It’s my twelfth birthday and we’re all waiting for Wormwood and everyone is here and I mean everyone. Me and Mom and Dad and Big Pa which is my grandpa who was the strong man at one of the last traveling carnivals in America, and Bigfoot of course, and a swarm of killer bees collectively named Kyle who aren’t really so mean, and a very tall alien, and fillyloos flying backward and upside down overhead and jackalopes scampering about under our feet, tons of them, flashing out of the woods into the campsite, tearing around the picnic tables and disappearing again into the trees and you can hear the constant click and clack of them knocking their horns together and the schlurp schlurp schlurp when they drink whisky from the shallow dishes that Big Pa set out. It’s not really my twelfth birthday but if I don’t have it now, I won’t have it at all.

Somehow in the middle of the campgrounds one of those famous giant stone figures with the huge heads from Rapa Nui (we used to call it Easter Island I guess, but there really isn’t anything Eastery about it and besides it already had a name—Rapa Nui) appeared in the middle of the auditorium, which is a place with splintering wood benches in a half-circle that go up and up a little hill around a stage. Some people are sitting on the benches waiting for—I don’t know what, maybe for the head to speak or something. Anyway, when I say we’re all here, this is what I mean. We’re all here, from every time and every place, and we’re all waiting for Wormwood.

It’s a big party.

Wormwood is what you call that thing lighting up the sky like Las Vegas (so I imagine, I’ve never been because I’m too young to gamble says my mom, but they have stuff there for families and kids says my dad). The sky is bright is what I’m saying, even at night, and Wormwood is coming—it’s the size of the moon but not a moon, and not a star exactly, not a meteor, not a comet. Probably not a black hole but something close. Maybe a white hole. Maybe a wormhole. Maybe something we don’t have a name for yet. Except, of course, “Wormwood.”

Dad says the gravity will hit us long before Wormwood physically does, and already the moon is cracking and reality is getting pushed and pulled and squeezed and twisted (like taffy, Mom explains, but I’ve never really had taffy because Mom always says it is bad for my teeth and I’m thinking instead when I used to stretch and pull different colors of modeling clay together and each color became a thin band, then many thin bands, then eventually blended all together into itself). That’s what’s happening now. Everything we know is getting all mixed together. Even time, because it’s all one thing with space, Dad says, and I said I know that already because I watch science on YouTube. Amelia Earhart was here last night but I missed her because I had already gone to bed and apparently there are still bedtimes at the end of the world, which sucks.

“The world has turned to a dream,” Mom says with a sigh as she arrives at the picnic table with shish kebabs, which is her go-to thing to make outdoors and I love them because it’s the only time I get to eat mushrooms because Dad hates mushrooms and we never have them because apparently whatever he doesn’t like we can’t have which doesn’t seem fair. But everyone gets to have whatever they want on their own kebab.

Mr. Glarn (that’s the alien’s name you know, and it makes me smile because it’s exactly the sort of name I would have made up for an alien when I was six and now here he is, Mr. Glarn the alien) takes a kebab and nods his head in a way that means Thank you for the delicious cubes of Earth meat and especially for these plump little Earth mushrooms which add so much to this humble Earth delicacy.

“You’re so very welcome, Mr. Glarn. I hope they’re not too overdone,” Mom says and touches her fingertips lightly to Mr. Glarn’s tall shoulder and Mr. Glarn bobbles his head in a way that means Not at all and I thank you for your hospitality and I shall savor every morsel of this Earth food which you have cleverly stabbed upon this sharp stick and especially these plump little Earth mushrooms which is a lot to say with a head bobble but Mr. Glarn is pretty amazing.

Mom serves me my kebab and says, “See how polite Mr. Glarn is? Even though it’s the end of the world? I’ll bet he went to bed on time last night and didn’t make a fuss about brushing his teeth.”

Mr. Glarn dabs at the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin, which means There is a saying among my kind—At the end of the world, we shall not be bitter.

“Oh, I like that,” my mom says and gives Dad a sad mushroomless kebab (he’s so absorbed in conversation with Kyle—the killer bees, remember?—he doesn’t notice) and then she puts the platter down in the middle of the table in case others join us or anyone wants seconds. I look around for Big Pa and he’s across the way at another picnic table with some of his old carnival friends—an Illustrated Woman whose tattoos are sagging and telling a much different story than they did when she was younger, and a fire-eater who is complaining that the salsa is too hot (it’s an old joke) and a beardless woman who used to be a bearded woman but shaved it off after it had gone completely white. Bigfoot is with them too and laughing and getting to know everyone. I wish Big Pa would bring him over here and introduce us.

I wonder if Mr. Glarn’s saying is something like a commandment—you shall not be bitter, or more like a New Year’s resolution, like making a promise to yourself not to be bitter even if everything is ending, even and especially your life.

“We shall not be bitter,” I say out loud, trying it on for size, you might say. I like Mr. Glarn, but his saying doesn’t fit me right. Not all the way.

“Couldn’t you stop it, Mr. Glarn?” I ask through a mouthful of mushrooms. I’m eating all the mushrooms first in case the world ends faster than I expect. “Couldn’t you stop Wormwood from killing us all and destroying Earth and reality? Don’t you know stuff about black holes and things?”

Mr. Glarn chews thoughtfully on a roasted cherry tomato and some of the juice dribbles over his chin and he blinks oh, dear me, and dabs again with his napkin which is now very soggy and I tear a square of paper towel from the roll in the middle of the table and pass it to him.

Mr. Glarn sneezes, which means I tried to tell them, you know. Your Men in Black. I might have been able to do something if they had listened, if they had let me go in time. But I’m afraid the time to do something about Wormwood is not when it’s right on your doorstep, as it were.

Mr. Glarn looks a bit sad. I guess we shall not be bitter at the end of the world, but we shall be a little sad.

Wormwood pulses—it does that sometimes, sends out these flashes that ripple through reality—and now I can hear splintercats smash their skulls against the trees deep in the woods and another moai (that’s the giant stone figure with the big head) appears on the stage with the first one and I can’t be sure but the first one does look a bit happier to have a friend. I stare at them both a long time, hoping to see their stone mouths move, but then I get sidetracked because Big Pa (my dad’s dad) trots up to the table and announces he is going to have a rock-lifting contest with Bigfoot, and we all rush to the edge of the woods to watch.

Big Pa and Bigfoot stand side-by-side, limbering up. Big Pa has his striped strong-man singlet on, which he occasionally wears when he wants to regale us with carnival tales, and which I suspect he sometimes, maybe even all the time, wears under his regular clothes, and which is loose in places that used to be tight and tight in places that are just plain wrong, and once upon a time it probably had padded muscles sewn inside, not that he ever needed them. Big Pa bends and stretches and groans.

Bigfoot is a good three feet taller than Big Pa, and he shakes his arms out—well, one arm anyway because he is holding a very full stein of beer in the other hand—and he stomps his fourteen-inch feet on the earth and grunts several times to hype himself up.

Dad stands between them, Kyle buzzing all around him (they’re inseparable now) and he has a dripping cone of vanilla ice cream in one hand and I don’t know where he got it but it is going to go completely to waste if he doesn’t hurry up and eat it. The illustrated woman is off to the side, struggling to reset her stopwatch. Wormwood has a funny effect on clocks so it’s a little tricky.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Dad starts, and I roll my eyes.

“That doesn’t exactly include everyone, Dad,” I say.

Dad flashes a quick embarrassed smile, holds his drippy ice cream a little farther away from his body, and says, “Friends and neighbors and distinguished visitors!” and I say, “Better, Dad!” but not loud enough to interrupt.

“For your end-of-the-world entertainment, I present your Rajas of Rocks, your Sultans of Stone, your Kings of . . .” he pauses, and I can see the gears in his head turning, then says “Your Kings of Kinetic Contests!”

There’s a smattering of applause for the save.

“Prepare to be thrilled, stupefied, and amazed as you witness Bigfoot versus Big Pa in the Rock-lifting Contest at the End of the World!”

Dad flails his free arm and cheers and takes a big bite of melting ice cream and trots away and now there’s bigger applause from the audience and some cheers and a deep rumble of approval from the moai that you can feel in your chest and yowls of pleasure from the splintercats and the jackalopes signal their excitement by making several new litters of jackalopes in a matter of moments and the fillyloos settle into their upside-down nests to watch and Mr. Glarn strides over and folds himself down to the ground next to me and hands me a Cherry Coke and it is straight-out-of-the-ice-chest cold and I drink half of it down in one gulp before the contest even starts.

The object of the contest is to see not just who could lift a heavy rock, but who can hold it up high over their head the longest time. The illustrated woman has her thumb on the crown of the stopwatch and Big Pa’s face is already red as a beat by the time the rock is up to his knees and thick cords stand out on his neck and a fat vein on his forehead pulses and the rock finally rises over his head. No sooner does the illustrated woman start her stopwatch than Big Pa throws the rock down and lets out a roar of victory. Or of pain. It’s hard to tell.

Bigfoot nudges the rock over to its original starting point with his foot, a display of casual strength which doesn’t bode well for Big Pa. He gulps down his beer and tosses the stein into the air and Kyle swarms it and floats it down gently to a picnic table, making sure not to trap any of themselves beneath it.

Then Bigfoot lifts the stone effortlessly above his head. It nearly floats out of his hands. Really, the contest is won after a single second, but I guess Bigfoot wants to make sure his record stands for however much time the world has left. After the illustrated woman calls out one minute, Bigfoot’s arms start to quake, and after two minutes his face strains, and he leans his enormous frame back and a window-rattling beer-belch escapes him (to great applause).

At two minutes thirty seconds, Bigfoot lets the rock back down to the ground, planting it solidly between his feet.

Mr. Glarn makes a harumph sound that means harumph and unfolds his long grasshopper legs and lifts himself into the air and strides over to Bigfoot and puts his long arm around his shoulder—Mr. Glarn is nearly as tall as him—and speaks softly into his ear, and Bigfoot nods and then says something into Big Pa’s ear, who is still red-faced and sitting on log and swabbing his sweaty bald head with a tea towel, and Big Pa nods and gets to his feet.

When Mr. Glarn sits beside me again, I ask him what’s going on. He tilts his head, which means watch and see. But honestly, I’m not that interested in rock-lifting contests. It seems kind of a waste at this point. Instead, I go to get another Cherry Coke because I finished the one Mr. Glarn brought me and dang it was good—I’m not normally allowed to drink (or eat) sugary stuff, but it isn’t going to hurt me now.

When I come to the picnic table area I catch my mom holding my dad’s head against her shoulder and shushing him because he’s crying and it breaks something inside me to see him so sad and to see her having to be strong for him when she is also so sad and he is saying why do we always wait until funerals to get together and my mom snort-laughs and my dad chuckles and she strokes his hair and she says I don’t know, it’s stupid, we’re just really stupid.

After a moment, Mom spots me watching them and she smiles through her tears and ruffles Dad’s hair to get his attention and he sniffs and wipes his face and they both put their hands on my shoulders and then hug me and it squeezes a little water out of my eyes. Kyle buzzes around us and their sound is warm honey and sunlight and endless fields of clover.

“It’s all so beautiful,” Mom says. “Everything and everyone mixed up together like this. We could have had this anytime we wanted. We could have had this.”

I look up at Wormwood. We shall not be bitter I try to remember but there is a hard knot in my heart anyway.

I go back to Mr. Glarn, who is still sitting front row at the rock-lifting contest. When sitting he is almost the same height as me. I crook my elbow around his neck and lean a little bit on him and he pats my arm.

“What are they doing?” I ask Mr. Glarn, because now Bigfoot and Big Pa are both holding the rock together between them, their arms tented, as if they are holding the stone up like some kind of holy relic even though it’s just a big ugly rock.

“Three minutes!” the illustrated woman exclaims and there is applause and some gasps.

When they get to four minutes, they gently settle the rock back down between them and hug and jump excitedly while they hold on to each other and whoop and holler and go off to find some more beer.

“Can’t you change it, Mr. Glarn?” I ask him while he is still eye-level with me.

He looks at his toes which means I tried, little one, I tried.

“But you were alone, then. Everyone is here now. Everyone.”

Mr. Glarn looks around at the dozens of people who came to celebrate that night and all the jackalopes digging their burrows and the fillyloos quietly snoring in their gravity-defying nests and the shadows of the splintercats slinking in the deep woods and Big Pa and the illustrated woman starting up on their tales and already laughing until they can’t breathe and Bigfoot wiping beer foam from his mustache with the back of his hairy arm, and beyond all these things to other things I couldn’t even see or sense.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to do the big things alone,” I say. “I don’t think we even can.”

Mr. Glarn unfolds his legs and stands very tall over me and Wormwood shines down furiously from the sky behind him but Mr. Glarn’s silhouette nearly blots it out. He smiles at me in a way that means, Yes, I really do suppose we can do something. Together. He reaches into his pocket for his key fob and clicks it and decloaks his flying saucer, which is painted eggshell blue except for it has two wide white racing stripes down the middle.

“I’ll round everyone up,” I volunteer, and start to dash off, but Mr. Glarn clicks his tongue in a way that means, Oh, just one more thing. I turn.

He opens his arms wide which means I’m afraid it’s too late to outrun it—if we’re to have a chance, we’ll have to take it head on.

For some reason, I feel as tall as Mr. Glarn and much older than twelve. I nod and lift a corner of my mouth in a way that means, Let’s do it.