We Are the Ants

Mrs. Franklin must not have called the police to report me, though I jumped at every sound and spent hours peeking out the windows, waiting for a patrol car to arrive. Honestly, spending a few days in jail might not have been the worst thing to happen to me. When my mom and brother were tipsy enough that I knew they wouldn’t notice I was gone, I rode Audrey’s bicycle to Diego’s house. I stood at his front door, sweaty and stinky, clutching a bag of gifts.

  Diego opened the door, wearing pajama bottoms decorated with cartoon elves, and a gray tank top. His hair was rumpled like he’d just woken up, even though it was mid­afternoon.

  “I’m sorry.” Before Diego could tell me to leave, I rambled on. “Audrey smashed the windows and I should have believed you but I trusted Jesse and he kept secrets from me and killed himself and I don’t think I could ever go through something like that again.”

  “I’m not Jesse.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not going to kill myself.”

  “I know.”

  Diego stood in the doorway, blocking it with his whole body. I hoped he could forgive me, but I doubted my chances. “I wish I had smashed Marcus’s car windows. I wanted to smash his face for what he did to you. I will if he ever hurts you again . . .” He shook his head. “I think you were right about us just being friends. You’re still messed up over Jesse, and I’ve clearly got my own issues to work through.”

  I couldn’t argue. Starting a relationship under the best of circumstances is difficult. For us, it would have been a disaster. That didn’t stop me from wanting to push Diego into the house and kiss him until the world ended. From imagining what a future might look like with him in it. But I couldn’t afford to think like that. I held up the bag. “Christmas gifts.”

  “I got you something too.” Diego hesitated before standing aside to let me in.

  “Where’s Viviana?”

  “Her boyfriend’s house.”

  “She left you alone on Christmas?”

  “Nah,” Diego said. “We had breakfast and opened our presents earlier. She had to go do the Christmas thing with her boyfriend’s family.”

  “Oh.”

  “Wait here.” Diego left me in the living room, and I sat on the couch. He returned a moment later with a couple of wrapped packages that he set on top of the coffee table.

  “You first.” I pulled the presents out of the bag and handed them to him.

  “What’s this?” Diego tore the paper like a pro. None of that prissy trying-to-spare-the-paper-to-reuse-next-year stuff. He was a ripper, and I adored that. “I love Frida Kahlo.” Diego fingered the book’s cover before flipping through it, stopping at some of his favorite works.

  “Your paintings remind me of hers.”

  “It’s . . . perfect!” Diego sat with the book in his lap, just staring at it for a moment before opening the rest of his gifts. Along with the book, I got him a pair of real flip-flops, Doctor Who pajama pants, and a one-pound bag of cereal marshmallows. “What am I going to do with all these marshmallows?”

  “I don’t know, but everyone should have a bag of emergency cereal marshmallows.” I pulled a last gift from the bottom of the bag.

  “Henry!” Diego frowned but accepted the gift.

  “The others were . . . you know . . . This one is special.”

  Diego tore into it with the same zeal as the others but froze when he saw the front. It was a simple black journal with leather front and back covers, and pages with a deckle edge. But it wasn’t the journal that had caught his attention; it was what was etched into the front.

  REMEMBER THE PAST,

  LIVE THE PRESENT,

  WRITE THE FUTURE.

  Diego traced the words. I couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. He’d practically gone catatonic.

  “I thought you could use it to record all the stuff you want to do,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. If you hate it, I can take it back.” Of course, I couldn’t take it back because of the etching, but whatever.

  “Thank you, Henry.” It was only three words, but it felt like more to me. It felt like a wish that we could go back and forget I’d accused him of breaking Marcus’s windows, that we could forget about his past and my Jesse and meet at a time before tragedy had consumed either of us. But that wasn’t possible, and this was all we had. For these last thirty-five days we could be friends, and that would have to be enough.

  Diego handed me my gifts.

  I looked at the wrap job, and grinned. “That was so sweet of you to let those poor orphans with no fingers do your wrapping for you.”

  “Whatever,” Diego said. “It’s abstract wrapping. You just don’t understand my art.” There were four badly wrapped gifts in all. A book about rockets and space travel written in 1948, a retractable fountain pen, a bottle of dark red ink that looked like blood, and a star chart.

  “You shouldn’t have done all this.”

  Diego grinned like crazy. “There’s one more.” He handed me an envelope. “Open it.”

  I expected it to be a card, and I felt like a jerk for not getting Diego one. Only, it wasn’t a card. Inside were two tickets to see Janelle Monáe in concert. I’d only mentioned liking her once. “I can’t believe you remembered.” I turned the tickets over, scanning them for the when and where. The show was at a club in Fort Lauderdale. On February 2, 2016. “Diego—”

  “If the world doesn’t end, we can go. Or you can take Audrey if you want. Either way, I thought having something to look forward to might help you make your decision.”

  “You still want me to press the button, even after what I did?”

  Diego smiled. His hand twitched like he wanted to touch my cheek but was fighting the impulse. “I still want you to want to press it.”

  28 December 2015

  I wish I could say that it was my idea, but that honor belonged to Jesse Franklin. Jesse believed stories were the collective memories of the world, recorded in books so that each of us could know who we were before we became who we are. He said that’s why people love The Catcher in the Rye when they’re teenagers, but fall out of love with it as adults. We’re all Holden Caulfield at fifteen, but when we grow up we want to be Atticus Finch. I didn’t exactly buy Jesse’s theory, but I stumbled upon the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird he’d loaned me, and it came back to me. That’s when I knew what I needed to do.

  Audrey and Diego were both in on the plan—it’d been easy to convince them. Convincing TJ to let us into Nana’s room without her permission required a more devious approach.

  “And that, gentlemen, is what boobs are good for,” Audrey said as she shut Nana’s door behind us and dropped the box she was carrying onto the empty bed. We hadn’t spoken about breaking into Jesse’s house, and I was happy to forget it had ever happened.

  I rolled my eyes, but I doubt we would have gotten in without her. “You can finish patting yourself on the back later. Mom said she’d have Nana here by three thirty, which leaves us less than an hour.”

  Diego scanned the bare room. “Where should we start?” It was difficult to resist holding his hand or leaning over to kiss him. I caught myself a couple of times, forgetting we’d agreed to just be friends, and I wondered if it were easier for Diego.

  “Let’s start at the beginning.”

  It took the entire hour, all three of us working quickly to finish before Nana returned. That didn’t include our preparation from the last two days. This was my belated Christmas gift to Nana, and one that she wouldn’t need to remember to appreciate.

  Mom wasn’t in on the plan. Not the real plan. I’d only told her that I wanted to hang something in Nana’s room at the nursing home as a surprise, and convinced her to delay bringing Nana back after spending Christmas with us. My phone buzzed, letting me know they were close. We finished in a mad rush, and were waiting outside the door for Nana when she arrived.

  “What’s this, Charlie? What are all of you doing here?” A few of the residents shuffled from their rooms, drawn by Nana’s
annoyed tone.

  “Come on, Nana. There’s something I want to show you.” I held out my hand and led her into the room.

  I already knew what was on the other side of the door, so I watched Nana’s face when she saw it for the first time. Her tight frown eased, fell, and disappeared completely, replaced by confused awe as she tried to take in everything at once. The walls were almost completely covered in pictures of Nana’s life. There had been hundreds of photographs in the boxes Charlie had taken from her room, and the ones we’d chosen barely represented a tenth of them.

  “This is the story of you.”

  Nana touched the nearest picture. She was dancing with a handsome young man. Her left arm was raised, and her ­flowered dress twirled around her, open like an umbrella. If you listened closely, you could hear the Coasters singing “Poison Ivy” in the background. Nana couldn’t have been older than I am when that photo was taken. That girl’s face was unlined, untroubled, and unconcerned about the future.

  Framed next to the picture was a photocopy of a handwritten journal entry. The boy’s name had been Kenny Highcastle, and Nana had only allowed him to escort her to the dance because her mother insisted, but she’d had the time of her life that night. Each picture we’d hung had a corresponding journal entry, and Nana’s life filled the spaces of all four walls.

  “Even if they steal all your memories, they can’t steal the amazing life you led. Whenever you forget, just come in here until you remember again,” I said.

  Nana shuffled around the room, moving from photograph to photograph, stopping at some longer than others. “Oh! I remember this. Your father and I bought our very first car. A Pontiac Tempest, Teal Turquoise. I never did learn how to drive it.”

  “Yes, but you were the only mother on the PTA who could drive a tractor.” Mom stood behind me and rested her hands on my shoulders.

  A few of the other residents trickled in. “Look, Hannah. Charlie found my missing memories. They’re all here.” Watching Nana show off her life, all the things she’d done, was the most amazing feeling in the world. I didn’t even care that she called me Charlie.

  Maybe our lives did have meaning. Nana’s did. It meant something to her and to the people in her photographs. Each and every one of those memories was a moment that had mattered, even the ones that hadn’t seemed important at the time.

  Mom kissed my cheek before she left. Audrey, Diego, and I stuck around a while longer, listening to Nana recount stories from the pictures. I figured, even if she didn’t always know she was the woman who’d lived this life, she’d know how important it was.

  On the way out, Audrey said, “For a guy who thinks the world is going to end in a few weeks, that was a pretty amazing thing to do.”

  “Nana deserves to be happy, for however long we have left.”

  Diego shrugged and said, “She’s not the only one.”

  31 December 2015

  Mom decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her girlfriends at the Hard Rock Casino, leaving the house to me and Charlie with explicit instructions not to throw a party, which we obviously planned to ignore.

  We weren’t going to host a rager—just Zooey, a few of Charlie’s friends who were home from college, Audrey, and Diego. I told Audrey she could go to Marcus’s party if she didn’t want to hang out with us, but she said she’d rather eat a flaming cockroach, which seemed a little dramatic. And gross. Marcus had been bragging about his New Year’s Eve bash on SnowFlake all week. He even texted me an invitation, but I never responded.

  After I finished moving Mom’s breakables into her bedroom and locking the door, I checked on the snack and alcohol situation. Between Diego’s Christmas gifts and the picture frames for Nana, I’d blown most of my meager savings. Mom had given Charlie her engagement ring, which was a family heirloom, but remodeling the baby’s room meant he was also broke. Hopefully, no one would notice we’d bought the off-brand sodas and chips, no dip, and liquor so bottom shelf it was practically on the floor. Charlie filtered the vodka through our water purifier—a trick he’d learned from his college-­going buddies—and paired it with the off-brand sodas that had names like Pop! and Lemony-Lime Fresh. I checked on the cocktail wieners baking in the oven. Those, of course, were nothing more than a family pack of hot dogs cut up and wrapped in croissant dough. The only thing worse would have been if we’d served ramen, and don’t think we didn’t consider it.

  “Charlie! Charlie, where are the cups?” I searched cupboards for the stack of red plastic cups I knew we’d bought.

  “In here!” Charlie yelled.

  Why in the world did Charlie have them? People were going to start showing up in a few minutes, and I still needed to shower. I stomped back to his bedroom. The plastic sheeting was gone, and Charlie stood in the doorway, grinning. “I wanted to finish before everyone arrived.”

  “Finish what?”

  “The baby’s room.”

  “Oh.” Even though I still had a ton to do, I knew he wanted me to ask. “Can I see?”

  Charlie nodded, manic and proud. He stood aside and motioned for me to enter. What had once been his bedroom was transformed from a smelly, dreary man cave into a ­simple, neatly organized room. He’d replaced his lumpy twin bed with a new full-size mattress, added curtains to the windows, and bought a new dresser. They’d settled on painting the walls a soft blue. On the baby’s side of the room, they didn’t have much in the way of furniture, but they’d found a crib, a changing table, and rocking chair.

  “Isn’t that Nana’s old rocking chair?”

  “Mom got it out of storage.” He was beaming. I wondered how many generations of our family had been rocked in that chair. Around the time my mom was rocking Charlie in it for the first time, light from the star Delta Pavonis was beginning its journey toward Earth. From its point of view, Charlie was still a colicky baby who barely slept for his first few months of life. In the triple-star system 26 Draconis, Mom was the baby and Nana the beautiful woman nursing her.

  I walked deeper into the room. A mural of a tree decorated the far wall. Its branches reached high and stretched wide, and under it sat a little girl who resembled both Charlie and Zooey, staring at the stars overhead, a secret smile on her face.

  “Your boyfriend did that,” Charlie said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He smacked my arm playfully. “He says it’s not finished, that he’s got to paint stars on this wall, and the sun on the other side. Zooey knows all the details. It’s supposed to be, like, the turning of a whole day or some shit.”

  “Jesus, Charlie, I can’t believe you did all of this.”

  “It’s not permanent, you know, but it’s a start.” I stood there admiring the work my brother and Zooey had put into creating a perfect little corner of the universe for their family. My brother wasn’t a kid anymore. I don’t know that anyone is ever ready to have a baby of their own, but Charlie was as prepared as anyone could be.

  “Hey, so what do you think of the name Evie?”

  “Evie . . .” I said, trying it out. “I like it.”

  “Good.”

  “Evie Denton.” The more I said it aloud, the more real it felt. She wasn’t the little parasite anymore. She had a room and a mural and a crib to sleep in. She had a name. My niece and goddaughter, Evie Denton.

  • • •

  It was still an hour until midnight, but I was drunk. No, drunk isn’t the right word for it. I was blitzed. Blitzed and surrounded by the best people in the world.

  “I love you, Audrey.” I hung off of her while Diego and Charlie tried to light the cheap firecrackers Charlie had bought from Target as a surprise. Charlie kept trying to light the whole box, and Diego was doing his best to make sure no one blew off their fingers, while Zooey watched from a lawn chair, her belly big and her ankles swollen. “I do. Love you. I was an ass.”

  Audrey looked stunning. She’d worn a simple black shift dress that highlighted how
beautiful she was. Sometimes I forgot. “I love you too.” I didn’t know if Audrey was drunk, but perspiration beaded her upper lip, and she sipped her vodka and Pop! through a Krazy straw.

  A bottle rocket zipped through the air, over Diego’s shoulder, narrowly missing his ear, and exploded with a frantic crack. Charlie’s buddies hooted and crowed. He seemed to have reverted to his teenage self in their presence, but he deserved this time to be dumb—parenthood offers no vacations or sick days. Diego silently begged me for help before telling off my brother for shooting fireworks at his face. I suppose I should have been glad his aim wasn’t as good with a bottle rocket as it was with toast.

  “I think I love that guy too.”

  “Yeah?” Audrey said. “Does he know?”

  “No. Maybe.” Diego wrestled the lighter from my brother and then lit three Roman candles, which sent streamers of blue and red and green sparks into the air. Charlie pumped his fist and hollered. “It doesn’t matter, though. We’re just friends.”

  “You’re obviously more than that, Henry. Any idiot can see it.”

  I couldn’t look at Diego and not see Jesse. I couldn’t think of the future and not imagine all the ways it could fall apart. Maybe Diego wouldn’t kill himself, but he could end up back in jail or find someone better or move home to Colorado. Only, those weren’t the reasons holding me back. “I don’t think I deserve him.”

  Audrey shrugged. “Probably not. But he doesn’t deserve you, either. Maybe that’s why you’re perfect for each other.”

  “Do you think it could last?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I care.”

  Audrey sucked up her drink and tossed the empty cup onto the ground. There was no way we were going to be able to hide the fact that we’d had a party from Mom. Fuck it.

  “You like bacon, right?” Audrey asked.

  “Duh.”

  “So, when you’re offered bacon for breakfast, do you refuse because you’re worried about what’s going to happen when it’s gone?”

  “No.”

  “No!” Audrey smacked me in the chest. “You eat that bacon and you love it because it’s delicious. You don’t fret over whether you’ll ever have bacon again. You just eat the bacon.” Audrey stood in front of me and held my face between her hands. Her expression was so solemn that it was difficult not to laugh. “Eat the bacon, Henry.”