The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(88)

“You don’t want to know,” she answered coldly.

Her father picked up his fishing pole.

“Come into the shed. It’s warmer,” he said. “Let’s not do this out here.”

He turned away.

Zoe thought about just walking away right then and there.

Her father must have known what she was thinking.

“Don’t go,” he said over his shoulder. “You came this far to tell me how much you hate me—so come tell me. I deserve it.”



The shed creaked in the wind. It’d been built out of salvaged plywood and two-by-fours—one of the walls still had Post No Bills stenciled onto it in black spray paint—and sat on runners so her father could slide it around the lake. Inside, there was a thermos, a wooden stool, a copy of some ridiculous self-help book, and an electric heater powered by a small, puttering generator. Where the floor should have been, there was a five-by-five-foot patch of cloudy ice with a dark hole in the center, like a bull’s-eye.

Zoe’s cell rang as she entered the shed.

ME!!! it said.

Jonah was trying to FaceTime her now.

She silenced the phone, but a text popped up a minute later: It’s raining so bad! I need someone to talk to! Me and Spock are UNDER THE BED. Wait—now Uhura is, too!

Zoe frowned, and put the phone in her pocket. She just needed a few minutes with her father, then she’d call Jonah back. In a few minutes, everything would be different. X would be here.

“Was that—was that Jonah?” her father asked.

His voice broke the slightest bit.

“Don’t you dare say his name,” Zoe told him.

Her father nodded. He stood in a corner of the shed, hugging his spindly chest with his arms as if to comfort himself. He looked as if he were going to cry. He was so much weaker than she was!

“How did you find me?” he said.

“You don’t get to talk,” she said.

It was unbearable to be so close to him. The air felt toxic. Even the silence was awful, the way it fed on itself and grew bigger and bigger. And yet some part of her—a part she hated, a part she’d crush if she could—wanted to hug him.

“Zoe,” her father said, “I never meant to hurt you.”

“You don’t get to talk!” she said. “And you definitely don’t get to say dumb bullshit crap!”

But he couldn’t stop himself.

“It would have been worse if I’d stayed,” he said.

“Really?” said Zoe.

She loathed the sound of his voice.

“It would have been worse?” she shouted.

She threw open the door of the shed.

“I can’t be in here with you,” she said.

She stormed away on the ice. Her father followed her. The lake had been shoveled clean. It was glassy and slick. The holes were everywhere.

When she’d put 20 feet between them, she stopped and turned to him. He knew not to come any closer.

“Jonah used to punch himself in the chest to stop his heart from hurting,” she said. “Would it have been worse than that?”

“No,” her father said quietly.

“I almost killed myself in a cave just so the cops would go get your body,” she said. “Would it have been worse than that?”

“No,” he said again.

“Mom didn’t have a life when you were ‘alive,’” she said, “and she has even less of a life now. Would it have been worse than that?”

“No, Zoe,” he said. “No.”

“You don’t get to talk!” she screamed, then took it up like a chant. “You don’t get to talk. You don’t get to talk!”

Her father made a tent out of his hands and hid his face behind it. He was sobbing. It was pathetic. Zoe walked toward him so purposefully that fear flashed in his eyes, and he stepped backward toward the hut.

“Your BFF Stan?” she said. “He murdered two people we loved—with a fireplace poker. Would it have been worse than that?”

Her father looked stricken.

“Who did Stan kill?” he said.

Zoe let the question hang in the air, unsure if she wanted to answer it. He didn’t get to talk!

“Bert and Betty,” she said finally.

Her father shocked her by letting out a pained cry.

He spun away from her.

Suddenly, he seemed consumed with an energy he couldn’t control.

He knelt down on the ice and checked a fishing line that ran into a nearby hole. When he’d finished, he crawled to another, and then another. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at her again. He never left his knees. He scrabbled around like an animal. It scared her. She shouted, “Stop!” He wouldn’t. When he’d run out of holes, he finally stood. Still, he didn’t turn. It was like he’d forgotten she was there—or was trying to drive her away.

There was a giant sort of corkscrew, an auger, leaning against the shed. Her father took it and, hands trembling, began to screw yet another hole into the ice. Above them, the sky darkened. Zoe looked up at the hills. The trees were a solid black mass now, an army waiting for orders. X and Ripper stood there, watching. Soon it would all be over.

She didn’t know if she was ready. Had she said everything she’d wanted to say? Had she gotten what she wanted? What had she wanted?