This is the End 2(630)

But my dad and I just ticked faster and louder than others. And maybe our ticking was more demanding than most. We were forced to consume as much information as we could before our minds spiraled into insanity. There was a very slim line between functioning genius and raving lunatic.

I had learned to control mine for the most part, without becoming a super computer. But it was harder now that there wasn’t anything to fill the hungry, demanding spaces of brain matter.

Music used to be the only thing that could calm my racing thoughts. It would make the ticking stop completely and I would fade away into peaceful sound. But now, there was no music to occupy my waking moments.

Only silence.

And silence was a problem.

“Solar panels,” I whispered first. And then excitement and hope sprinted through me, racing with the promise of a night filled with electricity and sound. I bounced up and down, forgetting Nelson was underneath me. “Solar panels!”

“What?” Reagan was the first to catch on that I was saying something life changing. “Where?”

“Over there. That farm house. I see them all over the roof!” They weren’t super obvious to the average eye, but I had noticed the sun reflecting at an odd angle off a mostly-hidden farmhouse. And then the closer we drove the more noticeable they became.

“Solar panels,” Nelson agreed, sounding both awed and anxious.

I didn’t blame him. This could either be really good.

Or really bad.

“You really want to check it out?” Vaughan asked hesitantly from the front seat.

“I haven’t seen any kind of civilization or settlement in a full day,” Hendrix put in.

A full day was roughly six hours of driving, maybe a little less. Between the terrible road systems this far off the highway, the lack of readily available gas, and having to stop and set up somewhere safe-ish each night, we weren’t able to travel very far per day.

“We don’t know what’s beyond it though,” King wisely argued.

“But it’s solar panels or nothing.” I didn’t know if I was being reckless because I craved electricity like an addict or if it was intuition that pushed me toward the decision to stop. Either way, we could be walking into a Zombie trap. Of course, that was potentially a problem wherever we stopped. So it was either now or later. We weren’t in a hurry to get to Mexico. And I could charge my iPod. “If we stay on these back roads we’re going to stay at a place just like this anyway. But it probably won’t have working electricity.”

“Haley’s got a point,” Vaughan agreed softly. He slowed the van to a stop in front of a long, gravel drive. We sat idling in the road, staring up at the seemingly empty farmhouse.

We stayed there for a long time, waiting for movement, waiting for Zombies to pop out of every unseen place at the sound of the engine rumbling, waiting for a holed up, half-insane farmer to come barreling out of the front door spitting tobacco, angry shotgun in hand.

Nothing happened. Not for fifteen full minutes.

All of our nerves pulled tight with apprehension. Now we were wasting precious gas, now we were sitting ducks. A decision had to be made.

Finally, Vaughan took a deep breath and announced, “Anywhere else could be just as dangerous. We check it out. If we don’t like it, we get back in the van and keep going. It’s still a little early to settle down, so if this doesn’t work, we find a better place. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” we agreed in subdued voices.

This was our plan. Our plan potentially included electricity. And now I was smiling and couldn’t stop.

“You are really excited about those solar panels aren’t you?” Nelson asked quietly as Vaughan drove the rust-bucket van up the driveway and around to the back of the house.

“Maybe,” I grinned.

“We don’t know what we’ll find inside,” he reminded me somberly.

“True,” I agreed. “Still, it’s the possibility of what’s inside, isn’t it?”

In a deep rumble of fierce agreement, Nelson answered, “I can’t argue with that.”

I turned my attention back to the house, not able to have that conversation with him. Was he talking about me? Or trying to convince me to give him a chance? Or was he seriously just talking about the house?

Suddenly I did not feel very smart anymore.

Thanks a lot, Nelson.

Not that I’d ever really tried at the super brain powers thing anyway. But there was something painfully frustrating about a simple boy making me feel stupid. Is this what happened when a girl truly started to fall for a boy? Our brains turned to mush and we resorted to giggling and blushing?

God, that could not happen to me.