We Are the Ants(96)

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Diego’s painting from the winter carnival was leaning against my bed when I finally got home. Charlie said he’d found it outside the door the day I was admitted to the hospital. A note was taped to the frame that read This isn’t a painting; it’s a mirror.





28 January 2016


The smell of popcorn filled the living room, and Charlie and Zooey wouldn’t stop kissing on the couch. It was pretty disgusting. Mom and I had a bet on how long it would take before they were pregnant again, though I thought it was gross for Mom to be wagering on her eldest son’s sex life.

I was emptying popcorn into a plastic bowl while Audrey prepared our drinks, when the doorbell rang.

“Get that will you, Henry?” Charlie yelled from the living room.

“You’re closer.”

“Bunker’s already started.”

I sighed and set the popcorn bag aside. “Ten to one, it’s Charlie’s friends.”

Audrey poured the root beer too quickly and it overflowed. “Shit!”

“Smooth.” I laughed as I walked to the door. When I opened it, Diego was standing on the step, dressed in gray shorts and a black sweater. I hadn’t seen him since the winter carnival, and I didn’t know he’d returned from Colorado. I was too stunned to speak, so I stood there like a moron.

“I really hope you’re the one who ordered the nude model, because the last house I went to let me strip down to my underwear before telling me they weren’t.”

I threw my arms around Diego, accidentally knocking the back of his head with my cast, but I didn’t care because he was here and not in jail and I’d missed him so much.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I can’t help it; I love to make an entrance.” He grinned so big, it hurt to look at him.

“Everything cool, Henry?” called Charlie.

“Yeah,” I said. I pulled Diego outside. “What happened to you?”

Diego filled me in on the hearing and how he almost ended up in juvie again. “It was pretty close. The judge was ready to toss me back in, but my lawyer argued that since Marcus wasn’t pressing charges, there was no one to refute my story that I’d been acting in self-defense.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You would have been just fine, I think.”

Once the shock of seeing him wore off, I remembered all the things I’d said to him, the things we’d said to each other, and I wasn’t sure where we stood. That he was at my house was a good sign, but I was uncertain how to act. I tried to cover my awkwardness by telling him about Quiet Oaks and how I finally made my peace with Jesse.

“I’ve still got a lot to figure out, but I like having choices.”

Diego rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands in his pockets. “I’m seeing a therapist about my anger issues. Apparently, it’s not okay to beat the shit out of anyone who hurts someone you love. Go figure.”

“I still think Marcus deserved it.”

“Maybe.”

“And I love you too, you know?”

“I know.” I kissed Diego. We floated free and unfettered. Maybe love doesn’t require falling after all. Maybe it only requires that you choose to be in it. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with us or how much time we had left, but I wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

Audrey joined us outside, and we walked to the beach together. It was a clear sky full of stars with a bright moon overhead, and we passed the time naming the constellations.

“Did you ever press the button?” Diego asked.

We sat in the sand at the water’s edge. Audrey on my left, Diego on my right. The rest of the world didn’t exist. “The sluggers haven’t abducted me in a while. I would if they’d give me the chance.”

Audrey checked her watch. “There’s still a few hours left until the twenty-ninth.”

Diego leaned his head on my shoulder. “What do you think’s going to happen?”

I’d imagined dozens of ways the world could end, but I still wasn’t any closer to an answer. I watched the sky and wondered where the sluggers were. Why they hadn’t given me another opportunity to press the button and whether they were ever real at all. I didn’t know if the world was going to end tomorrow, nor did I care.

“Honestly? It doesn’t matter.”





Ms. Faraci




I know this isn’t what you had in mind when you assigned me this extra credit project. You probably expected a thousand words on gravity or the four laws of thermodynamics, not a journal recounting the last 144 days of my life—-possibly of all life—interspersed with crazy doomsday scenarios. It’s entirely possible we won’t even be alive to discuss it. The world will probably end in a flood that cleanses the stink of humanity from the face of the planet. No, strike that. It’s the acidification of the oceans that’ll do us in. Climate change causes the glaciers to melt, which causes the acidification of the world’s oceans, resulting in the death of most sea life. This triggers a worldwide food shortage, which leads to wars and the end of mankind.

Or maybe robots rise up and murder us all. Gamma rays from deep space blanket the earth and annihilate all living creatures. A supervolcano erupts or aliens invade or a genetically modified virus is released by a terrorist organization that kills 99.99 percent of all humans, leaving the remaining .01 percent to die slowly of starvation and loneliness.