by Amy Zhang
She sighed. “Don’t be that guy, Micah. I said I was sorry, okay?”
“I know, I just mean—” She always said that guilt lived in my side of the soul. Janie never had anything to apologize for. People forgave her without being asked. I squinted at her. “Is that my sweatshirt?”
She looked down. “Yeah, I guess. They don’t make sweatshirts like this for girls, you know?”
“Uh, not really,” I said. I pushed my laptop aside and started to get up. She crossed her arms and curled over a little. She looked small. I wanted to shake her awake.
“Oh, you know,” she said, and I wondered why she kept crushing her chest, if it made her voice so shaky. “Girls’ sweatshirts are too thin and don’t do shit to keep you warm. Girl things are just like that. They don’t work right. They’re just there to—you know. Look nice. And this. This is just nice, you know? This is a nice sweatshirt.”
“Janie,” I said.
“Don’t,” she said, flinching. I wasn’t anywhere near her; my hand twitched from across the room and she flinched away from it. I swallowed. My spit was cold.
She took a breath, and I heard it rasp into her lungs without filling them. “Sorry,” she said. Her voice was small. Her voice was microscopic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Do you ever feel like you just can’t win?”
Of course I did. I lived in fucking Waldo, Iowa. I went to Waldo High School and didn’t play sports. I was not particularly rich in friends. I was poorly endowed in just about every possible area of life. Of course I fucking did.
“Oh, stop that,” said Janie, a little closer to normal, which meant that she was annoyed. “I can hear you thinking.”
“Stop what?”
“Your poor little white boy nice guy act. Don’t be the cliché, Micah. You’re better than that.”
“Janie,” I said. I took another step forward and she took another step back.
“Stop,” she said, and I did. She took another breath. “Don’t. I’m fine.”
It was a lie.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said, and she laughed, or she tried. It didn’t matter how many breaths she took to steady herself. She tried to laugh and choked.
“Oh, please. You don’t want to know what’s wrong, Micah. If you wanted to know, you would have—” She stopped. She blinked, and tilted her head to the ceiling so the tears wouldn’t fall out. “What isn’t wrong? The world is ending. I’m not even being dramatic. The world is fucking ending. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you picked apocalypses, isn’t it? The bees are dying. The ozone layer has more holes than I do. Some idiot could press the wrong button tomorrow and start a nuclear war. It’s just—it’s a lot of stuff, Micah. And we can’t really change it. Isn’t that the worst part? We can’t really change any of the stuff that matters. Just think about how much sleep we lost trying to fix stuff no one can ever really fix.”
“Um,” I said. “I guess?”
Her voice is smaller than I’ve ever heard it when she says, “What are the odds that you’d ditch Maggie and the dance tonight and do something with me?”
“What?” I ask.
“Do you trust me?”
Of course I trusted her. And of course I would go with her—it wasn’t a question. Maggie was cute, but she wasn’t Janie.
“Just let me text Maggie,” I said. “And I have to change.”
She smiled. She crossed the room, finally, and wrapped her arms around me. She smelled like she was burning when I put my head on hers. Sometimes I forgot how small she really was. She barely reached my chin. She looked up and her lips were curved and her eyes were too bright and I—
I nearly kissed her, but didn’t.
I nearly told her that it was okay, but didn’t.
I nearly said scientists were working pretty hard on the bee problem, but didn’t.
I did what I always did. I waited until she moved away, until her eyes were a normal brightness and her breath was regular again, and I waited for her to take my hand and pull me after her.
Her hand was cold and sweating.
“I’m having a bonfire,” she said. She reached up to push my glasses back up my nose, and kept her hand on my face. “I have marshmallows. Everyone’s coming. You’re coming, right?”
I hadn’t really planned on it. Janie’s “everyone” had little overlap with my “everyone.” But she didn’t let go of my hand until we were in her car, until she stuck her key in the ignition and looked at me, hard. By then my fingers going white in her fist.
“More than anything,” she said.
“More than everything,” I replied.
On the night of the bonfire, the air was at odds with itself. The wind hurt and the smell of beer was heavy. The cold was sharp and the smoke kept growing.
People were shouting. People were chasing each other with shots and torches.
Janie was curled against me, and her hair kept making me sneeze. In the morning she would pretend this never happened and I would read too much into it, as always.
“Micah?” she said. Her voice was sudden, hitched, almost a gasp, almost a whisper. “Do you think there are things that can’t be fixed?”
The fire was in her eyes. The fire. No one was paying attention to the fire. But it was growing in her eyes, and spitting.
“What do you mean? Do you mean us?”
All of a sudden she was upright. Her tailbone dug into my thigh; I winced and tried to move away, and she wouldn’t let me go. “No. Not us. Not ever.”
On the night of the bonfire, it rained too late. The water pasted her hair to her neck and shoulders. It soaked through my sweatshirt.
She screamed my name.
She screamed, “Do you hear me? More than anything, Micah. Anything.”
On the night of the bonfire, there was a match between my fingers.
This I remember clearly: the match, burning toward my fingertips. I remember the heat on my nails, and then the burning. I remember the flame, teased high by the wind, made clear by the cold.
I remember letting go.
I remember the match falling.
“Everything,” I said as it hit the ground.
What a night to forget.
What a night to remember.
THE JOURNAL OF JANIE VIVIAN
What do you think happened to Sleeping Beauty’s bed?
No, really. I want you to answer.
Do you think she ever slept in it again?
She couldn’t get up for a hundred years. She was stuck there, tangled in the covers, crushed into that fucking mattress for a hundred fucking years. She couldn’t get up. She wanted to, she fought and kicked and clawed and couldn’t get out of that hundred-year nightmare.
Do you really think she could ever fall asleep there again?
before
OCTOBER 11
There are a lot of things people never tell you about sex. They say it’s romantic and life changing or whatever, sometimes they even say that there’s blood and it hurts. But no one tells you about how heavy he is, or how he leaves the condom on your floor. No one ever tells you about the smell of him, sweat and body and unfamiliarity, that never goes away. You can stand under the shower and let it go from scalding to hot to lukewarm to cold to freezing. You can throw your sheets and blankets into the washer and the smell will still seep up from the mattress.
Did you know that? I didn’t.
I use an entire bottle of body wash. I scrub until my skin is so numb that I can’t feel how cold the water is, and then finally, finally I shut it off. The silence is complete, and I slide onto the floor and just lie there, feet together and hands folded. I think of the time Micah and I went to the cemetery with our fists full of dreams. I think of how wide the sky was.
I lie there and cry until I puke. Then I kneel there and puke until my throat is raw.
Then I turn on the water again and wash it all down the drain, tears puke dreams. I clench my fists tighter and tighter. I will use them next time.
Next time?
And—damn. There I go. I’m crying again.
I whisper fuck until it loses all meaning, not that it had much in the first place.
I don’t really know how long it takes me, but I do peel myself off the shower floor, eventually. I’m dry by then, and I go to my room in the stupid new house that I fucking hate, and I look around. My makeup is spilling out of my underwear drawer. The wall behind my desk is splattered with paint and nail polish and Skarpie. There are rocks everywhere.
My bed is a queen and completely stripped right now, so it’s hard not to look at. I do my best.
I look at the mirror instead. I remember every single place where he kissed me—every single one—but they have not burned me; I am still whole. If he’s bruised me, the bruises have yet to appear. I’m fine. I’m fine.
I make myself look for another five seconds before I sprint to the bathroom again and puke all over again.
Stop crying.
It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m going to be okay.
I just need a plan.
Soul Google: how to decapitate an angel
no results
How to burn cut punish the wicked no wait
How to stop them
I can see it now, the color of his soul, behind the cloud cover. It’s white. It’s white and crawling, it’s covered in maggots.
I sit down, flop down, Come on, limbs, get it together, we have a job to do. We have to do something. Sit. At the computer—yes, I can do that.
R A P E
I type that into Google.
Followed by:
Lawyers in Waldo IA
Average sentence for rape
What constitutes rape
Statistics of rape
Why are there so many rape victims
Why aren’t rapists convicted
What do I do?
What the hell do I do
I should have known. That’s basic sixth-grade computer class—you can’t find everything on the Internet.
I close the tabs. I clear everything.
And then I grab a fistful of rocks and throw on my jacket. I grab my keys and run down the stairs and I figure that since I don’t fall, I’m sober enough to drive. I’ve probably puked up the vodka anyway. I don’t look at the muddy footprints on the carpet or the empty bottles on the breakfast bar. I have to get out of here. I shouldn’t have put the sheets in the wash. His smell has gotten all the way through the house. I just need to hold it together for a little while longer.
To be honest, I don’t remember driving all that much. I remember the dark going by quickly, much faster than the speed limit, holding my breath for as long as I can, and then I’m in Micah’s driveway, out of the car and heading for the door on the back porch, slipping into his pitch-black house and sprinting up the stairs. I am quiet by default. I am small and wincing and I’m still holding my breath.
Micah’s room is bright. He sleeps with the window open and the moonlight is streaming and awful. There’s a pizza box on top of books on top of binders on top of clean clothes on top of dirty, and I almost cry again because it’s unfamiliar too, and his room is never unfamiliar. But then there’s Micah, a lump under the covers, and my breath whooshes out. He’s slept like that for as long as either of us can remember, with the blanket over his head and all of the sides tucked in. Is it safer? Is that why he sleeps like that?
I creep across the room and perch on the edge of the bed and poke him with a finger. I think the moonlight makes it shakier and paler than it really is, but who knows? “Micah,” I whisper. “Micah.”
He doesn’t move, and I can’t stand it anymore. The sobs are rising and my throat is thick and shivering, so I crawl next to him and tug on the blankets. He stirs, he turns, he opens his eyes and blinks up at me.
“Janie?”
His voice is heavy with sleep and my tears spill over. Micah, my Micah.
“What is it?” He tries to sit up, but I’m sitting on the covers and he’s tangled, and for a moment it’s so ironic and strange that I can’t move or answer or see him. “What’s wrong? Janie—”
“You’re hogging the blankets,” I manage, and I crawl in with him before he can say anything else. For a moment he hesitates, but he doesn’t ask any more questions. He just scoots to give me room and throws half of the covers onto me, and I drag them over my head and pull his arm around me.
“What,” he says. “What—”
“Shhh,” I say. His lips are soft on my finger. “Shh, I just want to sleep. That’s all. Okay?”
And that’s what we do. He holds me and I cry and close my eyes and it’s like we’re on the boat again, like I never left. That Thursday never turned to Friday and Piper and Wes and Jude and Gonzalo and Jizzy and Ander never came over at all, ever. And it feels so possible, easy, to wish time back to the quarry with all of our secrets spilling out into the water, that I keep rewinding and rewinding time. We are babies, embryos. The blanket is a womb, and we’re waiting to be born. The world is waiting, and none of this—not last night, not him, not anything—has happened yet.
And who knows?
Maybe it never will.
“Janie Grace Vivian!”
Micah jumps awake beside me. He groans and blinks and then he sees me, and falls off the bed.
“Jesus,” he gasps. “What the hell? What are you—are you crying? What’s wrong?”
My dad’s voice comes again, louder.
“Shit,” I whisper. “Shit shit shit.” I can see our car parked outside, remember their early morning flight. “Oh god, oh god.” If they came here, it means they knew I wasn’t at home, which means they’ve seen the house and the vodka bottles and the mess and everything else and oh god oh god oh god.
Footsteps are coming up the stairs. Micah looks terrified, and I am about to puke again. I’m twisting and tying his blanket into nooses. We turn to look at each other, and then the door bursts open.
“We weren’t having sex” is the first thing I say. “I was just sleeping over.”
But my father is already red in the face and screaming, and it doesn’t matter what I say, it’s never mattered, and I understand that now, I understand, so while he shouts about the bottles he found, about how worried he and Mom were to go home and find me gone, how irresponsible I am, how disappointed he was, so on and so forth, loudly enough to shake the entire house and make Micah cower with the covers to his ears, and I twist around and grab a pillow, and I bury my face in it and scream as loudly as I can, and the sound is trapped and I am trapped and also going deaf, and in that moment I realize that the universe does not give a single shit about us.
“What—what’s going on here?”
I raise my head to see Micah’s dad coming through the doorway, haggard from work. Behind him, my mom, twisting her earring. I put my head back down in the pillow because the sun is too bright and I can’t do this right now or ever, I can’t, I can’t.
“Your son is in bed with Janie,” I hear my dad yell. “I told you, Karen, I told you that boy was a horrible influence, I told you this would happen. Janie, go downstairs. Get in the car right now or—”
“Or fucking what?” I scream, and everyone flinches and goes still. I’m on my feet, on the bed, the tallest person in the room and also the smallest, shaking so hard that my edges might be blurry. “Or what? You’ll ground me? You’ll send me to bed without supper? How the fuck is that going to help? How the fuck do you think you’re protecting me?”
“Get in the car, Janie, or so help me—”
I’m running. Not to his car but to mine, and I hear them all calling after me, and then I can’t hear anything anymore as I tear out of the driveway. I make like the universe and don’t give a shit. Not a single one.
My favorite metaphor is “between a rock and a hard place.” I also like blind men and elephant, bread and circuses, and shooting the messenger.
My favorite Virginia Woolf quote is “Fear no more.” I also like “And I said
to the star, consume me,” “Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is enough,” and “She was off like a bird, bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom, at what directed, who could say?”
My favorite class is English, though my highest grade is AP Bio. My favorite fairy tale is “The Little Mermaid,” and my least favorite is “Sleeping Beauty.” My favorite Skarpie has bite marks on both the cap and the end. My favorite matchbook looks like a tiny copy of Fahrenheit 451. My favorite Metaphor rocks are the ones worn smooth by the water. My favorite art project I’ve done this year is my teapot, even though the spout is too low and looks phallic. My favorite color is red, my favorite season is fall, my favorite food is shrimp, my favorite band is Florence + the Machine.
Something else they don’t tell you about sex is that it doesn’t change you. Your favorite things are still your favorite things. Isn’t that strange? It can be such a small thing if you want it to be. I wanted it to be.
But if I move too suddenly, it hurts and I still get whiffs of him. How is that possible? But it is.
I go through the list again and again. My favorite metaphor is “between a rock and a hard place.” My favorite Virginia Woolf quote is “Fear no more.” My favorite class is English, my favorite fairy tale is “The Little Mermaid,” my favorite Metaphor rocks are smooth.
I really did like him.
I liked him a lot. I liked that his favorite book is Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, even though it’s probably because he hasn’t read anything since fourth grade. I liked that his favorite sport to watch was soccer even though he was a wrestler, I liked the way he wore dark V-necks that hugged his arms, I liked the way his eyelashes curled naturally, I liked the way he always stretched out when he really laughed.
We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that’s not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all of the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn’t stay that way.
