But I could barely hear this. I was just watching my mother, the way she was staring at them, her judgment so clear on her face. From Delia’s chaotic business practices to Kristy’s scars to Wes’s past, it was clear they were far from flawless.

“He’s the boy you were with the other night, correct?” she asked.

“What?” I asked.

She looked at me, her face stern, as if I was talking back, which I wasn’t. “The other night,” she repeated, enunciating the words, “when I came home and you were outside with someone. In a truck. Was that him?”

“Um,” I said, “yeah, I guess it was. He just gave me a ride.” And here I’d thought she’d hardly noticed us. But now, as I watched her looking at Wes, I knew this was one more thing she would hold against me. “It’s not what you think. He’s a nice guy, Mom.”

“When the show is over,” she said, as if I hadn’t even said this, “they leave. Understood?”

I nodded, and she stuck the folder under her arm as I headed back through the kitchen, toward the living room. I was almost there when I heard her call after me.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, her voice loud and clear. “Jason called. He’s going to be in town for the weekend.”

“He did?” I said. “He is?”

“His grandmother’s taken ill, apparently,” she said. “So he’s coming down for the weekend. He said to tell you he gets in around noon, and he’ll see you at the library.”

I just stood there, trying to process this information, as she turned and headed back to her office. Jason was coming home. And of course my mother had felt it necessary to announce this out loud, in front of everyone—especially Wes—while so much of our other business had been conducted in private. She’d told me she wanted me back on track: this was one way of nudging me there.

When I walked into the living room, the announcer on the TV was talking about the mega-tsunami, describing in detail how all it would take was one volcano blowing to set off the chain reaction of events that would end with that big wave crashing over our extended coastline. What other proof, I thought, did you need that life was short. That volcano could already be rumbling, magma bubbling up, pressure building to an inevitable, irrevocable burst.

Kristy scooted over on the wide arm of the oversized chair, making a space for me between herself and Wes, who was studying the screen intently. He didn’t say anything as I sat down, and I wondered if he’d heard my mother say Jason was coming home. Not that it mattered. We were just friends, after all.

“Everything okay?” Kristy asked me, and I nodded, my eyes on the TV, which was showing a computer simulation of the mega-wave. There was the volcano blowing, there was the land falling into the ocean, all of these events that led up to this one, huge After as the wave rose up and began to move across the ocean, crossing the space between Africa and where we were. All I could think was that right there, in every passing second, was the future winding itself down. Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.

Chapter Fourteen

The next day, I woke up in the mother of all bad moods. I’d tossed and turned all night, having one bad dream after another. But the last one was the worst.

In it, I’d been walking down the sidewalk outside of the library during my lunch break, carrying my sandwich, and a car pulled up beside me, beeping its horn. When I turned my head, I saw my dad was behind the wheel. He motioned for me to get in, but when I reached for the door handle the car suddenly lurched forward, tires squealing. My dad kept looking back at me, and I could tell that he was scared, but there was nothing I could do as it headed into the intersection, which was filling up with cars from all directions. In my dream, I started to run, and it felt so real: the little catch I always felt in my ankle right after a start, that certain feeling that I’d never get my pace right. Each time I got close to my dad, he’d slip out of my reach, and everything I grabbed thinking it was the car or a part of the car slipped through my hands.

I woke up gasping, my sheets tangled around my legs. Unfurling them slowly, I could feel my pulse banging in my wrist as I struggled to calm down. Not a good start, I thought.

My mother was on the phone as I came into the kitchen, dealing with some last-minute details for the Wildflower Ridge Independence Day Picnic and Parade she’d been planning for weeks now. After my shift at the library, which was open special holiday hours until one, I was supposed to be there at the neighborhood information table, to smile and answer any and all questions. Even if I had gotten a good night’s sleep—or any sleep at all—it would have been a long day. Now, with Jason and everything else still to get through before that even began, it felt like there was no way for it to be anything but positively endless.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, forcing down some cheese grits and trying not to think about it, when my mother hung up the phone and came over to sit beside me, her coffee in hand. “So,” she said, “I think we should talk about last night.”

I put my spoon down in my bowl. “Okay,” I said.

She took a breath. “I’ve already conveyed to you—”

And then the phone rang. She got up, pushing out her chair, and crossed the kitchen, picking it up on the second ring.

“Deborah Queen,” she said. She listened for a second, turning her back to me. “Yes. Oh, wonderful. Yes. Three-thirty at the latest, please. Thanks so much.” She hung up the phone, jotting something down, then came back over to her chair. “Sorry about that,” she said, picking up her coffee cup and taking a sip. “As I was saying, we’ve already discussed my unhappiness with some recent changes I’ve noticed in you. And last night, it seemed that some of my concerns were well founded.”