28
Sarabeth almost skipped to the bathroom, her lips feeling fuzzy and a little raw from Leo’s two days of stubble grazing them. And grazing them. And grazing them …
She passed the Claire’s boutique and Gloria Jean’s Coffees. She flitted past the site of her earlier party-outfit anxiety, Charlie. She hung a left down the hallway where the mall bathrooms were, shining her flashlight down the long corridor. A little creepy, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
Especially after what had just happened. She’d kissed him. Her first kiss, and she’d gone for it. She’d surprised Leo Starnick. She’d kind of surprised herself, too.
She hoped that this side of her wasn’t coming out just because it was the end of the world. She didn’t want her new self to retreat back into its neatly organized shell when all this was over. If all this was ever over …
She used the restroom and stopped on her way out to look at her reflection, shining the flashlight into the mirror so she could see. Her mouth was bright red and a little chafed from kissing. The skin around it looked a little bitten. Her hair was matted down on one side, and her chest was a little flushed. She had never looked better. Okay, yeah, so she definitely had the goofy expression of a crazy person, but a wildly happy crazy person.
She was in love. Wasn’t she? She didn’t have anything to compare it to.
“How messed up am I?” she asked the mirror un-self-consciously. “Who falls in love when they’re surrounded by violence and carnage, weirdo?”
She shrugged. Maybe people did fall in love in dire circumstances. Maybe it was part of what kept the world going. Because even without an alien attack, it wasn’t like the world was normally all puppies and kittens and rainbows. A lot of it sucked, and people fell in love amid the wreckage all the time. They laughed and kissed and went to prom. Ha, prom. She was going to prom. It was like she’d finally joined the teenage human race.
Sarabeth’s whole life felt new. She felt new. And not just for being in love. If she could survive this, everything else really didn’t matter.
Even so, she still needed to wash her hands before she returned to Leo. She didn’t want to fight aliens while fighting one of those late-winter colds. The tap ran freezing cold, but she closed her eyes and soaped up her hands, singing the song they’d all sung in the car that morning.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”
And then, she smelled coffee. Really, really good coffee.
It took her a few seconds to remember that the Gloria Jean’s down the hall was not brewing today. Nothing was brewing today.
She opened her eyes, saw the purple aliens’ reflections in the mirror behind her, and screamed.
Have you ever screamed?
Like, really screamed.
Not one of those fake shrieks you do when you see someone you haven’t seen in a long time and feel like you have to make a bigger deal out of it than it is.
Not an “OMG, this roller coaster is so fast and we’re all going to diiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!” scream.
Not a movie scream. In the movies, no one gets a true scream quite right.
Really screaming isn’t something you do on purpose. It’s something you can’t not do. It’s like a giant hand is reaching down your throat and ripping out your entire voice all at once. It burns. And it leaves a mark. The kind that no one knows is there but you.
So, you may think you’ve screamed before. But if you’re lucky, you never have and you never will.