The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

  It was too much. Too much for me to handle. I was frozen with indecision. I couldn’t, in good conscience, continue following the voices’ orders when there was so much I didn’t know or trust about their plan. But I couldn’t do nothing, either, not if the fate of humanity hung in the balance.

  The only thing I could do was continue trying to figure out the truth on my own. On Monday, I skipped lunch and went to the art room, hoping Freddie would be there. We hadn’t spoken since the movie, and I was nervous about how she would react. Between Conor and Sean and the voices and the end of the world, Freddie was the last person I should have been worried about—priorities, you know?—and yet she was the one person I couldn’t shake from my mind. We’d almost kissed. I’d told her I liked her and she hadn’t rejected me outright and I swear we’d nearly kissed, and I know I said the end of the world should have been my primary concern, but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the nearlys and almosts that had happened that night in the car. So I was determined to do it. I was going to lay it all out there for Freddie and make a move and see what happened.

  I didn’t see Freddie when I first walked in, but her phone was plugged into the portable speaker, playing a song sung by a man who sounded like he’d had his heart ripped out of his chest and was being forced to watch someone he’d once loved blend it into a bleeding-heart smoothie. It might have been the saddest song I’d ever heard.

  “Damien Rice,” Freddie said.

  I swung around to find her walking out of the supply closet holding a pair of pliers. She was wearing paint-splattered overalls and her work gloves.

  “My dad wrote notes to go with each of the bands he put on the playlist, and he wrote that I should listen to this when I was going through a breakup.”

  “Are you going through a breakup?”

  Freddie shook her head. Her blue hair had faded at the tips, and her auburn roots were growing out. “Not that I know of.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Pretty depressing.” Freddie dropped the pliers on the worktable and changed the music to something more upbeat.

  “How’d he die?” I asked. “Your dad, I mean.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Really?”

  Freddie turned on me, her face etched from stone. “You think I’d lie about that?”

  “I didn’t mean. I wasn’t . . . It just came out.”

  I was a giant ass. I hadn’t known her father had killed himself. The more I learned about Freddie, the more I realized I knew nothing.

  Freddie sat on the stool by the workbench and hugged her arms around herself. “I only ever saw glimpses of it. The days when he’d lock himself in his workshop in the garage and not come out until after dark. The days when I’d hug him and he’d try to hug me back but he lacked the strength to lift his arms. He and my mom hid what he was suffering through from me. That week he’d said he was going to a comic book convention? He’d really checked himself into a hospital for treatment.”

  “I’m so sorry, Freddie.”

  I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me, because she kept talking. “I think they kept it from me because they were scared I was like him.” Freddie looked up at me. “And I am. Like him.”

  “You’re not—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I am. Even when I didn’t have a word for it, I knew I was like him. And the worst part is that since he died, I feel closest to him when I’m depressed. When I’m good and everything’s good and I don’t have this fucking shadow latched to my back, I feel him slipping away, so I pray for the bad thoughts, and when they come, I don’t want them to leave because I don’t want him to leave.”

  I hopped on top of one of the workbenches and let my legs dangle over the side. “Did you want David to shoot you that day?”

  “No,” she said. “But I was glad he did.”

  “Freddie . . .”

  “I’m not—” She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not my father. I take my medication and I tell my therapist when things get really bad.” Freddie paused, and I kept quiet. “I go to these group meetings a couple times a month for kids whose parents committed suicide. Some of them are depressed like me, and there’s this boy who said once that his greatest fear is that he’ll never be happy. Mine is that I will be. I understand how depression works. It won’t ever go away, but I’m terrified that one day I’ll look around and I’ll have everything I ever wanted—someone who loves me, a job where I can make a difference, friends who care—but my father won’t be there anymore. I don’t want to be happy if it means losing him.”

  More than anything, I wanted to hold her. To tell her it would be all right. But saying a thing doesn’t make it so. Empty words can’t return what we’ve lost. “Being happy doesn’t have to mean losing your dad. As long as you remember him, he’ll be with you.”

  Freddie laughed derisively. “You sound like a fucking greeting card.”

  “Maybe. But it’s true.”

  “I wish he wasn’t—” she started to say but stopped. “Forget it. Enough about me. How’s your brother?”

  “He’s okay,” I said. “Home now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah. I moved all of Sean’s belongings out and I’m pretty sure Mama won’t let him come home again, so hopefully—”

  “You’re not the reason David Combs shot me,” Freddie said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I know you’ve got this idea in your head that the voices told Combs to shoot me in order to motivate you to do your healing thing, and that you blame yourself, and maybe that’s true, but it’s also not. You’re not the reason.”

  “How so?”

  Freddie’s shoulders slumped. “Do you remember the Halloween dance when we were in eighth grade?”

  “That was the year with dengue fever from the mosquitoes, right? And we had to hold the dance at four in the afternoon?”

  “You were a Valkyrie,” she said.

  “You remember?” I wasn’t just surprised that she recalled what I’d been wearing; I was surprised she’d remembered the dance at all.

  “You were beautiful in that costume. You’re always beautiful, but there was something otherworldly about you that night.” Her cheeks flushed red and she coughed before continuing. “Anyway, I’d been dancing with Cam and Shannon—”

  “Who’s Cam?”

  Freddie waved the question aside. “No one. He moved to California a few months later. He’s not important. Anyway, this squeaky sixth grader in a Spider-Man costume that was at least two sizes too big asked me to go out with him. I didn’t even know who he was, but I’d had my eye on Jacob Gold—”

  “Didn’t Jacob—”

  “Transition,” Freddie said with a nod. “Last year. She’s Nissa now, but that’s not the point.” She seemed to be waiting to see if I was going to interrupt again. I didn’t. “Spider-Man was all adorable and I couldn’t take him seriously, so I started to laugh. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it. He ran into the boys’ room and I didn’t see him for the rest of the dance.”

  “It was David Combs, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Freddie bowed her head and fidgeted with her gloves. I noticed the polish on her fingernails was in as bad shape as her hair. Chipped and faded. “I was going through my old yearbooks looking for . . . nothing . . . anyway, and I found a picture of the dance and Spider-Man was in it and there was a caption underneath with his name.”

  I tried to recall a Spider-Man at the dance, but I couldn’t. I’d spent most of my time with Fadil, pretending we were too cool to dance, hanging out by the snack table. I’d known Fadil had wanted to show off his best moves, but he’d stayed with me. “That doesn’t mean he targeted you for that reason.”

  “Why not? It makes a lot more sense than him shooting me because voices convinced him to.”

  I couldn’t argue, even though I thought she was wrong. “I have to tell you something,” I said.

  “I already know
you like me,” Freddie said. “And I don’t know what to tell you. That you’re an idiot? That you should ask out Tabia Fumnaya because she’s gorgeous and I hear she’s got a massive thing for you? That I can’t tell you I like you back because I’m not even sure I like myself much these days?”

  Freddie’s admission reached down my throat and stole my words. My mouth still hung open, but nothing came out.

  “That girl, the one you had a crush on, she’s not me. She’ll never be me. I’m not sure she ever was. And I feel like a completely different person since you healed me. Wrong somehow in a way I can’t describe.” Freddie paused, but I still couldn’t speak. “But I get it, you know? I’ve had crushes before. I had a crush on a senior last year. Courtney Winters. She was the first girl I ever admitted to myself that I liked.”

  I’d known Courtney. Or rather, I’d known of her. She wasn’t the type of girl I’d expected Freddie would find attractive.

  “We had creative writing together, and I spent last year dreaming that every story and poem she read in front of the class was about me. And all the poems and stories I wrote were about her, and it was pretty fucking transparent. I created this fantasy where I asked her out and she said yes and we fell in love and carried on a long-distance relationship until I graduated.

  “Then, right before summer, I asked her out.”

  “She turned you down?” I said, finally finding my voice again.

  Freddie shook her head. “She said yes. I’d planned to take her to dinner and a movie, but when I picked her up, she said a friend was having a party that she wanted to go to. She got drunk and told me she’d stolen her creative writing assignments from her older sister, and she tried to finger me on the couch while her friends were right fucking there, and then she puked on the floor. I swore off girls forever after that.”

  “That’s . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Freddie said. “It was my own fault. I’d never seen Courtney before. I didn’t really know her. And when I finally got the chance, she wasn’t the person I’d thought she was.”

  “And you think you’re not the person I think you are.”

  “Exactly.”

  I’d marched into the art room determined to take a chance. But Javi had been wrong. Sort of. Yeah, I definitely overcomplicated life, but sometimes life really was complicated. Freddie couldn’t say she liked me because she wasn’t sure who she was, her father had killed himself and she was afraid of being happy, and she’d laughed at David Combs and thought that was the reason he’d shot her. It didn’t matter what I wanted. I couldn’t tell her I liked her and kiss her and act like it was just that simple.

  So I said nothing. I did nothing.

  Freddie and I sat together quietly for a few minutes, her father’s music playing in the background. I thought I should leave, give Freddie some time to think, but I didn’t want to.

  Then the bell rang, making the decision for me. I picked up my backpack and headed for the door.

  “Elena?”

  I stopped and turned around.

  “I know it might not seem like it, but I am glad you healed me or whatever.”

  “Even if I brought you back wrong?”

  Freddie nodded. “The girl you had a crush on, the girl you thought I was? I don’t think you would have had the guts to tell her you liked her.”

  “I might have.”

  “Maybe, but she wouldn’t have had the nerve to tell you she liked you back.” Freddie cranked up the music before I could respond, and returned to working on her sculpture.

  FORTY-SIX

  I STOOD IN front of the gym, looking across the football field. There was a crowd of students gathered near the bleachers waiting for me. I wasn’t certain they were waiting for me, but I doubted they’d assembled to watch Mrs. Naam berate the marching band for an hour and a half.

  They were the people I was meant to help. But I wasn’t sure I was helping them at all.

  I dug Snippity Snap out of my backpack and held her in front of my face. “Tell me the truth. Am I helping people when I heal them? Are you really taking those you ‘save’ to a better place? Why did you rapture David Combs?”

  The plastic pony didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected she would. The voices only spoke to me when they thought they could manipulate me.

  I’d healed Freddie, but had chained her to a world where she felt wrong and where her father was dead and she might like me but didn’t like herself enough to say so. I’d healed Mrs. Haimovitch’s hip, but I couldn’t do anything about her daughter refusing to speak to her. I couldn’t mend Michael Graudin’s broken heart or give Tori back her best friend. I’d healed Ben Smith, but maybe the world was going to end and he’d die anyway.

  And somewhere out there David Combs was still alive. He’d gotten to live and would never face the consequences of his actions. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair and none of it made sense and I had no idea what to do.

  I turned my back on the field and walked toward the front of the school. It was too late to catch the bus, but I figured I could wait for Fadil to finish band practice without having to face the people who wanted me to solve their problems.

  “Elena!”

  I’d been sitting on a bench in front of where the busses loaded, and I hadn’t seen the gray Honda Civic pull up and idle at the curb. Sean Malloy was sitting in the driver’s seat, the passenger window down, leaning toward me. “Hey, Elena! Can we talk?”

  “I’m sure there’s got to be a law against a known child abuser being parked at a school.”

  “Don’t be that way.” I heard the anger crouching in his throat, threatening to attack, but he kept it tamed.

  “What do you want, Sean?”

  “You need a ride home? Let me give you a ride and we can talk.”

  My inclination was to give him the finger and walk away, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was worried that the people waiting on the football field would grow restless and find me. And if they did, I wasn’t sure I could refuse to help them even though I wasn’t certain I’d actually be helping. They wouldn’t understand why I was telling them no. They would hear my rejection of them and believe I thought them unworthy.

  Besides, I wasn’t afraid of Sean.

  I sighed, lugged my backpack to the car, and got in. “Who’d you steal the car from?”

  “I borrowed it from a friend.” He rolled up the window and pulled around the circle back out to the road. I noticed he’d taken a right instead of a left, which meant he intended to take the long way home.

  “So what do you want?” I did my best to keep my voice neutral and flat.

  Sean clenched his fists around the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. The inside of the car, while clean, reeked of cigarettes, though Sean, surprisingly, didn’t smell like booze. “You know I didn’t mean to hurt Conor. I love him. And Sofie too. I’d never lay a finger on either of them.”

  “What you meant to do and what you did are two totally separate things.”

  “I get that. I fucked up.”

  “You put your son in the hospital, Sean. My brother. You gave him a concussion.”

  “But he’s all right. He’s gonna be okay.”

  “No thanks to you. And have you even thought about the hospital bills? Do you know how expensive it’s going to be? As if Mama doesn’t already have enough to worry over.” I shook my head in disgust. “At least we won’t have to pay for your beer anymore.”

  Sean breathed shallowly. His chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, and I kept expecting him to yell at me or call me a bitch, but he didn’t. “I’m going to pay for all that.”

  “With what job?”

  “I’ll find a job,” he said. “And I’ll pay the hospital bills and I’ll make it up to Conor and Natalia and Sofie.” Sean slammed his palm on the steering wheel. “I’m not a bad person, Elena!”

  “You’re not a good one, either.”

  Sean opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he nodded. “Yo
u’re right. You didn’t have a father, and I never wanted to be one.”

  “Then you should have worn a condom.”

  “You think I hate you.” He kept on like I hadn’t spoken. “You think I hate you because you’re weird, but it’s not that.”

  “So you hate me for some other reason?”

  “You and Natalia came as a package deal, but I didn’t want you.” He shrugged, like saying he’d taken me when he married Mama because he’d had no choice wasn’t a big thing. “I thought when we had Conor and then Sofie that—”

  “That she wouldn’t love me as much anymore and you could have her all to yourself?”

  Sean nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You really are an asshole.”

  “Don’t—” He stopped himself. “She’ll never love me like she loves you and the kids.”

  “It’s not a contest, Sean. Mama can love us and love you and there are no losers there.” I cocked my head to the side. “Well, you’re a loser, but that’s your choice. You choose to sit home all the time getting drunk. You choose not to get a job. Those are your choices, and no matter what you think, your choices do have consequences. If Mama doesn’t love you anymore, it’s on you.”

  The thing was, I knew she still loved him. I didn’t understand why, but she did. I wasn’t about to tell him that, though, because he didn’t deserve it. Not after what he did to Conor.

  Sean’s shoulders slumped. “Help me,” he said. “Heal me. You did it for Helen.”

  How could I, though? I could take away his addiction to alcohol the way I’d done for Elias Morales, but he’d still be a self-centered jerk. He’d still believe the world revolved around him and that nothing was his fault. I could heal him, but I couldn’t fix him.