What Comes After

August 18

I was kissing a guy in my dreams.

Or at least I think I was. The memory is a bit of a blur, like pretty much every non-nightmare dream, the golden tones smearing the dream. But I do remember that we were in a bright green field overflowing with vivid flowers, glowing oranges and pinks and turquoise. I remember my hand brushing a bit of scruff and I remember our faces being close to each other and that there was this warmness surrounding me.

And then I woke up. Or more specifically Dad woke me up with a shake of my shoulder. The cozy warmness shifted to a coolness and the saturated colors dominating my dreams faded to muted grays.

While I was layering up in thick socks and extra sweaters, I thought a lot about the dream. I know people have all kinds of weird dreams where they do weird things, and when they wake up, they acknowledge the reality of their dream and move on with reality. Hell, I've had dreams where I was running away from May, armed with throwing knives and trying to kill me, but when I wake up from that nightmare, I know that May doesn't want to kill me (Or at least I hope so).

But there was something different about this dream. There was no lingering wrongness about the dream, when you know you've crossed the line between fantasy and reality. If anything, it felt oddly right and almost surreally beautiful, if that makes sense.

Actually, reading over what I just wrote, I don't think what I just said made any sense. I don't even know why I'm spending so much time writing about this dream anyways. The memory of it will probably fade away in a few days.

Mom left Grandpa and Grandma to guard the house, but I think we all knew that if anyone tried to ransack our house, there wouldn't be anything that Grandpa and Grandma would be able to do. But we didn't really have much of an option and we trudged through the streets dusted with ash, shivering ever so slightly as our wagon creaked behind us. Dad turned to Mom.

"We need to start doing wood gathering at least two times a week," Dad said. "The weather. It's getting much colder than I expected."

Mom sighed. "We've—"

"I know we've already talked about this, but circumstances have—" Dad said, before a fit of coughing cut him off.

"See," Mom said. "We shouldn't be spending much time out anyways. Lung cancer will kill us long before starvation or the cold."

"That wasn't from the ash," Dad said. "It was just autumn allergies."

"From what plants," Mom said and pointed around at all of the bare trees, branches hanging out like skeleton fingers, lining the streets. "Everything around us is dead."

"It's from the dust," Dad quickly replied before pivoting. "And going by what you said, we don't want to join them."

"And going by what I said before, we'll join them long before the cold kills us."

May stepped in between them. "I swear I've heard this argument a hundred billion times already, and now it's just getting boring hearing you two argue the same old crap over and over again. Just find some compromise and move on."

"Maybe have rotating axe shifts," Mira said. "Dad can cut one tree, then Mom, and then me—"

"No," Mom said. "Only Dad and I do the axe rotating shifts—"

"Why?" she protested. "I can help—"

"I don't want any of my kids risking their lives cutting wood and breathing in all that ash. Let your father and I handle this."

"I know the risks, and I want to help," Mira replied. "I'm an adult anyways. I'm perfectly—"

"And we're your parents," Dad said. "And I agree with your Mom. No more axe cutting shifts anymore for all three of you."

Mira stopped walking and faced Dad. "I can—"

"No one's saying that you're not capable," Mom said. "We don't want you to get hurt, or worse, get really sick in the future, that's all."

Mira opened her mouth, and I could nearly sense the retort that was coming out from her mouth, the unsaid thought that had crossed every one of our minds at least one: What future is there even to look forwards too with the never-ending volcanic eruptions and ash storms that threaten to bury us six feet under a layer of gray?

"Okay, great," Mom said, taking Mira's non-answer as a sign of agreement. "What about you two?"

May shrugged. "Fine. Whatever."

Mom then suddenly turned to Dad. "What did you mean by 'anymore'?"

There was an awkward silence. I think Dad was referring to that time with Leon when I spent about ten minutes struggling to chop even a small notch into the tree.

"It was for only two minutes," I lied, hoping that downplaying the number would downplay Mom's worries. "And it was all the way back when the ash wasn't all that bad."

"Well, no more," Mom said.

"Works for me," I replied.

"Also," Dad said. "We may need to make some changes in our house."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We'll have to start moving all the mattresses and comforters to the living room sometime soon," Dad replied.

"What?" Mira, May, and I all exclaimed at the same time, and May added, "I first lose having my own room, and now I lose my room completely. That's so unfair."

While May complained for a bit longer about losing her privacy and how her life is going to fall apart if we all moved to the living room, my mind went straight to the pantry of cans. With everyone eating, breathing, and sleeping in the living room, right adjacent to the pantry of cans, there's no way I'm going to sneak out enough to help Charles and his family. Mom and Dad will always be keeping a close eye on the food, along with Mira and May and Grandma and Grandpa.

"But why?" I asked Dad.

"Well if you guys would let me explain and stop complaining for a second, I would," Dad said.

May shut up, leaving Dad's hoarse voice and the creak of the wagon filled with rustling canvas bags as the only sounds.

"Natural gas is going to be shutting down soon," Dad said before Mira cut him off.

"How do you know?" she asked. "There's been no announcement, nothing—"

"They'd never announce it," Dad said. "No one would agree to it, and there'd be hoarders siphoning natural gas or people threatening to burn down city hall if the natural gas was projected to be shut off. A quick, quiet shut off will cause protests, but everyone in leadership would be long gone or they'd be able to say they kept it on for as long as possible."

"But what I know is this. The cold will set in, and winter will be bad," Dad warned. "I've been keeping the heater on low the past week or so, but without the heater, the nights are going to be freezing. So we're all going to have to move to the living room because we've got the fireplace there."

"But what about the laundry?" May asked. "Where are we going to dry the clothes? I don't want to be sleeping in a puddle of soapy, gross water."

"We'll figure that out later," Dad said.

"Don't we have a heater in the garage?" I asked, desperate to try and stop Dad from making this happen. "Why don't we just charge the heaters using the solar panels?"

"That's what your Mom and I are doing," Dad replied. "But the panels barely get three watts an hour, not even close to being able to power the heaters on the long term. And we've still got the issue of lighting up the greenhouse—"

"How is the greenhouse doing?" May asked. "You guys have been working on it forever."

"We've..." Dad said, his words trailing a bit. "Hit a couple of roadblocks."

"It's pitch-dark in the garage," Mom said. "I'm not even sure why we were trying to build a greenhouse down there, so we're moving our set-up to the living room tomorrow to take advantage of the natural light and figure out the lighting system."

"What about the solar panels on the ro—" Mira said before being cut off by Dad.

"I don't know how to remove and disconnect the solar panels from the roof," Dad replied. "I'd need a mound of textbooks. Anything salvageable would probably be destroyed by the ash anyways. The panels on the roof are dead. Completely useless."

"What about scavenging for solar panels?" I asked and May shot me a warning glance. "In other—"

"No," Mom and Dad said at the same time. They looked at each other and smiled a bit. For some odd reason, they were finding a sense of unity by tearing down our ideas.

"We're not stealing," Mom replied. "Don't even think about it."

"And what's with all the what ifs," Dad replied. "We're moving when the natural gas shuts off no matter what."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I can only pray that the natural gas won't shut off. If there even exists a God, hopefully, they will understand and make sure that doesn't happen, at least for now.

We stopped in front of the forest, gazing at the ash covered stumps of the sycamore trees, a skeleton forest holding up the dark gray sky with its spindly, bone-colored branches. Hopefully, that'll be long enough for us to get our wood and leave before the ash storms start again.

We split up, Mom and Dad to the nearest tree, Mira, May, and I deep into the dark forest (by deep, I mean about 10 meters away from Mom, with her hawk-like eyes watching us) to gather the kindling, bending down to pick up branches and twigs every couple of steps and dump them into our canvas bags.

"I've got an idea," Mira said, suddenly appearing next to me. "To solve Mom and Dad's greenhouse problem."

"The lighting or the heating problem?" I asked.

'The lighting one," Mira said and outstretched her arms around us. "If, after all this work, the heating problem isn't solved, Mom and Dad are going to be in serious trouble."

"Deathly serious," I said before quickly adding. "Was that too dark?"

"Probably," Mira said with a sigh. "It's hard not to think about it though."

"Yeah," I said, my words trailing off and leaving the crunching of fallen leaves and scratching of branches against canvas as the only sounds. "So what is the plan? We kinda got off-track."

"There are basically two parts to it," Mira said. "You remember the random solar phone chargers, right?"

"Didn't we get a whole bunch of them?" I asked. "What happened to them anyways?"

"Probably disappeared when Grandma and Grandpa organized the whole house or maybe Mom and Dad stored it away when they thought that the solar panels weren't working? I'm not sure," she replied, picking up another branch from the ground before continuing. "I was thinking that we could use that to charge all of our phones."

"How does that help?" I asked, genuinely confused. Maybe she was high or maybe this was her anger-planning. "What use is charging phones?"

"Well It's not so much the phone as it is for the phone's flashlight," Mira said. "Since we can't charge the small batteries that we have since the big solar panels are being used for the heaters, the only flashlight we've got that we can use are our phones."

"That's... actually really smart," I said. "Is this what college education does for people?"

She chuckled a bit and shook her head.

"More like waking up in the pitch-dark this morning and trying to grab my phone for its flashlight only to realize that I hadn't used my phone in months," she replied and then sighed. "Old habits do die hard."

"Yeah," I said, both our words trailing off before I continued. "But how exactly are we going to get enough light for the plants, especially since the phone flashlights aren't super strong."

"This is the fishier part of my plan," she said. "Mostly because I don't know much about this, but I think we should use mirrors and point them inwards to the plants to reflect any light that is being wasted."

"The question is how are we going to position the mirrors," I said. "To make them reflect light properly."

"The library might have some information," Mira said. "We should go sometime next week, maybe Monday or Tuesday."

"I can't go on Tuesday, just because Charles and I have a thing planned," I replied. "Why don't you just ask Mom and Dad first?"

"I don't know," she said and looked down, not to pick up branches but to kick a stone. "It's just that they never listen to me."

"I mean they listened to you last night—"

"But that was when I was agreeing with them," she replied. "And it's like they're always treating me like I'm a little kid, and I thought I was making progress, but I'm just not. It's like I took a step up the mountain yesterday and then got buried by an avalanche today."

"Mom and Dad are just worried," I said. "And they care, a lot, and sometimes in the wrong way, you know."

"But then why don't they care about what I say?"

"Who cares about what other people think?" I said. "I mean you've literally done so many daring things that I wouldn't even have the confidence to even think about doing."

"But I hate that I do care," she said.

She sighed and stuffed a couple of twigs in her bag. "Remember that ugly fight Mom and Dad and I had back in April?"

"Yeah," I said. "It was about the blue hair, wasn't it?"

"It's weird how we were all just arguing about the stupidest little things," she muttered and then spoke more loudly. "But that night, I dyed my hair black and sat in my room with my finger hovering above my phone screen, almost clicking on Mom and Dad's number, so that everything could be sorted out 'cause I cared too much about what they thought of me, and it hurt me to disappoint them."

"But I mean you didn't call them back," I said and pointed at her hair, red roots growing out. "And you kept to your beliefs."

"The red was from an anger-dyeing session," she said with a little chuckle, lightening the atmosphere a bit. "Just wanted to go for the angstiest look I could manage to get back at Mom and Dad."

She continued, "It feels like the only time that I do what I want is when I'm just angry, and I want to change."

"I guess you have to make a new identity," I said. "Or find a new one or something along those lines where your, I guess self-worth, isn't tied with Mom and Dad."

"But how?" she asked. "It's not like I can go off on a grand adventure and find a new me while battling dragons and zombies."

"I don't know," I said. "I guess it's just something that finds you or maybe you find it or something. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. Lit class never taught me any of this."

She chuckled a bit, and then I chuckled a bit and the woods echoed with our soft laughter. Mira turned to me. "I thought I'd gone past this after I turned eighteen, but twenty-one just feels like a second puberty."

She picked up a branch and added, "How do you always know the right things to say?"

"I didn't really say much," I replied with a shrug. "You mostly did the talking and I just repeated back things. Maybe you're the one that knows the right things."

"Maybe. But seriously?" she asked. "Where do you get all this advice stuff from?"

"Advice columns, I guess?" I replied. "Maybe books? Whatever you're thinking about just comes to me."

"Anyways, I should probably go to May," Mira replied and turned the other direction from where I was walking. "Meet you back at Mom and Dad's tree?"