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THE END OF THE WORLD BEGAN with a nine-year-old girl named Avani. She had a gap between her front teeth, thick hair she'd cut herself (she wore it in two pigtails tied together with twin purple bows), and was the picture of innocence in American youth, all ice-cold lemonade and Girl Scout camping retreats and clean-pressed church clothes and fields of sunflowers and an eager sort of optimism, or so I've been told. I've never met the girl.
However, she just-so-happened to go to the same church as a certain someone you might be familiar with, a certain someone that carried the same innocence about him. And she just-so-happened to be in the same Sunday School class as this certain someone's little sisters.
So when little Avani's parents planned a day-trip to Maine for their anniversary, they just-so-happened to seek out the help of their other parents in their precious daughter's Sunday School class for help finding a babysitter and Josie Darling just-so-happened to suggest her son, Silas. After doing an extensive background check on the boy and discovering that he was a part of NHS, was just shy of a 4.0 GPA, actively did community service, was certified in CPR, and didn't have any bit of a criminal history, Silas got the news: He had the honor of being Avani's babysitter.
This would prove to be the biggest mistake that Surya and Veda Nagarkar ever made.
The day of the end of the world, once the final bell rang at Warwick High School, Silas said goodbye to his friends and drove to the next town over, Berlin, to pick Avani up from her elementary school. He drove her to her home and helped her with her homework, saving his own for when he got home that night, as he didn't have all that much. Once she finished, the two played with her American Girl Dolls until she got bored, and then Silas came up with the brilliant idea of taking a little hike to enjoy the weather: it wasn't quite as far below freezing out as New Hampshire usually was in early December. He knew, however, to avoid the woods where the rift was hidden. He'd never do anything to jeopardize the little girl.
They walked for around half an hour or so, picking wildflowers (though most of them were dead) and sticking them in Avani's pigtails so she looked like an aspiring Whole Foods shopper. She'd even found several lilacs peeking up through the melting snow that she stuck behind Silas's ears.
Avani, who wanted to be a botanist when she grew up, or, in her own words, a 'flower science-ist,' had the time of her life rambling on to Silas about all of the plants they saw, although half of what she said was made up. ("See this bush? It has magical powers! Drink from it and you'll never-ever have to eat your vegetables." "This is an oh-ak tree. It's very poi — very poi — very not good. Don't get too close.")
After all their walking, Avani found just about the prettiest flower she'd ever seen. It was a deep shade of gold-tinged red that left a burning taste in the back of her throat, folded over like a rose, but it wasn't a rose at all: it was smaller, but fuller somehow, and it didn't have any thorns. Enchanted, she skipped towards it, tugging at it, wanting to pick it for Silas to add to her pigtails. It didn't budge.
