After the End

Ten minutes later, we’re in the car. I turn the key in the ignition, and the engine fires right up. I glance over at Juneau and lift an eyebrow, impressed.

“Dry spark plugs,” Juneau says, looking proud of herself.

I turn the car around and begin driving down the dirt path toward the main road. “So if you used water on the spark plugs, what did you use to fry my phone?” I ask.

“Fire,” she replies. “It’s fu

“I am guessing you can’t reverse that,” I say, nodding to my iPhone under the dashboard.

“Nope,” she confirms, tapping it with her fingernail. “As amusing as it is to watch you play with it, you might as well throw it out.”

A half hour later we sit in a booth at Ruth’s Diner, eating stacks of buttermilk pancakes smothered in strawberries. Juneau’s actually drinking a coffee, although she’s transformed it into tan-colored sludge by adding almost a whole carton of half-and-half. She grimaces as she takes a swig.

“You don’t have to drink coffee,” I say. “Some people drink tea for breakfast. I mean, no one I know, but . . .”

“Trying to integrate,” she says, one eye narrowed and her nose wrinkled in distaste. But I can tell her mind isn’t on our breakfast beverages. Her thoughts are miles away. She sits there, zoned out for a moment, and then shakes her head.

“I just can’t stop thinking about how the elders could lie to their own children for all those years.”

“Instead of asking how, maybe you should ask why,” I say. “I imagine that your elders were good people, and if they lied to you, there must be a reason.”

“I’ve gone over so many scenarios in my mind already,” she admits. “Their conviction about the harm that mankind is doing to the earth makes sense. I mean it’s well founded. But why not just move us out to the middle of nowhere and tell us that’s the reason? Why make up such an elaborate lie?”

“They didn’t want you to leave,” I suggest. “If they kept you in that small area of the country, they must have had a motive for why they didn’t want you to come into contact with the rest of society. Like fear of persecution. Or a secret they felt they have to hide. And both of those could be reasons they would be kidnapped. Although kidnapping dozens of people is kind of extreme.”

“The lies they told were pretty extreme too.”

“True.”

We both fall silent but something is nagging at me—pulling on the corner of my mind. “Okay,” I say finally. “Why don’t we start with something obvious? Like your ‘starburst,’ as you call it. Tell me more about that.”

“All the children in our clan have them. They show our closeness to the Yara.”

“But the elders are supposed to be near the Yara too, and they don’t have them, do they?”

“No,” she answers. “Their explanation was that we were the first generation of children to be born with complete immersion in the Yara. Children of Gaia—of the earth. They were all practicing it when they arrived in Alaska. And we were brought up knowing nothing else.”

“Does that actually make sense to you?” I say, as gently as I can. Because it sounds like a total crock of shit to me.

“Now that I’m explaining it to you, and knowing that the elders lied about other things, no. It doesn’t make sense. We just trusted that explanation because . . . why would we question something they told us?”

“If every single child born into the clan has the eye starburst, maybe your parents and their friends were all exposed to something in Alaska. Like radiation, or something in the water. But that’s still strange, because why would they lie to you about it? I would think they’d try to figure out what happened and call it what it is: a genetic mutation.” I hear the words come out of my mouth and then drop my fork and reach forward to grab her hand. “I mean, a nice genetic mutation, of course, not like you’re freakish or anything.”

She smiles halfheartedly and puts her other hand on mine to show she’s not upset, before pulling her hands back to her lap.

“Is there anything else that is different about you?” I ask, picking up a piece of crispy bacon and biting off a big, greasy chunk.

“I’ve told you before, but you didn’t believe me.”

“Well, tell me again. Before, I was an ass. Now . . . well, I’m still an ass, but an ass who is willing to learn.”

“Miles, we don’t get sick. And we don’t age.”

I draw in a sharp breath, inhaling a chunk of bacon down my windpipe, and it takes me a couple of minutes and a glass of water to cough it back up and start breathing normally again. “I remember you saying that before,” I finally squeak. “But at that point I thought you were schizophrenic. Could you repeat that?”

“We don’t get sick. And we don’t age.”

“What do you mean, you don’t age?”

“We grow to adulthood and then just don’t get any older.”

“And no disease?” I ask.

“No. I mean, people break bones and that kind of thing. It’s not like we’re supernatural. But we don’t get ill.”

I hesitate, and Juneau reads the question in my eyes. “My mother died when her sled broke through lake ice,” she says, and looks down at the table.

I nod and wish I were sitting in the booth beside her so that I could hug her. From the lonely look on her face, I think she’d let me. “So I’m guessing the elders explained this immunity to disease and death by telling you it’s from being close to the Yara,” I say.

She doesn’t answer.

And suddenly everything falls together in my mind. The realization of what this is all about hits me like a head-on collision. “Juneau,” I say, and the urgency in my voice makes her look up at me. “I think we’re getting somewhere with the ‘Why were they kidnapped?’ question. Don’t get sick and don’t age? Who wouldn’t want some of that? My dad, for one, obviously.”

“But it’s not a drug, like you said he was looking for. It’s a whole way of being. Of living.” Juneau looks upset. Like reality is becoming clear to her as well.

“Living out in nature has nothing to do with health and aging,” I prod.

“No? Eating well doesn’t make you live longer? Clean air and water and growing and killing your own food doesn’t make for better health?” Her voice is defensive, but her expression is pleading. She’s still holding on to the “truth” she’s been taught.

“Of course it does,” I concede. “But Juneau, one generation of healthy living doesn’t wipe out disease, and definitely doesn’t make you immortal. That is where your logical thinking stops and brainwashing kicks in.”

Her eyes get all glittery, and she looks like she’s about to cry. She closes her eyes and clenches her jaw. “I don’t feel like talking about it anymore.”

“That’s okay. That’s fine,” I say, and fishing for something to change the subject, I say, “Hey. What about the riddle you hadn’t figured out? What was it anyway?”

Juneau takes a deep breath and looks grateful for the switch in topic. “Your exact words were, ‘You will go to the place you always dreamed of as a child.’”

“And?”

She shakes her head and begins playing with her napkin, folding it over and over into smaller and smaller squares. “It’s impossible to figure out. I dreamed of going just about everywhere as a child. Except Salt Lake City, that is.”

“Well, if under-the-influence me made the prophecy about the serpent and the lake, it must be a specific place here in Salt Lake City. Why don’t we drive around and see if anything jogs your memory?”

“Good idea,” Juneau says, and plops her origami napkin in the middle of the lake of maple syrup on her plate before standing to leave.

When we get to the car, she turns to me and in her solemn, grown-up way says, “Hey, Miles?”

“Yes, Juneau?” I respond.

“Thank you. For believing me. For wanting to help.” Her lips curve into a smile and her eyes crinkle, and I want to hug her so badly my arms ache. But she turns and opens her door. As she gets in she looks at me and says, “Just . . . thanks.”