The Long List Anthology Volume 4 Page 4

  “Did they disown you for being trans?” I asked.

  “No, they disowned me for leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses and majoring in Theater and then when I came out as gay that would definitely have been the last straw, only they hadn’t spoken to me in years already at that point. Robin is actually my birth name, but I changed my last name after that. My last name is Raianiemi. It was the last name of one of my neighbors. The only lesbian in the town where I grew up.”

  I couldn’t really answer that at all. Patty had refilled my coffee again so I put the mug up where it sort of hid my face and drank coffee.

  “My second Armageddon was when I almost died from a mysterious infection about a decade ago,” Robin said. “I was in the hospital and they were giving me IV antibiotics but I wasn’t responding and they thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die.”

  “I feel like calling that an Armageddon is kind of cheating,” Michael said. “You thought you were going to die. But in an Armageddon, everyone dies.”

  “I really think the biggest difference is the level of hassle,” Robin said. “Each individual thinks they’re going to die. The problem is that when it’s everybody, this means huge numbers of people don’t show up for work, so everyone runs out of gas just as they’re trying to make road trips to see loved ones or visit Yellowstone or whatever.”

  “Did they ever figure out what you had?” I asked.

  “Enough that they were able to treat me. But I spent a few days thinking about what I’d most regret, if I died that week, and I knew the thing I’d really regret was never living as my real self. Never living as a woman. The thing was, I had a partner — that’s what we called our spouses before we could get legally married, I don’t know if kids these days remember that — and I had no idea how he would react and he was the love of my life. Coming out the first time, as gay, that was scary. Coming out the second time, as trans? Made me realize just how much scarier it could be.”

  “But it was okay. Don’t forget to tell her that part,” Michael said, and squeezed Robin’s hand.

  “Yeah, it was all okay. Anyway, once you’ve survived Armageddon twice, a third one rolls around and you say to yourself, ‘What would I like to see in case this is it?’ and we knew we could get to Yellowstone so we gave all our nieces and nephews a big hug and hit the road.”

  I’d eaten the last of my pancakes and my coffee cup was empty. Patty hadn’t been by in a while.

  “We really thought we’d be able to find gas, though,” Michael said. “If we stuck to the back roads…”

  “That was my theory, too,” I said. “It worked at first.”

  “So where are you headed?” Robin asked.

  “Pierre,” I said. “It’s where my parents live.”

  “Do they know you’re coming?”

  It was an odd question, and I knew I’d betrayed myself, listening to her story. “No,” I said. It came out in a whisper.

  “When was the last time you and them talked at all?”

  “After I graduated college, they were really mad that I wasn’t going to move back home.”

  “That was all it took, huh?” Robin asked.

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of other stuff they’d be mad about, but they just don’t even know about it, unless someone’s told them. Which maybe someone has.”

  “Listen,” Robin said. “There are a lot of people who will tell you that you have to reconcile with your family, that you only get one, that if you never speak to your parents again this is somehow on you, and I am here to tell you that this is crap. You don’t have to reconcile with your family. You can find a family that accepts you for who you are instead of trying to cram you into the box they think you’re supposed to live in. And if they choose to reject you, that’s on them.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  Robin pulled some Kleenex out of her purse and handed it to me. I wiped my eyes and looked out the window at the sunny afternoon.

  “Just cause they raised you, that doesn’t mean you have to give them the opportunity to slam another door in your face,” she said.

  “I didn’t have anyone else to go see,” I said. “My girlf—” I choked off the word, then checked myself. “My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago and none of my friends out there are super close. I moved to Spokane for a job and I kind of hate it and I thought, ‘I should go see my family’ and so I went.”

  I had felt so alone, listening to the news in my little apartment. And I’d tried calling home, and they hadn’t picked up. So like everyone else, I’d blown off work and hit the road.

  What would I regret? “I would regret not reconciling with my family” seemed like an obvious answer, so I’d decided to try.

  “Did you pass through Yellowstone on your way east?” Michael asked.

  “No,” I said. “Even if I’d taken I-90 I’d have passed north of it.”

  “Want to come see Yellowstone with us?” Robin asked. “It has Old Faithful.”

  “And a Supervolcano that could blow up at any time,” Michael said. “So even if the asteroid misses us completely we could still potentially die in a cataclysmic disaster today!”

  “You can still say no,” Robin said, “because we’re going to have to go door-knocking to try to find gas. You be the cute kid and we’ll split whatever we can find.”

  • • • •

  Robin was being generous, because Michael’s plan was to offer cash — $10/gallon for whatever they’d let him siphon out, and if they balked at that, he’d try upping it to $20. We walked around Belle Fourche, knocking on doors. Mostly no one answered. We did find one person who was also out of gas, which was the only reason she was still in Belle Fourche and not on her way to Cheyenne, Wyoming to see her granddaughter, and someone who had a full tank but flat-out refused to sell us any. (“Bank notes won’t be worth a damn thing if that asteroid hits. I need a full tank to get out of here, if I have to.”)

  “I think we’re stuck here,” Robin said, after we’d been knocking on doors for ninety minutes with no luck.

  “That’s not the attitude that got you theater jobs,” Michael said.

  “I’ll be honest. At this point, I’m thinking that what I’d like to do with my maybe-last-day-on-earth is not knock on doors all afternoon. Let’s see the local sights, if there are any.”

  Belle Fourche’s big thing, if you can call it that, is the Geographic Center of the United States, which was recalculated by the National Geodetic Survey after the addition of Alaska and Hawaii. (The center of the lower 48 is in Kansas, which is probably about where you’d expect it.) The actual technical true Geographic Center is about twenty miles out of town, but there was a Monument with a nice sculpture a mile walk from Patty’s Place, so we walked over to the Center of the Nation Monument and I took a picture of Robin and Michael together, and then they took a picture of me.

  One of the parks had a playground and there were some families there with kids and dogs. I wondered if the kids knew anything about what was going on. Even if their parents didn’t tell them about it, they were probably overhearing stuff from the TV and the radio. Still, they were running around and looking like they weren’t worrying about it.

  Robin and Michael decided to book a room at the Super 8 and encouraged me to book one, too. “When we don’t all die, everyone’s going to think, ‘oops, didn’t die, better find a room,’ and you’ll be glad you have one. And if we do all die, you won’t have to pay your Visa bill.” There was an older man working the front desk; I wondered if he was the owner, like Patty. He gave us our keys. I tucked mine in my pocket and then, for lack of anywhere else to go, we walked back across the street to Patty’s.

  • • • •

  Patty’s had gotten more crowded; people were getting tables and just camping out there. But there was an awkward little table for three in a corner she squeezed us into and we ordered more drinks and more food and settled in. “Probably for the duration,” Robin admitted.

&nbs
p; “A lot of people are doing that,” Patty said, looking around. “I’d say it’s about half people like you who got stranded here today when they ran out of gas, and half locals who don’t want to sit at home. People were coming and going for a while but now they’re just coming. No one wants to be alone tonight, I guess.”

  The asteroid was going to hit, or miss, at 9:34 p.m. Belle Fourche time. It took a little over 3 hours to drive from Belle Fourche to Pierre, so as the clock ticked toward 6 p.m., I knew my decision had more or less been made for me.

  But then Patty came bustling over, an older couple in tow. “Are you the girl who was trying to get to Pierre? Because these folks are going to Pierre to see their daughter and they have enough gas they’ll probably make it, they think.”

  “As long as you don’t mind dogs,” the woman said, “Because you’ll have to share the back seat with our two beagles.”

  “What’s the address in Pierre?” the man asked, and punched my parents’ address into his phone. “Yeah, that’s almost right on our way.”

  I imagined knocking on my parents’ door. Waiting for the answer, like we’d done with all the people we’d tried to buy gas from. My parents’ house had a peephole, and you could hear their footsteps inside so you knew they’d come to the door and were peering out at you, deciding whether to open up. I’d know Mom was looking at me, measuring me with her eyes, looking at my short-cropped hair, the frayed collar of my shirt, assessing whether I was penitent. Penitent enough.

  I could see myself standing on that front step, in the dark, these nice people waiting to see me safe inside, until I had to turn around and admit it wasn’t going to open.

  Or if it did…

  What I wanted was to see my parents smile. What I wanted was for them to welcome me.

  Did I really think that news of an impending asteroid would have changed who my parents were? Who they needed me to be?

  I turned and looked at Robin and Michael. They gave me hesitant smiles, like they didn’t want to discourage me from leaving, but like they were biting their tongues. I could see Robin furrow her brow, like she was imagining the same things I was and they worried her.

  I turned back to the people with the beagles. “No, thank you,” I said. “That’s a very kind offer, but I thought about it and I’ve decided to stay here for the night. Thanks, though.”

  They headed out. I settled back into my seat. Robin said, “I’m glad you’re staying.”

  “I’m glad I have someone to stay with,” I said.

  • • • •

  At 9 p.m. everyone went outside to the parking lot.

  It was dark out. Someone from the town had dragged out a box of fireworks left over from last year’s 4th of July and everyone took turns lighting them off, including me. (Mom had never let us have fireworks when I was a kid, because we might blow ourselves up, but if there was ever a time for YOLO, it’s when there’s a 4.3 kilometer asteroid on a collision course for earth.) Some of the stale fireworks fizzled and went out. Others shot up into the sky and gave us a shower of sparkles. Despite how nervous everyone was, things took on a weird, almost festive air. Maybe we were all going to die in a few minutes: might as well enjoy the show until then.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to see anything before it hits us?” I asked. “What’s it going to look like?”

  “One of the scientists on the TV said it would look like a tiny star and get bigger, if it was coming towards us. We’ll definitely see it coming. But it could hit the other side of the planet, and we’ll have no clue.”

  At 9:34, someone shouted, “There it is.”

  We could see something moving in the sky. It wasn’t very big, but it was definitely moving. Was it getting bigger? I realized I was holding my breath. For a second I thought it was getting bigger; a moment later I was sure it wasn’t. The slightly-bigger-than-average, slightly-blurry star moved across the sky and disappeared.

  There was a long pause, and then we ran back inside the restaurant to see what they were saying on CNN.

  The optimistic scientist Shjefte was either back on, or still on. He was jumping up and down — literally jumping up and down, clapping his hands — screaming “it missed, it missed, it missed, it missed, it missed!” So apparently all his optimistic talk about throwing pennies onto a football field was bravado. “I’m going to call all my friends, I’m going to write a book, I’m going to go see Petra,” he shouted, just before the TV got turned off.

  We could hear cheering from the town beyond the restaurant, and more people were setting off fireworks. Robin and Michael kissed like it was New Year’s Eve. Someone at the diner had chilled a bunch of bottles of champagne and Patty popped it open, and everyone drank it out of coffee mugs, and we were all a weepy mess for a while.

  And then there was a run on hotel rooms, and I was awfully glad that Robin and Michael had suggested I get one early.

  • • • •

  “Are you going back to Spokane?”

  The gas truck had come and gone: we’d waited until the line had dissipated, then filled up both our gas tanks. I must have been down to about the last quarter-cup, given how much gas I put in.

  I looked at Robin. “You know, I thought about how one of the things I’d really regret, if I died, was never seeing New York. My parents acted like it was some sort of den of sin and iniquity when I was growing up, but they were wrong about a lot.”

  “So wait, are you going to hit the road and drive the rest of the way east?”

  I laughed. “I kind of think I should go home and pack up my stuff, give notice on my lease, stuff like that. But I expect I’ll be coming back this way in a few months.”

  “Well, let me give you our address,” Robin said. “You can stay with us when you get to Minneapolis.”

  “This is kind of silly,” I said, “but do you mind going back to the Center of the Nation Monument for a minute?”

  Someone else was there, so I didn’t have to snap a selfie to get a picture of myself with Robin and Michael; they took it for me.

  The road west was wide open, and I listened to music my parents would have hated the whole way back to Spokane.

  * * *

  Naomi Kritzer has been writing science fiction and fantasy for twenty years. Her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the 2016 Hugo and Locus Awards and was nominated for the Nebula Award. A collection of her short stories was released in 2017, and her YA novel, CATFISHING ON CATNET (which is based on “Cat Pictures Please”) will be coming out from Tor in November 2019. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her spouse, two kids, and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.

  Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue

  By Charlie Jane Anders

  The intake process begins with dismantling her personal space, one mantle at a time. Her shoes, left by the side of the road where the Go Team plucked her out of them. Her purse and satchel, her computer containing all of her artwork and her manifestos, thrown into a metal garbage can at a rest area on the highway, miles away. That purse, which she swung to and fro on the sidewalks to clear a path, like a southern grandma, now has food waste piled on it, and eventually will be chewed to shreds by raccoons. At some point the intake personnel fold her, like a folding chair that turns into an almost two-dimensional object, and they stuff her into a kennel, in spite of all her attempts to resist. Later she receives her first injection and loses any power to struggle, and some time after, control over her excretory functions. By the time they cut her clothes off, a layer of muck coats the backs of her thighs. They clean her and dress her in something that is not clothing, and they shave part of her head. At some point, Rachel glimpses a power drill, like a handyman’s, but she’s anesthetized and does not feel where it goes.

  Rachel has a whole library of ways to get through this, none of which works at all. She spent a couple years meditating, did a whole course on trauma and self-preservation, and had an elaborate theory about how to carve out a space
in your mind that they cannot touch, whatever they are doing to you. She remembers the things she used to tell everyone else in the support group, in the Safe Space, about not being alone even when you have become isolated by outside circumstances. But in the end, Rachel’s only coping mechanism is dissociation, which arises from total animal panic. She’s not even Rachel anymore, she’s just a screaming blubbering mess, with a tiny kernel of her mind left, trapped a few feet above her body, in a process that is not at all like yogic flying.

  Eventually, though, the intake is concluded, and Rachel is left staring up at a Styrofoam ceiling with a pattern of cracks that looks like a giant spider or an angry demon face descending toward her. She’s aware of being numb from extreme cold in addition to the other ways in which she is numb, and the air conditioner keeps blurting into life with an aggravated whine. A stereo system plays a CD by that white rock-rap artist who turned out to be an especially stupid racist. The staff keep walking past her and talking about her in the third person, while misrepresenting basic facts about her, such as her name and her personal pronoun. Occasionally they adjust something about her position or drug regimen without speaking to her or looking at her face. She does not quite have enough motor control to scream or make any sound other than a kind of low ululation. She realizes at some point that someone has made a tiny hole in the base of her skull, where she now feels a mild ache.

  Before you feel too sorry for Rachel, however, you should be aware that she’s a person who holds a great many controversial views. For example, she once claimed to disapprove of hot chocolate, because she believes that chocolate is better at room temperature, or better yet as a component of ice cream or some other frozen dessert. In addition, Rachel considers ZZ Top an underappreciated music group, supports karaoke only in an alcohol-free environment, dislikes puppies, enjoys Brussels sprouts, and rides a bicycle with no helmet. She claims to prefer the Star Wars prequels to the Disney Star Wars films. Is Rachel a contrarian, a freethinker, or just kind of an asshole? If you could ask her, she would reply that opinions are a utility in and of themselves. That is, the holding of opinions is a worthwhile exercise per se, and the greater diversity of opinions in the world, the more robust our collective ability to argue.