by Amy Zhang
Exit Janie, end scene.
Except—
“Wait, Micah! Micah. We have to take your car. I’m out of gas.”
It started small. I think we made a plate of cookies and left them on Michael Wong’s front porch because his girlfriend had dumped him on the first day of freshman year. His mom made him throw them out because she thought they might have had pot in them (which obviously they didn’t, or I would have kept them for myself), but it was the thought that counted. After that it was cliché: raking someone’s leaves, leaving heads-up pennies on the sidewalks by the elementary school, putting an extra quarter in parking meters.
And then: sophomore year. We were stupid and invincible. We thought we were everything, and we started getting adventurous. There was the whole library fiasco, and I guess it snowballed from there. We started wearing masks. We started thinking bigger, brighter, like there was nothing in the world the two of us together couldn’t do, and sometimes I still think we were right.
Because we are freaking badasses.
We have a hit list, and we are damn creative. We are Justice. We do right, and we reward the deserving. There was the time we sneaked into the petting zoo and protested animal captivity and the time we hid lollipops all over Grant MacFarther’s house and the time we hung Christmas ornaments in Jade Bastian’s car in July. And there were other nights too. Quiet ones, just us, Micah and me, me and Micah. Swimming in the quarry. Shadow tag in the parking lot by the baby wipe factory. A reenactment of Les Mis in the rain. Stars and stars, night after night, secrets spilled in a world too big for sleep.
Micah is taking forever.
I sit on the hood of his car, and when he finally appears—through the door, what the hell? He knows doors are against the rules—I smack the top of his car and yell, “Driver!”
He only says, “You can’t call driver, it’s my car. And get off. I just washed it.”
“As if you care,” I say, but when I climb back onto the ground, he dusts my footprints from the paint. I put my hand in my pocket and squeeze my rocks and wonder if there is a word for the marks you get on your palm when you squeeze something so hard that the skin is on the verge of ripping.
“Micah Carter,” I say, and he does look up, right at me. And his eyes are the same green-gray-brown that they always have been, and he still has eleven freckles (two on the left cheek, nine on the right), and his glasses are in their perpetual state of sliding down his nose, and this is my Micah August Carter. This is the boy who climbed onto his roof when we were five to hear the wind better. This is the boy who, due to a small miscommunication, donated blood during my appendectomy even though he thought it would kill him. This is the boy who is both my impulse control and my very best ideas.
If we can get through tonight, everything will go back to normal. We will be us. He will stop ditching me for Dewey most weekends and I will stop moping in my stupid new house every night. I will drag him into the night, every night. We won’t have to worry about going to college and growing apart and forgetting each other in favor of bland significant others, because this is real and always and forever.
He turns away and gets into the driver’s seat, and I glare at him for a solid ten seconds before I stomp to the other side. Pick the battles, win the war.
We don’t back out of the driveway, we tear. His engine shreds the sky. We’re going to get caught before we start. “Oh my god, we’re going to wake your dad. Micah. I just started my Common App. I don’t want to write that I have a felony.”
This is a little bit of a lie, which I feel a little bit terrible about. Micah and I swore in fourth grade never to lie to each other about the important things, and maybe lying about starting the Common App is a small thing, but not planning to go to college right away is a much bigger one. I did start an application, just less one for college and more one to volunteer in Nepal for women’s rights. I want to rebuild orphanages and teach English and sex ed. Not that I know much about rebuilding orphanages or teaching, but I’ll figure it out, and I’ll hike and take pictures and draw and buy souvenirs in open markets. I’ll fill my journal so full of paint and gesso and charcoal and color and Skarpie and words and stories that it won’t close. I want to explore. I want to go far, far away.
“Felony?” He sounds annoyed, which makes me annoyed. “Janie, you said this would be fast.”
“It will be,” I say. “Felony was hyperbolic. If anything, it’ll be a misdemeanor, and only if we’re caught. I can’t believe you’re done with college apps. That’s ridiculous. They’re not due for months. And—turn turn, MICAH, TURN,” I scream and the wheels scream and I think the mailbox was already on the ground, I don’t think we knocked it over, but we don’t stick around to figure it out. “Okay, next left, second house on your right. Got it?”
“I get it, I’m not an idiot.”
“No, left, MICAH. Left! LEFT!”
Update: we are not dead, and Micah still doesn’t know left from right.
He finally pulls to a stop on the wrong side of the road, and I’m laughing and I can’t stop, because, God—
“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.”
I reply to the ceiling. It is almost white, almost smooth, almost more interesting than the video game Dewey has been playing on repeat because he beat all the levels two days ago. “So answer the goddamn question.”
He stares at me. I don’t think Dewey has ever really looked at me before. “Usually you just ask where she is.”
Where. Where is Janie Vivian. The world tilts; I might fall off the bed. I’ve stopped puking, but I might start again. I might. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Dewey doesn’t say anything.
“So what happened? Where’d she go?”
For a moment it seems like he might tell me the truth; I look at him and he looks at me. His eyes are almost black. Then he looks away and says, “She went away.”
“But where?”
“She—she’s doing a volunteer trip. In Nepal.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“But why? Why Nepal?”
He shrugs. “She just couldn’t be in Waldo anymore, I guess.”
“But why didn’t she stay and tell me?” The pain is growing. The pain is growing larger.
Dewey meets my eyes again. His eyes are almost black, but not quite. But no, Dewey’s eyes are blue. They’ve always been blue.
But for a moment I thought they were black, the pupils so big that they eclipsed the iris.
The world is nearly sideways.
Dewey presses play again.
The doctor comes later to ask if I’m ready to go.
“Where?” I ask him.
He’s balding; his chest hair puffs out from the top of his coat. I don’t remember his name yet. He always keeps one hand in his pocket and never stops clicking his pen.
“Home, Micah,” he says. His smile is wide and false. “You get to go home.”
He checks my head and asks me about my new glasses. I remember that these glasses are new, but not what happened to the old ones. He tells me that I’m doing just fine, and leaves.
Dewey watches the door close. “He’s told you that every time.”
“Told me what?”
He sighs. “That you’re leaving tomorrow, dumbass.”
“Oh,” I say, and try to remember that. “Okay. But I don’t remember how many times he’s come.”
Dewey snorts and goes back to Metatron. “That’s what he said.”
On Sunday, Dewey packs up the Xbox.
On Sunday, I am finally allowed to wear normal clothes again. My dad brought them last night, but I was asleep, or I forgot he was here.
On Sunday, the police come.
There are two of them. One is fat and one is less fat. They introduce themselves, but they only do it once, and I forget their names as soon as they say them.
One sits and one stands. They ask Dewey to leave, and he doesn’t. His fingers twitch for a cigarette and he remains sitting, so one of the police officers has to stand. He glares at them and asks them why the hell they’re here.
“We’ve talked to everyone from the fire,” says the less fat one, who is sitting. “It’s just procedure, nothing to worry about.”
“He’s completely fu—I mean, he’s messed up in the head,” Dewey says. His hand keeps going to his pocket for a cigarette and coming back empty. “You can’t talk to him like this. There’s no way this is okay.”
“The doctors cleared him,” says the fatter one. His voice is low and firm. “It’s just a few standard questions, Jonathan.”
“That’s not my name,” Dewey snaps, though it is.
“Dewey, just go,” I say. They’re hurting my head.
He glares at me. “Shut up, Micah. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know what I’m saying,” I say, slowly, so it’s not a lie. “I want you to go.”
He glares at me for another second, and then stalks out of the room. He has his phone in his hand and he’s dialing. I think I hear him say my dad’s name before he slams the door behind him.
There’s a beat of silence. Then the fatter one says, “How are you feeling, Micah?”
“Not great.”
That’s probably the best answer I give them. They keep asking questions. If I want water. What I knew about the quarry. Why I was there so often. If I always went with Janie. If she was ever sad. If she ever cried. How well I knew her.
“Better than anyone,” I tell them.
The less fat one pulls out a notepad. “Is that right, son?”
He doesn’t believe me.
“Better than anyone,” I repeat.
The fatter one watches me. “Are you sure about that, Micah? We’ve talked to just about the entire school, and I don’t think anyone would back you up on that.”
“Better than anyone.”
“They all say that no one ever saw the two of you interact. Ever.”
That’s true. I remember that. We decided that in middle school. Before that, maybe. I can’t really remember, but not because of my head injury. It’s just been a long time.
I have been trying to figure it all out while staring at the ceiling, but it’s hard because I’m still forgetting. I forget that my dad is working three shifts now to pay for the hospital bills and that’s why he’s never here. I forget that I am eighteen now. I forget that it’s November. I keep trying and trying to remember, but all I can think of is Janie closing her door with her fingertips and the wind from the window and how that was really it.
“It was easier,” I tell the policemen.
The less fat
detective writes something down. “Why’s that?”
I shrug. Shrugging doesn’t uncover my ass anymore, because I have a real shirt now. Hah. “You said you talked to everyone at school. Can’t you figure it out?”
They watch me. I watch them back. Neither of them have answers.
“What happened?” I ask them.
They don’t answer. They just keep asking questions. About that night. About what happened before the bonfire. If I was with her. If I knew she was planning a bonfire. If I know why there was another fire by the quarry. If I drank that night. If I knew beforehand that her parents would be out of town that weekend.
I don’t know why they’re talking to me at all.
I don’t remember.
“Her parents,” I repeat when they ask me about them. “Her parents don’t like me.”
“Why’s that?” the less fat one asks again.
“They just don’t. Janie’s parents. She didn’t like them, did you know that? Have you talked to them?”
They nod. Their lips are tight and they do not speak more than they have to. I don’t like them. I don’t like either of them, but they are going to find out what happened. Because Janie is gone. Janie Vivian is gone.
I repeat this to myself, in my head and out loud, and try to keep breathing as the world keeps tilting sideways. We are nearly upside down.
“Do you know why she went?” I ask them. “Why did she go to Nepal?”
“What?” the less fat one says.
“That’s right,” the fatter one says. He’s giving the other one a look like a warning. “Nepal.”
“Why’s she there?”
They look at each other, the policemen.
“Why’d her parents let her? They would never let her. What about school?” School. “She’s doing her senior project on fairy tales.” Out loud, deliberate. Sudden, because that’s how the memory comes and goes. Papers by the Metaphor, my voice and hers. Feathers. Scissors. Senior projects. We are seniors, because Janie moved the day before senior year. Her hands with chipping nails, her voice laughing because. Because her parents wanted her to do her project on American economics. Her eyes were pale that day. Her hair was everywhere.
