Instructions for the End of the World (9 page)

Well repairman?
There isn't anything like that in the W section.

Nicole follows me into the kitchen and grabs the book. “Stop it,” she says. “You have to let me think. Maybe I can figure out how to fix it myself.”

“You're an idiot,” I say, mostly because I'm mad and not because it's true.

I go to my room and dig around until I find my stash of birthday money. I have almost two hundred dollars I've been saving, which I have no intention of telling Nicole about because she'll want to spend it on something stupid like economy-size bags of beans. But I could take ten dollars and hitchhike to town and buy myself some dinner.

I look gross, so I wipe the sweat smell off as best I can with some facial cleansing wipes I have in my cosmetic bag, and I pull my hair back in a fresh ponytail and put on my favorite baseball cap. Then some fresh clothes and I almost look normal. I put on some deodorant and a spritz of the body spray my mom bought me for Christmas, even though Dad forbids us from wearing perfume, and I smell pretty normal, too.

I can hardly believe I finally have some real freedom for the first time in my life and I can't even take a shower before enjoying it. One thing's for sure, though—I'm not letting it go to waste.

When Nicole isn't looking I slip out the front door, ease the creaky screen door shut silently, and head for town while it's still light out.

LAUREL

I am riding in Pauly's van with Pauly and Kiva when we spot the girl on the side of the road, her thumb stuck out halfheartedly, like she isn't really sure if she wants someone to pick her up. She is young and pretty, maybe early teens, with a body that guys like Kiva find as distracting as shiny objects.

“What have we here?” Kiva says as Pauly slows down and pulls to the side of the road where gravel meets grass.

I roll down the window. “Want a ride?”

She forces a smile. “I'm going into town, if you're headed that way.”

“It's your lucky day.”

Kiva leans over and opens the rear door on her side for her, and I already know the scenario that's going to play out. He's going to do everything he can to get in her pants, and unless she's got an iron will, he will succeed. He is, at the fully pubescent age of sixteen, ridiculously determined to put himself as far from virginity in the shortest amount of time he can manage.

This girl, though, she looks fresh. Untouched. Close up, I'd guess she's fourteen years old.

I catch a scent of some kind of fake raspberry stuff when she gets into the car, and when I turn to look at her I realize she resembles one of the new girls Wolf described. Same olive skin, same dark, straight hair, same vaguely Asian features.

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Isabel,” she says.

“I'm Laurel, and this is Pauly,” I say, nodding toward him.

“I'm Kiva,” Kiva says from the backseat.

“Thanks for picking me up.”

“Didn't your parents tell you never to hitchhike?” Pauly asks, peering at her in the rearview mirror, his tone slightly flirtatious even though he's totally, one hundred percent gay.

She shrugs. “Probably.”

“You must be new around here, or I'd recognize you,” Kiva says.

“I'm just here temporarily. Do you guys go to the high school here?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “There's a school at Sadhana Village that we attend.”

“I'm a graduate of the school of life,” says Pauly.

“I'm studying the art of being,” says Kiva, which is pretty much true for him. I haven't seen him crack open a book any time in recent memory.

“We decide for ourselves what we're going to study at the World Peace School.”

“The World Peace School? Is that really what it's called?”

“Yep.”

“You guys all live together?” the girl asks.

“Something like that,” Pauly says. “You should come over and see our place. It'll blow your mind.”

I refrain from an eye roll. I don't know what about a bunch of hippies in dorms and cabins is supposed to impress anyone, but I've lived there almost my whole life, so I guess I'm a bit jaded. I know what the village is, and what it isn't. I know it has never lived up to the spiritual ideals it was founded on, and I don't really care about that anyway, but I hate when people talk about it like it's some kind of super-special paradise.

Mostly it's a place where people escape from reality. And it's kind of a shitty place to grow up. I knew all about sex by the time I was, like, six years old, because I'd seen so many drugged-out losers doing it right out in the open, and I'd experienced a lot more than that by the time I was this girl's age. The stories I could tell her.… I mean, some of the people at Sadhana really are trying to be enlightened beings and all, but it also draws a lot of oddballs and people who don't want to live in the real world with real responsibilities.

Not that I blame them.

Pauly's favorite Queen song has come on the radio, and he has cranked up the volume so loud no one can talk. The music makes him drive faster, and as we speed toward town we can see billowing smoke over the mountains in the distance, from the nearest wildfires. It's been forever since a fire has gotten this close to us, but they come every year to this part of the state, as regular as the seasons. It's usually so hot and dry in the Sierras by this time of year that there's no stopping the flames.

I like how they make the night glow red sometimes, and I like how the smoke hangs in the valleys and colors the air beige. It feels like the end of the world.

Which reminds me of what Wolf told me about seeing the girl in the woods with the gun. I lean forward and turn down the radio as we reach the edge of town.

“So, do you have your own rifle?” I ask Isabel, and Kiva's eyebrows shoot up.

Isabel makes a disgusted face. “My sister does. Not me.”

“Is your family into survivalism?”

She makes a pained face. “Um, my dad is, kind of, I guess.”

I see from the tension in her mouth that I've caught her off guard, bringing up something she doesn't want to talk about.

“Seriously? You're a survivalist?” Pauly says.

“Do you guys believe the zombie apocalypse is coming?” asks Kiva, who loves zombies.

I don't understand how anyone loves zombies.

“No way. But my dad is kind of into that stuff, and my sister too. He's got her totally brainwashed.”

Survivalist gun nuts, moving in right next door to our peace and love spiritual commune? It's such an awesome coincidence I almost laugh out loud. I really have to meet the gun-toting sister, ASAP, and figure out what her deal is.

NICOLE

When I realize Isabel is missing I try not to freak out. I mean, how far could she really go, anyway? She has no sense of direction and no money. But then I imagine her hitchhiking, getting picked up by some creepy guy, and panic rises in my chest. Dad trusted me to be able to take care of my sister, the house—everything—and it's all falling apart. I've already failed, in less than a week.

I first search the property, hoping to find her moping in the barn or looking for something in the garage, or most unlikely of all, communing with nature outside, but part of me knows it's a fruitless search. I can tell by the silence, the peaceful stillness that Izzy is incapable of, that I'm alone. She is forever humming or fidgeting or declaring herself bored.

I think of my bike in the garage and go get it out. Maybe I can catch up to her before she gets picked up, if I ride fast. I am strapping on my helmet when I notice I have two flat tires. Of course. The bike has been sitting unused while we were getting ready to move and then moving. I am the only one in the family who owns a bike. My sister had one, but she left it unlocked at school and it was stolen last year, causing my dad to refuse to buy her another.

I look around for the tire pump but all I see are boxes waiting to be unpacked, because Dad doesn't include unpacking the outdoor stuff in our 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? It's not like we've chosen this world. Still, there's something so singular about it, we still choose other kids like us, maybe not from this village but definitely from among those who understand—those who've grown up in the counterculture, or what remains of it.

What would a girl like Nicole think of this world? What does she think of me?

I realize, in this lonely darkness, that for better or worse I have to find out.

*   *   *

Helene is my mother's oldest friend. They came to the village together when it was first getting started, and while my mom kept being an addict, Helene cleaned up her act, got a master's degree, and became the resident therapist at the village. She is sort of like a mother to me, if I thought of mothers as reliable people who give good advice.

I haven't talked to her since Annika came back, mostly because I know she will tell me how I have to give Annika another chance, and I have to forgive for my own sake, and it's all stuff I don't want to hear.

But she knows I've been avoiding her, so when I see a note stuck under my bedroom door, with my name scrawled in her handwriting across the front, my stomach sinks.

I pick it up and open the envelope. Inside is a piece of paper that says, “We need to talk. 3:00 today, my office. Love, Helene.”

I drop it on my nightstand and turn away, thinking of reasons I can't meet her. I have chores. I have to work on the cabin. I want to see Nicole.

But it's 2:52 now. There is nothing I have to do that can't wait a half hour. As much as I don't want to hear what she has to say, I don't have it in me to blow her off, either.

I walk across the central courtyard and through the redwood grove to the main building. Inside, down at the end of the main hall, is Helene's office, a small room with large windows, handwoven Indian rugs, and potted ferns.

The door is standing slightly ajar, so I know she's not in session with anyone. When I knock, she calls for me to come in. The scent of incense hangs faintly in the air inside the room. Helene is sitting at her desk, her pen hovering over a notebook.