pit and buried it with a shovel, carefully planting nettles and sow thistle in the
freshly tossed dirt so they would grow and conceal the tank. He whistled “I
Feel Pretty” from West Side Story while he shoveled. His hat was tipped back
on his head, and he wore a brilliant smile. “We’ll be the only ones with fuel
when The End comes,” he said. “We’ll be driving when everyone else is
hotfooting it. We’ll even make a run down to Utah, to fetch Tyler.”
I had rehearsals most nights at the Worm Creek Opera House, a dilapidated
theater near the only stoplight in town. The play was another world. Nobody
talked about Y2K.
The interactions between people at Worm Creek were not at all what I was
used to in my family. Of course I’d spent time with people outside my
family, but they were like us: women who’d hired Mother to midwife their
babies, or who came to her for herbs because they didn’t believe in the
Medical Establishment. I had a single friend, named Jessica. A few years
before, Dad had convinced her parents, Rob and Diane, that public schools
were little more than Government propaganda programs, and since then they
had kept her at home. Before her parents had pulled Jessica from school, she
was one of them, and I never tried to talk to her; but after, she was one of us.
The normal kids stopped including her, and she was left with me.
I’d never learned how to talk to people who weren’t like us—people who
went to school and visited the doctor. Who weren’t preparing, every day, for
the End of the World. Worm Creek was full of these people, people whose
words seemed ripped from another reality. That was how it felt the first time
the director spoke to me, like he was speaking from another dimension. All
he said was, “Go find FDR.” I didn’t move.
He tried again. “President Roosevelt. FDR.”
“Is that like a JCB?” I said. “You need a forklift?”
Everyone laughed.
I’d memorized all my lines, but at rehearsals I sat alone, pretending to
study my black binder. When it was my turn onstage, I would recite my lines
loudly and without hesitation. That made me feel a kind of confidence. If I
didn’t have anything to say, at least Annie did.
A week before opening night, Mother dyed my brown hair cherry red. The
director said it was perfect, that all I needed now was to finish my costumes
before the dress rehearsal on Saturday.