This Is Where the World Ends(15)

“Janie? What are you—”

I was already climbing, or at least I was trying. The pebbles looked steady from the ground, but they started to crumble as soon as I started climbing, and I was back on the ground within a few seconds, probably, but they were worth it.

“Oh my god,” I said, my voice all hushed and awed because there was something holy about the pile of rocks but also because I was still breathless from the fall. “It’s like a metaphor for our lives, Micah. Wait—that’s perfect! The Metaphor for Our Lives. That’s what we’ll call it!”

“What?”

We had just learned about metaphors that day, and Micah clearly hadn’t been paying attention. I was obsessed. I wrote a whole page of them in my notebook and didn’t listen while the teacher explained why they were useful, because some things should just be beautiful and useless.

I ticked them off. “Metaphor one: it’s impossible to climb. Inevitably, you end up on the ground with your breath knocked out of you. Metaphor two: see these?” I picked up a rock and held it up to him, but when he reached for it, I retracted my hand. I didn’t actually want to let go of it. I put it in my pocket. (Later, I’d write a Virginia Woolf quote on it: Fear no more. In case you doubted that this was the beginning of everything.) “See how smooth they are? Smooth and all the same, like thoughts that people kick around until they’re smooth and all the same. Metaphor three—”

“They’re not all the same,” Micah argued, squatting and squinting at the base of the Metaphor. “You’re just not looking close enough. Most of them aren’t even the same size.”

“You’re ruining my moment,” I said, and we argued back and forth like we still do, and we never did get to the third Metaphor. But the point is that that was the first time I climbed and fell off the Metaphor, that was the first time I had a rock in my pocket, that was the first time we were really and truly free and alive and us. We were born that day.

I kick my calc stuff aside and get to my feet and start climbing again. I was going to wait for Micah, but I can’t stand it any longer. Climbing is always the first and last thing I do here. One of these days, I’ll get to the top. I will. But today I’m only a few feet up when I finally hear Micah pull up. His door slams, and I hop back onto even ground before the Metaphor can throw me.

“Late much?” I ask him as he comes toward me. He has a piece of paper crumpled in his fist. I frown. “What is that?”

“This? This is a goddamn speeding ticket,” he snaps. “You rushed ahead and almost killed a fourth grader and got the attention of every grandma in Waldo, and now I have to pay a f*cking two hundred dollar fine for speeding.”

I shrug. “Wouldn’t be a problem if you drove faster.”

He throws his hands in the air. “That doesn’t even make sense! Janie, I’m serious, I have no idea how the f*ck I’m going to pay for this and my dad is going to kill me—”

“Oh, don’t be a drama queen, Micah,” I say, waving the ticket away. “You still have money from Pizza Rancheroo.”

“God dammit, Janie, this happens every single f*cking time! You get away with shitloads and I’m left with—”

“Shhhhh,” I say, throwing back my head. “Micah. Hey, Micah. Look at that.”

He looks up without thinking and squints. “What?” He still sounds annoyed. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Nothing. Just the sky. Isn’t it beautiful?”

He opens his mouth to snap something else, but he takes a deep breath instead. “Whatever. Can we just do calc already? We’re like three weeks into school and I’m already going to fail. Do you get this optimization shit? Because I don’t.”

Of course I don’t. Neither of us is meant for calculus. I can’t see the world in numbers or molecules. I just can’t. When I look around, I see colors smells motions beginnings. I see sky and wind and hope like birds and art like fire and every desperate wish ever made.

“Oh, forget calc,” I say, and dive into my bag for my book of fairy tales and a pair of scissors. “Here, help me make feathers.”

He’s paging through his notes, frowning and squinting. The sun makes the pages too bright and the wind blows over the Metaphor to ruffle his hair and his annoyance grows on his face like mold.

“Micah, look.” I wave my hand in his face. “I’m making wings, remember? I told you.”

“Huh,” he says, barely glancing over.

I sigh, tragic. “Fine. I’ll do it myself. Hey, are you coming to wrestling regionals next week? There’s gonna be a fan bus.”

We have one of the best wrestling teams in the nation. Maybe because they’re good, but probably because we’re also one of the only schools where wrestling is a fall sport instead of a winter one. Ander tried to explain to me once why we had to be different, but I wasn’t really listening because I was too busy imagining him in a skintight uniform.

“Hell no.”

“Why not? I want you to come. It’ll be fun. I’ve never gone to a wrestling match before.” I don’t really care about wrestling. I’m rooting for the wrestlers because my ten-phase, six-month, totally non-creepy plan requires cuddling on the bus back from regionals, hopefully celebratory, but I’ll take consolidation cuddling too. Ander’s going crazy. It’s adorable. I haven’t seen him in a while because he’s got a scholarship riding on his state ranking, which all depends on regionals. Or something. I don’t know. I just know it’s important to him and I get to see him in a skintight uniform.