What Comes After

August 14

We went to school in the morning.

May and I got bundled in thick jackets and sweaters, tightly fastening on our masks, before slipping into our sneakers. The sky was as dark as usual, and it felt like Mom woke me up at four in the morning, though it could've been eleven in the afternoon. It's hard to tell the time these days.

"I need to clean my shoes," May said just before we exited, looking at her formerly white sneakers, now stained with streaks of gray.

"We need to save—" Mom said but was cut off.

"I know," May replied. "It's just a dream, for when things get better."

Mom's face softened, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. "I think we might be able to afford to spend a little water to wash them."

"It's fine," May replied, looking at the ground, kicking the dusty rug. "I don't need it. Can we just go?"

"Don't kick up the dust," Mom said and patted down May's pants, smearing ash down her leggings. "You're getting ash all over your pants."

"Whatever," May grumbled. "It's not like anyone cares anyways."

I think Mom was going to say something but held it back, and we began walking towards school, one ash rimmed footstep at a time. No one really talked much while we were walking. There really wasn't much to talk about anyways, and the quiet outside felt better than the crammed indoors. It's like we could finally breathe outside, even though the air was filled with flakes of ash drifting on the wind.

Mom's scarf was billowing in the wind, and she re-adjusted it, wrapping it around her neck securely, and I put on my hood for my ski jacket, the cold seeping into my bones. It must've been around thirty degrees that morning, maybe even less. I think it might snow soon, probably not this month or the next but maybe October, when the rains start coming as snow blankets the landscape. Outside of trips to Lake Tahoe, my only memories of snow were faint wisps of an image from toddlerhood on the East Coast that become even blurrier every time that I think about it.

As we approached our school, I could hear the wrongness in the air. The school grounds were deserted and bare. The electric billboard announcing our school's name was turned off and smeared with ash as the echoes of old summer conversations and gossip about homecoming drifted in the air.

"Mom," May said and tugged at Mom's jacket. "There's no one here. Let's go back."

"There is," Mom said. "Look at the light."

She pointed at the school library, glowing a soft white.

"Maybe someone just left the lights on by accident," May replied.

"If the city is still keeping the lights on for school, it means that there has to be someone in the library." Mom stood a step forward. "Hurry up. I don't want to get caught in an ash storm."

So we walked towards the library, passing by empty buildings and hallways. I looked down one, and I could imagine myself, if the Mooncrash never happened, walking down the hallways to head to my advanced biology classes, nervous but cautiously optimistic. Now, if I wanted to learn about biology, the best I could do is a thick textbook chock full of words and a lack of clarity.

When we entered the library, there was a soft chime of a bell, and Mom looked around. "Hello?"

I heard a shuffling of footsteps.

"Hello there," a woman I've never seen before said. "Are y'all here for the textbook checkout?"

"Yes we are," Mom said.

"Great!" she said. "Y'all are actually the third family to come here for book checkouts, so most of the nicer books are available for checkout."

She ushered us forwards to rows of tables with rows of cardboard boxes set atop them along with some miscellaneous items scattered here and there. "First row is math, the second is for science, the third for history, the fourth is for foreign languages, the fifth are all our copies of English reading material, if you're interested."

"I highly recommend The Great Gatsby," she said but then hesitated. "Though you two might want to skip the Valley of Ashes chapter if it's too much given everything that's going on."

"What's the Valley of Ashes?" May whispered to me.

I shrugged back at her and followed the librarian to the last two rows of school material. "These are mostly art supplies and other miscellaneous material. We've got some spare SAT and ACT workbooks from the workshops last year if you're interested and college planning worksheets for if everything gets back to normal."

She turned towards us. "Pick anything you want and ring the bell at the front desk, and I'll be there to check out your books. Take all the time you need."

She walked away, probably towards a backroom, and I gazed over the long rows of books.

"There's no way that I can fit so many textbooks for every single subject in my backpack without dying," May said.

"Fine," Mom replied. "You have to pick at least two textbooks about anything you're interested in. And one English book too."

"One textbook."

"Nope. Two textbooks and that's final," Mom said. "I'll even grab one textbook."

"That's so unfair," May complained. "Why do you only get one textbook?"

"Because I finished college already, and I'm doing this for you. Now hurry up."

"I thought we got all the time that we needed," May grumbled as she trudged through the rows of books while I followed her as the lights flickered for a moment, threatening to shut down, before coming back again.

We went through the math section first.

"Goodbye, geometry! I'm never going to miss you," May shouted, her voice echoing through the cavernous library.

I picked up a calculus book before putting it down. There was no way that I was going to waste my time studying derivatives and integrals and other useless stuff, so we moved onto the science section.

"Have you finalized the plan yet?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Because we cannot risk Mom or Dad finding out and probably start freaking out."

"Mostly."

She picked up a dusty physics book before setting it down. "Well, what is it?"

"I haven't got that part completely figured out. Why do you want to know?"

"Well I've got my own plan. And I need to be sure that you'll be able to convince Dad to take the axe."

"Well you can't always be completely sure with everyone," I said. "Especially with the whole thing we're in and if they catch us in the lie."

She turned and picked up a chemistry textbook before tossing it to the side. "Well, you know what people say about sacrifice. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to save our family."

"That quote is so cliche."

"Doesn't make it any less true," she said and picked up a textbook. I looked at her strangely. She never liked science ever.

"I'm doing this for Mom," she added and turned into the history section.

"You go ahead," I said. "I forgot to get a book from this section."

"You're actually studying these textbooks. God, sometimes you're such a nerd."

I ignored her and went into the section about environmental science. The windmills adorning the cover caught my eyes, rolling pastures and skies saturated with so much blue that it hurt my eyes, but in a good way. I picked up the book and flipped through the pages, filled with solar panels and forests and bursts of life, before putting it in my backpack and running to the history section.

I'm not exactly sure why I picked up that textbook. Maybe I'm being naive, but I want my future to be like that, not dead and desolate but filled with shades of green, and maybe, I'd want to help make a future like that possible. I don't know why I'm writing so much about this anyways.

By the time I had reached May, she had picked up her last remaining textbook, European history, grabbed a tenth-grade comic titled Persepolis, and cursed at a Spanish textbook, before waiting impatiently next to Mom for me to finish so that we could all check out.

So I quickly made my way through the sections, grabbing a government textbook, two sets of colored pencils, and briefly glancing over the English books, grabbed a copy for The Great Gatsby before heading to check out the books.

"Took you long enough," May said.

"What book did you get?" I asked Mom.

"French one," Mom said. "I've always wanted to visit France, so when all of this is over, maybe I'll finally get this opportunity."

"Mom also forgot to mention that she got us all SAT and ACT workbooks."

"It's good practice," she said. "Has anyone dinged the bell?'

"I'll do it," May said and tapped the bell too many times.

The librarian emerged from her backroom with a smile even if she was a tad annoyed as we took our books out from our backpacks and placed them on the counter for checkout. She pulled out two notecards and placed them on the desk.

"No normal checking out?" May asked.

"I'm afraid not. There's only enough electricity to support the lighting and barely," she said. "Just write your first and last name on the card along with the textbooks you're checking out."

"And that's it?"

"Yes," the librarian said, scanning over May's books. "Ooh. French, very interesting choice to learn about."

"That's not me," May replied and looked at Mom. "It was my mom's pick."

Mom smiled. "It's never too late to keep learning."

"The best lessons I've learned were in my fifties," the librarian said and nodded. "You never get too old to stop learning."

As May and I filled out our notecards, Mom and the librarian talked a bit more as the lights flickered again.

"Are you going to be here for the rest of the week?" Mom asked.

"Only for two more weeks, and by then, I think I'll have enough gas to make the trek South, like everyone else has."

"What do you mean?" Mom asked. "About the gas part. Are there any gas stations nearby still selling gas?"

The librarian's smile faltered a bit, and she looked downwards, scratching her thick gray hair. "Well, I wasn't exactly supposed to tell, but the city has been paying workers like me with gas. Most people are using it for the lights and heating, but I'm saving mine for the big trip South before everything freezes over."

She then looked at Mom. "You're not going to tell anyone, right? The city told me to keep it a secret just because when you have something that people want, the guns come out, and it gets dangerous."

"Of course not," Mom said. "But when you leave, they'll be an opening, right?"

"Maybe," the librarian said, though there was something oddly familiar about the way she was saying it. "How about I write your name down on a notecard and send it to the city in two weeks?"

"That sounds great," Mom said and put her name on the notecard. "Thank you."

The librarian took the note card and put it in a drawer.

"Are the rumors really true?" Mom asked. "About conditions in the South."

"I can only hope so," she said and looked into the distance, chuckling. "It's funny how I spent my whole life running away from Texas and all my small-minded friends, and now, going back to Texas is the only thing on my mind. I guess maybe we weren't so different after all."

No one really knew what to say.

"Anyway, y'all probably don't want to hear me rambling," she said. "It was nice talking with y'all. Stay safe and stay strong."

We waved goodbye and left the library. Mom's prediction about the ash storm hadn't come true, the sky dark gray but not snowing flurries of ash as we thought it would but, but just plain old gray skies. The walk back was even quieter, Mom barely attempting to make conversation, tired from the one in the library.

Nothing much interesting happened today, except for the fact that May started complaining about not feeling well. Everyone mostly ignored her, not that they didn't care, but Mom and Dad just thought that she was being overdramatic. May said she had a plan, but I'm not too sure what feeling sick has to do with the plan. Wood gathering tomorrow is going to be such a pain.