grief and mourning. We learned that it takes six months to get over the death of a loved one. Presumably, on the first day of the seventh month, you wake up and think to yourself, “Hey, that sucker’s dead, but I’m not. I’m going to take six shots of vodka now, because I can. Yes, I know it’s seven-thirty a.m. Yes, with my Cheerios. What of it?”
There’s a boy with tight jeans and the faint bristle of a beard beside me. I want to turn to him and say: I am still here. This is my constant refrain, here at Westing, maybe it’s everyone’s refrain the whole world over, sick or healthy, I don’t know.
I want to say: We invented language for the sole purpose of issuing this reminder.
When I return to my apartment from class, there’s a note pinned to the door from the office of residential life, stating Alice and I have to find a replacement for Marty, or else they’ll assign someone to us. I crumple the note and throw it into the trash so Alice doesn’t see it, and then I settle into the kitchen, on my computer, with every intention of playing Factoryfarmville for the next eight hours straight, to beat Connor Grant’s most recent high score, because he’s bumped me out of the Top Ten Hall of Fame. Maybe you can reduce friendship to playing a game—constructing a set of rules inside which you build a story together. In this case, me and Connor Grant must be bffs (sorry, Marty).
I’ve slaughtered a hundred twenty-seven cows and turned their hooves into McDonald’s beef patties when I get a text from Jane, telling me she had another fainting spell.
orientation leader, want to come make sure i dont drop dead? :)
She’s playing Zombie Survival in her bed at Wellness, grimacing and tapping maddeningly on her laptop keys as a headless zombie reaches for her.
She blows him away with a machine gun.
She glances up, then back at the screen. “I’m under observation,” she says, in the same tone someone else would use to announce they’ve been sentenced to life without parole.
“I prefer Age of Rome,” I say.
“I know,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re always on the high score list. It’s a little sad.”
I laugh. “What can I say? It’s my legacy.”
“Getting sadder,” she says.
“Virtual accomplishments are still accomplishments,” I insist.
“Saddest,” she says, and gives me a pitying look.
“Zombies has a cooperative mode,” I say.
We play Zombie Survival together, both of us craned over her screen. We move through an abandoned warehouse, mowing down one undead minion after another, and I realize Alice was right about becoming orientation leaders. Sitting here with Jane, saving the world one zombie at a time, racking up the highest score we can manage before we run out of bullets and become zombie food, that feels right, just the way calling EMS for Ally did.
In fact, mowing down zombies together feels more than right.
It makes me feel whole.
I cannot simply disappear when there are more zombies to slay.
SEPTEMBER 26TH
The last day begins as all days do: the earth spins, the sun rises, my alarm clock blares.
But I realize something as I listen to that dreaded screech, as I run through the morning chill, breath white, eyes closing, closing; as I take a hot shower; as I sit on the toilet, wrapped in two towels, completely wrapped, gazing at the porcelain tub while the water sinks down the drain; as I swallow a fork or two of mediocre scrambled eggs, breakfast of the gods; as I leaf carelessly through an assigned reading, Escobar’s Territories of Difference, which might as well be Territories of Indifference.
The one-in-ten thousand odds of Apep hitting earth are only as trustworthy as their source.
Why should I believe anything Westing lets us read, what with Marty gone?
So tonight, I will gather with all the rest of the Believers, on the lawn around Sunset Lake, for a midnight picnic, and, under Peter and Wendy’s watchful gaze, I will wait for the world to end.
I need the world to end.
It will be simpler, this way, easier. No more worry and uncertainty, no more unsolved mysteries. This is my plan and it makes me so happy, to have a plan for the future, a story to fulfill. I know what I am here to do.
I feel like I’m on stage again—the one and only place where I don’t have to act.
Maybe I will hold Alice’s palm in my right hand and Zach’s palm in