This Is Where the World Ends

by Amy Zhang

“Don’t worry about him,” Ander says. “Come on, Janie. Let’s stop fucking around.” And his hand is on my wrist, and I whirl around and shout it at him.

  “No!”

  And I punch him across the face, just in case the message wasn’t clear.

  Piper’s watching me, horrified, mouth open and useless and stupid.

  “Fuck you,” I say, and I mean it, I really do, I don’t hate anyone like I hate her right then.

  And then I’m pushing past them, running. The blanket falls off and the air is so cold it hurts, everywhere. “Micah,” I scream, and I’m crying. “Micah, wait.”

  He’s halfway down the driveway already, though, and he hesitates for maybe a second before he turns around again, but the second is enough. The moment. The moment has to be enough.

  “Micah,” I say, and I run into him, crash, collide. His breath whooshes out of him and mine disappears. Or it was never there in the first place. “Micah, don’t leave, just listen, listen to me—”

  “I’m tired,” he says, very, very quietly, and I hiccup into silence. He’s looking at the ground, playing with his car keys in sloppy fingers.

  “Micah, stop, you can’t drive like this, just stop—”

  “I’m not driving. I’m finding Dewey. He’s driving.”

  The anger that rises in me isn’t rational, I know, but I can’t help spitting out, “Of course he is. And where is he? God, Micah, you keep going to him because he’s in love with you, but don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. He isn’t here. Here is us, Micah. You and me. Me and—”

  He turns away. “I’m tired,” he says again, far, far away. “Janie, I’m just really fucking sick of this, okay?”

  “Of what?”

  And that’s when he looks up. Snaps up. His eyes meet mine and I realize that this isn’t what I want, I don’t want to look at him, not at all, not like this. He is so far gone that I don’t know—I don’t know if he will come back.

  “I am sick,” he says slowly, deliberately, spitting the words out syllable by syllable. “I am sick of being screwed over by you. Every single time. I’m tired of you and all of your shit.”

  “My shit?” I say, my voice rising on every word, every letter. “Yes, I have shit, Micah, you know why? Because I was fucking ra—”

  Throat clogged, need plunger. I can’t get the word out. I choke on it. I swallow it back down.

  Micah laughs. He rubs his face with the heel of his hand and tries to shake the vodka from his head and pushes me out of the way. “What’s that, Janie? What aren’t you telling me this time?” He shakes his head. “Someone fucked you over, huh? How does it feel?”

  And he’s walking down the driveway, and I can’t think about what he said, I can’t; but I also can’t let him go. “Micah,” I say. “Micah, but us. But you and me.”

  For ever.

  For everything.

  Janie and Micah.

  Micah and Janie.

  “Micah,” I scream. “Micah, more than anything. Do you hear me? I love you more than anything.”

  He looks back. He looks straight into my eyes and says, “Don’t. Get the hell away from me, Janie. I’m going home. Just . . . don’t. We should just. We should stop trying, Janie.”

  And he does that. He walks away.

  I watch him go, and I’m shaking so hard that the world is almost blurring. But I take a breath. I hold it. I pull myself together. Micah will come back, because he has to. For now, I have more important things to do. I have to make sure the universe stays in balance. That the wicked are punished, even if the good are rarely rewarded.

  Let the fun begin.

  The maximum sentence for rape is hard to find. I know. I looked. It’s hard to find because it’s hard to convict, which is funny. Imagine this: you are a victim. You are a victim, and the person who gave you that bruised label is probably never going to get punished because no one believes you, if you ever even get the chance to say anything at all. He will never go to jail and he’ll never understand what it is to be trapped, to rot.

  Rape? Rape is a word that no one wants to shout or hear. But let’s say—

  —let’s just say—

  That we let dead horses lie and rot and breed maggots. We never say that word out loud again. That’s okay.

  There are other crimes.

  I’ve wanted to see my room for a while now. To see where it all started and ended, but what a shitty ending. I haven’t gone yet. I didn’t even go upstairs when I was setting up for the bonfire. I didn’t even leave the kitchen. I only needed to pillage the garage for all the stuff to burn. I hadn’t come back at all before today. I haven’t even talked to my parents in ages, so I guess that means they don’t want me back. It’s kind of weird. They spent an awful lot of time tracking my whereabouts for eighteen years, and that all seems like kind of a waste now.

  The gas is in the garage, and I go in through a side door. All the lights are off, and we’re too far from the bonfire for anyone to see me, not that anyone would have missed me, anyway. It’ll take minutes. Seconds. I lug the cans upstairs two by two. From the upstairs window, I can see the bonfire and the bright specks of the torches the guys wave around. I take a deep breath.

  I push open the door to my room.

  Oh god. Oh god—how? How can it possibly still smell like him?

  I had this whole dramatic pouring ritual planned out—I was going to soak the bed and then go out in circles around it, but I just run in holding my breath and let loose. The gasoline spills out desperately. It waterfalls.

  I do the rest quickly. The living room and the kitchen. The foyer and the den. I do Mom and Dad’s room last. I imagine their faces as I pour, and smile. Their beautiful ugly house in ashes, their ugly beautiful daughter with a story they might finally, finally hear.

  And then I go back to my room. I pull Journal Twelve and a match out of my coat pocket. Quick, quick movements, no thinking necessary. I light the match and lay it on the journal pages and drop the journal, and it happens.

  I run.

  My chest is still tight tight tight, but I’m running. Out the side door, back into the party, where people are still drinking and chasing each other. No one even sees me until I start screaming.

  “Fire!”

  after

  DECEMBER 20

  “Micah? Micah, can you hear me? Stay on the line, Micah.”

  “Dewey.”

  “Yeah, man, it’s me. Where are you? Why aren’t you at home? Are you still at the quarry? Jesus. Have you been there all day?”

  “Dewey, I saw you. After Janie. You were by the police cars.”

  “Okay, I’m going to call your dad—”

  “I told her that I never wanted to see her again. That we should stop trying. Did you know that? I didn’t want to, really. I was really drunk.”

  “Are you drunk now? How drunk are you?”

  “You shouldn’t have told me that she was a nutcase. I was still trying not to go back. I still loved her. I still do. But she was insane. She set the fire, you know.”

  “Okay, great, we can talk about that later—”

  “But she kept trying to tell me that I only kept you around because you loved me. I was really sad, Dewey. I was really sad. I thought she might be right. I’m sorry. But she kept telling me.”

  “Yeah, well, I mean, fuck her, but—”

  “I’m sorry I kissed you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to watch me these past weeks too. That must have sucked. My dad wasn’t really paying you, was he?”

  “Micah, I need you to focus and tell me where the fuck you are, okay? Hey, just—”

  “I figured he wasn’t. You’re an awesome guy, Dewey. Did you know that? You’re awesome.”

  “Fuck it, I’ll come get you. Stay where you are—”

  “I’ve finally figured it out, Dewey. I think I finally figured out all—oh. Oh shit. Oh god.”

  “Micah—”

  “Oh god, Dewey, oh god. Oh, god. It was me. I remember, I remember
what I said to her. Dewey, oh fucking shit, fucking shit.”

  “Micah, breathe—”

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck, oh god, oh my god, she didn’t fall, Dewey, she didn’t fall into the quarry, did she. Did she? Oh shit, oh shit, oh fucking shit—”

  “Micah? Micah!”

  But that is all I hear.

  I stare and stare at the ice over the quarry and all I can see is her hair

  sinking

  lower.

  before

  OCTOBER 16

  The fire burns and burns.

  It’s all very nice and all, but—

  Where’s Micah?

  The police and the fire department come. People are screaming and running around, and if they’re getting burned, it’s because of the torches. Someone just fell down the hill and probably sprained an ankle. Some people keep getting their fingers trampled on because they’re drunk enough to think that stop, drop, and roll is a good idea while the sober ones run away.

  I’m sitting on the curb and they don’t even notice, except to tell me to move aside. The house is almost gone.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, staring and staring down the street, waiting for him to come back.

  It begins to rain.

  The house is gone, and now the police are starting to dig around.

  I take a deep breath and pull myself together long enough to get out of there.

  I go to the barn first. I put my matches and stone and the ticket to Nepal with our alcohol behind the rusty tractor. I don’t feel right taking it. Maybe Micah can use the refund to pay off that speeding ticket. And I want him to have the rock.

  Fear no more.

  But I’m terrified. I sit on the floor of the barn and take little gulps of air but don’t let anything out. I need Micah. Micah was my alibi. Micah was going to be too drunk to remember I wasn’t with him all night.

  My phone keeps vibrating in my pocket and I finally take it out. There’s five missed calls from probably the police and a few holy shit this is crazy are you okay where are you sorry about the house texts and one from Ander that’s just a picture of his middle finger.

  It’s so ridiculous—so Ander—that I almost laugh before I realize.

  His middle finger isn’t at the bonfire. He sent it a while ago, probably right after I ran after Micah, and he’s in a car and not at my house and definitely, definitely not setting it on fire.

  Oh god. Oh god, oh god.

  Fuck. Fuck.

  It isn’t fair.

  It’s not, it’s not fair, he’s going to walk away from this and I’m—I’m going to still be asphyxiating burning shaking paralyzed terrified terrified terrified. No. No. He’s going to get away with it, isn’t he, of course he is, of course of course of course. There’s a scream in my throat and too much air blocking it. It isn’t, it isn’t fair. How—how can the universe really not give a shit? How?

  I try to take a breath but where the hell can I even let it out now? My stupid fucking house is gone and so is Micah. Micah. Oh, god, Micah. I try again but I’m shaking and my lungs have collapsed because it doesn’t fucking matter, the police are going to figure out that it wasn’t Ander at all, and it just isn’t fucking fair and I can’t do it anymore, I can’t, because what’s the point? Micah is gone, Micah isn’t going to defend me. Oh, god. Micah.

  I stand up.

  It’s very dark.

  I push open the doors of the barn, and keep walking. I go to what’s left of the Metaphor. I sit down in the furious rain and pull handfuls of rocks into my lap. I uncap the Skarpie and begin to write on the impossibly smooth rocks.

  Slut.

  Whore.

  Bitch.

  Nice ass, though.

  Asking for it.

  Liar.

  Liar.

  Liar.

  Roses are red, violets are blue. You’re a piece of shit, a raging bitch too.

  Janie Vivian is a bore, Janie Vivian is a whore, Janie Vivian has no friends, Janie Vivian needs to end.

  Slut.

  Slut.

  Whore.

  Slut.

  Slut.

  Bitch.

  Someone fucked you over, huh?

  How does that feel?

  And when I’m done, when they’re in my pockets and sleeves and hood, I stare at the water and think about absence.

  That’s the truth, I guess. We don’t catch moments in the passing. We don’t catch them at all. We just reach and scramble and wish for fairy godmothers and Prince Charmings. It’s too bad none of it is real. It really is too bad.

  My name is Janie Vivian, and I don’t exist.

  The water is cold and it is rising.

  It is rising higher and higher and higher still.

  The moment has passed.

  The end.

  after

  DECEMBER 20

  I never learned to light matches right. Somehow, I always burn my fingertips. I can never

  actually

  do it

  right.

  Or anything else, really.

  I’m sorry, I don’t have the guts to do it like you did. I can’t walk it. But maybe I can just fall.

  I drop the matches onto the ice, one by one. The ice is thin and dark. Behind me is the empty space where the Metaphor used to be. Where we spent every Thursday. Where we ate fries and counted stones and climbed and fell. Where you declared an apocalypse and I chose the music.

  I watch the matches fall, and I think I can do that. I don’t have to do anything, really. Just let the ice melt and break apart. Just let gravity do what gravity does. I can’t screw that up. I’ve already screwed everything else up. I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wanted Ander to go to jail, and I want him to go to jail too, but I’ve fucked it all up.

  I’m running out of matches. Ten or so left. I think about apocalypses.

  Ten.

  In 634 BCE, the Romans thought their city would disappear because it was the one hundred twentieth year of their founding, because Romulus had supposedly received twelve eagles from the gods when he discovered Rome, and the old, gray philosophers thought that each eagle represented a decade. But it passed, and the world didn’t end, but the Romans still died eventually.

  Nine.

  Pope Sylvester II tells everyone that the world will end in 1000 CE, presumably because it’s a nice even number. People freak out. Riots pop up all over Europe. People travel to Jerusalem to—to what? I don’t know. The world doesn’t end. They move on.

  Eight.

  Pope Innocent III, Islamophobe extraordinaire, tells everyone that the world will end six hundred and sixty years after the rise of Islam. He is wrong.

  Seven.

  The Black Plague hits Europe in 1346. People say it’s a sign of the end of times, and for a lot of them, it is. Some of them die. Some of them don’t. The world continues, but people stop throwing their shit on the streets.

  Six.

  Thomas Müntzer calls it the beginning of the apocalypse. Everyone else calls it 1525. He and his followers are killed by the government for some hazy reason that Wikipedia did not list and so was not included in my thesis paper. He himself dies under torture, and gets beheaded, so it was pretty apocalyptic for him.

  Five.

  Christopher Columbus jumps on the apocalypse-predicting bandwagon in 1501 and writes the Book of Prophecies, in which he says the world is going to end in 1656, after he is safely dead so he won’t be around to witness it.

  Four.

  1666, just because it has the number six hundred and sixty-six in it. Just because.

  Three.

  1806. Some chick named Mary Bateman has a hen that lays an egg that proclaims the second coming of Christ. Rich people worship the chicken. Poor people starve because they don’t have chicken. Turns out that Mary Bateman went to a lot of trouble to etch the words onto the egg, and even stuffed it back up into her chicken.

  Two.

  Janie Vivian declares an apocalypse while
standing on a pile of rocks that has no significance whatsoever. This one is not rescheduled. This one is not miscalculated. This one is true. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true.

  One—

  “Micah!”

  A car door slams and Dewey is running, but I’m on the last match, and he stops. His hands are high. “Micah,” he says, calm now. Forced calm. Full of pressure. “Micah, you look like shit.”

  The last match is in my hand. The ice is thin and bright under my feet. I hold the head against the lighting strip. Press it down.

  “I feel like shit, honestly,” I tell him.

  “I figured,” he says. Slowly. He talks slowly. He moves toward me slowly and stops at the edge of the quarry. Puts one foot onto the ice.

  I don’t want slow. I want a flick of the wrist. I want to drop. I want this to be over.

  “I killed her,” I tell him matter-of-factly.

  And I flick my wrist

  And the match comes to life

  And I’m about to throw it down

  And follow

  When Dewey says,

  “I did, too.”

  And the match

  burns.

  “What?”

  “She wrote on the rocks,” he tells me. “She wrote the things people called her, horrible things. They found them, when they got the body out. You want to know how she died? That’s how she died. She put rocks everywhere she could and she walked into the quarry. She wrote shit on them like slut and whore and they dragged her down.”

  I stare at him. He stares back. The moonlight is terrible and everywhere. Dewey takes a step onto the ice.

  “I let her,” I finally say. “Didn’t I? I remember. I told her we should stop trying. After she kissed Ander. Even though Ander—even though he . . .”

  I heard and I knew and I never asked her about it. I never tried because I didn’t know how.

  “Yeah,” says Dewey. “You were shitty. You were a shitty friend.”

  “And Ander,” I say. “Nothing’s going to happen to Ander?”

  Dewey is quiet for a moment. “No,” he says finally. “I don’t think so. I mean, you know. No one can do anything now. Maybe her parents, but fuck them.”

  The match burns lower

  lower