Maisie Farley's Weird Nerd Blog

It was like a goddamn magic trick.

    Some egotistical prune with terrible fashion taste snaps his fingers on the other side of the galaxy, and half the world turns to ash. Abby stopped trying to make sense of the world years before, but this broke any remaining shred of normalcy she had. Makes sense it did. It broke everything else.

    The day it happened, everything was normal. Mom was gone by the time Abby woke up, a post-it note professing her love stuck to the counter. The car broke down before it even pulled out of the driveway, and Harley spent an hour and a half fixing it while Abby watched TikToks on her phone. When they got to school, the drop-off line was empty.

    Abby poked her head out the window, examining the empty school campus. “We’re so late.”

    Harley sighed dramatically. “Yes, I know.”

    Abby pulled herself back into the car, pouting. “They’re not gonna let me in.”

    Another sigh from Harley. “If they don’t, go get Mom.”

    “But she’s working,” Abby whined. “She doesn’t like it when we bother her at the diner, and I’ve already skipped school this month ‘cause of that flu I caught, and I don’t wanna bother her.” She kicked the front of the seat with some prejudice. “Can you at least walk me in?” she pleaded.

    Years later, Abby would remember this conversation while lying concussed on the floor of an alley, and wonder if Thanos had the gauntlet by then. She wondered how doomed ten-year-old her had been in that moment.

    All the way back in 2018, Harley groaned. “Just go,” he ordered. He already sounded so tired and annoyed. The grease on his hands was smeared across the steering wheel. Abby didn’t want to push him. She stepped out of the car, crept silently towards the school. The car puttered past behind her. She turned, waving goodbye like she was trying to flag down a passing plane. She caught a glimpse of Harley’s reflection in the shattered rear view mirror. That was the last time she would see her brother for almost half a decade.

    What happened next? Abby wasn’t sure. Somehow, she negotiated her way through the front office and into her classroom. They were supposed to be learning fractions, and she vividly remembered a row of numbers written in green on the whiteboard, but she remembered very little else from the actual lesson. Something was happening in New York, but no one was paying attention. New York was a world away.

    The teacher finished her lesson and traded places with another teacher who immediately started on his history rant that centered almost entirely on unproven conspiracy theories. Some kids’ phones chimed with news alerts, but the teacher glared at them when they tried to pull them out. At the time, Abby looked at this and thought it was wrong.

    Abby thought of this years later and laughed, then glared at a passerby when they looked at her weird.

    By the time lunch rolled around, something was obviously wrong. The cafeteria had two ancient TVs set up, usually playing the news or some sort of mindless, background-noise sitcom, but when Abby looked at them, they were turned off. She would remember it forever: her face reflected in the black screen, kids whispering all around about what was happening (“Dylan said Loki came back, then that arrow guy shot Thor, an’ that’s what’s going on.”)

    Then–well, the next part came in pieces. The girl she was sitting across from dissolved into dust. She didn’t even seem to notice, just stabbed at her chicken before melting onto the floor. People started screaming–one of the lunch ladies dusted into the mashed potatoes. Other kids were gone. Everyone was gone.

    Then Abby was running. She was outside her school and racing across the football field that stood between her and the high school, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole way. She was crying and her tears were blurring the line between the green grass and the blue sky.

    Then there was the high school, oh, the high school. Abby had to fight through a tide of panicking teenagers to get in. The next few minutes were blended together in a mess of random images; ash in front of an open locker; kids screaming and shoving each other as they ran for the exit; some of the teachers were standing in doorways, trying to corral the students. 

    Somewhere along the line, words came spilling out of her mouth. “I’m looking for my brother, has anyone here seen Harley Keener? Do you know where Harley Keener is?” But the dust clogged her throat and the words stayed stuck in her mouth. She could barely breathe through all the dust.