Read Online The End of Everything by Megan Abbott - Free Book Online

it once. It hurt our
     throats, but the good kind of hurt. That’s what we said.
    Are there cigarettes in every backyard, every garage, every toolshed or bird feeder?
    I spot a lemon wedge sucked dry in the corner of the patio. Sliding my foot out from beneath me, I take my toe to it, kick
     it loose, watch it wheel across the pebbled expanse, hollow and paper light.
    This is where she sits with him, with Dr. Aiken, who wears squared glasses and, in my head, always seems to be carrying a
     clipboard, wearing a stethoscope, even though I’ve never seen him with either. He’s not my doctor and wasn’t my mother’s.
     She met him, Ted confided—but how did he know?—at the snack bar at the pool last summer, but that seems too long ago, so I’m
     not sure. I think I’ve felt him in the house only since March, since that night he brought her that book, the one called
The Heart of the Matter,
which he said he’d promised to loan her and which she read even while washing the dishes. I never saw her read like that
     before, but it was soon after that all the huddled conversations in the backyard started, all the mixing of drinks and long
     telephone calls and a steamy pink look on my mother’s face.
    She doesn’t talk about him, but he’s everywhere, all over the house. Once I saw him through my window at four in the morning,
     saw him rustling through the patio shrubs, looking for his glasses, which he cleaned with the tail of his untucked shirt.
    He leaves himself everywhere, I think. He leaves bits and pieces and scraps and shavings.
    It’s strange, a little, sitting where he sits, even though it’s our patio, my patio.
    I can hear the Darltons’ television drifting from their living room, the theme music with the big strings and whirling piano.
     And, from upstairs, Ted’s baseball game,
And there’s a strike on the outside edge
…
    Then, just like that, Mr. Verver emerges from the green of his backyard, a finger shoved into a brown beer bottle.
    He swings it back and forth as he walks toward me.
    The startled
oh!
that springs from my mouth, I didn’t even know it was there, and he looks at me and I feel my face scrub up hot.
    “Hi, Mr. Verver,” I say. I wonder how long he’s been in his driveway. Has he seen me eyeing those cigarettes? Has he seen
     the awkward way I’ve been sitting, hands between my thighs?
    “Hey, Lizzie.” He smiles slightly, forelock dangling like a football player. His shirt looks dirty, like he wore it to sleep.
    I feel my hand go to tuck my hair behind my ear.
    It’s the first time I’ve talked to him in two days. The first time since I recognized the car, since I told him about the
     cigarette butts. Since everything seemed like it was hurtling fast toward something, whatever something might be. That’s how
     it seemed two days ago, but here we are, Mr. Shaw everywhere and nowhere at once, and no closer to Evie at all.
    I think of how disappointed he must be in me because in some way he thought I had given him a golden key. I wish I had given
     him a golden key.
    He stands over me and pauses, eyes crinkling.
    Then, and I can scarcely believe it as I see it, he settles into the chair beside me, legs astride.
    “So how are you. How’s school,” he says, looking off into the hazy stretches of the yard.
    “Okay,” I say, but it sounds ridiculous. “You know, strange.” My hand reaches to scratch a phantom mosquito bite on the back
     of my knee.
    Talking to him, talking like this to
Mr. Verver,
feels so big and important. I don’t want it to stop, but I don’t know how to make it go forever. I never had this before,
     never had him like this, just talking to me.
    “Everything’s been canceled,” I say. “Practices and stuff.”
    I feel my face flushing. I can’t really look over at him, but I can feel his eyes on me.
    “You miss her very much,” he says, with such gentleness, as though I am the one to be comforted, soothed. “Don’t you?”
    I feel my mouth open