This Is Where the World Ends(31)

And me on the ground. I look up at him through smoke, so much goddamn smoke, and seeing my blood on his knuckles, his hair in his eyes, blue eyes eclipsed by his pupils.

A memory within a memory: I shouldn’t have said that.

I should have kept my f*cking mouth shut.

And then—pain, searing but dull. Focused but everywhere.

Here, now, my head hits the ground.

The impact shakes the memories loose, and they come back in floods.

Helium on her breath. Her voice rising higher as I wondered if it was okay that it turned me on.

Janie climbing the Metaphor. Arms spread wide as I squint and try to find where her hair ends and the trees begin.

The sky and fireworks. The secrets and elements.

She climbs into my bed. We huddle under the covers. The air is humid with her sobbing.

Wings. I remember the wings, I remember them burning. A fire, a different one.

Janie pulling on my sweatshirt and transfering her rocks, her markers, her matches into its pockets.

They come, they fall, faster and faster.

Anything, everything: they’re almost equal, but not quite.

I have always needed her more than she needs me.

“Goddamn,” Dewey gasps in my ear. We’re on the ground and the night is dark and I’m cold, I’m freezing. “Goddamn it, Micah, goddamn, we’re getting out of here.”

He drags me to my feet, and I sway.

“She declared an apocalypse here,” I tell him.

“Good for her. Can we go?”

“Right. Go. Barn. We have vodka in the barn. We’re out of champagne, though. We drank it all that night. Didn’t mean to.”

I am swaying from the memories. Dewey hitting me Janie sobbing fire burning. Drink, drink to forget.

“No, not the barn, we’re f*cking going home—”

But I’m stumbling toward the barn already, Old Eell’s where there are ghosts. Ghosts. Janie’s ghost? Maybe.

Maybe we drank here too much. We had a stash in the winter to keep warm. And in the summer, to stay hot. That’s what she said, anyway.

“Micah, will you just hold on—”

I push the barn doors open and almost fall over. I see the blurry shape of the boat and remember the treasure hunt, remember how easy that was. How she was waiting. How I always expected her to be waiting. Needed her to be waiting.

“Micah, please—”

“Back here,” I say, stumbling in the dark to the rusty tractor. It’s dark; I lose my balance and then my footing. It doesn’t hurt. Something is poking into my elbow. Dewey stops next to me and uses his phone screen to shed a bit of light on us and I see I see

Matches and Skarpies and rocks. Rocks, but only a few.

“What the hell is this?” Dewey asks. He crouches down and starts sifting through the papers, squinting. “What the f*ck? Hey, Micah, look. Plane tickets.”

“What?”

He opens a brochure. “Cool. Look at this. You want to go to Nepal?”

He understands faster than I do. He snaps it closed and shoves it out of sight, and glances at me with his mouth tight. I sway on my feet.

Tickets to Nepal.

Janie is in Nepal.

But

but if the plane tickets are here

then

she’s not.

And if she’s not in Nepal, then

then

I scramble for the rocks. I yell for Dewey to turn on his f*cking flashlight app, and the light is sudden and burning but when the stinging stops and I blink the water away, I see it.

Black against the other ones, smeared by her fingers.

Fear no more.

I can’t claim to know Janie Vivian. I don’t know if our souls are connected. But I do know this: she would never go anywhere without this rock in her pocket.

“Micah.” Dewey’s voice finally reaches me, frantic. “Micah, man, can you hear me? Oh, shit. Oh, goddamn, shit goddamn—okay, it’s fine. I’m taking you home.”

I reach up and clutch his collar, and try to say his name. My lips are slow. “Fuck,” I say. “Oh god. Wait. Dewey, wait. I remember. I think I remember.”

He doesn’t listen, or he doesn’t understand. I can feel his body heat and his breath. No one has been this close to me since Janie, that night.

Janie in my arms, hot breath and fingers clutching, lips on mine.

“Oh, Micah.” Her voice is everywhere, that night, tonight, every night. Forget. Forget. “Forget everything. Burn it all.”

“Shit, you weigh a ton. Okay. Fuck you, f*ck this. Fuck this. Stay here.”

I don’t know how long it takes me to realize that I’m alone.





before


OCTOBER 10


“No, we always play Never Have I Ever,” I whine. My head is in Ander’s lap and they’re all here on the floor in the basement of the house I f*cking hate but that’s finally good for something, Piper and Wes and Jasper (who they all call Big Jizz because he spilled milk on his lap in, like, middle school) and Gonzalo and Jude. Happy happy happy birthday to me. “I’m out of Never Have I Evers.”

Ander’s hands are wrist deep in my hair, and his fingers play with it like it’s water. “What, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Something fun.”