The Reverse of Everything Read online

  “Zo?”

  “What?” I snapped out of my thoughts.

  “You’re doing it again.” Owen gave me a hard stare, visibly fighting all the mean things rolling through his wickedly fast mind. Instead of saying something harsh, he slowed it down for me like I was an idiot, “Did you hear about the old people who died all at once? Some crazy number like”—he threw his hands into the air as though he might find the number he was searching for up there—“over three hundred thousand old people died globally. At the same moment.”

  “Three hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand old people died all at once?” I asked skeptically. The number seemed impossible. His entire sentence was impossible. Was I high? Did I accidentally eat one of Elaine’s special cookies again? I smacked my lips together to try to recall the last thing I ate, hoping it wasn’t lotus or cookie.

  “Yeah. Y’all didn't see that? It was all over the news. It’s been the only thing playing the entire week. I texted you like five links to news reports yesterday. Shoot, I knew you didn’t see them.” His eyes widened. “What were you doing while I was gone, hiding under a rock?”

  Avoiding my phone so I didn’t have to endure endless snaps and selfies from sexy-guy football camp.

  “I was working,” I defended myself and my obvious lack of knowledge of what he was yammering on about. I’d clearly missed something.

  “Not even the librarians have been talking?”

  “Most of them are old. They don’t care about what’s happening in the world anymore. And the rest are off for summer break. I’ve been alone all week running the kids’ camps and reading challenges and working the library.”

  “You legit haven’t seen anyone for the two weeks I was away, have you?”

  “The kids,” I answered honestly. “But I’m about to get annoyed if you don’t stop asking me.”

  “How do you do it? How do you hide so well in that silent little bubble of yours?” He rolled his eyes at me.

  “Anyway.” I didn’t want to talk about my bubble. “The old people?”

  “Well, they all died at 8 p.m., as far as they can tell. Everyone’s been talking about it. It’s crazy.” He was animated, always. “And they were all over the age of a hundred, all of them. There are reports they were sitting at tables at restaurants and walking and hanging out in old folks’ homes. And bam! Dead. A mass exodus of old people.”

  “I don't know what you mean.” I was waiting for the punch line. “I don't get it.”

  “Me either. No one does.” He scoffed. “Top scientists around the world don't get it.” He sounded baffled. Maybe this was real and there was no punch line. “Over three hundred thousand people, all around the same age, dropped dead at the same time. It’s freakin’ insane. Coach said they got called home. God was like, ‘Look, it’s about to get real ugly down there and you need to stay safe.’”

  “Of course he did.” It was my turn to roll eyes. “What did the news say?” My stomach tightened. What did this mean? Besides Coach’s theory . . . everyone in the South was going to go for the Revelations. Everything down here involved God. Or his counterpart. Husband cheating? Devil made him do it. Doctors cured leukemia? Praise Jesus.

  “Not much. One of the doctors being interviewed said it might have been some type of vibrational thing on the planet, affecting only their old hearts. But then another scientist said weak hearts wouldn't have been able to take it either, so other people would have died. Other age groups. Then someone else said terrorism. Sounds like they’re all guessing though.”

  “You aren’t kidding? Three hundred thousand old people dropped dead all at once, for real? Same time?” What the hell could that possibly mean? My brain did laps around the old books I’d read from various places, thus far in my short life, that spoke of similar events. I couldn’t recall anything about people dying like this.

  “Yeah, it’s real. Google it.”

  “Can’t. I don't even know where my phone is,” I admitted but didn’t bother telling him I hadn’t seen it in days.

  “You’re officially the worst teenager ever, Zoey. Ever.” He groaned, pulling out his phone.

  “Whatever. This doesn't make sense. Like how could they be sure of the time of death for all those people? I mean, some of the bodies would’ve been found much later. Lots of old people die alone. It’s a thing. I read about it. They end up being found much later because of smell or someone checking in on them.” It was a fear of mine, dying alone with no one to mourn me. A lot less young people died that way, no one caring they were gone. But I was an exception. I didn’t have a lot of people. Owen and Grandma Kay were pretty much it. I assumed Elaine cared, but not as much as Owen did.

  “I don't know,” he said, typing something into his phone. “Apparently, they’re searching for anyone over the age of a hundred, but they haven’t found anyone. And the thing about people that old, everyone knows where they are. They’re not going all over hell’s half acre, ya know?” Owen stopped typing and furrowed his brow. “What if this is the end? Ya know? I’m not ready for the earth to start punishing us for global warming and shit. I haven’t lived yet. And you really haven’t lived.” He managed to mock me even while the world was ending.

  “Did we lose any old people here?” I pretended to ignore his comment.

  “Yeah, three in the county. You remember old Mr. Tyre? He was one of them.”

  “Shit.” I didn't know Mr. Tyre, not personally. I knew who he was. Everyone in Marion did. He had a hundredth birthday a year ago, it had made the news. “I thought he’d died already.”

  “Zoey Lynn!” Elaine’s shrill voice cut through the warm summer air, parting the humidity seas. Before I could roll my eyes while answering her, she screamed again, “Zoey!” Her tone hit that scary pitch suggesting something had gone horribly awry.

  “Up here.” I waved.

  She waved back at us from the light of the back door. “Zoey, y’all need to come in. Hurry the heck up.” She didn’t wait but turned around and rushed inside.

  “Oh hell.” Owen cocked an eyebrow, adding a little extra to his tone, resembling a character from Gone with the Wind. “Did you steal her cigarettes again? She’ll quit when she wants to—you flushing them down the toilet gets her fired up for no reason. And then we have to deal with that.” He pointed at the house.

  “No. It’s not that.” I considered what he’d said about the old people. “I hope Grandma Kay didn't die with all those old people. She had a stroke a few months ago.” I slid along on my butt to the stairs and crawled down.

  “Grandma Kay is in her sixties, not over a hundred.” Owen followed me down the ladder, making enough noise for a couple of people. He never did anything silently, except cry and scream. Those he did inaudibly, always.

  He said big men don't cry, they do it on the inside like winners. It didn’t seem like winning to me. Crying was natural. Before, when I could cry, I liked to watch a sad movie and pretend that was what was wrong with me because sometimes I needed a cry to release something or I’d burst.

  “But what if it is Grandma Kay?” I froze halfway across the crunchy lawn and forced myself to visit the feelings I’d have if she was gone, and I didn’t have any grandmas left. The others were dead too.

  A list fluttered past my brain: things I should have done before it was too late. I should have called her. She always called me so I didn’t ever think to. And I should’ve visited more. I was a bullshit granddaughter and now maybe it was too late.

  “It’s not, so stop whatever you have going on in that head of yours.” Owen shouldered me, nudging until we reached the door I didn’t want to go in. I would have to comfort Elaine who had no trouble crying all the time. She didn’t even need a movie.

  Inside, Elaine was sitting, waving us in but not speaking. Her eyes were locked on the TV she had blaring the news into the room. That worried me. She didn’t watch the news. Elaine was here for the good stuff only. Her job was all the bad she needed. I hovered in the doorway
, watching her and the TV.

  “It happened again,” Elaine spoke quietly, making Owen and I remain where we were. My heart was so tight in my chest I could barely breathe.

  “We don't think it’s a random coincidence,” a man’s voice blasted from the small flat screen on the wall. “Nor do we believe this is an act of terrorism. It’s too large scale to be anything but an act of either God or nature. In the North, they will say it’s environmental, but here in the South, we know the difference.”

  “Did he just reference Revelations—on the news?” I pointed but Elaine waved at me to shut up so she could hear the broadcast.

  “The age group of the deceased is now confirmed to have been from ninety to ninety-nine years of age. Every single one of the fatalities discovered, that is. I repeat, each person that has been found appears to have had a massive heart attack. The top scientists have gathered at the research center of the Broad Institute at Harvard to try to find answers.” Our local newscaster, Dean Worthington, spoke slower and softer than normal, which was saying a lot. He was from Alabama.

  “Holy shit!” Owen shoved me inside, forcing me into the room with Dean who spoke in that weird tone, clearly trying not to have an accent, and Elaine who trembled as though she was about to cry. My feet didn’t want to move and my heart pounded. I was scared I might have a heart attack too. Pins and needles overwhelmed me as I reminded myself Grandma Kay was in her sixties. She was fine.

  “Repeating for the newcomers to the broadcast, we are exactly seven days since the last large group of elderly people passed on, seven days to the hour. Last week at 8 p.m. our time here in Virginia, as far as we can tell, every person on earth over the age of one hundred died. This week, accounts are coming back of people in their nineties joining them. As the oldest pass on, many are saying this is a sign that the planet is also dying off. Some claim our weakest humans, as far as age is concerned, have been afflicted by the shift in the planet’s chemistry, while others suggest the possibility of the sun’s output of radiation has changed. But I think it’s safe to assume this is something more than planetary. Back to you, Brian.” Dean nodded his head as the screen panned back to Brian.

  “What a strange and devastating occurrence. We offer our deepest—” The TV shut off.

  Elaine sat holding the remote, staring at the black screen. “What do you think it means?” She was asking Owen. He was smarter than I was when it came to world events. “What do you think it is?” she asked again.

  “He’s right,” Owen finally spoke but he sounded funny too, “It’s too crazy to be coincidental.” His words were hollow and breathy. “Last week all the people over one hundred and this week all the people over ninety. I guess we wait and see if all the people over eighty die next week, then we’ll know.” His answer made my insides tighten and my brain quickly calculated that if this was how humanity would end, I had eight weeks until it was my turn to die.

  My gaze drifted to my mom. She would be dead in six weeks and Grandma in three. I was not ready for that, not ready for any of this. I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to whisper, “Excuse me. I need to make a call.” I turned, leaving them both.

  3

  The Eighties

  Celeste

  “Again, we urge the public not to panic.” The newscaster smiled weakly, his eyes were unmoving with unexpressed anxiety. But he wasn't fooling me. I suspected he’d be hyperventilating into a bag the moment the cameras were off.

  I clicked off my TV and turned back to my parents’ faces, trying not to cry as the news slowly sunk in.

  “Don’t come home,” my dad said with the same smile he’d forced the last forty-six minutes of this FaceTime call, the same expression the newscaster had worn. “There’s no point.”

  His words wounded me, creating an ache in my heart that bled down into my stomach, pooling there and filling me with agony, more of it. I didn’t have a response.

  How was I supposed to react to this moment?

  “We’re going to drive south along the coastline, enjoy the last two weeks of our lives.” His eyes glistened as he turned to Mom who was also giving me the worst of her PR smiles.

  “We made the decision before we called you to watch the news with us. We agreed that if everyone in their eighties died tonight, we’d go south to be alone. Okay, sweetie?”

  She never called me sweetie. She was above sweeties. She was Corinne Wentworth for God’s sake.

  My hands started to sweat, making gripping the iPad difficult.

  “We called your brother and sisters already and told them the same. We want you to do something you’ve never done before. Live for the last few weeks you have.” Her voice cracked and the painful bravado slipped, joined by a tear trickling down her cheek, her bravery melting slowly until she’d shown me everything. She was devastated.

  “We love you so much. And we miss you. No matter what happens, we need you to know, we have had the best life imaginable. And it’s you kids that made it for us. No accomplishment I have equals you kids.” Dad’s voice cracked too. It was his turn to lose the fake smile and pleasantries.

  Silent tears streamed my cheeks, making my parents’ faces fuzz in and out of reality, a fate I would have to get used to. They had two weeks left. I would be an orphan in two weeks. How was this happening? It had to be fake, a hoax, something.

  “Is there anything you need to say, baby?” she asked.

  A million ridiculous questions rushed my mind, secrets I needed to know before the end, but my lips refused to part, even for air so I twitched my head back and forth and lost them all.

  “Do you have friends to be with?” Mom asked, wiping her tears.

  My brain did laps, trying to find friends who were worthy of my death. Who did you die with? How did you even choose that person? What qualified a friend to be an end-of-the-world friend? Would I die with Julia? My roommate I’d known for a year, not even? We were friends but I wasn’t sure if we were death friends, or what would qualify someone as that.

  “Honey?” Dad asked, not needing to repeat the insidious question of did I have someone to die with.

  I nodded. It was easier to lie if I didn’t open my mouth.

  “Don’t be scared,” Mom offered the typical useless mom statement.

  “No,” Dad corrected her. “Be scared. And happy. And joyful. And terrified. Feel everything. You need to fall in love and run on the beach and see stunning sights. Live this life, Celeste Elizabeth Wentworth. You fill every minute. Or I will come and haunt you for the four weeks you have after we go on.”

  I laughed, though it came out as a gush of tears and snot and heaves, not at his comment but by the way they kept sugarcoating it. Death. They weren’t saying it. No one was.

  “Baby, don’t cry. Please. We have two weeks to FaceTime and talk. This isn’t goodbye.”

  I nodded again but I knew what this was. It was one of the last goodbyes. How many did I have left? How many goodbyes and I love yous and I need yous did you squeeze into two weeks?

  Two freaking weeks?

  Is this a joke?

  I battled every selfish inch of myself and forced the tears to stop. They’d begun the moment Anderson Cooper, in his incredibly thoughtful manner of speaking, said that “indeed the entire world population in their eighties did indeed pass on at 8 p.m. Exactly as the nineties and hundreds had indeed done the previous two weeks.” He said “indeed” five times in four sentences.

  Barely able to get a handle on myself, I wiped my swollen face and forced words, “I love you both.”

  The sentence was a bullet to their strength, shattering it, leaving them a mess as they succumbed to the heartbreak they had masked. They sobbed and muttered unintelligible things, gripping one another, losing all control and making me start up again.

  We sobbed for what felt like forever, until I couldn’t cry anymore.

  Dad stopped next.

  I was certain any moment they would tell me to come home. But they didn’t. I suspected th
ey didn’t want me to see them die. And be stuck with their bodies for weeks before I died.

  I’d given that some thought, the fact they would die way before me, the moment I’d said I would be on the next flight home. They told me no. Not to come.

  “I think we all need some rest. This has been an exhausting day. Just be safe, my sweet girl. And FaceTime tomorrow. Or later, whatever you need. We’re here,” Dad comforted me and Mom who wasn’t coming back from her sorrow. Being an artist, she could get swallowed up in it if she wasn’t mindful. “We love you so much.”

  “Love you,” I managed to get out before I clicked off the iPad, refusing to say or hear a goodbye. I put it down and sobbed, collapsing on my sofa in a heap of tears and anguish like I’d never experienced before.

  Nothing could compare to this moment.

  The world was ending.

  My family was dying.

  Mankind was dying.

  Extinction.

  And nothing I could do or say or give would change the outcome.

  The people in the South were saying it was God, and I was starting to think they might be onto something. How else could this happen?

  “Holy shit, did you see? All the eighties are dead.” Julia, my roommate, burst into our apartment, rustling and tripping and interrupting my soul-felt pain as she slammed the door and dropped her bags. “I was over at the noodle place getting us some dinner. They’re saying everyone in their seventies needs to prepare for next week—oh no! Oh my God, don’t cry.” She teared up. “You’re making me cry.” She rushed to me, crawling onto the sofa and wrapping her lanky dancer’s body around my not-so-lanky not-a-dancer’s body.

  We snuggled until I could contain my anguish enough to ask, “Are you okay?”

  “No, this is crazy. The world is fucking ending? Like how? I just can’t—I take it you spoke to your parents?” Julia’s green eyes glistened.