The Last Day – Rosa

Rosa sat glassy-eyed through her morning classes, unable to concentrate, rotor noise still chopping in her ears.  She sat next to Hannah in fourth period Bio, in a room that smelled faintly of formaldehyde.  As soon as the teacher dimmed the lights for yet another PowerPoint, Rosa leaned over to ask if Hannah’s dad had gotten scrambled onto base that morning too.

“Probably,” Hannah replied languidly.  “If it’s a day that ends in a ‘y,’ anymore.”

“Did he say anything to you?” Rosa asked.

Hannah lifted one hand in a speechless can’t-even.  “World’s ending, again.” 

At the front of the classroom, Mr. Ringler clicked to a full-color closeup of a wasp stinging a caterpillar, made a crack about zombie-pillars, and almost doubled over in silent hiccupping laughter at his own joke.  Rosa sighed.  If only the guy would wear less-tacky-than-polyester shirts.  And get glasses frames that fit so he didn’t have to push them up on his nose four times a minute.  And think at least a little bit about posture so he didn’t hunch like a scoliosis victim every day of his life—maybe, just maybe, the kids wouldn’t call him Ringworm.  He grinned maliciously now, his thin lips stretching, a bit of spittle arcing bright in the projector beam as he proclaimed: “And not all of the eggs just devour the caterpillar and leave!  Some larva make their way to the caterpillar’s brain for—who knows why?”  He answered his own question jubilantly: “Mind control!”

“We scheduled this class before lunch, exactly why?” Hannah asked Rosa.

Rosa made a little huff of disgust.  “Wait till we get to dissection.”

Unbelievably, a hand went up in the row ahead of them.  “Mr. Ringler,” Dewey said, and their teacher stopped, staring myopically into the darkness: he was as blind to them as a performer under stage lights.  “So does that mean the larva can make the caterpillar, like, do their bidding?  What if that kind of wasp bit a person?”

“A wasp needs to take control of that boy’s brain,” Hannah muttered.

Rosa countered, “Do we know one hasn’t already?” and Hannah nodded shrewdly, considering.

“They wouldn’t, Dewey,” Ringler replied, “because they only lay eggs on the gypsy moth caterpillar.  But—!”  He clicked to his next slide, a white mouse calmly sniffing toward the nose of a cat.  “Other species!” Ringler crowed.  “Toxoplasma Gondii infects mice, permanently altering their brains to eliminate their fear of cats!  And when these mice get eaten, the parasites reproduce in their new feline hosts, and the cycle begins again.”  He stepped forward, obscuring the image on the screen.  “The same parasite infects up to half of some human populations.”

Dewey again: “So…those people aren’t afraid of cats?”

Hannah slapped both hands over her mouth, smothering a giggle, and Mr. Ringler lifted his gaze to the ceiling.  “Well, we can’t conclusively say what the effect might be on humans, Dewey.  But it’s too soon to say there isn’t one.”  Warming to the question, thinking he’d engaged a student, Ringler went on.  “Think about it, one combination of neurotransmitters and hormones makes you fall in love.  Another makes you fall out of it.  Some say, if you precisely stimulate the temporal lobe—poke the brain in the exactly right place—you can induce a full metaphysical religious experience.”  He arched his eyebrows and waved his hands, making spooky-fingers in the air. “You ‘see God,’ and it all happens in the brain.”

Hannah mimed a glance at the clock, then gave Rosa her best dead-eyed stare.

#

On her first day at this school, Rosa had spotted Hannah sitting alone at lunch.  Hannah had been wearing tall lace-up boots, a loose black top, chipped black nail polish, and a long, coiled brass-looking bracelet.  She wore dramatic black mascara on just one eye, and a square of bluntly applied rouge just below it, only on one cheekbone.  Rosa slid her tray down next to hers, and Hannah stiffened.

“You new here too?” Rosa asked.

“Until next time my dad gets re-stationed,” Hannah said apprehensively.  “Then I’ll be new somewhere new.”

Rosa nodded.  “Exactly!” she said.  “Me too.  Makes it easier, when you don’t have to impress anybody.”

Hannah studied her for a moment, then relented.  “Don’t eat that,” she said, leaning closer and hovering one nail over Rosa’s breaded fish portion.  “I made that mistake once and once only.  Here.”  She produced, from a small black handbag with a silver clasp, a pale red apple.  “If you want.  I brought two.”

And that was how they’d become friends.

“So when your parents got divorced,” she asked Hannah at lunch today, thinking of her dad’s weirdness in the car.  “How did it happen?  Did one of them go all mid-life crisis?  And, how’d they tell you?”

Hannah nodded knowingly.  “They both got super-awkward for, like, a month.  And then we all went out to dinner at this gross buffet, and they sat on either side of me in this round booth—so I couldn’t bolt?  It was like, one of my friends had this cat, that whenever it saw the travel crate come out, it would hide in the basement for days, because there was no way that shit was leading anywhere good.”  Hannah stroked her shiny bangs.  Her hair today swept sideways across her face, black and slick as the pelt of some exotic animal.  Rosa could respect Hannah’s cultivated looks, though she herself rarely varied from her functional ponytail and hoodie.  “But yeah, they totally pitched it as this op-por-tun-i-ty, and we’d all be so much happier, and I’d get to finish school stateside and spend summers with my mom in Okinawa.”  Hannah raised one eyebrow. 

Rosa scowled.  “I don’t even know what my parents aren’t telling me.”

A commotion rattled the lunchroom then, the seniors coming in, preceded by Dewey and Caleb and their cadre horsing around, whipping a tennis ball back and forth.  Rosa knew them because everyone did: football team, basketball, basically school royalty.

Caleb surveyed the cafeteria with his trademark benevolent, sensitive smile.  When the tennis ball came to his hand, he snapped it down almost disinterestedly off the center of a crowded table so it flew cleanly to Dewey’s chest, where he caught it with clasped hands.  The disrupted table of freshmen burst into delighted laughter.  Just as Rosa was about to mutter a biting comment about kiss-ass sycophants and the way some people got away with everything, Hannah observed, “Isn’t that your brother?”

And sure enough, even though the middle-schoolers’ lunch had been over for an hour, there was Leo, tagging along behind the older boys like an accepted sidekick.  Rosa heard him pestering Dewey about the football game last season when he’d hit some kid hard enough to put him in the hospital. 

Dewey threw the next pass just outside Caleb’s reach, who lunged to catch it a step too far, slamming a table hard with his hip.  Altogether, this table seemed less appreciative, and at least one chocolate milk overturned.  One of the shop kids, in jeans and cowboy boots, rose holding his dripping tray, glared at Caleb, and pronounced, “Asshole.”

Instantly Leo shot forward, slamming the tray from the other student’s hands in an explosion of pudding and silverware.  The plastic tray boomed as it hit the ground, chocolate blossoming in dollops onto boots.  “Sit down!” Leo screamed up into the other student’s face.

“It’s like watching one of those tiny aggressive dogs just lose its shit,” Hannah commented, and Rosa agreed, remarking in surprise that her brother didn’t get beat up more often.

Caleb had already intervened, distraught, apologizing everywhere and for Leo too, when like the hand of God, Mr. Stokes from History seized Leo’s shoulder.

“I didn’t start it!” Leo protested, “I never start anything,” as Mr. Stokes propelled him from the cafeteria.

“Of all the douches in this world,” Rosa said, “my brother is destined to be their king.”

Caleb continued to apologize, somewhat impeded by a blonde girl cooing at his shoulder.  The shop kid simmered, swiping pudding from one boot with his fingers.  No one handed him a napkin.

Hannah squinted at the blonde and shook her head slowly, as if she just couldn’t see the attraction.  “If that was the last guy on Earth,” she said, “I might actually jump off a building.”

“And if that made me the last girl in the world?” Rosa added.  “I might jump after you.”

“Although, what if that just left you crippled?” Hannah said.  “I think I’d eat rat poison and shoot myself, while standing on the roof of the tall building.  And, holding a lit Molotov cocktail.  Just to, you know, be sure.”

When Rosa’s phone rang, she recognized the school office’s number, and cleared her throat before answering.  “Yes,” she said, eyeing Hannah.  “This is Sonja Calder.  Again?  I don’t know what to—yes, I assure you, he will be disciplined at home.”  Hannah was enjoying this; Rosa shook her head once fast and popped her eyes, expressing disbelief at what she had to put up with.  “I understand, until 4:30.  I’ll need his sister to—yes, all right, thank you.  I’m sorry again.”

Rosa ended the call, and Hannah opened her mouth, but before she could comment, the lights flickered above them, and Mr. Ringler waved for their attention by the door.  “Everyone?” he called over the confusion, finally taking his hand off the light switch when the noise calmed down.  “Everybody, finish up your lunches,” he said.  “There’s been an electrical problem—nothing dangerous, but we’re going back to homeroom, and then dismissing early.”

“Wow,” Hannah observed.  “Did your brother finally break the school?”

“To get out of one detention?” Rosa said.  “That’d be overkill even for him.”

The lights flickered again, now with no one’s hand on the switch.

“Could be the world’s really ending,” Hannah offered pleasantly.

“Don’t get my hopes up,” Rosa grumbled.

#

On the way home, Leo swung like a monkey around every light pole and kicked every can or plastic bottle in his path.  He was only stomping every piece of trash to antagonize Rosa, and she avoided turning to acknowledge him at all.  Hannah had waited with her out of boredom, and now they walked the not-especially-scenic route back toward base housing, Leo’s violence trailing them like the wake of a tiny tornado.

The day was mild and warm, and Rosa pulled her hoodie off as she walked.  Her hair crackled with static electricity, and she brushed it back with her free hand.  If Hannah was hot in her long black sleeves, she didn’t show it, and Rosa imagined the thin material probably breathed pretty well.  Above them hung a cloudless blue dome of sky.

They cut across the crumbling concrete parking lot of a dilapidated strip mall, and Rosa wondered who actually spent their days here, who worked shifts at the nail place, the game exchange, or the paycheck-advance, or even bothered pulling into the out-of-the way gas station and convenience store.  The handful of cars in the lot had to belong to employees, and Rosa could neither see nor imagine any traffic from customers.

A deepening drone from above drew her attention, and Rosa recognized the silhouette of a B-25 Mitchell.  “Wow!” she said, even though Hannah made a point of being bored by anything airborne.  “That’s gotta be seventy years old.  How many B-25s can there even be, that still fly?”

“No one cares,” Leo pointed out.  “Rosa’s-friend, watch out: she’s got trivia.”

Above them, the light bomber with its iconic twin tails settled into a landing pitch toward the base and began to lower its landing gear.  “That’s what Doolittle bombed Tokyo with, in 1942,” she said obstinately.  “They rigged them to take off from aircraft carriers, they weren’t even designed for it.  They ditched in China, there weren’t even plans to land or recover them, I think.  They took off knowing they might never come back home.  But, you know, don’t let me disturb your ignorance or anything, little brother.”

Rosa jumped as a chunk of concrete spun past her, skipping for a couple of bounces like a flat rock on a lake.  “Leo, I swear to God,” she said.  “When you’re grown up?  I’m not even going to visit you in jail.”

“What makes you think I’ll want you to?” he jeered.  “No one wants to look at you now.”

“I should have left you to rot in detention!” she exclaimed.  “Seriously, what would you even do?”

“Walk home without having to look at your fat butts, I guess.”

Rosa threw a look at Hannah meant to convey incredulity and apology.

“It’s OK,” Hannah said.  “Everywhere I’ve been?  People are pretty much the same level of dipshits.  Your brother’s less creative, is all.”

“Can you imagine,” Rosa asked, “living in a world without assholes?”

Leo snickered, working out a response guaranteed to involve a poop joke.

“You mean empty?” Hannah said.  “No.  No, I can’t.”

“Hypothesis,” Rosa stated, enjoying the direction of the conversation.  “A controlled population will spontaneously generate its own assholes.  Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Leo was silent, possibly confused.

“Human nature,” Hannah responded.  “Amen!  That’s the world, right there.”

“Somebody needs to just burn it down,” Rosa said.  “Rebuild society right.”

As they walked past a blank storefront, its dirty windows newspapered, a low siren rose in the distance.  Her first thought was that Leo had committed some act of vandalism she hadn’t seen, and a patrol car was rolling up behind them.  The tone wavered and grew, though, and Rosa recognized the same sirens they’d had in Nebraska.

Hannah was looking around in confusion, and Rosa said, “Tornado warning.  Seriously, you don’t get those here, all the time?”

“We do but,” Hannah said, eyeing the very clear, very blue, very calm sky.  “Look at things.  So I’m thinking maybe, air raid?”

Behind them, Leo leaped onto a closed Dumpster, like the world was his own private parkour course.  He hunched, slightly simian in posture, his hand to his brow as he scanned the sky.  “Where’s a tornado?” he said.

Hannah nodded.  “See?” she said.  “You’d expect a funnel cloud.  Or, you know.  Clouds, at all.”

“I’ll say it: Ohio, I’m underwhelmed.  No offense,” Rosa said.

“None taken,” Hannah said brightly. Rosa glanced again at the sky and shrugged, then kept walking.  “Leo!” she called, not looking back.  “Can you just keep up?”