Vivian Apple at the End of the World (Vivian Apple, #1)

by Katie Coyle

want to be meek anymore. I want to be unstoppable.”

One minute we’re here and the next minute we’re leaving. It’s that simple.

say nothing. I think, I could love this boy. Someday soon, I could find myself loving him.

The Believers before had a smugness about them, a sureness that they’d go to heaven and the rest of us wouldn’t; these Believers aren’t quite so sure, and that makes them angry and violent and desperate.

like all it would take to change the world is a bunch

of young, smart people who care about it. Goliath

“Frick was all myth and bluster and crazy-ass stories. Taggart was the dangerous one.”

There’s still my father’s sister in Salt Lake City, my aunt Leah. I’ve never met her or Uncle Toby, but whatever kind of people they are, they’re farther west than here. Closer to California.

I know she’s afraid, but it isn’t fair. Because I hold grief and fear inside me, too. So does Peter, so does Edie, so does everyone. And we still manage to stand up straight.

it will be different than if I’d stayed in Keystone, because she’ll be an adult, a member of my family, and she’ll know what’s good for me in a way the New Orphans never could.

It’s so easy to slip into anger; it fits so much more comfortably than any of the other emotions I’m feeling.

“For God so loved the world,” says the Book of Frick, “that he sent us guns with which to protect our homes and women.”

you can’t go through life distinguishing the Believers from the Non-Believers and divvying up your love and trust accordingly.

Don’t be the kind of person who sees groups instead of people. That’s the sort of thing Beaton Frick does.”

The statue depicts Peter’s father burning a group of women alive. “This fucking religion,” Harp says.

He’s part celebrity, part god, part ghost. It seems impossible that we could be standing here, breathing the same air as the man whose face has hung framed in my living room for a year, the man who took my parents from me.

all—those clear green eyes, piercing on TV or in magazine profiles, are wide open, confused, manic.

I’ve always believed Frick to be detached from reality, but I thought he was just a megalomaniac, a manipulator, a con artist. Now I begin to slowly understand. He’s far more dangerous than any of those things. He’s a true Believer.

But what I’m feeling at this moment is something deeper than these platitudes. It’s something huge and primordial and completely beyond my understanding. I believe in Peter. I believe in Harp. I believe in me.

God had given some of us a particular gift—or, if you like, a weapon. He had sent our souls to live in the United States. He had loved us so much, he had given us that.

Of course, it was divine inspiration, I realize that now.

Frick couldn’t be more proud of himself.

They spoke to me through the screen,” he says, gesturing at it, “and they told me all I had to do was wait. Wait for the devastation to convince them. Wait for them to come to me.”

“The angels said those who would be saved would have to sleep, that I would have to help them sleep, that I would have to make them sleep—”

“They said there was precedent for this. For sacrifice. So Adam and I, we served them wine that would make them sleep, and we watched them leave their earthly bodies.”

“We watched them leave their earthly bodies, and then we burned the bodies. The angels came on the screen and saw that it was good, and told us we would be rewarded. But still we wait and wait.”

“He made them believe in him, and then he killed them, Peter!” “I know. I heard him. But he’s out of his mind, Viv. He’s mentally ill. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

We see a balding middle-aged man, a younger woman with her blond hair pulled into a severe bun, and a third man with light eyes and a high, sinister forehead.

The corporation. The Church of America Corporation. I think he just told us himself. People began to listen to him, and then the angels appeared. They told him to make it more about capitalism.”

But I have a fury in me that is bigger and wilder than any other emotion, including all the love I have for Peter.

“Oh, Vivian Apple,” Harp says. “You beautiful, crazy bitch.”

and I think it’s possible Goliath is being bankrolled by the Church of America.”

‘The Church of America is in the past. We’re the future.’ I think they were paying him to keep the resistance movement as passive as possible.”

I am past goodness, past grief. I’m broken in a way I don’t understand yet, and I’m going to make them feel it.

Any Believer who met you would attest to your godliness. So why did you never become one?” It feels to me like the answer’s obvious, but my mother stares at me with genuine curiosity. “Because I didn’t believe, Mom,” I explain. She waves her hand dismissively. “But that’s just a part of it, Viv. That’s just a story you can take or leave. For me it was about feeling like a part of a community. It was about trying to be good.”

you wasn’t goodness; it was meekness. And I know because I’ve been meek for seventeen years. That’s what you just called godliness. It’s so much easier to be meek—to read the guidelines and submit and obey, instead of actually dealing with chaos, or pain—but it’s not what good is. When the Rapture comes, that’s not the life you’re going to be satisfied by.”

Ned and I were both wrecks. But he said, and I believed him—you needed a trauma to learn the error of your ways, to come to Him.

I can understand this. She was a year older than me when she married.

But I can’t forgive it. I try to find a tender spot in me with which to forgive her, but there simply isn’t one left.

met. In doing so, I could inflict on her more pain than I’ve ever caused anyone. I could make her feel what I feel. But I shake my head no.

There’s a small part of me that wants to speak up, to tell her I won’t blindly obey anymore, that I’m Vivian 2.0. But she’s offering scrambled eggs, medical attention, new clothes, a soft bed. I savor the wave of calm that spreads over me as I nod and nod and nod.

“The point is that we’re alive, Vivian Apple. And brave, and good. If we can make things even the tiniest bit better, we should do it now, while we have the chance.”