What Comes After

Even though Dad said that it would take only two hours, it ended up taking probably three hours or more, and by the time we had finished, it was noon, and we were all exhausted. My arms were on fire, and I wished that I had some ice or some cold water to dunk them in. Even right now, they still hurt a bunch, but a lot less than before, and even just holding the pencil to write this entry, I can feel my arm muscles tensing up in pain. God, tomorrow is going to be a nightmare.

Anyways, May and I spent the afternoon lounging on the couch while Mira disappeared somewhere into the house, presumably into her room. Mom and Dad said that we weren't allowed to go back into our rooms because they don't want much heat escaping the living room, but they weren't here. And sometime in the early afternoon, Mira left the house with a piece of paper scrunched in her hand.

"Where are you going?" May asked.

"To do something," Mira said. "Maybe you should try doing that instead of laying down and doing nothing."

"I can relax. I deserve it," May said before sarcastically adding. "Go on and save the world. You're a freaking superhero."

Mira ignored her and the door slammed close. And then, we resumed laying down on the couch for another five minutes before May sat up and suddenly said, "Thank god Mira's out of the house. She can be so nosy sometimes, and it's better not to risk it, given her whole savior thing going on."

"Risk what?"

"I'm scoping one of the houses," May said. "I already found one on the hike to the creek. It's one-hundred percent empty, and there's a low enough window that I can step into it pretty easily."

"Mom and Dad will be back soon," I replied. "It's too risky."

"Mom and Dad aren't going to be back for a long time. They're up in the woods chopping down trees all day, like they said, and plus, I'll only be gone for, like, ten or fifteen minutes, so if they come back, just say that I'm in the bathroom or something," she said before shrugging. "I don't know. You'll make up a good excuse."

As she stood up and went towards the kitchen, I asked, "Where are you going to store your finds?"

"Toy chest in our room. No one checks there, and no one's going into our room anyways," she said, emerging from the kitchen with a thick pair of gloves and a rubber band as she tied her hair up.

"You're actually doing this?"

"Yeah," she said, not in the sad or resentful way but curtly like in a "no duh" way. "Unlike Mira, I'm actually going to do something."

She put on a mask and laced up her boots as I stood up. "You better not get hurt or die. Mom will kill me"

"I've got perfect vision," she said. "I'll be fine, so stop making me paranoid."

"You better be home soon," I said.

"Geez. Stop being so paranoid."

"I can't help it."

"You know it's alright to get in trouble."

"Then why don't you tell Dad the truth about that axe that I just miraculously found," I said, standing in front of the doorway as she stepped out of the door.

"Not that kind of trouble," she said, calling back. "Truth trouble is always bad."

And then she disappeared down the street, I went back to sitting on the couch for a couple of moments before deciding to go to our room just because the living room felt so exposed and because Grandma and Grandpa were hanging out there, and I wanted some real privacy. Last night, I barely got any sleep, with Dad's snoring reverberating throughout the living room and the bright glow of the fireplace at the edge of my vision bothering me, as everyone's breaths went in and out in an uncomfortable symphony.

And on my old desk with a stick shaped lamp that doesn't work anymore, there was Leon's letter opened. I nearly went over there and picked up the letter and read it all before feeling guilty.

It felt like a violation of privacy, and me reading the letter would be like her reading my diary. I'd hate that, maybe even burn the diary if she found out everything that I'm thinking of and all the secrets lining its pages. But I wanted to know because I had no idea what she was doing, and she stormed out of the house so suddenly that I couldn't stop her or ask, and I had a feeling that the letter had answers.

So I picked up the letter and read it all, and then, I guess on impulse I copied down the whole letter on another sheet of paper. I don't know why I did that since that was a step beyond just violating privacy, but I think it was because at that moment, I was just so annoyed by Mira and May going around and doing secret activities that I wanted my own secret too, even as a bunch of them are literally threatening to bury me right now. I kinda regret copying the letter down, but I guess, if Mira ever loses her original letter, I'll have a copy.

But that'll involve revealing this secret. So maybe I'll keep it to myself forever and attach it at the end of this entry because this diary is the only place where no one looks, and even if someone took a peek, they'd be inundated with so many other things that I haven't told anyone, that this letter will fade into the distance.

After doing that, I prepared Charles' food bag in relative ease compared to what's coming up ahead. Grandpa and Grandma were distracted by the fireplace and the warmth and crackling, and I managed to slip a couple of extra cans into the bag because of the food drive stoppage. Now, their whole family is dependent on me, and I can't fail them now. A couple of pessimistic thoughts popped into my head at that exact moment, chief of them being whether he and his family are still alive, but I pushed them down because they just had to be alive. I know he lived in a bit of an old house, but there's no way that it collapsed. Things like that just can't happen, you know. They can't.

I managed to get Charles' bag stored in a nice, convenient location in a closet full of junk that no one looks in before clicking on the phones and having the time pop up, a bright 3:17. I didn't check the time before, but I'm pretty sure that May left a long time before three, and I had no clue where she was or if she was dying and needed help or if she had found a good bounty. I mentally gave myself until 4:30 before I would go and search for her myself, and until then, I hoped that Mom and Dad wouldn't come home.

In the meantime, I curled up in my bed, probably for the last time, and grabbed my book that I had stored in the back of the bathroom cabinet, now vaguely smelling like the tea and lavender soap we store there and opened it up and began to read. About sixty-pages in, I stopped and placed a bookmark there.

And I guess the reason that I stopped is because I guess it's just weird how the main character is so confident in his desires. Yeah, he's not really told his parents or his friends or even the guy he's crushing on, but he knows that he likes that guy, and he's sure that that's what he wants, even if he hasn't told anyone yet. And I don't know because for me, sometimes I'm confident and I know that I'm interested in other guys, but other times, I'm not really confident because I haven't ever been in a relationship yet, so I don't know if everything's true, or whether this is a phase that people go through. Maybe I'm the weird one because I'm not confident in what I want. Sometimes, I wish that I could just make mistakes that I might regret later without that constant hammering fear, but now's not the time for it.

But there never seems to be enough time.

But I ended up continuing it, and just as I was about to get to the part where they go on their first date and have their first kiss, there was a knock on the window, and I slammed my book shut. It was May, holding a bag of something and telling me to open the backdoor, and thank goodness Dad didn't decide to clean these ash-stained windows because I would've gotten exposed by May.

I unlocked the backdoor and she barged in before looking around quickly. "Mom and Dad aren't home, right?"

I shook my head. "What took you so long? You were gone forever."

"I wasn't gone that long," she said as we walked towards our room. "Maybe like thirty minutes or something."

"Definitely more than thirty minutes, and you still haven't answered my question: what took you so long?"

"Geez, be patient," May said and closed the door behind me and opened up her backpack. There was a pair of pants in there, a ball of yarn and collection of sharpies, a travel sized bottle of eucalyptus shampoo, some mason jars, flower patterned pillow covers, a metal water bottle, an earring that probably had a fake diamond on it, four blue and purple ski socks, five skinny batteries and one fat one, and a handful of dried beans. "What's up with those?"

She shrugged. "I just found it in the food pantry. The raiders must've torn the bag and missed some."

"And this is all you found?"

"Well, you know if I could actually break into one of those houses that haven't been broken into, instead of picking up the leftovers, I could go for the whole thing," May said. "But you get what you get, and the whole house was picked dry. These were the most valuable things that I could find. There were some other things, like tons of toothbrushes and underwear, but there's no way that we're going to be using those"

"That's a whole lot of risk for getting basically nothing."

"Well, it's a start," she said. "I wanted to go into the attic, but I couldn't reach the pulldown. If Mom and Dad actually did something and came there, I could've had a chance to see what's up there because tons of people hide random stuff there."

"Well Mom and Dad aren't going to come," I replied.

"Sucks for them. And us," she said, turning away before turning back. "And why are you complaining? What have you been doing?"

"Nothing," I said, but that sounded a bit too quick and too desperate, and May's eyes narrowed as she looked at me suspiciously, so I added, "Absolutely nothing. I've just seen so lazy and bad while you've been so cool and great."

"Thank you, thank you," she said, even though she knew I was being sarcastic. "I know I'm too cool for the world."

"Totally," I said, and then, she left the room, and I collapsed on the bed, my heart beating like crazy, as I fished underneath the bed for the book that I hastily shoved there when May was moving from the window to the backdoor, and I moved it back to the back of the bathroom cabinet to rest again.

May ended up taking a shower, and I took a shower after her. Well, it really wasn't a shower, but more like using a lukewarm wet towel to wipe myself off along with some soap. We weren't really sure if the shower drain worked without power or whether it'd get clogged, so May set up two buckets. One for the clean water and the other for the soapy water when we wrung out the washcloth. It was terrible and uncomfortable and now the only things that I miss more than electricity and the internet are hot showers.

Mom and Dad eventually came back around the same time that May and I were making dinner. May was sick and tired of eating soup, and we worked pretty hard today, so she decided to do an impromptu bean and chips night. She mostly did the work while I watched the beans slowly boil next to the fireplace and got stuff out of the cabinet for her: some canned diced tomatoes, three bags of Doritos, our last bottle of sour cream and onion pringles, and some dried cilantro.

"What are you making?" Dad asked.

"Nachos," May said.

"That's too much food," Dad said. "Too many calories in there."

"Everyone probably burned, like, three times as many calories compared to what's here," May replied defensively. "If you want soup today, be my guest."

Dad sighed, and Mom put her hand on his shoulder. "I think we might need to take over counting the pantry from you two. Both of you have done a great job, but now, we need to ration our food more carefully, and I noticed that you two haven't updated the inventory since early June. It might be better for your father and I to handle the food situation now."

"I did something nice for you guys, and this is what I get," May said. "Less and less food."

"We'll update the inventory," I said, and May looked at me weirdly. "Every day like you want. And you guys have so much on your plate."

And then Mom and Dad looked at me weirdly and pretty soon, everyone was looking at me weirdly. I probably shouldn't have panicked like that because that just made me look suspicious, but at the same time, if Mom and Dad took over the inventory, I'd actually be screwed. There's no way that I'll be able to sneak food past them ever again, especially if everything is documented in pen and I can't just erase and rewrite values.

"Okay," Mom said. "Tomorrow, both of you will be counting everything in the pantry to figure out exactly how much we have right now, and your father and I will help plan out the meals."

I nodded. It was a partial win for me, but who knows for how long? I can only hope that it's long enough. Mom then looked around. "Where's Mira?"

I shrugged, and May said, "Ran off to save the world."

"I'm serious," Mom said. "Did she go shower?"

"And I'm serious," May said. "She literally left. I have no clue where she went."