When we were seven, I set Micah on fire. Mom always tells the story on our birthday when we blow out the candles together because she thinks it’s cute, but it totally isn’t because I was making a wish and his hair got in the way and I never got my Skip-It. Lesson learned: bad things happen to good people.
(I mean me, not Micah. He was hardly even burned. And I really, really, really wanted a Skip-It. Piper and Carrie and the other girls brought theirs to recess every day even though they weren’t supposed to, and I never even got one.)
So, to recap: bad things happen to good people, and that’s not fair. Bad things should happen to bad people, like Caleb Matthers.
Cue mustache twirling!
My pockets are full of stones. I drew runes for silence and speed and courage all over my arms and I’ve wished for luck on two matches. Usually I only light one before ninja missions, but one isn’t enough for tonight.
I park my car on the next street over and run through the Gherricks’ yard to our old street, and kick over the FOR SALE sign in front of my house before stopping at the door. It’s blue, not electric like I’d wanted, but still navy, because we painted it back when my parents acknowledged that I was capable of forming opinions. Not that I’m bitter!
Wait, that isn’t even a little bit true. I’m totally bitter. I am brimming with resentment and teen angst.
(And I fucking hate the new house.)
I try my key, but it turns out my parents have already changed the lock. I roll my eyes and hope God will convey the message to my parents, and go to the side of the house. Thankfully, the workmen haven’t discovered the loose basement window yet, but it still takes me awhile to coax open the rusted hinges. It’s Sneak-Out Route Number Seven, and I don’t use it often because of the seasonal spider nest. But you know. Desperate times.
I tumble into the basement and get a face full of carpet, which is still moldy from the flooding last fall. It’s all empty—and I go up the stairs and it still smells like the Wonderfully Happy Vivian Family, like scotch and the kind of perfume they spray on supermarket flowers to make them smell brighter than they really do, and dust. I think that’s a good way to describe us: our house smelled like dust even before we moved out.
I light a match to get me up the stairs and to my room because the house is all kinds of creepy without furniture, and I wish for perfection before I open the door, so all I smell is smoke. I take a breath and burst through, eyes forward, so that the only things I see are the desk and the window and the bookshelf, and not how empty the room is. I open the window and frown at the screen.
Kicking it out is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done.
The noise it makes brings Micah to his window, and the fury that rises in me is sharp and everything, because this is how it should always be. Us, at our two windows, no screen, sneaking out of the house and driving without headlights just to get over here.
“Janie?” he asks. “Um, what? Are you supposed to be in there?”
I ignore that and slide the shelf across and he holds the other end by habit. I get on my knees and somersault over before I can make a better decision. For a second I’m unsteady and crooked and wondering if I will survive a two-story fall, and a second later I’m tumbling into Micah’s room and he’s saying “Shit!” on repeat and everything, everything is exquisitely funny.
“Oh my god,” I gasp through laughing. “Micah Carter, it is an honor to be alive with you.”
But he just yawns and starts to fall back into bed, and—I do not freaking think so.
So I pounce. I land with my knees on either side of him and he yelps and my hair is in his face and we are tangled in his blankets, and his eyes are the first thing I remember understanding.
For a moment all I want to do is turn off the lights and sleep in a bed with him in it, like we used to when we were little—climbing through the window and falling asleep together. I know the sound of his breathing better than any lullaby in the world.
Instead, I put my knee on his chest and say, “You’re welcome.”
He is still gasping. “What,” he says, “what the hell for?”
I push my knee down harder. “For not killing you,” I explain. “Benji told me that you can kill someone like this. Jump on their chest and land with your knee, break the sternum, et cetera. I just saved your life.”
Benji Arken is going into the navy. He is an asshole. Racist and misogynistic and homophobic, but he is cute, occasionally even funny, and he was a damn good kisser. And he knows how to kill people, which was not why we broke up. We broke up because he didn’t shower between basketball practice and when he came to my house.
“Janie,” Micah said, and he was looking up at me and his eyes were wide and his pupils were dark and widening, and—
Not yet.