What Comes After | ✔️

Chapter 2

May 19

I woke up at five because I couldn't sleep. The damage was worse than everyone thought. By the time the tides had retreated, millions of people were missing with casualty estimates rising up to the hundreds of thousands. I felt like I should've been more sad or shocked or just felt something about this, but I just couldn't. It's like I still can't believe that this has happened to us.

Mom managed to get a call with her family back in Taiwan. They're a bit shaken, but they're all right. They lived high enough above sea level to avoid the worst of the tides, but who knows how bad it's going to get? Dad came back in the middle of the night pretty shaken up from what I've heard from Mira. I don't think they found anyone alive. He also tried calling his parents. I think he's worried. They live in Mumbai, which is right next to the sea. I hope they're alright.

No one knew what was happening with school. The power kept going on and off, and there was no new information from the school. "Do you think we're going to school?" May asked.

"Maybe," I said. "I don't know."

"We're going to school," Mira said and entered the dining room. "I'll drop you two off at your high school."

"Is school even open?" I asked. "It might be closed because they'll be using it for holding all the injured people from yesterday."

"Maybe," Mira said. "I don't know. I think we should go anyway, just to see if they have any additional information. The internet is down right now, and the radio is mostly focused on the national news, so it'll be better just to see what the situation is like. It's what Mom and Dad would want."

"What are they doing anyways?" May asked.

"They're sleeping," Mira said. "Dad came back late at night from the beach. He wouldn't talk to me about it, but it's bad."

May looked a bit shocked, and I pushed the cereal around in my bowl. There was this stifling, awkward silence that blanketed the room. Mira looked down at May. "Are you okay? Did— Did you know—"

"I'm fine," May blurted out. "I'm fine. Let's hurry up and go to school. I don't want to ruin my attendance record."

Mira looked at her strangely and opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but then kept it to herself.

Mira drove me and May to school. We didn't talk much. The radio kept droning on and on about the tides and the Moon and the deaths. She turned off the radio and when we reached a curb, took the long way around to school to avoid the houses close to the beach, but I could already imagine the destruction.

School wasn't any better. The principal was out there directing the students to get off at an alternate drop-off lane since the main one was occupied by ambulances, sirens blaring as people in gurneys were carted off into the main gym, now transformed into a makeshift hospital with white tarps and rows of emergency workers clad in scrubs. He also said that school was still open, which made sense because it was on dry ground and was something normal and stable, so Mira drove around and dropped us off somewhere a little less grim even though the sirens still echoed throughout the air.

In my classes, there were pockets of students that were missing. I wasn't sure if they decided to skip school today or if they got, you know, swept away in the tides. There were students in the corner crying, some were just sleeping, burying their heads in their arms. Most of us were just staring at the whiteboard, still in shock of everything that happened, as if it wasn't real. I stared out of the window, watching the flashes of the police cars and ambulances reflect across the glass of the building next to the emergency lane. We all just thought that whatever happened just couldn't have happened.