World Building of Mearth & of Earth

OTHERBORN: Preview Chapter: 1

EPISODE 1

MADDIE

Our bus seems on the verge of tipping sideways, but it's still on the road.

Sliding about in my seat, I look through the rain-dotted window. So much ash. It floats and twirls in the sky like a bunch of happy little ghosts. Even the floods can't wash it fully clean, this terrible gray that furs everything from cars to generators.

I smack my lips, a bitter taste on them. Will my breakfast stay down?

Maybe I can nap away the nausea before we reach Granite High School. Wicked how the place hasn't crumbled yet. "The Crestville Stone," some call it. Emphasis on "Stone." One of the few things that didn't break like the world.

In the middle of time between what was and what's coming, I wonder if speed is the only thing separating the present from the future. Over my seat paper planes soar, the bus driver yelling at the dumb boys tossing them.

I rest my head on the window's glass and keep my attention on the outside, the blurs—houses—mailboxes—telephone poles—all, of course, furred with ash—and farther off, the treeless land gnarled and inverted. The Crust, our planet's outermost layer, is a scab someone has picked at. Maybe that someone was us. Humans. We love to pick and dig at wounds until they bleed. Earth's surface will disintegrate soon, we're told. What a thing for us high schoolers to hear. We've barely started living our lives.

The bus stops and I follow the jostling current of my peers toward the door.

Boys, girls, and I.

Occasionally I don't feel I belong to a gender. I guess I consider myself enough of a girl, but nobody else seems to. Mom says I should try a T-shirt color other than black once in a while, and Dad says wearing sweatpants to church is a bit lazy. I guess I just have trouble meeting expectations. Funny, just like Mom and Dad do!

I contemplate: What is appropriate apocalypse-wear?

The Crust shudders again, rattling our bus. We grab hold of railings, crouch down close to the floor. Eventually the quaking stops and we sigh and poke up our heads. Earth has been simmering, stirring, for three or four years now. There's nowhere to go, or folks would have relocated. It's like this everywhere, the collapsing of huge swaths of land, skyscrapers toppling like dominoes, ice fields churning to slush, sink holes deepening, and areas along fault lines suddenly rippling high and jagged in unexpected directions.

Our save-the-earth homework could be a joke at this point. What's left to save?

I know it's nasty of me to think that. I'm sorry, Mother Earth. Maybe we'll save you, maybe yet.

* * *

On the way to my locker, I feel a sting in my shin. I hiss a curse and bend to massage my leg as Jayden, who kicked me, dances about, hooting like an owl.

"Wakey-wakey!" he shrieks.

I call him a malformed gremlin, a janitor tells me to "Be nice, Maddie!" and I silently fume, clacking at the dial of my padlock before opening my locker to an avalanche of papers.

Jayden's my partner, or, as I'd much rather label him, my desk potato in crime. We feud often. It's likely my fault for being irritable, or his for being lazy. Maybe we'll never know which for sure. In the basement we haul geographic models up the steps for Ms. Serebrin's class. Jayden and I play tag in the vast, pillared cellar for a bit. We leave half the models. We'll finish our job later.

"Welcome to the Procrastinators Club," he says.

"Don't welcome me to your degenerate cliques," I say. "We will complete our tasks in order. No procrastination."