September 10

We were careful on our walk there, Mira in the front, Dad in the back, Mom right behind Mira, making sure that I didn't get close to the gun holstered on her waist. Without Grandma and Grandpa slowing us down, we moved pretty quickly, staying close together as we approached town hall.

Unfortunately, there was a ton of fog this morning, just blanketing the skies and air around us, though for a second, I thought it was one of those ash blizzards, and we could barely see more than ten or so feet in front of us, so we creeped forwards, one step at a time.

As we walked towards city hall, there were more blobs of dark figures, and Mom held me awkwardly close as we filed into city hall, sticking ourselves to the back wall as people filled out the front rows and clumped together in the middle. People were carrying signs, some professional looking and illustrated while others were just crude markings on cardboard, and the angriest people congregated around the front, near the two hapless security guards. They had their hands on their guns holstered alongside a bottle of mace spray on their hips.

It took me a while before I realized that everyone in the room was armed. There were no metal detectors, and I noticed that people were carrying crowbars and had knives strapped to their boots. But most of all, there were guns everywhere, from small handguns that almost every clustering of people had to the rifles of some of the older, white men that were sitting near the sides.

Where did all these guns come from? I've never seen any guns before in public, and everyone here hates guns. Or that's what I thought. Maybe they hated guns, but then changed, just like Dad with guns because he was talking with Mira about them.

"If the worst comes, give me the gun," Dad said. "And you make a run for it."

"No," Mira said. "I'm the only one trained to do it. I'll do it to keep us safe."

"We're going to do neither," Mom said, butting into the conversation. "We all run, unless we want to end up in a shootout."

So then I added something, "Mom has a good point. Being a hero is good and all, but it's not going to work, and we might only get hurt or targetted."

Mom nodded approvingly. "We need to keep ourselves safe, especially with the hospitals down."

I saw Mira open her mouth, so I interrupted before she could speak. "And to keep other people safe too. If you fire a gun into a crowd like this, you'll only get another innocent person killed, and we can't afford this, not with the vigil you saw in the hospital."

"It's for everyone's good," Mom said, understanding my message. "We're keeping everyone safe."

And then Mira stood down a bit, her eyes softening. "Okay. We'll get out into the open first. Then, it'll be better for me to make the shot to take them down."

"I'll make the shot," Dad said. "I'll do it."

"But Dad—"

"I'll do it," Dad said again, firmly. "I don't care, but I'm not going to let you do it. I've played enough video games to know how aiming works, and I'll make the shot if we need it. You just run."

"I can't run," Mira said. "And it's my life, and I get to choose whether—"

"Maybe you'll help someone else in the future," Dad said. "But not this type of help."

I don't know whether Mira was going to say something or not, but I was surprised by Dad. I guess I never knew he cared so much, but I guess that's not so surprising either because sometimes he cares too much, and I think this time, it might actually be for the good. All of a sudden, there was this unusual quiet that swept throughout the room as the mayor stepped in, flanked by the announcer guy.

He certainly looked gaunt, much like the rest of us, and a bit pale, though less skinny than the rest of us, and walked with a distinct limp. Even the people holding up the protest signs put them down for just a second because no one expected our mayor to look this bad.

"Are we getting the food deliveries back?" someone shouted, breaking the silence.

The mayor sighed. "We tried our best in Sacramento, but there's just not enough gasoline and security forces to navigate through the cities and roads up north of us to reach our community. It's getting dangerous out there, and there's just not enough resources."

"Well you should've tried harder," someone shouted and people agreed with "Yeah"s and one loud "Hell yeah!"

"We tried, but they've approportioned the gasoline so carefully that they cannot afford even a couple of miles of detour," the mayor said. "Resources are so spare right now, and as of the moment, only our northern neighbors have clear enough roadways to get these food deliveries. But don't lose hope. If we are able to clear the mountain roads, we may have the ability to receive these food deliveries again. We've got a bit of spare gasoline, and construction equipment to clear up the roads, and I'm sure someone here must've worked in construction."

As soon as he finished, I think he realized that he had made two big mistakes: revealing that the city still had gas and that the northern cities still had food deliveries. All of the sudden, there was this massive clamor.

"Give me the fuel," a lady shouted. "We all need it for the trip down South."

"City council hoarding food and now gas," a man holding one of the signs spitted out. "Maybe they're hoarding the food deliveries too."

One of the men with the rifles stood up on his seat, and announced, "I'm heading up north to get some food for me and my family. Anybody else joining me."

There was a chorus of "Hell yeahs" and "You can count me in" and "We're going to take down the corrupt government." And while a large group formed around him, ready to trample other cities, another larger group surrounded the mayor, the two security guards barely holding back the tide of people ready to engulf him, both with questions and physically.

"Please don't do this," the mayor said. "We need to take the high road. We are better than this."

A woman carrying a crowbar spat at him. "I've got children to take care of, so don't you go around moralizing me."

"But don't you want your children to grow up with safety and order," he said. "Don't you want them to look up to you as—"

"I want my children to grow up, and I'll do anything for that," she said and disappeared into the mob ready to plunder the cities above us, as the mob surrounding the mayor surged towards him. He tried escaping through the backdoors, and the security team began grabbing out the pepper spray, aiming it at eye level where it'd hurt the most.

All while that was happening, we all were pressed against the wall, trying to sneak out of the door. My heart was pounding, and my eyes flashed across the room, scanning to see whether we'd become the target for violence. There was a moment when my heart skipped a beat, as a person approached us, holding what looked like a knife and a bottle of mace, but they got distracted by something else, and we all escaped city hall as the sharp pepper smell filled the air and the cacophony of scream became louder.

We basically ran home, the collapsed houses and cracked glass and ash-stained sweetgum trees just blurring past us until we stepped into the house, panting deeply, as May asked, "Why are you guys running?"

"We're not ever going back to a meeting," Dad said. "Next Saturday, I'll be the only one going."

"I'm going too," Mom said. "Everyone needs to be partnered up."

"I'm going," Mira said before Mom shook her head and said, "You need to stay at home. Not even an army of guns will be able to save you from that crowd. And if, and only if, someone is trying to break into our house or threaten your brother and sister, your skills may come in handy."

There was an awkward pause because I was shocked that Mom changed her mind. First it was Dad and now it was her, and it's like everyone is adapting, getting more used to the idea of guns while I'm standing here unchanged. The more survivalist part of me would want me to be like the other guys in the movies: pick up a gun and learn enthusiastically because guns are "cool." But I just can't do that. There's just something wrong about guns, and I know it.

May broke the awkward silence. "Hello? No one has told me what's going on or what happened?"

"Angry people happened," Mom said. "And some people wanted to hurt—"

"Mom. I'm not a six year-old. Just tell me what happened straight."

Mom sighed and apologized before telling the whole story, and May nodded along. When Mom finished, no one really said anything. There really wasn't much to say because we all knew what was happening up north, with the cities that are just half a day's walk away. Just before we broke apart, Mom said, "We aren't going to be like that. We're going to be better."

All of us were pretty confused, but I think that summed up about how everyone felt today: confused, angry, scared. I wonder how the cities up north feel now that our people have invaded them, and I wonder if it'll cause the famed butterfly effect, where their actions trigger the citizens of those communities to do something and so one until the avalanche of decisions collapses on us.

I don't know why, but I feel like something bad is going to happen. I'm probably being over-paranoid, but I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't think anyone in the world would know because we're all trapped here as the world crumbles all around us.

September 11

Today's the day when we normally hold the moment of silence, but I don't think there's much to commemorate anymore.

Everybody just shuffled around today, doing what we do everyday: watering the sprouting plants, pushing firewood into the fireplace, sitting around and eating a bit. Sometimes, everything that's happening feels like a skipping stone, where we're jumping from one disaster to another with boredom and mundanity filling up the moments in between.

The only thing different was when Mom took me to the kitchen. I thought I was in trouble and that she'd found out about Charles and the food cans, and even though I kept a bored face, I was literally panicking because I didn't have a good excuse for this. But thankfully, she asked, "Can you keep May busy on Wednesday?"

I was probably too surprised by this question since I expected the whole "Why are you smuggling cans of food?" or "I know what you did" because she asked that again before I managed to stammer out, "Why?"

"I'm planning something special," Mom said. "For May's birthday. This Thursday."

"Oh, yeah," I said because I had completely forgotten that her birthday was coming up. I knew she told me a week or so back, but it just slipped out of my mind. "Do Mira and Dad know?"

Mom nodded. "We're planning something special for her. This has been tough on her because I know that you've got Charles and Mira's got Leon, but I don't think May has seen her friends for a while now."

"Do you think we should invite them over?" I asked. "Though it might ruin the surprise a bit since we're probably going to ask May about it, but still."

"It's too dangerous," Mom said. "I— We just haven't seen much of them, and it will be too dangerous. People have changed too much, and I'm worried—"

"I get it," I said. "I'll figure something out."

And we shuffled towards our separate ways as I plopped on the couch, staring at the crackling fireplace and thinking about 9/11. Every single year, my teachers hold that moment of silence about 9/11 before asking whether any of us were born before 9/11, and every year, they'd have the same comment about how our grade was the first year of all post-9/11 kids. They'd always say how lucky we were to be born after that tragedy, but it looks like karma caught us because we got caught in something much worse. I don't know if there even will be enough people to have a post-Mooncrash generation.

Even so, I wonder what they'd think about us. I don't know if it was happening today or yesterday, but some people from the town must've raided the cities to the north of us or at least tried to. I'm trying not to think about it, and I think we're all trying to avoid talking about it, but a lot of people must've died fighting over tin cans and jars of calorie-filled goo. Those future people would probably think that we were savages and cruel, and they'd be both right and wrong because this cruelty and selfishness isn't a choice but a means for survival. I know that it sounds like I'm justifying the actions of the raiders, and I'm not, but I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Dinner was the same as usual, Dad telling all of us the schedule for tomorrow, where Mira, May, and I had to go and gather water while he and Mom were chopping firewood. He wanted us to gather more than fifteen buckets, about twenty this time, because we all stank since we ran out of showering water a couple days back.

May wasn't really happy about this. "More water buckets? It's my birthday week."

"I can take some," Mira said. "Actually, Neal and I can do all of your water gathering tomorrow."

I groaned a little, but nodded. May didn't say much for a bit before saying, "Whatever. I'll just do it. But I'm remembering this for my sweet sixteen, so you guys better get me a car and some new leggings."

"If—" Mom said before quickly changing it. "When we make it to your sixteenth birthday, you can get whatever you want."

"Then, can I get a Ferrari?" May asked, half jokingly, half seriously.

"It was to be within a budget," Mom said with a small smile.

"Are you still obsessed with saving money? Even after the world has ended."

"We still need to be prepared for what comes after," Mom said. "And plus, learning to budget is going to be a good habit too, especially for college and adulthood."

No one really said anything right after Mom said that because just thinking about the idea of going to college (or in Mira's case, going back to college) seemed both funny and depressing at the same time. For Mom to even suggest that college would be open in the near future given the fact that our world is half-buried under ash and half-flooded under the sea was hilarious in the saddest way possible.

May turned to Mom. "You still think college, of all things, is coming back if the world stops coming to an end?"

Mom took a deep breath and gave one of her long sighs. "It's better to think about it that way, so that we don't get used to the guns and violence around us because that's not going to last forever."

"Because everyone will kill each other at some point," May said. "I think I've just found the solution to world peace guys."

"This isn't something we joke about anymore, May," Dad said, holding Mom's hand as he joined this conversation. "And no, everyone's not going to kill each other because there's a reason that humanity has lasted this long, and it's not because people decided to start murdering each other."

I don't think Dad or Mom believed in what they said because just yesterday, we were all talking about taking out guns to protect ourselves and shoot other people. It's like they're just trying to tell a nice story to us and themselves because what's happening now is just too much for them to handle.

I pulled out the book once again, sneaking into the bathroom and grabbing the book out from within the depths of the cabinet. While I was sitting next to the fireplace, I nearly had a panic attack when May moved around on her bed because I thought she had woken up. I know that this fear is completely irrational because there's no shame in liking guys and reading romance. But still, I guess just the idea of someone knowing or even suspecting anything about my, not love, but attraction, scares me.

I guess I'm just too weird around being personal because that's probably why the scariest portion of the book to read was just one guy telling another guy that he cares about him and that he loves him. I'm trying to imagine this scenario, standing in front of a guy that I care about and maybe holding his hands with our fingers intertwined and saying the words "I care about you" or worse, "I love you," but I just can't even imagine saying those words. It just feels too close, too risky, and maybe I'm not made for this type of love.

All the books make the closeness of relationships to be warm and glowing and right, and even reading them, without overthinking it, it feels right. But as soon as I picture myself there, this picturesque image crumbles apart like a mound of ash.

September 12

I noticed that Dad was picking at the pink tape on the bottom of the axe in the morning, the one covering up the Hunters' name on the axe.

"Stop picking at it," I told Dad.

"It's bothering me," Dad said. "And it's getting dirty from all the sweat and ash."

"Just keep it," I said, trying to come up with a reason for him to not rip the pink tape off and expose all of my lies. "It's good for your grip."

"It just makes the axes slipperier when I hold it," Dad said. "And it's placed too low to provide enough grip. I'll rip it off this afternoon."

That sent me into a panic, and my hands were clammy as I searched for a solid excuse before coming up with a half-decent one that would at least stop him, just until I could figure out a good way to permanently end this problem. "I borrowed it from the garden, and just in case they need it back again, I don't want to return it damaged or without the pink tape. I think they were using it for identification or something like that. Just don't mess with it."

"That's a good point," Dad said before stopping his picking at the duct tape, the first edges already partially ripped off. "But why do you care so much?"

"Just don't touch it. Leave things the way that they are. Inertia is great."

Mira suddenly entered the room, with a thick jacket on and a scarf tucked around her neck. "Inertia is a property of matter."

And, to the utter bewilderment of Mom and Dad, who probably thought we were going a bit crazy because they had literally no clue about what was going on, we both started laughing and faux shouting, "Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye the science guy."

"God, you two are so weird," May said while Dad added, "I might need to check the water to make sure that none of us are getting lead poisoning."

And then we had a small laugh before going wood and water gathering. Mondays truly did suck, and even though I should be used to carrying buckets since this wasn't my first time, by the third round of water gathering, my arms were burning, and I was panting into the water bucket. The sun was shining between the skeleton-gray branches of the sycamore trees, but the weather was stubbornly cool, and the world was quiet around us.

Well, at least until we were on our fourth round, when we saw a gray-haired woman dipping their bucket into the creek, the bright blue plastic bobbing on the murky water. She stood up and nodded at us with a smile. "Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon too," Mira said, as she reflexively put herself in front of us.

"You folks doing alright?" she asked.

Mira nodded. "As alright as we can be."

"Well I suppose that is the best that we can do," she said before pausing. "I haven't seen you folks before. Well, I haven't seen much of anyone recently. Are you guys from the east side of town?"

"Northeast," Mira said, her lie coming out so quickly and smoothly that it sounded like she was telling the truth. "We only come down here because the water is clearer."

Both of those were lies because we live in the southwest part of the city, and the water in the creek was muddy and filled with sediment, and going to the reservoir in the northern part of the city would have much clearer water. I think the lady knew that we were lying because she then approached us, and Mira put her hand on her waist, instinctively reaching for a gun that wasn't there.

"That must be terrible," she said. "I've heard from many people that most of the houses there collapsed during the collapse. Is yours alright?"

We all looked at each other. Mom and Dad would probably know how to defuse this situation or confront her, but we didn't know what to say. I couldn't even tell whether she was trying to pry information from us or whether she was just being nice and polite and that irrational paranoia has infected even us too. Thank goodness that May had a good response, "I thought you said that you haven't seen or talked to anyone in a while."

"Well, yes." The woman gave an awkward smile and picked up the bucket. "It was nice meeting you folks."

Mira gave her a terse wave as the women put on a straw hat and walked up the banks of the river and down the road. We waited a couple minutes in silence, dipping our water buckets into the creek and letting them sit there for a while until we were confident that the woman wasn't in earshot.

"I thought you said all people were good," May said, looking straight at Mira.

"Most people are innately good."

"So then why'd you try pulling at your gun that you don't have?" May said. "I saw you reach for your waist, so don't deny it."

There was an awkward moment of silence. Mira let out a long sigh before replying, "I panicked, and I got worried that she would get close to you both and hurt you, so that's why—"

"So you don't believe that people are good," May replied. "You believed that lady was going to pull out a gun and shoot us or something, and you were going to shoot her. So what's even the whole point of protecting other people if you think everyone's dangerous."

Mira could barely stammer out a reply before May added, "You're such a hypocrite."

There was a long silence. I tried walking up the banks so that maybe they would follow me, and that their fight would end because we'd all be too tired from walking while carrying these heavy water buckets. But they stood by the creek, the water rushing over the stones, and imagining hard enough, I could hear the chirps of crickets and rustle of leaves on branches.

"I— I am a hypocrite," Mira said. "And I'm trying to be better at not letting the cynicism of the world around us get to me because it's so easy to get scared and worried, especially after the town hall meeting, where normal people, good people decided to go and storm the cities to the north of us for food."

"Then stop wasting your time," May said. "If good people are becoming bad, then who knows when the people you're working with are going to turn against you. Against us."

"They won't if we have community. That's the most important part in keeping people looking out for each other, and that's what's going to keep us safe," Mira said. "Because it's easier to hate and turn on people that you don't know, so I'm keeping us safe by keeping us in touch with other people. And I'm keeping everyone, including us, safe by going out every evening to make sure that people aren't looting other people's homes or killing other people or—"

"What if you saw someone looting a home?" May said, and I shot a warning glance at her because it was far too dangerous for her to mention that.

"Maybe we should go," I was going to say before Mira cut me off.

"I'd give them a warning," she said. "That's what the Shepards taught us to do."

"A warning shot or what?" May asked.

"Verbal warning. A warning shot might get someone nearby injured."

"What if they don't listen? Because you guys aren't the real police, and the real police don't exist anymore."

"Then we'll move towards them, and we'll announce that we are armed, and that we have guns. We'll pull them out just in case they think that we're bluffing or lying."

"And if they don't listen?" May asked. "And what if they have a knife or a gun of their own because everyone carries them around since it's the freaking apocalypse?"

Mira didn't say anything, but I think we all knew the implication was: she and her partner would shoot that looter and injure them, which would be akin to a death sentence considering the state of the hospital. After a long moment of silence, Mira said, "I— I don't know. It's complicated and—"

"So you'd shoot them?" May said, basically stating out loud the idea that Mira was too afraid to talk about. "For just grabbing things from abandoned houses? What if they have a family to feed? What if—"

"Just stop talking," I said because I was fed up with their arguments, and because if there's one thing that I hate more than anything, it's people fighting and arguing because no one gets anywhere. "Let's just go. Hurry up."

There was a long moment of silence, neither of them speaking, and then, surprisingly, May and Mira dropped their argument, and Mira trudged forwards, some of the water splashing out from the sides of her bucket as she sped down a different street from where we came street, leaving May and I trailing pretty far behind.

"Where are we going?" I shouted.

"Scenic route," Mira shouted back and continued walking quickly. I knew what she meant. We were taking a detour, a long way around the sprawl of our suburban neighborhood to make sure that we weren't being followed directly back home by that woman and whoever she was associated with. I doubt that many people were surviving well alone.

I turned to May, who was panting hard, just like me, as we lugged the buckets. "You know if you want to continue doing your scavenging trips, it might be better to have Mira out of the house more often."

"Our trips don't even align," she said. "And plus, it's a waste of time. And I hate people that waste their time."

"It's not a waste of time for her," I said. "And it's good that it keeps us safe."

"She's being stupid," May said. "Those people she's working with, they know where we live and they will turn on us."

"They won't."

"How do you know?" May said, kicking at a stone on the ground, sending it skittering across the ash-caked sidewalk, and stopped walking and placed her bucket on the concrete as we took a small break. "They've got big guns, and all we've got is a tiny little handgun and an axe."

"We've just got to trust them," I said. "You can't be this cynical about everything."

"Well, if cynical means being very careful and keeping us alive, then yes, I can be cynical, and there's nothing wrong about it."

"That's not even what— Never mind. We may have a problem with Dad," I replied. "He's picking at the pink duct tape."

"I know. I saw him this morning. How long until he picks it off completely?"

"A couple weeks. Hopefully," I said. "I wrapped probably more than ten times, and it's duct tape, so it sticks pretty hard, but I don't know. We've got to do something about this."

"No duh," she replied as we picked up the buckets and continued to walk. "We'll start figuring something out on Friday. I just want to have my birthday in peace."

"So no dangerous scavenging missions this week?"

"Maybe," she said with a shrug. "I'll see."

"You heard what Mira said," I said. "Or what she didn't say, about them shooting the looters. You could get hurt."

"Eyes," she said. "I've got perfect 20/20 vision. And plus, because she couldn't say it out loud, I doubt that anyone would be able to shoot even if they saw me. You need to stop worrying. We've already had this conversation a billion times."

And so we walked around the neighborhood, following Mira's ashy footprints around partially collapsed houses and twinkling windchimes hanging from porches and the occasional creaking of doors and cars abandoned after the earthquake. We walked for a while before we saw Mira, just standing on the sidewalk, waiting for us. She pointed somewhere in the distance, and I saw a thin line of smoke drifting from a chimney.

My heart leaped, but I wasn't really sure if it was because there was a good chance that there were other people doing well or because there was another person that could kill us or rob us. Maybe it's something in between, but either way, after seeing that, we all walked a little closer, eyes watching the rusting mailboxes and white picket fences stained with crumbling ash since we were in an unfamiliar neighborhood. By the time that we had reached home, our arms were on fire, and Mira decided that we would finish grabbing the water tomorrow.

So we waited around and watered the plants as they raced towards our phone lights perched on top of the greenbox, as we entered the soaring phase of the skipping stone, where nothing special was going on at all. Mom and Dad entered the house late at night, while Mira was going on her nightwatch duty, and just drifted right to bed, as I put on some heavy duty gloves to grab the firewood and put it next to the fireplace. I feel bad that I have to wake Mom up, but I guess that's just life.

I didn't pick up the book today, mostly because I was thinking about what I wrote down yesterday, about caring. I think I know why that idea is freaking me out. It's because when you tell someone you care or that you love them, it's just so honest, and to let someone know that is just so vulnerable and invasive. I don't even get how you can do that, and I guess I don't get it because I'm not even being honest to anyone about how I feel about anything.

Hell, I can't even be honest to myself about how I feel about guys.

September 13

This morning's water gathering was quiet, like usual. Mom and Dad were sleeping in because they had to stay up all night attending to the fireplace, so after a breakfast of half a cup of rice and some canned beans that we had to painfully cook by the fire, all of us kids set off to finish gathering the last three buckets, or in the case of May, two buckets.

There was a heavy fog in the morning, and I could see dewdrops forming on the dying grass and the few stubborn weeds that still remained (along with annoyingly misting up my glasses). For a second, I saw a darting of a shadow in the fog behind me, and the memory of those men in the ash storm flash through my mind. But it turned out to be nothing, probably just a deer or the gust of the wind.

When Mom and Dad woke up in the afternoon, they didn't look too good, their faces were a bit gaunt and pale, probably because they didn't eat any dinner, as far as I know, and they had to stay up all night tending the fireplace. I probably should've stayed up at night instead of them and woken up Mira to do Dad's middle of the night shift. Dad seemed to be counting firewood while Mom disappeared into the garage and got a long tube of wrapping paper that she probably was going to stash in an old suitcase in her room for May's "surprise" birthday.

I met with Charles this afternoon. For a second, I thought he had died or something because I literally spent an hour waiting outside without any sign of him, and another hour sitting inside until I realized that I had completely forgotten about the food bags because I'm such an idiot. And the second that I realized that I saw him walking towards our house, and I didn't have enough time to formulate a plan to somehow sneak the food underneath Mom and Dad's tired but still sharp eyes.

When I stepped outside and waved at him, he waved at me pretty energetically. He looked better too, and for a second, I thought that maybe his family would be alright without food. But I know that I was just imagining things to make myself feel better because his family isn't alright. When he stepped onto the porch, I began my apology tour. "I completely forgot about the food. Sorry about that."

"It's fine," he said. "We can manage."

"I'll see if I can sneak extra in next week," I said. "Or maybe sometime later this week."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "We'll be fine."

But will he actually be fine? I couldn't tell if he was saying the truth or telling a lie to make me feel better like friends do.

"You sure?" I asked, just to make sure.

"Yeah," he said. "Anyways, back to business with your dream number four and your book writing bucket list, which is still very lame by the way. Have you got any rough drafts for me to review?"

"I haven't been thinking about it a lot," I said. "We should move on to your final wish now, just to make it more efficient, and finish my book after."

"That would be cheating, so since you haven't got any ideas," Charles said with an evil smile. "To spark some inspiration, let's talk about dating."

"Dating?" I asked. "Why are we even talking about it, and what does that have anything to do with me writing a book?"

"I don't know," he said. "I feel like everyone but us talks about this—"

"Well, we shouldn't conform to societal pressures. You know, independence and all."

He ignored me and proceeded to plow on. "So tell me, was there anyone you had a crush on when school was still around?"

"You go first."

"Well, I'm not telling you if you don't tell me first."

"You asked the question, so you can answer it first."

"I asked the question to you, so you have to answer it."

"This question is getting pointless," I said. "Talking about dating and whatever is cursed."

"Fine," he said. "At least tell me what your ideal girlfriend would look like."

"That's even worse. It's like objectifying," I replied. "And since you asked the question, why don't you answer it first?"

"You know that AI is getting so advanced that they're getting the ability to mimic human speech," he said as I nodded along. "Well, that's what my ideal girlfriend would be like, but more anime-like."

"That's just creepy," I said. "Like why would you want a robot, anime-girlfriend?"

"There's no disappointment with robots and machines," he said. "Like, you can't get rejected, and whatever you don't like, you can just change."

"All of that seems fake."

"But it is real—"

"But it's not," I said. "I don't know anything about love—"

"You know what? We can finish this philosophical debate about future things later. Now tell me."

Now was a chance to come clean that I've never really thought about an ideal girlfriend, but I have most definitely thought about an ideal guy I'd like to be with, like the perfect guy in the magazine. But I didn't say that because I'm just too much of a coward, and instead, I thought really hard about what I'd want in an ideal girlfriend because I've got to at least try for Charles. But I couldn't think of anything, and couldn't make something up to make Charles feel better, so I just said, "I haven't really thought about it. Dating is, like, a college thing, and we're still in the middle of high school."

"Well, given everything happening around us, I'd say that it's safe to say that college isn't happening soon," he replied. "So we might as well make college right now."

"I mean, I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I feel like you're dodging the question."

"No, I'm not," I said. "Anyways, I've figured out what I'm going to write about. 'Charles and his Anime Robot Girlfriend - A Human-Digital Love Story.'"

"No."

"Yes," I said. "It'll be great."

"Now that is objectively creepy," he said.

"It's not," I said. "It's like hitting two birds with one stone: we get my book down and your future romance all at one go together."

"But that's not real," he said, flipping my own argument against me, so I did the same to him.

"Like you said, we've got to experience the future now, and in any form possible," I said, and he gave up on his argument and we began our brainstorm session, filled with terrible puns from Charles, horrible ideas from me, and we basically ended the same way that we started, virtually idealess and completely stuck on my book project. It's not like the ideas weren't fun, but, I don't know, I guess I was struggling to find any way to expand on the idea. Nothing was really connecting.

But while we were talking and joking around, with the skies clear and cloudless, everything felt so normal that it scared me. It was as if college and internships and everything that I worried about before was coming back and that I'd finally have to face the future again. And just for a smallest second before instantly taking it back a thousand times over, I wished that the ash clouds would sweep in, so that this would never come true, and that I'd find whatever chaotic peace that we had when the ash clouds snowed us in.

Sometimes, I don't know, it almost scares me how much I can't move on. I want to be like those people that just brace uncertainty without fear, the ones that just look at the future and just rush towards it and all the change that comes with it. I wish I could be better at this because maybe honesty will come out of it, and being actually honest to myself and everyone else.

But I don't know because I don't know if I actually want to change or that I think that I actually want to change. I don't know anything at this point.

September 14

"Mom asked you to distract me, right?" May asked. "Because you are acting really weird, and because I am 99% sure that Mom is planning a surprise party."

"You're going to have to act surprised tomorrow," I said, coming clean with the truth since I was tired playing card games in our room for the whole morning and afternoon with May.

"That's easy enough," May said. "Oh my gosh, Mom. I'm so surprised by this!"

"You need to tone down on the sarcasm and practice your acting skills."

'You want me to start crying?"

"I think that'd make Mom happy," I said and pulled out an old board game. I'd play Scrabble, but May is not into it since it "requires too much brain power" to play, and I'm honestly too lazy to punch numbers in a calculator and keep track of values. I remember that a long time ago there was this fantasy board game that I can't remember that we'd all play at one of Dad's coworkers' houses, and I wonder if one of the abandoned toy stores would have them. People were hoarding food, water, toilet paper, even survival books in the beginning, but I doubt anyone broke into stores to loot board games. Though, honestly, who knows what people are thinking?

We spent pretty much all day in the room, and by the time Mom called us out for dinner, I think anyone who had a brain cell could figure out that Mom was planning something. Dinner ended up being super awkward since the planners (aka Mom, Mira, and Dad) were pretending that everything was normal while the people stuck in the room (May and I) pretty much knew that whatever they were saying was to try and distract us from what they were actually doing.

Still, I do hope that tomorrow is good. I remember the day of the wedding, with the glowing lights and aroma of food drifting throughout the air, and even though I know that I said I would look back and hate it someday in the future, at least for right now, I wish that tomorrow would be like that. Everything seems so down right now.

September 15

It turns out that Mom was planning a spa day.

"With everything going on, we haven't had much of a chance just to relax and unwind," Mom said. "Maybe it'll feel more normal."

Well, it certainly wasn't normal since we had never actually done a home spa ever before, but I think she thought it'd take our minds off of the bloodshed that was probably in the north and everything around us. Even though doom and gloom might be keeping us alive, I guess even she is tired of constantly worrying about our safety and not dying.

In the morning, Mom and Dad grabbed some old aromatic candles that an old neighbor had given to us a long while back and lit them while I was assigned to mix boiling water with cold water in old pots, so that they'd be a pleasant warmth. Apparently, the reason that Mom took so long to call us out of the room was not because she and Dad weren't able to find a lotion or facial, but because she and Dad spent all day gathering enough water so that we wouldn't run out when we were doing this.

After I had finished mixing the water, I was assigned to help Dad with running the whole spa thing since it was a whole girl's day even. "We'll have a guys day out," Dad said. "Just you and me doing whatever we want."

"Whatever," I said. I didn't mind not getting a special day for myself, and spending all day with Dad seemed tiring, and anyways, having Mom, Mira, and May in the same room, doing the same things together really helped heal whatever is happening in between them.

I noticed that even though it was May's birthday, Mom was being extra-nice to Mira. Maybe it was because Mom feels bad about being hard on Mira about the guns, and that she's starting to understand why guns are needed to survive in this world. I don't really know how to feel about this because while it's nice that Mom and Mira aren't spending all day glowering at each other, at the same time, I'm scared that everyone will start carrying guns around, like everything is just normal.

Anyways, for the first part of the day, I didn't really have to do much work since Mom was mostly taking care of Mira and May, with the whole deep shampooing and conditioning aspect while I was just running around to pick out the various lavender and citrus and eucalyptus scented lotions from the giant pile that Mom had laid out front of the bathroom.

It was then when I realized that Mom found out about the magazine.

When I searched throughout the cabinet, it just wasn't there anymore, and I knew that someone had taken it, probably Mom or Dad, and that just sent me into a panic because what if they jumped to premature conclusions. I guess I just want to maybe tell them about this, but on my own terms once I've figured everything out because right now, I only kinda know but have no clue how to say it.

Anyways, after a few seconds of irrational panic, I realized that Mom and Dad wouldn't be able to trace the magazine back to me, and if anything, they'd probably go to May or just think that it was just some old magazine that made its way into the cabinet a long time ago. But still, finding the magazine and returning it back gave me some other purpose today other than serving all the women of the household and celebrating May's birthday.

Unfortunately, that task started out much harder than I expected to be after finding May and Mira sitting in one of those laid back pool deck chairs, towels on their heads and holding magazines with stacks of magazines next to them.

"How do we look?" May asked, holding up a magazine and posing.

"Like rich, white women from some old sit-com."

"Well then," May said. "Go serve me some tea with one and a quarter sugar and a dash of cream. Hurry up."

"I'm not your servant," I said.

"Well, you said that I was a rich white lady..." May said. "So, yeah, you are my servant. And it's my birthday, so I can do whatever I want, so get me some tea and deal with it."

"Where'd you get all the magazines from?"

"Everywhere," Mira said. "It was May's idea, just to give it a more professional feel rather than some DIY project."

"Well," I said during my first attempt to get the magazines back. "It looks a bit tacky, I'd say. Do rich people that can afford a couple thousand dollar spas really read gossip magazines."

"Duh," May said. "How else do you think they keep up with all the celebrity gossip?"

She flipped a page. "Like this stuff about Brad and Angelina, whoever these two nobodies are."

"How do you not know about Brad and Angelina?" Mom asked. "Everyone knows."

"Well they're probably old and dying," May said. "And they're probably, you know, kicking the bucket at the moment, so who cares?"

"Well, you shouldn't be turning your brain to mush reading all this garbage," I said, trying for a Dad approach to making them hand back the magazines.

But that failed spectacularly. "I have a right to turn my brain into garbage, and it's not like I've got a ton of use for it since, you know, school has ended forever."

"Not forever," Mom said. "Just temporarily."

Even though May didn't say anything, I could literally hear her saying "Totally" in her mind, and I was about to go for my third attempt when May interrupted me, "Aren't you supposed to be finding the eucalyptus lotion?"

"Yeah," I said and decided to bide my time to get my magazine back since if I acted too weirdly or too defensively, they'd know that something was up. So I went into the bathroom and picked out a eucalyptus lotion for May and a couple of other creams, just in case Mom and Mira wanted them and went back to work.

At noon, we actually had lunch for the first time in forever ever since we've cut it out and replaced it with brunch and din-unch or linner (or whatever a dinner-lunch hybrid is called). It was just a simple chicken, beans, and rice mixture, but like all non-soup food right now, it tasted like heaven. Well, maybe not heaven since I'm sure that that would taste more death-like, but like something really good.

Unfortunately, the afternoon was when I was sent to work to paint Mom, Mira, May, and even Grandma's fingernails since I'm the only artistic person in the family sadly. After a long period of deliberations, Mom and Grandma both went with clear polish since it wasn't too flashy while May went with white colored ones. For the first time, it was Mira that was waffling over which polish to choose.

"Well, just test all the colors out on this magazine," May said as she happened to pull out the only magazine that I cared about and flipped to the only pages that I cared about. "Let's paint over this hottie."

"Just get a bit of tissue paper, and I can test it on it," I said, trying to turn May the other direction. "The colors might not show up on the magazine well because of all the colors."

"First of all, I'd like to save all my bathroom paper and not waste it," she said. "And second of all, if you haven't realized it, nail polish is not clear, so who cares what is underneath it."

"I care," I nearly said before realizing how misinterpreted that could be, so instead, I said, "Well, we might burn these magazines in the future, so it's probably not a good idea to spread toxic nail polish over them."

"Why are you being so weird about this?" May said.

"Just choose a color," I said to Mira, probably too aggressively because she gave me that look like I'm involving her in an argument that she has no part of.

"Blue," she said. "The bright one, not the dark ones."

"Great," I said before getting to work. It was only after a couple of seconds that I noticed May, approaching with a sharpie in her hand, probably getting ready to draw devil's horns and a giant stache on that guy's face just because she can.

"What are you doing?" I asked, even though I already knew.

"I'm bored," she said. "And it'd be absolutely hilarious to draw all over his face."

"Just stop touching it," I said, snatching the magazine from her hands.

"What is up with you?" she said. "Since when did you care about a dumb magazine."

"Just do something else and stop touching and drawing on them," I said. "Read a book or something."

"Whatever," May said and crossed her legs. She tried reaching for her phone, but it wasn't there and hasn't been there for months. Still, old habits tend to die hard, and eventually, she got up with a huff and left.

"You know, it's just a magazine," Mira said.

"Just don't touch it," I said because there was no other way to say that it wasn't just a magazine. I don't even know why I'm so attached to it because it scares me, sometimes, the way that I feel, the kinda attraction that feels new and familiar. Maybe I'm keeping it around me to remind myself, so that I don't forget or let my doubts take over me. Whatever the reason, I don't think I'll ever figure out the right way to say it. They'll probably think I'm weird for pining over some paper guy that I'll never meet. Yeah, it's definitely too weird.

After I painted her nails, Mom and Grandma came in and began fanning the air with old cardboard sheets. We even opened the windows, for a brief few minutes before Mom closed them and mopped the inside frame of the window coated with the thinnest layer of tiny ash particles.

And then came dinner.

The scented lotions and aromatic candles, burning to the very bottom of the wax, mixed surprisingly nicely with the food bubbling in the pot next to the fireplace. Even though it was her birthday, we still couldn't avoid eating a bit of soup, though today, Mom and Grandma used up two cans of our nearly gone chicken to create a thick broth. We even chopped up a stalk of green onion that we are growing in the greenbox to add a bit of freshness to the noodles.

Dinner was really nice for everyone except for Dad, since being a vegetarian, he got left with a can of half-warm, limp zucchini and carrot with some noodles, which probably tastes as bad as it sounds. But, you know what, a solid six out of seven people were enjoying dinner, and that's all that matters.

After we had finished drinking all of our soup, Mom brought out the centerpiece, a loaf of brownie, only a couple of inches high and maybe half a foot long, but the chocolatey smell wafted through the air and even though we've eaten more today than we have in the past few days, everyone's mouths were wafting. Mom let it sit somewhat close to the fireplace, so that the chocolate chips would melt and ooze out with every bite.

"How—" May said, uncharacteristically stuttering. "Where'd you get the brownie mix from? I thought we ran out."

"We had a little bit left," Mom said. "And your father and I decided to stash it away for a special day, like today."

"Well, Mom. Do you also have the keys to a ferrari stashed away?"

"Very funny," Mom said and grabbed the slightly smoky but warm brownie cake with gloves. May tried to grab a chunk of the cake, but Mom blocked her and picked up a candle, lighting it and placing it on top of the cupcake.

"Can we hurry up and get to the cake eating part?" May asked.

"Not before we sing."

"I don't need a song."

"Well, I need one," Dad said and started clapping his hands in a rhythm. "One. Two. Three."

And then our terrible, off-pitch singing began. One miracle about Mom and Dad is that they haven't figured out how to sing with their own beat, their hand clapping completely asynchronous to their singing. And then, after we finished "Happy Birthday," Mom decided to do a rendition in Chinese to bring Grandma and Grandpa in, with Dad filming and mumbling along while I struggled to remember exactly how to sing it.

"It's time to make a wish," Mom said.

I could almost hear the sounds of "ferrari" being chanted in May's mind as she blew on the long candle on the cake. It was a weak blow and the candle flickered back to life.

"It seems like the man in the sky doesn't want you to get a ferrari," I said.

"I wasn't wishing for one anyways," she said, but you could see everyone thinking, "Totally."

This second try, she managed to do it, and Mom removed the candle before cutting a small slice of brownie and serving it to May. "So what was your sweet fifteen wish?"

"It's sweet sixteen," May said. "Only Spanish people do sweet fifteens."

"I know," Mom said. "I just thought it'd be a good idea to celebrate it a bit early."

"You think I'm going to be dead before sixteen," May said. "And that this birthday is like one of those cancer charity things for kids that are about to die."

"That's not what I mean—"

"Then we've always got next year," May said. "So let's just keep today what it is supposed to be. A boring, nothing special fifteenth birthday. It's not my sweet sixteen. It's just fifteen, so don't call it that."

"Okay," Mom said, though she was a bit confused and flustered. I was kinda confused too because sixteen didn't seem very exciting. I mean mine was just like any other birthday, just renting a cheap movie to watch, eating some pizza and cake, before working on homework since that's what I get for being born in January in the school year.

But I kinda get May too. I know she's trying to change for the apocalypse, raiding homes and basically stealing from people that aren't there, and maybe she's changing a little too fast, but I wonder if that's all just an act. Well, maybe not an act, but just a way of dealing with the change around her by changing faster, and that trivial stuff, like sweet sixteens or fancy cars, is her hanging onto normalcy that's still here around us.

We didn't talk much beyond some very light conversation, as we nibbled our brownies, savoring the last bit of chocolate that we may ever eat, unless Mom has some more stashed away. The sun was setting, and we all knew it was time for Mira to leave, but as soon as she got up, she stopped and looked at her hands.

"I just realized," Mira said, looking down at her nails. "The others, they might know or find out that—"

"I'll go get the nail polish remover," I said and disappeared into the bathroom to grab a lavender bottle that smelled faintly like artificial fragrance along with some tissue paper. Swishing the polish remover on the tissue, I walked into the bedroom, where Mira sat, staring at her hands.

"Do you think May's right?" she asked. "Not about the sweet fifteen or sixteen thing, but about people."

"I mean, I don't know," I said as I handed her the soaked tissue paper as she scrubbed the polish from her fingers.

"When we argued about it last time, I thought she was wrong about this, about me," Mira said. "But I'm starting to think she's right. I'm becoming more like Mom and Dad, more scared about people and about interaction and community. She was right that I was reaching for my gun that other day when we saw that lady. I didn't even think about it, and just made a judgement call based on nothing."

"I mean, people are changing, you know."

"Yeah," Mira said. "But I want to be less scared about people. How else are we going to go back to normal if we're all pointing guns at each other?"

"You think things are going back to before?"

"Not before, but something like before," she said. "Just a normal future where we fight about stupid things like movie nights or magazines."

My heart leapt because I knew what she was trying to do and trying to shift the conversation to the magazine, which is exactly what happened.

"I know that the magazine was more than just nothing," Mira said. "Sometimes, you're bad at lying."

I didn't know what she was saying or what she was insinuating. It's situations like this that I wish I could just disappear off the face of the world, drifting under the waves for a couple of hours or days until the whole situation is over, so that I can pop back into existence when everything is better. I knew that I couldn't lie my way around the truth because Mira knows that something is off, and she'll know that I'm lying, so I went with the half-truth.

"I just have a hard time with letting go of old things," I said. "I'm, like, a compulsive hoarder."

Sometimes, that does feel like the full truth, with the magazine and the guys and all the kissing in make-believe meadows in my mind. There are moments where I wish that I could just let go of this feeling, and there are moments where I believe, sometimes for just a flicker of a moment and other times for a couple of hours, that what I'm feeling is something else, like hoarding. Maybe I can box it away, like old mason jars and dust-stained toys, until I find the courage to throw it away.

But other times, this feeling flips, where I wish that I had the courage to speak up and the courage to say that what I'm feeling is right and real and it's not just a figment of my imagination gone wild because of my need to feel different. Some moments, I can even imagine being in a relationship. Well, not really a relationship, but more like an idea of a relationship, like the idea of having someone that you can actually confess to beyond just scribbling words to myself.

I'll actually take the half-truth back. This is actually a full-truth, just in two different ways that feel like half-truths when combined together.

Mira stood up and was just about to leave the room when she said, "I've got to go now, but you know, there's a whole world of non-magazine people out there."

I almost scoffed and gave a May-like response, "What world?" But instead, I just nodded, and Mira said goodbye and left.

I guess the reason that I said that was partially because the world around us is crumbling away, one ash storm at a time until we're all buried under a thick layer of volcanic dust, like the people that were trapped in Pompeii. With Mom and Dad's paranoid and everyone killing each other for just little cans of food, beyond my mandated trips to the rivers and the glances of the streets and outside when Charles visits, it's like my world has shrunken more from before. And once winter comes with snow and bitter cold, these four walls around me will be my whole universe. Like all of my hopes and dreams will live and die between brown-painted walls and ash-stained windows.

But I think another reason is that I don't feel like there's a world for me out there, even if everything returns back to normal. Charles had got me thinking about what my ideal partner would be like, but that mostly has me thinking about what that guy's ideal partner would be like, if he was even interested in guys. He'd probably choose someone just as attractive as he is, someone cool, confident, funny, charming, and just perfect. I know I shouldn't be thinking so hard because this is all just a fantasy, and that no self-respecting twenty-some year old would ever get into a relationship with someone whose 17th birthday is a solid 4 months away since that'd violate a ton of laws. But still, even when I'm a twenty-something year old, I just can't see myself with anyone like him.

That's probably the one thing that I'm sure of.