This Is Where the World Ends(57)

I never learned to light matches right. Somehow, I always burn my fingertips. I can never actually

do it

right.

Or anything else, really.

I’m sorry, I don’t have the guts to do it like you did. I can’t walk it. But maybe I can just fall.

I drop the matches onto the ice, one by one. The ice is thin and dark. Behind me is the empty space where the Metaphor used to be. Where we spent every Thursday. Where we ate fries and counted stones and climbed and fell. Where you declared an apocalypse and I chose the music.

I watch the matches fall, and I think I can do that. I don’t have to do anything, really. Just let the ice melt and break apart. Just let gravity do what gravity does. I can’t screw that up. I’ve already screwed everything else up. I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wanted Ander to go to jail, and I want him to go to jail too, but I’ve f*cked it all up.

I’m running out of matches. Ten or so left. I think about apocalypses.

Ten.

In 634 BCE, the Romans thought their city would disappear because it was the one hundred twentieth year of their founding, because Romulus had supposedly received twelve eagles from the gods when he discovered Rome, and the old, gray philosophers thought that each eagle represented a decade. But it passed, and the world didn’t end, but the Romans still died eventually.

Nine.

Pope Sylvester II tells everyone that the world will end in 1000 CE, presumably because it’s a nice even number. People freak out. Riots pop up all over Europe. People travel to Jerusalem to—to what? I don’t know. The world doesn’t end. They move on.

Eight.

Pope Innocent III, Islamophobe extraordinaire, tells everyone that the world will end six hundred and sixty years after the rise of Islam. He is wrong.

Seven.

The Black Plague hits Europe in 1346. People say it’s a sign of the end of times, and for a lot of them, it is. Some of them die. Some of them don’t. The world continues, but people stop throwing their shit on the streets.

Six.

Thomas Müntzer calls it the beginning of the apocalypse. Everyone else calls it 1525. He and his followers are killed by the government for some hazy reason that Wikipedia did not list and so was not included in my thesis paper. He himself dies under torture, and gets beheaded, so it was pretty apocalyptic for him.

Five.

Christopher Columbus jumps on the apocalypse-predicting bandwagon in 1501 and writes the Book of Prophecies, in which he says the world is going to end in 1656, after he is safely dead so he won’t be around to witness it.

Four.

1666, just because it has the number six hundred and sixty-six in it. Just because.

Three.

1806. Some chick named Mary Bateman has a hen that lays an egg that proclaims the second coming of Christ. Rich people worship the chicken. Poor people starve because they don’t have chicken. Turns out that Mary Bateman went to a lot of trouble to etch the words onto the egg, and even stuffed it back up into her chicken.

Two.

Janie Vivian declares an apocalypse while standing on a pile of rocks that has no significance whatsoever. This one is not rescheduled. This one is not miscalculated. This one is true. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true.

One—

“Micah!”

A car door slams and Dewey is running, but I’m on the last match, and he stops. His hands are high. “Micah,” he says, calm now. Forced calm. Full of pressure. “Micah, you look like shit.”

The last match is in my hand. The ice is thin and bright under my feet. I hold the head against the lighting strip. Press it down.

“I feel like shit, honestly,” I tell him.

“I figured,” he says. Slowly. He talks slowly. He moves toward me slowly and stops at the edge of the quarry. Puts one foot onto the ice.

I don’t want slow. I want a flick of the wrist. I want to drop. I want this to be over.

“I killed her,” I tell him matter-of-factly.

And I flick my wrist

And the match comes to life

And I’m about to throw it down And follow

When Dewey says,

“I did, too.”

And the match

burns.

“What?”

“She wrote on the rocks,” he tells me. “She wrote the things people called her, horrible things. They found them, when they got the body out. You want to know how she died? That’s how she died. She put rocks everywhere she could and she walked into the quarry. She wrote shit on them like slut and whore and they dragged her down.”

I stare at him. He stares back. The moonlight is terrible and everywhere. Dewey takes a step onto the ice.

“I let her,” I finally say. “Didn’t I? I remember. I told her we should stop trying. After she kissed Ander. Even though Ander—even though he . . .”

I heard and I knew and I never asked her about it. I never tried because I didn’t know how.

“Yeah,” says Dewey. “You were shitty. You were a shitty friend.”

“And Ander,” I say. “Nothing’s going to happen to Ander?”

Dewey is quiet for a moment. “No,” he says finally. “I don’t think so. I mean, you know. No one can do anything now. Maybe her parents, but f*ck them.”

The match burns lower

lower

toward my fingers.