The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You’re lying, Elena. Please. I want to get better; I want to be better.”

  “Then you’re going to have to do it on your own.”

  Sean slammed the brakes, screeching to a stop in the middle of Military Trail. The car behind us squealed and swerved out of the way, its driver shouting profanities at us as they passed.

  “What the hell?”

  “Get out,” Sean said. When I didn’t move, he shouted, “Get out!”

  I scrambled out of the car and onto the sidewalk. I hadn’t even shut the door when Sean peeled away, leaving me stranded.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THIS TIME, FREDDIE had rescued me. I’d called her after Sean had abandoned me on the side of the road, because Fadil was still practicing with the band and Mama was working the Groom Waggin’, and she’d agreed to pick me up without hesitation. We’d ended up at her house because I hadn’t wanted to go to mine in case Sean cooled off and made another attempt to convince me to heal him.

  Freddie’s house was smaller than I’d expected, but it was on the intracoastal with a dock and a boat, which meant it was worth a fortune. The outside was plain and white with a wood shingle roof, but the inside was modern and chrome and sanitized. Even her dog, Biscuits, had pristine curly white fur.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Freddie said as I followed her inside.

  “You think this is a mess?”

  “According to my mom it is.”

  “This place is cleaner than a sterile operating room. I can’t imagine what you’d think of my apartment.”

  Freddie shrugged. “Mom’s allergic to clutter. Everything has a place, and God help you if you put something where it doesn’t belong.”

  Where the kitchen at home usually bore sticky handprints and cup rings as evidence of Sofie and Conor’s presence, the Petrines’ kitchen was immaculate. There were no bills sitting on the counter waiting to be opened and paid, no aced tests stuck to the fridge, no dirty dishes in the sink. If I’d randomly walked into the house without knowing better, I would have guessed it was a show home that no one actually lived in.

  “You sure you don’t want me to take you home?” Freddie asked.

  “Already trying to get rid of me?”

  “I thought your brother and sister—”

  “They won’t be home from school for a while, and if I’m not there they’ll go to Mrs. Haimovitch’s house.”

  “Oh.”

  “You going to show me your room?”

  Freddie motioned for me to follow, and we walked toward the back of the house. “Mom didn’t used to be such a neat freak,” she said. “Before Dad died, she didn’t care how the house looked. I think it helps her feel like she’s in control, you know?”

  “I guess it makes sense.”

  Freddie’s bedroom wasn’t quite as tidy as the rest of the house, but it still had that not-lived-in feeling. Her queen-sized bed was perfectly made, every item on her desk in a precise position, her walls bare but for a framed photo of Freddie with her parents in front of the Eiffel Tower.

  “It’s not much, but it’s where I sleep.”

  “At least you have your own room.” When Freddie frowned at me in confusion, I said, “I have to share a room with my brother and sister, so I sleep on the couch most nights.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It is what it is.” I didn’t know where to sit or stand. I’d left my backpack in Freddie’s car, so I didn’t even have that to hold. I spotted a creepy plastic clown on the nightstand by Freddie’s bed. It was lumpy and squat with an elongated mouth full of teeth, and it was wearing a pink skirt, a halter top, and had yellow pigtails. It looked so out of place in her otherwise boring room. “What in the world is that?”

  Freddie followed my line of sight. She walked to the figure and picked it up. “Winston.”

  “Winston?”

  “My dad designed toys,” she said. “Figures and stuff. This one’s from a comic book. It was the last one he worked on before . . .” She trailed off and set Winston back down. “Mom boxed up the others and hid them in the attic. She keeps trying to take Winston too.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what’s the deal with your stepdad ditching you on the side of the road?”

  I flopped down on Freddie’s bed and told her what happened. About the drinking and how he hadn’t had a job in years and how Mama worked her butt off to make sure we had a place to live while he contributed nothing but dirty laundry and empty beer cans.

  “And then he expected me to heal him and make all his problems go away.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Freddie asked. She’d sat at the head of the bed, hugging her pillow, while I sprawled out across the end, rubbing Biscuits’s belly.

  “I can’t fix everything. I’m not a vending machine you can pop money into and demand a miracle from.”

  “But you could have helped him.”

  “Fixing one of his problems wouldn’t have fixed the rest.”

  “Didn’t you say you helped someone with an addiction to painkillers, though?”

  “Elias Morales,” I said. “But it’s different with Sean.”

  “Why?” Freddie asked.

  There’s something uniquely meditative about rubbing a dog’s belly. It cleared my head and allowed me to think. “Elias wasn’t using pills to escape his life. He got hooked because a crappy doctor prescribed them. He wanted me to heal him because he didn’t want to take them anymore.” I paused. “Sean didn’t want to quit drinking. He wanted an easy fix for his problems, and I think if he wants to make things right badly enough, then he needs to do this on his own.”

  “Not everyone’s as strong as you,” Freddie said.

  I laughed so loudly I woke the dog, who glared at me for it. “You think I’m strong?”

  “All the shit you’ve gone through?” Freddie said. “I would have broken a long time ago.”

  “You’re the one who got shot.”

  “But you’re the one deciding the fate of the world,” Freddie countered. “I couldn’t handle that. I can barely deal with the problems I’ve got.”

  Freddie was stronger than she gave herself credit for. I tried to imagine losing Mama or Fadil or one of the kids, but even thinking about it carved a hole in my heart. “My mother says there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. That it’s just more tunnel. More dark, sometimes broken up by light, but that we can find others to walk through the darkness with us.”

  Freddie shifted toward me. “You offering to walk through the dark with me, Miracle Girl?”

  “If that’s what you want,” I said. “And if you don’t, I’ll be there if you change your mind.”

  Freddie leaned forward and gently brushed her lips across mine. It was the lightest touch and the brightest light and I could hardly breathe because I was afraid to ruin the moment. Then she leaned back again and watched me.

  “Are you asking?” I said.

  Freddie bit her bottom lip, but she didn’t pull away. “There is one thing.”

  “What?”

  “My dad,” she said. “Bring him back?”

  “He’s dead, Freddie. I can’t—”

  “You perform miracles. You could give him back to me. Make it so he never died.”

  I was shaking my head, unable to believe what Freddie was asking. “That’s not . . . I heal people; I don’t resurrect them. I don’t think I could if I wanted to.”

  It broke my heart to watch her. The tears that streamed down her cheeks. She hadn’t been able to ask me to heal her when David had shot her, or known she could, and she might not have wanted me to, but she wanted this. She wanted me to bring back her father.

  “Could I?” I asked. But I hadn’t directed my question at Freddie.

  I knew you were going to do this.

  I already disliked clowns, and Winston was a nightmare with its fleshy tongue and thick arms and razor teeth. Oddly, its raspy, high voice didn’t match its terrifying
appearance, which made it less frightening. “Do what?”

  Fuck up saving the world.

  Freddie was watching me argue with an inanimate object, and it was kind of weird, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “Can I do it or not? Can I bring back Freddie’s dad?”

  I got the sense that if Winston could have moved it would have been stomping around and clenching its fists. It’s com—

  “I swear to God if you tell me it’s complicated, I will never speak to any of you again.”

  You can heal the sick and nearly dead. Why can’t that be enough?

  We’re trying to help you save your pitiful world, but you want more. You have to know why David Combs shot your pathetic girlfriend and why we told you to save Freddie and where the people we save go. Instead of saving billions from dying, you want to resurrect someone who’s already dead!

  “You chose me,” I said. “Why give me these powers if I can’t help those who really need it?”

  You’re not special. You’re a cosmic fuckup. A mistake we exploited to save humanity. You think we wanted you to help us? We used you because we didn’t have a choice. You’re nothing but a tool. What gives you the right to question us?

  “Go to hell.”

  No, Elena Mendoza. Hell is what your world will become if you fail to act. Now do your fucking job or you will leave us no choice but to do ours.

  “Elena?” Freddie said.

  I bowed my head. I couldn’t look her in the eyes because I knew she’d see that I’d failed. I was a failure. She’d asked me for one thing and I couldn’t give it to her.

  “Freddie. I’m sorry.”

  “Elena, please.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then what fucking good are you?” She ran out of the room, leaving me alone.

  “I hate you,” I said to Winston.

  The feeling’s mutual.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  IT’S DIFFICULT TO see the stars well from where I live because there are too many other lights competing with them. Streetlights and stoplights and the headlights from cars. All that ambient light overwhelms the stars in the sky, but they’re still up there, millions and billions of light-years distant, waiting for us to see them. They’re a lot like life that way. The constant noise of our own personal problems drowns out what’s happening in the rest of the world. We get caught up in our day-to-day struggles and can’t see that everyone is fighting their own battles.

  But they are.

  Whether we see them or not, they are.

  “Everything okay, Elena?”

  I sat up on the trunk of Mama’s car and found Mrs. Haimovitch walking toward me. She was wearing a flower nightgown and looked like she was ready for bed.

  “Hey, Mrs. Haimovitch,” I said. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  “About anything good?”

  I shrugged. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  I scooted over so Mrs. Haimovitch could climb up and sit on the trunk beside me, something she wouldn’t have been able to do a month ago.

  “If I could bring Oscar back for you, would you want me to?”

  Mrs. Haimovitch narrowed her eyes. “You can do that?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But Freddie’s dad committed suicide last year and she asked me to resurrect him but I couldn’t and now she hates me.”

  “There’s been a part of me missing since Oscar died,” Mrs. Haimovitch said. “When you spend long enough with someone, they grow to occupy a place inside of you, but you don’t know it until they’re gone and you have this hole where they used to be.”

  I slapped a mosquito off my arm. “So you’d want me to bring him back, then?”

  Mrs. Haimovitch shook her head. “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Oscar was a good man who lived a good life. He loved me and I loved him, and he loved our daughter. He worked hard his whole life to provide for us. It’d be selfish of me to call him back now. He deserves to rest.”

  “But Freddie’s dad killed himself.”

  “And that’s terrible,” Mrs. Haimovitch said. “It’s terrible that he felt taking his own life was his only choice, and it’s terrible that he left his daughter behind to wonder why. But it was still his choice, and I’m not sure anyone has the right to undo that choice for him.”

  Every time I blinked, I saw the devastation on Freddie’s face when I told her I couldn’t help her. It was like she’d been holding on to this tiny scrap of hope and I’d torn it from her and stomped it into the carpet. “Don’t you think if he saw how much Freddie was hurting he’d make a different choice?”

  “Maybe, but the cruel truth of life is that it only moves in one direction. All our actions are permanent. We might be able to apologize for the mistakes we make and atone for our sins, but we can’t take them back.” Mrs. Haimovitch sighed. “We can’t make choices for others. That’s how I lost Katie.”

  Mrs. Haimovitch had never told me what had happened between her and her daughter. All I knew was that they rarely spoke and that Mrs. H. had never seen her grandchildren in anything other than pictures. “What happened?”

  “I didn’t approve of the man she married,” Mrs. Haimovitch said. “They met when they were in high school and dated for years before getting engaged. He cheated on her multiple times while they were together and caused my Katie so much pain. When she told me he’d proposed, I tried to be happy for her, but I didn’t want to see her end up with a man who would hurt her.”

  “What if he’d changed?” I said.

  “The foundation of every relationship—friendship or otherwise—is trust, Elena.” I started to tell her I knew that, but she cut me off. “Just listen. Before Oscar and I married, I told him I only had one rule. If he was thinking about straying, he had to tell me and we’d work it out from there.”

  I frowned. “You’d let him hook up with someone else?”

  “Stay with anyone long enough and the urge is going to strike. It’s human nature. But if you trust the person you’re with enough to tell them, then it’s possible your relationship is strong enough to survive it.”

  “Did Oscar ever cheat?”

  Mrs. Haimovitch chuckled. “He told me after we’d been married ten years that there was a woman who’d been flirting with him and that it made him feel good. I told him if he wanted to sleep with her he could, but he had to tell me if and when he did.”

  My eyes grew wide. “Did he?”

  “No,” she said. “He told me having my permission had ruined it for him. The point is, Larry hadn’t trusted Katie enough to tell her he was going to stray, so I didn’t think it was right for her to commit her life to someone who wasn’t mature enough to be honest with her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Mrs. Haimovitch said. “That’s the point. I tried to make Katie’s choice for her. Sometimes we have to let go of people if they’re dragging us down, like Natalia did with Sean. But I should have trusted Katie to make her own decisions. I didn’t, and now I have to live with the consequences.”

  I couldn’t imagine Mama doing anything that would make me cut her out of my life the way she’d done with her own parents and Mrs. Haimovitch’s daughter had done with her. “She might still forgive you,” I said.

  “I hope she will, but I can’t force her. I made that mistake once already.”

  My thoughts drifted back to Freddie. Even if I had the power to resurrect her father, I think Mrs. Haimovitch had a good point. He’d made his choice, and I didn’t have the right to undo it. “I wish there was some way for me to help Freddie,” I said.

  “You already are.”

  “What?”

  “You’re being her friend.”

  I was trying to be her friend, but Freddie deserved more. And then an idea struck me. I slid off the trunk to the ground. “Thanks, Mrs. H.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To bring back the dead.”

  FORTY-NIN
E

  MAMA WAS OFF on Thursday night, so I borrowed the car and drove to Freddie’s house. I didn’t call first because I was worried she’d tell me not to come and I needed to see her. It was almost eleven when I showed up at her house. I considered knocking on the door, but I didn’t imagine her mother would appreciate being woken up by a strange girl.

  I tapped Freddie’s name on my phone and then waited.

  “Elena?” Freddie’s voice sounded froggy and thick.

  “Come outside.”

  “What?”

  “Come outside,” I said. “And bring your phone.” I hung up without giving Freddie time to argue, and then I waited.

  A few minutes later Freddie opened the front door and walked outside. She was wearing blue pajama bottoms and a white tank top and her hair was adorably messy and sticking up in every direction, but she didn’t look as happy to see me as I was to see her.

  “Is this payback for me dragging you out the other night?” Freddie asked as she approached. “Because I’m not in the mood.”

  I was already walking back around to my side of the car and getting in. “Trust me. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Freddie stared at the car door, sighed, and got in.

  I drove to Arcadia West High and parked near the football field. We had to hop the fence, which Freddie grumbled about, to get onto the field. I’d brought a blanket with me, and Freddie waited while I spread it across the dewy grass.

  “I hope the sprinklers don’t turn on,” she said. “If I go home smelling like swamp ass, I’m going to kill you.”

  “They won’t.” I couldn’t be sure, but there was nothing I could do about it so it was pointless to worry.

  I sat down on the blanket and patted for Freddie to sit across from me.

  “So what’s the deal, Elena? This better not be a date; I told you I don’t know how I feel and—”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I can’t bring back your dad.”