things that got lost in the rubble

10:00 am, September 24th, 20XX. 6 hours until the end.

Kendall was late. Kendall was always late.

Vivian stared out the coffee shop window into a Manhattan sky that felt grayer than usual, twirling a strand of hair haphazardly around her finger. The shop was closed, technically, but the door had been left unlocked, and she wasn’t looking for food or drinks anyway. Her fingers hovered over her phone keyboard, twitching with some long-dormant vigor.

where ru???????

No train

Omw haha

lol c u soon

The Brew Ha Ha, on 14th avenue, felt like home to Vivian—she couldn’t count how many times she had hidden out in here after school ended, ordering some cheap latte and nursing Kendall’s wounds. They always had a knack for getting into trouble. Trouble, though, tended to follow Kenny wherever they went, lurking behind corners, looking for some back alley to strike in.

The bell rang, and Vivian looked up to see a familiar figure stumble into the cafe, weaving through tables and skidding to a stop, mumbling breathlessly about the MTA having stopped running. They looked roughly the same as they always had: messy dark curls, a hoodie, beaten-up checkered vans they’ve had since middle school. They were chubbier, though, and not as bruised and battered as Vivian remembered. Their smile was wider, and their hair was streaked with washed-out green.

Kendall sat across from Vivian, and the two sat motionlessly and took each other in for a while. Nobody said a word. The silence did all the talking.

11:00 am. 5 hours until the end.

“You look good,” said Kendall, shouting a bit over the traffic. The pair had run to get some actual coffee, given away for free by an older gentleman who couldn’t afford to leave. Everyone with a car and a dream was packing up to get as far away from the city as they could. The meteor’s trajectory had somehow gone under the radar in media coverage until about a week ago, so people didn’t really have time to prepare. Anyone who could escape by train was gone, and the last few people with cars were gearing up to get out as fast as they could. The tunnels south were already backed up with haphazard last-minute evacuation efforts.

“Thanks,” said Vivian, staring out into the smoggy sea of asphalt and metal. She took a sip and immediately spat it out. “God, it tastes like shit water.”

Kendall laughed. “Remember the coffee from Presley’s around the corner?”

“The one that gave people lead poisoning?”

“Yep.” They cracked a sly grin. “Remember Katie? The cafeteria worker who quit one day without explanation in junior year?”

“Yeah, what about her?”

“Apparently she was a Presley’s regular.”

Vivian snorted, sending sprays of shitty coffee onto Kendall’s face. The two burst into laughter.

12:30 PM. 3 hours and 30 minutes until the end.

The city was an artificial constellation made of sunlit steel, tiny specks of cars and buses forming paths between skyscraper stars. The entry fee for the Empire State Building was waived for the day, so anyone unfortunate enough to not have a ticket out was getting a ticket up. Kendall and Vivian stared down at their city from the 101st floor, determined to get one last look at the concrete jungle from above.

“Hard to think this is just going to disappear,” Kendall whispered into the glass. Their eyes were transfixed on the Brooklyn Bridge, a line of cars marching like ants across it. The drivers of these cars knew full well that escaping to Brooklyn would do nothing—all of the NYC area, and some parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would be leveled or at least severely damaged in the collision—but sometimes delusion was stronger than logic.

Vivian followed Kendall’s eyes to the river. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?”

“This is my city. I was born in this city. I want to die in my city.” Kendall offered that wide, bright smile of theirs in confirmation. It didn’t reach their eyes.

1:45 PM. 2 hours and 15 minutes until the end.

The alarms in every store on 5th Avenue were going off, and their symphony of blaring and beeping rang in time with the church bells across Midtown. Nobody seemed to care—no luxury item was making it out of the city anyway. Freshly adorned in shoplifted couture, Kendall and Vivian found themselves inside Swarovski, dressed in thousands of dollars' worth of diamonds.

“I look really fucking good in pink,” exclaimed Vivian with a flourish, showing off the pink diamonds paired with a halter dress from a Ferragamo window display. Kendall’s resounding laughter synced with the store alarm for a moment. Their languid breaths afterward felt out of place in comparison.

“You were the reason I came out, you know,” whispered Vivian after a moment.

Kendall’s head perked up in response. “Really?”

“You were.” She looked up, catching her reflection in a diamond necklace display. “I don’t know, I guess I never really felt like a man. I just didn’t have the words to express it. I kind of went through the motions for a good chunk of my life. I was an athlete, not a person.

“And then I met you, and you taught me stuff like how to play tennis, and why fast fashion is bad for the environment, and you made me feel like a person again. And then you told me you were non-binary, and I didn’t get it. You explained—I don’t remember exactly how you explained it, actually. I think you said you weren’t a man, you were just a person. I still didn’t get it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let people give you shit for it. It took me until college to realize I did actually get it. I’d kind of gotten it all along. I’m a person. A person who’s a girl.”

Kendall was quiet for a while. “Do your parents know?”

“They do. My dad was furious. Still is.”

“Did you hesitate to tell them?”

“Of course I did. My parents might be the most conservative people on the damn planet.”

Kendall’s shoulders sagged. “They could be worse. They could be mine.”

“Really? I thought you said your parents were chill—”

“I lied, Viv. They told me every morning that they were proud of their boys, and every night they said I didn’t have to change for anyone, that I was perfect the way I was born. You went to SUNY Binghamton, and I went to UChicago, and then my parents stopped being nice. They told me”—they sniffled into their jacket sleeve—“they told me I was an abomination, that my existence was an affront to God. I came back to make things right with them, you know that? I wanted to be their child again, and they repaid me with—with—”

Dead silence. Then, “They left without you, didn’t they?”

Kendall was silent. Then they stood, turning toward the door. “It doesn’t matter. Years from now, or maybe just weeks, they’ll dig up the charred skeletons of the people who died in the meteor strike on Manhattan. They’ll find nothing of this city besides scraps of concrete and steel, and Lady Liberty will be knocked from her pedestal in the harbor. They’ll find our bodies, and they’ll look at our pelvises and remark on what a shame it is that the world lost two fine, strapping young men.”

2:30 PM. 1 hour and 30 minutes until the end.

The Big Apple was rotten now, smoke and silence filling every street. Outside an abandoned patisserie, a copper-green table for two rattled in the growing wind. Two abandoned pastries and cold cups of coffee marked a million miles of distance between two souls who had long since become strangers.

Ripping through the smoky veil, Vivian stretched her hand across the table. Kendall, eyes glinting and puffy, reached out and took it.

3:10 PM. 50 minutes until the end.

The lights in the Natural History Museum were dimmer than usual. The signature T. rex skeleton had been packed up and shipped to another museum in Washington D.C., as had most of the other exhibits to museums across the country. Eleven years ago, two groups on the same high school field trip met under the neck of the massive Titanosaurus skeleton, and a fourteen-year-old Kendall had whispered to a fifteen-year-old Vivian that it looked like it had just smoked the fattest blunt. Vivian laughed so hard she pissed her pants.

“I haven’t been here since sophomore year,” Vivian whispered into the darkness. She had been pulling Kendall here since their confrontation in the Swarovski, hoping to see the skeleton that brought them together. Nobody else was inside the museum, save for videos of excited archaeologists chattering away from distant rooms.

“Sorry about earlier,” Kendall murmured, putting a hand on Vivian’s shoulder. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s fine,” Vivian murmured back. “We’re all grieving a little bit. You have more cause than most.”

“Don’t say that. You have as much cause to grieve as me. Nothing is harder than your parents leaving you behind.”

Vivian’s eyes lowered. “They didn’t.”

Kendall’s brow furrowed. “You chose to stay?”

“It was a tough decision.”

“Dude, why? Ever since we’ve known each other, you’ve been the successful one. You graduated with honors. Your resume is impressive. You have a good life, a nice place, somewhere to go. Why waste the perfect life you have ahead of you?”

“There isn’t much ahead of me anymore.”

As if in reflex, Kendall pulled their arm away. “What?”

“I have cancer.” Tears began to stream past Vivian’s smile. “Pancreatic cancer. Stage 3. It’s getting more and more expensive to treat. This type of cancer is one of the hardest to fight, and I would have to spend the rest of my probably very short life paying double, maybe triple, my student loans. Easier to die here, I guess.”

She sat down on the bench, staring up at where the fossils used to be. Kendall sat beside her.

“Sorry again for giving you shit back there,” they said. “I had no idea.”

“Don’t be.” Vivian rested her head against the wall. “I had a good life. I feel pretty good ending it here.”

“Why? What’s the point? We’re two average people who will die in obscurity. We’ve contributed nothing. Nobody will remember us.”

“I disagree. We know who we are. We know what we want. We remember our lives, and how we lived them, and what we stand for. We are our own witnesses.” The light, however dim, seemed to swallow her whole. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Our every movement, every choice, caused something to happen somewhere. Maybe the repercussions didn’t leave the city, or maybe they spread throughout the world. The universe will remember us because we lived in it.”

3:55 PM. Approximately 5 minutes before the end.

The two sat in silence on a bench in Central Park, staring at the meteor hanging overhead. The greenness and calmness of the park was undisturbed by the approach of the calamity. The massive chunk of white-hot metal was visible now, growing bigger and bigger every second. Those unlucky few who remained in Manhattan could feel the rising heat on their faces.

They were a sight to behold, together outside the museum in their stolen Ferragamo. Kendall inched their hand closer to Vivian’s. They locked their fingers together.

“Hey, Viv?”

“Yeah?”

Kendall smiled. “We’re going to die as ourselves.”

Vivian smiled as the heat and light washed over her. “Yeah. We are.”