Instructions for the End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

the compliment but shrug again. I’ve never been into relationships, at least not serious ones. There are guys, yes, but what to say about someone I’ve slept with a few times but never want to spend time with in the light of day?
    â€œI always thought you and Wolfie might end up together. Maybe not now, but eventually.”
    She pronounces his name “Volfie,” with a soft German V.
    â€œOh god, no.”
    â€œWhy is that so crazy? You know each other better than anyone else.”
    â€œThat’s the problem. No mystery.”
    This idea is nauseating to me, like thinking I will someday marry my brother. I don’t know how Annika can suggest it.
    â€œMystery is important,” she says, nodding. “But I can’t help wishing. I worry about that boy.”
    Wolf has grown strangely withdrawn and quiet these past few years. He has disappeared into himself, and I hardly see him anymore, but when I do, he’s often alone. And silent.
    â€œHe’s fine,” I say, wanting to steer the conversation elsewhere, but I can’t think what to talk about.
    â€œHe reminds me too much of his father now. I don’t want him to go down that road.”
    By that road, I know she means suicide. Which Wolf’s father committed the year we turned thirteen. I will never forget that detail, since it made me think that thirteen really is an unlucky number.
    The waitress arrives and sets down on the table our cups of tea, along with a small jar of honey.
    â€œWolf would never do that,” I say, unable to get out the words commit suicide, but I don’t know if it’s true.
    The old happy-go-lucky Wolf wouldn’t, anyway.
    Annika smiles, but there is a sadness in her eyes I don’t like. It’s how she used to look when she needed a hit or a drink, or both.
    Wolf exists in my earliest memories as a golden-brown sliver of a boy with gentle hands and watchful eyes. He seemed to have emerged from the soil beneath our feet—that was my childish impression of him. He was dirty, feral looking, a little animal that I felt like I’d managed to tame simply by sitting next to him. And his attention and friendship evoked the same feeling you get when a wild animal graces you with its trust: as if you are chosen.
    I still feel that way about him, but he no longer chooses anyone as his trusted companion. Especially not me.
    I was the one who first called him Wolfie, and later, Wolf, as if he were my own personal forest creature. Back then he was always Wolfgang, thanks to Annika’s prehippie aspiration to be a concert pianist. It struck me even as a small child that it was a terrible name for him.
    There was a time (when I was like five years old) when I thought we would always be together, that we would get married and have little golden-skinned babies and live happily ever after.
    I don’t think that anymore, of course.
    I stopped believing in happily ever after long ago, in a land far, far away.
    Our food arrives, faster than I would have expected, and when the waitress disappears, Annika smiles across the table at me. “Will you pray with me?”
    I freeze, and my stomach drops.
    I’ve heard the rumors—that Annika has gotten all Jesusy. It’s the AA, people say in hushed whispers, which was apparently part of her rehab program. She’s gone all in. But I didn’t quite believe it.
    She is reaching for my hand across the table, and I let her take it, not knowing what else to do.
    She bows her head and closes her eyes, so I do the same, but I feel like a fraud. I’ve been raised around spirituality at Sadhana, but not this kind. Not religion, which I’ve only seen in movies about people living regular lives in regular American places.
    Sadhana Village is not like any of those places. Mahesh’s philosophy (he’s the closest thing the village has to a guru, though he denies such titles and is an aging hippie with a gray ponytail and