by Amy Zhang
Micah’s car is nowhere in sight, so I don’t even know if he’s going in the right direction. I think he knows, I think he remembers. He has to. I turn down the street, freeze, and throw the car into reverse. Oh, thank god. He did remember. And he didn’t look back.
Ninja mode activated. And maybe just one more match.
I park my car behind some willow trees and send a silent sorry to Ms. Capaldi’s lawn. I mean, she’s pretty old. Maybe she won’t see the tire tracks.
Before we got the guts to leave the neighborhood, before we found the Metaphor and the rest of the world, we used to come here all the time. It must have been second or third grade. We came every day, because Ms. Capaldi had this fantastic tree in her backyard—a real tree, not the wimpy toothpicks you see on everyone else’s lawns. The trunk was so wide that when Micah and I hugged it on opposite sides, we couldn’t get our hands to meet. The lower branches were too heavy to grow upward anymore, and there were places where gravity took them back, and they rooted there and grew again. I never climbed, really, but Micah did. No, he scurried. He pulled himself higher, higher, and I stayed on the ground and kicked the trunk because my climbing skills were pathetic.
I used to think this was the most beautiful place in the world. I used to think that this was the place where the world began. But then in third grade, we came after school and the tree was in pieces, hacked and ripped and ruined, and I burst into tears. Ms. Capaldi explained that the tree was dying, but I didn’t care. It was freaking tragic. Micah had to drag me away, and I cried all the way home.
So Ms. Capaldi ruined my childhood and I just ruined her backyard. I call it even.
Now there’s a stump, and when I peek around the side of the house, Micah is sitting on it with the next clue in his lap. Is he smiling? It’s too dark to tell. I think so. I hope so.
It’s a flashlight and a calendar page from the September of our freshman year and a bottle of peach vodka.
He’s too far away, but I feel him relax. I feel his laugh, even if I don’t see it—I feel the air shift, but only between the two of us. He clicks the flashlight on and casts it around, and I slam myself against the side of the house and suck in my breath. The light passes and I put my fingers behind my back. No shadow puppets tonight.
The light clicks off. Then on. Off on, on, pause.
Morse code? Code! I knew making him learn it would come in handy one day!
You’re the world’s biggest idiot, Janie Vivian.
And I’m grinning like it.
I hear his engine a bit later, and I tiptoe back to my car and follow. There are three texts from my dad telling me that he and Mom have checked into their hotel and to call them when I can. Improvement! Usually, there would be a few phone calls and a voicemail or seven. There’s hope for him after all. I send him a quick “I will later!” and drive to St. John’s Cemetery.
Which is actually, as far as cemeteries go, really pretty. Not overly groomed. Overly groomed cemeteries are so wrong. Cemeteries shouldn’t have lawn-mower tracks. They should have wildflowers and dandelions and wishes and tears. And tonight, under the angel with the wide, wide wings for a certain Michael van Pearsen, 1920–1977, I HAVE LOVED THE STARS TOO FONDLY TO BE FEARFUL OF THE NIGHT, there is also a clue.
(It was only the most perfect epitaph ever. I Googled it later—it was by Sarah Williams, and I am sososososo jealous because I didn’t die quickly enough to claim it first.)
We first came here two nights before the start of freshman year. I slid my bookshelf across the space between our houses and climbed into Micah’s room with a slim bottle of peach vodka that I’d (over)paid Beaver Rossily from across the street to get for me, and we walked 1.58 miles to the cemetery and got drunk for the first time.
I hadn’t wanted my first time getting drunk to be, I don’t know, sweaty. I didn’t want it to be at a party with people I didn’t know. I actually wanted champagne, but Beaver said I didn’t have enough money. It was fine, though. The peach vodka had burned, but we choked it down and laughed fire out of our noses.
I remember that the stars were huge. Enormous. They were worlds, and that night, ours was as bright as any of them.
I remember that it was endlessly funny that we were in a cemetery. I remember that we lay down under the angel and laid our hands over our stomachs like we were dead, but then Micah slid his hand into the space between our bodies and I took it, and it was warm and sticky with vodka. I remember threading my fingers through his and pressing our life lines together.
I remember planning our funerals. I wanted blue flowers, all kinds. Forget-me-nots and cornflowers and bellflowers, irises and pansies and hibiscus. I wanted them anywhere, everywhere, in my hair and on my coffin and on the tables at the reception afterward.
I had asked him if funerals had receptions.
No, Micah told me, weddings do.
Then I want blue flowers at my wedding too.
What else?
I want rain, I told him. I want thunder and sobbing. I want cursed wifi so people who use it will grow nose hair so long they trip over it. I want a hot minister and a church full of people and chocolate, honey cookies, and cinnamon candles and handkerchiefs the color of the sky.
For the wedding or the funeral?
“Both,” I said. I want it all, I want everything.
Micah had wanted the normal stuff. A coffin, a hole in the ground. But he wanted a yellow tie. I remember that specifically, because I remember picturing it: a tie made of sunshine.
I wonder what Micah remembers. I wonder if he remembers the same things, or if he remembers the other parts. There must have been other parts. We must have walked back—what had that been like? Stumbling and laughing all the way back under streetlights. I should ask him later. We’ll lie on X-marks-the-spot and piece together the memories.
That had been a good night.
Tonight will be a good night too.
I don’t even get out of the car. The next one is a fast clue, just a bunch of sparklers. Besides, Micah is all jittery around cemeteries now. I don’t think he’ll stay long, and he doesn’t. I see him half jogging out of the cemetery and jumping into his car. I take a breath that pulls all the air in my car into my lungs, and then I roll down the windows and follow him.
Down the road, to the school, and farther. To the forest on the far side of the quarry that was supposed to be cut down and made into a nice neighborhood full of picket fences, but they ran out of money almost as soon as they started. So now it’s just this cluster of trees that desperately wants to grow into dark fairy woods, and once in junior year, Micah and I went there with a bunch of sparklers. No reason, really. It was finals week and we needed something beautiful. We sent them high, and the embers rained down and burned our bare shoulders.
By the road to the quarry, Micah goes straight and I make a left. He’ll go to the forest and find a pair of paddles sticking out of the ground and a rock from the Metaphor balanced on top, and he’ll know where to go. I have to beat him there.
It’s dark now, aggressively dark, and I open my window and stick my head out to make sure there are stars. It’s freezing and I’m prepared to be annoyed, to huff and puff at the sky and blow the clouds away, but no, there they are! Baby stars blinking and waking and stretching. Don’t be shy, baby stars! You can shine. You can even fall, if you want. Just not tonight. Tonight is mine.
I take a deep breath. I feel the darkness in my lungs and it feels right. I start toward Old Eell’s barn, filled to the brim with the night. The barn is farther down the shore than the Metaphor, and it’s unfamiliar territory in the dark, and unfamiliar is terrifying, so I pee before I go.
What? Fear makes my bladder wonky.
Old Eells is the ghost who lives in the barn and drowns the faint of heart, and I know he’s not real because Alex Brandley always brings girls here on first dates and he should have drowned a thousand times over by now. He brought me here sophomore year and tried to go through three bases in a minute,
and I told him I’d kick him in the balls but they were too small to find.
But he did show me the boat, so I guess it was worth it. I’ve taken over the barn now. Micah and I have a stash of alcohol behind the rusty tractor, and it makes me feel terribly grown up. I ignore that tonight, since Micah is bringing the special peach vodka I left for him. I go to the back corner instead, where the boat is. It’s not heavy, but it’s still heavier than I’d like it to be. I kick it and lug it and then something rustles over by the tractor and it’s probably a starved wolf so I run, hauling the boat behind me, until I’m at the edge of the quarry. I leap into the boat and wrap my arms around my legs and squeeze my eyes closed. No spiders no rats no snakes no bats no wolves. Nope nope nope.
“Janie?”
I scream.
Micah yelps too, and he drops everything he’s holding, and I’m out of the boat and his flashlight is in my face and I’m screaming again, screaming, “Did you break the vodka? Is the bottle broken?”
“Jesus Christ the vodka is fine I am having a fucking heart attack!” he yells back, and then we’re in the grass and laughing, and everything is okay, okay, okay.
“You took forever,” I tell him when I can breathe again.
“Yeah, I wandered around that goddamn forest for a while. You couldn’t have done this, like, during the day?”
Well, we could have, if you were home. But I don’t say that. I say, “But it was more fun in the dark,” and he shakes his head and smiles and says, “I guess.”
“Well, we’re not done. Come on. Last clue,” I say impatiently, trying to tug both of us back into the boat. But Micah digs his feet in.
“Wait,” he says. “That’s the boat from the barn.”
“Get in the boat, Micah.”
“I’m not getting into the boat. No. No way.”
I consider stomping my foot. Overload? Overload. I glare at him instead. “Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t really want to drown tonight.”
“You’re not going to drown,” I say impatiently. “I keep telling you, it’s totally safe. Alex Brandley takes girls out in this boat all the time. We’ll be fine. You’re like, half his size. If it doesn’t sink while Alex has sex in it, it won’t sink with us in it.”
“Oh, great,” he says. “Unstable and ridden with STDs.”
But he pushes the boat into the water and climbs in, and then I run and leap into it, and the boat wobbles and we cling to each other, but it doesn’t tip over, and we don’t drown. We are nervous laughter and fast breath and faster heartbeats, alive alive alive.
And then we calm and become a different kind of alive, the kind that requires music, so we take out the Walkman and push earbuds into our ears.
“Indie shit,” Micah complains, but he hums along. And the next track is Liszt, and his fingers tap against my palm. Eventually we are on our backs, hands pressed together.
We are Janie and Micah, Micah and Janie.
“Let’s play a game,” I whisper. I am the quiet and the quiet is me. “Let’s play Secrets.”
“Okay,” he says, like I knew he would, like he always does. “You start.”
“I peed in the quarry before you got here.”
He quickly retracts the hand he had been trailing in the water. “God, Janie.”
“What? I had to pee. Before I got in the boat. Or else I would have peed in the boat, and—”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Um. Uh . . . I still do the lightning bug thing. Like, you know. Put them in jars with grass and stuff.”
“That doesn’t count,” I say. “I already knew you did that. I’ve seen them on your dresser.”
“It does count,” he says, sounding annoyed. He’s not, really. Just embarrassed, which he shouldn’t be. I think it’s adorable, and mostly I was just mad that I didn’t think of it first. “It just has to be something you’ve never told anyone before.”
“Fine,” I say. “I ordered a pair of Hunter boots even though I swore I’d never get a pair.”
“Yeah, I’d probably care more if I knew what Hunter boots are. I stuck a cockroach in Dewey’s sandwich at lunch yesterday.”
“Ew ew ew,” I say, and the boat rocks as I try to wriggle the word off. Cockroach. “Ugh, where did you even find one?”
“What, the cockroach? I just—”
“Stop saying that word. I hate that word.”
“—grabbed one out of the empty locker next to mine. There’s always five or six in there. Cockroach cockroach cockroach.”
I try to push him out of the boat. He tries to pull me in with him. We splash each other and we both end up soaked.
“I tried to pierce my own belly button.”
“You used that last time,” he says. “You always try to use that one.”
“Yeah, because I tried to pierce it again.”
“Yesterday I told my dad that I couldn’t believe he grabbed his one opportunity to have an affair, while Mom had so many more and never did.”
It’s quiet now, just the wind and us. The rest of the world has stopped existing. This is it: the quarry and the boat and the curving sky, and our confessions to each other. Our soul is bare, and we are spilling everything.
Well, not everything.
But he’s holding stuff back too.
“I flushed my mom’s Tiffany earring down the toilet,” I say. “Then I went online. It cost five thousand dollars.”
“Did you really?”
“Well, I only flushed one, so I guess it was only twenty-five hundred. So now she just wears the one and leaves her hair down over the other one.”
“I told Dewey that we couldn’t hang out tonight because my dad’s taking me out to dinner.”
“My parents think I’m at Piper’s because they didn’t want me to be alone in the house that they should never have bought, and I’m glad I’m not.”
That’s not a secret, but Micah just braids his fingers tighter with mine, matching up our life lines. I scoot closer. I push my shoulder against his, and my thigh against his thigh, and I hook my foot around his calf because he’s gotten too tall for our feet to match up. And that’s how we lie, telling secret after secret as we drift, until I look around and decide that this is it, this is the center of the quarry.
“This isn’t the center,” Micah says when I tell him.
“Why not?” I ask, and he doesn’t have a good answer.
I open the vodka. We pass it back and forth, throwing it back and coughing all the way down. We flick water at each other as we wait for it to kick in, and when it does—when the dark is fuzzy and the stars are much closer, I bring out my matches. Micah hands me the sparklers. I aim at the stars and set the sparklers off, and we lie back and laugh at how high they go.
“We should do this again,” he says. I watch the fireworks in his glasses.
“Nope. No repeats. Just live the moment, Micah.”
He doesn’t argue. “Something else, then,” he says, and his voice is cautious, almost shy, and I lean back against him. I put my face in his shoulder and breathe him in, memorize the way we fit together.
“Something else,” I say. “After tomorrow. Then we can do anything. Anything.”
“Right. You can legally have sex with Ander,” he says, and his voice gets further away with every letter of every word.
“Micah,” I say, closing my eyes. “Don’t. Not tonight. Hey, what time is it? Can you check? My phone is dead.”
He squints at his watch. “Twelve fifteen. Almost.”
“Happy birthday, Micah Carter,” I say. “This is my present, by the way. I hope you like it.” I put my face in his side and smile. “We’re eighteen, mostly.”
He pushes me away, and for a second I wonder if this isn’t enough, if he’s still angry, before I open my eyes and see him shifting so he can pull an envelope out of his pocket.
“What’s that?” I ask, already reaching.
“Happy birthday, Janie Vivian,” he says, shy.
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I open it and begin to cry.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Micah. What did you do? Did you really?”
They’re tickets, and brochures, and phone numbers and emails and a map to Nepal.
“This is the trip.” I still can’t get my voice louder than a whisper. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Micah. Did you really? You can’t do this, it’s too much—I mean, I’m going to take it, obviously. But Micah. Micah. I can’t believe you. How did you know?”
He laughs. “Are you kidding? You’ve been looking at that page for months and closing it if you thought anyone was looking. You even didn’t start your college applications, did you.”
It’s not a question because he already knows the answer. I can’t stop sniveling. His smile is everything.
“You have to pay me back,” he says, but he still can’t stop smiling for long enough for either of us to take him seriously. “I only got it because I knew you’d never go unless someone told you it’s a good idea.”
“Oh, shut up, Micah,” I say. I love him more than anything. I grab him and drag him against me, full-on sobbing into his bony shoulder. The boat wobbles and Micah shouts a warning and his head bumps mine and we collide. We are whole again, we are us.
“So there,” he says, “now you know what you’re doing next year. Good Samaritan Janie Vivian. I still have no idea where I’m going to be—”
I slap my hand over his mouth, because I’m not done admiring my tickets, and none of that matters right now anyway. Tonight. This moment is all that matters.
“We have this,” I tell him, and drop my hand from his soft, soft lips. “This is ours.”
“This,” he says, and the word is so quiet that it seems to stretch on forever.
Later, as we paddle back, I ask him, “Did you get it? The treasure hunt?”
“Um, I guess. Was it your way of saying you’re sorry you were a total bi—”
“It was the elements,” I say. I tick them off on my fingers, starting with the middle one. “First was the tree, and climbing, and into the sky, the air. And then the cemetery, for earth. And the fire, and the water. And the last one.”
