This Is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang Read Free Book Online

back into the car to avoid whatever is going to happen next. Janie’s dad is a big man, but he looks gray too. He used to be on the football team at Waldo High, and the track team. He used to date Piper’s mom, and also Wes Bennet’s mom, and they might have overlapped. Janie told me that freshman year. She was convinced her parents could have been happy with anyone but each other.
    â€œIsn’t that funny?” she had said. We had just come back from a ninja mission. She was perched on the windowsill, about to climb away. “If there’s one person in the world you should be with, there must be one person in the world youshouldn’t be with. Well, I mean, a lot of people. But one person in particular. Don’t you think it’s funny that out of all the people in the whole wide world, my parents ended up with each other? I do.”
    It’s not a helpful memory. It’s not what I came here to remember.
    â€œMicah, what are you doing here?” asks Mr. Vivian. He walks up the driveway slowly but doesn’t cross the yellow tape.
    I watch him but keep walking backward. The ash is thickening. It reaches my ankles. It covers my shoes. I look up; the sky is the same color as the ground. “Is this where her room used to be?” I ask him.
    His jaw is tight.
    I look around. The trees are fine, mostly. Some of the branches are burned, but for the most part, they’re okay. They cage the house in.
    â€œShe lied,” I said. “You can’t see the Metaphor from here.”
    â€œMicah, you know you can’t be here,” he calls. “It’s blocked off for a reason. And you—you especially can’t be here.”
    He’s almost yelling. He says you like it’s shit in his mouth.
    â€œWill you move back now?” I ask.
    There is a screw in his jawbone and it’s tightening and the tension is too much.
    â€œLeave,” he tells me, and I wish—I wish I could. But my feet have sunk into the ash. I can only look at him. His eyes are bluer than Janie’s. His hair is dark, but his beard is red like her hair. I can see Janie in him. I would never tell her that. She would never listen. She would probably punch me if I said it. But I can see her in him.
    â€œMicah,” he says. “I want you off my property. I want you to leave. I never want you near my family again. I don’t ever want to find you here again. The next time I want to see you is in court.”
    You can see the quarry from here, so that part was true. But I can’t see the Metaphor. There’s Old Eell’s barn and so I should be able to see the Metaphor, and Janie wouldn’t lie about that. Janie would never lie about the Metaphor.
    â€œI have to go,” I say, and I stumble past him and down the driveway, where Dewey is waiting in his car. I don’t remember when he did that. He must have dived in when he saw Mr. Vivian, which doesn’t surprise me. Dewey usually solves problems by getting the fuck out of there.
    I am still walking toward Dewey’s car, I am still staring at my best friend who is an asshole safe inside, I am still wondering why I couldn’t see the Metaphor from the top of the hill.
    But then suddenly I am also in my bed, and the room isdark, and Janie is beside me. We are tangled in the blankets. Her head is in my pillow and she is screaming. Her father is standing in the door, and he fills the room.
    The moment fractures and turns to dust. Ash.
    I stumble into the car.
    â€œLet’s drive to the quarry,” I tell Dewey, and he does.
    In the car, I remember again. “What did Janie’s dad mean, about court? And me?”
    Dewey hauls ass towards the quarry, away from the tall, empty houses. “He didn’t mean anything.”
    â€œYou didn’t even hear.”
    â€œSo why the fuck are you asking me, then?”
    â€œBecause you’re not telling me something,” I say, and his hands