Instructions for the End of the World by Jamie Kain

backyard, because that’s what we have to use now, spiders, bugs, awful smells, and all, until I sort out the water situation. Izzy and I got into a screaming argument about it at midnight last night, but once she understood how gross it would quickly become to have an unflushed toilet sitting in the house stewing in the heat, she gave in.
    I’ve camped with Dad before, but I’ve never camped in my own house, and that’s what this is starting to feel like.
    I am sitting on the ground next to the well, its cap off, staring down into the darkness of it, when I hear footsteps on the dry grass. I look up, expecting to see Izzy coming toward me with yet another complaint, when I see Wolf instead, and my breath catches in my throat.
    His presence is unsettling in ways I don’t quite understand.
    â€œHi,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a smile that doesn’t reach his mouth.
    He is carrying a couple of fabric bags, one with a bouquet of flowers poking out. For us? I almost laugh, because it’s so far from what I need right now, which is a plumber.
    â€œHi.”
    â€œI come bearing welcome-to-the-neighborhood gifts,” he says, holding up the bags and then setting them aside on the rear porch steps.
    â€œWow, thanks.” He’s like one of those military wives from the army post who used to show up bearing cookies in a country-style basket to welcome us to our new neighborhood.
    â€œDid you lose something down there?” Kneeling next to me now, he peers into the hole.
    â€œNot exactly. Our water in the house stopped working, and…” I think of the lie I’ve rehearsed in my head. “My parents went to the Bay Area for a couple of days to pick up some of our stuff we had in storage there.”
    â€œHmm.”
    â€œDo you know anything about wells?”
    â€œA little,” he says, and my heart skips.
    â€œThere’s definitely enough water in here,” I say, picking up a flashlight and shining it down inside to show him. “I just don’t know how to get to it.”
    He frowns like he’s pondering the problem. Finally he says, “This house has been sitting vacant for so long, probably your pipes are rusted, and your starting to use them again caused one to burst.”
    â€œSo we have to figure out where it broke?”
    â€œYou don’t have any leaky spots in the house?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnd you’ve tried all the faucets?”
    â€œNone work.”
    â€œThen I would think that might mean your break is between the house and the well, and it looks like it’s an underground system. You’ll probably need to dig to figure out where it is.”
    I look down at the ground below me. I am sitting on the space that needs to be dug out, and it’s only a few feet, assuming the pipe goes straight from the closest side of the well to the closest point at the house, which is the kitchen wall where the sink is. This seems probable, and doable. Except the ground is hard as rock after months of no rain.
    I sigh, not sure if I should reveal that I’m the one who will have to do the work. In a normal family, a normal situation, the teenage girl would, I guess, call her dad and tell him to come home and solve the problem. And then the dad would do that. Or he would call a plumber.
    I don’t want Wolf to know exactly how far from normal we are.
    But he seems to guess my dilemma. “Want some help digging?”
    I bite my lip and look up at him. “Really?”
    â€œSure, why not. Looks like you’re on your own here otherwise. Do you have two shovels?”
    â€œIn the garage.”
    We stand up and head that way, and I wonder for the first time why Wolf is here. I’ve been so caught up in the water dilemma, I forgot to ask.
    â€œI hear your little sister went hitchhiking last night,” he says.
    â€œWhat? How did you know?”
    â€œShe got picked up by my