by Amy Zhang
Outside the car, the lamplight is fighting the rain. The Metaphor is just down the hill, and I imagine it while he kisses me, the perfect scene: the two of us dancing under shy streetlights, spinning closer to the water, hand in hand, climbing my mountain of rocks and falling flat on our perfect asses. Can’t you just see it? I can.
Maybe we even make it to the top together.
I always knew I’d make it to the top one day. I had painted the moment of triumph in watercolor, in oil, in acrylic; I had sculpted it in clay and stone and plaster, welded it in copper and iron; I had dreamed it in color and sepia, oversaturated and in black-and-white. And never once had Ander been there with me.
It was always Micah. Always, anything, everything.
We kiss for a while, until Ander starts getting frisky and I pull away. He never stops grinning at me, not even when he drives me up the hill to my new house, where all the lights are on because my parents have probably been waiting for me to come home for hours now. My lips are swollen and I use the last bit of my third tube of Chapstick. He kisses me again before I get out of the car, and he gives me his jacket to run to the house so I don’t get wet.
At the front door, I turn back to blow him a kiss good-bye, but he’s already gone.
after
DECEMBER 5
Dewey is in my house again.
Why is Dewey always in my house?
“Dude,” he says. “You gotta get out of bed. You smell like ass. You haven’t even been getting up to shit, have you. Goddamn, Micah. I brought Metatron: Sands of Time. It’s zombie Confederates this time. Come on, get up.”
“No,” I say.
“Yeah, you know what? We need to get you out of this house. We need to get you some air or something.”
“There’s air here,” I say. I take a breath to prove it. Look at me, breathing. Look at me, breathing. I’m not a vegetable.
“Vegetables still breathe,” says Dewey.
“Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes, you goddamn said that out loud. Jesus, Micah.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Jesus,” he says again, and glares at the ceiling like Jesus is right there. “Come on, Micah. We’re gonna do something. What do you want to do?”
“I want to lie here,” I say.
“We could go to the diner,” he says, like he didn’t hear me. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe I didn’t say it out loud that time. I try to remember, but I already forgot. “Or we could drive somewhere, run over some kids like Janie liked to do, crazy bitch—WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?”
I throw an apple at his head, hard. It’s rotten; it splats.
“Oh, fuck it, Micah,” Dewey howls, “they were right about you. Goddamn, goddamn, you actual fucking ass, what the hell? Fuck. You’re going goddamn crazy, man. You’re one seriously fucked-up little son of a bitch, and—screw you, Micah. God, my fucking face.”
But he still doesn’t leave.
“Get the fuck out of bed,” he says, seething, looking around for a clean shirt to wipe his face on. He snatches one up, finally. I think about telling him it’s not clean, but I guess he’ll figure it out. “You know what? We are going out tonight. I’m going to throw your sorry ass over a cliff.”
“I don’t want to get out of bed,” I say. Yes, out loud, I hear the words out loud. “I want to stay here and feel sorry for myself and imagine the apocalypse.”
Apocalypses. Apocalypses are safe.
“Let me tell you about the apocalypse,” Dewey says. He strides to the bed and throws my covers back. I shiver and he gags. “Jesus. Jesus. You know what, Micah? You’re not going to live to see the fucking apocalypse. You’re going to get your filthy ass out of bed and we are going to go see this shitshow of a world, or I’m going to murder you right here and you’ll never see anything again. Got it?”
I sigh into the pillow, and he’s right. It does smell like shit. “Will you just leave? Please?”
“Yeah, dude. And you’re going to come with me. Let’s go.”
So I get up. I go.
The Metaphor is Janie’s territory. Dewey and I always do our drinking on the far side of the quarry, where people drown. That’s where we go now. There’s a ledge where stoners smoke and assholes dare each other to jump. We are both tonight. Dewey has weed and cigarettes and Canadian whiskey, and I keep daring him to jump.
He just lights another cigarette. He cups his hands around the tip and shivers. “Dammit, Micah, will you sit the fuck down? You’re making me nervous.”
I sit. He hands me the bottle of whiskey. I drink until I almost puke.
“God,” I say, coughing. Some of the whiskey comes back up and sprays the grass, which is already frosty. “Isn’t Canadian whiskey supposed to be the good stuff?”
“This is the good stuff,” he says. “Just wait until we have to start into the shit wine. You know what you need? A cigarette. Shit offsets shit.”
I ignore him and take another swig. And another. Dewey watches me. I watch the other side of the quarry, where someone is running. “Is that Piper?”
“Hell if I know.”
“She’s always crying,” I say. “Every time I see her she’s crying.”
Dewey snorts. “And how often do you see her?”
Not very. But in school, when I was still in school. Sometimes, she runs by my house and she’s always crying.
Another swig. After a while, he tries to take the bottle back, but I lean out of reach and take another swig.
“Seriously, Micah,” he says. “How are you doing?”
“I’m cold,” I say.
“Micah—”
“I’m fine. My attitude is as bright as my future.”
“Micah, stop fucking around—”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m telling the truth.”
The truth, the truth. I’m a terrible liar. I take another drink. Dewey stares at me for a while, and then he starts talking about shit I don’t care about. He blows clouds around our heads and I drink until I forget.
Drink to forget.
Janie’s lips in my ear. “Take another shot.”
“. . . town is going to shit. I love it. You hear about Ander?”
Her breath soft against my cheek her lips in my ear her body warm against mine.
“Are you listening to me? Suey Park and a bunch of other people told the police that they saw Wes and Ander leaving Janie’s before the fire started, so I guess that idiot really didn’t set the fire. Shame, right?”
Her breath soft against my cheek her lips in my ear her body warm against mine her eyes colorless and glittering.
“I mean—shit. Don’t listen to me. Don’t worry about it, man. No one really thinks you did it. They just think that she—that you might have known . . . you know what? Never mind—Micah, what the hell are you doing?”
Her breath my cheek her lips my ear her body against mine her eyes
her eyes glittering and colorless
and the only part of her face I can see
as she tells me to take another drink.
“Micah, Jesus, get away from there.”
The only part of her face I can see because she is backlit
by the bonfire that rises higher
and higher as she tips my cup back
whispering, “Just drink. Forget this. It’s okay. I promise, just drink, just forget.”
“She told me to forget,” I say, spitting the words so that they are real and outside my head. Spitting, as if the momentum will push the memory out. “We were on a lawn chair and under a blanket and the cup was electric blue and she made me drink and drink and told me to forget.”
“Micah.”
Lips breath warmth.
The whiskey is horrible in my mouth pleasant in my chest fire in my stomach. I take another swig, a long one, and then I say, “I think we did something. Janie and I.”
“Micah,” says Janie.
“We did something horrible.”
“Micah,” J
anie says again. Her voice is burning. “Don’t.”
“What? She told you to do something and you scampered off to do it like her little bitch? Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
“She doesn’t want me to tell you.”
“The two of you were so fucked up,” he says, but he isn’t taunting anymore. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and the tip burns the color of her hair. His voice is low and tight.
“She says that you can’t ever know.”
Dewey blinks, and then he’s squinting at me. “What?”
“Micah, stop talking. Stop talking now.”
“She wants me to stop talking,” I say.
“Micah. Micah, hey. Look at me.” He taps the side of my cheek. The cigarette is too close to my ear. I think I can see it burning out of the corner of my eye, but that could just be Janie. It could be her hair. “Micah, man. You’re saying she’s here? Now?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She says that she hates you.”
My legs are over the side of the ledge now. The water is far, far below, probably. The quarry is two hundred and nineteen feet deep. It is the deepest quarry in Iowa. It’s dark. I can’t see. I don’t remember when I got this close to the edge.
Dewey’s face is so white that it glows in the dark. “Dude, do you want me to—do I need to take you to the hospital or something?”
“Nah,” I say, and take another swig. “Damn, Dewey. Isn’t Canadian whiskey supposed to be the good stuff?”
The bottle is empty. The bottle goes flying. Dewey smacks it out of my hand and it goes flying. Distantly, there is a splash as it falls into the water.
I squint into the dark. “There’s like a five-hundred-dollar fine for littering.”
“Screw the fine.” He’s in my face. “There’s been, what, fifteen people who’ve died here in the last fifty years? If they can’t find their bodies, you think you’re going to find that stupid bottle? Look, Micah, listen to me—”
“Fourteen,” I say. “The last one was Patty Keghel in 1972. I remember. I was looking up local apocalypses and came across her name because she was a big Herbert Armstrong follower. She believed every one of his false apocalypse predictions and once she ran naked through Waldo to alert everyone. She used to fish in the quarry and she made her own rafts, but I guess not good ones because that’s how she drowned.”
Dewey goes quiet, so I keep talking.
“Janie and I saw her grave. Freshman year, we saw her grave. It’s in the cemetery. Do you want to see? We should go see. We can go now.”
“What the hell are you on right now—”
“And again,” I say, spitting again, “again this year, we came here. Here.”
“Yeah, I know we’ve come here before. We get drunk here all the time because we’re the biggest shits on the planet.”
“Not you and me. Us. Janie and me. Me and Janie. I remember that. I remember now, it was our birthday. We came and there was a boat. You made a treasure hunt and it led to you.”
“Micah. What the fuck are you even saying? Are you talking to her?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I turn to Dewey but a little too fast, and his hand is on my arm and I am leaning on him because I can’t feel my feet. “She won’t—she won’t leave me alone.”
“Oh, stop exaggerating, Micah,” Janie says. “You don’t want me to leave you alone.”
“She’s my soul mate,” I say, and I say it again, but I can’t make it clearer. The words are mashed in my head, vomit in my mouth. “My soul mate. Or not soul mate. She said that we shared a soul. What does that mean? She said that we were an atom. I don’t know, Dewey. I think she’s crazy.”
“I am crazy,” Janie says. “So are you. All of the best people are. Who said that?”
“Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll said that.”
Dewey is holding his cigarette so tightly that it’s disintegrating in his fingers. Maybe he’s imagining that it’s me. Squeezing all of the insanity away. “Micah, seriously—”
“She’s goddamn insane, man. But I love her, Dewey. God, I don’t know how to stop loving her. Sometimes it fucking hurt to look at her, you know? You ever love someone like that? No, you haven’t.”
“You don’t know that,” Dewey says. All of a sudden, his voice is so sharp. He cuts through the haze, and it hurts, hurts everywhere.
“It hurts,” I say, and it’s almost a sob, it sounds like a sob. Am I crying? I don’t know. I don’t know. “It hurts, Dewey, it hurts so fucking bad. It feels like I’m dying, Dewey, like my head is fucking tearing itself apart. I just want her to come back. I just want to know why she didn’t ask me to go with her, I just need her to text me back—”
I’m on my feet and the ledge is higher than I thought and I’m staring down and down and it’s too dark because there’s no moon tonight just like there was no moon that night and I can’t see anything but the height. I look to the side and Janie is looking up at me and everything is blurry and she is the only clear thing in the world.
And then I’m falling and falling and falling
but
in
the
wrong
direction.
THE JOURNAL OF JANIE VIVIAN
Once upon a time, there was a boy in a tower. His hair never grew long enough so that he could climb out, so for a long time, he just watched. He watched and watched until he knew the angle of the moonrise and where the stars crossed and how the geese flew. He watched anything, everything.
Which was nice and all, but someone had to show him that there was more to life than watching. Someone had to drag him out.
That’s where the girl comes in. The girl was the best kind of crazy. She got her luck from matches and threw rocks at his window and coaxed him out, one word at a time. She did it because she wanted to, because she needed to, but also because she didn’t want to be alone. It wasn’t fair to keep that kind of boy locked away.
But life’s not fair. So there’s that.
before
OCTOBER 9
Yes, fine, I still feel guilty. What? I do have a heart. A big, messy, bleeding-like-a-volcano heart. If you pulled it out of my chest, it would be covered in escaped butterflies and black holes and weeds that look like flowers.
It has been six days since I’ve talked to Micah. That has to be some kind of record.
And tomorrow is our birthday.
Sure, Ander fills me full of butterflies that get all tangled in my heartstrings, but Micah adds gravity to all of my black holes. He waters my weeds.
He hasn’t even looked at me since regionals. And he has such nice eyes.
Insert grumble here. Oh, all right. They could almost even be called bedroom eyes. Maybe.
So, I don’t know. Maybe it’s guilt or maybe it’s just that I want him to talk to me again or maybe it’s our freaking birthday tomorrow, but I skip school today, after my parents climb into their cab to the airport arguing about who was in charge of printing out the boarding passes, to set up a treasure hunt for him. I write a note in ink with a pen that has a real nib (which is totally not the one that Mr. Markus is still looking for), and I stain it with coffee and burn the edges and everything. I sneak into his house through the door on his deck and leave it on his bed, along with an ancient Walkman with a CD inside and earbuds wrapped around, and a note that says BRING ME. I swipe his binoculars from inside his desk too, because I couldn’t find mine, and settle in his bushes to wait.
And wait.
And wait and wait and freaking wait.
Oh, hurry up, Micah. I’m chilly. There’s a whole pile of burned matches next to me and still no luck. It’s the eve of our birthday. Don’t do this to me. But it seems like he just might. It’s getting late. I’m about to sneak back into his house and grab the note before he can see it and spare myself some horrible humiliation and also maybe give up on the kind of friendship that keeps the whole freaking world turning—
Yes! There he is! Ninja to mission control: subject is driving onto pre
mises. He pulls into the garage and I raise my (his) binoculars. A minute later, the light in the kitchen comes on, and then the lights in his room. I tiptoe out of the bushes so I can creep on him better. I’m getting a cramp in my neck and I can’t stop thinking about how much easier this was when I was across from his window, but at least I can see him rubbing his eyes before he flops out of sight onto the bed—NOOOO! My note! Oh, come on, Micah, it’s barely ten. You can’t go to bed yet. Roll over. Damn it, I spent so long on that note! Get up. Get up—oh, okay, I guess that works. He rolls onto his side, and the note—oh, my poor baby—must crinkle or something, because he sits up, confused, and feels around for it. Finally.
He reads it, and then he crosses the room and opens the window. I’m almost too slow diving into the bushes. He looks around and just stands there for so long that I’m already deflating, because of course this wasn’t enough, of course he’s still annoyed, and he and I will never talk or look at each other again just because of that one stupid fight at regionals, and our soul will wither and crumble—
His shoes! He’s looking for his shoes! His lights are out! He’s going back to his car!
And now I’m rushing too, and I can’t stop grinning. My half of the soul is dancing, my half is light, and I dive into myself and tell it to shut up, because Micah’s half is totally going to feel it, and the surprise will be ruined. Nope nope nope. I won’t allow it. I spent too much effort on this. On us.
Keep quiet.
Tiptoe through the freaking tulips, soul.
Micah starts up his car, which probably starts an earthquake in Australia. I count to sixty, and then I run after him.
I run three blocks over to where I’m parked. The world is wide, and the moon is rising.
I put my hand in my pocket before I start the car and squeeze. Fear no more—I don’t even need the reminder, or even the Skarpies or matches. Tonight, tonight, there is nothing I have to black out. There is nothing I have to set on fire.
The note had read, “Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl who found a tree and fell in love with it, until the witch cut it down.”
