Instructions for the End of the World (16 page)

“No. We're just friends,” I say, unsure how to explain the whole relationship accurately.

“I get the feeling she doesn't like me.”

“Yeah, I don't know. She's a little possessive of things that don't belong to her, if that makes any sense.”

“So you've never, like, messed around with her or anything?”

“Oh god no. That would feel like messing around with my sister.” I actually get a little nauseous at the thought, but I don't say so, for fear it'll make me sound like a freak.

Everyone is attracted to Laurel. She's like the mini version of my mother, only without the serious addictions.

“I know it doesn't make much sense,” I continue. “But she's the same when it comes to my mother. It's like she wants my mom all to herself and gets annoyed whenever my mother wants to spend time with me.”

“Wow.”

“Like I said, it's complicated. She grew up without a family, so maybe since I'm the closest thing she has to a brother, she's afraid someone will steal me away? Same deal with her possessiveness over my mom.”

“You feel like swimming yet?” she says.

I don't. I want to kiss her, to show her that Laurel's weird possessiveness doesn't make any difference, but I know it's not the right time, not the right setting.

So I take her hand. “Come on,” I say. “Let's get wet.”

 

Thirteen

WOLF

I show up the next day at the farmhouse, where it's still and quiet in the early morning. Only birdsong can be heard from the nearby trees. I've tried on the walk over to imagine what it must be like to live here alone, for two teenage girls. When no one was here, over the years, I've poked around this place, just curious. It was a nice house once, but it hasn't been cared for in decades.

I knock on the front door and wait. A minute later, Izzy opens the door and gazes sullenly at me. “What do you want?”

“I came to see Nicole. Is she around?”

“I don't know,” she says, and closes the door in my face.

I wander around the side yard to the back and spot Nicole carrying a bucket of water across the field from the woods, so I go over and relieve her of it.

“Thanks,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“I said I'd come help out, remember?”

“Oh god, that's nice of you, but there's really nothing to be done other than maybe burn the place down and start over.”

“Careful what you wish for,” I say, nodding at the smoke on the horizon. The winds are blowing away from us again today, thankfully, so we don't have to breathe it in, but reminders of the summer fires are never far away.

“Hey, you know,” I continue, “if you don't feel like sticking around here today, we could head over to my tree house and you could help me with a few things there. I need to sand the floors and a couple of other spots before I start painting.”

“This was all just a way for you to get free labor, right?”

“Pretty much.”

She smiles and shrugs. “Okay. It'll be nice to get away from here. My sister's in a mood.”

As we walk through the woods she tells me about their hitchhiking trip to town for pizza.

“You should have let me know. I can always borrow my mom's car and give you a ride, you know.”

“Thanks. I guess it was good at least this time to do something with Izzy, just the two of us. She's not handling things very well.”

“So who picked you up on the road?”

“A nice family in a minivan. We got lucky, and I knew it, so I wasted twenty dollars for us to take a cab back home, since it was dark by then.”

We reach the tree house and she stops to stare up at it.

“Here we are. Home sweet home,” I say.

“I guess I was so surprised to see you here before, I didn't really notice how pretty this place is. I mean, it's weird but beautiful, you know?”

I smile. “You're the first person who's seen it, far as I know.”

“Really?”

“I never intended to show anyone this place,” I say.

She turns and gives me a look. “Why not?”

“I wanted to be alone.”

“You want to live out here by yourself and never see anyone?”

“If I want to see someone, I'll go visit them.”

“Oh, so you don't want visitors.”

“No.”

“Does that mean I can't come visit?”

“I showed you the place, right?”

“Not really. I found you here by accident, remember?” She crosses her arms over her chest and turns back to the tree house, regarding it as if it's a work of art in a museum.

“I brought you here today on purpose.”

“For free labor.”

“It's actually a labor trade,” I counter. “But you can come visit any time,” I say. “You're the one exception to my rule.”

She smiles a little, and I realize how rare it is to see her smile. She has a face like calm water, rarely revealing what's happening beneath the surface.

I like that she doesn't have an easy smile, because I feel as if I'm witnessing something rare and beautiful when it happens.

“I'm honored.”

“Can you keep my secret address a secret?”

“Of course.”

She climbs up the ladder to the entrance, and I follow her inside. I didn't design this place to hold two people, didn't imagine another person ever entering and filling the space I don't occupy. The small room fills up with us, and I am aware of her closeness.

“What will you do out here all alone?” she asks as she peers out a window.

“Whatever I want.”

Right now, what I want to do is kiss her, but when I lean a bit closer I can see her body tense, like a deer about to bolt. I wonder again if she has ever been kissed—really kissed.

“It's amazing,” she says. “Like something out of a storybook.”

“What is?”

“This tree house. Last time I was here, I was kind of distracted. I can't believe you've built it all yourself by hand. I'm impressed.”

I suppose that was the point of bringing her here … to impress. But no. That's not what I want. I just wanted to show her a piece of myself that has nothing to do with the village or my mother or Laurel or anyone else.

I want someone to know who I am, separate from all that. I want Nicole to be that someone.

She looks away, then looks back at me, and I am surprised when she leans in this time and places a tentative kiss on my lips, like a question.

I feel only the fluttering softness of her, but then she lingers, and I pull her closer until she is pressed against me. I slide one hand up into her hair and cup the warm base of her head as the kiss deepens, and slowly we are melting into each other.

It's some kind of miracle, this kiss.

It goes on and on.

Every little molecule in my body wakes up, and the black fog lifts completely for the first time in recent memory. I am awake, fully here in this moment, alive.

Somehow, eventually, we stop kissing, and Nicole looks at me as if she is just as shocked as I am about this turn of events.

“Wow,” she whispers.

“Yeah.”

“We should do that again sometime.”

“Soon,” I say.

“Yeah, soon.”

“Like right now.”

And we do.

NICOLE

I'm no saint. I've thought about what it would be like to kiss a guy I like, to touch him, to lie pressed against someone.

I think about what it would be like to do all that with Wolf.

It keeps me awake at night.

But really kissing him is nothing like what I imagined.

I didn't realize it would be impossibly soft and hard at the same time. I couldn't have imagined how I would become electrified by it, dizzy and breathless and so lost in the moment that the rest of the world fades away. It's like nothing else I've ever known. You have to be in the middle of it to understand.

But then he stops and pulls away, and mumbles an apology.

“I really didn't bring you out here to make out,” he says.

“I know.”

“It's just I've wanted to do that for a while.”

“I'm actually the one who kissed you,” I point out.

He smiles. “Right. I forgot. I kissed you back, though.”

“And then some.”

“I don't want you to think I invited you into the woods alone just to perve on you.”

“Maybe I'm the one perving on
you.
”

He laughs. “You're the opposite of a pervert.”

I shrug. “You haven't seen what I can do with sandpaper.”

For the first time, our aloneness here feels illicit, and intoxicating.

I think of what my father would say, and then I push that knee-jerk habit away. It doesn't matter what he would say. What matters is what I want to do, and I want to be here with Wolf right now. I want to stop thinking like a little brainwashed girl and start thinking like I'm my own person with my own mind.

“This floor doesn't look like it needs sanding,” I say, running my hand along the smooth surface.

“Not here, but over there.” He nods at the other side of the little room.

I start to crawl across a green sleeping bag that's spread out in the middle of the room, but halfway across I just sort of collapse, and there he is beside me.

“You don't really want to sand the floor, do you?” I say, as I pull him to me.

I don't know where this boldness has come from, but it's not anything my father has taught me.

ISABEL

I'm not really sleeping, just lying in my room, half-awake, listening to the scratching sounds in the ceiling. Mice, I guess—or that's what Nic says the sounds are. But then there is this crashing sound in the kitchen and I bolt upright, my heart pounding in my ears. I try to get totally quiet so I can listen.

I've thought about break-ins, out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one to call for help except my dumb sister. And now I think it's really happening.

I scramble out of bed and tiptoe across the room when I hear no more noise downstairs. Then I peer out into the hallway, which is still and quiet. That's when I hear a scuffling sound downstairs. I run on silent feet into Nic's room and grab her shoulder.

“Nic!” I whisper as loud as I safely can.

“Mmm,” she mumbles.

Somehow she is dead asleep while there is a rapist or a meth addict or a killer downstairs looking for us. I grab her arm and shake her.

“Nic! Wake up!”

Her eyes pop open, and she startles when she sees me so close.

“What?” she says, too loudly.

“Shh! There's someone downstairs!” I whisper.

She pushes herself up on her elbows, frowning in the moonlight that shines through the window.

“How do you know?”

“I heard noises.”

“It must be Dad getting back,” she says. “Or Mom.”

“In the middle of the night? What if it's not them?”

She finally seems to register just how screwed we are, being here alone, and she sits up and reaches under the bed, where she now keeps her hunting rifle.

I watch her check the barrel for ammunition, and for once I'm relieved my sister is a weirdo gun nut like our dad.

Downstairs, there is only silence now, but I take this as a bad sign. Whoever is down there probably heard us up here and is now just waiting for us to come down so he can kill us.

Nic stands up and crosses the room to the door, and I hurry along behind her.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going to see what the noise was.”

Before I can stop her, she flicks on the stairway light. “Who's there?” she calls out, and I want to slap her.

Silence.

“Dad? Mom?”

Then there is a sort of scratching, shuffling sound, barely audible.

She takes a deep breath and exhales. “You stay here and find a place to hide. If there's any trouble, go down the fire ladder in your room and run to Sadhana for help.”

I look at her like she's lost her mind, but I can't think what to say. I don't remember when I've ever been so scared before.

“Stay here,” I finally whisper, but she is already headed downstairs.

“Nic!” I call after her, and when she keeps going I edge closer to the hallway and peer down at her descending the stairs.

She vanishes around the corner of the staircase. A few seconds later I hear a gunshot and I nearly piss myself. Mouth dry, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I forget the safety plan and hurry down the stairs, unable to leave my sister alone down there.

What if Nicole is dead?

But she isn't. She's standing in the kitchen doorway, holding the gun barrel down. She turns and looks at me.

“Rats,” she says. “Eating our food. I got one but the noise scared the others away.”

I guess the sensation that fills me is relief, and then disgust when I peer into the kitchen to see a dead rat splattered against the tiles above the kitchen counter.

“Oh my god, I'm not cleaning that up.”

She enters the kitchen and places the gun on the table before kneeling down to a dark hole below the cabinets. “This is how they're getting in,” she says.

I think of all the scuffling sounds we've heard at night in the ceiling, and I imagine them being not cute little mice now but rats, like this fat gray one with its head blown off. It's nearly the size of a cat. Or was. The sight of it, and the scent of gunpowder in the air, makes me gag.

“What if there are more of them in here?”

“The other two ran back through this hole.”

I cross my arms over my chest and scan the room and the hallway. I don't want to live in a house with rats so big it takes a rifle to scare them away.

“Why don't you check all the cabinets and the other rooms while I try to seal up this hole?”

I'm not going into the kitchen if there's any chance of a rat lurking, but I say nothing. I just watch as she heads to the front door and unlocks it, then takes the flashlight off the door-side table and turns it on.