This Is Where the World Ends(30)

That’s not a secret, but Micah just braids his fingers tighter with mine, matching up our life lines. I scoot closer. I push my shoulder against his, and my thigh against his thigh, and I hook my foot around his calf because he’s gotten too tall for our feet to match up. And that’s how we lie, telling secret after secret as we drift, until I look around and decide that this is it, this is the center of the quarry.

“This isn’t the center,” Micah says when I tell him.

“Why not?” I ask, and he doesn’t have a good answer.

I open the vodka. We pass it back and forth, throwing it back and coughing all the way down. We flick water at each other as we wait for it to kick in, and when it does—when the dark is fuzzy and the stars are much closer, I bring out my matches. Micah hands me the sparklers. I aim at the stars and set the sparklers off, and we lie back and laugh at how high they go.

“We should do this again,” he says. I watch the fireworks in his glasses.

“Nope. No repeats. Just live the moment, Micah.”

He doesn’t argue. “Something else, then,” he says, and his voice is cautious, almost shy, and I lean back against him. I put my face in his shoulder and breathe him in, memorize the way we fit together.

“Something else,” I say. “After tomorrow. Then we can do anything. Anything.”

“Right. You can legally have sex with Ander,” he says, and his voice gets further away with every letter of every word.

“Micah,” I say, closing my eyes. “Don’t. Not tonight. Hey, what time is it? Can you check? My phone is dead.”

He squints at his watch. “Twelve fifteen. Almost.”

“Happy birthday, Micah Carter,” I say. “This is my present, by the way. I hope you like it.” I put my face in his side and smile. “We’re eighteen, mostly.”

He pushes me away, and for a second I wonder if this isn’t enough, if he’s still angry, before I open my eyes and see him shifting so he can pull an envelope out of his pocket.

“What’s that?” I ask, already reaching.

“Happy birthday, Janie Vivian,” he says, shy.

I open it and begin to cry.

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Micah. What did you do? Did you really?”

They’re tickets, and brochures, and phone numbers and emails and a map to Nepal.

“This is the trip.” I still can’t get my voice louder than a whisper. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Micah. Did you really? You can’t do this, it’s too much—I mean, I’m going to take it, obviously. But Micah. Micah. I can’t believe you. How did you know?”

He laughs. “Are you kidding? You’ve been looking at that page for months and closing it if you thought anyone was looking. You even didn’t start your college applications, did you.”

It’s not a question because he already knows the answer. I can’t stop sniveling. His smile is everything.

“You have to pay me back,” he says, but he still can’t stop smiling for long enough for either of us to take him seriously. “I only got it because I knew you’d never go unless someone told you it’s a good idea.”

“Oh, shut up, Micah,” I say. I love him more than anything. I grab him and drag him against me, full-on sobbing into his bony shoulder. The boat wobbles and Micah shouts a warning and his head bumps mine and we collide. We are whole again, we are us.

“So there,” he says, “now you know what you’re doing next year. Good Samaritan Janie Vivian. I still have no idea where I’m going to be—”

I slap my hand over his mouth, because I’m not done admiring my tickets, and none of that matters right now anyway. Tonight. This moment is all that matters.

“We have this,” I tell him, and drop my hand from his soft, soft lips. “This is ours.”

“This,” he says, and the word is so quiet that it seems to stretch on forever.

Later, as we paddle back, I ask him, “Did you get it? The treasure hunt?”

“Um, I guess. Was it your way of saying you’re sorry you were a total bi—”

“It was the elements,” I say. I tick them off on my fingers, starting with the middle one. “First was the tree, and climbing, and into the sky, the air. And then the cemetery, for earth. And the fire, and the water. And the last one.”

“Ununoctium?”

“Us,” I say. “You and me. We’re the last element, you idiot. I love you more than anything.”

“I love you more than everything.”

Janie and Micah. Micah and Janie.





after


DECEMBER 5


Dewey is reaching for me and he is missing, his voice in my ear. He spits f*ck shit goddamn at me, and the moment splits: us, here now, and also not us, not here.

Dewey’s fist is slamming into my jaw, his voice in my ear telling me to never f*cking talk to him again.

His eyes are all pupil and the fire is burning higher in them.

I am falling but also already on the ground, and the smoke is thick and my glasses are shattering and Dewey is on top of me. His spit is flying and splattering on my face.

“You *.” He says it like he means it. “You *, you little f*cking *. You piece of shit, you actual f*cking piece of shit—”