At the empty lot, Jason ran at the wall and climbed it and stood on top. “Nostradamus predicted the world ended already,” he said. “And it did. I can feel it in my brain. It feels like sand.” He stood on one foot. He almost fell and his face reddened. He helped LJ and they went over.
Jed moved an empty bucket and used that and got over. He watched LJ and Jason go into the field. He felt like he was vanishing, that he had vanished. But then he was back again. He hadn’t vanished. He went into the fort area. On a board of wood in green marker it said, “You’re a butthead.”
“I’m a butthead,” Jed whispered. His heart beat a little faster. At the end of fourth grade, some kids had begun to say “Shit” and “Bitch.” Jed didn’t like it. They just said those things to be cool. Jed liked “Moron,” and “Idiot.” There was one kid who said “Moron” all the time and Jed secretly admired him. Jed liked anyone who was weak or quiet. You had to be weak, or else you were mean. You couldn’t be mean, Jed knew. You could only be nice, and if you felt hurt you could only be even more nice.
It was getting cloudy. Jed picked up a branch and whacked some leaves off a tree. In first grade, he was sitting in the school auditorium and someone had called his name and he had gone to the front and received an award for a painting he had done. In the painting the sun was just a dot, you couldn’t even see it. He was so weird then, he thought. He didn’t know that person, his old self. It was as if for a long time, he didn’t even have thoughts — wasn’t aware of anything.
He walked outside the fort and saw that LJ and Jason were far away in the field. He wanted to go home. He wanted to teleport home, without having to do any work. You weren’t supposed to be in a field during a storm, he knew. LJ and Jason looked to Jed like husband and wife. Jed always felt younger than his peers, like a baby almost. There was always the feeling that he had to try really hard at everything — smile bigger, talk louder and clearer, argue and fight things behind his eyes more. He thought that tonight he would read PC Gamer magazine and drink fruit punch with ice cubes in it while taking a bath. He liked computer games. He felt better. He ran into the field. As he neared LJ and Jason, he remembered hazily his mother — she had left when Jed was three — and felt almost like he was LJ and Jason’s son. He ran to them.
“It’s Jed,” Jason said. “Jed head.”
“Jason,” Jed said inaudibly. He looked at Jason and LJ holding hands and felt very nervous. He looked away. The grass was up to their knees and Jed was afraid of snakes. They seemed to be walking toward McDonald’s and not the church.
LJ began to wrap her hair around her neck. She had very thin smoke-brown hair. She hadn’t been mentally focused for a while now. She had been thinking about … she couldn’t remember what.
“Don’t,” Jason said. “You’ll choke to death.” He went to unwrap LJ’s hair from her neck.
They stopped walking. LJ let Jason unwrap her hair some. What was happening, she thought. She twisted away and fell. She sat and looked at the top of the grass covering the rest of the field, swaying light green and flaxen, a failed and reoriented sea. “You’ll choke to death on a stiff Chinese dumpling,” she said. She grinned at Jed, who was looking down and doing a kind of sideways walk — shifting, it seemed. LJ didn’t understand it.
Jason put a hand out as if to help LJ up. “A stiff Chinese dumpling,” he said. “You don’t know what that means.” He was pointing now. With his other hand he took out an apple and began to nibble at it. “You can’t act this way. You won’t,” he said. “When you know the world ended already you’ll be different.”
“That’s the most meaningless thing I’ve ever heard,” LJ said. She sat Indian-style. She widened her eyes and looked up at Jason and shouted, “What are you looking at?” Her voice was normally small; louder, now, it sounded a little like singing. Jason’s face turned red, and LJ felt bad, and blushed. She had thought she was just playing. She didn’t know.
“A dumpling,” Jason said. “That’s bad. That’s racist.” He threw his apple into the air and it went into the sky. He ran towards McDonald’s.
A cloud moved and blocked the sun.
“Aren’t you afraid of snakes?” Jed said. He spun in place, 360 degrees. One time LJ whispered in his ear that she liked him and he didn’t believe her.
Snakes, LJ thought. She didn’t know what that was. She remembered the squid. She would probably have to apologize soon. It’s just a giant squid. She wasn’t thinking when she said that. They should have gone and looked at it, and sat on it. “Gigantic squid are good,” she said, and lay back into the grass. Jed felt afraid and went and looked down at her.
LJ’s eyes were slowly moving. She was looking at the air, which seemed grayish, a little outer-space-y — but bright, too, because of the little dusts of light that were traveling through it. Her mom had told her that there wasn’t ever any reason to worry about anything or be sad. Her mom had said that everything you ever did was a result of the thing that happened right before, because of cause and effect, and that that went on forever, going back, so that there wasn’t ever a first thing, and there wouldn’t ever be a last thing, and in between there was just the middle, and there you were, always, right in the middle, and you couldn’t stop or change anything — so you didn’t have to.
“It’s dangerous. You’re surrounded,” Jed said, very slowly, concentrating as he spoke. “There are bugs on the ground. It’s dirty.”
LJ began to roll in the grass. She giggled, quietly and forcelessly — the sound of it like something you heard in your head after the first sound from outside.
“Don’t!” Jed said. He thought of anthills and Indian arrowheads. “Stop that!” He felt a little dizzy, being so loud. LJ stood and quickly hugged Jed, then stepped back. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re weird.” She was smiling.
Jed looked at her. His heart felt tiny and slippery — and sealed, like a marble, like it wouldn’t ever get any bigger, wouldn’t ever be able to pump enough blood. LJ pushed Jed’s shoulder and ran away. After about twenty feet, she stopped and turned around. She took out a bonnet from her pocket and put it on her head. It was a black bonnet. She grinned and widened her eyes. She looked surprised. How pretty she was, it made Jed feel — not good or bad, but just feel, like it was something in him that was opening up, something new and secret, that only he would ever know, and he could fill it with sadness or longing or whatever, but here it was, opening centerless and vacuum-y as something attempting itself, and it would be over soon, and nothing, then, really, would’ve happened.
LJ ran back towards the wall, and it began to rain.
They both had colds for awhile. LJ’s mom phoned Jed’s dad, talked about colds and the flu. Jed’s dad wasn’t saying anything and after a while LJ’s mom said, “What am I even doing right now?” She waited a second then hung up, and didn’t call again until late in July, on a hot Sunday night; Jed answered.
“I’m drunk,” she said, “I’m doing a hundred ten on the highway.”
“LJ?” Jed said. He knew it wasn’t LJ.
“Jed. Oh Jed,” LJ’s mom said. “What’s going to happen to you?”
Jed’s dad picked up on another line. Jed went into his room and sat on the carpet. He was frightened. What was going to happen to him? He took out some computer game magazines and looked at them, but couldn’t concentrate.