At the End of the World
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University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Summer 8-13-2014 At the End of the World Allison Reu University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Reu, Allison, "At the End of the World" (2014). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1889. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1889 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. 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At the End of the World A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film, Theatre and Communication Arts Creative Writing by Allison Reu B.A. Indiana University, 2008 August, 2014 Table of Contents Chapter One: Benji ................................................................................................................1 Chapter Two: Ms. Caldwell...................................................................................................23 Chapter Three: Delia..............................................................................................................46 Chapter Four: Ms. Caldwell...................................................................................................71 Chapter Five: Benji................................................................................................................87 Chapter Six: Delia..................................................................................................................106 Chapter Seven: Ms. Caldwell ................................................................................................120 Chapter Eight: Benji ..............................................................................................................134 Chapter Nine: Delia ...............................................................................................................145 Chapter Ten: Benji.................................................................................................................163 Chapter Eleven: Ms. Caldwell ...............................................................................................171 Chapter Twelve: Benji ...........................................................................................................187 Chapter Thirteen: Delia..........................................................................................................194 Chapter Fourteen: Ms. Caldwell............................................................................................217 Chapter Fifteen: Delia............................................................................................................229 Chapter Sixteen: Benji ...........................................................................................................239 Chapter Seventeen: Delia.......................................................................................................249 Chapter Eighteen: Benji.........................................................................................................259 Vita.........................................................................................................................................265 ii CHAPTER ONE Benji On the day that all the shit went down, Benji Landry sat in class and spent most of his morning fantasizing about being someone else. When he was angry, which was most of the time since he hated school, he pretended to be his idol, John Cena, the pro wrestler. He waved his hand in front of his face like John’s signature move. You can’t see me , Benji thought. He watched all the dumbasses in his class act a fool while Ms. Caldwell, their newbie teacher at St. Bernard High School, tried to control them. The mayhem was free entertainment until he could leave. When the time came for journal writing that day, Ms. Caldwell told them they had a choice of what to write about. “Today, I want you to tell me one thing about yourself that you’re most proud of,” she said. “Or the one thing you’d change about yourself if you could.” Some boys in the class called out their answers, saying something about how they were proud of being badass thugs, trying to make everyone laugh. A few others made jokes about 1 what they would change, like making bank and getting out of St. Bernard. Fewer laughed then. Benji stayed quiet. Ms. Caldwell ignored them. “Don’t forget to explain why in your explanation,” she said. And then she started her stopwatch, which meant they were supposed to get working. Four minutes went by, and Benji’s notebook remained closed on his desk. He didn’t have an answer to either of those questions, and he didn’t care that Ms. Caldwell could see he wasn’t trying. So he sat and stared out the window. From his seat in the back of the room, the back right corner, where he always sat, he had a good view of the football field right behind the school and the refineries in the distance beyond it. He watched the white steam spill out from the smoke stacks and into the blue sky. The day before Ms. Caldwell had asked them to describe their favorite childhood memory. The day before that they were supposed to write about how someone in their lives had influenced them. Benji hadn’t answered any of the prompts, except one. The time he hadn’t been able to help himself. On the first day of the school year, Ms. Caldwell had stood up in the front of the class, looking all nervous, like all these big scary boys were about to attack. Benji had wanted to tell her to relax. They might be the bad class, but they weren’t that bad. She was up there looking like she was about to pass out. The first assignment she gave them was to describe St. Bernard Parish in a single word. “I’m new here,” she said in an accent that told Benji that fact the first time she opened her mouth. She sounded too clean. “So, help me get to know my new region.” She smiled, but her hands shook. Benji saw them. “And maybe that will help me get to know you, too.” 2 Benji had watched her move around the room that first day. He wondered why she was so stiff. People in his parish moved with a kind of slowness that reminded him of the water in the bayous out where he lived. Way out down the road. That water only moved when something else moved it. Benji opened his brand new notebook, the one that Ms. Caldwell had given to him when she passed out their new school supplies. She probably knew these kids never would have bought them on their own. He wrote the word, “struggle.” Ms. Caldwell stopped by his desk on one of her laps around the room. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. He shrugged. “Well, I need you to explain it to me so I can understand why you think that way.” She spoke in slow, even tones. So Benji added, “Just is.” Ms. Caldwell said she’d expect more from him in the future or something like that and walked on to the next kid. She reminded him of a little chicken, pecking at everyone she saw. Benji didn’t think he needed to explain himself. He could have written a lot of things. He could have told her that being a poor white kid living in St. Bernard meant having your life story told for you. St. Bernard wasn’t like the city with so many people around, where you could blend in and disappear. He’d been to New Orleans before; sure, he knew how it was there. All those people just mixing it up together. He’d only seen it at Mardi Gras, but that still counted. People there didn’t care about each other’s business the way they did in this parish. 3 He could have told her that when he walked into the Wal-Mart, everyone in the store knew who he was, even if he’d never seen them before. They knew he wasn’t Catholic or Baptist or part of the Pentecost. That was his first problem—being a sinner. They knew he lived in the trailers, and he was one of the Landry boys, the ones with all the anger issues. They remembered that Benji beat up Will Jeansonne in the seventh grade, and because Will happened to fall against a brick wall, and because his daddy was on the parish council, Benji got stuck in the behavior class. Everyone knew he was a troubled kid. But they also knew his mama. And that was the worst part. Benji could have asked little Ms. Caldwell, “Hey, you ever been walking around the Wal- Mart looking for bread or some shit, and you hear them buzzing about you?” He could hear it now. “She was loaded again, almost ran me over right there in the parking lot.” And before he could get up out of there, that story would be the truth. It didn’t matter that his mama was high because she stole the meds from his dresser, the ones that numbed him and kept his “deviant” behavior under control, and she only ever took them when she ran out of booze. And she only drank because the smell of shrimp in the salty air made her think of Benji’s daddy,