Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

And I could. I knew the secret eight-digit code.

“Can you imagine the big red button sitting on the president’s desk, ready to be pushed?” Max asked.

I glanced up from my notebook and scowled at him. “I don’t think it’s a big red button, and it’s certainly not on the president’s desk.”

He winced dramatically, as if he’d just been slapped. “I know… but it’s funny to imagine.” He laughed.

“It’s just keys and codes.”

“How do you know?”

“Um, the beginning of WarGames . [34] A 1983 major motion picture starring Matthew Broderick. David Lightman hacks War Operation Plan Response with the help of Jennifer, played by Ally Sheedy, and we as planet Earth almost went to DEFCON 1 and World War III. You remember the beginning of WarGames ,” I said, changing the subject.

“Yeah, the beginning of WarGames .”

“So—our script,” I said, hoping he’d finally take the hint.

I couldn’t tell Max what my dad had said while piss drunk. My dad could have been tried for treason. It was an accident, what happened at Damascus. A socket fell in the silo and hit the side of the missile, causing a major leak of flammable rocket fuel, and it nearly went BOOM. He didn’t die, but he could have. He still worked on the ICBMs. And the ICBM was six hundred times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. My dad didn’t have anything directly to do with the “accident,” but he was on location with the ICBM at the time. And he still worked on them. If he had everything to do with it, they wouldn’t keep him on, right? Right?

“What if the government is hiding something from us?” Max asked out of nowhere. Well, not out of nowhere. He was smart.

“Like before?” I asked.

“Didn’t your dad get into trouble?”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“Accident? I’m sure it was the Russians,” he said with a wink.

“It was an accident.”

“Sure it was, Laura. How many times have we accepted these ‘accidents’?” he asked, using finger quotes. “We should be a part of the resistance, not a part of the propaganda machine.”

Max went back to drawing but left me thinking about the plot to our comic, which we were calling Big Sister . He wouldn’t allow me to see his drawings. Only when they were perfect, but according to him, they never would be.

After each drawing, he’d crumple it up into a ball and drop it into the waste bucket he kept beside him. He would take the trash bag home when he left after each work session—or what Max’s mother would describe as a playdate. He was a budding tortured artist.

“One little peek?” I would ask.

And he would say no and then get defensive. I would only see what he’d drawn when it hit the comic bookshelves at Dewayne’s.

“So you want to change the main character from a boy to a girl superhero?” he asked.

“Or a villain?” I said.

“Or a villain.”

Our script was about done. (And by “done,” I mean we’d started over a few times. But our first line remained the same: And with a big, loud bang, everything was gone . Max and Laura’s untitled comic had fun promising the apocalypse.) Also, our plot was simple: A few teens got trapped in the cellar of Old Barnaby’s Farm in a small town called Seaside during a nuclear exchange between two opposing foes. (Max and I were afraid to say who the two opposing foes were; we didn’t want our sales to be compromised, and if we kissed and made up with the USSR, then we’d be screwed financially.) Some went mad, some tried to escape, some fell in love. But all got superpowers. When they emerged, they saw a changed world. It was overrun by an organization called Big Sister. Big Sister keeps order in the wasteland that it created. Chocolate was distributed for radiation sickness. We couldn’t decide if our characters were going to be superheroes or supervillains in the new world order.

“Godzilla was created because of nuclear radiation, and he’s a monster, and yet our superheroes are created nearly the same, and they’re not,” he said.

“It’s like they see nuclear fallout quite differently than we do,” I said.

“You think?”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Me too.”

“You know, if we were born one year later, we would have had completely different sets of friends at school and be completely different people.”

“I think about that a lot.”

According to Tom Brokaw, the Doomsday Clock was set at three minutes to midnight. 11:57. They might as well have moved the hands to midnight because that was what it was like at church that Sunday morning.

Mom skipped church. She still had a mile-long list of stuff to do, and a big crew was showing up on Monday. Terrence was with his mom, so I went with Dennis to church. We were late and sat in the front pew in the sanctuary. After the service we went to the fellowship hall and waited for the potluck.

I watched as Dana approached, homing in like a missile homing in on its primary target—Moscow, or Leningrad, or… Laura.

“Dana Cobb, daughter of Nathaniel and Melanie Cobb, sister to David Cobb and Daniel Cobb, friend to everyone except you,” she said.

“Why are you talking in the third person?” I asked.

“No, Dana has once again decreed that the friendship with Laura Ratliff is over.”

“Dana—”

“How dare you speak her name!” she cried.

Now I was confused. Whose name?

“The end is near,” she said in the silence.

“You mean… the world?”

“No, our friendship.”

“Near, or over?” I asked. I was grumpy and hungry. I wanted clarity. I wanted to end the conversation.

Her eyes turned to slits. “Laura, I never want to speak to you again. I have written it down. I have commanded it.”

Fine. Is that it? I didn’t say the words out loud, but I came close.

She opened her Bible and flipped straight to Exodus. Commandment eleven. Added fresh in blue ink. (It had smeared.) Thou Shall Not Be A Friend, Acquaintance, Adversary, or Confidante. Laura Ratliff Will Be Dead To Me—As Judas Was To Jesus—Now And Forever, Amen.

I frowned. “Jesus forgave Judas.”

She rolled her eyes. “A misjudgment on his part.”

“Wow,” I said. Looking up, I tried to reclaim my place in the food line. Old people usually go first, leaving only the Jell-O that looks like mold, the green bean casserole, and the cold macaroni salad. No deviled eggs, no fried chicken, no homemade yeast rolls. But today the trays of decent foods still held out hope…

“Wow what?” she asked.

“Wow, I might actually get fried chicken this time, if I pay attention.”

She snapped the Bible shut. “You are not a nice person!” she hissed. “And I’m glad we’re not friends anymore.”

“My mom will be glad too,” I said as she walked away.

She froze, then spun in place. “I just have to know,” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest.

“Have to know what?” I groaned.

“How could you do that to me?” She pouted. “I thought you were going to choose me. I’m the one who wants to be a star!”

“Exactly.”

“But you chose Terrence.”

“Well, yeah. He’s… around. Also, because you would make it about yourself,” I said.

“How dare you make it about yourself ,” she retorted. “It’s not the Christian thing to do.”

“But I’m the one who won the contest.”

She drew close. “I hope your character dies in a nuclear explosion.”

I shrugged. Whatever. The truth was that I didn’t know a thing about my character. I didn’t even know if I had one. At least one beyond Teenage Girl Extra . My eyes drifted toward the steaming tray of fried chicken. “Are you in line or not?” I asked.