What Comes After

August 11

Dish-scrubbing was such a pain.

May complained the whole way through. Mira silently washed the dishes, barely speaking at all. I poured dish soap on the plates, scrubbing them with a limp sponge, feeling the mixture of suds and food scraps on my palms. I tried my best not to think about it.

It took us an hour or two to get everything washed, dried, and put into the proper cabinets. Mom looked upon us, satisfied that everyone was being productive, but May was anything but satisfied. She spent most of the time just glaring at the dishes, hoping that lasers would come from her eyes and clean the dishes. It was actually pretty funny to watch.

I got some of the stuff ready for the food drop-off for Charles. When I was getting everything ready, I realized that I had forgotten to ask about when and where we were meeting next Tuesday, so I grabbed some paper, a pen, and some tape and put them together. "What are you doing with those?" Mom asked.

"Just organizing them," I lied.

It seems like I'm lying to Mom and Dad more often. I guess I feel guilty, but it feels weird that I feel only a twinge of guilt, nothing overwhelming or anything that'll make me tell them that I'm lying. In fact, just the thought of telling them the truth scares me because what if they stop me from giving food to Charles because he's not family, and his family starves and dies, and I'll be responsible for the deaths of people who feel like family, even if they aren't.

I can't let that happen. I just can't. I hope Mom and Dad understand if they find out.

August 12

I woke up early in the morning, unable to get any proper sleep last night. I was just too nervous about the Charles situation.

Mira, May, and I were all bathed in the dark cerulean glow of dawn. I slipped on a jacket and walked softly out of the room, opening and closing the door with a faint creak. I walked more hastily down the hallway, paranoid that Mom or Dad or anyone was going to open the door and see me.

I opened a plastic bag, filling it with a mixture of anchovy, mixed vegetables, and brussel sprouts cans. Then I scrawled a short note asking when we should meet up and tape it to the front of the bag along with a pen and another piece of paper. My heart was beating fast, and my palms were sweaty. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard a creak in the hallway and thought it was Mom or Dad coming out.

Opening the front door, I walked out. There was a blind spot on the porch, an area that anyone looking at our house would be able to see, but no one looking from our house would be able to see. That's where I put the canvas bag, nestling it between ash-stained grass stalks, brittle from the lack of rain, making sure the note was visible for him.

But when I stepped back, I heard the creaking of someone opening the door. I quickly moved to the porch steps, standing there and gazing at the sky.

"Neal?" I heard someone say.

I looked back. It was Mira, dressed in pajamas, her hair in a mess like she had just woken up. "What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"I couldn't sleep," I replied. "And I wanted a breath of fresh air. What about you?"

"Same thing," she said. "I think I had a nightmare or something, but I don't really remember."

She sat down at the top of the porch steps, and I sat next to her. There was this awkward silence that settled between us.

"Thanks," she said, and I must've looked confused before she clarified. "For being there, two days back. I never thanked you for being there."

"No need to thank me," I said, and she sighed. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice cracked a bit. "I'm trying to stay strong for you guys, but I feel like I'm even failing at this."

There was a long silence between us. What was I supposed to say?

"You just lost someone," I said after a long pause. "It's alright to feel like this."

"I hate that I can't put just everything that I'm feeling to the side and just deal with it," she said. "I just can't, and it's frustrating."

"Then don't."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't really know, but I guess you're supposed to confront your emotions headfirst, you know, like what they do in the movies."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know either," I said and sighed. "I wish I knew the right things to say."

There was another silence between us. The air was frigid, and I could see my breath in the navies of the dawn light, like a small puff of smoke.

"Do you think Leon's out there, staring at the same sunrise as us?" she asked

"I guess," I said. "He's probably in Arizona or New Mexico by now. They'd have seen the same sunrise as us, but a bit earlier."

"Actually," I added. "They wouldn't see the same sunrise as us. The skies would be clearer down south, and they'll be able to see the sun slowly rising above the desert."

"Do you actually believe this?" she asked and swung her foot.

"I try to," I said.

A gust of wind kicked up a small cloud of dust, forming ghosts of flowers awash in lighter blues as the sun rose behind the ash clouds.

"So tell me more," she said.

I could see something in her eyes, wanting to believe that Leon was better, so I weaved a story for her. "They'd be in a cabin with a watering well far away from everyone that they'd be safe. The government would be handing out gasoline to everyone because they've got plenty and there would be heating and power. There'd be plenty of greenhouses and food for everyone, and Leon would be there, thinking about you, finding a way to come back because he loves you."

I knew she didn't believe a word that I said, except for the very end of my story, but it's one of the things where you know someone is just making up a story, but it feels easier, almost better, to believe every word they said. I don't know if it's worse letting someone feel like they've lost hope or handing them a sliver of hope, only for the world to take it away from them.

"Thank you," she said.

"He's coming back," I said, but from her half-hearted nod, I knew that even she didn't believe that was going to happen.

"I'm going inside now," she said. "You probably should come too. You don't want to breathe in all that ash."

"I'm coming after you," I said.

I stared at the sky, hoping that the ash clouds would break and let sunlight come through, cutting through the cold and ash. But nothing happened and the haze of ash stayed put, enshrouding the sun. And I sighed and stood up. I guess I even fell for my own story.

The other portion of the morning was spent trying to make sure that no one saw that Charles came and took the bag of food. I closed all the curtains in the front of our house so no one would peek out and accidentally see him. When Mom woke up and asked what I was doing, I said, "I'm tired of looking at the sky."

"Aren't we all," Mom said. "But keep the curtains open."

"Why?"

"It's too dark inside, and we have to make do with what little sunlight we have."

"Just for this morning," I said. "I just need to take my eyes away from the sky."

"Fine," Mom said and shuffled out of the living room. "I've got a headache anyways. I'm going to try and get some sleep."

She turned back and looked at me. "Open them sometime in the afternoon, though. I hate how dark it is every day."

"Will do," I said and closed the curtains hanging over the living room.

When I was busy eating a can of limp corn in the middle of morning, May woke up and went into the kitchen, asking, "Why is our house so angsty?"

"Mom's tired," I lied. "She told me to close some of the curtains to help her get some sleep."

I don't know why I lied. I guess it would feel weird to tell May this thing because I don't think she'd understand, at least not in the way that Mom and I do.

"That's weird," she said. "Everything is weird right now."

"No, duh."

She sat down and stabbed at the little bits of corn in her can with her fork. "The moon messed up everything."

"Way to say the obvious," I quipped.

"The next three years were supposed to be my years," she said. "I was supposed to get a car and start driving. I was supposed to celebrate my sweet sixteen with all of my friends. I was supposed to get a boyfriend and have him take me out to prom. But the moon had to just come closer to the Earth and ruin everything."

"Now, everyone is gone," she added. "And life just sucks."

"So that's it then. Your whole life ruined because you couldn't go to prom."

"That's not the point," she said. "Those next three years of my life were mine until the moon stole them away from me."

"I don't get it."

"I don't expect you to get it," she said. "It's not like you were going to prom next year anyways."

"I literally don't understand. What's the big deal with missing those three years?"

"You don't get it," she replied. "These experiences were supposed to be mine. They were supposed to happen until our dumb moon decided to rob them from me."

I kinda understood what she was saying then, the loss of the normal part of her future. Even though it felt shallow, and I didn't know why she'd attach her dreams to pointless high school stuff, I understood her pain. It was like Mira's pain too, the apocalypse snatching away both of their normal futures they had planned in their minds.

"What?" she said. "Nothing to say. See, I didn't think you'd get it at all."

She picked up her fork and dumped it in the sink and stormed away before I could say anything. Not like there was anything to say to her. Sometimes, conversations are meant to end in an awkward reply-less silence.

Around noon, I went outside to check on the bag of food, making sure to wear a mask tight around my face. It had disappeared, and there was a note in its place.

This coming Tuesday. Mid-afternoon. Library. ~ Charles

I grabbed the note and tucked it into my pocket, heading back indoors and opening up the curtains, letting the pale light in. Our house grew a bit bright, the gray afternoon sunlight washing the counters and cabinets with a faded glow, like they were being painted on by watercolor.

"You got what you were looking for?" someone asked.

I nearly jumped. It was Mom, holding a cup of hot water. "Yeah," I said. "It was nice to avoid the sky for a whole morning."

"Good," she said. "So you want to tell me where this came from?"

I shrugged, trying to show nonchalance even though my heart felt like it was going to explode. "I don't know. I guess I'm just bored looking at all the grey."

"Anything you want to talk about?" Mom asked with a more concerned face. Did she know I was lying? Or did she think it was something else? I wasn't going to find out.

"No," I said and left, heading towards my room, where I spent the rest of the day re-reading some old coming-of-age books. In nearly every one of them, the characters told the truth and got rewarded by it with everyone forgiving them in the very end. I sighed while reading those sections, wishing that was how the world works.

It's too bad that that's not how life is like. There are some things that I just can't tell anyone.