The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

by Davina Bell

  ‘Maybe he was exactly who you thought he was but he was someone else as well. People are complex, am I right?’ I said, trying to channel my inner Mikie. ‘Besides, you’re so easy to love that the guy never really stood a chance. Trust me. It only took three hot seconds for Mikie to start swooning once I told him about you. He thought you were a honey.’

  ‘Who’s Mikie?’ she asked, because she’s great at deflecting when she’s just been given a compliment. People saying nice things about her is excruciating to Winter.

  I paused. It was a good question. Who was Mikie? ‘Nobody, I guess.’

  ‘But Summer,’ Winter continued, ‘now Edward’s got the notebook. And what…what will he do when he gets into that helicopter? To the people who think they’re coming to help us?’

  ‘Simple,’ I said. ‘Two options. Number one: he’ll be so lovesick for you that he’ll see the error of his ways and hand them the notebook and join the Resistance, and BOOM! The world starts turning. Without the internet to make things all murky, people get their shit together and rise up. The planet is saved!’

  ‘Or he gets on board and he kills them,’ she whispered. ‘I think he’s been trained.’

  ‘And I’m guessing the people he’s working for will want to keep what’s in that notebook on the down low. They won’t be using it anytime soon.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Why wouldn’t they want to? Won’t everyone die if they don’t?’

  ‘The usual,’ I said breezily, feeling kind of smug that I’d thought this part through. ‘Money. Power. Greed. Think how much they could sell it for. Plus, if the world’s not turning, it’s probably a good excuse to fast-track that whole scheme where people pay truckloads to relocate to Mars. Boy, what a cash cow. Like that guy with the baseball cap needs any more cash, am I right?’

  Winter didn’t say anything to that, and after a while I felt her tears drip onto my forehead, still a tiny bit warm from running down her cheeks. I shifted myself a little away from her so I could prop my head up on my elbow and look right into her eyes.

  ‘Kid, most people most places—they’re just doing the best they can. That includes Edward. That includes you and me. We didn’t know any better. You’d never blame Anne Frank for being stuck in the annexe, would you?’

  I thought this was a masterful argument but, truly, Winter was always the smarter one.

  ‘Anne’s family didn’t get stuck there because of something she did,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘That we know of,’ I said. ‘The diary’s probably a little biased in her favour.

  ‘So you took a risk and it didn’t work out,’ I continued. ‘But Winter, for a little while, boy, you were in love, and that is why we are alive, am I right?’

  ‘I guess…’ Winter laughed through her snot, which is one of the ways I loved her most. ‘Summer?’ she asked. ‘Do you forgive me? For Edward, I mean? For telling.’

  I paused. I did—I had. And yet…

  ‘If I say yes,’ I said slowly, ‘will you drink some of that milk? A little bit—a bird’s beak.’ I could feel the fur of her body stand up. ‘If you loved me,’ I whispered, ‘you would eat.’

  ‘If you loved me,’ she whispered back, ‘you wouldn’t ask.’

  I swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying not to show how much that broke my heart. ‘I do forgive you. And…’ There was something else I needed to say—something that had been boiling up in me since I had left Bartleby, or maybe since I was born. ‘And Winter? I’m sorry you felt you needed to escape me and I’m sorry I couldn’t help loving you so hard. After everything, I couldn’t handle losing you too, and if that makes me a monster, well, sign me up with a lifelong contract to appear on Sesame Street.’

  Winter shook her head. ‘You weren’t a monster, Summer. You were brave and strong and fierce, like a lion. Like a bear.’

  My heart felt full to bursting and I smiled at Winter, a smile so deep I felt it in the soles of my feet. And Winter, she smiled back.

  We slept facing each other, our knees tucked up in each other’s knees, noses close enough to catch the warmth of our breath because that cave wasn’t exactly tropical, though Winter was surprisingly toasty. Winter fell asleep first, she always did, and I spent a whole lot of time looking at her tiny, hollowed-out face while it was up so close to mine, trying to figure out which bits were still the same—the same as before, the same as me. I reached out to touch her hair, just as she’d done to me, and as I stroked it she murmured a little, a happy murmur, and so I twirled gentle spirals around her scalp with my fingers, and that would have been enough right there, enough to make anything bearable.

  Except that when I eventually pulled my hand away, a clump of her hair came with it—I’m talking a bunch like a bunch of raw spaghetti when you tap it out of the packet, trying to figure out how much will make a bowl. And after that, I was so disturbed that it took me ages to fall asleep, as I’m sure you can appreciate.

  Winter

  ‘Do you love me?’ Edward had asked as we’d sat side by side under the tree in the forest with the rope still tied round the branch, its end sliced through.

  This was back when he was working on that little guitar. Everything around us glistened with the ends of a sunshower. We had come here to shelter, where the leaves were the thickest.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. Like they do in a movie—the type Summer swoons over. It made me smile, to sound like a script.

  He turned his head and leaned right over, kissed me deep, touched my forehead with his. And then he’d said, ‘Go and get me that knife.’

  I froze.

  I knew the one. We had had it since Tokyo. Sharp and bright. Long—as long as a torso is deep.

  I swallowed and I whispered, ‘But what for?’

  He looked into my face. His eyes were sad. ‘Winter, don’t you trust me?’

  I went and took that knife from where Summer had hidden it.

  Edward smiled when he saw me walking so slowly, the blade pointed down as I slipped through the trees.

  He stood up. Held out his hand. I gave it to him. ‘Turn around,’ he said, ‘and then don’t turn around.’

  I started to shake, but I turned.

  He said, ‘What are you thinking, Winter, right now?’

  I kept my voice steady. ‘I am thinking of my mother.’

  Summer

  I woke because Winter was unhooking her legs from mine. ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered, all groggy, because however long we’d been asleep hadn’t been long enough.

  ‘Running,’ she whispered back.

  ‘Winter, your wrist is broken,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. ‘You probably shouldn’t move it around.’

  She just looked at me, or was it past me? I sat up and pulled my scrap of a T-shirt over my head, and it was cold but I didn’t care, not really. I tied the two raggedy ends in a knot and handed it to Winter. ‘Here—a sling,’ I said. ‘At least put it on while you’re running.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ I said, turning my bare back to her so I could rub my eyes and think.

  I wish that I had come to terms with her Xtreme running addiction so squarely that it didn’t bother me, seeing her lope off, knowing there was nothing in her stomach—literally nothing—and I thought about what Mikie had said about her running back to me one day, tried to hold that inside me, but, boy, it wasn’t easy.

  I’m a little ashamed here, but my motives in letting Winter go weren’t exactly pure, or even a tiny bit. Truth be told, this whole time, I’d been dying—DYING—to figure out what was in the notebook she kept writing in so feverishly, and now was the perfect time to sneak a peek. And while my money was on soppy love poetry about the bear, probably in haiku because it was a form we were pretty familiar with, what I was really hoping for was a juicy account of what had happened while we’d been apart. I felt that gap of time deep within me, like a toothache. What had she done, and what had b
een done to her, and had she missed me, even a bit? She had written so much, so intently, that it had to be in there, blow by blow, her thoughts and feelings, all untangled and tidied, and even the thought of it made my mouth water.

  I was running, I mean running really fast, and if you find that surprising, well, so did I, but there I was, positively sprinting around that cave, jumping over rocks and puddles and slopes of scree like I was Anna-May Barnes, who was the hurdling champion at our school and also ridiculously popular and also blonde, and why those things so often go together, beats me.

  I was yelling Winter’s name. And though I imagined it would bounce around the cave like in a cartoon and smack me right back in the face, it didn’t: my voice just disappeared, and I want to say it was sucked into a vortex, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong in a number of ways—semantic, scientific, whatever.

  I was panicked.

  That notebook, boy oh boy, it had freaked me out on seventy-seven different levels. And not because of what was in it, but because of what wasn’t, which was anything of anything that made sense, and I would even have been okay with some hardcore erotic sonnets compared to what I found.

  Which was this:

  Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter Summer Winter

  But that was all. Pages of it, over and over. And the writing, it wasn’t Winter’s writing—well, it was, because I’d seen her do half of it right in front of me, but the style wasn’t hers at all, so scraggly and uneven, like she’d done it blindfolded after a cheeky swig of sherry.

  I knew about this—something like this. Your starved body sort of eating your starved brain. I should have known by the smell. I should have known when her hair came out in my hands that this was Serious (capital S). Winter was starving to death.

  And I knew that—I had known back when the world was still spinning.

  And I didn’t do anything—not a thing.

  And that was why I was running so hard, backpack slamming against me, screaming her name into the void, hoping it wasn’t too late.

  Winter

  ‘Tell me about her,’ Edward said, ‘Anything you like.’ Behind me, I could hear that he was moving.

  ‘My mother…’

  A part of me was waiting for Summer’s knuckles against my face. For the heat of her slap or the slice of her nails. But there was nothing—just rustling.

  Where was The Knife?

  ‘When my mother washed the dishes,’ I continued, feeling bolder, ‘she was always talking.’

  ‘Just when she did the dishes?’ Edward interrupted.

  ‘No—all through the day. When she was home, I mean. Because often she wasn’t.’

  ‘Where was she?’ asked Edward.

  ‘Away. Different places. She interviewed people.’

  What was he doing? I heard rubbing. I went to turn.

  ‘The dishes?’ said Edward quickly.

  I paused. I closed my eyes, remembering. ‘When she filled the sink, she would be talking as she put in the washing-up liquid, so it was always a big slosh. She never noticed. And when this huge mountain of bubbles rose up, she was so surprised, every time. I loved to watch for it, that big slosh of green that came out while she chatted, all absent-minded. She had so many ideas—she wanted to know everything about everything and chat it all through. Like… like Summer, I guess. She would put the bubbles on my face, like a beard or a hat. Or a mushroom cap. When she was home, it felt like home.’

  I turned around to look at Edward. He also felt like home, but in such a different way.

  He had cut down the rope—what was left of it. Held it out with both hands. ‘Want me to take this some place?’ he asked quietly.

  Summer

  Winter was lying by that star-speckled lake, facedown, her knees tucked up under her, with one hand, the not-broken one, stretched forwards, fingers dangling into the water, the other still tucked in that sling. I recognised that pose from Gifted and Talented Yoga. It’s called child’s pose and its Indian name is Balasana, and it’s supposed to be a good one for contemplation.

  ‘Winter!’ I yelled. ‘Get up! We have to go, like, NOW.’

  ‘Go where?’ said Winter dreamily.

  ‘You know where, dickhead,’ I said, and I do that—I get grumpy when I’m scared so it doesn’t show, and it’s an unattractive trait, I know.

  ‘Home?’

  But we didn’t have a home. I stomped my foot down hard then, right on the edge of the lake, hoping that a good splash of water would wake her up a little. But the droplets just sat on her, gently shimmering, and it reminded me of the Christmas Eve when I’d wrapped her up in our fairy lights, like a parcel, and switched them on, and how she hadn’t told me that the tiny globes were getting hotter and hotter because she could see how much I loved her there, shining and gorgeous and trapped.

  ‘Winter, I need you to come with me to the top of the mountain, and I can carry you if you need me to—just let me know, but we’re leaving right now.’

  Slowly, she stood up, and it really did look like she’d been showered with liquid diamonds.

  ‘I’ve been there,’ she said, ‘before.’

  ‘Course you have, sugar,’ I said, a little more gently, because aren’t you supposed to just go along with people’s fantasies when they’re kind of going demented? ‘Sure you have. You can show me around when we reach the top.’

  I threw my backpack down for what felt like the zillionth time, and I pulled out the silver blanket, folding it up into a sling so that I could have my shirt back. And I know it seems stupid now—so stupid!—but a tiny part of me wondered if Pops might be up there, at the top of the mountain, waiting after all, in which case the last thing he needed was to be confronted by his daughter topless rockclimbing. After nearly two years, that wasn’t the impression I wanted to make.

  In spite of the snow, it was hot work, summiting that mountain, and, boy, did I ever wish I had deodorant, because today more than any other day, I totally stank. ‘Great,’ I said to Winter. ‘Our rescuers will get a whiff of us and take off again, no questions asked. This is terrorism right here, how bad I smell.’

  When the towpath ran out, petered down to nothing, it was just your basic rockclimbing, that last little bit, scrambling up and over and across, the stone cold and sharp on my palms. Winter refused to let me carry her, and in truth I didn’t blame her, so it took forever. Every time I thought that we surely must be about to pop over the lip, there was another slight rise, and another, until I could have cried with frustration. But I didn’t have any tears left. I’d entered this weird phase of cool, grounded calm where I knew I had to watch over Winter, get her safely to the top—to wherever came next. Truly, I might have made a pretty great astronaut, because once I am totally focused, boy, I am on, on, on and it’s Mission Accomplished.

  My lungs were puffing and creaking like an old accordion, and I wondered if the accordion wasn’t actually first invented as an instrument of torture that somehow mistakenly found its way into the hands of a merry, gormless troubadour, and we’ve all b
een suffering ever since. And, I kid you not, that’s what I was thinking about when I reached the summit, which is so un-triumphant and unromantic, and gazed out to the other side.

  But maybe it took the shock away from the fact that up there, touching the skin of the sky, I could see more than clearly that this was not an island but just a sticking-out bit of the mainland. And below, twinkling through the gloom, there were lights, and I’m not talking fireflies here—I’m talking the lights of actual buildings, and there were plenty of those, it seemed, scattered below like Lego blocks on a play mat.

  It felt like discovering an extra set of limbs on the back of your body that nobody had bothered to tell you were there: creepy and wrong and possibly useful and confusing in so many ways.

  I guess you could call it a settlement. And I guess that made our father a liar. I guess.

  Winter came up beside me and slipped her twig of an arm into mine and she whispered, ‘Summer, I am sorry.’

  Winter

  We took that frayed piece of rope to a riverbend, cast it into some rapids, watched it streak swiftly away as we held hands.

  Then we lay in the meadow, side by side, with Pete snoozing between us, his paws in the air.

  Edward stroked my hair so lightly, as if it might melt if he touched it too long. The sky blazed above us, impossibly wide.

  ‘“We live on a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea, and you don’t believe in miracles?”’ I recited. ‘That was one of my mother’s favourite sayings. She knew so many poems. She could memorise things so easily because of her synaesthesia. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘Crossed senses?’ he said. ‘Like, when sounds have a taste, days have a colour, that sort of thing?’

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked. ‘Most people don’t.’

  ‘Seriously,’ he said, kissing the back of my hand. ‘Do you honestly think I’m just most people?’