The end of the world as we know it

Part 1

My sister wanted me to fail out of med school. At least, that’s what it seemed like.

“Julie, I’ve got to go. You know I have to be up at 5 tomorrow.”

“That’s tomorrow. This is today.”

“Is it like your life’s mission to get me to be irresponsible?”

“No. It’s my life’s mission to get you to chill out. Come on,” Julie said, laughing and pulling on my hand. “We’re going to the zoo.”

“No, we’re totally not.” I tried to get my hand back, but she had a kung fu grip on me. “Julie, I don’t have time to go to the zoo. Not that it doesn’t sound great and everything, but I have to study.”

“You always say that.” My little sister stopped pulling on my arm and frowned at me. “How can you spend so much time studying? When was the last time you did anything fun?”

I took a deep breath and tried not to think about that. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Oh, please.” Julie snorted. “Like we had fun when we were kids. Whenever we weren’t in school, we were always off on one of Dad’s crazy camping trips. That’s why we have to make up for it now!”

“Just because our childhood sucked doesn’t mean I can blow off my homework. Maybe getting a PhD is easy, but med school’s insane. If I don’t prioritize my schoolwork over everything else, I’m gonna flunk out. Not even kidding.”

“Over everything else? Even your little sister?” Julie’s puppy dog eyes were like a sucker punch to the gut.

“I…” There was no good answer to that. “Two hours. That’s it. Then I have to study.”

***

“No, seriously, we can skip the bears.” Julie shuddered. “We saw enough of those when we were kids.”

I laughed. “They still scare you?”

“Don’t laugh,” Julie pouted. “If you’d been interrupted by a hungry bear when you were peeing in the middle of the night, you wouldn’t want to see one either.”

“I don’t know what the big deal is, Julie. It’s not like it tried to eat you.”

“It scared the shit out of me! And I was seven.” Julie was still frowning, but I thought I could see a smile starting to break through. “Whatever, Naia. Just because you’re older than me doesn’t mean you were never scared of anything. Someday I’m going to figure out what it was and I’m going to get you.”

“Fine, fine. No bears.” I held up my hands in surrender. “Wanna go see the tarantulas?”

Julie punched me in the shoulder and then we both froze. Someone behind us was screaming. Like it was choreographed, we were back to back. We scanned the area around us, our hearts pounding. This wasn’t one of Dad’s drills, but we’d practiced so many times, it was second nature. As I looked around the zoo, I saw the source of the screaming: a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, was lying crumpled on the ground, her mother hovering above her in a panic, wailing.