he usually texted first, and he almost never came this late, just past ten thirty. He had been in school that day. In fact, he hadn't staged an illness for over a week, which I might have found strange if I hadn't been so glad to have him around to challenge me to “power pirouette” contests during dance class or to doodle stupid cartoons in my history notebook when I was supposed to be copying down disgusting facts about medieval Europe. (One word: leeches.)

“You up for a walk?” he asked, hands in his jeans pockets, narrow shoulders angled forward.

I almost said,
No, let's just hang in my living room.
I was in my pajamas already (flowered boxers and a tank top; it was a warm night), and I still had a good half hour of math homework left. But there was something about Henry's expression. His eyes, so dark brown they were almost black, were always sharp, but tonight they looked strained. His jaw muscles twitched.

So I said, “Yeah, sure. Let me just tell my mom and put some clothes on.”

Five minutes later, we were out the back gate and onto the trail. Something rustled in the bushes. My arm tickled; I swiped away a spiderweb that might have been imaginary but probably wasn't. The path, so familiar during the day, was kind of creepy at night.

“We going to your house?” I asked.

“No.”
(Had his voice really been that forceful? I couldn't remember. Mostly, I was just relieved that I wouldn't have to deal with his parents.)

We said almost nothing until we reached the pond, which wasn't as weird as you might think. Henry and I were not only close enough to tell each other everything (at least in my mind), we trusted each other with our silences.

At the pond, Henry stopped as if entranced by the glassy surface. The night was clear. The moon cast a ribbon of light across the water. The air smelled of eucalyptus and wild sage.

I studied his profile: the straight nose, the strong jaw. Henry was better looking from the side than he was full-on. His face was a touch too narrow, and his eyes, dark and deep-set, were a little too close together. But I liked his face from any angle—not in
that way
, not really, but because it was Henry's face. It was so familiar, I knew just how to read it. At least, I had until this night.

“If you knew you only had one day left on earth, what would you do?” Henry asked, his gaze still on the water.

Coming from someone else, this question might have seemed odd, but all the time we launched conversations with things like, “Would you rather be a free-range chicken or a farmed salmon?” Or, “If you could only bring one book to a desert island, what would it be?” (My answers, in case you're wondering, were farmed salmon and an e-reader. And I don't care if that's cheating.)

“Depends what you mean by last day on earth,” I said. “Are we talking solar flare or alien abduction?”

Henry chewed his lower lip. “More like aliens.”

“I'd hide,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, no, no. One day left and there's no escape. They've got you, I don't know, microchipped or something. And they've got a Daisy-finding task force. And if the aliens don't get you, they'll take out your entire family.”

“They could have Peter.”

“You can't sacrifice your brother! Peter is my role model.” Henry laughed but in a sad way, which I hadn't even known was possible. And then he did this weird whimper-hiccup thing. I let it pass.

“Fine,” I said. “If I knew it was my last day on earth, I'd shut myself in my room with a box of cookies. And I'd cry.”

“Would you come see me to say good-bye?”

“Sure. Maybe. I don't know. I wouldn't want to make you sad. And besides, I hate good-byes.”

There was a long pause. Finally, he spoke. “What kind of cookies?”

“Girl Scout. Thin mints. And those coconut thingies that are like a thousand calories each, but if I'm going to die tomorrow, who cares?”

“That's two boxes. And I didn't say you were going to die tomorrow, I just said…” He sighed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked. “You seem weird.”

“I'm always weird. It's my natural state.”

He held my eyes for a moment.
Henry's taller than I am
, I thought with surprise. When did that happen? We'd been more or less the same height since I'd known him. And then, before I could ask how he'd snuck a growth spurt past me, he did something that was undeniably weird, even for him. He yanked off his sneakers and ran into the pond.

“Henry! Are you crazy? It's gross in there!”

But he didn't answer, just waded through the muck until the water got to waist level and dove under. He remained submerged just long enough to make me worry that he'd gotten caught on something or that his waterlogged jeans had dragged him down, and then he burst through the slimy surface.