Eleven Twenty-Three (20 page)

“If Layne says he saw it, I believe him,” Mr.
Tennille declares. “I myself watched your mother completely lose
her mind in less than a breath, Chloe. You were still on your way
here when it happened, so you didn’t see it firsthand. I did. She
was foaming at the mouth, screaming and ranting, clawing at her
hair—it was like someone else was controlling her—she had no
cognizance whatsoever. If that same thing happened everywhere in
town, then someone has to be behind it. I’m with Layne on that. And
if Layne says he just saw a message on the TV screen, then I
believe that too.”

“Thanks, Mr. Tennille.”

“No problem, kid.”

“Things will go back to normal,” Chloe
insists, picking up the remote from the sofa. “You guys will see.
Just wait till the phone service comes back. Then just give the
other towns time to find out what happened here and help will be
coming. I guarantee it. It just hasn’t been long enough for anyone
to know what’s going on yet. But when they find out—”

“Chloe,” I interrupt, “in the times we live
in, people know about what’s going on in the world the moment it
happens. We know about bombings in Iraq five minutes before they’re
launched. CNN knows about the collapse of other nations hours
before our own military does. So why wouldn’t anyone know about
this,
this huge event that happened
hours
ago right
here in America? Why isn’t it on every channel?”

“Because the phones are out,” she says,
flipping through the TV stations. There is nothing on a single one
of five hundred or so that mentions Lilly’s End. “The phones are
out, so no one knows what’s going on yet, but they’ll be back on
soon—”

“And why are the phones out, Chloe?” Mr.
Tennille asks, running his hand shakily through his dirty blond
hair. “Why do we not have cell phone reception? It’d be one thing
if the land lines were out, but cell phones should get reception at
any time, as long as we’re in the network.”

“Oh my god, you’re right,” I say. “Our cells
should never have gone out, unless someone cut us from our own
network.”

“So you’re saying someone from town cut our
phone service?” she asks us. “Layne, you’re acting a bit paranoid
and, um, stupid.”

“Not someone from town, Chloe. The different
servers would all have to drop thousands of people from their
network. It couldn’t be done from here.”

“Either that or someone from outside of town
is somehow blocking our cell phone reception altogether,” Mr.
Tennille says. “That’s not easy to do.”

“This was
planned
for this town, and
it was planned so that none of us could let the outside world know
about it. This isn’t meant to make the news.”

“Why would someone do that to us, though?”
Chloe asks, flipping the channels without pause. Mr. Tennille and I
stare, deep in our own thoughts, at the television.

And it is as Chloe absently changes the
channel from 124 to 125 that I see another white message, floating
in a sea of blackness, dash across the screen:

You are forgotten.

“I
saw
that!” Mr. Tennille exclaims.
“Layne, I god-damned saw that.”

“Me too, sir. I saw it too. Between the two
channels, another message came up. Chloe, did you see it?”

“No, you prick, I didn’t,” she says, throwing
the remote down on the couch. “I don’t
want
to see it. I
think things are bad enough without having to put tin foil on my
head next, don’t you?”

She storms from the room to go check on Tara
and her mother, leaving Mr. Tennille and I behind.

“We are forgotten,” he mutters, looking at
the digital cable images. “That’s what it said, right?”

“That’s what I read, yes.”

“Not exactly encouraging, is it?”

“Nothing that’s happened since Tara and I got
home has been encouraging, to be honest. This is just one more
thing.”

We continue watching the muted television for
several more minutes. Once, during a Verizon commercial that
ensures us that their network will always be there, that our calls
will never be dropped, and that we will always be connected to the
rest of the world, the screen flashes one more ominous
transmission:

This is your duty as a citizen.

Mr. Tennille grimaces when he sees it but
does not comment.

“Do you have a cigarette?” he finally
asks.

“Let me guess: you quit.”

“No,” he says. “I’m just out.”

I hand him one and remove another for myself.
I light both of them and await the next message. They seem to come
at regular five-minute intervals.

“So did you even get to bury your father this
morning?”

“No,” I murmur. “No, Mr. Tennille, I didn’t
get to bury my father.”

“That’s really a shame, son.”

“Yeah it is, sir. It’s a shame.”

04:55:22 PM

Tara stares at the turkey sandwich I made for
her and pushes the plate away in disgust. When I try to push it
back toward her, she lights a cigarette.

“You really should eat, Sunshine. You haven’t
eaten since your toast and jam last night.”

“And you should really understand that I’m
not hungry,” she says. “You haven’t eaten either. Take my sandwich,
if you want it.”

“But I don’t want it.”

“Well then the hell with eating,” she sighs,
standing up and pacing around the kitchen of her house. “What are
we going to do with Miranda?”

“I don’t know. Do you think her family has
found out?”

“They’re in Tampa. If you and my dad are
right, then they have no idea.”

“And we can’t tell them,” I say. “I guess—I
guess I’ll deal with it.”

Tara turns to me, a blank expression on her
face.

“I feel bad for every minute I’m not crying,”
she mutters. “Miranda is one of my best friends.”

“Everybody in town lost best friends today,
Tara. Everyone lost someone important. We can’t wallow in it. We
have to keep going. We need a plan. We’re in a mess here.”

“I always thought that was the most callow,
selfish advice in every disaster film.”

“What?” I ask. “To move on and save one’s own
ass?”

“Yes.”

“What would you rather us do?”

“I’d rather reach the still point, to be
honest. I’d rather get to the part where we can just stop, look
around us, take a deep breath, and think things over before making
our next move.”

“In that case, Lilly’s End has been at the
still point for years,” I say. “And after this—this still point of
yours is exactly what we’re trying to
avoid
. If we stop and
ruminate over everyone that died today and all the bad things that
happened, who’s going to grapple with
our
deaths tomorrow,
Tara?”

“Layne, I can’t look in that room again,” she
says, her voice breaking. “Miranda is—”

“Don’t worry,” I say, looking out the window.
“I told you: I’ll deal with it. What kind of yard tools do you have
in your garage?”

There are pictures of Tara and Miranda and
Julie and Rachel and other minor friends strewn about the desk and
carpet of the bedroom. Miranda must have knocked over her old tin
can of photographs during the morning struggle. There’s a snapshot
of Tara and Miranda, drunk and surrounded by horny frat guys, both
girls making the obligatory
“wild-and-naive-but-not-in-a-slutty-way” face. There’s a photo of
Miranda hugging her mom in front of the Raymond James Stadium, and
it is stuck with blood to another photo of Miranda’s dog Pumpkin,
who died two years ago of tumors. Wavy and sad underneath veils of
red are dozens more pictures, a memoriam to a forgotten female bank
teller who died alone on a Saturday morning in her bedroom.

Miranda appears to have sliced her own face
and neck open with a letter opener before stuffing the bed sheets
into her mouth and choking to death. Her gruesome, bloated head is
slumped against the bed frame. Her body is awkwardly contorted
across the floor, which is covered in what I can only guess is
blood and vomit. It takes me a long time to muster up the nerve to
touch her.

Her chorus trophies are perched up on the
dresser and have been used as hat racks and a spot to drape
Miranda’s high school graduation tassel. There is an opened DVD
case for the film
Old School
on top of the DVD player. A
crucifix has been hung above the bed. All of these knick-knacks and
collectors of dust are proof: Miranda was a real person. She
existed. She lived. She collected things and went to school and got
a job at the bank and made friends with Tara and Julie. She watched
movies in this room and occasionally slept with a cheating
bartender named Brendan in this bed.

My grandfather was a real person, too. He
carved flutes out of rosewood and crunched on peanut brittle and
was a big fan of the phrase “Have you lost your pretty little
mind?” while conversing with Dad or Grandma. My aunts and uncles
and cousins were real people. They baked pies for Thanksgiving and
shook my hand at Christmas gatherings and looked uncomfortably
westward when conversations arose concerning my absent father.
Everyone that has died today was a real person.

My father, Paul Prescott, I am still unsure
about.

Before the first tears can build up and send
me into shock and eventually unmanageable despair, I grab Miranda’s
stiff legs and drag her body across the carpet. I cover her ruined
face and neck with the bed sheet and laboriously pick her corpse up
from the floor and make my way out of the room. The rigor mortis
has begun setting in and her body feels like clay packed over
petrified desert wood. I focus on the floor instead of my
nausea.

“Tara, stay in your room a minute,” I call
out, and carry Miranda outside, where it is cold.

After laying the body out in the leaves, I
head to the garage and return with the shovel. Then, under the
tranquil blanket of twilight, I begin digging.

I don’t get very far into the dirt before my
cell vibrates and I drop the shovel to the ground. I whip the phone
out of my pocket and see that another text message has come in. I
am well aware that the phone service to Lilly’s End has been
severed, and that for reasons unknown to me, I may be the only one
here that has had any contact with the outside world since this
morning. Again, it is from an unknown name and unknown number.

Attach the briefcase to your wrist.

Somewhere, a man who said his name was Mr.
Scott slowly closes his phone and resumes a conversation with other
well-dressed men indistinguishable in their cruelty and lack of
remorse. They talk of timelines and project expectations, the
effects of subliminal messages and how gullible the boy in the
airport was. They laugh and flick absently at their neckties. A
taciturn plane soars on the cold side of a thick glass pane. One of
the junta mentions a mocha latte, but all he receives in response
is a fleeting glance. Nothing.

I snap my cell shut and go back to digging a
hole in Tara’s backyard. For a moment, I fight off the urge to bury
my phone along with Miranda. The light breeze builds and after a
while I can no longer see the bottom of my own pit. A neighbor’s
wind chimes clink and coo faintly in the breeze.

I consider the possibility that this entire
ordeal is my fault. Did I unwittingly bring this disaster home with
me in the form of a Schlesinger American Belting attaché case,
four-and-a-half inches deep, eighteen-and-three-quarters by
thirteen-and-one quarter inch in size? Is the Apocalypse that
compact? Did I carry Pandora’s Box around in my car for almost two
days and do nothing to stop this from happening?

Even in the dark, I can still see the
disseminated chemtrails looming in the purple-blue sky above my
head.

After getting about three feet down, the dirt
turns hard and I don’t care about digging any farther. I drag
Miranda’s stiffened corpse across the mat of leaves and drop her
into the hole. I didn’t dig it long enough for her height and her
legs bend up awkwardly. Even after covering her body with dirt and
leaves, the tip of one of Miranda’s Keds poke through the
ground.

By seven-fourteen, I begin to really worry
about Hajime and pace around the kitchen. Tara retreats to her
bedroom to fret over Julie. I peer through the blinds at the street
outside, waiting for headlights to slice through the dark. Nothing
happens. By seven-thirty and still no sign of Hajime, the sweats
begin.

I blink and swallow uncontrollably as a
scratchy montage of silent images from childhood runs through my
mind: four a.m. and hunched around the unnatural glow of a computer
monitor, Hajime and I looking for nude pictures of Sheryl Crow or
Alanis Morissette or Christina Ricci or autopsy shots of Cobain or
video from the Budd Dwyer news conference; sprawled out on blankets
in the backyard of his parents’ house, grilling onions on a
hibachi; the two trailer park girls from our junior year at
Kennedy, and how they both smelled like fresh tapioca when dressed
but more like the lobby of a Motel 6 once their pants came off;
four of Hajime’s paintings hung in the student exhibition hallway
of a small art museum in New Smyrna; five minute diatribes on why
French fries without ketchup lose the fun factor; and the two of us
lounging across an orange sofa, Hajime wiping away tears as he
says, “Dude, have you ever realized just how fucking
scary
space is?”

I keep looking out the window, waiting for
the moment when his Vibe rounds the corner, and to spot his limp
hand dangling from the window clutching a cigarette, or maybe a
clove.

“The Internet is still out,” Tara says from
the hallway, then adds, “of course.”

“I don’t suppose you have a cage full of
messenger pigeons stowed away somewhere, do you? We’ll tell the
world our story yet.”