This Is Where the World Ends (14 page)

“Oh,” he says.

His sadness is everything. He tries to hide it, like he
can hide anything from me, but of course I catch how his breath hitches, the way he stiffens and the way his eyebrows flicker, the way his nostrils widen to suck in a little more air than he would otherwise need. I reach for his hands. I take his awkward fingers and wrap them in my own.

“Maybe I don't have a soul at all,” I say.

He relaxes. Immediately, he unwinds against me.

“Well,” he says. “You are a ginger.”

“Maybe I have a ghost.”

“A ghost,” he repeats dumbly.

“A ghost,” I confirm, but I don't elaborate. I'm too tired to think it through. I don't know what first made me think it, but it sounds right out loud. I don't have a soul at all.

I lean my head back against his shoulder and cross my arms, still holding his hands so that his arms come around me. “You were never in love with me, you know.”

His hands immediately start sweating in mine. His chin fits on top of my head and I feel his throat bob along the back of my skull as he swallows, and it's kind of comforting. “That's not true,” he says quietly. “You don't get to say that. Look, Janie. We don't have to talk about whatever happened. I won't even ask, if you want. But god, Janie, if you don't think that—that I don't—”

“You don't,” I say. I press myself against him, hard, so
that his heartbeat bleeds into my body and shakes my spine. “What if you never knew me, Micah? Not really. You love the dreamer and the painter and the ninja who used to jump through your window. What if that girl isn't real? Then what? You don't love the bitch. You've never even met her.”

He laughs a low laugh that I feel everywhere. He leans his face into my hair, so that I feel the shapes of his lips when he says, “Trust me, Janie, I have.”

I don't argue, but I just don't think that's true.

“Micah? Micah, are you with me?”

“I'm with you,” I say. I think I say. “Where are you?”

Someone sighs. Lately there is always someone sighing around me. The lights are bright, the harsh kind of bright. The lights are spinning but nothing else; nothing is spinning but everything is wobbling.

“Can I go to sleep now?” I ask, and I don't hear the answer.

Janie Vivian is dead.

When I woke up in the hospital on the day after the bonfire, the first thing I asked Dewey was if she was there. I remember that now. My head hurt because it had split open when Dewey punched me and I hit the ground, but I didn't know that. I didn't remember anything after the day she moved.

It was still raining outside and I wanted to know if I could see her. If she was on the same floor as me. Dewey told me that she wasn't. Eventually, eventually it came out that she was in the morgue, and the world exploded and rebuilt itself without that particular detail.

The doctors, the nurses telling me again. I remember, and it hurts. I remember how apocalyptically it hurt every time, every single time, they told me she was dead. Janie Vivian is dead. I remember my dad, sitting beside me and saying in his quiet voice that on the night of the bonfire, Janie Vivian fell into the quarry and never came back out. They kept telling me and I kept forgetting.

Eventually they stopped trying. I could understand a world where she was in Nepal, though I couldn't figure out why she didn't text me back. I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn't understand a world without her.

I remember forgetting.

And there's more.

God, there's so much more.

“Dewey? Oh, fuck, Dewey. Dewey.”

“Yeah, I'm here. Micah, it's fine. It's gonna be fine, we're going to the hospital. We're in an ambulance because you're too fucking tall to carry. You idiot. It's going to be fine.”

“Dewey, the fire.”

“Uh, let's talk about the fire later. Go to sleep. No, wait. Shit, don't listen to me. Don't go to sleep. Are you listening? Micah. Stay awake. We're going to the hospital, okay?”

“No. No, no no, I don't want to go to the hospital again. I don't want to, I don't want to. Oh, god, Dewey, do they think I set the fire?”

“It doesn't matter right now, just shut the hell up—”

“Dewey, I remember. I'm starting to remember. I remember that Janie's dead. Oh, god, she's dead. She drowned. You kept telling me about it.”

“Yeah, you kept forgetting. You're really fucked up, okay? Just take it easy.”

“But I remember the fire too.”

“Micah, don't—”

“I remember the match. Dewey, I remember dropping the match. Did I tell you about that? They think I set the fire, and I remember a match. I just don't remember when. I don't.”

“Micah—”

“But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't burn down her house. Why would I do that? I wouldn't do that, but what if I did? Did I?”

“Micah,
shut your fucking mouth
.”

The memories do not return so much as plunge. Shatter back into place.

My dad in a suit, his tie too tight. Checking on me before he goes to her funeral.

Yellow flowers in the school, everywhere and dying.

People carrying stones in their pockets. Writing Virginia Woolf quotes on their arms.

The notes people wrote for her and taped to the wall in the cafeteria. The way the soup splattered across them when Ander pushed me.

Understanding, however briefly, that she was dead. Heading to the quarry to see where the water climbed or she slid, forgetting she drowned halfway there.

Forgetting was the easy part. Remembering is harder, but not as apocalyptically

painful

as knowing that there is more to come.

T
HE
J
OURNAL
O
F
J
ANIE
V
IVIAN

Morrow and Lietrich Law Offices

920 Niagara Road

Waldo, IA 50615

(319) 555-8372

Ghomp Schumacher Krumke LLP

34 Main Street

Waldo, IA 50615

(319) 555-3854

Kirk Olsen, Attorney at Law

4300 North 14th Street

Cedar Falls, IA 50613

(319) 555-0770

Joshing and Jones LLP

275 South Bend Boulevard

Des Moines, IA 50301

(515) 555-2861

I wait in Micah's car until 7:57, even though we arrive at 7:35 and he gives up asking me why I won't just go in and leaves at 7:40. I huddle in the passenger seat with my arms around my knees. At 7:57, I untangle myself and sprint for the school. You would think that the hallways would be mostly empty by then, but nope, good job, Janie, way to plan.
Everyone
is in the halls, rushing and pushing and squeezing, and I know they're not staring at me but just . . . I wish the halls were empty. I don't want to touch any of them.

I walk into Mr. Markus's room. I go to my seat, next to Ander.

Right next to him.

I sit down. I cross my legs and fold my arms into knots.

He's sprawled, spilling over the side of his desk and his legs spread wide open and just everywhere, and I can feel
his heat, I can hear his breathing. I sit and I hold my breath as long as I can, and when I can't, I'm gasping, I can smell it. I can smell his maggot soul.

I might puke. I might run. I might explode and cover the room with Janie guts.

But I will not fucking cry.

He will never, ever, ever make me cry again.

I decided that this morning while getting ready for school in Micah's basement. (Which was totally a fun arrangement, by the way. Much better than my brilliant plan of sleeping by the Metaphor. There was this little ledge out of the wind under the bridge, and there was something almost romantic about that: sleeping under the stars, just me and the world and hypothermia. I would have done it. I'm never living with my parents again.)

I don't know how he explained it to his dad. He dragged me back to his house after my meltdown at the Metaphor. He and his dad chatted for a minute while I sat in the other room and picked at my nails, and then Mr. Carter poked his head in said hi and waved his awkward, common-sense-boneless hand and asked me if I needed anything, and I said no, and he left for his shift at Pick 'n Save and Micah and I watched more cartoons under an afghan his grandmother made him.

Ander turns. He's looking at me. His maple syrup eyes
are wrapping me in webs of sap. I look around for Piper, quick, words, talk to someone, look away, but she's not in the seat next to me.

No, she's not there. She's all the way across the room with a Starbucks cup in her hand.

And. She. Didn't. Bring. Me. One.

“All right,” Mr. Markus says from his desk. “Well, as the three people who utilize the English Twelve website will know, today was supposed to be a peer review day for the first draft of your thesis papers, but seeing as the same three people are the only ones who have sent me drafts, this is clearly not going to happen.” He sighs, a long sigh that carries all of the disappointment in the world that I have not already staked out for myself. “Well? Get laptops. Write.”

I don't. I pull out my journal and start paging through. In there, in bits and pieces, spread across pages and pages, are my fractured fairy tale autobiography and a mostly done paper about fairy tale miracles with all of my sketches of universes and oceans and heart variations.

Miracles,
one of them begins
, do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale
always
has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us,
and we fall flat,
splat,
and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is—salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or a prince or a glass slipper—in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances.

Forget fairy tales. Screw Andersen and Grimm and Perrault—I could have built a thousand pairs of wings out of this beautiful bullshit.

I open my journal to a new page. I write
THESIS
at the top and underline it three times for emphasis and a fourth for luck, out of habit. I start again.

Miracles do not belong to fairy tales. Miracles belong to the desperate, because only the desperate believe in bullshit.

There.

End thesis. I expect my Pulitzer any day now.

Ander is still watching me.

It's all so familiar, and I am even wearing the same shoes.

My hand shoots into the air. Every single person in the room looks at me, except Mr. Markus.

I cough. He doesn't look up. “Mr. Markus,” I finally say. Whisper, more like.
Come on, voice. Pull it together.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”

He nods without looking up from his grading. I grab my stuff and head for the door.

Behind me, someone mutters, “Pregnancy test, Janie?”

It's Ander. I know it's Ander.

I don't look back. I pause at the bathroom and wonder if I
do
need a pregnancy test, but no, don't think about that, I will not fucking cry I will not I will not.

I go to the art room instead. I go to my senior studio closet and I look around. And then I explode.

Here is what Janie guts look like: broken charcoal pencils and empty glaze jars on the floor. And paper, paper everywhere, shredded feathers and scraps of plans. A broken teapot that doesn't need a fucking lid. Shattered clay map of a shattered world. Greenware bowls smashed to dust.

And one clay covered in lucky pentagrams and Viking runes and witch-curse-repelling spells that I throw against the wall as hard as I can, so hard, so hard that it doesn't shatter, it doesn't crumble, it dissolves. It turns to dust and I sink into it and close my eyes.

I leave the wings alone.

I have to finish the wings.

I have to finish something.

I roll over and push my hair out of my face.

Just one miracle.

I go to lunch because I'm hungry. I'm hungry and I want to eat and they can't stop me with their bent heads and
whispers and staring. I can do what I want. I can do whatever I want.

Even the lunch lady stares at me. She forgets to give me a cookie.

By the time I get to the table, I don't have energy to sit. I collapse. I am a bag of bones, and I have been robbed of my spinal cord. They were talking about homecoming and dresses and dinner reservations, but they stopped when I was five feet away.

“Hey,” I say, and look around. “Where's Piper?”

A beat too long of silence. Then, finally, Katie says, “She went home. Cramps.”

“Okay, Janie,” Carrie Lang says. Her long hair droops onto the table as she leans toward me. “What happened? What's this? Is it Ander?”

Karma. Karma, I knew you were real. I knew filling Carrie's lawn with balloons was an investment in the future.

“Is it true that you guys had sex and then you dumped him because he sucked?” she asks, and adds, “Not the good kind, obviously.”

Blink. Blink again. “Wait. What?”

“Is that what this is?” she asks. “Janie, you know you could have called us. That was your first time, right? Babe, you should have
called me
. Is it because it hurt a
lot? Or was he really just that bad?”

“What did he say?”

“Ander? I don't know, he didn't text me back. But Jizzy said that you guys did it and then you freaked and dumped him. God, Janie, I can't believe you didn't call me!”

“He was tiny, wasn't he,” Blair says, taking a teensy-teensy bite of her salad. “I knew it. The hot ones are always falsely advertised. I keep telling you guys that.”

They're all leaning in now, Blair and Sadie and Kelsey and Meredith. They blink their big, big eyes and wait for me to tell them all about Ander and me. Ander and Janie.

No.

I imagine sketching the scene: me and an oversized hammer, off-balance and smashing, their Whac-A-Mole heads popping like cherries.

I want to say something, something scathing and brilliant and conversation ending, but let's talk false advertising. The real picture would look something like this: them and their mole eyes and twitching noses, me with my guts back in my art room and my brain melting out onto my lunch tray and my mouth catching all the flies that buzz around the trash can. And I know then that I did the right thing when I crossed out those lawyer numbers. Who the fuck would take my side? No one in Waldo. No one here. No one who saw me scuttling after him since freshman
year, flirting at every chance, kissing at regionals. Kissing kissing kissing.

I close my mouth and open it again and close it again, and in the end I just take my tray and walk away. I briefly consider the bathroom, but, ugh, who could actually eat lunch in a school bathroom outside of a nineties chick flick? Gross. I can barely walk through the door without gagging.

Hello, universe. I know you don't give a shit. But you handed me the wrong nineties chick flick.

I don't want this one.

I don't freaking want it.

I just can't stay at this table. I can't breathe.

But—there! There's Micah! And Dewey! I'm even glad to see Dewey! I didn't know they ate lunch in the hallway! Okay, I totally did. But I pretend I didn't as I walk over. I pretend and pretend and pretend.

“Look, I'm just saying,” Dewey is saying as I get closer, “that's
who she is
. Hell, she's been—
that
for so long that she probably doesn't even fucking remember what the truth is. She didn't fucking change, Micah. The two of you are just so goddamn parasitic that you can't even see it. Get your head out of your ass. Just because she flirts with you doesn't mean you stand a chance. She flirts with everyone.”

Quick, can I get away? No, Micah has already spotted
me. His cheeks go red so fast it's almost funny. My breath catches a little, but I force it out.

I drop my tray next to Dewey and say, “I don't flirt with you.”

“Yeah, well, there's that whole thing about me not being into girls,” he says. He doesn't even try to look embarrassed about seeing me. He takes another bite of pizza before he talks again, and not to me. “Do whatever you want, dude. But I'll be waiting with the
I TOLD YOU SO
sign when she fucks you over again.”

Metaphorical sign, I tell myself. They don't have a real sign.

Do they?

“Shut up,” Micah mutters. He doesn't look at me. Why doesn't he look at me? I prod him with my soul. He still doesn't look up. But he does talk in my direction. “What are you doing here?”

“She's here because no one back in there wants to sit with her,” Dewey says. Does he always chew with his mouth open? Pepperoni pieces and wet pizza dough between his gnashing, gnashing teeth. “Same reason we're out here. Right? Cameron's been telling everyone that he dumped you because you had sex and then you shouted rape because you regretted it in the morning. That true?” He looks straight at me.

I didn't exactly
mean
to dump my lunch tray over his head.

“Fuck you,” I say. My voice is perfect—so cold, so wonderfully hollow. “Get a life, Dewey, and stop chasing Micah around. He doesn't love you back.”

He loves
me
.

Then I walk away. Just kidding. I sprint the hell out of there. I go straight to the parking lot, and I dig out my phone and start Googling directions on hot-wiring a car. Micah can find another ride home. I'm stealing his.

I'm scrolling through the Wikipedia page, holding my breath because I just have to keep it together until I'm in the car driving away, when suddenly—

“Janie.”

I yelp and drop my phone and close my eyes and take a moment to tell my heart to
freaking chill
, because it's not Ander and it's not Dewey, it's just Micah. Just Micah.

He bends down to get my phone, and his eyebrows furrow. “You were gonna steal my car?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “but it's a lot more complicated than nineties chick flicks would have you believe.”

“No shit,” he says, and gets in the car. “Come on.”

I slide into the passenger side. “Metaphor?”

“Sure.”

We drive in silence. I study my palms. There are four
perfect half moons where my nails dug in, and a fate line that looks normal. Perfectly straight, average length. I used to think that destiny was fluid, because isn't that the point of every Disney movie and Saturday-morning cartoon? You make your own choices. You decide how life goes. I always thought that your fate line would change if something happened,
bam
, something goes wrong and the line on your palm goes all wonky to reflect that. Nope. It still looks fine.

Well, fuck you too, fate.

I dig my nails into my palms again and look ahead. Staring contest, glaring contest. Let's go, universe. You and me, right here, right now.

Micah pulls to a stop farther away than normal, and the Metaphor looks even smaller. I get out of the car.
Slam.
He closes his door as quietly as he can, as if that'll make my slam less offensive. I shove my hands into my pockets and start toward the quarry, and he follows, and we stop right at the edge of the rocks. I don't even need to tilt my head back to squint at the top anymore.

“You know,” I finally say, “it's actually really fucking ugly.”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Micah.

“It's really just a pile of shit.”

But Micah isn't looking at the Metaphor anymore, he's
looking at me. His eyes are all wide and worried, and he says my name, and I look at the sky and wonder,
How many times can a person explode?

Here's some metaphorical resonance for you: I don't want to look up at the Metaphor anymore. You should not look up to shit. You should not want to fucking climb to the top of something that shouldn't even exist, and this isn't how I wanted to reach the top anyway. I wanted to reach the top of a mountain. This is barely a pile anymore. It's a disappearing heap of rejected rocks that should have drowned with the rest of the quarry.