Josin L McQuein - Meridian

It’s where I met myself for the first time, standing as I am now, in front of the mirror. My skin’s still pale, but no longer ashen, now that the Fade no longer block the melanin. Dr. Wolff says my hair is likely to darken, along with my eyes, but I think I may be stuck with white blonde and ice blue. I’ll never know what I should really look like.

Honoria’s book burns against my back, where I stashed it in my waistband.

I sit cross-legged on the floor, in an empty corner where the bed will hide me from view if anyone comes in unannounced, and open the book. This paper is heavier from what filled Tobin’s magazines. It turns slowly, dragging across the facing page. Someone’s sewn a pocket to the inside of the front cover and then stuffed it with folded scraps and pictures. I’m not sure I should risk touching those. The pocket’s aged and is as brittle as the satin covering the book. It might give way.

A card fastened to the first page reads:

Our Wedding

~ Rashid & Trinity ~

May 15th

I turn the page and hit an unexpected obstacle. The words aren’t typed like what we read for class. They’re handwritten in blue ink, so the letters loop and swirl into lines I can barely make out. Everything’s thin and tilted.

Someone—Honoria, I suppose—marked through the word Guest at the top of the page and replaced it with a date.

May 19

Dear Rashid and Trinity, whoever you are.

I’m sorry I took your guestbook, but it was the closest thing I could find to a journal in the salvage pile. We’re past the 15th, anyway, so I guess you didn’t need it. Nothing spoils a wedding like the apocalypse, eh?

Sorry, that was mean.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re together, and still human, and that you found a way to get married, even without the pretty white satin. I’ll take care of it, I promise. And if you somehow end up here, or I end up where you are, I’ll give it back.

Sincerely,

Honoria Jean Whit

I’ve never paid much attention to how something sounds in my head while I read, but it’s Honoria’s voice I hear. She’s younger, unsure of herself, and quick to apologize. I wonder if any of that has survived.

The next entry is on the same page as the first.

Also May 19

Dear Rashid and Trinity,

Sorry to keep bringing you into this, but it’s easier if I can pretend this is one long letter. If I’m writing to people who might still exist, then there’s hope the world’s still working.

I am such a head case.

I’m holed up in the corner, bunched up in a sleeping bag, and writing letters to strangers with their feather wedding pen. This is stupid.

The entry stops there. There are a couple of drawings in the margins of a woman in a long dress and a man in a suit, but no more words for several days.

Loose pages are stuck between the bound ones, where she scribbled things down and pressed them in. These are sheets of lined paper with holes in them, not guestbook pages.

The entire chronicle of how mankind fell to the Fade is here. She filled in the gaps by memory, adding details of the run from her house to the Arclight and how they almost didn’t make it. She focuses on her family—especially her little brother. He was sure the army would fix things, and then they could go home.

We burned our house today —begins one page dated before Honoria started writing in her book. It’s sandwiched into a stack containing details of her father’s disappearance and worry over a friend whose dog had wandered to Honoria’s house half starved and filthy.

One of my teachers is here, isn’t that weird? I don’t think school exists anymore, but I can only think of him that way.

There’s an entire list of entries like that—short sentences about people she noticed at random. They’re scribbled on squares of colored paper and glued into the book.

• The kids are getting quieter at night. They’ve figured out crying doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t bring back parents or stop friends from leaving.

• One of the base officers is kind of cute. He’s nice, too. He gave me an extra apple at dinner because he thinks I’m getting too skinny.

This one’s stuck to a whole page with Kevin written in different ways.

• The colonel’s watching us. He thinks we’re dangerous because of Dad, but he’s the greater threat. I saw him burn his hands. He’d only do that if one of them touched him. It won’t do me any good to tell, no one listens to me. I’m just a kid.

The colonel.

The colonel. It’s not a name; it’s a title. Col. Lutrell’s name is James. Lt. Sykes’s first initial is K , according to his name bar. For Kevin , maybe?

Colonel and lieutenant are designations from the world before the Fade, so why do both have them when no one else does?

Could Tobin’s father be as old as Honoria? Older?

Tobin’s good luck charm is that photo from the world before. A boy on a beach who became his father’s namesake, but what if it’s a picture of the colonel himself. Did he lie to his own son?

That would mean Honoria didn’t lie to me.

Now it’s more than curiosity; I need to read on.

The entries become sporadic, jumping dates.

July 6

This morning I realized the 4th had passed with no fireworks. A couple of hours later, it sunk in why—there’s no country anymore.

No one’s celebrating anything after the rain last night, anyway. It cost us the bonfires. We hadn’t had darkness in weeks, besides that black shroud that’s swallowed everything we left behind.

People were screaming and crying, scrambling to find candles and flashlights. They tried to get all the doors and windows shut, but there was so much howling and scratching and noise . . .

There was Spacey Tracey, sitting by the exit, in the dark. She laid her hand against the door, and said, “I know, I will” to nobody. Mom says she’s talking to her family, that she can’t deal with what’s happened to them, but Mom’s wrong. If Tracey was talking to her family, she’d use their names. She doesn’t.

And her eyes were not that blue last week. They’re nearly silver. No one notices things like that, but they should. I saw Dad’s eyes. I remember them.

That nuthatch is going to break and run one of these nights, and I wish . . . I wish they’d get rid of her. There—I said it. I know it’s horrible, and I know it makes me a bad person, but I don’t care. I don’t want her around.

I heard the adults talking. These old ventilation pipes catch everything and broadcast it like stereo. They don’t know what to do, and that scares them.

No . . . I think what really scares them is that they do know, and no one wants to do it. Not to pretty Tracey, who used to be so sweet and so smart, but they don’t get it. Tracey’s gone.

I hate this place.

I want to go home.

Things change after Tracey. People Honoria mentions on one page are lost within the next three. She kept a list, tracking who left on what day, through several sheets held together with metal clips. I bet she didn’t miss a single name.

Pages and pages are doodles of trees without leaves. Their branches are spindly and gruesome— ominous . The first few are practice for one that takes up an entire page of meticulous detail. I start to trace the outline with my finger, but draw back at the feel of the paper along the lines. They’re rigid and sharp, as though she was caught up in a frenzy while making them. Discolored patches on the page look like dried blood that’s deteriorated over time.