Free Would You by Marthe Jocelyn

thinking about it ahead of time, but the actual event would just, you know, be the end.”
    “Oh,” I say. “You mean Claire's the drain.”
    “Well…,” says Audrey, “… yeah. I guess.”
    “There were plenty of times in history when they thought the world was going to end,” says Zack. “Like the Crusades, for instance. How about if you were sixteen in 1091 and this thundering cloud of horsemen pounded through the village wearing metal body suits and not having washed for maybe a decade. And they raped you and they stole your father's grain store and then they raped your mother and burned everything else. And they said they were doing God's business. Wouldn't that seem like the end of the world?”
    “Or how about the Plague?” says Leila. “That was nasty.”
    “It wasn't a healthy time in general,” says Zack. “Aside from the Plague, there was plenty of consumption going around, and grippe and dropsy and fevers and rickets and rotting teeth! No one died of old age.”
    “I vote for the Nazis,” says Carson. “Best all-time world-enders. Thought-out evil. Kind of brilliant, really. Organized death camps all over Europe, nothing but horror from the first roundup to the cattle-car trains to the bug-infested dorms to the gas—”
    “ Zyklon-B,” says Zack.
    “Yeah,” says Carson, “With the gas gassing them in piles and then the pits full of bodies …”
    “Did you know that Anne Frank has her own Dewey decimal number?” says Zack
    “Please tell me you don't know what it is,” says Audrey.
    “Nine four oh point five three four nine two,” says Zack.
    “Weapons are worse now,” says Leila. “Push a button and blow up a whole city. Fly one airplane into a building and kill thousands of people.”
    “Two airplanes,” says Carson.
    “Are weapons worse,” I say, “or better? Would you rather die,
pfff
from a nuclear bomb? Or have your throat slit with a not-real-sharp sword? Or, god, like all those children in Africa, who had their hands cut off. How sick is that?”
    “The thing that scares me the most,” says Leila, “is that the Plague will come back. Sores or pox all over your face. Or other, you know, private places.”
    “The Plague has come back,” I point out. “It's called AIDS.”
    “That's why sex is a bad idea.” This is Leila's mantra.
    “You don't have to have sex to die from the West Nile virus,” says Zack. “Just get a mosquito bite. Or eat a burger and get E. coli. Or breathe and get SARS. Bird flu. Whatever. There are going to be about fifteen plagues that end the world, and every one of them will be really ugly.”
    “What if the terrorists have biological weapons?” says Leila.
    “Won't be long, Leila.” Zack loves to torment her. “If I were an evil genius, nothing would be more satisfying than infecting my enemies with smallpox or something that would cause festering boils, running pus and hideous pain.”
    “Good thing you're not a genius,” says Carson.
    Zack hits him. “But—Nat's question. Would you rather feel blinding, scorching pain and then die quickly? Or no pain, but prolonged, trembling decay instead?”
    “My point,” says Audrey, “was Claire.”
    “Oh yeah.” They're all nodding, being sensitive.
    “Claire doesn't have a choice,” I say.
    “Exactly,” says Audrey. “She got it both ways.”
    “She's not dead,” I whisper.
    But what if she dies?
    And what if she doesn't?
Joe-Boy
    This day is longer than a week. I'm on my bike in the dark; my light's busted. It's maybe midnight and I'm pedaling back and forth outside Joe-boy's house on George Crescent. It's too late to knock. But I want to know what happened.
    Someone said he went to the hospital, but they're still not letting anyone in except family. Dad went over to hishouse to talk to him, but I guess Joe was a mess; the police had been there. His parents let him stay in his room and gave Dad a whiskey. Dad was pissed off and told them he had a right to know what