Instructions for the End of the World (20 page)

Izzy is carrying a duffel bag as she follows me out to my car and climbs into the passenger seat.

“What's up with the bag?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing. Just some stuff.”

I know this isn't anywhere near the truth, but I let it go and drive through the Sadhana entrance and on to the main road. She straightens her hair in the visor mirror.

“Where am I dropping you off?” I ask when she says nothing.

“Just in town, wherever.”

“Are you, like, running away or something?”

I glance over and catch a guilty look cross her face.

“You don't know what it's like at my house. My dad is insane. I can't stay there.”

“So you're headed where?”

“To L.A. I know I can get a modeling job or something. I've got money saved up.”

“That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard,” I say as I pull the car over to the side of the road.

I don't know why I even care about what this dumb girl does or doesn't do. Maybe she reminds me of myself a little.

When I start making a U-turn to go back the other way she screeches, “What are you doing?”

“I'm taking you to Sadhana, so just chill out.”

“I don't want to go there, okay? Just let me back out and I'll get another ride.”

“You're going to hitch a ride all the way to L.A.?”

“No, just to the Greyhound bus station.”

“I want you to talk to someone before you do anything.”

“Not Kiva. I don't want to see him.”

“Of course not Kiva.”

“You're not going to talk me out of this, you know.” Her arms crossed over her chest, she's glaring out the front window.

“No, I'm not. But you need some good advice, and I don't have any to give.”

Five minutes later I'm walking her to Helene's cabin, located on the quietest end of the village. She's the only person I know who can talk sense into a dumb teenager, even if she has never been able to talk any sense into me. She's gained a new respect from me for trying to convince Annika to stay here. I knock on Helene's door, and when she answers I explain the situation. Izzy looks at me like she wants to kill me.

But one benevolent smile from Helene, and a few kind words, and I know she'll chill out.

“I've got to go,” I say, and I leave Izzy there, in more responsible hands than mine.

Now that I've done my good deed, my first responsible adult act, I wonder what's next. College? A job? A pension plan? Two-point-five kids and a husband?

Maybe not, but I am starting to not feel so hopeless about the idea of taking one little step forward and seeing what happens.

I am not the girl the world sees. I'm not what everyone thinks I am.

I don't even know who I am anymore, but maybe I'm ready to find out.

As I head back toward the car I watch Annika stride down the gravel path, away from me, her skirt flowing around her calves, the late afternoon sun glistening on her hair, and I feel an ache in my chest that I know now will never quite go away. Or maybe it will someday when I'm not paying attention.

Then I get in my car and drive off to register for classes.

 

Sixteen

ISABEL

With Mom gone and Dad acting like the end of the world finally arrived and he was totally unprepared, Nicole and I were able to convince him of one thing. He is letting us go to the high school in town. That might not sound like much of a victory, but try being in our house 24/7 and see if you wouldn't like to hop on a yellow school bus and head off to a typical American school.

Really he agreed to this only because he had no interest in homeschooling us himself. That kind of thing is women's work, according to Dad.

Whatever.

I am a freshman walking through the crowded, noisy halls, feeling like I'm a star in my own high school movie. It's just like I pictured it would be, way better than middle school. I scan the numbers on the doors, trying to find my first-period class, and when I do, there is a cute guy sitting in the first row. He looks up at me and I look away.

I have promised myself no more guys, not anytime soon. I don't know what to do with all the feelings about what happened with Kiva, but I know I need time, and I know I need to not be so stupid again. I think of that woman Helene, who I've gone back and talked to a couple of times now. She's offered to be my therapist or whatever for free, and I like talking to her.

Nicole was less interested than I was in attending the high school, but she didn't put up a fight. She rode the bus in silence with me this morning, probably as relieved as I was to be getting away from Dad.

In the time he's been back he's been working like a lunatic to fix all the things that are wrong with the house. It's a long list, so it's hard to tell he's done much.

He doesn't talk about Mom, but we got another letter from her a few days ago, explaining that she's enrolled in graduate school at UC Davis, only a few hours away. She said she's volunteering at the MIND Institute and hoping to get hired there sometime. She's learning something called applied behavior analysis, and she actually sounded pretty happy and excited about the whole thing, working with screwed-up kids and all. I don't get the appeal, but whatever. I guess it's cool that she's happy, and she said she'll be able to visit us soon and have us down for weekends whenever she can afford to get a place of her own.

Dad also doesn't seem to notice that Nicole has stopped obeying his every order. Since the day he hit her, she hasn't really spoken to him much at all, except for the bare minimum.

I like her a lot better this way, the new, defiant Nicole. She's the kind of person I don't mind being sisters with, especially since she blew a hole in the wall just to scare off Kiva and those other guys for me. She's the kind of sister I could maybe even be a little bit proud of, if she ever put on cuter clothes.

WOLF

Annika finds me in the chicken run, communing with the hens, who search for bugs and pluck at the rare green sprout emerging from the earth. They have lost interest in me now that they've gone through the bits of sandwich left over from my lunch, and I can watch them in their silly gracelessness. She is driving past when she sees me sitting there amid a trio of Barred Rocks, beautiful birds with black and white fringed feathers. Her car edges to the side of the dirt road, and my stomach sinks when she kills the engine.

She comes striding toward me with purpose, a white skirt flowing around her legs, her hair pulled back in a bun. Thanks to a pair of sunglasses, I have no sense of whether this visit will be a hassle.

“Wolfie,” she calls. “I've been hoping to find you, and here you are among the chickens.”

To this I say nothing, just watch as she opens the gate and lifts the hem of her skirt to cross the yard. A few moments later she sits down next to me on the grass and sighs.

“It seems like you've been hiding from me,” she says.

“Not really.”

“School starts back tomorrow, yes?”

I shrug. My transition year, which is what senior year is called at the World Peace School. Transition to adulthood, for whatever it's worth. I can't imagine how it matters now, after this summer of strangeness.

“Aren't you going?”

“I don't know.”

“Maybe it would be good to have a change of scenery. I've been thinking of going back to Germany. Would you care to join me?”

This surprises me so much I don't know what to say. Annika has never expressed any real desire to return to her home country. She's about as American as any German can get, far as I can tell.

I wonder about the boyfriend, whether he will be going, but I don't dare ask.

“Why?” I finally croak, my throat oddly constricted.

“Why am I thinking of going or why am I asking you to come?”

“Both.”

“I met someone while I was in rehab. He's invited me to come live in his flat in Berlin.”

“You met someone who isn't Mark, in rehab?”

“Mark and I aren't working out so well. He understands.”

“So you're asking me if I want to come live with you and some guy I don't know in Berlin.”

“You could visit and decide for yourself if you want to stay or come back here.”

“No,” I say, without giving it another thought.

Another deep sigh. For a while she says nothing, and the boldest of the flock of chickens, Lulu, comes close and pecks at my foot.

“The thing is, this is not an easy place for me to stay sober. I think Berlin will be better, with my friend who's also sober.”

“Good for you.”

“I don't think I should go without you. I'm still your mother, you know.”

“That's debatable,” I say, knee-jerk, without considering my own cruelty until the words have left my mouth.

“You have every right to be angry.”

“Great.”

“What I'm saying is, I want to go, but I won't go without you.”

“You're going to force me to go to Germany?”

She is silent again, her gaze drifting from me to the horizon and back again.

“I won't go if you don't want to come. I'll stay here.”

“Please don't. Not on account of me. I'll be fine here on my own.”

“I left you for a year, Wolf, and I came back to find you anything but fine.”

I start to stand up, unwilling to hear an amateur analysis of my psychic state, but her firm grasp on my arm stops me short.

“We're not finished here,” she says, in her rarely used Mom voice.

I slump back down, crossing my arms over my knees and staring straight ahead to avoid any meaningful eye contact.

“You can't close yourself off from the world. It's not healthy. It's what your father did.”

This parallel between myself and my dad is not what I want to hear right now. “There's a big difference. He numbed himself with drugs. I don't.”

“I'm glad you don't. You're a stronger person than he was, and a stronger person than I am. I'm proud of you, you know.”

I cringe, but something occurs to me. What if she's really going to stay sober this time?

What if she means what she says?

When I look over at Annika I see the same woman I've always known. I have survived a life with her by trying to protect her from herself, trying to protect myself from her, not really accomplishing either.

“I know it's hard to trust an addict, Wolf. I know I've never given you much reason to trust me, so you're smart to be wary. But I'm not going to leave you again.”

She says this last part as if she's only just decided in that moment that it's true. And I don't know—maybe that's good enough for a start.

“Suit yourself,” I say, my throat so tight words can barely fit through.

She puts an arm around my shoulder, and this time I don't pull away.

*   *   *

When the oppressive heat of August continues into September, no one is surprised. There is always a hint of smoke in the air, even as the fires are reported to be more and more contained to the north. Some nights I still can't sleep in the tree house, the smoke is so thick.

I itch to get outside, and so I wander the trails above the Yuba River or along its shore, away from the area that burned, as much as I can. I swim alone, thinking of Nicole, wondering if she will ever come to the river and find me here.

And if she does, will she be carrying a gun?

How will she react? How will I?

I try to imagine her as her most relaxed self—the girl who kissed me in the tree house—stripping down and jumping into the cold water to swim with me, but my brain always stops short, not wanting to really go there. Something is seriously wrong with me if I can't fantasize about a girl, but there is this sense of not wanting to torture myself with things I can't have. I fear if I allow myself to want Nicole, to really want her, nothing else will ever satisfy me.

I want to visit her, but I don't. I know, with her father back, it will only cause her trouble. I stay clear, and I hear gunshots in the distance, which always make me flinch. I know the gunfire comes from her property, since the sound came with her family's arrival and was rarely heard around here before then.

I stay in the water until I can't stand the cold a second longer, and then I drag myself onto the shore and stretch out on the warm river rocks, letting the sun bake me. Because I did decide to go back to school—no sense in bailing out on my senior year, I realized at the last second—I force myself to think about my final project, which is supposed to somehow be the culmination of all I've learned during my years of school. I am studying populations of local bees, and after spending the past two years planting bee-friendly plants around the area, and encouraging others to do so, I have to do final counts to see if my efforts have paid off, compile all my research, make sense of it, and consider all the factors that might make the numbers vary—of which there are many. Like the wildfires, for instance. Will they have made the bees go elsewhere?

The sound of gravel crunching underfoot catches my attention, and I sit up to see a sight my eyes have trouble believing is real.

Nicole is making her way down the hillside trail. She moves just as naturally, as unaware of her own grace, as she did the first time I saw her, and my stomach fills with a warm buzz. I don't know if she sees me here, since she's looking down at the trail to choose her steps carefully, but then when it levels out she looks up and straight at me.

NICOLE

When I didn't find Wolf at the tree house, it was easy enough to guess where he might be on a day as hot as this. From above, shielded by the trees, I watch him swim, his bare chest glistening in the sun. I can remember all too well how his skin feels to touch, how his warmth and his scent are all I need to know when we're together.