by Jamie Kain
“Good for you.”
“I don’t think I should go without you. I’m still your mother, you know.”
“That’s debatable,” I say, knee-jerk, without considering my own cruelty until the words have left my mouth.
“You have every right to be angry.”
“Great.”
“What I’m saying is, I want to go, but I won’t go without you.”
“You’re going to force me to go to Germany?”
She is silent again, her gaze drifting from me to the horizon and back again.
“I won’t go if you don’t want to come. I’ll stay here.”
“Please don’t. Not on account of me. I’ll be fine here on my own.”
“I left you for a year, Wolf, and I came back to find you anything but fine.”
I start to stand up, unwilling to hear an amateur analysis of my psychic state, but her firm grasp on my arm stops me short.
“We’re not finished here,” she says, in her rarely used Mom voice.
I slump back down, crossing my arms over my knees and staring straight ahead to avoid any meaningful eye contact.
“You can’t close yourself off from the world. It’s not healthy. It’s what your father did.”
This parallel between myself and my dad is not what I want to hear right now. “There’s a big difference. He numbed himself with drugs. I don’t.”
“I’m glad you don’t. You’re a stronger person than he was, and a stronger person than I am. I’m proud of you, you know.”
I cringe, but something occurs to me. What if she’s really going to stay sober this time?
What if she means what she says?
When I look over at Annika I see the same woman I’ve always known. I have survived a life with her by trying to protect her from herself, trying to protect myself from her, not really accomplishing either.
“I know it’s hard to trust an addict, Wolf. I know I’ve never given you much reason to trust me, so you’re smart to be wary. But I’m not going to leave you again.”
She says this last part as if she’s only just decided in that moment that it’s true. And I don’t know—maybe that’s good enough for a start.
“Suit yourself,” I say, my throat so tight words can barely fit through.
She puts an arm around my shoulder, and this time I don’t pull away.
* * *
When the oppressive heat of August continues into September, no one is surprised. There is always a hint of smoke in the air, even as the fires are reported to be more and more contained to the north. Some nights I still can’t sleep in the tree house, the smoke is so thick.
I itch to get outside, and so I wander the trails above the Yuba River or along its shore, away from the area that burned, as much as I can. I swim alone, thinking of Nicole, wondering if she will ever come to the river and find me here.
And if she does, will she be carrying a gun?
How will she react? How will I?
I try to imagine her as her most relaxed self—the girl who kissed me in the tree house—stripping down and jumping into the cold water to swim with me, but my brain always stops short, not wanting to really go there. Something is seriously wrong with me if I can’t fantasize about a girl, but there is this sense of not wanting to torture myself with things I can’t have. I fear if I allow myself to want Nicole, to really want her, nothing else will ever satisfy me.
I want to visit her, but I don’t. I know, with her father back, it will only cause her trouble. I stay clear, and I hear gunshots in the distance, which always make me flinch. I know the gunfire comes from her property, since the sound came with her family’s arrival and was rarely heard around here before then.
I stay in the water until I can’t stand the cold a second longer, and then I drag myself onto the shore and stretch out on the warm river rocks, letting the sun bake me. Because I did decide to go back to school—no sense in bailing out on my senior year, I realized at the last second—I force myself to think about my final project, which is supposed to somehow be the culmination of all I’ve learned during my years of school. I am studying populations of local bees, and after spending the past two years planting bee-friendly plants around the area, and encouraging others to do so, I have to do final counts to see if my efforts have paid off, compile all my research, make sense of it, and consider all the factors that might make the numbers vary—of which there are many. Like the wildfires, for instance. Will they have made the bees go elsewhere?
The sound of gravel crunching underfoot catches my attention, and I sit up to see a sight my eyes have trouble believing is real.
Nicole is making her way down the hillside trail. She moves just as naturally, as unaware of her own grace, as she did the first time I saw her, and my stomach fills with a warm buzz. I don’t know if she sees me here, since she’s looking down at the trail to choose her steps carefully, but then when it levels out she looks up and straight at me.
NICOLE
When I didn’t find Wolf at the tree house, it was easy enough to guess where he might be on a day as hot as this. From above, shielded by the trees, I watch him swim, his bare chest glistening in the sun. I can remember all too well how his skin feels to touch, how his warmth and his scent are all I need to know when we’re together.
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 s
ays, “I wish you’d told me before. That fucking idiot—”
“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.
About the Author
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. Or sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY JAMIE KAIN
The Good Sister
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part I: The End of the World as We Know It
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part II: You’re on Your Own
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part III: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
About the Author
Also by Jamie Kain
Copyright
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.
www.stmartins.com
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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First Edition: December 2015