This Is How It Ends

Tannis laughed, and Sarah smiled. It was the first time the mood broke, maybe since we’d heard about Nat’s dad. “Were you napping during lit class again, T.?” Sarah asked.

“Wait . . . they show  p**n  in lit class?” he said. “Shit, now when am I going to sleep?”

“It’s a myth,” I told him.

“I knew it was too good to be true.”

“Not  p**n  in lit,” I said. “Pandora’s box. She opened it out of curiosity, releasing evil into the world.”

“Well, that’s a brick,” Trip said.

“But there was something left in the box,” Sarah reminded me. “Hope.”

I’d forgotten that part.

“See? It’s not so bad, Mr. Doom and Gloom,” Trip said. He unlatched the lock, flipped open the lid, and took out the binoculars. They looked heavy and cold. Sinister and promising. There was a tangy taste in my mouth as Trip rubbed the lenses quickly, then looked.

I held my breath, feeling the thud, thud of my heart. After a minute Trip pulled them away, frowning. He messed with the knobs and looked again.

“What do you see?” Tannis leaned forward.

He didn’t answer, but I knew, and was surprised by the wave of deep disappointment that washed over me. He’d seen nothing. My chest felt tight, and there was a single, unexpected thought: No.

“There’s nothing there,” Trip said, his voice slightly muffled.

“Really?” Tannis sounded hopeful. “Nothing at all? Not my hand?” She waved it in front of the binoculars. “Or my face? Or those weird shapes and colors?”

“Shapes and colors,” he said. “But nothing else.” He held the binoculars toward her. “Here. You try.”

“Nuh-uh,” Tannis said, shuffling back. “I’m not looking.”

“Why?”

“I’m with Riley on Team Chicken.”

“I’ll look,” I said, like it was nothing. “Curiosity’s been bugging me, too.”

But Tannis stepped between me and Trip before he could hand them over. “Hold it.” She put her hands on my shoulders, turning me to look her in the eye. I shook her off, irritated at being maneuvered like a rag doll. “I thought you weren’t going to,” she said accusingly. “You’re not trying to win a pissing match with Trip, are you?”

“I can out-piss him any day.”

“Whatever, Riley,” she said, her voice dropping. “You’re not doing this to impress us—or any certain one of us?”

“Of course not,” I said levelly, but inside I was a swirling mess of emotion. I didn’t want to look again, but I’d been caught off guard by the profound letdown when Trip had said there was nothing. I wanted there to be something. I’d been going over it again and again this past week, just like Tannis had. Me in a dorm room. At college. With Sarah. My future: As impossible as it seemed and as wrong as it was, I wanted that.

Tannis eyed me for an extra second, then reluctantly stepped aside, letting me take the binoculars from Trip.

I toyed with the dials for a minute, then took a deep breath and lifted them to my eyes.

And saw immediately that Trip was full of shit.

The shapes and colors swirled and blended, blurring the outside world just like the first time. Then the image, figures and objects emerging from the miasma.

It was different.

It was my mom.

I only recognized her because she was in our living room. And I only recognized it because of the stairs curving slightly at the bottom and the small window in the wall. Everything else had changed. The carpet, the wallpaper, the pictures. They were all cleaner and newer. Better.

But my mom looked old. Her hair was a steely gray, piled in a bun like my grammy used to wear. She was smiling at me, but it wasn’t her usual smile. It was droopy, lopsided, her left eye half-shut. A heart-stabbing bolt of fear shot through me—I knew these symptoms—and then I saw the man next to her, holding her hand.

He was looking at me too, something really familiar about the way he smiled, cocked his head. Probably because I’d just seen him doing it an hour earlier.

Holy shit. It was him.

Trip’s dad.

I whipped the binoculars from my eyes, my pulse racing. Had Trip tricked me into looking?

“What?” he asked eagerly. “Did you see something?”

No, he hadn’t tricked me. Not unless he was the world’s best actor.

There was no way I could tell him. Trip idolized his dad, God knows why. After all the years I’d spent hiding that ass**le’s secret, I sure as shit wasn’t going to have it unravel like this.

It was pure dumb luck—or un-luck—that I knew. It had been the end of eighth grade, seven months after my dad died. I’d been sent home sick from school, and I remember thinking it was weird to see Mrs. Jones’s car in the driveway. She didn’t really come over anymore then. I walked into the living room expecting to see her, but the room was empty.

Everything seemed normal. Bits of dust floated in the sunlight, chairs were where they should be, lamps off.

Still, hairs prickled on my arms and the back of my neck.

I heard them just before they came down the stairs.

My mom first, giggling. Then him. They stopped when they saw me, the three of us frozen like it was a game of statues. First one to move loses. Finally my mom came toward me. “Riley . . .”

Bzzz! my brain said. You’re out!

My feet were already crossing to the stairs, moving past Trip’s dad—in a bathrobe!—up two at a time, my head buzzing nonsense and the bits and scraps that had stuck there year after year. Marshmallows. My dad’s drinking. I slammed the door and dove for the bed, closing my eyes and jamming in earbuds.

At some point my mom came in. I’m sure she knocked. She’d never just barged in before. Never been caught with a married man either!

“Can we talk?” Her voice was tiny, a bug’s cry, through the music.

I shook my head, volume still full blast. “No one knows what it’s like . . .”

“Riley . . .”

I shut my eyes, blocking out the rest, melting into Behind Blue Eyes. I felt her touch my shoulder, and shook it off.

Finally she left.

I sat on that bed, Roger Daltrey screaming at me for another hour, the visual coming back over and over. What am I supposed to do with this?

We never talked about it. I wouldn’t let her. I tried to pretend it never happened, not that the memory faded even the tiniest bit. I certainly never told Trip, and I didn’t want him to find out now—after all this time—that his dad wasn’t who Trip thought he was, and maybe neither was I.