The Girl at the End of the World Read Free Page A

incident, people had begun uploading their videos to the web. By eight o’clock it was on the local news, preceded by warnings from the newscasters that what they were about to show was extremely graphic and might be disturbing to younger viewers.
    Like they cared.
    My step-mom had driven me back to my mom’s straight from the stadium, the boys and I silent in the backseat while my dad called my mom to tell her we were on our way. I could tell she was giving him the third degree, trying to figure out why were coming back so soon, but he didn’t want to tell her over the phone, didn’t want us to be reminded in the backseat of what we’d just seen and couldn’t shake no matter how understated he tried to make everything sound. In the end, he lost it and shouted at her. “Damn it, Deena! Will you just believe me when I say Scarlett’s fine—no, we’re ALL fine—and just let me explain when I get there? Okay?”
    I wanted to yell back at him, to tell him to leave her alone, that it wasn’t her fault. But I kept quiet. Mostly because I wasn’t fine. I sat in the back of that car with Randy and Mike, and I trembled, squeezing Randy’s hand—something I’d never done before—and feeling for the first time like they were my real brothers, not half, not living reminders of the divorce. I probably would have held anybody’s hand just then, just to feel someone else alive and near me.
    When we got home, I ran past my mother without a word, straight to the bathroom and threw up. I hadn’t had any clue that it was going to happen, but the instant I walked in the door there was no question. Over the sound of running water, I could hear raised voices in the living room and then silence.
    By the time I came out of the bathroom, my hair now pulled back in a loose ponytail and feeling almost normal for the first time in an hour, I saw my dad standing in the open doorway, my mom a few feet away. He just stared at me, trying to look reassuring. My mom turned, her hand up over her mouth and tears in her eyes. Then she ran to me and threw her arms around me and squeezed, pulling my face into her shoulder as I squeezed back.
    My dad left a few minutes later after giving me another hug, shorter than my mom’s, somehow awkward now in this house. Then, hesitantly, he hugged my mom, too, just briefly. When he stepped away from her, he gave this funny little wave he always had when he didn’t know what else to say, and he was out the door.
    I watched through the window as the car pulled away, my two little half-brothers’ heads barely high enough to be visible in the backseat. Seeing them go made me feel suddenly worse again. I wouldn’t have been able to say why.
    Neither my phone nor the computer could pull me out of my mood, so I didn’t touch either one—just sat on the couch with my mom while she fretted over me, not thinking at all about checking my Facebook or texts for birthday messages or any other distraction. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to talk.
    After a while, my mom said I should get a shower. It helped.
    By the time I went back downstairs, dressed now in loose shorts and a soft old t-shirt, Anna had gotten home from her part-time job, got the short version of what had happened, and turned on the TV.
    The incident at Dodger Stadium was on every local channel.
    At first, I didn’t want to see, but after they’d shown it a dozen times from different angles, I got used to it, kind of numb to it. It was like watching a video of one of your nightmares, inexplicably captured in more detail than you could have remembered and at more angles than you’d have thought possible. The newscast blurred out the most gruesome parts, but that didn’t help me any; my memory filled those parts in without me even trying. Blocking those images wasn’t even an option. I saw the details so vividly in my mind’s eye that now, even though I know the real images were blurred out, when I play that night back in my memory, I