The End of Always, page 5
He shuts the dishwasher and turns to me, frowning. “The whole reason we’re going is to see if the ranch works for us as a family. We need to do this together.”
“But—”
“Besides,” he goes on, “Traci and Heath are way out of the way, in the opposite direction. It would add two extra days to the trip.”
I stop scrubbing and toss the dishcloth in the sink. Desperation flares through me, and I scramble for something—anything—to knock him off center. “Have you told Traci about this?”
He avoids my gaze and puts the juice and syrup back in the fridge. “It’s not her concern.”
“So you haven’t told her. Why not?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Because you know she wouldn’t approve of us driving across the country and being isolated in the woods for weeks? Because she’d tell you this whole idea is crazy?”
He shuts the fridge and turns to face me. “Isobel….”
“Well,” I say, my eyes steady on his as I draw the last card I have to play, “if you’re not going to tell her, I will.”
His quiet confidence flickers, but just for a second. “Do whatever you feel you need to, sweetheart,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter what Traci thinks, because she’s not the parent here. I am. We’re going to Endurance Ranch.”
My hope dissolves with the soap bubbles in the sink. For days, I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to figure a way out of this. I should have known threats wouldn’t work. I should have known he wouldn’t want us to stay with Traci, even for a few days. If it were up to him, he’d probably never let us out of his sight again.
* * *
After Dad and April leave for the farm, I go to my room and take a stab at studying for my English final. I’m only ten minutes in when my mind starts wandering, the themes in Julius Caesar drowned out by echoes of my conversation with Dad this morning. To see if the ranch works for us as a family.
What does that mean? Of course it’s going to work for him, a doomsday prepper with construction experience. Of course it’ll work for April, who loves the outdoors and animals and new adventures. But what about me? What do I have to offer a place like that? I doubt homemade jewelry would be a big hit with the survivalist crowd.
Giving up on Julius Caesar, I shove my notes aside and open my laptop. I type Endurance Ranch into Google.
I can’t keep avoiding facing this just because I don’t want it to be true. If this is really happening, like my fa-ther said, then I need to be prepared. Just in a different way than he usually means.
The top search result is a website. I click on it, bracing myself for pictures of armed guards and barbed wire. Instead, I’m greeted by the ranch logo—an image of a jaguar head inside a circle—with the words Prepare, Endure, Thrive curved beneath it. The rest of the page is mostly text, about the founding of the ranch and what the members hope to achieve. It’s nothing I haven’t already heard from Dennis and my father.
I click on the About the Ranch tab. My screen fills with a list of the ranch’s features, followed by a gallery of pictures. I scan through the amenities—underground shelters, riding corrals, stockpiled supplies, quarantine facilities, livestock, and gardens—and zero in on the photos. The first few depict the various basement shelters, apparently located under basic log-cabin-type buildings that look more like vacation cottages than places to hide in the event of Armageddon.
The rest of the pictures remind me of a summer camp brochure, with happy, smiling people engaged in various outdoor activities. Only here, it’s mostly adults, and along with canoeing, hiking, and fishing, they’re also doing things like hunting and target practice. One picture has a tiny boy holding a child-sized crossbow, aiming his arrow at some unseen target. Is this the kind of thing they do there? Teach children to hunt and defend themselves against “marauders,” like Nick from the meeting said to describe potential human threats to the community?
An image of April with a weapon in her hands flickers through my mind. My sweet little sister, who sleeps with a night-light and cries if she accidentally squishes a bug. Despite the sunshine streaming into my room, a chill runs through me.
I haven’t given much thought to weapons, though I know the ranch must have a stockpile of those too. Does Dad have any here, in this house? I think about the list he made in Mom’s recipe book, the collection of items we’d need to survive an apocalypse. Weapons was on there. I shiver again. Mom was strictly anti-gun; she never would have been okay with Dad owning one. But now….
Sometimes I wonder if she’d be disappointed in me for failing to step up in her place. She was always able to keep Dad grounded. She would have squashed this ranch idea way before it got this far. But what have I done, besides make threats and complain about the unfairness of it all?
I shut my laptop and lie back on the bed, my chest aching. Most days I’m able to manage living without my mom, but sometimes—like right now—I’d give anything just to feel the warmth of her presence again, assuring me that everything will be okay.
Chapter Nine
I’m in my room, sorting through schoolwork from the year that I no longer need, when I’m interrupted by unfamiliar voices. I stop to listen. It sounds like people talking in our living room. The doorbell rings, followed by more voices. What the hell?
I go to the door and open it a crack. My father passes by the end of the hallway, on his way to the kitchen. Curious, I follow him, glancing into the living room as I pass. Oh God. The redheaded guy. The white-haired couple. The hippy-ish couple. The young couple with the baby. They’re all here, save for Dennis and Roberta, who left for Holcomb days ago, and the elderly woman named Jun, who for all I know is headed there too.
The Weldon Preparedness Group. Right here in my living room.
“Isobel,” Dad says, surprised to see me standing in the kitchen. “I didn’t know you were home.”
This isn’t surprising, considering we’ve been avoiding each other all week and only speak when it’s absolutely necessary, like when April’s around and we want to appear normal for her. Threatening him with Traci either pissed him off, worried him, or a combination of both. In any case, we’ve been circling each other warily.
I watch as he fills glasses with water and iced tea. “What’s going on?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “Why are they here?”
“Oh.” He glances toward the living room, his eyes shining brighter than ever. He’s definitely found his people, and they aren’t us. “I offered to host the monthly meeting. There was some kind of mix-up with the library room we usually have booked, so I invited everyone here instead.”
Great. “Where’s April?”
“She went to the park with Rana and her parents.”
I relax. At least I don’t have to worry about her wandering in there and soaking up their end-of-the-world gloom.
“Want to give me a hand with these?” Dad asks, nodding toward the half dozen glasses on the counter.
I don’t want to, actually, but I gather up three of the glasses and follow him into the living room. The white-haired lady—the one who told Dad he had beautiful daughters at the library meeting—smiles at me as I place the drinks on the coffee table.
“Are you joining us today, sweetheart?” she asks, her tone sweet and grandmotherly. I try to picture her hunting deer in the woods or pointing a rifle at oncoming marauders.
“Oh, um.” I glance around the room, which is noisier and livelier than it’s been in years, with people perched on the chairs and sofa, smiling and chatting. As nice as that part may be, I have no interest in sitting through what will probably be an hour-long discussion about Endurance Ranch. “Not today.”
At the sound of my voice, everyone stops talking to look at me. Flustered, I turn and go back to the kitchen, even though I don’t need anything in there. I consider going to my room, but I’d still hear them through my door, so I pour a glass of iced tea for myself and take it outside to the deck.
The backyard is quiet and still. I sit down in one of the patio chairs and tip my face to the sky, feeling instantly better. From here, the voices inside sound like faint murmurs, far away from my private little spot under the sun.
I left my phone inside, so I’m not sure how much time passes as I sit there, sipping watery iced tea and staring into the trees beyond our fence. The heat of the sun, along with the muffled conversation humming under the soft chirping of birdsong, has lulled me into sort of a trance, so I’m a little startled when I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. The melting ice in my glass rattles as I stand up and turn toward the open fence gate.
“Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was back here.”
For a moment, we just stare at each other. Before I stood up, I was expecting to find April at the gate, or maybe a loose dog. What I wasn’t expecting to find was the dark-haired boy from the meeting at the library, the hippy woman’s son.
“What are you doing?” I ask, baffled by his presence in my yard. He looks different in the sunlight, taller and broader, his tan skin flushed with either heat or embarrassment.
“The meeting is here, right?” He gestures toward the house. “I told my parents I’d come by after work. I’m Dane, by the way. Dane Covey.”
I glance down at his T-shirt. The words Jumbo Pretzel are emblazoned across the front in big red letters. “Isobel,” I say, still rattled. “You know, the front door is open.”
“Oh. Right. It’s just….” He takes a couple of steps forward and points to something at the far end of the yard. “I noticed your patch of chickweed, and I was going to sneak back here and pick some. My mother loves it.”
I blink at him, wondering if all that sun has gone to my head. “My patch of what?”
He tucks his fingers into his jeans pockets. “Chickweed. It’s an edible plant. Grows in yards and gardens and places like that, though most people try to kill instead of eat it.”
“You can eat it?” I look at the area in question, which I always dismissed as a blanket of useless weeds.
“Yeah.” He hesitates for a second, then starts walking across the yard. I put down my glass and step off the deck onto the lawn. “The leaves have vitamins,” he continues, crouching down and touching one of the tiny white flowers. “You can eat them raw, but they’re better when they’re cooked. They taste kind of like spinach.”
I wrinkle my nose. Spinach isn’t my favorite. “How do you know all that?”
He straightens up and brushes off his hands. “My moms are experienced survivalists. I’ve been identifying and eating wild edibles since I was about four.”
I nod. So, the two hippy-looking women are a couple. They seem exactly like the type of people who regularly cook up a pan of yard weeds for dinner. One of them—the fair-skinned woman—showed up at our house today wearing a flower crown in her hair. They look like they walked straight out of the sixties.
“My dad’s been learning about that sort of thing,” I say, reaching down to pick one of the weeds. “Living off the land, I mean. I think he took a class on edible plants once.”
Dane smiles, and I’m caught off guard by how bright it is and how much it transforms his face. “My mom teaches that class,” he says. “She takes people on a hike through the woods so they can sample all the edibles.”
“Sounds like a recipe for gastrointestinal upset.”
He laughs. “Only if you eat too much. Here,” he adds, reaching for the chickweed stem in my hand. I let him take it, then watch as he carefully peels off the leaves. He passes one to me. “Try it.”
I examine the leaf for a moment, hesitant. I’ve never eaten something picked from my backyard before. What if a stray cat peed there or something? I could get parasites.
Dane, seeing my reluctance, pops the rest of the leaves into his mouth like they’re a handful of M&M’s. I wait until he chews and swallows, and then, when he doesn’t keel over, I slowly place mine on my tongue. And it tastes like…a leaf.
“Not bad, right?” Dane asks, dark eyes twinkling like he’s holding back a laugh.
I force myself to swallow. “Delicious,” I say, coughing a little. “Though it could use some Italian vinaigrette.”
He laughs again, and I can’t help smiling in response. Even though his parents are preppers and he likes to munch on weeds, he seems basically normal. I’m starting to wonder if he’s preoccupied with the apocalypse like the rest of them. After all, this guy and I have something in common—an odd, unconventional something—and now might be my only chance to talk to someone who actually gets what it’s like to live with a person who’s actively preparing for the end of the world.
I swallow again, tasting bitterness at the back of my throat. “Are you going to Endurance Ranch?” I ask, my gaze focused on my red-painted toes peeking out from the grass.
“Oh, yeah. My parents are all over that.”
The slightly wry tone in his voice surprises me, and I look up again. His good-natured smile is gone, replaced by an expression I can’t quite read.
“When are you leaving?” I ask.
He shrugs and pushes his hair off his face. “The same day as everyone else, I guess. A few people from the preparedness group are leaving together, on the twenty-eighth. Isn’t that when your family is going?”
The little chickweed leaf suddenly feels like an entire tree in my stomach. The twenty-eighth is only a week away. Dad said we were leaving shortly after school ended, but the actual date—coming from some guy I barely know—makes it feel more official. More inevitable.
“Yeah. The twenty-eighth.” I clear the tightness from my throat. “Are you just going for a visit, or are you moving there like Dennis and Roberta?”
“We’re moving there. Nick too. I think James and Kendra are just visiting, though.” He looks away, his hair tumbling back over his forehead. “My moms have been packing all week. They’re really excited.”
“And you? What do you think about it?”
He meets my eyes again, his face still unreadable. “They’re my parents. I go where they go.”
Hope sparks through me. He doesn’t seem excited about the ranch either. He just seems…resigned.
“I mean, it’ll be great.” His smile returns. “Imagine the edibles that are probably growing in Westlake Forest.”
The hope fizzles again. “I think it’s weird,” I push back. “Like a cult or something.”
Dane’s expression darkens briefly, like my words flipped some imaginary switch behind his face. “I don’t think there’s anything weird about being prepared,” he says.
The last hope sinks, and I feel a stab of disappointment. Why did I assume he was like me, forced to endure his parents’ paranoia about doomsday disasters? I was so desperate to find an ally; it never occurred to me that he might be all in on the prepper lifestyle, too.
I change tack. “But won’t you miss school and your friends?”
“Well, I’m homeschooled, so there’s nothing to miss there.” He looks down at the chickweed stem, still clutched in his hand. “But yeah, I’ll miss my friends. How about you?”
An image of Claire, her head tipped back in laughter, pops into my head. “We’re only going for a couple of weeks, so I won’t have time to miss anyone.”
“Oh. I thought….”
Uneasiness creeps down my spine. “You thought what?”
“Nothing. I just….” He sighs and tosses the chickweed stem into the grass. “My mom mentioned your dad is helping with construction on the new shelter.”
“Yeah….”
“Well, it’s just that the construction will take months, probably right into fall, so I assumed….”
Even though I’m out in the open, safe in my own backyard, my pulse starts racing like I’m trapped in a coffin that’s slowly being lowered into the earth. “Did my father tell your mom that we’d be staying longer?” I ask, my tone chilly. What else does he know about my life that I don’t? What else is my father keeping from me?
“I don’t know,” Dane says quickly. “He probably didn’t tell her anything. Like I said, I just assumed.”
“Well, you assumed wrong.” I turn away from him, suddenly eager to get back inside to the sanctuary of my room. There’s a mess to clean up, jewelry to design, a present to live. I don’t have time to talk to a boy who’s willing to put his fate into the hands of his doomsday prepper parents.
“Isobel.”
I turn to face him again. My name sounds different coming from his mouth, familiar and new at the same time. “What?” I say, trying not to notice how attractive he looks, standing there in his perfectly fitted T-shirt, the weathered privacy fence rising up behind him.
Dane smiles again, only softly this time and without all the dazzle. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”
He says it like we’ll be meeting up for a Sunday picnic or something, no big deal. Maybe it isn’t, to him. But to me, compliance isn’t the same thing as acceptance. Sometimes, all it means is that you’re stuck with no other choice. Maybe I’m sticking my head in the sand against the scary realities of the world, like my mom did, but I’ll never accept the ranch as a solution. She wouldn’t have accepted it either.
Dane’s still watching me, waiting for an answer or a nod or maybe something else altogether. Instead, I just walk away, leaving him alone by the fence.
Chapter Ten
I peer into my empty suitcase, open on my bed, and try to visualize what I’ll need to pack for a survivalist ranch besides clothes. My jewelry-making supplies, for sure. A few of my favorite books. The framed picture of Mom taken at the beach the year before she died, her bare feet digging into the wet sand, the ocean deep blue and sparkling behind her. What else?
April bursts into my room, dragging her small purple suitcase and her bug-out bag behind her. She was supposed to wait for me, but apparently she started packing on her own. I can only imagine what’s in there.
