The End of the World and Other Signs of the End of the World - ONC 2021

Juliet: Attempt #1

I never thought I'd live to see the world end.

I mean, yeah, the polar ice caps were melting and global warming was killing us, and there was this whole mess about super viruses that were resistant to antibiotics, and you think with all that I'd be ready for the world to end, but I wasn't. I'm not.

We can't understand endings, us humans. We don't understand death. We don't understand nothingness.

That lack of understanding doesn't go away when you look death in the face. It gets worse.

On July 31st, my best friend of seventeen years, August Chada, came to my door for the last time. It was 7:25 in the morning. I wasn't awake yet.

He banged on my door for probably five minutes before giving up and throwing rocks at my window. That was what finally woke me up.

I wasn't happy to see Auggie. It was 7:30 in the morning. 

He could tell from my look that I was ready to murder him, but he just grinned and yelled at me to let him in.

I did so begrudgingly, but secretly I was happy to see him. His smile was the sun - bright, cheerful, and probably the only thing I really wanted to see in the morning.

He managed to convince me to get dressed and go wherever with him. I told him I was about to hurt him.

Midsummer, it always felt like my skin was frying on my bones. My mom always insisted I wear three layers of sunscreen, and even though she was at work, the habit still stuck. I could feel each individual layer baking into my pores like an omelet. I pulled my long hair back in a ponytail. It had already started to stick to the back of my neck with sweat.

Auggie was unfazed. His deep brown skin looked like it was glowing in the morning sun, glimmering with sweat and cheap cologne. I'd bought him nicer cologne for his birthday. He said he was saving it for something special.

Normally I'd never notice anything like that about him, but this year something about him had changed. He'd started running, for starters, and he was looking almost good in his muscle tee. 

I pretended I didn't notice this.

"August," I said, as soon as we were out of my house and out of earshot of my doorbell camera, "I am going to murder you. And no one will find your body."

He rolled his eyes. "You'll kill me? You don't even kill houseflies."

"Flies are innocent. You're not." I poked his chest. "Why are we up at this ungodly hour?"

August grinned, showing off his perfectly white teeth. His smile was enough to melt my anger, but I couldn't let him know that. "There's something up with the sky."

"August. It's the sky. There's always something up."

"Ha-ha." He flicked through his phone and showed me a picture. "See? Weird."

There was something weird in the sky, or a thousand little somethings, like stars. They couldn't be stars, though. Something wasn't quite right about them. Their formation was too orderly, to perfect.

Auggie and I got into astronomy when we were kids. We'd met at Kumon, and again at piano practice, and had decided that, as the only two Asian kids in town, we ought to stick together. Both of us had wanted to be astronauts when we were kids. We were still in love with the stars.

Still, even for weird star formations, Auggie knew never to wake me before ten. It was one of the foundational rules of our relationship. I decided he didn't deserve my genuine interest.

I managed to be silent for a whole minute.

"What is it?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.