We Are the Ants (34 page)

“None taken.” Ms. Faraci pointed at a picture of a boy with a flattop and a bold smile. “Andrew Darby once told everyone I had a penis. These days he sells insurance and has been divorced three times.” She pointed at a girl. “Molly Roswell stole my clothes during gym all through tenth grade. She has four children with two different fathers, and a DUI.

“Tyler Coombs, Gregory Nguyn, and Chris Brentano tormented me during lunch. Tyler runs a successful Internet business, Greg now goes by Caryn, and Chris works with special needs children at a school in Miami.”

I tried to stop her, but Ms. Faraci cut me off. “I'm almost done.” She pointed at a picture of a beautiful girl with a prom queen smile. “Nasya Boulos. Everyone loved her. She tortured me for four years. No matter what I did, she made certain I knew I would never be as beautiful or as popular as she was.” Ms. Faraci took a breath and smiled. “She's a heart surgeon in New York, married to a handsome man in publishing. She's got a beautiful child and the life she always dreamed of.”

I waited to make sure Ms. Faraci was finished before I said, “Is this supposed to make me feel better? That the ­people who bullied you didn't get what they deserved?”

“It's meant to show you that these people don't matter, Henry. Their successes and failures mean nothing to me. I am exactly who I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do. After graduation, the people who torment you will disappear, and they'll never have the power to hurt you again. When I tell you it gets better, this is what I mean.”

“I guess it's just hard to believe that right now,” I said.

Ms. Faraci closed the yearbook and smiled. “And one day you'll wake up, look around, and wonder how you could ever have believed otherwise. If the world doesn't end, of course.”

“Thanks, Ms. Faraci.”

I was in a hurry to get to lunch. Diego had texted me to find out where I was, and I was busy typing a reply instead of paying attention to what was in front of me. I turned the corner out of the science building and pain exploded in my face. The suddenness of it paralyzed me. It felt like I'd been hit by a brick instead of a fist. The force of the blow knocked me into the wall, and I banged my head, the pain of the collision spreading through my skull like ripples on a pond.

“Rot in hell, Space Boy.” A large figure in my blurry vision darted past me, leaden footsteps pounding down the hall. I didn't need to see his face; I'd heard Adrian's voice in my nightmares often enough to recognize it.

Mr. Curtis poked his head out of his classroom. “What's going on out here? Mr. Denton?”

I leaned against the wall and held my hand over my throbbing, watery eye. “Nothing, sir.”

  •  •  •  

Diego punched the steering wheel so hard, the dashboard shook. “I'll fucking kill him.” I'd skipped lunch to avoid Diego seeing my eye, but he found me after last period. We'd been sitting in the school parking lot for ten minutes while he raged, blaming himself for not being there to protect me. “I'll rip his fucking hands off.”

“Calm down, Diego. It's not a big deal.” It was difficult to sell it with a swollen eye and a plum-colored bruise running across the bridge of my nose.

“It's a big fucking deal,” Diego yelled. “Which one of them was it? Was it Marcus?”

“No.”

“Don't protect him!”

I flinched. The air around Diego vibrated the way it does before a thunderstorm, warning me that worse was coming. “Stop, Diego, just stop. It doesn't matter who did it.”

Diego clenched his fist. He punched the steering wheel until his knuckles bled. “Don't you get it, Henry? I love you. I love you so much, and I know this is all a big joke to you because the world is ending and you don't think any of this matters, but when it comes to you, it always matters.”

I unbuckled my seat belt and twisted around. I held Diego's face in my hands and kissed him despite the agony that exploded around my nose and eye. Pain has a way of reinforcing memories. It binds them to the moment so you never forget, and I didn't want to forget.

“I think . . . I think I love you too, Diego.” They words hurt. Saying them to someone other than Jesse, but I knew they were true. And that made them hurt even worse. “But that's why we shouldn't see each other.” I don't remember when I started crying, but I couldn't stop. “I wish the sluggers had chosen you to save the world. I just . . . I can't be the reason you end up back in juvie.”

Diego was shaking, but I couldn't tell if he was crying or going to punch me. “I don't need you to look after me. You can't even look after yourself.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You won't press the button to save the world because you don't think you deserve to live in it.”

“I was going to do it, Diego. Because of you.”

Diego shook his head. “Maybe you're right. We shouldn't see each other.” He laughed bitterly, but I didn't get the joke. “I wanted you to press the button because
you
wanted to, not for me or anyone else. If you can't see how amazing you are, then . . . forget it.”

I tried to think of something more to say, but I'd run out of words. I got out of the car and walked back toward school to call Audrey for a ride. I half expected Diego to chase after me, but he didn't.

The first case of untreatable gonorrhea is observed in Maxx Costanza of Warwick, Rhode Island. It is estimated that he infected thirteen sexual partners before being diagnosed.

Within months, outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
,
Clostridium difficile
, and E. coli are observed in patients around the world. Not even last-resort antibiotics are effective in controlling the diseases.

Governments around the globe direct their resources to the development of new antibiotics. As deaths from simple infections rise dramatically, a new sense of teamwork spreads throughout the world. Knowledge is shared freely, old barriers are eliminated as humanity races to find cures for diseases once considered beaten. Economic and military rivalries are set aside to save the world.

An unparalleled level of global collaboration leads to the first breakthrough nearly two years after Maxx Costanza's initial diagnosis. The potential new antibiotic is found in the chemical secretions of cockroaches. While attempting to isolate enough of the compounds in the cockroaches, an international consortium of scientists develops revolutionary technologies to increase the size of the cockroaches through genetic manipulation. These novel insects, named
Blatella asmithicus
after the geneticist responsible for creating them, Dr. Andrew Smith, measure nearly a meter in length, and have an astounding resiliency and immunity to all known toxins. Capable, even, of withstanding significant exposure to radiation. They are more commonly referred to as CroMS: cockroaches of mighty size.

The first new successful antibiotic in a decade is tested on 8 January 2016. Within days, the mortality rate from bacterial infections decreases to levels never before achieved.

United by their cause, a new age of peace and prosperity envelops the world. It is the golden age of humanity.

On 29 January 2016 a pair of CroMS escape from a laboratory in Austin, Texas. They begin to breed. As a result of their increased size, CroMS possess a ravenous appetite and devour everything in their path.

Austin is overrun in three days. Texas in two weeks. The United States in less than a year.

When CroMS are the only living creatures remaining on the planet, they consume each other.

After Adrian punched me in the hallway at school, which I read on Marcus's SnowFlake page was retribution for his expulsion, despite not even being the one who'd e-mailed his video confession to Principal DeShields, I spent most of my free time in my room, contemplating my existence.

I've been wondering why the sluggers haven't abducted me since Thanksgiving. They've had plenty of opportunities, and there were definitely a few times I might have pressed the button. Maybe they don't want Earth saved after all. Maybe they're messing with my head. They want to see if I'll break under the pressure. Maybe the world isn't going to end, and I'll spend January 29 waiting for an apocalypse that won't come.

Diego sent me a couple of texts, left some messages, but I deleted them unanswered and unread. I'm not sure I did the right thing, breaking up with him. I'm not sure we were ever actually a couple. I'd seen him naked and he'd seen me, so we were more than friends; I just don't know what
more
actually means. I wasn't kidding when I told him I loved him. Somewhere between his bursting into my chemistry class and punching his knuckles bloody on his steering wheel, I fell in love with Diego Vega.

As human beings, we seek meaning in everything. We're so good at discovering patterns that we see them where they don't exist. One summer my parents sent me and Charlie to stay with our uncle Joe in Seattle. I had to share a room with Charlie, and his snoring kept me from sleeping. Uncle Joe gave me a white-noise machine. When it was time for bed, I fired it up and listened to the static. It was nice at first—like crumpling paper or a fly's endlessly buzzing wings—but after a while, I began to hear things in the noise. Random words or bits of music repeating. I woke up Charlie and made him listen, convinced I'd discovered a secret message left by spies, but he punched me and went back to sleep. Once I heard the pattern, I couldn't stop hearing it, and I spent the rest of the summer looking and listening for patterns in other random sources—the wind, clothes tumbling in the dryer. I even pulled out one of Uncle Joe's old television sets to watch the snow.

We look for the same patterns in our lives to give them meaning. When someone says, “Everything happens for a reason,” they're trying to convince you there's a pattern to your life, and that if you pay close attention, it's possible to decipher it. If my mom hadn't packed my lunch on 18 September 2013, I wouldn't have gotten to the cafeteria early and sat at a table that belonged to a group of seniors, which included my brother. Charlie wouldn't have stolen my lunch, and I wouldn't have been forced to buy something to eat and sit at another table on the other side of the cafeteria. Jesse never would have seen me, and we wouldn't have met. We wouldn't have dated, fallen in love, and Jesse's suicide wouldn't have destroyed me. I wouldn't have gone to the boys' room to cry and run into Marcus on his way out. Marcus and I wouldn't have started fooling around, and I wouldn't have gone to his party to prove that I could. I wouldn't have bumped into Diego and gotten to know him, and we wouldn't have fallen for each other. A person who believed in patterns might be tempted to believe Diego and I were fated to meet.

Only, it wasn't fate. It wasn't destiny. And it certainly wasn't God. It was chance. A random series of events given meaning by someone desperate to prove there's a design to our lives. That the minutes and hours between our birth and death are more than frantic moments of chaos. Because if that's all they are—if there are no rules governing our lives—then our entire existence is a meaningless farce.

If Jesse didn't have a reason for hanging himself, then his death was pointless. And if Jesse died for nothing, how can I live for anything?

  •  •  •  

The doorbell rang, but I didn't move. Mom was somewhere in the house; she could answer the door. I was inert, still in my school clothes, lying on top of my sheets, dozing in a transitory space between asleep and awake. My skin was moist, but I was too lazy to crank up the fan. I must have drifted off, because I didn't hear my mom calling my name until she was standing over my bed, shaking me.

“Henry, wake up.”

“What?”

“There's someone here to see you.” She hesitated in a way that made me think it was Diego. I hadn't told her we'd broken up or whatever, but she wasn't stupid, either.

“I'll be out in a minute.” Mom left. I got a whiff of my pits, slapped on some deodorant, and changed into something less pungent. I wasn't sure what was left to say to Diego. Nothing had changed. If he stayed with me, he'd end up hurting someone, and I didn't want him to spend the last days of Earth behind bars. But I missed him. I missed his goofy smile and his stupid jokes and how he blushed when his stomach gurgled. I wasn't sure if I could see him and hang on to my resolve.

As it turned out, I didn't have to worry.

Mrs. Franklin sat at the dining room table with my mom. She looked out of place in our house, like finding a van Gogh displayed amongst an army of Thomas Kinkades. Even dressed in a simple outfit of shorts and a blouse, she radiated refinement. A crispness that my mother, in her shabby clothes, could never match.

I thought she must have come to confront me about breaking into her house, and that cops would surely be busting down my door any moment, but I resisted the urge to panic. If police were on their way, freaking out wouldn't help. “Hi, Mrs. Franklin.”