Authors: Rob Stennett
The rapture was something for her family to freak out about. Her parents were freaked out about it because it had something
to do with Will causing a big commotion at school. And that created lots of arguments and tension in the house. Her parents
were arguing with each other. They were arguing with Will. They were pacing back and forth and making phone calls and squawking
at whoever was on the other end of the line about what was going on.
And it drove Emily crazy.
She tried to escape from the problem by locking herself in her room, chatting on her laptop with potential homecoming dates.
But they didn’t want to talk about homecoming. They didn’t want to talk about where they’d go to dinner and what they’d wear.
They were asking her what she thought about Will being arrested.
She didn’t know exactly what to say. She barely understood what happened herself. All she really knew was that last night
Will saw a ghost or the devil or Jesus or something in the Johnsons’ cornfield. Emily wasn’t sure exactly what Will had seen
because her parents were being so secretive about it. This morning when she asked, “What happened last night?” they quickly
said, “Nothing.” But the way they answered, they were so nervous, it was like walking up to a car and asking a get-away driver
what time it was in the middle of a bank heist. Any question would make the get-away driver crack because he had so much to
hide. And that morning her parents were a couple of get-away drivers. They were carrying the weight of some secret, but Emily
didn’t have the energy to find out what it was.
By that afternoon it seemed like the secrets had only multiplied. When Emily got home, her kitchen was packed with her mom,
dad, Will, Sergeant Mike, and some other officer. They were arguing. The police were saying that for the rest of the week
Will was under house arrest. He could not leave the house for any reason.
“What if it’s on fire?” her mom asked.
“Okay, only if it’s on fire,” Officer Mike said.
“Or what if — ”
“Amy, you know what we’re trying to say. He needs to stay inside unless there’s an emergency.”
“This is so unfair,” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
The police said maybe not, but there were a lot of people in town really upset by what happened. “There could be lawsuits,”
they said. At that Emily watched her dad turn a pasty white.
She didn’t want to listen anymore. It was making her sick. She walked away from the kitchen and up to her room. She plopped
onto her bed and stared at the ceiling wondering, if I lay here long enough, will my problems eventually melt away? Maybe
if she stayed in her room and gave things enough time, she would go back downstairs and discover things had returned to normal.
It would be like a sitcom. Everything would reset and the Henderson family would be ready for another adventure. Because the
adventure that was important in her life right now was becoming homecoming queen. And there was no way she was going to be
able to do that while her brother was screaming about the end of the world during recess.
A couple of hours later — after she was done answering for the hundredth time, “Do you think your brother can see the future?
Or is he just crazy?” — Emily came back downstairs and realized her problems were still there waiting for her. At least the
police were gone, but now her family was gathered around the TV.
They were all sitting on the couch and the blue glow from the television was bouncing off their faces. They were watching
Wheel of Fortune
. “Will’s going to be on the news tonight,” her mom said.
“He’s what?” Emily asked.
“That’s what I heard from Fran Morris,” she said without looking up from the TV. “Fran knows Tiffany Peters. And Tiffany Peters
is friends with a gal who does all the makeup for the newscasts.”
“Oh.” Emily said. But that’s not what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, “On TV? Are you kidding me? Really? He’s
going to be on TV? That’s just great. It’s bad enough everyone’s talking, and now you’re telling me the whole town is going
to be watching this. You’re telling me my brother’s freaky problems are going to be broadcast!”
Then no one said another word because the newscast started. Emily sat on the dark blue recliner in the corner and watched
with the rest of her family, wondering what the media would say about her little baby brother.
The news kicked off that night with Sean McGuire reporting live from Jefferson Elementary. As the news anchors turned it over
to Sean, he stood in the middle of the playground with the twisted silhouettes of merry-go-rounds and monkey bars serving
as a somewhat ominous backdrop.
“There’s a lot of panic and fear tonight over a scene that happened on Jefferson Elementary’s playground today,” Sean said.
“The worry started when a fifth-grade boy began to tell the other students that the school was going to be destroyed. The
boy didn’t say he was going to destroy the school, rather, he said he’d had a vision. Administrators and the police are yet
to comment if this is being treated like a threat or if this is simply a misguided student. To be honest, there seems to be
a lot of confusion with this story thus far. But here’s what some eyewitnesses and parents had to say about the incident.”
The newscast cut to a boy in a yellow jacket. “I probably wouldn’t say he was screaming. But he was yelling really loud. He
was saying something bad is going to happen to Jefferson.”
The newscast cut to a sour-looking mother. “I don’t know if I should believe this boy or not. Who knows him? I don’t know
him. Do you know him? And is he going to commit some sort of violence if his ‘
prediction
’ doesn’t come true?”
The newscast cut to a mom loading her kids into a minivan. “Am I going to send my kids to school tomorrow? Absolutely not!
Not if people are saying it’s going to be destroyed or violent or whatever. I don’t care if it’s true or not. If there’s even
a chance anything could happen I’m keeping my kids home.”
The newscast cut to two girls — both in the second grade, both wearing pink, and both with pigtails. “Yeah, he said not to
come to school.”
“He said he knew he sounded crazy.”
“Or weird.”
“Or maybe weird crazy.”
“But he said a meteor was going to blow things up.”
“Or a laser.”
“Or a meteor with a laser. And he said it’s going to happen in three days.”
“Which means tomorrow.”
“Or the day after tomorrow.”
“Yeah, the day after tomorrow.”
The newscast cut back to Sean McGuire. “There is actually quite a bit of debate over when this alleged ‘event’ is going to
happen. I would say about two-thirds of the people I’ve polled believe it’s going to be tomorrow, everyone else thinks the
day after.”
The newscast cut back to the studio where Nancy Palmer was looking concerned. Emily was impressed by how Nancy always looked
beautiful and confident. Emily thought, I bet she was homecoming queen once upon a time. Then Nancy interrupted Emily’s thoughts
by asking, “Sean, do we have any idea if the school is shutting down tomorrow?”
“The school will be open for classes,” Sean answered. “Administration has guaranteed the school will be safe and assures extra
police protection will be on hand. They also want parents to know that all absences must be excused like normal, should parents
decide to keep their students home.”
“Thank you, Sean,” Nancy said.
Then Nancy looked into the camera and said, “To get a different perspective on this story we have contacted Bill Thorpe, a
theologian at Goodland Community College, and Rhonda Vernon, a child psychologist at Cedar Brooks Mental Health Center.”
The newscast cut to a split screen with the theologian on one side and the psychologist on the other. “Good evening,” Nancy
said.
“Good evening,” the theologian and psychologist said.
“Let’s start with the day that this incident is allegedly going to take place. The student said three days, but what does
that mean exactly? A full seventy-two hours?” Nancy asked.
“I believe it means tomorrow,” the theologian said. “Prophecies are not concerned about hours nearly as much as days. Take
Jesus, for instance. He died Friday at three p.m. He was raised from the dead by Sunday sometime in the morning. Many scholars
believe he was only dead for a total of around forty to forty-two hours, but that still counts as three days.”
“So do you believe the school is going to be destroyed tomorrow?” Nancy asked.
“No. Not at all. I just think that is what the boy meant,” the theologian answered.
“Okay,” Nancy said. “Dr. Vernon — if the school is fully guarded for the next few days and the student who’s allegedly making
threats is nowhere near the school, do parents have anything to fear?”
“Actually, they could,” the psychologist said. “In a school violence situation, the attacker often doesn’t work alone. In
many cases there are accomplices, several students that work together to form an attack.”
“Who said anything about attacking? Jeff, they’re putting words into his mouth!” Emily’s mom shouted as she jumped up from
the couch.
“I know,” her dad said.
The newscast continued. It was almost as if Nancy had heard her mom’s objection. “Okay, but what if this isn’t an attack or
a threat? There are some people who believe this prediction is religious. We talked with many in town who believe the boy’s
prediction has something to do with Armageddon.”
“Sure, that’s possible,” the psychologist agreed. “With all of the religious fears that are inherent in Goodland, it’s possible
the boy had some form of a hallucination that made him believe the end of the world was coming. He could have even thought
it was a vision. In this case the student would believe that he was helping by predicting the school’s destruction.”
“I think calling it ‘religious fears’ is a bit condescending,” the theologian said.
“Then how would you say it?” the psychologist asked.
“I’d say the boy and many in this town have beliefs in a higher power.”
“Semantics aside,” Nancy interrupted, “is there any chance this student actually had a vision?”
“I suppose anything is possible, but I doubt it,” the theologian said.
“Rhonda?” Nancy asked.
“What is this, the sixteenth century? No, there is no chance. Visions are what we called things before we could diagnose them
as psychological disorders.”
“Well, we’ll be watching as this story develops. Thank you for joining us.” Nancy quickly moved along to other news stories.
Apparently there were problems with a drainage system and some of the local livestock were getting sick.
“Psychological disorders. Jeff, they’re making our son look like he’s a nutcase.”
Emily was a little shocked that her mom would say this in front of Will. But he didn’t seem to mind; he just stared at the
laces on his sneakers as if they held the answers to all the problems of the universe.
“This will all go away in a couple of days,” her dad answered.
“A couple of days!”
“Let’s talk in the other room honey,” her dad said. Emily knew what he was doing. Her dad’s parents were divorced at a young
age, so he never wanted to fight in front of the kids. Of course, they could always hear them when they were in another room.
But Emily knew it made her dad feel better so she never pointed that out.
He gave the remote to Will. “You can watch anything you want buddy. We’re just going to talk for a few minutes.” And then
Emily watched her parents leave the room.
Will started clicking through the channels. Cartoons. History. Rambo. Martha Stewart. CNN. Will didn’t seem to care what he
was watching. Seeing the picture on the TV change every two seconds was all that mattered to him. Emily was sure he was upset
by what was said about him in the news. All of his friends, teachers, and everyone else in town was thinking he was a freak
with some sort of psychological disorder.
“You okay?” Emily asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Will said.
“Don’t even worry about what they were saying,” Emily said. She felt awful for her baby brother. He didn’t deserve this. He
was just a kid. He’d probably never had a girlfriend. He’d never had a locker, and he’d never had to keep his own schedule
going from one class to the next. You don’t have to do that until junior high. It’s intimidating the first time you have to
do that, when you’re suddenly responsible for getting yourself to class on time with the right books. But it teaches you responsibility.
It prepares you for the real world. Will hadn’t had any of that preparation.
Yet tonight he was instantly thrust into the real world as all these newscasters and people in town were talking about him.
They were making judgments about him without even having met him. Most of them weren’t even there when he said those things
at his school.
Will continued to stare at the TV.
“You know those people on the news just make stuff up so everyone will watch,” Emily said.
“I know. For sure. I don’t even care. I mean, I’ve just about forgotten what they said anyway,” Will said. Emily was pretty
sure his eyes were watering up.
Emily didn’t say anything about that. And she didn’t know what else she could say to make things better. So she just sat silently
in the living room with her baby brother, watching him flick through the channels, searching for something amidst all the
choices cable television had to offer.
In one sense, Emily felt bad for her little brother. She could see the toll the rapture predictions and the town’s whispers
and gossiping were taking on him. She should be doing everything she could to validate him and help him get his message out
there.
The problem was that in another much more urgent, real, and everyday sense, Emily understood that her brother’s soothsaying
was creating a serious problem in her social life. There were enough real problems out in the world already. Why did Will
have to be making them up? And why did he have to be doing all of this
now
? This was the most important week of Emily’s life. She planned on becoming homecoming queen. It was the highest honor that
any girl could achieve in high school. It would be something she could always look back on proudly, something she could tell
her grandchildren about.