When the World Ends

Downtown

We talked a lot.

I mean, I suppose we had to. We were the only company to each other, except for the short time spent with Ollie, and until the boy with the gray eyes came along. So, we talked a lot, and many times, our conversations seemed to have deeper meanings that I never seemed to understand or realize. Until now.

One day, as we were walking through an ash-covered city, we noticed that the sky was turning even grayer than usual. The shapes of clouds could be seen through the ash, and so we quickly went to find shelter.

This day took place not too long after the world had ended, but not too close to when it had. I wish I could recall the amount of time, but time had stopped for us the day the teacher's house collapsed.

We crouch together in the closet of a four-story building. It used to be the workplace of office-type jobs, it seems, but not anymore. The fourth floor no longer exists, and as an effect of that, the third floor has no roof. The second floor, however, seems fairly solid, and so we hover in the closet of a first-floor office, to ensure our safety. We're in the closet to avoid the rain pelting in from the office's all-glass windows, in case of breakage; we chose the one remaining office with unbroken glass, taking shelter in the closet to double our distance from its windows.

   We sit in silence for awhile, until the soft tap tap tap of pelting rain droplets break the quiet atmosphere. It's such a soothing sound, even now. It's sad that such a soothing thing has become so deadly.

The rhythmic noise of the rain continues, and I'm drawn into sleep.

Equality.

She speaks of that a lot that day, as the rain continues, now at a much harder pace than before. The rain will continue all day, and we will both doze off and on. But mostly, we talk.

Equality, she explains, can never be fully reached if people don't listen to the opposing side. For example, the gender equality--the feminist movement that was occurring around the time the world ended. Many women would spout about how they needed change, which was mostly the case in many middle-eastern countries. But in ours, the men needed equality, too. The mindset Americans were given have portrayed women as sexual objects, as well as vulnerable and easy to obtain. It has also portrayed all men as having to be society's version of "manly".

She wished she could have changed what the media had done. She'd hoped she'd be able to stop the advertising that always had a sexual component, or the body standards that drove people to buy the parts they felt they lacked. She'd wanted to stop all of that when she'd been older, but now, it was all gone.

I wonder, she asks, if that's a good thing? Keane, do you think everybody is equal now?

I don't know, I admit. Equality is a mindset. I have always viewed everyone as equal. You told me, I add, that at school, the "popular people" were only so in the minds of others. In reality, they really weren't, until you were pushed to see them that way. So, technically, nobody is out of my league.

She nods her head, and soon she's asleep again. I frown at her not having noticed that my last statement was directed at her.

If nobody is "out of my league", that means I could have this wonderful person, who does all of these beautiful things at the end of the world, right?

She could love me back, right?

When I open my eyes, the noise of the rain has stopped. I glance over at her, and I see that she's still sleeping peacefully. I realize that I haven't seen her sleep peacefully in awhile.