The Girl at the End of the World Read Free

sounds and the chaos rushed back into place as though a floodgate had just been opened and water was pouring through the channels it had been kept from.
    A second or two later, there was another popping sound and I expected to see more blood, but there was nothing. People gasped. And then what appeared to be a cloud of dust rose into the air around the stricken man. Some people nearby knocked others down to get away from the scene. More people turned away. More people yelled.
    As for me, I think I was in shock. I could say or do nothing. I just stared.
    And then I was moving, my feet shuffling forward without my thinking about it. My dad had grabbed me by the shoulders and started pulling me toward the aisle. Confused, I looked past him, wondering what had happened to my brothers and step-mom. They were already in the aisle. Angie was hustling them away, trying to shield the boys from looking back at the spectacle of the dead man in the aisle.
    My dad’s grip on my shoulders felt as tight as that seatbelt had in the accident. He wouldn’t let me slow down, wouldn’t let me turn to get another look. I wanted to tell him I was okay, but words wouldn’t come—like in a dream where you want to scream, where you have to scream, and no sound at all will rise from your throat.
    I felt numb as he pulled me up the steps and toward an exit, barely noticing the people running past us, some in uniforms, others not. And all the shouting. Maybe something else had happened down on the field. I don’t know. I never found out.
    I think I came close to passing out then. I found out later that a lot of people had fainted at the sight of the dying man and what happened to him there in the aisle. I felt all the blood leave my head, and for a few seconds I was dizzy and nauseous. I stumbled, but my dad had me so tight that I didn’t come close to hitting the ground. He just held me, half pulling and half dragging me.
    I don’t remember leaving the stadium. It’s funny that I’d remember everything but that. Maybe I did pass out. Maybe my dad had to carry me part of the way.
    All I know is that when we got to the car and I piled into the back seat with my brothers, I put on the safety belt and then started crying inconsolably. My tears were contagious, or maybe frightening. At any rate, my brothers were crying too. My step-mom hit the gas, and we left Dodger Stadium behind forever.

Chapter Two
     
    Someday, when all the electricity comes back on again and people rediscover all the technology that’s been lost, someone is going to find a way to tap into all the servers that held all the data from cell phones and emails and texts, and everything that was broadcast on TV and streamed on the web.
    It’s embarrassing to think about that as our legacy. All the stupid junk that people wrote about and fought about and scandalized each other over. I actually hope it never gets dug up again, that it’s the part that gets forgotten by future archaeologists or is irrecoverable and has to remain one of the mysteries of a lost civilization. Because we were really ridiculous.
    I was just as guilty as everyone else. That day, my mom had forbidden me from taking my phone to the game— quality time with your father , she’d said. That had been the only reason I hadn’t pulled my phone out at the stadium to text my friends about how bored I was by the game or how I wished I could be doing something different with my birthday.
    And I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I’d had a phone in my hand when the man two rows down started yelling about the foul ball. Or what I would have done afterwards. Would I have filmed it? I’d like to think not. That may not have been the case, though.
    At any rate, several dozen people who’d been in the same part of the stadium didn’t second guess themselves when the man had his attack, and none of them had mothers who’d made them leave their phones at home.
    I’m sure that within minutes of the