This Is Where the World Ends(39)

“But I remember the fire too.”

“Micah, don’t—”

“I remember the match. Dewey, I remember dropping the match. Did I tell you about that? They think I set the fire, and I remember a match. I just don’t remember when. I don’t.”

“Micah—”

“But I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t burn down her house. Why would I do that? I wouldn’t do that, but what if I did? Did I?”

“Micah, shut your f*cking mouth.”

The memories do not return so much as plunge. Shatter back into place.

My dad in a suit, his tie too tight. Checking on me before he goes to her funeral.

Yellow flowers in the school, everywhere and dying.

People carrying stones in their pockets. Writing Virginia Woolf quotes on their arms.

The notes people wrote for her and taped to the wall in the cafeteria. The way the soup splattered across them when Ander pushed me.

Understanding, however briefly, that she was dead. Heading to the quarry to see where the water climbed or she slid, forgetting she drowned halfway there.

Forgetting was the easy part. Remembering is harder, but not as apocalyptically painful

as knowing that there is more to come.



THE JOURNAL OF JANIE VIVIAN

Morrow and Lietrich Law Offices 920 Niagara Road

Waldo, IA 50615

(319) 555-8372

Ghomp Schumacher Krumke LLP

34 Main Street

Waldo, IA 50615

(319) 555-3854

Kirk Olsen, Attorney at Law 4300 North 14th Street

Cedar Falls, IA 50613

(319) 555-0770

Joshing and Jones LLP

275 South Bend Boulevard

Des Moines, IA 50301

(515) 555-2861





before


OCTOBER 13


I wait in Micah’s car until 7:57, even though we arrive at 7:35 and he gives up asking me why I won’t just go in and leaves at 7:40. I huddle in the passenger seat with my arms around my knees. At 7:57, I untangle myself and sprint for the school. You would think that the hallways would be mostly empty by then, but nope, good job, Janie, way to plan. Everyone is in the halls, rushing and pushing and squeezing, and I know they’re not staring at me but just . . . I wish the halls were empty. I don’t want to touch any of them.

I walk into Mr. Markus’s room. I go to my seat, next to Ander.

Right next to him.

I sit down. I cross my legs and fold my arms into knots.

He’s sprawled, spilling over the side of his desk and his legs spread wide open and just everywhere, and I can feel his heat, I can hear his breathing. I sit and I hold my breath as long as I can, and when I can’t, I’m gasping, I can smell it. I can smell his maggot soul.

I might puke. I might run. I might explode and cover the room with Janie guts.

But I will not f*cking cry.

He will never, ever, ever make me cry again.

I decided that this morning while getting ready for school in Micah’s basement. (Which was totally a fun arrangement, by the way. Much better than my brilliant plan of sleeping by the Metaphor. There was this little ledge out of the wind under the bridge, and there was something almost romantic about that: sleeping under the stars, just me and the world and hypothermia. I would have done it. I’m never living with my parents again.)

I don’t know how he explained it to his dad. He dragged me back to his house after my meltdown at the Metaphor. He and his dad chatted for a minute while I sat in the other room and picked at my nails, and then Mr. Carter poked his head in said hi and waved his awkward, common-sense-boneless hand and asked me if I needed anything, and I said no, and he left for his shift at Pick ’n Save and Micah and I watched more cartoons under an afghan his grandmother made him.

Ander turns. He’s looking at me. His maple syrup eyes are wrapping me in webs of sap. I look around for Piper, quick, words, talk to someone, look away, but she’s not in the seat next to me.

No, she’s not there. She’s all the way across the room with a Starbucks cup in her hand.

And. She. Didn’t. Bring. Me. One.

“All right,” Mr. Markus says from his desk. “Well, as the three people who utilize the English Twelve website will know, today was supposed to be a peer review day for the first draft of your thesis papers, but seeing as the same three people are the only ones who have sent me drafts, this is clearly not going to happen.” He sighs, a long sigh that carries all of the disappointment in the world that I have not already staked out for myself. “Well? Get laptops. Write.”

I don’t. I pull out my journal and start paging through. In there, in bits and pieces, spread across pages and pages, are my fractured fairy tale autobiography and a mostly done paper about fairy tale miracles with all of my sketches of universes and oceans and heart variations.

Miracles, one of them begins, do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is—salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or a prince or a glass slipper—in front of us. And that’s what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances.