Of course Maudie made it out. She had the means to make her own ending.

But no one got out of the End of the World.

Still, Bulahdeen wrote to Maudie. Every day at first, then every few months, when she’d collected enough events to fill a sheet of paper. Bulahdeen excelled at school, which didn’t mean anything, really. She still went home to the same place and slept on the porch and waited for her life to play out.

The summer she turned fourteen, her aunt Clara made a bed for her in the corner of the kitchen because she needed the help. Several of Bulahdeen’s cousins, cousins not much older than Bulahdeen, now had lap babies and hip babies and babies on the way, and all they seemed to do was eat and poop.

Bulahdeen didn’t pay much attention to the men in town. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was to avoid them. But one day, when she was alone in a nearby field collecting dandelion greens to boil, out of nowhere came Big Michael, young and mean. His eyes were light blue and close set, and Bulahdeen had caught him staring at her sometimes when she would hang out a line of diapers.

He smiled at her and then picked a dandelion in full fluff from the ground. He blew on it, and tiny bits of fluff stuck to her hair like dust. He reached over to pick them out, but she backed away. Quick as a flash, he grabbed her and fell to the ground with her, face-first, the force knocking the air out of her chest. Then he was on top of her, grabbing at her skirt and pulling it up. He lifted himself slightly to pull at his own pants, and that’s when she twisted herself around enough to catch him in the side of the face with her elbow. The pain was like fire in her bone, and, from the sound he made, it didn’t feel too good for him either. She managed to knock him off of her, and she scrambled away on all fours before picking herself up and running faster than she’d ever run in her life.

Her aunt Clara found her in the kitchen later, cradling her arm, clothes torn, covered in dirt. The only thing she said to Bulahdeen was, “Next time, don’t fight so hard. It’s easier that way.”

That’s the moment Bulahdeen realized that she did fight. And she’d fought because she hadn’t wanted that ending. She’d wanted something else. Not this. It had been six years since Maudie had left, and Bulahdeen hadn’t received a single letter from her. Still, that night, Bulahdeen wrote to her at the address she’d given her, and told her everything that had happened. She told her she wanted things to change but she didn’t know how.