The Day the World Ended

“One day, you’ll be all each other has,” Johnny coughed into the phone and on the other end Aine waited for the hacking to subside.

“We have you. And we have Aunt Celia.”

“I’m going to die soon, Aine, and my sister lives across the country.”

“So does mine.” The period at the end of her statement was audible and meant to end the conversation. It had been a pleasant chat, but her dad always felt the need to do damage control on a relationship that’d been dead for almost ten years.

“Aine,” Johnny waited a beat to make sure another coughing attack wasn’t on the way. “I don’t know where I’d be in life without Cee. You need to get past whatever this is, it’s time to patch-”

“Dad, I’ve got to go. The oven’s going off. Love you so much… and it’s just a cold. You’re not dying.”

Aine dropped her phone on the counter and went outside. It was a hot day but she wore slippers, soccer socks, flannel pajama pants, and an oversized hoodie of her dad’s alma mater, Michigan State, a place she never got to attend. The frozen pond in their front yard held a slim sheet of ice, the top layer of which growing ever smaller as the wind separated and blew it gently from the surface. It was all white out there, but she remembered when deep red cut into the delicate lines of the ice. Her sister, she always did anything for her sister. She took the majority of Molly’s groundings growing up, lied about the bruises Molly would leave when she would squeeze her sister’s arm a little too tight in an argument.

Molly was smart, too smart to stay in Hancock, Michigan. She'd been offered a full ride to Berkeley on an academic scholarship. On December 21st of 2012 the world was supposed to end. It kept spinning for everyone else, but when Connor Williams fell through that ice, choking on the blood in his slit throat, it stopped for Aine and Molly Hansen. Her sister had everything to lose, and Aine had nothing to lose. She saw that look on her sister’s face and grabbed the knife. She was young, still a minor at the time, and she took the fall. It was her decision and hers alone, but she resented the hell out of her sister for it.

If she were honest with herself, Aine resented Molly long before Connor the neighbor died. Molly was prettier, more athletic, and smarter. She couldn’t leave a single category for Aine to shine. But, Molly had a temper. And there was no better way to piss her off than mess with her younger sister. Only Molly could mess with Aine, and Connor bullied her baby sister one too many times. There was a hole in the ice that day on the pond. That was the same day Connor ripped Aine’s necklace from her throat. It had once belonged to their mother, and proudly dangled a triangular Celtic Knot. Aine wore it every day and he would taunt her, saying she was a witch. He declared Aine should be hanged by that very necklace, but she was too fat for even the thickest rope to hold.

Molly was making sandwiches in the kitchen, and through the cracked window watched as he dangled the necklace over the hole in the pond and dropped it. Molly watched her sister dive to the edge of the cavity for it and ran outside, knife still in hand. She’d just been using it to cut the corned beef sandwiches into triangles. She didn’t even think. Her chest was a tight, boiling furnace. Her feet were sure in their purpose on the ice. “Aine, get away from there!” Connor turned, a shit-eating grin still on his face, hot and smelly breath making filthy clouds in the otherwise fresh air. Molly swung her arm in a perfect arc and successfully wiped that laugh from his face as he looked down at the blood falling from his throat. Aine dove to the side just as Molly shoved him toward the hole. Molly watched his foot crunch through the lighter sheet of ice that just circled the black water, and as he fell through, she felt her blood freeze with regret. Aine was still on her knees and the sisters’ eyes met. The only sound came from their strained pants. Aine crept over to her sister and took the knife. She backed toward the house, tears leaving hot tracks down her face. Molly reached for the knife but Aine shook her head no, and then as she got to the gravel by the back porch, shook her head yes. Yes, this was how it was going to happen. This is what happened.

Now Aine remembered the lines that extended from the hole that day, not from the blood but from the broken surface. It created the same fern-like darkened stains in the ice that you see in the grass from a lightening strike. She had called the police and watched as a few men swarmed the area and extracted his bluish body from the water while the remaining officers questioned her and Molly. The men in uniforms so navy they were almost black spoke to them separately, but their eyes stayed on each other, even while Aine was being loaded into the back of the car. She could see her sister through the rear window and the blue lights were dancing on Molly’s pale face though they had long since cut the sirens.

The hole closed and the pond stayed frozen over all the years since, defying climate change and all logic, but now Aine could see the beginning stages of melt. She stepped closer and watched the ice lose its opaqueness, too fast to comprehend. Aine stuck her hand in close to the edge and it went through a transparent piece of ice easily, breaking into warm water. She leaned forward until the water was up to her shoulder, and stayed hunched like that for a moment, mystified. Then she felt something, a thin, warped twig, perhaps. She pulled her arm from the water and dangling from her wrist was her mother’s necklace.

Aine bowed her head and let heavy sobs shake her entire being. In a trance, she shuffled on stiff legs back into the house, staring at the Celtic Knot. She didn’t take her eyes from the weaving lines of yellow gold as she listened to the the dialing tones interrupted by Molly’s whisper, “Aine?”