Rocks and Butterflies

I heard the bombs.

Ashes, ashes, like in ‘Ring Around The Rosie’.

I checked my phone.

Several news alerts, but I had missed them all.

THE END OF THE WORLD - IS IT CLOSER THAN WE THOUGHT?

I don’t know, is it?

I open my messages. Sixteen voicemails, twenty missed calls, and thirty-two messages. This is the most I’ve ever gotten. Like, ever.

I open the voicemail from my mom first.

“Sweetie, I hope you’re okay! Dad’s here with Benny, and Angela’s with Grandma. I know you were sleeping, and we should’ve woken you up, but I’m coming to get you now. Did you hear the bombs? Surely not, because you’ve slept through hurricanes before, ha. Stay safe, and I should be seeing you in about an hour, unless you drive the golf cart or something to the airport, where we all are. Sorry for leaving you. Love you.”

That voicemail was at 2:56 am, and now it’s 6:17 am.

I guess I had slept through some of the bombs.

Bombs?

We live in Florida, not Iran or Afghanistan or somewhere in the Middle East (no offense, world leaders).

So why the actual fuck are there bombs here?

I’m only a kid…

For all of my life I’ve been the bigger person, but now, all I want is my mom. My dad. Hell, even Benny or Angela. I just want to be held.

Tears stream down my face.

I don’t even bother holding them in.

It feels like all seventeen years of pent-up tears came flooding down, and I was finally letting them.

But now is not the time to cry.

I’m alone, I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.

I’m only a kid.

I washed my face, turning on the lights in the bathroom. They illuminated the gray smudges under my eyes.

How had I gone to sleep last night?

Everything from the night before was clouding up in my mind.

I put on a crop-top, some shorts that I’d been waiting to wear - because in a crisis, it’s always good to be dressed appropriately - and my tattered black Converse. I wanted to see what, if anything, was left of my city.

I pulled my hair into a quick braid and opened my front door, holding my breath a little.

I don’t know what I was expecting.

Maybe I was expecting it to look like it does after a hurricane, or a fire, or a flood, or some other natural disaster.

I could smell smoke in the air. Not the cigarette smoke that you could smell if you were close enough to the liquor store, and not the fire smoke if somebody was having a bonfire. No, this was the kind of smoke that crept into your skin, easing its way into your nose.

This is the type of smoke you don’t forget anytime soon.

I stood on my front porch for a while, almost forgetting to close the door.

My neighborhood wasn’t too fancy, but we weren’t poor. All the houses were fairly modern, and we were considered upper middle class. The Lee’s house had a tree that had been on fire, you could tell by the way it was scorched in an unnatural way.

Our house was untouched, except for a couple of burning leaves dotting our gutters. The same was for the rest of our neighborhood.

I didn’t even want to see the houses that had been causing the glowing orange in the distance.

What a great way to start the day!

I decided to walk around the city, mapping out where I was, and where I could possibly go to reach the airport. The golf cart was still an option, but I'm pretty sure it was low on fuel, so for now I'd go on foot.

I walked out of my neighborhood and around where my school is. Suddenly, I heard the snap of a tree branch, and shoes hitting the ground hard. Running.

My heart raced, and my breathing became more shallow.

I must've not been the only one who was sleeping, who, in the middle of a bomb attack or whatever this was, was not woken up by their parents.

"Is that Mabel? Mabel Grace?"

My body froze. I turned around, and saw a figure coming towards me.

Oh shit. Oh no, no, no. This is bad.

I should run.

I should fight - fight or flight, you know?

"What do you want?" I said, my voice a little raspy.

I looked more closely at him.

Suddenly, it made sense.

This was Lucas. Lucas Greene.

He looked different. Well, I mean, the world had kinda ended a little bit, I guess, so, maybe he would look a little different.

"Hi," I said, breaking the awkward silence. I feel like if this wasn't a life-death situation, maybe it wouldn't be as awkward.

"Hey," he said, "Have you seen any others out so far?"

"No, I haven't. Have you?"

"Nah. I was just checking around."

"Same here. Did your family kinda leave you too, or am I just going to have very big feelings of invalidation for the rest of my life?"

"Uh, no, I actually don't really know what happened. My phone died three days ago. I have, like, severe ADHD, so I actually can't physically remind myself to charge it. Ah, sorry, that was weird."

"Weird?"

"Whatever. So, uh, Mabel, do you have any clue on what the hell happened?"

"No, you?"

"Nada."

I looked at him, really looked at him, and felt a little flap of butterfly wings in my stomach. I made a disgusted face and cleared my throat.

"So, uh, what do you want to do?"

"Like, with me?"

"Well, assuming that we're the only ones here..."

"Greene, what are you trying to ask me to do?"

"Let's have fun,"

"Uh, Lucas, if I'm gonna die, I'm fine with dying a virgin..."

"Oh, God, Mabel, sorry, I meant like, play on a playground or something. Have real fun,"

Lucas looked at me with this sparkle in his eyes. Besides, I couldn't resist a playground.

"Definitely. Elementary school?" I asked him.

"Totally!"

We walked a little bit, keeping our eyes prone to any others, and then we reached elementary school.

The slide had a burn spot in it, and the air still smelled like that smoke that was embedding itself in my senses forever.

We played on the things that were safe to play on, and then I looked at Lucas. Really looked at him.

"Lucas, do you think that it's just us?" I asked him, my legs swaying on the swings.

"I'd like to believe that there's others out there somewhere, but I think that the truth is yeah, it's just us." He said, moving side to side on his swing, becoming closer to me with every movement.

He swung too hard, and hit me with his swing. I waited for him to say sorry, and then he smirked at me.

"Oh, it's like that, is it?" I asked playfully. He laughed a little, and I felt something again. It felt good to laugh, even if we were literally at the end of the world.

We swayed back and forth to the music playing around us. Silence, but it was still music to my ears.

After a little bit of silent swaying, the situation's weight finally dawned on me.

I stopped swinging, my feet hitting the mulch with a crunch.

"Lucas, it's literally just us. How the hell are we gonna survive?"

Lucas looked at me, his brown eyes glistening in the sunlight of the day.

"I don't know." He said. My heart slowed down, beating to the rhythm of my shallow breaths.

"We'll stick together, though, right?" I asked him, holding out my fist for a fist bump.

"Yeah," he said, bumping my fist with his. It sent sparks through my body.

I thought of a song that would play over and over on my playlist, highlighting itself.

My lips,

Your lips,

Apocalypse

The butterflies growing in my stomach were swarming now, thinking about Lucas and that song.

Lucas and I had known each other for years, but only ever been comfortable around each other. Not friends, but not strangers, either.

We decided to walk around for a little bit, our goal being to prepare. Who knows how long we could be by ourselves.

I remembered what my mom said in her voicemail. At the airport.

I looked in the direction of the airport, and saw nothing but flames dying down.

My heart lurched, and I felt sick.

I stopped in my tracks, and Lucas turned and looked at me.

"Mabel? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied.

"No, you're not." He said.

God, this boy could see me. And I loved it.

He walked towards me, and took my hand in his. It sent shivers down my arms.

I looked down at our hands together, and then he took his hand away and shoved it in his pocket, his cheeks becoming rosy.

I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

For a second, it was only me and him. No fires. No ending world. Just us.

Your lips,

My lips,

Apocalypse

The song rang through my head, seeping into my eyes, my ears, my nose.

It replaced the smoke for a second.

He put his hand out of his pocket, swaying it in front of me. I locked his pinkie with mine.

It was a start.

I was surprised by how far we had walked, our pinkies intertwined. We reached the Walmart Super-Center in the heart of our city, and walked inside, the doors opening for only us.

"Mabel?" Lucas said, pulling his pinkie away from mine. Electricity shocked me again.

"Yeah?" I replied, and I could feel my face becoming a little hot.

"I... I just wanted to say that you look really pretty, considering that the world is ending and all that," he blurted out. I smiled, despite myself.

"You do too," I said to Lucas. He really did. He looked lovely, considering that the world was ending. Well, now that I'm here with him, he's always looked lovely.

He smiled at me, and then my face went to flames. Good flames.

I grabbed a cart, the butterflies awaking in my stomach, and then we took as much stuff as we needed, including two bikes, because the golf cart wouldn't get us anywhere anytime soon.

I suddenly thought of my mom, my dad, Benny, with all ten years of energy exploding behind his glasses, and Angela, even if she was just an annoying thirteen-year-old. We've all been there. What if they didn't make it out safely? I hadn't looked at any messages, or any missed calls, or any voicemails besides Mom's. What if last night was the last time I would ever see them?

I brushed away the thoughts, turning my focus to the candy aisle, which I was in right now.

"Okay, Lucas, what should we get? I've already got the Cheezits and Eggo Waffles and Tostitos, with the good salsa, because we don't have to pay, right? Or should we leave a note saying that we would pay them back later?" I asked him, as he looked at me like I was a little mad.

"Uh, Mabel, we need soup, non-perishables, not candy and Cheezits," he said. I made a pout-pout face, which made his nose go bright red, like Rudolph, and then he looked away, mumbling something about the sun.

"Can I still get some of it, just for pleasure?" I asked him.

"Look, if you want to, you definitely can." He replied.

"Lucas, my dear, if the world's ending, I'd like to eat some good food while I'm at it,"

"Okay, fine. But hey, get some Doritos like a sane person, OK?"

"Of course,"

Lucas laughed, which made me laugh, which made the laughter echo throughout the entire store, ringing in the air, letting us know that we weren't alone. We weren't. We had each other.

Once we got out of Walmart, I hooked a trailer that we had gotten to the back of Lucas' bike, and one to mine, filling them with our food. I told him I wanted to go to the airport, to see what, if anything, was left behind. He suggested tomorrow. I agreed, because it had been quite a day, and the sun was starting to set.

We rode our bikes to my house, which had the most space, and the possibly-working golf cart.

I had forgotten about the exhilaration of riding a bike. The wind in my hair, my shirt pillowing out. Something about it made me feel like I was flying.

Once we reached my house, I took a deep breath. All I needed was sleep now, and tomorrow would be a day in itself.

We organized everything, and then pulled out some sleeping bags and set them up in my living room.

It was dark outside now, and the sound of fresh rain hitting the asphalt flooded my brain.

The rain came from God, who knew that there'd been too many fires for one little day.

Too many fires.

I opened my phone when I found it, discarded on the counter where I left it this morning, and checked my messages. All from Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Angela.

I read them all. They all were a variation of the same thing:

I'm sorry. I love you. We'll get you, or you can come. We're sorry. We love you.

I felt a tear come rushing down my face, carving canyons in between my freckles.

Lucas walked towards me, and I turned to him.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm being such a baby," I started to say, but he cut me off, enveloping me into a hug. He put his arms around me like they were meant to be there, and I sighed into his shoulders.

We stayed like that for a while, and then got ready for bed.

I sat down on my sleeping bag, rubbing my hands along my legs that I had just shaved. Lucas looked at me, with those chestnut brown eyes. God, I loved his eyes.

He came up to me, and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, smiling a little. My heart burst.

"Night, Lucas," I said to him before I fell asleep.

"Night, Mabel," He said.

I went to bed, dreaming of Lucas Greene.

I woke up to the smell of Eggo Waffles dancing through the air.

Lucas had made them, and I saw him as I walked groggily into the kitchen.

"Morning, Mabel," he said, pouring syrup over the waffles.

"Morning, Lucas," I said, yawning.

He handed me a waffle, which I gladly accepted. It was a little awkward, considering what happened last night.

My hair was messy, and I grabbed a pink hairbrush that I had gotten at Walmart to calm the mane.

After eating breakfast, and getting ready for the day, all while making small talk, we set out on our bikes to see the airport.

The smoky smell still lingered, but an earthier scent, the one of rain, overpowered it.

I didn't feel the same way I felt yesterday when I rode the bike. It still felt like flying, but a weight was tormenting the butterflies in my stomach.

We reached the airport in about twenty minutes.

Terminal A and B were halfway there, and I couldn't see anything else. No belongings left behind in a hurry; nothing.

I slowly got off of my bike, kicking down the kickstand. I wonder what it would be like if humans had a kickstand somewhere in them, like something to help them stand up when all they possibly could do was fall.

Lucas got off of his, and then put his near mine.

The weight was like a rock, but the butterflies somehow escaped. Hope.

Lucas took my hand, squeezing it a little. They squirmed around again, a feeling that I was getting used to.

Thoughts swirled through my head, but they all came to a halt when Lucas looked at me. He took his hand out of mine and brought his hand up, near my face. I could see the hesitation in him, so I smiled, despite everything.

He took my face in his hands, and kissed me.

The butterflies escaped my stomach and flew all around us, leaving the rocks to vanish entirely.

The song lyrics were blasting all around me.

My lips,

Your lips,

Apocalypse

"Did you feel the butterflies?" I asked Lucas.

"Yeah, I felt the butterflies."