The End is Now (23 page)

“No, it
is
him. I recognize him from the news,” the lady with the ice cream said.

“What’s happening? Can you tell us what’s happening?” someone else asked Will.

More questions started to fly. People in the surrounding aisles could tell something was happening and they started to flock
towards the freezer aisle. Quickly people from the store jammed their way into the freezer aisle and both the aisle entrances
were overflowing with more customers trying to see what was going on. And even though most people couldn’t see Will, they
could hear the murmur of the mob saying, “It’s him… the prophet… the tornado kid… he’s about to say something.”

Will heard their questions and he knew exactly what they were asking. They wanted to know what the next prophecy was. He had
to give them the second sign. He would just open his mouth and tell them. He had waited long enough. His mom or his dad or
the mayor or anyone else couldn’t stop him from doing what the face wanted him to do.

He took a deep breath to speak, and that was all it took to make the crowd go completely silent. But nothing came out. His
mind was blank. He still couldn’t remember what exactly the next sign was. He thought it would all just come back to him when
the time was right. But for some reason, it wasn’t that simple. For some reason the face’s words seemed far away and cloudy.

So he clinched his eyes shut and tried to remember back to the night of the cornfield. He tried to remember the face telling
him about the three signs that would predict the rapture. And the face used three words. Will could remember that now. The
first word was about destruction. Will could hear the face’s strong, thick voice saying, “The school will be destroyed.” But
what did it say next? What was the next word?

Power
.

Yes,
power
, that was it. But what about power? It was coming. No, it was going. Will couldn’t remember. It seemed like the night in
the cornfield was a lifetime ago. Even now, as he closed his eyes and pictured it, it seemed so blurry and jumbled. It seemed
like a dream. Will knew he had to say something, so he finally took a breath and belted out the word, “Power!”

The mob began to murmur questions all around Will: “What about power? What does
power
mean? Whose power? God’s power? Power plants? Power Rangers? Power team?”

Then Will answered all of these questions with his eyes still clinched shut. He hoped the face’s words would come to him as
he spoke. “The power is — ”

“The power is what?” someone squeaked.

“The power is leaving. The power is going to leave,” Will said and let out a deep breath. He knew there was nothing specific
to this prophecy. No timeline, no event, so of course this time no one would believe him. But when he looked around at everyone’s
faces, that didn’t seem to be the case at all — in fact it looked like everyone believed him. They nodded as if they understood
— or at least as if they were trying to understand — what exactly
the power is leaving
meant.

And Will decided he would let them figure it out; he couldn’t talk anymore. He just wanted to get to his mom and dad. It seemed
as if the mob in the freezer aisle understood. They parted like the red sea and let him through. No one touched him. No one
even reached for him; they acted as if they were afraid God would strike them down if they did.

Emily didn’t know why people were cramming themselves into the freezer aisle until Will emerged. As he left the freezer aisle,
he was all hunched over and his fingers were crunched tightly together so that, from a distance, it looked like he only had
three fingers on each hand. And as he walked away from the aisle, people just kept staring at him like he was Gandhi or Joseph
Smith or some other kind of freakish prophet. His eyes were a liquid ice blue, almost glowing, and as they looked up at her,
Emily realized something — there is no possible way I’m related to him. We are nothing alike. So who is the stranger in the
family? Is it Will or am I the one that doesn’t belong?

Will slowly kept sliding his feet across the grimy grocery store floor. As he walked, Emily couldn’t handle the way those
people in the freezer aisle just kept staring at him. When he got close enough, Emily grabbed her brother’s arm and pulled
him into the cereal aisle where all the Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes were now gone. There was nothing but oatmeal left.
Emily crouched down next to her brother and looked at him. On closer inspection she noticed her brother’s eyes weren’t glowing
at all; rather it looked like they were coated with that frosting they put on glazed doughnuts.

“What’s going on? What happened?”

“I had to tell them.”

“You had to tell them what?”

“The next sign.”

“The next sign?”

“The next sign that the face gave me for the rapture.”

Then a large man in a flannel shirt and puffy vest burst into the aisle. He stared at the two children for a moment. Then
he shouted, “Are there any more Rice Krispies down there?”

“I don’t think so,” Emily said.

“Great. That is just fan-freaking-tastic. My wife is gonna kill me,” the flannelled man said as he left the aisle.

“This place is crazy,” Emily said.

“I know,” Will said. “Those people were crazy. They pressured me to tell them the next sign. That’s why I told them.”

“So what did you tell them?”

“The power is leaving.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. The face just gave me the signs. He didn’t explain them.”

“Yeah, but ‘the school is going to be destroyed,’ that’s at least sort of specific.”

“I know. I think that’s why the face gave me that sign first.”

“Let’s just find Mom and Dad. They sent me to find you and I’m sure they’re freaking out by now,” Emily said.

Once Emily and Will found their parents, they all left the Super Mart. Problem was, they didn’t leave with very much. They
had a flashlight (with no batteries), a few apples (which had been badly bruised), some yellow and blue yarn (her mom insisted
she could knit them all sweaters), and a couple of Salisbury steak microwaveable dinners. They had much more that they had
needed to get, but Will’s meltdown/prophecy had taken place before they could get anything else.

And on the car ride home they seemed unable to focus on their lack of supplies because everyone was still too angry. Emily
couldn’t decide exactly why both her parents seemed so upset with Will. After all, they were split down the middle about the
prophecy issue. Someone should have been happy with him. And it was pretty clear to Emily that her mom thought whatever had
happened in the cornfield was a gift from God while her dad just wished all the prophecy talk would go away. But now, for
whatever reason, they finally agreed on something. They agreed Will should not have told everyone his prophecy. At least not
in the store. Not like that. And Emily could tell this because they were shouting things like, “Seriously, what were you thinking,
Will?”

“We were worried,” her mom said.

“Very worried,” her dad echoed.

“I thought we needed food.”

“But not at the cost of something happening to you. What if something would have happened to you, son?” her dad asked.

“Nobody hurt me.”

“But if they did, then how would you feel?”

“I guess I would feel hurt,” Will answered.

“Exactly. You would feel hurt.”

Emily watched the conversation circle around like this for most of the way home. Her dad insisted that what Will did was dangerous,
her mom said that giving his prophecy in the store was poor timing, and Emily decided she’d heard enough. “I think you guys
should lay off him,” she said.

“We’re not laying on him,” her mom said.

“Don’t you think he’s been through enough?”

“Yes, I think he’s been through more than enough. He must feel awful,” her dad said.

“Could you guys not talk about me like I’m not here?” Will said.

“My point is, I think we’ve all been through more than enough. That’s why I don’t want us running around and making prophecies
or going on the news or anything else. Why would we put ourselves in harm’s way?”

“That makes no sense, Jeff,” her mom said.

“It doesn’t?”

“No, we’re already in harm’s way. Have you ever even read Revelation?”

“Amy, don’t get started on this.”

“On what? The fact that there is going to be fire and plagues and wars and you want to keep us out of
harm’s way
? This is too big, too important, Jeff! Will is too important to just tuck him away because people are going to say something
bad about him. He has been given a gift and he has a responsibility!
HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT?!
”

Emily watched her mom scream this. And it looked like she was a lunatic. Insane. Emily remembered that when she was a kid,
her dad loved
Terminator 2
. And he’d let her stay up late at night and watch it with him, but she had to promise not to tell her mom about it because
it was rated R. But in order to be a good father, he told her to close her eyes at the really scary parts like when the T
– 1000’s arm becomes a giant sword and stabs the guy through the mouth while he’s drinking milk. Anyway, in
Terminator 2
John Conner’s mom was crazy, like mental hospital crazy, because she’d been so consumed with the fact that he was going to
be this great, important leader. And that’s what Emily thought her mom seemed like. She was so consumed with Will’s role as
prophet, so consumed with the rapture and the end of the world, that she was willing to do anything to prepare herself, her
family, her friends, her neighbors, and her community.

And, in a way, Emily could understand why. After all, when put against the end of the world, most other things seem trivial.
How do you worry about what people are saying when lives are at stake? Why would you even really worry about a shortage of
food and supplies when everyone is just going to be whisked away? Why even worry that much about safety? After all, it isn’t
this
life that matters.
This
life only has weeks or days or hours left in it. The only thing that matters is where everyone will spend their eternity.
Because an eternity lasts forever — right? So, in a way, Emily could understand why her mother would discard everything in
the present for the greater eternal good.

There was just one problem.

The world wasn’t coming to end. Not in Emily’s lifetime, and probably not her kids’ lifetime either. The world and Goodland
would go on just like they always had. And this presented a problem. Because it meant that her mother was lying. (Actually,
maybe lying was the wrong word. Her mother had been lying about things like the Easter bunny and tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
But the rapture did not fit into the tooth fairy category. Her mother actually
believed
in the Goodland rapture. Which made it much worse than lying. It made her mother delusional, or at the very least, extremely
naïve to believe in something so quirky and odd and paranoid.)

For the first time, Emily began to wonder what else her mother had been delusional and/or naïve about. Politics, sex, religion,
the origin of life, the meaning of life — was it possible that her mother had been wrong about all of these topics as well?
Of course it was possible. Anything was possible. But her mother had always seemed so sure. She always seemed so dead set
in her beliefs. There had never been any room for doubt.

That might have been part of what made Emily realize her mother was wrong because no one could be right about everything.
Emily wondered what she should do now that she was beginning to fear that so many (if not all) of the beliefs that had guided
her life up to this point were hollow. She was like Charlton Heston pounding his fist against the wet sand and staring at
the Statue of Liberty, realizing that the planet of the apes was earth all along. She was Alice taking her first steps into
Wonderland. Everything was backwards. Right was wrong and wrong was right. Things that were always rock solid suddenly felt
like shifting sand.

“Don’t you think so, Emily?” her mom said. Her parents had been talking about something, debating and fighting about Will
or the rapture or the prophecy or the face, and Emily hadn’t heard a word of it.

“I don’t know. I just… I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Emily said. And even though her mom was looking back at her,
she just stared at the floor mat. She couldn’t look at her mother. And she couldn’t face all of this. Not right now.

“Okay, honey,” her mom said. “Jeff, you need to understand, all I’m saying — ”

But Emily stopped listening. For the rest of the car ride home she tuned out the argument about Will and the prophecy, and
she simply stared out the window feeling completely alone and overwhelmed.

Emily had to get away from her family. She decided to call Curtis because she felt such a connection to him that day when
everyone was gathered around Jefferson. And right now she needed to talk with someone she felt connected to. So she called
him and told him she wanted to meet at the field out by the fairgrounds.

“You know, it’s kind of cold outside,” he said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Wouldn’t you rather go to the mall?”

“Too many people at the mall.”

“I thought homecoming queens loved malls.”

“They do. But not right now. Can we just meet at the field?”

Emily got to the field before Curtis was there. She parked her car in the empty lot and stared at the abandoned fair grounds.
In the summer they were always bubbling with life and Emily loved going there. She could walk around for hours, and laugh,
eat cotton candy, funnel cakes, and giant turkey legs. She loved the fair-grounds because it was like Neverland there — life
seemed to stop and there were no problems like homecoming dresses and dates and family problems and crises of faith. At the
fair the only thing that mattered was how long the line to the Tilt-A-Whirl was.