The End of the World

"I'm really sorry for that," I say, finding that I mean it. "I know how much football meant to you."

"Yeah, I suppose. Having my dream taken away like that really sucked at first, but in the end, it freed me up to live my own life. I got myself out of that dumbed-down curriculum that most jocks take and switched to Electrical Engineering. I used some of the study skills you taught me to make it through, by the way. When I graduated, I managed to land an amazing job that let me travel all over the world.

"I've made very good money over the last year. Not as much as I would have made in the NFL by any means, but my chances of getting drafted would have been small, even if I hadn't gotten hurt. I'd have been out on my ass with a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving, ready to start a new career as a barista, and reminiscing about my glory days to anyone who would listen."

"Funny how life works," I say.

The beep of the terminal makes both of us jump. We leap to our feet and crowd around it. There's fresh text on the screen.

"COLONEL MCGILL HAS ASKED THAT WE CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY. WHAT DID YOUR FATHER CALL HIS TRUCK?"

I sit down and type without hesitation. "CLIFFORD."

"Huh?"

"When we were stationed in Florida," I explain, "my dad had a Dodge pickup that was the same color as my favorite cartoon character, Clifford the Big Red Dog. I called it Clifford the Big Red Truck."

Greg almost snickers.

"Hey, cut me some slack. I was five."

"Oh, that's actually pretty cute, and I liked Clifford too, but how would this guy know about that?"

"Dad and Colonel McGill used to play golf together when I was in high school. I guess it must have come up."

Beep.

"HELLO LANA, I AM LIEUTENANT RAMON GARCIA. I HAVE BEEN AUTHORIZED TO PASS ALONG CERTAIN LIMITED INFORMATION. FORCES UNKNOWN HAVE EXPLODED ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE WEAPONS IN OUR UPPER ATMOSPHERE, SEVERELY DAMAGING MOST CIVILIAN ELECTRONIC DEVICES, TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS. MANY MAJOR US CITIES AND INSTALLATIONS HAVE ALSO BEEN ATTACKED WITH HIGH YIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS. ACTIVE COUNTERMEASURES HAVE PROTECTED THIS BASE SO FAR. WE ARE EXPERIENCING MODERATE FALLOUT FROM HITS TO THE WEST AND EXPECT IT TO GET MUCH WORSE OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS. STAY IN YOUR SHELTER AND TAKE WHATEVER STEPS YOU CAN TO LIMIT YOUR EXPOSURE. SORRY, BUT WE ARE NOT ABLE TO PROVIDE ANY AID."

I begin typing again. "UNDERSTOOD. WE ARE TAKING ALL PRECAUTIONS."

I'm not necessarily expecting a response, but a few moments later we get one anyway.

"HOW MANY OF YOU ARE IN THE SHELTER?"

"I think Ramon caught your 'we'," Greg says.

"Oops, I slipped up. I'm sorry."

"Oh, I figure it's safe to use my name now," Greg says grimly. "If they want to debrief me concerning what I know about the Hackensack Network, they can send someone right over." He nods at the keyboard, and I resume typing.

"MYSELF AND GREGORY EDWARDS, A NEIGHBOR."

"STAY SAFE. GOODBYE FOR NOW."

"So, I guess this is the real deal," Greg says, his voice flat and dry, but I can hear the edge of disbelief and horror in it. I share his emotions. What do you say when millions of innocent men, women and children are dying in horrible ways? When your family members are in danger, far from home, and your chances of ever seeing them again are small? When you find that you're going to be trapped in a small, cold space for months -- or years -- with someone you would just as soon never have seen again in your whole life?

When this was just a phone call with a goofy code phrase, I could inwardly deny that it was real, but with that last message, it's official. The world as we know it is ending. I'm enveloped by a dark sense of shock and dread.

I get to my feet and stumble to the couch, plopping down limply, though my first inclination at this point would be to crawl underneath it. Greg sits down, closer to me this time, but when he goes to put what I'm sure he feels is a comforting arm around me, I shake my head. "Don't," I say dully. Being civil to him is one thing, letting him touch me is another. He desists but doesn't scoot away any. I pull my knees up to my chest and bury my face in my arms.

"Lana, it's going to be okay," he says.

"No it's not."

He sighs. "You're right, but our loved ones are in relatively safe places, and we're as prepared as we can be."

"Yeah, I suppose we've got it better than a lot of other people do at the moment." Which isn't something I would have expected. Other places are being obliterated, but so far, we haven't so much as felt a rumble.

"What do you suppose he meant by 'Active Countermeasures?'" I ask.

"Well, the military's been publicly testing that anti-ballistic missile system for years. It sounds to me like they've got something like it set up near the base to protect our ICBM's."

"And it's been protecting us too. So far."

"Yeah, so far."

"Too bad they couldn't have installed more of those," I lament.

Greg nods, and the two of us are quiet for a while. I'm contemplating just how horrible it must be out there. This is a living nightmare. Why do humans do these kinds of things to each other?

"Lana," he says quietly, "since it's going to be just the two of us for a while, I think we need to clear the air." It's almost exactly what I would have predicted he'd say.

"I don't want to talk about it," I mumble.

"Since that day," he continues, as if I hadn't spoken, "I've known I needed to explain to you what happened, but I always found excuses not to. At first, it was your threat of a restraining order, but as time went by, I knew the risk of that was less and less.

"I thought about calling or emailing or even writing a letter, but that seemed so lame. If I was going to apologize, it needed to be face-to-face, so I kept putting it off.

"Later, I decided it didn't matter anymore because you would have put it behind you and moved on. I had my life out in the world and you had yours on the ranch, where you always wanted to stay. It seemed best to let old dogs lie.

"I'm ashamed to admit that it was only when I heard your voice on the answering machine that I finally got up enough courage to do what I should have done five years ago. Lana, I have no excuses for what I did to you that day, and it won't absolve me, but I'd like to explain why I acted the way I did."

As much as I'd like to, I know I can't avoid this conversation. Instead, I go on the offensive. "Oh, I think I understand it well enough. You were having fun leading your little lab partner on, but when you got caught at it, I became inconvenient, so you tossed me aside with as much thought as you'd give a used Kleenex."

I can hear Greg draw a long, slow breath. "That's fair," he says at last, "but it wasn't the way I would have wanted it. Lana, I was head over heels for you right from that first day in the lab."

I raise my head from my arms far enough to see his face. "What makes you think I would even begin to believe a load of bullshit like that?"

He shakes his head. "Lana, I loved the way you talked, the way your mind worked, and your attitude toward life. I could tell you were a little intimidated by me at first, but you didn't let it slow you down. I really admired that. And it didn't hurt that you were cute, too."

"Cute? I was a bony stick with braces. You said as much in the band room."

"Lana, I didn't mean that. You were a bit underdeveloped, but you were still cute. And I could tell that, given a couple of years to mature, you were going to be truly beautiful. I was right about that by the way."

Despite myself, my heart beams at the compliment, ridiculous as it is. There's no way I'm going to let him see that, though. "Then why didn't you ask me out? Too devoted to Courtney?"

His laugh is almost a bark. "Courtney? I didn't even like her particularly, but the guys considered her the hottest girl in the school. I dated her mostly because it stroked my ego, but I would have dropped her in an instant for you."

"Oh really? Then why didn't you?"

"Jesus, didn't it even occur to you what the real issue was?"

"No. Enlighten me."

"Lana, it was because of your age."

I shake my head. "I knew lots of sophomores who were going out with senior guys."

"Yeah, and those senior guys were careful to make sure the sophomores they dated were at least sixteen. You were two years younger than that."

I stare at him. "How did you find that out?"

"Well, it wasn't due to any great investigative skill on my part. When I told my mom that you were going to be my lab partner, she said you were, and I quote, 'ridiculously mature for a fourteen-year-old.' Perhaps she had a premonition that I'd take a shine to you and was trying to warn me off."

Shit! I hadn't thought he'd known, but I should have guessed. I'd been young for my grade anyway, beating the deadline for kindergarten by a mere four days, but with skipping fifth, I had indeed been almost two years younger than a lot of my classmates.

"Yeah," I say, not quite as sure of myself now, "but that shouldn't have been such a big deal. What were you, like seventeen?"

He shakes his head. "Back in grade school I had dyslexia pretty bad and had to take the third grade twice. I learned how to compensate for my disability, but I never managed to jump back to my original track, so I turned nineteen right around the start of my senior year. Your age put you totally off limits to me."

"Oh, wow."

"You acted a whole lot older than you were, but making any sort of advance toward you would have been way wrong. I tried hard to keep things at a 'just friends' level and always have other people around when I was near you, but after our last lab, I felt I needed to explain, face-to-face, that I really did care about you and why I'd been keeping you at arm's length. That was a bad idea, because it turned out that being alone with you was almost more than I could handle."

"I wanted you too," I admit, "so when you pushed me away, it really hurt, but what you did when Courtney walked in nearly killed me."

He hangs his head. "Yeah, that was bad, but please let me tell you why I did it."

"Oh, this should be good."

Greg soldiers on. "You know it was my dream to play for Coach Zublonsky. You were the one that gave me the courage to hold out for his offer."

"I remember."

"What I didn't tell you was about the big scandal in his football program a couple of years before that."

"Scandal? What kind of scandal?"

"Coach Z's star wide receiver had gotten an under-age girl pregnant. A paternity test proved it. The player ended up with a five-year sentence, and there were rumors that Coach Z's staff had tried to cover it up. They never proved it, but it looked bad and hurt the program. Knowing that, what do you think would have happened to my chances of playing for him if I'd been accused of having a romantic relationship with a fourteen-year-old?"

"I suppose that would have been bad, but even if there had been something going on between us, who would have told him?"

"Courtney, of course. She was already insanely jealous, but then a friend of hers in our Chemistry class told her that she thought I was being a little too friendly with you. Courtney confronted me. I explained that you were just a fourteen-year-old kid and there was nothing going on between us. I thought that telling her how young you were would reassure her, but instead, she used it as a weapon against me.

"Courtney was still suspicious and threatened to tell Coach Z that I'd been having an 'inappropriate relationship with a child' if she found out anything was going on. Then she took it a step further, saying that she'd squeal if I ever broke up with her."

"Possessive much?"

"Like I said, insanely jealous. By the time I met you, I was already looking for the most graceful way to break up with her, but after her threat, I was locked in. If she'd spread that kind of stuff around, I might not have played college ball anywhere. Even during my first year at the university, I had to fake being her devoted boyfriend or she would have gone to the coach with her story."

"But she had no evidence," I protest, "and I would have sworn to anyone who asked that there was nothing going on between us." Nothing, that is, if you didn't count dozens of long phone calls where we pretty much poured our hearts and souls out to each other. But I would have kept my mouth shut about those too, to protect Greg.

"It wouldn't have mattered," Greg says. "After all, there was no evidence that Coach Z knew what his wide receiver had been doing, but he still got tarred with it."

"Then that was stupid too," I grumble.

"Unfortunately, Courtney had tasked this unnamed friend of hers to keep close tabs on us in the lab. The girl saw us going into the band room together and called her."

I'd wondered how she'd caught us. "I've got to hand it to Courtney," I say. "Her instincts were spot on."

"They were, but as far as I'm concerned, her timing sucked. When I asked you to meet me after class, my intention was to explain how I felt about you, but how our age meant we couldn't have that kind of relationship. I hoped I could keep you as my phone friend so that later, when you were older, it might develop into something more. I knew you were already mature enough to keep our friendship on the down low."

"I would have agreed to that," I say. As a matter of fact, it sounds eerily close to the fantasy I'd had for us.

"Lana, I never intended to touch you, but when I saw the look in your eyes and you took that one step toward me, I just couldn't restrain myself anymore. I knew it was wrong, and I would never have let it go any further than a simple hug, but the moment I felt you in my arms, I knew you were something special."

"Then how could you have turned around and done what you did to me?"

Greg is silent for a long moment. I can almost feel how he's composing himself to talk about it. When he does, the shame in his voice is obvious.

"When Courtney walked in, I panicked. I knew that us being alone in a room -- with my hands on you no less -- looked really bad, especially since she was already suspicious. I was certain she would go straight to Coach Z unless I could convince her you were no threat, so I was willing to do whatever that took, no matter how vile. I knew my words and actions were beyond inexcusable, but I could see everything I'd dreamed of and worked so hard for being torn away from me. It shamed me to the core that my fear could allow me to hurt you, but it did.

"I did you wrong, Lana, very wrong. I don't deserve your forgiveness, so I'm not even going to ask, but I need you to know that I've regretted what I did every day since then." He comes to a stop.

Hearing what Greg had been up against, I understand his motives a lot better, but I'm still not ready to forgive him. For all I know, his apology is just fancy words. He's fooled me before.

Perhaps he hasn't even given that awful day a thought in years. For that matter, I now realize, there's no longer any way for me to confirm his story about Coach Z's player or Courtney's threat. He could have just made all that stuff up. He's got motive to, since he's going to have to live with me for a while.

I suppose that in his favor is the fact that he did come over to the house to talk about what happened, though I shut him down before he could. But it wasn't any huge gesture. It's not like he flew in from Chicago just to do that.

So, what am I supposed to do now? I'm going to be stuck in here with the guy whom I fantasize about, yet despise. Even if we form a relationship, what will it be based on? I want to be able to trust him, but how can I? Call me a Doubting Thomas, but I need more tangible proof of his sincerity.

I'm thinking hard on this when he speaks again. "My parents have never mentioned anything about what happened that day -- and I know they would have if they'd known. Thank you for not telling them. Please believe that they did their best to teach me better."

"They're wonderful people," I say. "Saying anything about what happened would only have hurt them."

"And that's the Lana I know," he says. "I went on an ego trip for a few years there, but you've always been so kind and down-to-earth."

I lift my head to look at him. He appears to be completely sincere. He shifts a little under my intense gaze, and my eye catches something else entirely. Something shiny that has just poked out from between the buttons on his shirt. It looks familiar somehow...

Captivated by my own curiosity, I throw caution to the wind and reach toward his collar. His eyes get wide as I find the chain, then fish the thing out of his shirt.

"Oh my God," I murmur. In my hand is the gift I bought for him back in high school. It's on a heavier, more expensive chain, but it's the same oval silver pendant. Its once crisp edges have been worn round and smooth -- it obviously hasn't spent the last five years in a drawer. I look closer and see that the tiny lettering is still mostly legible. You are Braver than you Believe, Stronger than you Seem, and Smarter than you Think. It's kitschy, but in my youthful innocence I had thought it would be perfect for him.

I look up at Greg. "But I saw you throw this in the trash."

He can barely meet my eyes. "It took all of lunch period for me to get Courtney calmed down and make sure she wasn't going to do something rash, but after I walked her to her next class, I went straight back to the band room. After what I'd already done to you, the very least I could do was make sure your gift didn't go out with the garbage. At first, I figured I should give it back to you, but then I decided if you hadn't already retrieved it, you probably wanted nothing more to do with it."

"You guessed right."

"I kept it out of a sense of guilt, but I packed it away because looking at it would have been an uncomfortable reminder of the kind of person I'd become. By then, with the success and constant adulation, I thought I was already as brave, strong and smart as I would ever need to be, and I didn't need anything telling me otherwise.

"All that changed when I got hurt, though. When they said I'd never play again, everything I had based my life and future on was gone. My former teammates quit coming around, probably because I was too big a reminder for them of how quickly it can all go to hell. It also turned out that a lot of my other 'friends' had mostly just wanted to hang out with the Big Man on Campus. With me off the team, they moved on.

"It was like my life was over. When it was time to start rehab, I just went through the motions. After all, what was the point if I was never going to play again? For a while, I was a complete basket case.

"Then, because of the loss of my scholarship, I had to move out of the fancy townhouse I was renting with teammates, and into a dive apartment with a couple of engineering majors who I thought were total nerds. It was when I was unpacking that I came across your pendant and read the inscription again. Suddenly, I could picture you saying those words to me.

"It took me back to those long conversations we had on the phone. How you were so open and earnest with me, telling me of your dreams and getting me to tell you about mine. About how you believed in me, not just as a jock, but as a person. When I talked to you, or worked with you in the lab, I could just be a normal guy. Thinking about that, I finally realized what a self-centered jerk I'd become. It wasn't the way I was brought up, and I swore I'd change.

"I've worn your pendant every day since. Now, anytime I get discouraged, or worse, think I'm entitled, I reach up and feel it, then remember you, your inner strength and steadiness, and how you believed in me. It's really helped me on the long road toward being the kind of man I know I should be."