Life As We Knew It: Chapters 1–4

Lots of people think Brandon is the best skater in the U.S. right now and besides it isn’t like I talk about him all the time and act like he’s my salvation.

Some of the guys Mom’s dated have tried too hard with us, but Peter seemed pretty casual.

All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

Mom said since I’m prone to carelessness, etc., it might be a good idea if I got a head start on all my moon papers, especially since they didn’t have to be about whatever is going to happen tomorrow.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to turn that into a paper, so Mom and I talked about it, about how fiction can have more power than reality and how in 1969 there was a lot of cynicism because of Vietnam and the sixties and all that and there were people who didn’t think men were really on the moon and thought it was a hoax.

I think I’ll do my French paper on what happens tomorrow night, because my French isn’t good enough for stuff like hoaxes and cynicism. For English I’m focusing on how fiction can be more exciting than reality and for history I’ll focus on how people in the ’60s were cynical about what the government told them.

I told Mom that Sammi said it was sure to rain tomorrow night because it always rains when something important is supposed to happen in the sky and she laughed and said she had never known a more pessimistic 15-year-old.

The astronomers looked like they loved what they were doing. You could see how excited they were that this asteroid was going to make a direct hit on the moon. They had charts and computer projections and graphics, but basically they looked like big kids at Christmas.

You could sense how we were all craning our necks, looking toward the sky.

It was still our moon and it was still just a big dead rock in the sky, but it wasn’t benign anymore. It was terrifying, and you could feel the panic swell all around us.

I forced myself to look at the moon. I think I was afraid I’d see it had grown even bigger, that it really was lumbering its way to earth to crush us all to death, but it didn’t seem to have gotten any larger.

Whoever was broadcasting the news must have heard it over his little earphone, because he actually turned pale and then said, “Are you sure? Has that been confirmed?”

“We are receiving reports of widespread tsunamis,” he said.

There is confirmation of massive damage to Miami. Many deaths, many casualties.

But here’s the information as we have it. Everything I’m going to announce has been verified by two sources.

Staten Island and the eastern section of Long Island are completely submerged. Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard are no longer visible. Providence, Rhode Island—in fact, most of Rhode Island—can no longer be seen. The islands off the coast of the Carolinas are gone.

Mom hates him like she hates Fox News, but she sat there transfixed.

“Very bad doesn’t really describe it. Catastrophic. They don’t know how bad the damage is yet, how many countries were affected.”

Holland was decimated; they’re pretty sure about that.

They think the asteroid was denser than they’d assumed it would be, so the collision was bigger.

A lot of kids started screaming then. Michelle began sobbing, real hysterical sobs, and other kids started crying, too.

The thunder kept rolling, and the tree began to smolder from the fire and the rain.

Other kids were laughing, too, so the hallway consisted of kids laughing and kids crying and kids screaming and teachers walking around and checking classrooms to make sure they were empty.

But remember if we actually need this stuff, we’re going to be a lot more grateful for a can of soup than for a box of stale cookies.

Jonny was there, but as soon as Mom showed up she told both of us to go back in and ransack the shelves for anything we could find.

There really wasn’t much left in the store, but I managed to fill the cart with lima beans and brussels sprouts and other end-of-the-world delicacies.

When we finally all got into the van, Mom wouldn’t let any of us talk until she maneuvered her way out of the lot.

That didn’t leave much for me, so I went to the antiques store. I don’t know why, but then again, I didn’t know why Mrs. Nesbitt was so insistent on going to the gift shop.

“Batteries,” I said. The transistor radio in the shop had made me think of them.

We didn’t fuss over which can of soup belonged to who or whether she was entitled to more candles. We just divvied stuff up, so that she had plenty.

The president said that almost every offshore oil refinery was gone, and that it was believed most of the oil tankers had been lost at sea.

Mom said later that didn’t just mean oil companies would gouge us, but that there might not be enough gas and oil to heat all the houses in the winter.

He said the state was looking into the possibility of rationing gas, but as of the moment, he asked for an honor system.

“Maybe they’re just closed because it’s Sunday,” I said.
“Or because tomorrow’s a national day of mourning,” Jonny said.

We walked back to the car and when we got in Mom said she’d found a bakery that was open, and she’d bought cookies and cake and a couple of loaves of bread. Nothing was fresh, but it was still edible.

It was the kind of store we never go to ordinarily, small and not well lit, and everything looked dingy.

“This is a crisis the whole world is going through together,” she said. “I have complete faith in our ability as Pennsylvanians and Americans to be able to pull through.”

He and Mom went through everything in the house, all the food we bought, and all kinds of stuff Mom’s grandparents had hidden away in the attic and cellar, yarn and a crochet hook (Mom says she hasn’t crocheted in years, but she thinks it’ll all come back to her if she works at it) and mason jars and canning equipment and a manual can opener and an egg beater and the sorts of things kitchens had in the olden days.

Matt looked up kids from his high school class. Only three were listed as dead, but a bunch were listed as missing/presumed dead.