Instructions for the End of the World (21 page)
Read Instructions for the End of the World Online
Authors: Jamie Kain
I don't know what I'm waiting for. I came here to talk to him, but I don't know what I want to say.
Finally, when he is lying in the sun next to the river, I work up the nerve to go to him and see what kind of words come out.
I don't even know if he'll want to see me after I sent him away last month and after I blasted a hole in the wall to scare him away.
“Hey,” I say when I'm close enough to be heard over the dull roar of the river.
“Hey yourself.”
His hair wet and falling in thick strands around his face, he looks even more gorgeous than usual, and for a moment I can't think of a thing to say, so I sit down next to him and look out at the water.
“Come for a swim?”
“No, but now that I'm here it sounds like a good idea.”
“You've been missed.”
I look at him to see if he's joking, but he isn't. “My dad came back,” I say.
“I know.”
“It's been kind of awful.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, and it's true. I am starting to be okay.
“What about your mom?”
“I guess she's gone for good. It's crazy, but I don't know. It makes sense in a weird way.”
I tell him about my parents, their differences, my father's career-ending affair, my mother's decision to leave for good. Getting it all out in the open leaves me feeling like it's not so shameful. It's just life. Stuff happens, and you deal with it.
Wolf, next to me, silent, is the kind of person who listens with his whole self. He doesn't have to make the sort of I'm-listening sounds other people make, because there's never any doubt that his attention is on me.
This quality, as much as any other, makes me sure he is one of the rarest people I've ever met, like some exotic, endangered species.
“So is your dad okay with your mom being gone for good?”
I laugh. “He is the opposite of okay with it.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. A hawk swoops overhead and lands on the branch of a nearby tree, and we watch as it rests for a bit and then sets off again, across the river.
“Listen,” I say. “About what happened the day of the evacuation, I'm sorry.”
“That's the first time I've ever been shot at.”
“I wasn't shooting at you. I was shooting at the wall. To scare you away.”
“Why?”
And then I tell him about what happened with Izzy and Kiva, how there was no way she could have gotten in a van and left with him.
He listens, his silence like a whole other person sitting next to us. Finally he says, “I wish you'd told me before. That fucking idiotâ”
“Please, don't say anything. She just wants to move on, and I don't see what else there is to be done. Okay?”
He sits silent for a while, and then he nods.
“So anyway, my dad's been freaking out about Mom, but he decided to let us go to the school in town, and things have gotten kind of better since school started. He's just been working on the house, and we get to be gone all day.”
“So what do you think of the school?”
“I think it would be better if you were there.”
He gives me an odd look, like he doesn't know if I'm joking or serious.
“I guess our school wasn't an option for you?” he says.
I laugh. “Not in a million years. But it's okay. Izzy's always wanted to go to a regular high school, so it's her dream come true, and I'm just happy to be away from our house all day.”
“Izzy's okay too?”
I give this some thought. I've never been close to Izzy, but lately things are better somehow. She talks to me. Asks me questions and advice. It's like, without our mom around, I'm the only person she has to rely on.
“She is. I mean, I can tell she's not as fearless as she used to be, but going to school has been a good thing for her. She loves getting away from Dad and being around normal kids all day.”
I know he's thinking of what happened in the barn and how badly that might have shaken her, but he doesn't say anything else about it, and I'm glad. I'm done talking about it, agonizing over how I might have protected her, and explaining away all the things that went wrong.
I guess, in the end, it's another way we proved ourselves capable of surviving whatever circumstances were thrown at us. Without Dad's help.
“Feel like a swim?” Wolf asks, and I watch as he stretches and stands up.
“Sure,” I say, conscious now that I didn't bring a swimsuit. He's wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs.
I consider yet again what my father would say about this scenario, and I know, in a moment of true clarity, that it doesn't matter. It will never really matter to me again. He's not the one I have to answer to anymore. After all that's happened this summer, I answer to no one but myself. He can kick me out of the house if he wants to.
I'll still find a way to survive.
I stand up, too, and without thinking about it I take off my jeans, my top, leaving only my panties. I meet Wolf's gaze for a second and I don't know what I see in his eyes. Amusement, maybe?
I don't care.
I go to the water's edge and, without feeling for the temperature, without hesitating, I just keep walking until I'm knee deep, and then I jump the rest of the way in. The water is like an electric shock, taking my breath away with its absolute ice cold, with the stunning relief of it. I plunge beneath and then break the surface, gasping.
When I turn, Wolf is right behind me, already drenched, smiling and laughing.
“Just stay in it for a minute and you'll get used to the temperature,” he says.
I go under again, and when I come back up for air he's a little closer, only an arm's reach away.
A wind has picked up in the past half hour, and the sky above us, which has been a murky gray from the forest fires, is clearer now, a crystalline blue, for the first time in days.
I reach out and take Wolf's hand in mine. I don't know what I have in mind when I do this, but the moment we touch, I know. I pull him closer until he's up against me, our wet, cold bodies skin on skin. And I kiss him.
It is the best thing I've ever felt. I think of the way food tastes so much better when you've been really, truly hungry, and maybe that's how it is with us.
I have been really and truly hungry for this.
His arms slide around my waist and I am lost in the taste of his lips, the feel of his touch on my skin. I am wrapped up in the one and only person in the world I can completely trust.
I pull away a fraction of an inch to catch my breath and look into his watchful animal eyes.
“Are you still okay?” he asks.
“I'm more than okay.”
The cold water has become a pleasant sensation now, numbing but welcome. I feel like there's so much I want to say, but no single statement comes to mind. I can only hope my silence speaks volumes.
“I've missed you,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I've missed you too,” I say. “I realized something, when I was trying to stay away.”
“That you can't live without me?”
I smile at this.
“I realized how much I like being with you.”
He kisses me again, this time slow and exploring. Somewhere overhead, a hawk calls. The sun blazing down on us warms our bare skin and we are, at that moment, the happiest creatures in this forest. We are a part of every living thing around us, and we are a whole world unto ourselves.
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JAMIE KAIN
grew up in Kentucky and now lives in Sacramento, California, with her husband and three children. Wherever she goes, her beloved pit bull mix, Reno, can almost always be found at her side. She is also the author of
The Good Sister
.
Visit her Web site at
www.jamiekain.com
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ALSO BY
JAMIE KAIN
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Contents
Part I: The End of the World as We Know It
Part III: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
. Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Kain. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-04786-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-04785-4 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250047854
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