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Most people immediately started digging bunkers or building shelters. Scientists came on the news to say that even the strongest ones wouldn't be much use against a miles-wide asteroid, trust them, they'd checked. They teleconferenced in from all over the world: Spend time with your loved ones. Make the most of what's left. Say your prayers. Their faces had been set and resigned, their opinions reasoned and fact-checked: They were the few who had spent years desperately scrabbling, after all.

That was when there was still news to watch. Slowly it had all stopped as people gave up hope. What passed for news these days was the radio, still scrambling messages and music from people trying to reach out to the world and entertain it.

There had been a time, right after the news broke, when there was plenty of violence and fury and desperation. There was a period of rioting for food and essentials. Systems of government and law enforcement collapsed. Aisha and Esah spent a month or so primarily inside with the doors and windows locked and barricaded, the very air brimming with worry and June's name. The stories they heard were brutal ones. There were people setting things on fire, frustrated and despairing with how much of their lives they had worked and how little there was left to show for it. There were other people who resorted to brutality for no reason other than they could.

And then there were the stories of the people who had just given up on their lives.

Time went on, and things shifted. There was still cause to be careful now. People were still angry and anguished. But the larger part of the world ventured out. They started stocking up, growing food, and working together to trade items. Communities were created, pockets of people who worked together to survive in the time they had left.

Life settled because people realized what was important: good health, no hunger, and going home to family. People still worked at these jobs on a voluntary basis, doing their part to help. People made sure enough lines were up for people to call their families far away. People made sure there was enough medicine, food, and ways for loved ones to visit each other. If there was the occasional violence and hurt, the community worked together as best it could to protect and defend one another from it.

They all knew the world would end soon. This fact might have driven them all to despair, and in fact it had driven some to utter hopelessness, their will to keep going sputtering out like a candle in a ruthless gust of wind.

But many kept on doing what they could while they were still around, while life lasted. They knew what was important. They knew they were doing this for one another.

When Aisha climbed into bed that night, she couldn't sleep for a long time, so she stopped trying: She just lay down with her eyes open and stared out the window at the moon. She thought, as she often did, of the moment before the tide went out and the people emptied the shore, when Walter had said, "Pass me a Magnum—no, a Walls. Actually, a Magnum, please," and she had reached over and laughed when she'd come up with what felt like mush in the packet. Their ice creams had melted. Their cooler had not been closed properly.

They'd been able to laugh about it. If something like that happened now, Aisha would snap that one of them should have been more careful, and Walter would become closed off, also snippy but curt and short with it.

But back then they'd been able to laugh at it. Walter had giggled and torn open the wrapper and tilted the ruined ice cream into his mouth to make her laugh more, getting melted ice cream everywhere. Aisha had said, "Ew, no, don't do that, ew!" and Walter had reached the mush dangerously over to her. Aisha's stomach had flipped, as it often did when he approached her with intent, even as she said, "Don't you dare!"

"I do dare, though," Walter had said, one side of his mouth quirking up, dropping the ice cream and reaching out to her anyway...

Aisha fell asleep, between this moment and the next.

* * *

She overslept, which was strange. Before the Announcement—everyone said it with the capital A quiet in their mouths—Aisha had been a seventeen-year- old student who deeply treasured sleeping late and whose mother shouted about breakfast to wake her up. Now, time was precious. She woke up early and faced the day and whatever would come with it.

Still, today she overslept and awoke to Esah shaking her shoulder gently.

"Bangun, sayang."

The sunlight had made its relentless way through her window, and Aisha winced when she opened her eyes. The sun seemed brighter these days: brighter and so very tired all at once. Like a final spurt of a sprint. Like it knew this was the final stretch.

"What time is it?"

"One," Esah said. "Lunchtime." She went downstairs.