Chương 1: Start Reading

I scowl at the glass door in front of me, but despite the righteous fury of my expression it stubbornly refuses to open itself. Normally this sort of thing wouldn't really bother me, but this is the local Selective Service headquarters. A government building. Aren't basic accessibility options like… the law? Leaning heavily on my cane, I reach out and grasp the handle with my other hand, pulling on it with the limited strength available to me. Holy crap it is heavy. This thing is all glass and metal. I could…

probably squeeze myself in there. Probably. But I'm not really in the mood to risk falling on my face today. I turn slightly backwards to call out to the massive van that's waiting by the curb, doors all hanging open in a vain attempt to combat the unusually hot Chicago weather. I clear my throat.

"Um, Peter?" I call out, putting on my best and most innocent smile.

"Could you get the door for me after all?" The boy in the passenger's seat snorts, stuffing his phone into his pocket as he twists to more-or-less fall out of the side of the car, landing easily and strolling up to me with a smug look on his face.

"Told you," he brags.

"It's less of a bother if you just let me do it from the start, Jules." I chuckle apologetically, making a conscious effort to not get on his case about calling me by that stupid nickname. I like my full name. A long, beautiful name like Julietta is just the thing I need to distract from how hideous I am.

'Jules' makes me sound like the bench warmer for a boy's little league team, which frankly quite oversells the athletic ability of a girl who can't even open a pull door by herself.

"Sorry, Peter," I say instead.

"You're right. I feel bad making you follow me everywhere, is all."

"It's fine," he brushes off easily, holding open the door for me.

"Seriously. Now do your best in there, okay?"

"I suppose I'll try?" I answer hesitantly. I'm not really sure exactly how my best or my worst will make any difference, though, since I'm just here to sign up for the fucking draft. And I, for rather obvious reasons, will not be accepted into the military unless I am the literal last person left alive on Earth. … Which I'm perfectly okay with. The person behind the front desk can't help but stare at me as I slowly hobble inside and make my way towards the counter, but it's fine. I'm used to it.

Everyone stares, their eyes roving over my body without even an ounce of self-control. It's not an outright leer, of course. More of a glance, then an awkward redirection of their gaze, then another look that they secretly hope is respectful this time, then a realization that it isn't, and so on and so forth until they have accomplished what could have just been a straightforward stare if they had bothered to commit.

"Um, how can I help you, miss?" the man behind the counter asks.

"I turned eighteen today," I answer, "so I am here to register for the draft."

"Oh! Yes, of course," he nods.

"Driver's li… er, identification?" I suppress a sigh and pull out my passport. I have never once actually used the thing to pass a port or any other barrier between countries, but (correct guess, Mr. Front Desk Man, ten points for you) I cannot drive. A different government ID is therefore needed. I hand it over to him and he looks it over, noting that today is indeed my birthday and the lumpy movie monster in the picture is indeed my face.

A solid ten minutes of bureaucracy later, I am given leave to sit down and complete a fun little questionnaire about myself before a nurse pops in from the back and invites me to take a medical examination. Or… well, she's dressed like a nurse, but she looks more like an MMA champion. Her tan skin and military-cut hair are framed by a mountainous mass of muscles, the kind someone working ten hours a day as an underpaid health professional likely doesn't have time for and definitely doesn't need.

Her nametag, which reads "Lance Corporal Erna Shuzen," confirms that this isn't her only day job—or at least it wasn't. A nasty scar crawls up her right thumb, the whole hand stiff and subtly shaking even when not in use. Recent transfer, then.

"You're… Julietta Monroe?" she double-checks, glancing at her clipboard.

"I am," I nod.

"Medical papers?" she prompts. I pull them out of my handbag and pass them over to her without a word. There's nothing quite as fun as getting all your private health information printed out in a big packet to hand over to the government. I try my best to not look too excited. But I admit, I'm begrudgingly impressed when Lance Corporal Shuzen has the absolute balls to whistle after reading them for a bit.

"... Wow, quite a lot here," she says, a smile on her face.

"Limited mobility, limited flexibility, limited strength, limited stamina, bad eyesight, bad grip… you've got quite the collection!"

"Thank you?" I manage.

"Well, get in," she says, jerking her thumb towards a small private room.

"We're gonna scrub you down and test all of it."

"Um, what do you mean by 'scrub me down?'" I ask, slowly making my way into the room as instructed. It looks like a pretty normal doctor's office, at least. Nothing too weird.

"I mean I am going to physically scrub you with a mild solvent to see if all that crap on you is real or makeup," she says. …What.

"What?" I say. She shrugs.

"Just protocol, hun, nothing personal. Draft dodgers get real creative when they want to. Hop up, you won't have to strip or anything. Just an arm or two will do." Well. The 'crap on me,' as she puts it, is quite real. So… I guess I have no reason to object, beyond trivial things like respect and decency. I struggle onto the raised examination table and hold out an arm for her. She takes the arm I don't offer. Huh.

"... Does this seriously happen that often?" I ask, letting her scrub at me. I hope she's not scraping me up too hard; I can't really feel it, so it's hard to know if she's injuring me.

"Well, with how wide we're casting our net here you need a pretty specialized set of problems to get out of service," the Lance Corporal answers.

"So people have to fake… well, a lot of stuff."

"Huh," I manage.

"... Wow, this really isn't coming off," Lance Corporal Shuzen says, almost excitedly. I… okay. I've never had this one happen before, I'll admit. This is new. She gets points for that.

"That is because," I say slowly, trying not to sound too condescending, "it's real."

"So it seems," she nods, moving to my other arm.

"Wow! This is just… it's almost comical, you know? Your file is a little difficult to believe."

"I don't really know what to tell you," I say, since there is truly no other polite and honest way to respond to that.

"Well, okay. It's true, then? You lost all your skin in Denver? All of it?"

"I… yes," I frown.

"Pretty much. It was burned off by acid, apparently. I don't really remember it well."

"Well that's probably good," she laughs.

"How'd you live through something like that?"

"Regenerator was at the field hospital. Which is why I have skin now, it's just…"

"It's all scars," Lance Corporal Shuzen finishes for me.

"Yeah. Because he makes you heal faster, not cleaner. I'm familiar." She waves her own injured hand. I almost snap 'then why did you ask,' but I guess this was just all part of the test. To prove I'm actually what I say I am. I swallow my irritation as best I can, but it's difficult. Being accused of lying always rubs me the wrong way. The accusation just hits too close to the truth sometimes.

"Faster saves lives though," she continues, "especially when he's that fast." I know this. I had all my skin burned off, plus a good chunk of stuff underneath it. I'm not a nurse, but I'm pretty confident most people don't survive that sort of thing. I am insanely lucky, not just that Regenerator was there but that he was close enough to actually have me in his effect radius.

But I don't really want to talk about it—especially not with the rude woman rubbing my arms raw enough to likely cause me problems later—so I just shrug. The subsequent tests aren't as long, but they do their best to be just as demeaning.

The fitness tests seem mainly designed to get me to slip up (I technically do, in the sense that she has to catch me), the vision tests involve flashes of light to see if my one blind eye reacts in ways a working eye would (it does not, because it is blind) and the usual reflex hammer-to-the-knee stuff is largely waylaid because she can't actually find my patellar tendon under all the scar tissue (I don't blame her, there's a lot of it).

The good news is that most of my body can't really feel pain, so it's all just annoying and mildly demeaning more than anything.

"... So, um, I take it your hand has a similar story to mine?" I venture, trying to make this a bit less embarrassing by getting her to talk about herself instead of jabber about me.

"Well, I don't know how it compares to you, but yeah. Nearly lost the thumb trying to retake Nebraska. Can't hold a fucking gun anymore, so I work here now."

"Why not just retire?" I ask, honestly curious.

"You, uh…" Don't seem to have the disposition for a job like this? No, she might take offense to that. Are clearly too much of an asshole to be working as a nurse? Wait, that's worse.

"... Have certainly earned it?" I venture.

"Eh. I'm on the list for a prosthetic, and while I doubt I'll actually get one I've wanted to fight the good fight since I was a little girl. Not gonna quit now just because my actual fighting days are done. All these jobs are important, y'know? We might even get you in, despite all this. You need all kinds to keep an army working."

"Huh," I frown.

"What inspired you to join the military in the first place?" She looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Well, it's the apocalypse, innit?" she says, quirking her head.

"Of course I want to fire lead up its ass." Right. Of course. I guess I should have expected that. By the end of this entire humiliating endeavor, I am left with a small card that proves I went and a polite assurance that I will be sent a message if I am selected for the draft, which I of course will not be because I can barely walk. Even if they need someone for a desk job, they're going to exhaust most of their options before they ask me because I can barely read either.

I was homeschooled, like most people, but my foster parents aren't really the most dedicated to education and the fact that I am farsighted as heck no matter what attempts at corrective lenses I've been saddled with doesn't help either. And yes, I'm farsighted and I have no depth perception. It is exactly as fun of a combination as it sounds.

"Jules, you made it back!" Peter waves at me as I stagger through the much-easier-to-operate push door that should still definitely just be an automatic.

"You were in there for a while!"

"Yes, well, it turns out it's a lot harder to fail the draft than it is to get added to it," I answer, trying to inject some genuine humor into my tone. I probably succeed.

"You can fail?" Max asks worriedly from the back of the van, sticking his head out between the middle seat and the door so he can see me.

"I can fail," I correct.

"You should be just fine, don't worry." There was, after all, no IQ test.

"They're not shipping you out, then?" Andre asks. Of all my foster brothers, he is the one who cares about me the least. I've never held it against him; if anything, it makes him easier to deal with.

"Sorry kids, I'm afraid you're all stuck with me," I smirk, my grin only widening as the entire car immediately protests the label. I'm the oldest, but not by much. I just had my birthday first, is all.

"It sucks that you don't get to fight, though," Max sighs. The others in the car—including my foster dad at the wheel—nod in agreement. I nod along as well, a look of melancholy on my face while, internally, I remain as baffled by this general opinion as I have ever been. Why would anyone want to go fight extradimensional horrors to death? Like seriously, I get that we have to. When aliens start pouring in from cracks in the universe and killing everyone they find you can't just ignore that.

A military response is needed. Fine. But why would you want to be part of that military? Why would you want to subject yourself to that horror? I've been in an incursion, and a flying, acid-spitting bug monster removed all my skin, and I am not exactly in a hurry to go back to that sort of thing! Do people actually look at the commercials and propaganda and recruiter videos and genuinely get excited for them? It makes sense that fighting to save the world is an obligation. But as an aspiration?

I don't understand it at all.

"Well, go ahead and get in, Julietta," my foster father calls out.

"We've still got to go home and have your birthday party!"

"Home?" I ask.

"Aren't we picking up Emily first?"

"Eh, sorry, Julietta," he shrugs.

"She texted to say something about her girlfriend dragging her out of town. She's apparently not going to make it." What? Okay, screw that. I pull my phone out of my handbag and slowly tap away at it so I can call the one kind-of-sibling I have that I actually like. I have one of those oversized models for old people, with the huge buttons and the big text so I can actually use it and read the letters and numbers and whatnot, but I still much prefer calls to texts.

Plus, they're harder for Emily to ignore, even with her asshole girlfriend pressuring her.

"Um, hello?" she squeaks in answer, picking up on the third ring.

"Emily!" I whine.

"Are you really not coming to my birthday party?"

"J-Julietta!" she stammers.

"I'm so sorry, it's just that I thought… you know, we were going to, um…"

"Hey, is that your sister?" a muffled voice says in the background.

"Put her on speaker."

"U-um, okay," Emily says, and soon I hear the fuzzy buzz of background sound getting amplified.

"Jules!" Emily's girlfriend greets me.

"Hey, happy birthday! How's it going?"

"Well, Lia, it would be going better if Emily was attending my party," I say flatly.

"Ah, geez, I'm sorry," Lia sighs.

"It's just, y'know, Emily really wanted to go to this place in Chesterton today, so we made plans, and just… gosh, I'm sorry. We both completely forgot." That's a lie. I know that's a lie. There's no way in hell Emily forgot my birthday. She's better at remembering my birthday than I am. But I just say nothing. Calling her on the lie would derail the conversation, letting Lia focus on the minutiae of who is and isn't responsible to satisfy her obsessive need to save face.

If I just don't give her that opportunity, it keeps her on the backfoot, and her narcissistic need to seem kind and reasonable will lead her to offer a concession instead.

"... I'm sure we can swing by for a little bit, though," she offers after barely a few seconds.

"I drive fast. We won't miss the reservations if we just say hi."

"Thank you, Lia," I say, forcing a smile on my face to make my voice sound more honestly happy.

"I'd really appreciate that."

"Please don't drive too fast," Emily whines, though Lia doesn't even answer and Emily doesn't act like she expected one. It will be slightly harder than usual to not try and strangle that rich bitch when I see her, but fortunately my arms are very weak so I can usually just remind myself it wouldn't work anyway. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! We exchange a few more pleasantries and hang up. Talking to Lia always makes me feel dirty.

I've tried to get Emily to see that she's an abusive, narcissistic bitch (without quite using those words) but she just doesn't want to listen, and that means I'm stuck constantly having to step in to make things less awful for her. Is getting her to delay her date so she can come to my birthday party an entirely selfless motivation? No, of course not. But Emily planned most of my birthday party. I know for a fact she wants to be there, at least for a while.

But she just lets Lia walk all over her and do basically anything she wants. It's sickening. I wish I could do more, but the only other thing that would help is if Emily just dumped Lia's ass. Of course, Emily insists that they love each other. No matter how miserable she seems. I groan and lean back in the seat as the old van chugs to life and sets off down the road. I probably shouldn't have to deal with this kind of thing on my own damn birthday, but it's whatever.

This isn't the first time I've had to play emotional manager for my so-called 'family' today, and it won't be the last. I'm used to it.

"... So, I hear there will be a moonfall over Florida in a couple days," my foster father says, awkwardly trying to change the subject as I put away my phone.

"Do the aliens have Florida?" Max asks. Yes, obviously the aliens have Florida. They have every single coastline and Florida is a peninsula, you stupid brick. …Is what I'm thinking, but of course I don't say that. Max is kind of a living human brick, though: short, stocky, and constantly a strange red hue due to being baked in the sun. Oh, and dumber than a box of rocks.

"They do, but the Russians are finally playing nice with their spaceport, so we should be able to launch a group into low orbit to intercept," Peter says. Peter has always been my favorite foster brother, mainly because his mission to annoy everyone he ever meets seems to specifically exclude me. It's probably pity, but he's never made it feel like pity, presumably because he exudes a constant aura of aloof apathy that makes it difficult to imagine he's capable of feeling any emotion other than schadenfreude.

Perhaps he is simply content soaking up the constant misery I passively exude by existing. But anyway, he's pretty cool.

He's also, apparently, the hottest member of our little faux family according to the limited selection of girls I know outside said family, but a combination of getting most of my body replaced with insensate scar tissue and the resulting surgeries required to open back all the parts of me that sealed up very wrong means I do not have functioning versions of any of the organs responsible for sexual attraction, except probably the brain. So naturally, I have no idea what any of them are talking about.

He's got short, naturally spiky blonde hair, he's… tall? I guess? And he has the face of an utter bastard. If that's the recipe for hotness, I'm happy to be obligatorily ace.

"They might not even be contested," Andre says.

"The aliens are oddly unpredictable in how they react to moonfalls. A lot of the time, they don't even try to fight over them, or they fight in a way that indicates they're just trying to hold their territory and nothing else. They may not understand their significance, or even be sapient."

"They've gotta be sapient," I grunt, getting into the conversation despite myself.

"They're too good at tactics and coordination."

"Ants are good at tactics and coordination," Andre counters.

"We have a lot of evidence to indicate these might just be very large eusocial hives." I sigh, not really wanting to argue further. As long as I drop the subject, Andre will assume that means he won the argument and be very pleased with himself. He's the middle brother in age, height, and maturity, with dark skin and perpetually messy long hair that's so unkempt it constantly gets on our foster mother's nerves.

He just sort of doesn't seem to care, though; if you don't engage with Andre, Andre rarely engages for long with you, and that's often a blessing.

"Wait, can we back up a second?" Max asks.

"Russia has a spaceport?" …Of course, if you don't stop engaging with him, Andre won't stop either.

"Russia has a lot of things," Andre shrugs.

"They're holding territory surprisingly well."

"Even aliens fall to the classic blunders!" Peter grins.

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia!" Andre scowls, because Peter just quoted The Princess Bride, a pre-invasion movie in which there is a character played by a man named Andre who is portrayed as, shall we say, less than excellently intellectual. This offends our Andre, as he apparently holds all Andres to a very high standard, even while they happen to be professionally pretending to be someone with a completely different name.

Peter knows this, of course, which is why he quoted The Princess Bride in the first place. … That and because it's a pretty funny movie. Pre-invasion movies are great.

"Why do we even call them aliens, anyway?" Max asks, once again valiantly yet vainly attempting to expand his scope of knowledge.

"They're not from space, right? So they aren't really aliens."

"... Yes, they are?" Andre blinks.

"The word 'alien' doesn't mean 'from space,' it just means 'foreigner.' Like, if someone came down from Canada, they'd technically be an alien."

"Woah, dude!" Peter gasps.

"Not cool! You can't call Canadians aliens, that's racist as hell!"

"Wh… no, I'm not… obviously I wouldn't call them that, I—""You just did!" Peter accuses, his tone appalled but his face grinning ear-to-ear.

"That's fucked up, man!"

"N-no, I was just explaining that at the time the term was coined it had a completely different meaning, so—""Every pre-invasion movie I've ever seen has the aliens from space," Max says.

"Wouldn't that have been the meaning 'at the time?'""Yeah, I think you're just trying to get us to use slurs, Andre," Peter accuses.

"Andre's right," our foster dad butts in.

"Three decades ago we would call people who entered the country without the right paperwork 'illegal aliens,' for example." There's a pause.

"Well, everyone knows that old people are racist, so I think we can all agree this proves my point," Peter says happily, and the car erupts into further argument. I try, for once, to tune it out. I shouldn't have to mediate stupid stuff like this on my birthday, so I look out the window instead, scowling northeast at the Chicago skyline. It's not pretty, but it's definitely impressive. The towering structures looming over Lake Michigan are quite the testament to human achievement.

They never fail to make me feel small. It's scary to think about the fact that this place was busy, once. I'm told there used to be a time when Chicago was clogged to the brim with people, the roads full of practically-parked cars too overstuffed to actually move down the street. Every room in every floor of every building was supposedly used for some business or apartment or whatever. I can't imagine what that many people in one place would look like, since it's all pretty empty now.

There are other cars on the road with us, sure, but at least sixty percent of the property in the city is vacant. Entire neighborhoods might have only one or two houses with people that actually live in them. More than anything, I think that's what drives home to me that we are losing. Despite our supposed air superiority, despite our technological advantage, despite the literal superheroes we have now… we're losing. The fact is, when people turn eighteen they go off to war, and most of them don't come back.

To be fair, it's not always because they die. The American government has been full-on state-of-emergency military-ruled totalitarianism for longer than I've been alive (as has basically every country on the planet, with some handling the transition better than others).

This means that a lot of essential industry has been deprivatized, be that food production or weapons development or medical technology or whatever, so a lot of people end up getting 'drafted' into the 'military' and then work on a farm with the rank of Private First Class for the next twelve years. It's a little fucky, but the end result is that basically everyone eighteen and older has their job assigned by the government until their mandatory service period runs out.

I will almost certainly be one of the few exceptions, since I am completely dependent on others to live, but hey, maybe they'll stick me in a cold call center for propaganda or something. If there's one thing I'm actually good at, it's talking. … But it's my birthday, and I really don't want to. I pull out my phone again, stick my earphones in, and turn on the book I've been listening to. It sucks that humanity will probably go extinct in my lifetime, but at least we still have the internet.

People wrote so many good stories before the war. I like stories. They're a lot happier than reality.

"I'm telling you, that's how the word was used!" Andre practically shouts, my earbuds no longer sufficient to stave off the ever-growing argument.

"It doesn't just mean 'from space!'""I've never seen that!" Max snaps.

"We watch movies about this all the time, and I've never seen that!"

"You're both right!" I butt in before I can stop myself.

"Yes, the common usage was obviously about space, but we thought they were from space! Because of the moon?" I point at the sky, where the offending celestial object is currently visible in the daylight.

"We assumed they were from space for like, twenty years or something," I continue.

"And it's not like anyone can ask them what their names are, and the scientific term is dumb, so we still just call them aliens. That's it. Stop arguing about it." There's a silent, awkward pause, my foster family quietly shocked by the loud interjection. I cringe internally, not having meant to sound that angry. I'm usually much better at controlling my tone.

"... Oh," Max mumbles.

"That makes sense. Sorry, Julietta."

"Sorry, Julietta," Andre parrots. Ugh, they probably think I'm grumpy because I won't be drafted rather than because they were loudly arguing about stupid shit.

"It's fine," I wave them off, even though it kind of isn't.

"Sorry for raising my voice."

"You barely even did that," Peter notes with a smirk, but I don't respond and neither does anyone else. We finish the trip back home in silence, giving me a welcome reprieve with my book. Our home is… decently sized. Property is apparently a lot cheaper than it used to be, despite how much less territory we have to actually put stuff on.

My foster parents also just get a lot of money from the government for housing orphans; there's always a surplus, so people who have children or raise children tend to get paid a lot for it. The government is trying really hard to get more people to make babies, but… well. I don't see why you'd want to bring a child into a world that doesn't have much time left. Though I suppose if you listen to the propaganda—and most people seem to—the war is starting to turn around. Personally, of course, I remain skeptical.

The point is, our three-story townhouse isn't exactly the height of luxury, but it's pretty big, even with seven people living in it. Peter helps me out of the car once we park, and I hobble the rest of the way inside on my own. I head to my room on the ground floor to sit back down and take my shoes off, hopefully scoring a few quiet minutes alone before the party starts. I don't really like birthday parties, but it's important that I have one and it's important that it goes well.

It'll make everyone else really happy, especially Emily and my foster mother. Gosh. This is really it, huh? I'm eighteen. It's the day I'm supposed to leave home, join the military, and help save the world, but as everyone probably expected, that won't be happening. I'll just remain here, a problem in the pockets of my foster parents that happens to get them a little more government funding.

I do my best to be as useful as possible, of course; I've been handed off between homes too many times to assume this is guaranteed to be my last one, even now that I'm an adult. So I help them manage the others, even though the 'kids' should all be more than old enough to manage themselves. I work a call center job whenever I have the energy to, which is unfortunately not often. But more than anything, I do what I can to ensure people are happy.

If they associate seeing me with becoming happy, I figure they probably won't throw me away. So! Birthday party. I take a deep breath, rest my legs for as long as I dare, and stand back up, hobbling into the dining room where my foster mother is putting the finishing touches on everything.

"Hey Mom," I greet her, because she likes being called mom.

"Is there anything I can help with?"

"What?" she asks.

"Oh, Julietta, no, it's your birthday! Sit down, sit down. I just need those useless… PETER! ANDRE! YOU BOYS BETTER NOT BE SLACKING!"

"We're coming!" Andre yells back from upstairs.

"DON'T SHOUT AT ME, JUST GET YOUR ASSES HERE!" my foster mother roars. I do my best to visibly not react.

"Right, so, did your SSS visit go well?"

"It was mostly physical tests," I tell her, which I figure is answer enough.

"Ah," she says, which… yep.

"Well, don't you worry about that, darling. Your father and I already told you that you're welcome to stay, and that will always be true."

"Thanks, Mom," I say, and I mean it. I need somewhere to stay, after all. Despite everything, I don't want to be alone. Even if it was an option, I wouldn't want to be alone. The boys come downstairs and my foster mother starts loudly ordering them around, but the bickering is light enough and the four of them are busy enough that I judge it safe to put my earphones in and continue listening to my book.

Normally I wouldn't do this unless I was in the car or alone, but it's my birthday and I think they'll forgive a little self-indulgence. I sit back, close my eyes, and let myself enjoy what little time I'll have until my party starts. I figure I have a solid fifteen minutes until Emily and Lia show up, and that's the effective minimum. Sure enough, my guess is pretty spot-on, and I pause the book to check just in time to see the two of them walk inside.

Lia walks in first, smug and proud as she holds the door open for Emily. She has black hair, dark skin, and long, fake, blue fingernails colored to compliment her light purple spaghetti-strap top and white short-shorts. She's pretty toned, but nowhere approaching buff; just the kind of body a person has when they go on a run every morning to keep in shape. Expensive bracelets and earrings flash jarringly in the light, and I suspect quite a few other piercings hide underneath her clothes.

Behind her, Emily seems like Lia's total opposite: pale skin, blonde hair, and the hunched, timid posture of a person expecting the room to somehow attack her. However, on a second look it's clear that Emily puts nearly as much effort into her appearance as Lia does, if not more. Detailed, intricate braids loop beautifully through her hair to keep it at shoulder length, though I know it falls nearly down to the small of her back after she unbraids and washes it.

While she's unadorned by jewelry and wearing a much more modest outfit than her girlfriend, Emily's clothing is no less professionally made, and it is both taken care of and worn pristinely. I hate to admit it, but seeing the two of them always makes me jealous. Downright envious even, in Lia's case. It's petty of me, but beauty is something I will simply never have, and both of them wear it effortlessly.

Still, I shove those thoughts away, put on a big smile, and slowly stand up to hold one arm out to my foster sister.

"Emily!" I greet her happily.

"You made it!"

"Y-yeah, I…" she stammers, though she freezes for a moment when she stares at me, looking shocked. Oh shoot, is there something on my face? She quickly rallies though, and walks up to accept my one-armed hug.

"I'm glad I could make it!" she says with a lot more confidence than before.

"Sorry, it just… it totally slipped my mind. I hope you can forgive me." I glare at Lia, who smirks at me. Bitch.

"It's completely fine," I assure Emily.

"I'm just glad you're here. Looking forward to the party?"

"Y-yeah, haha," she agrees, clinging to me a little tighter than usual. Hmm. Something's up with her.

"Emily!" my foster mother shouts from another room.

"Come here, help me with the thing!"

"C-coming!" Emily agrees, breaking out of the hug and rushing away, leaving me with Lia. Hmm. Well, no sense playing dumb.

"What happened," I demand, watching Emily go.

"Don't ask me, Jules," Lia shrugs.

"I was hoping you knew." I blink, turning to look at her directly. That's not exactly our usual script.

"What?" I ask.

"You heard me," she frowns.

"Something's wrong. I think she did actually forget your birthday."

"Bullshit," I hiss. Lia raises her hands in surrender. Again, that's not a Lia thing to do. It's not how she manipulates people. She looks… actually concerned.

"I'm not fuckin' with you this time, Jules," she insists.

"Something is up. What happened last night?" Well that's not a good question. I frown, thinking back. Nothing happened last night. Nothing weird, anyway. It would be just like Lia to be the cause of the problem and not be able to see that, too. But it's because she can't see it that there's no benefit to pointing it out.

"... I'll talk to her," I sigh.

"Thanks, Jules," Lia grins.

"I can always count on you." Ugh. Like I want to hear that from you. I just smile and nod, though. Well, this will give me something to focus on during the party, at least. It doesn't take long for my foster mother to order me to the dining room table, after which a burning cake with eighteen candles is walked into the room to that ever-classic and ever-irritating tune. Peter, as he does for every birthday, goes extra ham with it, belting out the entire happy birthday song in a deep, operatic baritone.

He's actually an extremely talented singer. It's annoying.

"Make a wish!" my foster mother orders like some demonic, cake-obsessed genie. I spend a few seconds pretending to think of one, and then blow out the candles.

"What do you wish for?" my foster mother presses.

"You know that's a secret," I tell her, giving her a coy smile and wagging my finger. She pretends to look put out. We've done this for the past three years, and I haven't actually made any wishes. That's okay though, because she likes it. That's really the point of all of my birthdays. Hours pass and presents open, some of which are actually, genuinely good.

My foster mother gives me more of the thick socks I like, Peter gives me a pimp cane (which I will never use, but is very funny), and Emily gives me an audiobook that I've never heard before but actually seems interesting. More importantly, she seems to relax more and more as the party continues, and is talking and smiling normally by the time everything starts coming to a close and my foster mother sends my foster father out to pick up dinner.

I finally get my chance to talk with Emily in private when I find her out on the front porch, staring at what's left of the moon before it dips back over the horizon.

"Hey," I greet her, sitting down on the bench next to her.

"You doing okay?"

"W-what?" she jolts, turning to me with a startled expression. A single laugh manages to make it out of my nose before I stop myself. With the way my cane clonks on the wooden floor, I'm not exactly stealthy, but Emily somehow manages to find herself consistently snuck up on regardless. It never fails to make me smile.

"You seemed out of it today," I tell her.

"Lia and I both thought so. I just wanted to check in and see what was up."

"... Lia thought so?" Emily says hesitantly, unconsciously playing with her braids.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you two. It's nothing, really."

"It's hard to believe it's nothing," I press gently. But not, apparently, gently enough. Emily glances away, something almost like bitterness passing over her face for a moment.

"Can I not, occasionally, simply appear something other than happy?" she asks.

"It irritates you too, doesn't it?" My mind freezes. What is she— I don't get to finish that thought. No thoughts, in that moment, get to finish. They are all simply cut in twain. We feel it, in that moment. The whole city feels it. But Emily and I, staring out at the sunset, get to see it, too. I've experienced something like this before. Back when I was small, back when I was more than scar tissue and bitterness. This time, it is not at all the same, but I still recognize it instantly. How could I not?

What else could be happening? There are now two skies. This is not, I feel the need to clarify, because a sky has been added. There is not a new, additional sky that has been grown or superimposed or inserted alongside the first. The sky is how it always was and always has been, but now it is two instead of one. It has been divided, split, sundered, and unequivocally made into two parts that I can no longer conceive as a single concept.

At first, nothing actually separates them; it is simply a fact that the sky is no longer one, and I know this before I can actually see the crack with my dull, struggling eye. But then I see the crack get wider, and the incursion alarm starts to blare. What a shame, I think to myself. I really didn't want to die.