Once upon a time, the little mermaid dies.
Once upon a time, true love’s kiss doesn’t work on Snow White, but the prince carts the corpse back to the castle anyway.
Once upon a time Scheherazade tells stories to stay alive. Rapunzel carts her children around a desert and almost starves. The miller’s daughter is too afraid to say no. Little Red Riding Hood loses her virginity. Janie Vivian tries to remember to breathe.
The end.
before
OCTOBER 16
The hard part is over. Phase three was the crucial one, everything from buying gas with Ander’s Visa to throwing the card back into his car when I went to hug him hello. I was careful: no one saw me, no one looked twice, I didn’t leave fingerprints.
Oh, right, I forgot to mention: I have a new plan. A new ninja mission. This one is four phases. Arson is easier than love.
Phase four is the fun part. It’s also the pot in my yard and the shitty music and the couples probably having sex in our lawn chairs even though it’s so cold that we’ll probably hear about someone having frostbite on his dick tomorrow, but I just have to wait that out. People just need to get a little more drunk.
Micah’s sprawled in a lawn chair and I’m against him, so that he’s leaning back as far as he can and my head is on his arm and I’m fetal on his chest. He weaves in and out of consciousness and stares at the house. Even in the dark it’s ugly and stupid and obscene. But soon that won’t be a problem anymore, so I try not to think about it.
His eyelashes flutter. He shakes his head, or tries to, and looks around.
“This is kind of lame,” he says, and I only understand because I know him so well. His words are garbled and adorable.
“Yup,” I say. “But the fun part is coming.” Just you wait.
His head is drooping, and my heart does a funny thudding thing. Maybe I made him drink too much. I tap his cheek. “Micah? Hello? Look at me.”
He tries, and I know I probably shouldn’t, but I giggle. He’s so confused and sweet, and he’s trying. He really is.
“Tell me a secret. No, don’t. I don’t want to tell secrets tonight.” We have enough secrets as it is. We have too many. “Tell me about your favorite day.”
“Huh?”
“Your favorite day. Us, together. Your favorite day.”
He tries to scratch his head. He blinks up at me, trying to focus.
“What are you thinking?” he asks me.
I almost laugh. What am I thinking? What am I not thinking?
I am thinking about Ander and the kind of love that starts and ends with lips. I am thinking about Piper and me curled in a bus seat with the same music thrumming in our brains and our zero-accountability friendship and how I would have stayed with her no matter what. I am thinking about the little girls in Nepal and how there is probably no Micah in their lives. Micah. Most of all, I’m thinking about him. I am thinking of his face in the window across from mine. I am thinking about the conversations neither of us remember. I am thinking about the times I wanted to say thank you but couldn’t find the words and the times I wanted to say I’m sorry but couldn’t find the guts. I am thinking of his face when I kissed Ander at regionals. I am thinking of the way I used him. I am thinking of the way his face tenses when he’s annoyed and the way the same face dimples when he smiles.
I am thinking about the way we love each other. I am thinking about our soul, one atom and bruised all over now that I have dragged it behind me with my muddy hands.
“Micah?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think there are things that can’t be fixed?”
He shifts against me. I watch the fire, and even though I know him down to his fingertips, I don’t know what he will say next.
“What do you mean?”
He tries to push me away, but I can’t, I can’t let go.
“Do you mean—do you mean us?”
“No,” I say. I wrap my fingers in his shirt and pull him close. “Never us. Never.”
“Okay,” he says, like thank god, and I hide my smile against his shoulder. “I dunno, Janie. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I sigh. I grab the bottle, take a quick shot myself, just one, and squeeze my eyes closed as I swallow. “Okay,” I say, “how about this. If you could go back in time and redo one thing, what would it be?”
I catch him off guard. He blinks. His head falls back, and I touch his throat where it quivers with an answer he doesn’t quite want to give.
“I wouldn’t have gone with my babysitter,” he says, so quietly I barely catch it. “I would have made my dad stay.”
“But your mom would still be dead.” He flinches. “Wait, sorry. Sorry,” I say again, quieter. I lay my head against his chest and listen to his heart beating, beating, beating. “I just—don’t you see? Everything would still have happened as it happened.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”