This Is Where the World Ends(8)

“Are they?” No one told me that. Or maybe they did. I shouldn’t be surprised. So they’re dating—Janie always gets her way.

They do not ask me why I hate Ander on principle, but it’s because I am in love with her and always have been. Maybe I already told them. I don’t know.

My head hurts.

“I know, kid, and I’m sorry about that. We’ll be on our way soon enough,” says the less fat one, and sure enough, he’s putting his notepad away. I said that out loud; I thought I was getting better about telling the difference. “You just rest up, kid.”

“There was a fire,” I say suddenly, and they pause on their way to the door. “A bonfire.”

“There was,” says the fatter one.

My hands. My fingers aren’t bandaged. None of me, except my head.

“A lot of people were burned,” I say slowly.

They policemen look at each other.

“Am I burned?”

The less fat detective twitches; he wants to reach for the notepad, but the other one stops him. “Were you at the party, Micah?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I can’t, I can’t remember.

“Okay, okay, son,” the fatter detective says. His voice is calm again. His hands are up. I take a breath. “Get some rest. We’ll talk soon.”

Waldo doesn’t have many parties. There aren’t really any colleges around, so no one knows how to throw one. People drink in their basements after prom and blast music in earbuds so their parents won’t wake up upstairs. Waldo doesn’t have big parties, parties people talk about, parties people go to. Parties everyone goes to.

But Janie did.

There was a party and a bonfire.

There was a party and a bonfire at Janie’s new house. I remember, suddenly, as we leave the hospital and the sun hurts my eyes.

The fire was enormous.

I think about this as Dewey drives me home. I thought my dad would have to pick me up, but I’m eighteen. I am an adult. I keep forgetting. I wish I remembered our birthday. Janie must have done something crazy for our eighteenth birthday.

At one point, I ask Dewey why he’s doing all this, and he says my dad is paying him. That makes a little more sense, except of course that my dad has no money.

There was a party and a bonfire and the bonfire was enormous.

I repeat that to myself as Dewey bumps along roads that no amount of construction can smooth. They’re still trying, though. They’re always trying. At the corner of our neighborhood is another tractor laying down pebbles along the shoulders.

Janie loved those pebbles.

She left them anywhere.

I wonder if the police know.

I wonder if I should tell them.





THE JOURNAL OF JANIE VIVIAN

Once upon a time, a girl and a boy went to the forest without their parents. They walked until they found a tree wide as the sky, a cemetery full of flowers, and best of all, a mountain of stones better than any witch’s house of candy, because it was theirs. Back at home, there were parents who told them to fatten up or skinny down, who said that they must save money for school and study and stop believing in fairy world. But at the mountain of stones, it was only the two of them, and that was enough.

Sometimes they got lost. Sometimes they didn’t want to be found. But it was a big forest and a bigger world, and whenever they went anywhere without each other, they left trails of stones that led all the way back to each other.

Because they loved each other with the biggest love of all.





before


SEPTEMBER 10


Ander Cameron is on a ten-phase, month-long, totally non-creepy schedule to fall in love with me. I spent two weeks planning us out on pages 158 to 176 of my last journal, and he—bless his beautiful heart—has rushed ahead this morning. Being the most perfect person in all the inhabitable planets in the universe, Ander Cameron has brought me coffee this morning. He didn’t have to do that for another week, but god, isn’t punctuality hot? (It totally is.)

And it gets better—he did it right! Chocolate hazelnut latte with chocolate whipped cream. He walks into English, slides it down on my desk, flashes those perfectly perfect teeth, and says, “Hey. That’s what Piper usually grabs, right?”

One of the perks of being best friends with Piper Blythe is that she lives right next to Starbucks and picks up coffee every morning. But Piper is at an orthodontist appointment today, and I had already steeled myself to the horrible reality of trying to survive today without caffeine, even though I’m still trying to make up the sleep I lost for Carrie, and then—well, hello, Prince freaking Charming.

“You’re the best,” I tell him, like he doesn’t already know, and fluff out my hair in his direction so he can catch a whiff. Lemon raspberry keratin strengthening shampoo and conditioner—I smell like a freaking sunrise. And it works! He leans in, just a little bit, but the little things matter most.

But he, on the other hand, smells like salt and deodorant, which is preferable to, like, no deodorant, I guess. He smells like salt in my head too, just more like the ocean and less like sweat. Alas, life isn’t perfect. Who knew?

Here is what you should know about Ander Cameron:

1. His soul is the color of a humid day, when there’s just the thinnest layer of clouds hiding the sky. You know there’s something behind there—it might be rain or sun or thunder, but you can’t quite tell yet.