Authors: Rob Stennett
Now, it’s entirely possible this was a selfish goal. Perhaps Emily was shallow for thinking about how Will’s meltdown was
messing with her chances of getting to wear a plastic crown from the dollar store while holding a bouquet of pink roses. If
that’s the case, you just had to forgive Emily. She’d had this goal locked in her sights every day for the last six years.
Emily decided that she was going to become homecoming queen after her first day in junior high. Actually, she made this goal
exactly eight minutes into her first lunch as a junior high school student.
At Jefferson Elementary, Emily always ate lunch with Marsha, Tonya, and Becka. She didn’t really even remember how they became
friends. They’d always been friends. But at her first junior high lunch she realized she didn’t know anyone.
Not a soul.
Well, okay, she “knew” other kids. But not enough to sit by them at lunch. You had to really know someone to do that. You
had to know them well enough to share the same piece of chewed gum. It was that intimate.
So she clutched her lunch tray and walked slowly through the room. She was looking for someone —
anyone
— to sit by. Marsha’s family had moved to Wichita that summer so that wasn’t helping. And Tonya had “B” lunch so she was
out. Emily continued to search the lunchroom for a friendly face. Only now it was getting obvious. She didn’t have a friend
in the room. She was looking foolish and scared standing there clutching the tray as her knuckles turned white. She had to
do something.
And then she saw Becka sitting at the popular table. The table where all the kids had clothes that looked ratty and torn even
though they really paid lots of money for them. These clothes were so expensive because trendy New York designers knew just
how to rip jeans, tatter hats, and give a rugby shirt the exact fade it should have. The unpopular kids would try to rip their
own jeans and fade their own shirts, but it was really embarrassing. The uncool kids were such posers.
Anyway, relief rushed through Emily’s face as she discovered the popular table. It was all so clear now. She would sit here
every day with Becka. She would become part of the “in” crowd, the upper crust of the junior high school. She would get a
boyfriend named Clay or Kyle or Blake. Maybe she’d get all three to be her boyfriends.
But as she placed her tray on the table something funny happened. A guy (who was kind of hot, which made this even worse)
with a brown thread beanie looked at the place where Emily placed her lunch tray. He said, “Hey, um, not to be weird or anything,
but that seat is taken. I think.”
This is what Emily hated about popular kids. They could never just be jerks. Probably because they had such a need to be liked.
So even when they were shooting you down they still tried to be so cool about it.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Emily said.
“It’s cool, but you know,” he said.
No, I don’t know. You couldn’t make a little room for me? Do you realize you’re destroying me? I have no other friends, and
I try to reach out and this is what I get? Do you realize what a wreck I’m going to be because of this? And who are you to
decide that I’m not cool enough? What, you really think Becka is prettier than me? Well, maybe she is, but I can get some
cool clothes, I promise. Please don’t reject me like this. I will do whatever it takes to fit in. Please just change your
mind. PLEASE!
“I totally understand,” Emily said.
Emily looked to Becka for support. But Becka was looking down at the table. No way was she going to sacrifice her spot at
the chosen-kid table for her old friend. So Emily picked up her tray and found a table in the corner. It was grimy and dark
and dim. Emily sat there alone eating her lunch. She wasn’t hungry at all, but she couldn’t just sit there. She had to at
least try to act busy. And for the whole time she was there, she didn’t look up. She just stared into her cheese and cracker
handi-pack and thought about her future. At that moment she decided to become popular. She would do whatever it took. And
by her senior year she’d be homecoming queen. Becka and that stupid hot guy with the brown beanie would be lucky if Emily
would even talk to them.
So that was the plan. That was what she was going to do. And once Emily decided to become the most popular girl in school,
she threw her handi-pack away, went into the bathroom, locked herself into a stall, and spent the rest of her lunch hour crying.
Six years later, Emily had forgotten what it felt like to be unpopular. But on the day that (according to her newly crowned
prophet baby brother) the school was supposed to be destroyed, it all came flooding back to her. Everyone had apparently watched
the news the night before. So as Emily walked down the hall, every student in the school looked at her as if she were an alien.
She was Carrie. She might as well have had yellow eyes, green skin, and the ability to lift objects with her thoughts. Emily
hadn’t felt this way since that first day of junior high. One outburst from Will, one silly rapture prediction, and she was
in exile. How could she have fallen from the top to the bottom of the popularity ladder so quickly?
How was she supposed to act after what happened on the news last night? Was she supposed to just be walking around school
like things were A-OK hunky-dory? Was she supposed to act like it was no big deal that her brother threatened (or claimed
that some supernatural force had threatened) to destroy the elementary school? Why would anyone trust her after what Will
had said? All the other kids in school probably thought she came from a long line of prophets/terrorists and there is no way
you vote a prophet/terrorist to become the homecoming queen.
Not even the Goth kids would do that.
Emily opened her locker. Inside were pictures of fashion models and movie stars, the people she’d need to dress like, look
like, and act like if she’d have any shot at becoming homecoming queen.
“Hi, Emily,” Megan said, peeking into her locker.
“Hey,” Emily replied. She didn’t want to talk. That meant she’d have to respond to all of this Will/rapture stuff. She was
running out of things to say.
“So, the news was crazy last night,” Megan said.
“Yeah, hey, I’m running late to trig,” Emily said as she shut her locker. She was almost home free. She’d go to trigonometry
and work the whole period on some response to her baby brother’s threat.
But right before Emily could get away, Megan said, “Why don’t you just cut class?”
“I can’t. Mr. Saunders is giving notes on what’s going to be on the first chapter test. He usually gives all the answers there,”
Emily said.
But she was lying. Mr. Saunders didn’t give any answers. Ever. Still, Emily knew this would be the type of class a homecoming
queen would be interested in. She could get all of the answers, which meant good grades, which meant she could go to college
and get into a great sorority. And she could do all of this without having to study hard. Even her popular friends could understand
why she wouldn’t want to cut that sort of class.
“No, you need to cut class. We’re all going.”
“Going where?”
“Jefferson Elementary.”
“What?”
“Everyone wants to see if it’s going to blow up like your brother said.”
“Right.”
“And you’d know more about all that than anyone else. So you’ve got to be there, everyone’s going to want to hear what you’ve
got to say about it.”
And that’s when Emily saw the life raft that was being thrown right at her. She was drowning in the sea of unpopularity. She
could pull herself out of it, and go straight into the upper crust again.
It was all so clear. She needed to go to the elementary school to control this situation. To control how people were thinking
about her brother. To show them how misguided they’d been. She couldn’t do that in trig. And if she didn’t go down there,
she’d have no way to control what they were saying. They could gossip about her all they wanted. She’d spend the rest of her
high school years as an outcast. Even worse, she’d be
remembered
as an outcast. The last six years of work would have been all for nothing.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Emily asked. “Come on, let’s go.”
Emily arrived at Jefferson with a carload of her friends. She couldn’t believe how many people were there; cars were parked
for blocks in every direction. Everyone was lined up around the school watching. They were waiting to see if something was
going to happen. They weren’t quite sure what, but they didn’t want to miss it.
How are people taking everything this seriously? Emily thought. Will’s just a kid. He reads comic books and pours chocolate
milk on his Cocoa Puffs. He’s not a prophet. He can barely do long division, and everyone is really looking at him to predict
the end of the whole world? Was the whole town actually shutting down because of what he said?
Apparently it was.
Businesses, restaurants, and government offices must have shut down because it seemed like most of Goodland was circled around
the perimeter of the school. The actual school was a ghost town, as if there were only a few teachers and kids inside the
school. It almost looked like the rapture had
already
happened. There wasn’t much for everyone to look at. A few uniformed officers roamed around the school grounds, but other
than that there was nothing but tumbleweeds.
But still everyone watched and waited.
When Emily and her friends arrived at the scene, there was almost a reverence in the air. But once carload after carload of
high school students arrived the reverence was replaced by rock music, booming speakers, tickling, laughing, flirting, smoking,
and everything else that ruined the atmosphere for those waiting to see a sign from on high.
Still Emily noticed that as the morning progressed, concern started to seep into many of the high school students. Their little
brothers and sisters went to Jefferson. And a lot of them had grown up in Goodland and went to Jefferson at one point. They
had great memories of their days as a Jefferson Mountain Lion. And now their old school was supposedly just going to be destroyed?
How were they supposed to feel good about that? How could they just tailgate and flirt and giggle?
Some students began to ask Emily this. She still had enough popularity left for them to respect her opinion, and besides,
who could understand this situation better than her? Her brother had caused it. So what was she feeling?
“What am I feeling?” Emily repeated to the group of students that was gathering around her.
“Yeah, do you think the school’s going to be destroyed?”
“No.”
“No?” The students asked.
“Not a chance,” Emily said.
“Then what’s going on here? Is your brother just crazy?” some guy asked.
Emily looked at him with disdain. He was probably on the chess club or a Mathlete. But she had to say something. If she ever
wanted to become homecoming queen, if she ever wanted to gain back the admiration of all of her friends and everyone else
at school, this was her moment. So she looked at all of the confused and accusing faces of her classmates for a moment, and
then she said, “What if I told you that someone could pull a prank so big that an entire elementary school would shut down?
And not only that, but then high schools, businesses, an entire town would shut down because everyone came to watch his prank.
“Look what’s going on around you. My brother came to me about a week ago. He said, ‘I bet I can shut down the entire city.
It’ll be just like a snow day. Only without the snow.’ I said, ‘No way.’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah, watch.’ And now look what’s
happened. He did it. And he’s at home and he is
so
busted. The police are pissed. He’s under house arrest. I mean, he could be expelled or something.”
Emily was starting to get fired up. She stood on the hood of some guy’s Camaro.
“Don’t you understand what’s happened here? My brother has given us a gift. He has sacrificed himself so we can have a day
to do whatever we want. And so if you want to waste it whining and worrying about something that’s just not going to happen
— fine. But as for me, I’m going to make the most of it.”
Emily jumped off the hood of the Camaro and into some guy’s arms.
She barely knew him. His name was Curtis, or at least something that rhymed with Curtis. And he held her for a second until
she grabbed his face and kissed him. She didn’t really have a reason — she did it just because it was a day off — a day to
do whatever you felt like at the exact moment you felt like doing it. And everyone cheered. Emily went from freak to rockstar
in minutes. It was an impressive feat. And everyone loved her that day because she made them feel okay. She gave them license
to make the day something to remember. And quickly Frisbees started to fly, teenagers used the hoods of their cars for recliners,
they laid blankets on the grass and had picnics. They flirted and had water fights. They ate. They chilled. They did whatever
they wanted. And the best part was the police couldn’t do a thing. They had bigger problems on their hands like the rapture/bomb
threat.
For a while Emily enjoyed the day off with her friends. She sat on the ratty old blankets that lined the hill overlooking
Jefferson. She lounged with the popular and smoked cloves, Swisher Sweets, and anything else that wasn’t an actual cigarette
because only the trashy, unpopular kids smoked regular cigarettes.
Through the smoke Emily started to watch what was going on around Jefferson. It seemed the other groups were following the
high schoolers’ lead. Actually, some of the groups that gathered were more active than the high school students. Some groups
were playing the guitar and singing with their hands stretched toward heaven. Other groups were waving posters and shouting.
Then there were some who just stood silently and stared at the elementary school.
Suddenly Emily wanted to know: Who are these people? Why do they care so much about my brother’s prediction? And as the day
wound down and the sun was setting, the crowds kept gathering. Cars were parked on curbs, in fields, and in front of fire
hydrants. The streets around the school looked like New York City during rush hour. Lights flashed and cars honked and drivers
yelled at each other. Everyone was gathering at the school. Emily had never seen an event like this in Goodland. And Emily
journeyed away from the teenage camp and toward the other groups so she could better understand who all was gathered out here.