What Comes After

I nodded and waved at her before going back to picking up branches.

I wish I could come up with a snappy metaphor for twigs (though I suppose a badly placed pun will do). Gazing over the ash-covered landscape, I could imagine the forest in winter, the flakes of ash mixing with snow and ice that will glitter like crushed little stars whenever the sun shines, even if it lasts only a second.

The rest of the day wasn't much. Mom and Dad were able to fully chop up four trees in the two hours or so we spent gathering twigs, which was much more than the last few trips combined with the tiny axe. The wagon could only take about a quarter of a tree's worth of logs per trip though and the bags only could hold a couple chopped up pieces, so we had to make multiple trips back and forth, carrying 10 to 15 pound logs on the five-minute walks back home.

Mom and Dad took over after the fourth or fifth trip back and forth. "We've got this," Mom said after we lugged the logs into the timber corner of the garage, slowly but steadily increasing every week. "You guys go shower."

"Okay," May said, a little too excitedly. "I call dibs on going first. I think I'm going to get an acne outbreak from all this sweat."

"I call second," Mira shouted.

"I guess I'm third," I said and muttered under my breath. "Middle child syndrome."

Mom and Dad came back after at least an hour or two, after we had all finished showering and the air around the bathroom felt like a little taste of an old Florida summer. Dad fell asleep right away and Mom fell asleep on the couch before she could finish brewing her chamomile tea. Neither of them ate dinner.

Mira gave them both blankets, and May commented, "They're not dead, right?"

All of a sudden, Dad's snores reverberated through the hallways.

"I guess not," she said and shrugged. "Should we make them dinner?"

"Maybe a bigger breakfast tomorrow," Mira said.

August 19

Mom and Dad refused to eat breakfast.

Well Dad did, but only a couple of nibbles, and then gave it back to us.

"You're eating all of it," Mira said. "We spent all morning working on it."

It's true. May had woken me up too early in the morning with the fluorescent glare of the lamplight, the sky a dark blue-gray color. Mira was with her, and I groaned. "What do you guys need me for?"

"We're making fresh bread for Mom and Dad," she said.

"Then make it yourself," I said and turned in bed. Unlike my brain, any semblance of generosity and selflessness did not wake up the glow of light.

"We don't know how to make it without yeast," May said. "That's why we need you 'cause you're so smart and cool and know everything."

"It's too early for sarcasm."

"Hurry up." May snatched the comforters off of me and tossed me a jacket. "Let's do something nice for Mom and Dad."

Huddling around the stove, May and Mira vigorously mixed the flour and water with a tablespoon or so of powdered milk, just for texture, while I explained, "You know, the whole purpose of the yeast is—"

"Blah, blah, blah," May said. "Get to the point. We don't need the whole science background or otherwise, it might take a whole hour."

"Well the whole point I'm getting to is that yeast makes carbon dioxide, and you know what else makes carbon dioxide, those baking soda and vinegar experiments we did in elementary school."

"Ew, vinegar is so gross. There's no way we're putting it in here."

"Do we have any other sour things, stuff like lime or lemon juice?" I asked.

"We might have used up all the lemonade in the summer," Mira said and reached for the pantry. "It's vinegar, I guess—"

"No, wait," May said and rushed into the pantry, digging through some items before pulling out the packets of pink lemonade we had taken from the Hunters' house. "I remembered finding a couple of these a few weeks back."

"Weird," Mira said. "I don't think Mom and Dad have ever let us get pink lemonade ever before—"

"I think I got some from a birthday party," May lied quickly. "Who doesn't smuggle food out from parties?"

Mira furrowed her eyebrows and looked at me. I shrugged and looked at May. Her lie this time was uncharacteristically weak.

After we mixed together the mixture of pink lemonade powder with some water and baking soda, Mira and May quickly kneaded the dough together to capture the fizzling of that mixture. After waiting for the pan to heat up, I oiled the top with a halo of avocado oil and placed the flatbread on its surface, listening to the sizzles and crackles that remind of the campfires seventh grade camping trips that we took with family-friends.

The air smelled heavenly, with the slightest tinge of butter, that made even Grandma come out of her room.

"Good morning," she said, trying to practice her English. "What are you cooking?"

What was bread in Chinese called? The first thing I thought was "pan," but that's bread in Spanish, and at that moment, I realized how much Chinese had slipped away from me. I felt like I should know the word, but it just wouldn't come out.

Luckily, Mira filled it in. "Mian bao," she said. "Bread."

They talked a little more as I flipped the flatbread on the pan with my spatula. I tried thinking of all the Chinese words that I could remember how to write. Outside of the basic pronouns, numbers, and extremely basic words ("tian" or field looks just like a window), I barely knew how to spell complex anything in Chinese, the most complex one being "yu" or fish.

But May snapped me out of my thoughts when she reminded me to make sure that I wasn't burning the bread, and I quickly flipped it into a plate, the bottom browned well. After serving Grandma and Grandpa, who appeared a couple minutes after she did, Mira gave me a cup of reheated tea and gave May the plate with the bread on it with a drizzle of olive oil and told us to serve Mom.

But Mom refused.

"I'm too fat," she said and grabbed her stomach, but there wasn't a whole lot to grab.

"Well we're not going to argue with you," May replied and put the plate on the tabletop next to her. "Eat it or we're throwing it away."

And then we left the room.

"Was that a good mic drop exit?" May asked.

"Very," I said, and we turned back into the kitchen, making some for ourselves and Dad.

After some guilting and mind games, Dad eventually began eating the flatbread.

"This is really good," he said, but I wasn't sure if it was his taste buds or his hunger-addled mind talking, especially since when I ate one, the flatbread was a bit hard, the dough un-fluffy because of the lack of yeast.

There wasn't much else that happened in the morning. Mom went into the kitchen and grabbed an ibuprofen and swigged some cold water before going back to bed to sleep. Dad took a shower and then presumably flopped into bed and fell back asleep. As ash flurries sprayed the windows, Mira, May, and I pulled out a snakes and ladders board, not to socialize but to just push pieces around until the day ended.

When I went to our room to search through some old magazines to read, I found one with a male model emblazoned on the cover, muscled and shirtless, dripping wet with water. For some reason, I blushed but at the same time, wanted to read more. But if May and Mira walked into the room, that'd get awkward, so I went to the only place with any privacy: the bathroom.

Locking the door behind me, I sat on the toilet seat, opening the magazine. After flipping through pages of old gossip and ads and Polynesia vacations, I arrived at the pages I was looking for. There was a piece dedicated to their success story, but I didn't care about the words, just focusing on the images.

The man posing like one of those Greek sculptures, the man leaning back in a chair, sipping from a coconut, the man putting his hands together, abs glistening in the light, his face dark and brooding. And suddenly, I could feel the rush of emotions, the same weird fluttery nervousness that I felt when I was around Leon for the first time and one that I've felt for a long time.

I've always brushed it off as jealousy when those attractive, male characters appeared on TV and movies. With my clunky glasses, acne-scarred face and back, and decidedly un-hunky body, I could never be like them, and despite my resistance to do weightlifting and working out, there was always a part of me that wished I could be them, if that makes any sense. Just wake up one morning and find myself in an attractive body with all the confidence and self-assurance that pretty people have.

But now I'm wondering if that rush is more than jealousy or just my socially anxious nerves flaring up, but possibly, maybe attraction? I guess, would I want to kiss this person, not just as a weird-dream-addled fantasy, but in actual real life? But before I could even attempt to untangle everything, May knocked on the door and said she needed to use the bathroom, so I flushed the toilet and turned on the water and dumped the magazine in the far corner of our bathroom cabinet. Hopefully, no one else finds it.

And going back to the last question, given about half a day of reflection, I still don't know. I guess I'm worried that I'm overthinking this or maybe that if I go with my gut and my heart that I might cross a line that I won't be able to go back from. It feels wrong to think what I'm feeling should be is forbidden because it shouldn't be. Maybe some sleep will help me.

When everyone in middle school said that being a teenager was complicated and confusing, I mocked them.

I guess they were right after all.