Megan Abbott - The End of Everything

Copyright 2011 by Megan Abbott

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: July 2011

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-17509-8

The Street Was Mine

Die a Little

The Song Is You

Queenpin

Bury Me Deep

For Janet Nase

S he, light-streaky out of the corner of my eye. Its that game, the one called Bloody Murder, the name itself sending tingly nerves shooting buckshot in my belly, my gut, or wherever nerves may be. Its so late and we shouldnt be out at all, but we dont care.

Voices pitchy, giddy, raving, we are all chanting that deathly chant that twists, knifelike, in the ear of the appointed victim. One oclock, two oclock, three oclock, four oclock, five oclock And its Evie, shes it, lost at choosies, and now it will be her doom. But shes a good hider, the best Ive ever seen, and I predict wild surprises, expect to find her rolled under a saggy front porch or buried under three inches of dirt in Moms own frilly flower bed.

Six oclock, seven oclock, eight oclock, nine oclock, the cruel death trill we intone, such monsters we, ten oclock, eleven oclock, twelve oclock, MIDNIGHT! Bloody murder! We all scream, our voices cruel and insane, and we scatter fast, like fireflies all a-spread.

I love the sound of our Keds slamming on the asphalt, the poured concrete. There are five, maybe ten of us, and were all playing, and the streetlamps promise safety, but for how long?

Oh, Evie, I see you there, twenty yards ahead, your peach terry cloth shorts twitching as you run so fast, as you whip your head around, that dark curtain of hair tugging in your mouth, open, shouting, screaming even. Its a game of horrors and its the thing pounding in my chest, I cant stop it. I see you, Evie, youre just a few feet from the Faheys chimney, from home base. Oh, its the greatest game of all and Evie is sure to win. You might make it, Evie, you might. My heart is bursting, its bursting.

I t was long ago, centuries. A quivery mirage of a thirteen-year-olds summer, like a million other girl summers, were it not for Evie, were it not for Evies thumping heart and all those twisting things untwisting.

There I am at the Verver house, all elbows and freckled jaw and heels of hands rubbed raw on gritty late summer grass. A boy-girl, like Evie, and nothing like her sister, Dusty, a deeply glamorous seventeen. A movie star, in halter tops and eyelet and clacking Dr. Scholls. Eyelashes like gold foil and eyes the color of watermelon rind and a soft, curvy body. Always shiny-lipped and bright white-teethed, lip smack, flash of tongue, lashes bristling, color high and surging up her cheeks.

A moment alone, I would steal a peek in Dustys room, clogged with the cotton smell of baby powder and lip gloss and hands wet with hair spray. Her bed was a big pink cake with faintly soiled flounces and her floor dappled with the tops of nail polish bottles, with plastic-backed brushes heavy with hair, with daisy-dappled underwear curled up like pipe cleaner, jeans inside out, the powdery socks still in them, folded-up notes from all her rabid boyfriends, shiny tampon wrappers caught in the edge of the bedspread, where it hit the mint green carpet. It seemed like Dusty was forever cleaning the room, but even she herself could not stop the constant, effervescing explosions of girl.

Alongside such ecstatic pink loveliness, Evie and I, we were all snips and snails, and when permitted into her candied interior, we were like furtive intruders.

You see, knowing Evie so well, knowing her bone-deep, it meant knowing her whole family, knowing the books they kept on their living room shelf (The Little Drummer Girl, Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, Lonesome Dove), the banana bark chair in the living room and the way it felt under your fingers, the rose milk lotion on Mrs. Ververs dressing tableI wanted to sink my face into it.

I couldnt remember a time when I wasnt skittering down their carpeted steps, darting around the dining room table, jumping on Mr. and Mrs. Ververs queen-size bed.

There were other things to know too. Secrets so exciting that they were shared only in hushed giggles under the rippling flannel of sleeping bags. Did you know? Evie whispers, and tells me Dusty is named after the singer whose album her parents played sixteen times the night she was conceived. It is thrilling and impossible. I cannot, even in my most devilish thoughts about the hidden wickedness and folly of grown-ups, imagine Mrs. Verver turning her childs name into a lurid, private wink.

Not Mrs. Verver. Living next door all of my life, I never knew her to laugh loudly or run for the phone or dance at the drunken block parties every July. Tidy, bland voice as flat as a drum, she was the fleeting thing, the shadow moving from room to room in the house. She worked as an occupational therapist at the VA hospital, and I was never sure what that meant, and no one ever talked about it anyway. Mostly, youd just see her from the corner of your eye, carrying a laundry basket, slipping from hallway to bedroom, a fat paperback folded over her wispy hand. Those hands, they always seemed dry, almost dusty, and her body seemed too bony for her daughters, or her husband, to hug.

Oh, and Mr. Verver, Mr. Verver, Mr. Verver, hes the one always vibrating in my chest, under my fingernails, in all kinds of places. Theres much to say of him and my mouth cant manage it, even now. He hums there still.

Mr. Verver, who could throw a football fifty yards and build princess vanity tables for his daughters and take us roller-skating or bowling, who smelled of fresh air and limes and Christmas nutmeg all at oncea smell that meant man to his girls ever after. Mr. Verver, he was there. I couldnt remember a time when I wasnt craning my neck to look up at him, forever waiting to hear more, hungry for the moments he would shine his attentions on me.

T hese are all the good things, and there were such good things. But then there were the other things, and they seemed to come later, but what if they didnt? What if everything was there all along, creeping soundlessly from corner to corner, shuddering fast from Evies nighttime whispers, from the dark hollows of that sunny-shingled house, and I didnt hear it? Didnt see it?

Here I was knowing everything and nothing at all.

There are times now when I look at those weeks before it happened and they have the quality of revelation. It was all there, all the clues, all the bright corners illuminated. But of course it wasnt that way at all. And I could not have seen it. I could not, could not.

Sometimes I dream Im playing soccer with Evie again, all this time later. First Im alone on the field. Its all green-black and Im knocking the ball around between my feet. My round little legs beneath me. My funny little thirteen-year-old body, compact and strange. Bruise on my thigh. Scab on my knee. Ink on my hand from doodling in class. Wisped hair pressed by cool girly sweat onto my forehead. Arms like short spindles and stubby fingers protruding. Barely buds under my shiny green V-neck jersey. If I run my hands over them, they will hardly notice. Hips still angular like a boys, rotating with each kick, passing the ball between my feet, waiting for Evie, whos there in a flash of dark heat before me. Breath splashing my face, her leg wedging between my legs and knocking the ball free, off into the dark green distance, farther than she ever meant it to go.