The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

  “I think you might be right about the world ending,” Freddie said. We’d agreed to go to David’s house after school on Wednesday, and I’d met her in the parking lot after last period.

  “How so?” I turned down her stereo.

  “You didn’t hear about the tsunami?” She glanced at me and I shook my head. “Last night. An earthquake in the Pacific caused a tsunami that hit Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, Indonesia. They’re estimating the death toll will be in the millions.”

  “Millions?”

  “It’s worse than the one in 2004 that killed almost three hundred thousand.” Freddie tapped the steering wheel. “Do you think your voices caused it, to try to force you to do what they want?”

  Winston had threatened to do something if I didn’t start healing more people, but I didn’t believe the voices capable of such extreme and direct action. “Maybe it was just an earthquake,” I said.

  “It’s possible, but the president is sending troops to Crimea, and North Korea had a successful nuclear missile test and—”

  “I get it. The world is ending.”

  “Or it’s not. But it’s fucking weird to be worried about David Combs if it is.”

  “I get why Fadil doesn’t care, but I thought you’d be curious,” I said.

  “I am, but not for the same reasons as you.” Freddie had dyed her hair again and it was back to a deep sapphire blue. In the story I told myself, she’d done it for me, but most stories are lies anyway.

  “So you think I shouldn’t talk to them? Because you didn’t have to come.”

  “Did I say I didn’t want to be here? Christ, you’re in a mood today.”

  “Sorry.” I played with my phone. “I’m not sure I can explain it.”

  “Try?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “I can explain the science behind how I was conceived. I understand parthenogenesis. I understand the scientific principals that made my birth possible. But I’m the only person ever proven to be born that way, and I can’t explain why. Given enough time, I might be able to explain how I’m able to heal people and how the voices ‘save’ others—I’m certain there are scientific explanations for both—but I doubt I’ll ever be able to explain why I can do these things or why the voices are rapturing strangers. If we don’t all die first, scientists will likely explain the mechanics that made the famine and the virus outbreaks and the earthquakes and whatever else happens possible. But they’ll never be able to explain why they’re happening. Hell, I can even explain hormones and pheromones and all the biological processes that make me like you, but I can’t explain why.”

  Freddie raised one eyebrow and frowned skeptically. “Okay . . .”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I told you I couldn’t explain it.”

  “Keep going. I’m listening.”

  I wasn’t sure I should, though. “I can’t explain why any of the things that have happened are happening, but maybe I can explain why David Combs shot you. And even though explaining why won’t change anything, if I can find this one reason, I can continue believing the others exist.”

  Freddie stared straight ahead, driving, likely rethinking her decision to join me on this foolish trip. I rolled down the window and let the warm breeze blow in. The sky was as blue as I’d ever seen it. On a day like that, it felt impossible to believe humanity was in danger and the world might ever end. And maybe the world wouldn’t ever end. Maybe, instead, humanity would be wiped away and the world would keep going on with its blue skies and boundless oceans. It’s not as if the world needed us to keep spinning.

  “I never wanted to know why my dad killed himself,” Freddie said after a few minutes. “It was the depression, yeah, but I was scared there were specific reasons and that I was one of them.”

  “You weren’t the reason he killed himself,” I said.

  “But you don’t know that. And neither do I. He could have hated his life and I was the cause and if I didn’t exist he’d still be alive.”

  “It’s like you said, though; it was the depression.”

  “I did say that. But the thing about depression is that it doesn’t create bad thoughts, it amplifies and distorts them. Depression doesn’t make me look in the mirror and see a girl who’s overweight and has too-wide hips and pudgy cheeks. Those thoughts are already there. Depression just cranks up the volume on them so loud that I can’t hear anything else.” She glanced at me. “So if I was one of the reasons my dad took his life, depression wouldn’t have made him feel that way, but it would have made him feel more that way.”

  “I get what you’re saying, but wouldn’t you still want to know?”

  Freddie shook her head. “Won’t change that he’s gone.”

  I didn’t say anything to that because there was nothing to say. Freddie had lost her father, and she was right that knowing why he’d killed himself wouldn’t bring him back. But that didn’t change my mind about needing to understand why David Combs had tried to kill Freddie.

  “I can tell you why I like you,” Freddie said.

  “What? I—”

  “You’re fearless, despite what I said.”

  “Hardly.”

  “And you think about everything. Everything. You’re never content to accept what anyone tells you.”

  I laughed. “Except weren’t you just trying to convince me to stop questioning?”

  “So what?” she said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t like that you do it.”

  “All right. Keep going.”

  Freddie snorted. “Maybe I should roll down my window so your swollen head doesn’t block my view of the road.” She winked at me. “You ask ‘why?’ instead of ‘why me?’ when faced with a problem. You’re kind of bratty—”

  “I am not!”

  “And you’re beautiful, Elena.”

  I don’t think anyone had ever called me beautiful other than my mother. Javi had said I was hot, and I’d been called cute before, but never beautiful.

  “Also,” Freddie added, “you saved my life.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “All I did was heal you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But that’s not what I was talking about.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  FREDDIE AND I had parked down the street to avoid looking suspicious. The Combs’s house was a two-story colonial with a neatly manicured front lawn, a mailbox built to look like the house, and nothing to signal that it was where an attempted murderer had grown up.

  We’d been sitting in the car for ten minutes while I worked up the courage to walk to the front door and confront David’s parents, but if I didn’t do it soon I was going to chicken out.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in with me?” I asked.

  Freddie turned to look at the house and stared for a moment before saying, “I think you need to do this on your own.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath, got out of the car, walked to the house, and knocked on the door. I’d spent the last two days rehearsing what I was going to say, but the moment the door opened, all my words vanished.

  “Yes?” The woman who opened the door appeared near my mother’s age, but she was dressed in jeans and a nice white blouse and stared down her nose at me like I was covered in pus-oozing boils.

  “Mrs. Combs?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, I think you have—”

  “My name is Elena Mendoza. I was acquainted with David Combs. I know this is his house, and I’m hoping to speak to his parents for a moment.”

  The woman stood holding the door half-closed, the slits of her eyes narrow, her lips tight. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face, but she said, “Stay here,” and then shut the door.

  I looked over my shoulder at where Freddie was sitting in the car. I got the impression that the person who’d answered the door wasn’t David’s mother, and I didn’t know what I would do if his parents refused to speak to me. Drive home, I supposed. I couldn’t force them to talk.

  A minute l
ater, the door reopened and the woman said, “Come in.” The house was a battlefield of toys and books and LEGOs. “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she said. “I’m Dan’s sister. We’ve been staying with them since . . .”

  “I have a younger brother and sister,” I said. “They never put their toys away either.” Of course the difference was that Mama couldn’t afford all the toys this family obviously could. She led me to the dining room and motioned that I should sit, and then offered me water, which I accepted.

  “Dan and Sue will be down shortly.”

  The woman, whose name I still didn’t know and was too embarrassed to ask, left me alone. But it was only for a moment. David Combs’s parents entered the dining room from the kitchen. Mr. Combs—Dan—wore a T-shirt with a hole in the neck and hadn’t shaved in days, and Sue zombie-shambled to the table, but light and life flooded into her previously dead eyes the moment she saw me.

  “You’re Elena Mendoza?” She pushed her glasses higher on her nose.

  Not “What the hell are you doing here?” or “What did you do to my son?” or even “Get the hell out of this house!” Mrs. Combs’s question surprised me.

  “I am,” I said, unsure of myself.

  Sue sat at the table, and Dan reluctantly sat across from her. A smile touched her lips, but it looked painful. Like she hadn’t smiled in so long that the muscles had atrophied.

  “Davie told us so much about you,” Mrs. Combs said.

  “He did?”

  She nodded. “He was always going on about Elena this and Elena that. I’m so sorry we didn’t meet before . . .” Words failed her. Her smile fled and tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

  I sat there confused. I’d hoped Mr. and Mrs. Combs would recognize my name—I was counting on it, in fact—but as the Miracle Girl. I hadn’t expected to learn David had told them things about me when I hadn’t even known his name until the day he’d shot Freddie.

  “Do you know where our son is?” Mr. Combs asked. His voice was sandpaper and his nose was a lattice of burst red capillaries.

  “Is he safe?” There was a hint of hope in Mrs. Combs’s face, where I’d expected accusation.

  “I have no idea where he is.” Which was the truth. He’d been raptured, but I was still clueless as to where the voices had taken him.

  “I don’t understand why he ran away,” Mrs. Combs said. “He seemed so happy. He was in the marching band and he had a beautiful girlfriend—”

  “Girlfriend?”

  Mrs. Combs reached out and touched my hand. “Or whatever you kids call it now. Hooking up? Is that the right phrase?”

  David had told his parents that I was his girlfriend? That had to have been how the rumors had started that I’d helped him run away. But why had he lied?

  “I told that sheriff’s deputy who questioned us that you weren’t involved,” Mrs. Combs said.

  I’d come to speak to David’s parents expecting they’d have the answers that I lacked, but instead of answers, they’d given me more questions. Every question I’d meant to ask, every answer I’d hoped to find, evaporated.

  “I wasn’t involved,” I said. “David shot my friend Freddie. She would have died if I hadn’t healed her.”

  “Allegedly shot,” Mr. Combs said.

  “I had her blood on my hands and—”

  “Why are you here, Elena?” Mr. Combs clenched his fists.

  “I was hoping you knew, that you could tell me why.”

  Dan and Sue looked at each other across the table. Unspoken words passed between them, and then Mr. Combs pushed his chair back and stormed out of the dining room.

  “You’ll have to excuse Dan,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I understand.”

  Mrs. Combs’s smile turned acerbic. “At least someone does.” Without her husband there, Mrs. Combs relaxed a little. “We simply don’t know what to believe. You say Davie shot your friend, but the police said the young woman had no gunshot wound. We only want to find him and understand what’s going on.”

  “Your son tried to kill someone.”

  “Davie isn’t capable of hurting anyone.”

  This was one situation I had come prepared for. I knew it was possible that David’s parents would be as skeptical as everyone else that I’d healed Freddie, and I had only one way to prove that I had. “May I?” I asked, motioning at her hand.

  She nodded, likely not fully aware of what I was asking. I took her hand and closed my eyes. I hated using my abilities knowing hundreds or thousands of strangers around the world were going to vanish as a result, but Mrs. Combs deserved to know the truth about her son. The energy of her body was strong, though the languid pulse of it showed me how exhausted she truly was. She had multiple problems, none serious, and I focused on the one that would have the most irrefutable impact. A pair of what appeared to be ghostly fingers were pinching her eyes and, with a thought, I swept them away and healed her.

  Mrs. Combs let out an “Oh!” She slowly pulled off her glasses, set them on the table, and looked around the dining room as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Did you—?”

  “I did.”

  As the weight of the implications of what I’d done settled around her shoulders, the wonder in her eyes and on her face fled, replaced by a tightness around her mouth that turned into a frown. “You were telling the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “About everything?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Combs began to cry. She buried her face in her hands and shook as she realized her son hadn’t run away. That he’d tried to kill someone and had vanished, possibly forever. I went into the kitchen and got her a napkin, which she used to dab her eyes and blow her nose.

  “Dan blames himself for David running away,” she said when she’d recovered. “We were going to send him to a private school, but Davie begged us not to. We thought things were getting better when he met you and his friends from marching band. He still had problems, but I thought having a girlfriend and friends would help him.”

  “I’m sure this is a lot to take in all at once,” I said, “but I was really hoping you could tell me why he shot my friend.”

  Mrs. Combs’s shoulders slumped—I’d given her too much information too quickly. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “I told myself he ran away. That he couldn’t have tried to hurt anyone. Even when the police told us they found Dan’s gun, I refused to believe. Davie was sweet and kind and . . . but, of course, you knew that.”

  “Did he ever mention hearing voices? Maybe from an action figure or a doll?”

  “No,” she said. “Why would you ask that?”

  “What about the name Winifred Petrine?” I said. “Freddie? Did he ever talk about her? Do you think it was my fault?”

  Mrs. Combs shook her head violently. “No. You can’t blame yourself, Elena. Davie loved you. You made him happy.”

  Except I hadn’t. Not really. Maybe the idea of me had made him happy the way the idea of Freddie had made me happy before I’d gotten to know her, but it wasn’t really me. Right before I’d healed Freddie, David had said that he thought his mother would have liked me, but I didn’t think she would if I told her that the things she knew about her son were a lie.

  “Why do you think he did it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Elena.” Her voice caught in her throat and tears welled in her eyes again. “I don’t know and I wish I did and if I could tell you I would, but I just don’t know!” She slammed her fist on the table and her whole body shook.

  Mr. Combs walked into the room and rested his hands on his wife’s shoulders. “I think you should leave now,” he said. “I’m sorry you came all this way, but you need to leave.”

  There were no answers here. David’s parents had thought their son was happy. They’d thought he had friends and a girlfriend and a life, but they hadn’t known their son at all.

  I stood and turned to walk toward the door. I stop
ped under the archway leading to the living room. “I don’t know where David is,” I said. “But I think, wherever he is, he’s okay.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FREDDIE DIDN’T ASK me what had happened when I returned to the car. I didn’t volunteer the information either. I’d learned a little more about David, but nothing to explain why he’d tried to shoot her. David had lied to his parents, convinced them he was happy. He might have even managed to convince himself of it for a while. But in the end, he’d made a choice. Maybe he’d done it because Freddie had rejected him. Or because he’d liked me and knew I’d had a crush on Freddie and thought killing her would make me see him. Maybe Javi had been right and the voices “saving” him had stopped him from trying to kill as many of us as he could. Or maybe the voices had told him to kill Freddie as motivation to get me to use my ability to heal.

  There was no way to know short of asking David himself, and he was gone. But regardless of his reason, he’d made a choice, and now it was time for me to make my own.

  “I like you because you never back down,” I said as Freddie pulled up in front of my apartment. It was the first I’d spoken since we’d left David’s parents. “I like you because you never give up. I didn’t know about your father or what you’ve been through, and I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me, because you defy the world, dare it to fight, and refuse to back down no matter what it throws at you.”

  Freddie bobbed her head a little as I spoke. “I don’t think I’m as strong as you think I am.”

  “And I think you’re stronger than you believe.”

  “Thanks,” she said.