This Is Where the World Ends(5)

“I miss you,” I say, accidentally/not accidentally out loud. Miss, present tense. I’m sitting here and I can still feel distance between us, just folded and crumpled and tangled. Our soul has stretch marks.

Wanted: stretch mark cream for the soul. The stuff that actually works, not the telemarketing crap.

Micah gets all blushy and awkward, but I don’t say anything about it because we don’t have time. We have a mission tonight. Eyes on the prize. I half kick open the car door—badassery—and jump onto the sidewalk.

Micah gets out too and squints at the house. “Where are we?”

“Carrie Lang’s. Come on. I put the helium tank in your trunk already.”

“But—how did you get into my car? I finally got the lock fixed.”

Oh, please. What a silly question. I pull my lockpick from my back pocket and flash it at him. It was two bucks on Amazon, so of course I got one. I think there’s a criminal streak in me. I think it’s wide.

But I’m using it for good, see? I’m doing—something. Anything. I’m tired of watching, and waiting, and expecting things to work out. It never works out. It never works unless you demand.

So here I am, demanding.

“Hurry, Micah!”

He’s chewing on his lip all uncertain-like, and I tap my foot on the curb until he sighs and comes to stand next to me.

“Ready?” I ask him.

We pop open the trunk, and I hop in and struggle with the helium tank. Thank god for Party City. Micah sighs, and then he climbs in with me and opens the package of balloons, and when our eyes meet, my smile lights up the entire world.

Carrie Lang is one of my best friends, I think. She called me both times she lost her virginity and if that doesn’t constitute a place on the best friend tier, I don’t know what does. She is blond and tall and pretty and cartoonishly in love with Caleb Matthers, or at least she will be until she finds out that he cheated on her with Suey Park.

She likes rain and British actors and balloons, and though I can’t get her the first two, I am going to fill her yard with the third.

So that’s what we do, Micah and I. We sit in the back of his car and fill balloons, and I see us as a photograph, snapped through the back window, zoomed out, long exposure. I don’t tell him that Caleb Matthers is the real reason we are really here, that he is cheating on Carrie and I know because Suey Park was wearing his boxers and I saw them while we were changing for gym.

Caleb is allergic to latex—not, like, deathly, but he’ll definitely break out in hives. Everywhere. Mwahahaha.

Like I said, the world isn’t always fair, and sometimes we have to help it along. Bad things should happen to bad people, but I leave out the details with Micah. I love him more than anything, but our soul is so strained right now that it doesn’t make sense to pull it even tauter with unnecessary detail.

It’s easier like this, just to be us. It’s easier like this to see how beautiful the earth and life and we are. We are stars and the purple-red-blue sky is the background. We are streamers and ribbons tied to trees and balloons that dance in the wind. We are shadows, the too-sharp angle of his nose and the frizzy strands of hair falling into my face. We breathe in the helium and sing show tunes to each other in unrecognizable voices.

“Janie,” he says as we finish up, “I missed you too.”





after


NOVEMBER 16


There is nothing special about Waldo. It is a shitty town in the middle of a shitty state. There’s snow for most of the year and corn when there’s not. No one ever comes. No one ever leaves.

It is known for having the deepest quarry in Iowa.

It is known for having a nationally ranked wrestling team.

It is known for Janie Vivian.

They take turns telling me. Dewey, the nurses, the doctor, even my dad when he visits for a few minutes between his shifts.

My brain is liquid. They press and press information, but my brain is liquid. They touch the surface and it ripples and then it goes blank again. This is the most frustrating part. I feel it when my brain goes blank, until I forget that too.

What I remember, what they tell me enough times, is this: There was a party.

There was a bonfire, and it got out of control.

Janie’s house burned down.

There were a lot of people at her house when it burned down, because there was a party.

But Janie wasn’t one of them.

They don’t tell me where she was, though, or where she is.

Or maybe they do.

I don’t know.

I sleep a lot. Dewey is usually there when I wake up. He’s the one who tells me that my dad is working another shift to pay for the hospital. He’s the one who tells me the most about the fire. He must be. He’s always there. For a characteristically shitty friend, he’s suddenly very dependable. It must be because of the Xbox.

“What happened to Janie?” I ask him. It’s a Saturday. I think. I’ve been in the hospital for a week. My head has stopped hurting enough that I can eat solid food again.

Dewey was leaning forward to shoot, but he flinches and misses. “What?”

“I said, what happened—”

“I heard you,” he says, and pauses the game. “You asked what happened.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“You’ve never asked that before.”