This Is Where the World Ends(28)

Which is actually, as far as cemeteries go, really pretty. Not overly groomed. Overly groomed cemeteries are so wrong. Cemeteries shouldn’t have lawn-mower tracks. They should have wildflowers and dandelions and wishes and tears. And tonight, under the angel with the wide, wide wings for a certain Michael van Pearsen, 1920–1977, I HAVE LOVED THE STARS TOO FONDLY TO BE FEARFUL OF THE NIGHT, there is also a clue.

(It was only the most perfect epitaph ever. I Googled it later—it was by Sarah Williams, and I am sososososo jealous because I didn’t die quickly enough to claim it first.)

We first came here two nights before the start of freshman year. I slid my bookshelf across the space between our houses and climbed into Micah’s room with a slim bottle of peach vodka that I’d (over)paid Beaver Rossily from across the street to get for me, and we walked 1.58 miles to the cemetery and got drunk for the first time.

I hadn’t wanted my first time getting drunk to be, I don’t know, sweaty. I didn’t want it to be at a party with people I didn’t know. I actually wanted champagne, but Beaver said I didn’t have enough money. It was fine, though. The peach vodka had burned, but we choked it down and laughed fire out of our noses.

I remember that the stars were huge. Enormous. They were worlds, and that night, ours was as bright as any of them.

I remember that it was endlessly funny that we were in a cemetery. I remember that we lay down under the angel and laid our hands over our stomachs like we were dead, but then Micah slid his hand into the space between our bodies and I took it, and it was warm and sticky with vodka. I remember threading my fingers through his and pressing our life lines together.

I remember planning our funerals. I wanted blue flowers, all kinds. Forget-me-nots and cornflowers and bellflowers, irises and pansies and hibiscus. I wanted them anywhere, everywhere, in my hair and on my coffin and on the tables at the reception afterward.

I had asked him if funerals had receptions.

No, Micah told me, weddings do.

Then I want blue flowers at my wedding too.

What else?

I want rain, I told him. I want thunder and sobbing. I want cursed wifi so people who use it will grow nose hair so long they trip over it. I want a hot minister and a church full of people and chocolate, honey cookies, and cinnamon candles and handkerchiefs the color of the sky.

For the wedding or the funeral?

“Both,” I said. I want it all, I want everything.

Micah had wanted the normal stuff. A coffin, a hole in the ground. But he wanted a yellow tie. I remember that specifically, because I remember picturing it: a tie made of sunshine.

I wonder what Micah remembers. I wonder if he remembers the same things, or if he remembers the other parts. There must have been other parts. We must have walked back—what had that been like? Stumbling and laughing all the way back under streetlights. I should ask him later. We’ll lie on X-marks-the-spot and piece together the memories.

That had been a good night.

Tonight will be a good night too.

I don’t even get out of the car. The next one is a fast clue, just a bunch of sparklers. Besides, Micah is all jittery around cemeteries now. I don’t think he’ll stay long, and he doesn’t. I see him half jogging out of the cemetery and jumping into his car. I take a breath that pulls all the air in my car into my lungs, and then I roll down the windows and follow him.

Down the road, to the school, and farther. To the forest on the far side of the quarry that was supposed to be cut down and made into a nice neighborhood full of picket fences, but they ran out of money almost as soon as they started. So now it’s just this cluster of trees that desperately wants to grow into dark fairy woods, and once in junior year, Micah and I went there with a bunch of sparklers. No reason, really. It was finals week and we needed something beautiful. We sent them high, and the embers rained down and burned our bare shoulders.

By the road to the quarry, Micah goes straight and I make a left. He’ll go to the forest and find a pair of paddles sticking out of the ground and a rock from the Metaphor balanced on top, and he’ll know where to go. I have to beat him there.

It’s dark now, aggressively dark, and I open my window and stick my head out to make sure there are stars. It’s freezing and I’m prepared to be annoyed, to huff and puff at the sky and blow the clouds away, but no, there they are! Baby stars blinking and waking and stretching. Don’t be shy, baby stars! You can shine. You can even fall, if you want. Just not tonight. Tonight is mine.

I take a deep breath. I feel the darkness in my lungs and it feels right. I start toward Old Eell’s barn, filled to the brim with the night. The barn is farther down the shore than the Metaphor, and it’s unfamiliar territory in the dark, and unfamiliar is terrifying, so I pee before I go.

What? Fear makes my bladder wonky.

Old Eells is the ghost who lives in the barn and drowns the faint of heart, and I know he’s not real because Alex Brandley always brings girls here on first dates and he should have drowned a thousand times over by now. He brought me here sophomore year and tried to go through three bases in a minute, and I told him I’d kick him in the balls but they were too small to find.

But he did show me the boat, so I guess it was worth it. I’ve taken over the barn now. Micah and I have a stash of alcohol behind the rusty tractor, and it makes me feel terribly grown up. I ignore that tonight, since Micah is bringing the special peach vodka I left for him. I go to the back corner instead, where the boat is. It’s not heavy, but it’s still heavier than I’d like it to be. I kick it and lug it and then something rustles over by the tractor and it’s probably a starved wolf so I run, hauling the boat behind me, until I’m at the edge of the quarry. I leap into the boat and wrap my arms around my legs and squeeze my eyes closed. No spiders no rats no snakes no bats no wolves. Nope nope nope.