This Is Where the World Ends(45)

“Here you go, beautiful,” said the frog. “I’ve done you a favor. Now you owe me.”

“Well, all right,” said the princess. “What do you want?”

“To sleep in your bed,” said the frog.

The princess said no. She held her breath and pushed him away and ran and locked the palace doors tight behind her. But you’ll notice that the frog ended up in her bed anyway.





before


OCTOBER 16


Please direct your attention to phase ten, step thirteen: candygrams. Ander was supposed to ask me (again—he should have asked me already, but I would have made it very clear to him that I wanted a confirmation) with one of the candygrams that the student council sells to raise money for the dance. It was supposed to be delivered during seventh hour, and the whole class was supposed to watch as I said yes.

Can you imagine?

Yes.

I don’t get a candygram from Ander.

I do get thirty or so from his friends. They come in a pile during calc. It’s enough candy to make all of my teeth fall out, lollipop after heart-shaped lollipop. I unwrap one and sweep the rest into my backpack while everyone watches. I bite the heart in half and look them each in the eye. They all look away, one by one. All because I shouted rape. Funny, right? Because I didn’t. I didn’t, but Wes and Ander tell everyone I did. I decided not to shout anything at all but everyone in school still knows I had sex with Ander, and who the hell would ever believe that I didn’t want to, right?

The note that accompanies the lollipop I unwrap says Janie Vivian is a whore, Janie Vivian is a bore, Janie Vivian has no friends, Janie Vivian needs to end.

Isn’t that cute?

I think it’s adorable.

Senior homecoming. My dress is covered in sequins and incredibly short. My shoes are five-inch stilettos and I was going to paint my nails red. I was going to be beautiful—devastatingly, truly, madly. I’m returning all of it tomorrow morning.

Micah is going with Maggie Morgenstern, who isn’t even close to good enough for him even though he won’t believe me. She’s a sophomore and I guess she’s cute enough. He asked if I wanted to go with them, but he doesn’t really want me there. Still, I guess it’s sweet. He comes by my locker to make sure I’ll be okay working on the wings here alone. Stupid, silly, lovely Micah, who is still oblivious. The rumors are out there, if he’d care to listen. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he says sometimes, so quietly that it’s almost not out loud at all. He doesn’t really want to know. That’s the truth. If he really wanted to know he would press a little, ask again when I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But he doesn’t.

So after he and everyone else leaves, I swing my backpack full of lollipops over my shoulder and head to the art studio. I’d already put twelve dozen eggs in Mr. Markus’s minifridge and told him it was for my project. He didn’t even blink twice.

Originally, I had wanted to smash one in every single locker in the senior hallway, but I guess that isn’t fair. The ninjas are nothing if not fair. Egging Waldo High’s seniors isn’t exactly an effective f*ck you to society. So instead I go straight to Ander’s locker, where I used to wait for him every day after French. I know his combination by heart.

I don’t light a match because luck isn’t real and I’m not one of the lucky ones, anyway. I just twist the lock and open the door and dump all twelve dozen eggs inside.

I start out one by one, holding them high and dropping them on his textbooks and reveling a little in the way the eggs break in layers—shell, white, yolk. But it’s an awful lot of eggs, and by the third dozen, I’m just opening the cartons and pouring them in, waterfalling, everywhere.

I blow it all a kiss, and I’m about to walk away when I see that he still has my picture taped to his locker door. It’s the classic senior portrait pose: hair twirl, bright bright smile, oversaturated eyes. At the bottom, in my handwriting, it says, I’ll like you forever, I’ll love you for always, xoxo <3.

Well. That just isn’t true.

I rip it off and set it on the eggs. I slam the door. I go back down the hall and close myself in the art room. The janitors cleaned up after I left on Monday. My mess is gone, but there’s lots of dust left. It’s everywhere.

I sit on the ground and pull the candygrams out of my backpack, along with my journal. I copy them down in Journal Twelve, one per page, to investigate further and figure out a ninja hit list. The Skarpie bleeds everywhere.

Roses are red, violets are blue, Janie’s a whore, and a little bitch too.

Slut.

Whore.

Bitch.

Just wanted to get laid. Nice ass, though. I’d be down. You can dump me right afterward and I won’t say a word. Not even to Cameron. HMU.

Liar.

Liar.

Liar.

I guess I can’t really argue with that.

Once everything is copied down, I smooth out the candygrams. I pull the wings closer and find my scissors and glue, and I start making feathers again. And for a little while, it’s okay. It’s okay again. It’s just me in my closet of a studio with wings that just barely fit, and feathers.

I glue these new ones at the very top of the unfinished left wing, in all directions. They stick up, ugly and messy and uneven, with glue oozing out of the sides, and they don’t really cover the bamboo and wire frame, which is already loose.