This Is Where the World Ends Read Online Free PDF

trying to survive today without caffeine, even though I’m still trying to make up the sleep I lost for Carrie, and then—well, hello, Prince freaking Charming.
    â€œYou’re the best,” I tell him, like he doesn’t already know, and fluff out my hair in his direction so he can catch a whiff. Lemon raspberry keratin strengthening shampoo and conditioner—I smell like a freaking sunrise. And it works! He leans in, just a little bit, but the little things matter most.
    But he, on the other hand, smells like salt and deodorant, which is preferable to, like, no deodorant, I guess. He smells like salt in my head too, just more like the ocean and less like sweat. Alas, life isn’t perfect. Who knew?
    Here is what you should know about Ander Cameron:
    1. His soul is the color of a humid day, when there’s just the thinnest layer of clouds hiding the sky. You know there’s something behind there—it might be rain or sun or thunder, but you can’t quite tell yet.
    2. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, he goes to the community college and strips—I mean disrobes —for the drawing class. Ander isn’t beach-boy hot, he’s hand-assembled-by-God hot. He’s made of the kind of angelparts that would have had Michelangelo swooning, and he pretends not to know.
    3. Okay, so he’s kind of a douchebag. That’s okay, though. It’s high school. Everyone’s a douchebag.
    The bell rings, and someone nasally comes on the PA and says the pledge, and Mr. Markus does attendance, and Micah and Dewey still aren’t here. Mr. Markus sighs when he sees their empty desks (again) and passes a hand over his face. He has time-travel hands, at least twenty years older than the rest of him, wrinkled and veined and knobby, nails like moons. I sketch them on the desk while he talks. (I figure that the no-drawing-on-desks rule mostly applies to penises.)
    â€œThe first part of your senior projects is due today,” says Mr. Markus. Collective sigh from the class, but not me, because I’ve talked my way into an extension. We’re supposed to write an autobiography, because you have to understand yourself before you can understand anything else.
    But my project is multimedia and my autobio is going to document my process—I’m fracturing fairy tales and fracturing them again until they fit my life, and it isn’t due until the end of the year. Anyway, Mr. Markus couldn’t argue when I told him I knew myself pretty well already.
    â€œAs of five minutes ago,” he continues, “I’ve received four. This is pitiful. I want to remind all of you that your senior projects are seventy-five percent of your English grade. Fail this and you won’t graduate. Work.”
    Gideon Markus isn’t one to waste words, because he is a genius. A lot of people hate Mr. Markus because he doesn’t bullshit them, but I think they also like him for the same reason.
    There’s a pause, and then a mad rush to the laptop cart, but I just lick the chocolate whipped cream from my coffee and open my journal. Journal Number Twelve feels promising. It’s already thick with envelopes and movie stubs and silly things I’ll page through and smile at when I’m gray, which is such a relief after the obsessive, writing-only neatness of Number Eleven. Twelve is a good number, heavy with significance: dancing princesses, brothers turned to swans, doors in heaven. (Number Thirteen will be a different story, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.)
    It’s too early in the day to be actually productive, so I pull out a Skarpie and flip through the index of Virginia Woolf quotes at the beginning of Journal Number Twelve to find one to write on my arm. I’m always covered in Virginia Woolf quotes because I’m in love with her. If I could hook up with one person in all of history, I’d pick Virginia in a heartbeat.
    I decide on: Arrange