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

than it should have because not even the sun could bear to stop smiling at them.
    But then the prince took the princess back to his small kingdom and they became the king and queen, and slowly things began to change. The king’s kingdom was small andpoor—there were no cocktail balls for the queen to dance at and no other princesses drowning in pearls for her to talk to, and she was lonely. She sat in the castle by herself most days and nights while the king took her money and left without telling her where he was going. The king and queen fought and cried and the nights began to last longer and longer, because not even the sun could bear to look at them.
    When they could no longer stand it, they went to the fairies and begged them to make them happy again. The king and queen thought the fairies were good, but really they were just stupid, and they told the king and queen that if they should have a baby, all would be well again.
    All except one. One fairy warned the king and queen that the child would be cursed,but no one listened to her.
    Soon after, a princess was born. The stupid fairies came and cooed over her cradle and the kingdom rejoiced and the sun peeked out again, and the king and queen sat together with smiles pasted on their faces.
    Of course it didn’t last. One day, the doors burst open and the last fairy flew in, furious. “Fools,” she seethed, one long finger stretched toward the king and queen. “How dare you? This child was cursed from her first breath. She will not save your marriage, and you will ruin her. Listen well. On her eighteenth birthday, at sunset, she will blow out her birthday candle and be gone from you forever. And then what will you do?”
    The king and queen trembled and clutched their princess so tightly that she wailed. And as she grew, they held on ever tighter. Because they would never let her out of their sight, the princess grew up watching them scream and sob. She counted the days untilher eighteenth birthday, and the king and queen held on tighter still, avoiding each other’s eyes but thinking the same thing: what will we do then?

before
SEPTEMBER 18
    â€œAre you coming over?” Piper asks as the school empties into the parking lot. “I have Chobani. And if I don’t learn an entire chapter of calc tonight, I’m going to fail the class.”
    â€œI can’t,” I say. “It’s Thursday! Thursday!” I’ve saved all of my daily allotment of exclamation marks for this moment. (Jeff Martin told me I was too enthusiastic once and tried to limit my exclamation marks. Eventually I told him to fuck off, but, well . . . you know. Bad habits don’t die young.)
    It has been a preposterously long day. Ander faked sick to skip the psych test and totally screwed over Phase Six, Step Fourteen: study hall date, and then I went to my senior studio and found out that three of my bowls had exploded in the kiln, and I had to lie when Mr. Dempsey asked me if I had let them dry before I loaded them, and then I probably failed my word-of-the-day quiz in Spanish, andthen the cafeteria didn’t have parfaits at lunch even though they always have parfaits at lunch on Thursdays.
    But Thursday is Metaphor Day, Janie and Micah Day, and that’s the only reason I didn’t fake cramps and go home early. Piper waves and I blow a kiss back, and we go off in our separate directions. I love Piper Blythe and everything about our no-commitment, zero-accountability, convenient-as-hell friendship. No one gets mad when texts aren’t answered or plans are blown off, because we both get the big picture. This is high school, and no one really wants to remember high school. In a few months, we’ll walk off the stage at graduation and spend the summer together, we’ll text each other for the first few weeks of college, and then we’ll lose touch. And that’s okay. The world is so much bigger than the two of us.
    I throw my