IT wasn’t as bad as you’d have thought.

A lot of us went to The Hill. It was a nice place—green grass, a lot of trees. Most were just sitting. A couple of folks were doing it, but not in that frenzied end-of-the-world way. Nobody seemed to mind.

A girl came up to me, maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five.

Hi, she says. My name’s Julianne, like as in “french fry”. She laughed, then got a little sad. I think she realized that was the last time she’d make that joke.

She asked if I’d kiss her. I told her no, that I was waiting for somebody. I figure, a vow is a vow until AFTER the world ends. She said okay, and made to walk off.

I just grabbed her and hugged her. Not in a romantic way, but we were all there together, you know? I just held her tight, and for a split second, all the bad shitwe’d all done—didn’t matter. Just folks, you know?

There were ashes in her hair. They weren’t from my last cigarette. I brushed them off anyway.

Then FLASH , and that’s that. That’s that, and here we all are.

Weird, huh?