This Is Where the World Ends(34)

PART II


HAPPILY EVER AFTER





after


DECEMBER 6


Forgetting is the easy part. This should be unsurprising, but it surprises me. Forgetting was easy. Remembering is endless and it hurts, endlessly.

On the night of the bonfire, on the last night that anyone saw Janie Vivian, it was too cold to be outside. I was in bed with my laptop on my chest when Janie came up the stairs. She had been gone all day. She was gone most days, actually. I see less of her now that she’s living in the basement than I did when she was at the new house.

She stood in the doorway, and I knew something was wrong.

Her eyes were almost colorless. Her hands were deep in her pockets and her pockets were full of stones. I could see them, knuckles and rocks.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. “Where have you been?”

She leaned her head against the doorframe. “What are you doing?”

“Senior thesis,” I said. “Have you heard of Thomas Müntzer? He said the world was going to end in 1525. Listen to this: he dies under torture and gets his head cut off, so I guess it was pretty damn apocalyptic for him.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for homecoming?”

I shrug. “I’ve got time.”

“Micah,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

I blinked up from my screen. Her hair was falling into her eyes and she didn’t move it away. “What?”

She sighed. “Don’t be that guy, Micah. I said I was sorry, okay?”

“I know, I just mean—” She always said that guilt lived in my side of the soul. Janie never had anything to apologize for. People forgave her without being asked. I squinted at her. “Is that my sweatshirt?”

She looked down. “Yeah, I guess. They don’t make sweatshirts like this for girls, you know?”

“Uh, not really,” I said. I pushed my laptop aside and started to get up. She crossed her arms and curled over a little. She looked small. I wanted to shake her awake.

“Oh, you know,” she said, and I wondered why she kept crushing her chest, if it made her voice so shaky. “Girls’ sweatshirts are too thin and don’t do shit to keep you warm. Girl things are just like that. They don’t work right. They’re just there to—you know. Look nice. And this. This is just nice, you know? This is a nice sweatshirt.”

“Janie,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said, flinching. I wasn’t anywhere near her; my hand twitched from across the room and she flinched away from it. I swallowed. My spit was cold.

She took a breath, and I heard it rasp into her lungs without filling them. “Sorry,” she said. Her voice was small. Her voice was microscopic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Do you ever feel like you just can’t win?”

Of course I did. I lived in f*cking Waldo, Iowa. I went to Waldo High School and didn’t play sports. I was not particularly rich in friends. I was poorly endowed in just about every possible area of life. Of course I f*cking did.

“Oh, stop that,” said Janie, a little closer to normal, which meant that she was annoyed. “I can hear you thinking.”

“Stop what?”

“Your poor little white boy nice guy act. Don’t be the cliché, Micah. You’re better than that.”

“Janie,” I said. I took another step forward and she took another step back.

“Stop,” she said, and I did. She took another breath. “Don’t. I’m fine.”

It was a lie.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said, and she laughed, or she tried. It didn’t matter how many breaths she took to steady herself. She tried to laugh and choked.

“Oh, please. You don’t want to know what’s wrong, Micah. If you wanted to know, you would have—” She stopped. She blinked, and tilted her head to the ceiling so the tears wouldn’t fall out. “What isn’t wrong? The world is ending. I’m not even being dramatic. The world is f*cking ending. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you picked apocalypses, isn’t it? The bees are dying. The ozone layer has more holes than I do. Some idiot could press the wrong button tomorrow and start a nuclear war. It’s just—it’s a lot of stuff, Micah. And we can’t really change it. Isn’t that the worst part? We can’t really change any of the stuff that matters. Just think about how much sleep we lost trying to fix stuff no one can ever really fix.”

“Um,” I said. “I guess?”

Her voice is smaller than I’ve ever heard it when she says, “What are the odds that you’d ditch Maggie and the dance tonight and do something with me?”

“What?” I ask.

“Do you trust me?”

Of course I trusted her. And of course I would go with her—it wasn’t a question. Maggie was cute, but she wasn’t Janie.

“Just let me text Maggie,” I said. “And I have to change.”

She smiled. She crossed the room, finally, and wrapped her arms around me. She smelled like she was burning when I put my head on hers. Sometimes I forgot how small she really was. She barely reached my chin. She looked up and her lips were curved and her eyes were too bright and I—

I nearly kissed her, but didn’t.