1 A Brand New World

Jonathan Blakey walked through the hall. He touched the wall, gliding his hand across the bumpy concrete painted white. He stood still when he saw the class photo on the ground. He saw other banners still hanging with the enlarged class photos of previous years.

The roof resisted the forces of nature while large vines waved in the air.

"The architecture of an American middle school..." said Sarah Blakey, a bright ball of light.

She saw her little brother exploring the new scenery with fear etched onto his face. A middle-school boy walked alone while his sister watched from the sky.

She approached him. The ball of light drifted with the movement of a dandelion seed riding the wind. He saw the ball of light and fell on his bottom. He saw the ball of light get closer, and he flailed his arms.

She stopped moving closer when she saw the deep look of fear in his eyes. She saw tears fall from his face, and a deep pain pierced her spirit. She started to cry. She hadn't seen anyone she knew since the world ended, and as her tear dropped onto the ground, Jonathan saw the tear drop and attempted to reach out to her with his right hand.

He failed to reach fast enough.

She flew away from him and hid herself deep in the janitor's closet. Too much at once, just too much at once. Too much assailed the siblings at once.

Morning just started, yet so much happened in the span of a minute.

_________

Early this morning, Sarah Blakey drove her little brother to school. The car was silent, except for the grunts Jonathan made while playing Forknite, a survival video game where the characters wielded weapons for fun. She could never understand him. She would never understand it she told herself. She tried to strike up conversation.

"So, do you have anyone you like? A girlfriend maybe?"

He growled.

She looked in the rearview mirror. She could never understand him or why he loved to watch Speed stream his videos. 'I need to tell mom to ban Speed in the house again.'

She dropped the conversation. She thought about her year off of college, and she struggled. She knew she had to stick to a major, but she didn't know how to stick to a major. 'I need help...' she said to herself.

Her little brother kicked her seat.

"You wanna crash, huh!" she said.

"I wish," he said, "I came in second, second to a blond ninja."

She said, "I thought ninjas were Japanese."

"Get your mind together," he said, "He dyed his hair, duh."

"Ok, well, kick my seat again, and you'll walk to school."

"Is that a threat?"

"..."

She stayed silent. She didn't have the energy to fight with Jonathan this morning. He missed the bus, and her hangover did not sit well. If their mom wasn't working so hard, so early, she would've taken Jonathan to school.

But, what can you do? Sarah wished he would grow up a little. She did, or at least she tried to mature she thought to herself. It's tough being a black woman at a PWI, a Primarily White Institution. Sometimes, white people perplexed her.

She dropped her brother off at Saint Jeremy Middle School. He didn't even shut the door all the way. As she drove away, a bright light filled the sky, like a grand aurora borealis had rippled through the entire globe.

Then, everything went dark for Sarah. She hit a pole. Darkness flooded her vision, and when she opened her eyes, she started to rise into the sky, breaking a hole in her car roof.

She screamed. She had never been so high up before.

She spiraled out of control and took a nose dive toward the ground. She feared hitting the ground more than her current situation, but steered herself towards the lake next to the middle school.

She started to drown. But, she remembered she could fly.

She ascended slowly above the water, and she saw her reflection in the clear lake. She laid eyes on a ball of light. When she looked closer, her skin was still black, but she had shrunk in size. Her body was covered by a bright light. She had on the same clothes from today, but everything had shrunk with her. She didn't know why or how she had turned into this fairy-thing. In fact, she didn't begin to imagine anything except for how she was now a fairy-like creature.

'At least I'm still black,' she thought.

That's when she saw the middle school in the distance with half the roof gone.

"Jonathan!"

She flew over to find him.

The reunion, far from ideal. The world had ended, yet she didn't know a thing, and neither did Jonathan. Will she come out of the closet?

The sky turned cloudy as a dark cumulonimbus threatened to worsen the circumstances, with rain.