Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

“She’ll know,” Tristan says.

I help Liam up, and buy the time I turn around again, Tristan is already out of sight. The fire is nothing but smoke. I am left there with nothing but the moon and a Liam trying to catch his breath. Well. Not only did I fail at finding my sister, Liam got beat up in the process. It’s really a good thing I’m not in law enforcement. I offer my old friend a pat on the back, even though part of me thinks he deserves it, pulling a knife on someone like he is in an action movie, when he is quite certainly high and has never taken one self-defense class.

“Did you really think that would work?” I ask him.

“I forgot the fucking guy was into Judo or Jiu Jitsu or whatever,” he says, standing up, rubbing his chest. “Fuck. He kneed me right in the chest.”

The whole thing probably took five minutes, but I know I’ll be unraveling it for weeks to come. I’ve definitely failed at retrieving Anna, but after talking to Tristan, a small part of me does understand why she would go, and why she might not want anyone to know where.

If we knew, we might stop her. Now I’m not so sure I want to stop her.

I remember how it feels to leave with nothing but a backpack strapped to your shoulders. We aren’t the type to sit in an office and click away on a keyboard for eight hours a day, like our parents, like that entire generation of Russian Jews who’d come here for a better life, always striving and striving and never being able to say this is enough . In Israel, nineteen-year-olds don’t have the luxury to disappear, because everyone has to join the army. In Ukraine, they are generally too hungry to do anything but find jobs. But Anna and I are lucky. In America, you can do pretty much anything. Wrong or right, we are able to choose our own paths, to make them up from scratch.

I hear the flick of a lighter behind me; Liam has a cigarette in his mouth, his eyes unmistakably dark. I stare at him, taken aback by his sadness. “You really liked her, didn’t you?” I ask. I finally realize it’s not his girlfriend Melanie he’s been mooning over since I saw him yesterday. It’s Anna. No wonder he looked so surprised when I mentioned her name.

Not that he will admit it. Instead he frowns at me and starts walking back towards where he parked. “I like everyone, Masha,” he says.

Turns out it doesn’t take all that much for me to consider stealing, once I run out of money and get used to the idea. It probably helped that I’d stolen before; if I thought I could get away with it, I’d walk right past a gas station register with a water bottle I’d already opened, or peanuts or a magazine from a booth at the airport. No one is ever paying attention at an airport. Because I am always broke, I like free stuff. But those were rare instances, small inexpensive things, small thrills. What Tristan does is different and takes more getting used to. Luckily for him, I get used to things quickly.

The first party he takes me to is in Shorewood, a cozy suburb just north of Milwaukee’s east side. It’s only a ten-minute bike ride from Riverwest, but it’s practically another state. Every house we pass is a different level of ostentatious, and there’s so much space between the houses you could fit another two or three buildings if you want to. I choose to marvel over this later, as it’s barely twenty degrees and we are chilled to the bone. Parking the bikes near the garage behind some bushes, we rush inside to warm ourselves with barely a glance at the exterior. Only once we’re inside do I notice how gigantic it is. It’s a three-level brick mansion with nearly a dozen windows, a portico, and a view of the lake. No one I know would live in a house like this, and I am dumbfounded how there’s a party with so many people my age until I notice the family photos hanging in the foyer. One of them shows a blonde, athletic-looking guy wearing a UWM shirt, flanked on both sides by a very well-dressed middle-aged couple. A minute or two later, I hear someone shout: “Dude, your parents should go to Greece more often!” Then I understand.

Now that I can feel my toes again, I grab Tristan’s hand and pull him into the living room, where I’m a little shell shocked by the vast amount of people and alcohol and bongs I’ve found myself facing. I don’t move when the door opens behind us, letting in a group of giggling girls drenched in various perfumes. Tristan pulls me to the side so that they can pass us.

“Did I mention I hate parties?” I ask Tristan, my eyes wide with horror.

“Only a hundred times,” Tristan laughs, giving my hand a squeeze. It calms me down, but only for a second. The place is full of people I might have gone to high school with—khaki pants with actual pockets in the sides, clean-shaven faces and hair with blonde highlights—and we stand out like sore thumbs. I try to swallow the dread that has been growing in my belly all day and meander through the crowd to get to the kitchen. A place like this has to have vast amounts of alcohol in the fridge. I’ll take any kind at this point, but my fingers are crossed for vodka or rum. Instead, I only find beer. In the far back, on the bottom shelf, behind the beer, Tristan grabs me a full bottle of wine with a twist-off cap. I open it and fill a plastic cup to the brim. Then I drink it all, and refill it again.

“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” Tristan tells me, his eyes narrowing in concern, but his mouth twisting into a smile, like he finds it a little bit amusing. I keep drinking and shake my head.

“I never throw up.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, then you look like you’re gonna pass out,” he adjusts. I refill my cup.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell him, finishing that cup too.

“How about you just watch me first. Will that make you feel better?”

I nod. I don’t feel like explaining that my issue is more related to social anxiety than concern over stealing a wallet. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m once again in a high school cafeteria, surrounded by people who don’t notice I am there. I need time for the alcohol to work its magic, so I tell him, “Yes, actually.”

Tristan gets straight to business. Not that watching does me any good. He’s so fast at grabbing the wallets out of men’s back pockets that I can only tell when he’s stolen something because his coat is wider. By the third or fourth wallet, I’ve finished more than half the bottle of wine and have learned absolutely zilch. My anxiety is spiking, having to stand in the kitchen alone, so I disappear out back to smoke a cigarette with a few others. In our puffy winter jackets it’s almost difficult to tell that we’ve come from such different worlds. It’s dark, and therefore hard to notice the holes in my clothes, which I suddenly feel self-conscious about. I sit on a patio bench and finish the cigarette far too quickly, then go back inside, where I realize I’ve also now lost Tristan. The place is crowded, wall to wall, with belligerent students. A beer pong table has been set up on the other side of the room, and a group of the drunkest students are playing against each other. Several people are making out, not even bothering to go into a room.

Suddenly, someone is touching me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I turn to find Tristan.

“There you are,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. I feel his arms wrapping around me from behind. I feel him slide the wallets from his hand into my bag. To the left of us, I watch a group of men yelling “Chug! Chug! Chug,” while a girl swallows beer from a plastic funnel.

“They won’t even feel it, losing fifty bucks. For us, that’s food. To them, it’s a manicure.”