Instructions for the End of the World by Jamie Kain Page B

one-day unpacking frenzy schedule. And he didn’t consider, in his rush to leave, that I might need to chase my sister down by bike. I mutter some curses, take off my helmet, and resign myself to running on foot after her.
    And then I think, what if I don’t? What if I just let her figure out on her own that it’s a bad idea to take off like this? I still have the not-so-small issue of our lack of water to figure out.
    Probably she will come back on her own. Probably I am worried about nothing.
    Probably.
    I decide to take the risk.

 
    Seven
    WOLF
    When I was very small it’s possible that I loved Laurel. I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t in my life, but I do remember a time when she was at my side always, when we were best friends and playmates and I thought of her as a girl made out of sunlight and sky. I daydreamed about her and breathed her in and thought of her as all the superlatives—prettiest, smartest, best.
    I don’t know why that changed. I don’t know when it changed. But you can’t know Laurel without changing your opinion of her as she shape-shifts from one form to another before your eyes.
    The girl you thought you knew will become one you don’t recognize.
    I’ve known her long enough now to understand that what lies beneath the facade is murky and dark. She is a bottomless pool in which it’s dangerous to swim. You never know if something will pull you under.
    So Laurel is my only experience of loving a girl, if whatever childish emotion I used to feel for her was love. It’s not just that the village is too small a community, that everyone anywhere near my age feels like a sibling. Kids from the outside come to the village school, because it’s known all over for its unconventional philosophy on education. So there are girls from the surrounding towns, some of them a world of possibility I can imagine on my brighter days.
    But something holds me back from pursuing any of them. Even when they pursue me, I freeze up, my insides hard and cold, unable to enjoy the pleasures of flirting and being flirted with. Sooner or later, they give up.
    Then I feel bad. I know I’ve probably missed out on something amazing, but it doesn’t change anything. I am still frozen.
    Laurel says I’m too aloof, too high-minded, too focused on the wrong things. But I know she’s secretly glad I don’t fall for any of the town girls. I can tell from the casual way she criticizes my aloofness, like she doesn’t really care at all.
    The new girl, though …
    Nicole.
    The dreams about her still plague me, when I’m asleep and when I’m awake.
    I dream about her narrow arms and her easy stride through overgrown weeds. I wake up with her name on my lips and woven into the space between my every thought. How do I proceed on this new planet?
    It’s sometime in the early morning hours and I lie awake in the new tree house, a mosquito buzzing at my ear. I swat it away for the third time and stare through the skylight at the stars above. I want, for once, not to be alone.
    I imagine what it would be like to have Nicole lying here next to me, her warm, light-brown skin against mine, and electric impulses buzz through me. I get hard at that one simple thought.
    Deep breaths as I both pull away from and move toward the feeling.
    Desire.
    I’ve felt it before, of course. Countless times. But not like this. Not tangled up in a crazy ache for one particular girl, who carries a gun and knows how to use it, who lives a life unfathomable to me, who knows nothing of my own strange world.
    Maybe it’s her contrast to me that’s so appealing.
    Most people from the village pair up with other people from the village eventually, once they realize that people from the outside just don’t understand. The spiritual path they’re on doesn’t allow for detours into the secular world. But us kids of the spiritual seekers?