Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

I tear outside. “Carrie! Carrie, where are you! Kezia! DeShaun!”

I find them behind our building, where there’s a sort of cement alcove beside the steps that comes down from a back door. A boy has them backed up against the dumpster. Kezia holds a drippy ice cream cone. The boy has the other two cones, which Mary must of given the kids. He licks one of them and then shoves the other one in DeShaun’s face.

None of them see me. I stop and wait.

DeShaun is bigger than the other boy. He could take the little turd even if Carrie and Kezia didn’t help. But all three of them just stand there, DeShaun with chocolate ice cream sliding off his nose onto the front of his hoodie. None of the three of them do anything. They look upset, not really scared. But they just stand there.

“Hey!” I yell.

The boy turns, and now he looks scared. He’s not more than six. I don’t recognize him. He drops the ice cream cone and runs.

“DeShaun, why didn’t you hit him?”

DeShaun looks down at his sneakers, then up at me. I can’t read his expression. Finally he says, polite—he’s always polite—“It’s not right to hit people.”

“Well, no, not usually, but when they’re attacking you—” I stop. He’s looking down at his feet again.

I finally say, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

At lunch, Sophie spills our last carton of milk and I yell at her. “I didn’t mean it!” she yells back, which is true. She goes into her room and slams the door. When I calm down, I apologize. I was only yelling at her from frustration. It’s not her fault. None of it is her fault—the ice cream thing or that I forgot to bring home milk last night or my crappy job or anything.

Later on, I go to the Browns’ and ask to use their computer. I bring some home-made cookies that I had in the freezer. They were saved for the girls’ lunches, but I don’t ever go empty-handed to ask for anything. We’re not charity cases. And this is research.

The summer after the volcano, when the scientific reports of weird chemicals in the ash first came out, the theories started.

Some people said the volcano was a conspiracy, that it had been deliberately set off by white nations to poison the Asians. But nobody who wasn’t already dead from the explosion seemed to be dying of any poison, and anyway how can you deliberately set off a volcano?

Some people said that the volcano was the start of the End Times, and pretty soon the Four Horsemen were going to come riding through, and then Armageddon and the New Earth. But no horsemen appeared.

Some people said that the weird chemicals didn’t come from Earth, so they must’ve been put deep inside by aliens. I wouldn’t of paid no more attention to this idea than to the others, except it was on the news that some scientists agreed that the chemicals weren’t like any we had on Earth. They were brand new here. They blew all over the world and got into everything. Everybody breathed them in. They were found in breast milk.

The kindergarten class is going on a field trip to Pumpkin Patch Farm, and I’m one of the room mothers going with them. I never done this before. It means taking the day off from work without pay, and riding on a school bus, and seeing the other two room mothers in their bright ski jackets and leather boots give me sideways glances, but I go. I have to look at a whole bunch of kids Carrie’s age, not just her and the twins.

I know I’m not some detective like in the mysteries from the BookMobile, but I have to do this.

The kids are excited. They each get a sip of cider from a tiny paper cup, see horses and kittens in the barn, and pick out a pumpkin to take home. The rule is that the pumpkin is supposed to be small enough for the child to carry by himself, but that don’t always work out. Two little boys want the same pumpkin, and I watch them fight over it, pushing and hitting until Ms. Steffens breaks it up. On the bus two girls get into a tussle over who gets to sit next to who. Carrie and four others, two boys and two girls, walk in a little group around the pumpkin field, discussing the choices like they was choosing diamonds, and helping each other pick up and carry their pumpkins to the bus.

My theory is shot to hell. Some of these kindergartners are passive and some aren’t.

On the bus one pumpkin rolls off the seat and smashes, and we get wailing and accusations.

The volcano was supposed to blow up 10,000 years ago. That’s what some scientists are saying now, from tracing all the things that go on under the Earth’s crust. Only something shifted unexpectedly next to something else, and the volcano got delayed.

I found that out on the Browns’ computer, along with a lot of other stuff I never knew. Big explosions like this happened before. One was in 1816, but even bigger ones happened thousands and even millions of years ago.

The weekend after Halloween is Sophie’s birthday. I almost cancel her party because on Halloween, against my orders, she took off with her friends to trick-and-treat at houses without me, where anybody could of given her apples with razor blades in them or poisoned candy. They didn’t, but I had to go over each one of the million pieces of candy she brought home, and then I made her give some to Carrie, who only went to three houses with me beside her.

“But it’s my birthday party!” Sophie rages, and I give in because it isn’t much of a party anyway, only four girls coming over for pizza and cake. I can’t afford more than that, and even the pizza is a stretch.

The girls bring presents. Two are expensive—who gives a ten-year-old a cashmere sweater? Two are cheap gimcracks, and I see that these two girls are embarrassed. After that, the party feels a little strained, and soon the girls all leave. Sophie, scowling, goes to her room, where Carrie had stayed throughout the whole thing.

I clean up, sorry that Sophie is disappointed in her party. But I’m not thinking about Sophie, or about the gifts, as much as about the girls. Two of them, one with a cheap present and one with the cashmere sweater, looked like teenagers. Already. They had on bras, the straps visible, and their faces were slimmer and sharper. The other two looked like Sophie: little girls still. But Sophie told me that they’re all in her fourth-grade class. Did some get held back a year? They didn’t sound any dumber than the others. (Most of the party conversation was pretty dumb.) I try to remember when I was in the fourth grade. I started out nine years old and then turned ten in November, like Sophie, and some of my friends didn’t get their birthdays until spring…

Older. Two of those girls were maybe six months older than the others. So—

Through the bedroom door, Carrie calls out something.

I race to the door, but something stops me. Carrie didn’t sound hurt or mad. I pick up a dirty glass from the party (“Just milk?” the cashmere-sweater girl said, making a face. “No Coke?”) and hold it between my ear and the closed door.

Sophie says, “You’re a baby and a wimp and nobody likes you!”

Carrie says something I don’t catch.

“It is so true! Kezia told me yesterday that she only pretends to like you so she can play with your toys! She really hates you!”

Carrie starts to cry.

“Stop that! Stop it right now, you little bitch!” Whap .

I shove open the door just as Sophie cries, “I’m sorry, Carrie! I didn’t mean to!” By the time I pick up Carrie, Sophie is crying, too. I look at her face and I know she means it—she is sorry she tormented Carrie. She don’t know why she did it.