The Girl Who Knew

I wake up, and I know. 

My parents think I’m crazy, and dramatic, and lie for attention. I can’t tell you how many times they roll their eyes when I say, “I just know.” 

I think they don’t want me to know. They want a normal, happy daughter, who doesn’t claim to predict things. They want another daughter like my sister, with her brilliant grades and motivations that align with theirs. 

It seems like a normal Tuesday, at first. I wake up, and the thought is instantly in my head, as it usually is when I have a prediction. 

The world is going to end today. 

Needless to say, it isn’t a comforting bit of clarity. I can admit that they never are—but this one, in particular, throws me for a loop. 

What does one do, when they know the world is going to end? They don’t know how, or when—just sometime that day—and there is nothing they can do to prevent it. 

Do they warn people? Do they live life like always? 

It’s May of my senior year in high school, and it may seem silly, but one of the first things I think of when I know the world is going to end—I’m not going to graduate. 

I lay there, trying to absorb this information. My room is chilly—I tend to sleep with the window open, even though spring in the mountains is late coming. The sun is beaming in through my curtains as they gently flutter. Everything is the same as always. Mechanically, I get up and get dressed, and head downstairs for cereal. 

“Good morning,” my dad says, over the paper. He’s one of the last on the block that still gets the newspaper, but today I find the crinkles of the paper and the smell of the ink comforting. 

“Hi,” I croak. He glances up quickly, his eyes searching my face. He pauses to speak, thinks better of it, and goes back to reading. 

He knows I’ve had a vision, but he doesn’t want to hear about it. 

“Hi,” my mother says, where she is making my father eggs. I’ve always hated their traditional relationship, and her particular obsession with the way things should be.

Not today. 

I go up and hug her from behind. “I love you, Mom.” 

I turn back to the table while she mutters, “oh, I love you too, Leah.” My dad hasn’t looked up again, but my sister, Zoe, is watching me. 

I go over and kiss her, for once not hating her perfectly straight hair—so different from my unruly curls. “I love you, Zoe.” 

She doesn’t respond, baffled. We are not a demonstrative family. 

I go do the same for my dad, who pats my cheek awkwardly. “What’s gotten in to you, Leelee?” He asks. 

I decide, in that moment, not to tell them. What good would it do? They would probably roll their eyes, tell me I’m wrong or crazy, and then spend the rest of the day being annoyed with me. 

“I just love you guys,” I answer him. “I’m going to head to school.” 

“It’s early,” my mom says, bewildered. 

“I have something I need to do,” I tell her. “Careful, the eggs are going to burn.” 

She whips back to the stove, and I study my family one more time. Will I see them this afternoon? Or is this the last time? 

“Are you crying?” Zoe says, suspiciously. 

“I just love you guys, and I’m grateful for you,” I say, in a rush, then dash out of the kitchen to head to school. 

There issomething I need to do. Several things, in fact. 

Even though most people at the school don’t blip on my radar—or me them—there are a few people I care about. One is my best—and only—friend, Sunny Berry. Sunny’s parents are old hippies, so she has experienced much stranger things than me in her life. 

The other person I care about is Grayson Grey. I’ve loved him for a long time. We even dated, briefly, but he realized that I really am, in fact, weird, and I think the novelty wore off. 

There are two things I need to do at school: find Sunny and thank her for being my friend, and warn her; and convince Grayson to skip school with me. 

The first is easy. I find Sunny in the music room, where she is almost always, practicing her singing. 

I slip in the room and watch for a while. I realize, suddenly, that tears are slipping down my cheeks. Her voice is—just lovely. 

I must sniff, because she turns on the piano bench, where she was sitting, and sees me. 

“Hey, Leah,” she says, casually, but stands up quickly when she sees my face. 

“Leah! Are you okay?” She hurries over to me. 

I hug her, taking her by surprise, but she pats my back all the same. 

“You have a beautiful voice,” I tell her, sniffling. “And you’re the best friend. Thanks for always being there for me.” 

She pulls back and searches my face. “What did you see?” 

Gratitude and relief surge through me, so quickly I almost felt faint. You can always count on Sunny. I am indescribably grateful that I’ve had one person who simply accepts me without question. 

I had been planning on telling her, but realize I want to tell her for myself, not because it would help her. 

“Nothing,” I insist, rubbing my tears away quickly. “I just wanted to tell you those things. I wanted you to know how much you’ve made my life better.” 

She smiles. “Back at ya, pal.” 

I squeeze her one last time, then tell her farewell, escaping before I blurt out everything. 

It is trickier finding Grayson. I don’t know his routine as well, but eventually I track him down by a his locker. He is chatting with friends, at ease, as always. 

His smile hits me like a punch in the stomach. Tall, lanky but heading towards broad-shouldered, with messy dark hair and the deepest brown eyes, all set off with coffee-colored skin. 

He sees me behind one of his friends, and the smile flickers on his face and fades. Something unreadable comes into his eyes, but when I motion him over, he comes. 

“What’s up, Leah?” he says, eyeing me warily. 

“Can I talk to you, somewhere more…private?” I ask, looking over his shoulder to see his friends watching us curiously. 

“Um…I guess so.”

“Okay,” I lead him out the door, into the parking lot. It’s mostly deserted—classes are due to start in about two minutes. 

“Leah, class is about to start. Can this—whatever it is—wait?” 

“No,” I say, definitively. “In fact, I don’t think you’ll want to go to class when I tell you. Can we sit in your car?” 

“What? Leah. No. I’m not going to miss class. You’re acting crazy.” 

“So what’s new?” I say. I look him straight in the eye. “Please, Grayson. You know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.” 

“If you didn’t think it was important,” he grumbles, but I can see him relenting. “Fine. I’ll just be a few minutes late, I guess. My car is over there.” He points to an old, beat-up Chevy truck. The same one where he’d given me my first kiss, over two years ago. 

He unlocks the side door, then moves around to the driver’s door. As soon as he gets in, I, deciding not waste another second, jump him. 

I kiss him with all I’ve got. I wrap myself around him and press my body to his. 

For a few seconds, he kisses me back. His hand is in my hair, and I’m in heaven. I’m starting to think this will be easier than I’d anticipated, when he pulls away, putting his hands up as if I’m pointing a gun at him.

“Whoa, whoa! What the hell? Leah, you want to talk to me about getting back together? Is this how you approach it?” His eyes are wild, and his hair is even wilder than usual. 

“I don’t want to get back together,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I just want to sleep with you.” 

Grayson looks as if I’ve kicked him in the face. “What? Where is this coming from? We’ve barely spoken since…” 

“The world is ending, today,” I cut in. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I know things. I know this. So, on my last day alive, I want to have sex with you. I love you, I always have, and I think—well, hope—you want to have sex with me, too. Of course, since it’s your last day, too…” I trail off. 

It feels good to unburden this secret of mine, but I also feel guilty. Did I need to tell him? I hadn’t planned on it. 

“Do you need to pretend the world is ending to get a guy to sleep with you?” Grayson says. I’m surprised, and okay, hurt, that this is what he focuses on. 

“I’m not pretending,” I say, impatiently. “I know it’s going to end. So, if you’d rather spend your last day doing something else, tell me now. I don’t have time to waste.” 

He doesn’t answer, just gaps at me. I feel hurt, and stupid, but hey. I don’t mess around on the last day of the world. 

“Fine,” I say, and I hop out of his car, slamming the door behind me. I don’t get very far when he is behind me, grabbing my arm. 

“What are you going to do?” he demands. 

I shrug. “I have some other things I want to do today.”

“Like other guys to proposition?” he says, cuttingly. 

I give him a cool look. “Maybe. So what? I don’t want to die a virgin.”

He looks down at me, obviously at a loss for words. 

“You really are crazy, you know,” he says, running his fingers through his hands in frustration. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, and turn away. Despite what I’d told him, I didn’t have a list of guys in my brain lined up that might want to have sex with me. I’d figured that Grayson would be okay with this idea—I mean, he’s a teenage guy. Aren’t they supposed to want to sleep with any willing female? 

I guess crazy girls are the exception to this rule. 

To my surprise, Grayson catches up with me again outside of the school doors. 

“Wait.” 

I turn to look up at him. I can’t read his face. 

“Come back to my car,” he says, quietly. I feel a thrill go up my spine, and I can’t help but beam at him. 

“Okay.” 

Thirty minutes later, we are parked by the lake. On a cool May morning in the middle of the weekday, it is deserted. The trees are in bloom and nearly at their peak green, and the water is clear. 

“Do you still have blankets in your truck?” I ask him. We hadn’t discussed where we wanted to go—but this is where we’d come, when we were dating. I knew he would come here. 

“Yes,” he says. He opens the door, then hesitates. “Leah, are you sure about this?” 

“Yes, I am.” I tell him. “I love you. I want you. You’re not taking advantage of me.” 

I’m acting slightly more confident than I feel, but I’m also being honest. If you can’t be honest today of all days, when can you? 

He still looks unsure, so I lean over and give him a hard kiss, leap out of the truck, and start stripping my clothes off. 

As I’d expected, he jumps out after me, shocked. “What the hell, Leah?” 

“I feel like skinny dipping first,” I say, tossing a smile over my shoulder. I feel reckless, and brave, and for the first time in my life, maybe as crazy as everyone thinks. But I also feel happy, and so I let this guide me. 

“Come join me!” I yell, and run to jump in. 

The water is freezing, and my blood pumps wildly in response. 

I come up gasping, but am thrilled to see ripples where Grayson had followed me in. 

“It’s fucking freezing!” he says when he pops out of the water. 

“I know,” I laugh, and letting my joy lead me, I swim over to him. I try to pull him under, but he’s too steady, so I end up clinging to him instead. 

“You’re still warm,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around me. I feel that sensation of heaven, again. 

“So are you,” I say back, smiling up at him. 

This time, he kisses me back. Soon, we aren’t in the water anymore, but in the bed of his truck, snuggled in the old blankets that smell like him, campfire, woods, and maybe his old dog. We are under the wide-open sky, with trees waving gently around, and I am feeling everything. Even crazy. But that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, now. 

When I get home, I find everyone asleep. It was later than I’d realized. My last day had been spent almost completely with Grayson, but I couldn’t regret it. He’d made me feel things, and feel alive, which is the best thing to feel on the last day ever. 

It’s 11:30 p.m. The world hasn’t ended yet. I’m exhausted, and I debate going to sleep, or waiting until the end of the world. I almost go to wake up Zoe, like old times, but that feels selfish. Plus, I’m not sure I want to be awake when it happens. 

I get in my coziest pajamas and crawl into bed—it’s still cold on May nights in the mountains. 

I’m just about to drift off when something wakes me. I have the errant thought, for the first time ever—what if I’m wrong? What if I don’t know?

I’m disturbed at first, because this thought seems just as sudden and clear as my usual flashes of insight.

If the world doesn’t end, what consequences will I face? Will I regret anything? 

I shake my head, trying to dislodge the idea. 

I always know. 

I can’t help but peek at the clock. I knowthe world is going to end. Today. Any second now, surely.

11:58 p.m.