What Comes After

August 26

I woke up in sweats this morning, a hazy nightmare plaguing my dreams. The details seemed so clear in the dark grays and blues of the dawn, but the sharpness quickly crumbled, and I was left with a vague sense of dread and a vestige of my nightmare, a guttural breathing mixed with the sound of bubbling water ringing throughout my mind.

Mom, Mira, and I ended up going to the beach sometime during the afternoon because Dad felt like being sexist and forced me to tag along with Mom and Mira because they needed a "man with them." May was too lazy to go to the beach (or maybe too scared because honestly, sometimes it's hard to tell when she's lying or telling the truth) and said that she needed to defend the house too. Just before we left, buckets in our hands, Mom grabbed the tiny axe.

When I was walking outside, I looked at the sky. It was so close to being clear, and that tinge of blue that I tried seeing a couple days back actually appeared, the thick haze transforming into a light fog that was just waiting to be burst. I could even taste summer on my tongue even though it was only around fifty degrees in the middle of the afternoon. Even with the ocean breeze blasting my face, there was this feeling of life.

"The sun's almost out," Mira said to me. "And the sky's almost blue."

"And this time it's not an illusion," I replied. "It's actually real."

We walked a couple of steps, and she turned to me. "Yesterday, you seemed kinda weird about going to the ocean. Is everything alright?"

"I don't know. It just seemed dangerous."

She gave me that look, and I knew that she knew that I was lying, probably because I didn't put much effort in that lie.

"I'm just not comfortable talking about it," I finally said.

"Okay, yeah," she said and looked down before looking at me. "I just realized that you guys would be starting school now."

"You're about one week late," I said, holding up a finger. "And you'd be in college right now, doing college stuff."

"You want to hear some college stories?" she asked. "Or have any questions, you know, about college."

I shook my head and sighed. "There's no point."

I really wasn't that pessimistic or downtrodden, and in reality, my heart was pounding out of my chest. Just the mention of college sent a spike of anxiety in me, and I began thinking about how it would be my junior year if high school was still open and how I'd finally have to make a choice about what I wanted to do in the future.

Luckily, Mira said something before everything became too awkward, "It sucks that you're missing a whole chunk of your life because of this. Your best years of life, just after you're old enough to do adult stuff but still young enough that everything isn't so serious."

"College applications and endless days of doing SATs," I quipped sarcastically. "So much fun."

"Well, not that stuff," she replied. "Like dating and going to prom and making new friends and just living your best high school life."

"None of that seems interesting," I said and shrugged. "A comfy sofa and an interesting book seem like a lot more fun. I mean, those characters living in those books have way better lives than any of us."

"Living through people vicariously is not living life," she said. "And plus, dating and going out is lots of fun."

"What's so much fun about getting rejected over and over again?"

"It's about finding a special connection," she said. "When dating starts again, I know you'll find the perfect girl."

"Yeah, totally," I said, shrugging a bit. I didn't tell her that I might not be interested in dating a girl, and that I might be not interested in dating or maybe interested in dating a guy or maybe not. I should probably stop writing about this since all these "maybes" are making me dizzy, but still, I guess I wonder how dating another guy would even work.

Anyways, back to more important things, like how after that, we didn't talk much. Maybe it was because of the stench of the ocean breeze, the rotting odor that smothered the life of our conversations. I think it was mostly because there was nothing to talk about. Well, actually, there were things to talk about, but it's just like I can't hold those heart-to-heart conversations like the people in the movies do. With everyone spending time with each other all the time, anything new will be personal and personal stuff is just weird to talk about, especially when I'm the one that has to do the whole talking about my personal stuff.

When we got the yellow tape, Mom and Mira looked down at the flooded neighborhood below. The walls of the houses looked worse than below, caked with sand and mud while there was kelp strewn all over the street, stinking up the air.

"Okay," Mom said. "Let's get to it."

Mira gingerly crossed the yellow tape, now tattered and laying on the ground, and put on some rubber gloves before picking up handfuls of kelp and putting it in her bucket, while Mom and I picked kelp from a safer distance. Flies flew in circles around our faces, and despite the pretty frigid temperatures, my body was hot and tired.

All of a sudden, there was a rumbling towards the ocean, and all three of us looked in the distance down the street that led to the ocean. At the very end, I could see the water, frothing and quickly moving towards us.

"Get back," Mom said and we scrambled away from the flooded zone and back behind the yellow tape.

The water rushed towards the middle of that street before receding, and then rushing another 10 or so yards forward every couple of seconds until the dry street that we were standing on was flooded by a foot of water after a couple of minutes. There was a loud screeching nearby, probably a broken car being dragged across the asphalt, and we all looked at each other, probably thinking back to the first day when everything happened, and the beach got flooded. I think there was a reason why no one had survived.

"Let's go," Mom said and we began partially carrying and partially dragging our buckets on the ground. I guess everyone was tired and glum after the waves and the work (even though it was for only around ten or fifteen minutes).

We were just about to leave when Mira looked back and shouted, "Look."

We gazed at the horizon, and suddenly, it was like the ocean was hit with a burst of light. Golden rays streamed from the clouds breaking apart above the ocean, the wind finally carrying the ash to new places away from here, as the sun began setting. The surface of the ocean, previously dark blue and moody, blossomed into jewels of amber and sapphire.

"It's beautiful," Mom said as Mira just gaped at the ocean.

"Maybe this is the end," Mira said before quickly correcting herself. "Not the end, but maybe a new beginning."

"Maybe," I said and gazed at the streams of light pouring through the clouds like rain.

Suddenly, I was hit by a barrage of memories of old summers. I don't know why my mind does this sometimes. It's usually always with music, an old pop song reminding me of tennis summer camps or a country song taking me back to those days where I stared at a computer and played Minecraft all day.

But now, it's like the streams of sunlight are stitching all my summer memories together, all those bowling camps when I was in second grade and that school pool party that we had in fourth grade and the strawberry popsicles that we got from the Asian mart coating my fingers with stickiness and the beautiful summers that I spent creating clover bracelets and random leaf and twig contraptions. And, for some reason, I felt this overwhelming sense of joy as I turned to Mira.

And for some reason, she was crying. "Is— Is everything alright?"

"It's nothing," she said with a smile and wiped her tears. "Actually, it's not nothing. It's just that I can't stop remembering that summer day that Leon and I met. It's like my mind is just playing it on a loop."

"He's made it," I said. "Maybe it's a sign from the people above or maybe it's just a sign of the universe. But if it's sunny here, then maybe, wherever he is, it's sunny too."

"I think he's made it too," she said. "I really do."

"He's probably got hot water," I said. "And actual electricity, not just some batteries, and an infinite-supply of instant-noodles—"

"He hated those in college," Mira said, laughing a bit. "Called it the most overrated college essential."

"Fine, then he'll have tons of pizzas and canned peaches and stuff," I said.

"Stuff?" she said.

"I ran out of ideas," I said. "But he's probably in paradise."

"Or at least as great as paradise could be," she said wistfully and turned back to the ocean.

"He's in a better place," I said before correcting myself. "Well, not the heaven better place, but safe and sound."

She nodded, and I could literally see the transformation in her. All that stress and anxiety and fear about Leon came one step closer to fading away. Maybe this was her way of letting go, not the idea of him or hope, but letting go of that fear and anxiety. It's odd that the Sun that we saw every day and every night for the past sixteen years of my existence is now so precious and filled with hope. It's these little things that you never notice until everything else is gone.

"I wish I had a camera," Mom said. "We can label this as our first Sun day."

"You better not post it on Facebook," I said.

"Why would I do that?"

"You literally post your life on Facebook."

"Well, you're lucky that there is no Facebook anymore," she said and gazed at the sea

"We should make a collage," Mira said. "To document everything that has happened."

"Document it for who?" I asked.

"Ourselves," Mira said and smiled. "For when all of this is over, and we're, like, ten years older and the world is back to usual. And we'll look over these photos and probably laugh at how happy we were to see the Sun."

May would probably say that we're making a collage for people to remember us by, once we all pass away from the ash or starvation or dehydration or a thousand different events, so that our existence wasn't a mirage or a dream but something real.

"We look a little ridiculous, though," I said. "I wonder what people would think of us."

"Who cares about what other people think?" Mom said. "When we've got each other."

And she hugged us, and even though she probably said the cheesiest line that she could think of to annoy us, there was something genuine behind it. Sometimes the most real things in life are the cheesiest ones (That sounds like a cheesy line in and of itself).

When we went home, we shared the news with Dad and May and Grandpa and Grandma, and even though the sky was still cloudy, I could see streaks of pink from behind the clouds during the sunset. We couldn't get a printed photo since the polaroid camera ran out of film and is garbage at capturing color, but we got one on Dad's phone and stared at it until Mom realized that we all were wasting batteries.

When we were at the dining table, eating some soup and a small side, Mom said, "When we were walking, Mira had a great idea that we should build a collage, and I think we should do it to commemorate this day."

She turned to Dad and told him to find an old spiral notebook and ordered the rest of us to either find or make something to remember this day about, even Grandma and Grandpa. After an hour or so of scattering and finding and coloring and making things, we finally all got together and shared.

Grandpa brought an old fishing hook that he had made in Taiwan a long time ago. I'm pretty sure there was a whole story to it, but I didn't understand his words, half in Chinese and the other in Taiwanese. Grandma brought the English word that she was trying to learn today, "Garden." "Your garden is beautiful," she said, and we all clapped for her as she beamed with pride.

"Our garden," Mom corrected her. "We all put work into it."

May took out a little suns sticker and pasted it on the paper. "I hope we're not jinxing it."

"Then, you guys better sing the anti-jinxing song," Dad said as May groaned.

"That's not even a thing," she said as Dad began clapping his hands to an unknown beat, smiling at May's suffering.

"This is the anti-jinxing song," he sang, though it sounded more like a wail. "We are not going to jinx-tomorrow. This is the anti-jinxing song."

He paused before saying, "Something-something-something rhyme. Sorry about that, I ran out of words."

Mom was laughing hard, and Dad bowed, though none of us clapped. Hopefully, it'd discourage him from doing this ever again. Dad then placed his object onto the collage, lyrics of his horrible song that he had written down while singing on a napkin. Mom went next and put in a picture of a sunset cut from one of those glossy magazines that we always received in the mail. It lay there in the center of the notebook, not taunting us, but almost reminding us of something we have to live for in the future.

Mira put a short haiku in there.

Dewdrops of sunlight.

Wash away ashy night skies

Blossoms of hope rise

"It's a bit rushed," she said. "But I didn't have much time."

"That's fine," Mom said. 'It's beautiful. It really is."

And I guess I was the last person to put my object in. Well, it was less of an object and more of a picture of a sunset: reds, oranges, yellows, purples, and blues made into a gradient that stretched across my picture sky, colored painstakingly with colored pencils. And then, Mom titled the entry with "Sun-Day - August 26th" and closed the notebook before waving us goodnight. For someone in the world, August 26th might not mean anything, but I think I'll remember it as the first time that the sun truly appeared (even though, technically, it was the second time).

Because even though this whole week started with death and guns, it's odd that everything feels so alive. I thought that I'd be bothered by the stench of the kelp, the rotten smell lingering in the living room despite us storing it in the garage, because it reminded me of that corpse lying on the street along with many others hidden by mansions and cars and the sea. But oddly enough, there's this sense of life too, like we're going to turn the kelp and death into fertilizer to grow our crops and bring life into the world. It feels ironic and poetic and weird all at the same time.

What's also weird is that I've been thinking about an old summer memory differently, back from all the way in elementary school. I don't exactly remember the movie, but I do remember thinking about the main character, a guy, for days, just wanting to be perfect and cool and smart like him. Maybe it's like what I thought it was back then and mostly now, just a twinge of envy and wanting to be him, but I believe it's more than that. Maybe that's when this whole thing started, and maybe I've been purposefully misinterpreting my emotions to keep everything normal, you know.

And maybe that normal just isn't me.