The Almost-Apocalypse of Apple Valley

The Beginning of the End-3

Steph was dealing with the latter as Mrs. Kirkwood came around and started collecting the Scantron tests for Monday morning’s reading comprehension test.

It was based on an essay about the Civil War.

For once, Steph had really, truly thought she was ready—two number two pencils, sharpened and at the ready; extra erasers (they were all shaped like sweetly scented watermelon slices); and a plastic baggie full of shelled sunflower seeds that she kept within arm’s reach, just in case her incessant hunger kicked in.

And then the timer started and she froze.

She had studied the chapters she was supposed to. Memorized the set of Civil War dates she was supposed to.

She did all the things she was supposed to.

And still she froze for a whole five minutes, with a mind that seemed not empty, but overflowing with darkness like a deep pit from which not even the slightest ray of dust-filled light could penetrate. Names and facts—Robert E. Lee, Appomattox, Antietam—tried to surface, but were sucked down below, never to be seen again.

For that whole five minutes, she drew random circles on the piece of scratch paper the students were allowed, thinking about Saturday’s events. She knew that what happened to Owen was only an excuse, though it weighed on her more heavily than another thought might.

The fact was Steph hated tests. It’s not that she wasn’t smart—at least she thought she had brains. She could keep up with Owen and Ryan on just about anything they talked about, but when it came to remembering dull facts, diagramming sentences, or working out long division that she just knew she’d never use in real life, she always had trouble.

She wouldn’t otherwise care except that trouble led to parent-teacher meetings and threats of being held back another year if she didn’t bring her grades up.

Her mom would have these little pow-wows with Mrs. Kirkwood and spill her guts about how she was a struggling, single mom and doing everything she could do for her daughter and, oh my God, how she was at her wit’s end and that it would just be so much harder if Steph got held back.

It was obvious Mrs. Kirkwood didn’t want to hear her sob story. Steph didn’t want to hear her sob story.

She just wished they would both leave her alone so that she could get through school and get on with living her own life as she saw fit.

But being held back another year would obliterate those plans. The rest of the gang would be in junior high school, and she’d be stuck with a bunch of babies in the sixth grade.

As Mrs. Kirkwood came around to Steph’s desk, she halted and placed a long, skinny finger on Steph’s Scantron. Steph was only briefly distracted by her teacher’s bland taste in press-on fingernail colors—flesh-colored. Not that Steph would have any sort of long fingernails. They would only get in the way with her playing with the boys. But she occasionally painted hers in neon green or pink—sometimes both.

“Are you feeling okay, Stephanie?”

There was no hiding it: only two-thirds of the little answer bubbles had been filled in.

Steph got a whiff of her teacher’s rosewater perfume as she swept her eyes up toward Mrs. Kirkwood’s face.

Mrs. Kirkwood was wearing a magenta skirt that flowed out just past her knees. Her collared shirt was silky and pearl-colored, buttoned all the way to the top, almost to the point of strangling her neck.

Her brown eyes were calm, sympathetic, and her brunette bowl-cut hair was like every other teacher’s at Mojave Mesa Elementary School—except for Ms. Berk’s curly ravenesque hair whose frosted tips settled right on top of her ridiculously big boobs.

“I just...just ran out of time,” Steph said.

Mrs. Kirkwood peered up at the round clock hung over the chalkboard. “You had thirty minutes and the test only had fifteen questions.” She narrowed her eyes at Steph again, this time with a little less sympathy. “That’s two minutes per question.”

Steph wanted to repeat a line which she’d heard one of her mom’s boyfriends say—No s**t, Sherlock.

But that would have been a very, very bad idea.

Instead, she turned her head away and looked past the annoying Loretta Mishki at the empty seat in the same row as hers, two columns over.

She wanted to visit Owen after school, but her mother had grounded her for the whole week because she came home later than she said she would on Saturday. Steph tried to explain that Owen had hurt himself and could use his friends’ company. Her mom said something along the lines of how Steph shouldn’t have been playing there with those boys in the first place and that because her tomboy daughter hadn’t come home on time, she had been forced to cancel her attendance at a Tupperware party she’d been planning for a month.

“I know you’re worried about Owen,” Mrs. Kirkwood said. “But his parents tell me that he’s recuperating just fine. He should be back in school next week.”

Steph couldn’t say a word, only nod her head slowly in response, thinking of Owen again at the mention of his name.

A crack snapped across her mind like sharp thunder. She swore she heard a similar sound at the track on Saturday when Owen was preparing his descent toward the jump. It seemed to emanate from his direction, up by the stranger in the blue truck. It was the weirdest thing, and she couldn’t shake it from her mind as she recalled how it felt like her nerves were on fire, momentarily pulsating through her entire being, only to dissipate when Owen’s handlebars disconnected in mid-air.

When he came tumbling down, finally rolling to a rest, he curled up into the fetal position with his hands tucked between his legs.

Apparently, he’d crushed his boys.

Steph couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have icky nards that hung between your legs, but boys always talked about how much it hurt to have them hit or kicked. And Owen landed square on top of his. That alone would have made Steph double over in pain, nards or not.

But that wasn’t his biggest problem. Owen hit the ground unexpectedly hard. Steph’s stomach felt like it was hanging in her throat when Owen briefly fell asleep. She wasn’t a doctor, but she didn’t have to be to know that wasn’t good.

Thankfully, he woke up after Jake slapped him repeatedly in the face, but he was still groggy.

None of them even noticed that his helmet had a long crack running all the way down the left side, top to bottom between his hand-painted initials, revealing some kind of Styrofoam inside; not until they’d managed to get him home by having him hang on to Jake’s back while Jake pedaled.

Mrs. Kirkwood tapped that press-on nail on the desk a couple of times, starting to pull Steph back to the here and now. “Tell you what. I’ll be in an hour early Wednesday preparing some mimeographs for the week’s lessons. If you’re here, I’ll give you the chance to retake it, but the most you’ll get is a B. Fair?”

Steph’s eyes were still zoomed in on the empty plastic chair.

“Stephanie?”

“Hmm?” She returned her focus to the freckles and wrinkly knuckles on Mrs. Kirkwood’s finger. “Oh. Yes, please. Thank you.”

Mrs. Kirkwood smiled with closed lips, looking like she’d just performed the world’s greatest act of extreme benevolence, and grabbed the Scantron from Stephanie’s desk.

Steph’s vision focused just past Mrs. Kirkwood and caught Jake and Ryan grunting lightly as they threw tiny punches at each other while barely staying seated in their desks near the front. Putting them right next to each other wasn’t one of the teacher’s smartest decisions.

“Knock it off,” Mrs. Kirkwood said, raising her voice as she picked up another student’s test, “or I’m sending you both to Principal Strick’s office.”

The faux fisticuffs came to a halt. Ryan turned around and smiled, making eye contact with Mrs. Kirkwood.

“Sorry,” he said.

Jake didn’t say anything. He only picked up his pencil and started drawing on his scratchpad again.

Mrs. Kirkwood continued making the Scantron rounds.

Ryan looked back toward Steph and made fun of their teacher, stretching his mouth with exaggerated scolding movements. He stuck out his tongue, tipping his head from side to side while he rolled his eyes, trying to make Steph laugh.

Steph cracked a brief grin, but it was mechanical.

She wasn’t sure if she would be there Wednesday morning. If the only option was to try to cram all night only to fail again, what would be the point?

But maybe she could ask Ryan or Owen to help her study. She’d risk the wrath of her mom, but if she explained that it would help her pass the quiz and keep up her grades, it might be enough.

Ryan was the obvious choice since he was still here and fully functional, but she really wanted to check in on Owen and studying would be the perfect excuse. Tomorrow night was the only option since she’d have to get the idea past her mom tonight.

She grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds from her bag, tipped her head back, and savored their saltiness as they hit her tongue.

Owen would probably have asked for some.

Monday, June 12, 1989 - 10:00 AM

Owen wasn’t supposed to be on the computer.

He wasn’t even supposed to be out of bed except to take a leak and grab a drink of water, but he’d pored cover-to-cover over three issues of MAD Magazine and two copies of Weekly World News. Spy vs. Spy always elicited a chuckle, no matter how many re-reads, but Bat Boy was getting ridiculous. Spotted hovering around the moon, holding hands with Peter Pan this time?

Come on.

But it was nice of Jake to slide the material through the window yesterday while his parents were watching the evening news in the family room. Jake mentioned it was Steph’s idea, apparently not caring that the only role he played was transporting the contraband material.

Owen sort of wished Steph had come herself, but Jake said she was actually grounded because of Saturday’s incident. That didn’t seem fair. She didn’t do anything wrong.

Jake left as quickly as he’d arrived, spending only enough time to make a joke about Owen’s “cracked huevos” and how, when Owen died, he wanted his collection of Transformer toys because he was going to set them all up in the middle of the desert and blow them up with an M-80 firecracker, pretending that they’d walked into a trap set by Megatron and Cobra Commander (Jake relished the idea of a crossover).

Other than reading, there was nothing to do in bed except stare at shifting patterns in the white popcorn ceiling and baby-poop-yellow walls that Owen couldn’t stand. His parents never asked him what color he wanted (purple). His mom just thought yellow would be cute and his dad did what he always did—mmmhmmed and painted it yellow.

If it weren’t for the large Rad movie poster of Cru Jones hanging over his computer and the random assortment of Garbage Pail Kid stickers (Mom was constantly threatening to scrape those “disgusting things” off), his room would have been uninhabitable in Owen’s mind.

He’d spent the rest of the previous Saturday and most of Sunday just lying there while his body gorged on drowsiness-inducing pills like a giant, fleshy leech, recuperating from Saturday morning’s sudden crash landing.

He swore the pills gave him weird visions if he stared at something too long.

Case in point: the poster contained a blown-up image of his idol soaring through the sky. Puffy white clouds surrounded Cru’s outline, expanding and contracting like a giant, fuzzy halo while a blurry crowd of people cheered and swayed in the stands behind him.