CHAPTER 1
DAYS SINCE THE COMET DIDN’T HIT: EIGHTY-EIGHT
It turns out that the “too long; didn’t read” version of the world almost ending in a fiery comet explosion is just the word “almost.” It could have happened, but it didn’t. Close but no cigar. The apocalypse-that-wasn’t.
Life as we know it was almost completely different, and the weight of that “almost” is everything. Contrary to viral internet theories and speculation, reckoning with death didn’t upend society, most of the population didn’t quit their jobs to go off-grid or live in a van, and the economy didn’t grind to a halt.
Which is good! But also … kind of weird?
The optimist in me wanted to buy into the other theories. The ones that thought humans would finally learn how to coexist peacefully. No more gun violence, no more violation of basic human rights, and no more taking three weeks to respond to a text because you were lazy and then forgot.
We stared death in the face, and we lived to tell the tale. Call me naive, but I thought our new lease on life would mean something. When you’re told you have eight days left to live and then defy the odds—shouldn’t that change, like, everything?
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
On the outside, life looks the same as it always has. I’m at Wildcat Welcome Week at Northwestern University, and it’s exactly what every college movie has prepared me for. Throngs of incoming freshmen have flooded the campus, with stars in their eyes and dreams of a new life filled with parties and booze, classes and friends, sex and freedom.
My life is on more or less the same trajectory it was when I landed in London back in June. Comet or not, I probably would have always been here, staring into the dark eyes of a stranger at a freshman orientation party thrown by an off-campus frat house. Classes don’t start for a few more days, but college life has officially begun.
Despite what I once wanted to believe, this mediocre party is my real fate.
“What’s your major?” the boy (Ethan?) asks as he fills my cup with foamy beer that I have no intention of drinking, while my phone buzzes endlessly in my pocket. I glance at the screen and have a quick internal meltdown before focusing back on the guy in front of me. He’s a few inches taller than me, with light brown skin and shaggy black hair. He’s thin but not lanky, and when he smiles nervously, I realize he’s cute in a way that would have caught my attention, before.
I guess not everything is the same.
“Undeclared,” I tell him, accepting the warm beer. “What’s yours?”
He leans closer so I can hear him over the music. “Engineering.”
“No hesitation! Nice!” I hold my hand up for a high five. He obliges with a laugh.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he says.
“That makes one of us.” Sometimes I wonder if there aren’t too many options at college. (In life!) I know for a fact that there are more than two dozen different engineering majors and minors.
“No plans?” he asks, the word “plans” pressing on my fight-or-flight instinct like a fresh bruise.
“None whatsoever,” I confirm. It’s a weird feeling; I went from being a girl with all the answers about her future to one who is utterly directionless. I don’t even know what next week will bring, let alone what I want to do with the rest of my life. I briefly thought photography was the answer, but what if I’m wrong? What if I waste my second chance?
When the gaping black hole that is my future starts to scare me, I remind myself that fate had my back in Europe, and who am I to think I’m stronger than destiny? Life will work itself out. (Right?)
He smiles, so I smile back, to prove to myself that I am present, that I’m not thinking about the Google Alerts blowing up my phone. I let the silence settle between Ethan and me for a beat too long—and take that as my cue to leave. My eyes wander over Ethan’s shoulder, searching for my best friend, Naomi, who’s just as likely to be found in a corner reviewing her class schedule and texting her boyfriend as she is to be doing a keg stand and making plans to pledge a sorority. She’s as social as she is ambitious, and these days I feel less and less like either. I open my mouth to say “See you around!” at the same time Ethan doubles down on our conversation.
“What’d you do during Comet Week?” he asks.
“Comet Week” is what everyone now calls those seven or eight days where we all thought we were going to die. I glance down at my drink and grimace, remembering the last time I got drunk (in a small Italian home, with a girl who hated my guts). The memory of that hangover—like everything from that week—feels painfully fresh. I take a small sip and shudder as I swallow.
“Nothing much,” I lie. He stares at me expectantly. I need to try harder. “I dyed my hair. It was horrible.”
“I like it.”
I sigh, exhausted in my bones. He’s nice, and I wish he weren’t, because then I’d have a reason to leave. “It was worse before.” I run my fingers through my hair. A few weeks ago, Naomi had dragged me to a salon. I was weirdly relieved when the stylist said the bleach had damaged my hair beyond repair and it needed more time to recover. She’d offered to tone my streaky red-orange locks, and I’d accepted, thinking that having something less stripey and more natural would make me feel like myself again. (It didn’t. It looks pretty much the same—minus the stripes—and every time I look in the mirror, I hear a confused British accent say “What’s a Gritty?” and I want to throw up.)
Ethan nods, probably expecting me to add something interesting to the conversation. Unfortunately for him, it’ll be a long wait. The first few weeks after my trip, I felt like a shaken-up pop bottle—ready to burst with all the secrets I was holding. From having gone through so much but not being able to talk about any of it. From the knowledge that I looked more or less the same on the outside but inwardly felt like every one of my molecules had been rearranged. Almost three months later, I’m still not ready to talk about it, especially not with strangers.
“What about you?” I ask Ethan. I’m rusty, but I’m trying.
“My fam and I got matching tattoos.” He pushes his sleeve up and shows off a big creepy creature that looks like the monster from Stranger Things. “No regrets!” he says, and once again I’m jealous of his certainty. My phone buzzes and I can’t suppress my curiosity any longer; my eyes stray to the screen, desperate to open the newest alert.
“My mom won’t stop texting me,” I lie again.
“Nervous parents?” He nods sympathetically. “My mom said if I don’t respond to her texts within an hour, she’s going to call campus police.”
The fizzy, restless feeling is back with a vengeance.
“Do you want to dance?” I shout over the music. Ethan nods enthusiastically, so we both ditch our drinks on a nearby table (I’m not coming back for mine) and I drag him onto the makeshift dance floor. I drape my arms across his shoulders, crossing them behind his neck. He rests his hands politely on my hips and we sway easily with the music.
“I’m glad I met you,” he says, his lips inches away from my ear.
“Mm-hmm!” I respond, suddenly conscious of the unbearable heat in this room. His hand slips from my waist to my lower back. I make eye contact for the first time since we started dancing, and my heart sinks. I’m hip to hip with a guy who is cute and nice and not ridiculously off-limits, and all I feel is the hollow realization that I’d rather be anywhere else.
He leans in, his lips a breath from mine.
I jump out of his arms. “I can’t. I, I—” I look around, hoping Naomi will swoop in and save me.
“Hey, it’s fine.” He raises his hands in the air as he steps back.
“I wish—” My voice cracks. My mind fills in the blank. I wish I could forget this summer. I wish I could move on.
“Do you have a boyfriend or something?”
Or something.
“I have to go.” I push my way through the crowded dance floor and flee outside to the empty porch. The late-summer air fills my lungs as I sink onto the steps and drop my head into my shaky hands.
Why does this keep happening?
When I’m alone, all I want is to be with people. When I’m with people, all I want is to be alone. Nothing feels right, because I don’t feel right.
With a glance to see if anyone is paying attention to me (they’re not), I open the alerts for “Comet, dog.” I felt like a stalker setting it up, but Comet is my dog, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep tabs on him. The problem is, I get sent way too many articles. I should have thought about that before naming my dog after the biggest global event of this century.
My inbox is now filled with unopened articles that mention Comet, which means he must have made a public appearance today. I pick the first one and open it. A video is embedded at the top of the article, and I’m surprised to read that it was filmed in Canada. I suck in a breath. Is it possible— I cut myself off before I can follow that thought to its natural conclusion and press play.
The video follows a procession of black vehicles, focusing on a Bentley as it pulls up to a curb filled with people waiting behind a line of steel crowd-control barricades. The car door opens, and Comet bounds out first, tugging my heart across the border. He waits patiently next to the open door, and my stomach twists in miserable anticipation. A moment later, the new king Theodore Geoffrey Edward George steps out, one hand holding Comet’s leash, the other raised to the crowd. Every time I see him (when I’m checking in on Comet, obviously) I’m surprised to see that his hair is still the same shade of brown he got from a box of drugstore dye.
If I cared enough to read into things like this, I’d wonder whether he’s also haunted by memories of this summer.
I study the figure on my screen, taking stock. I’m always measuring the boy I see in photos against the one I knew in real life, and today he looks startlingly like the Theo who kissed me on a beach in Greece. He has an effortless smile, a perfectly tailored navy suit that makes him look slightly older than his nineteen years, and an air of easygoing importance. He looks handsome and charming and loose. More notably, he looks happy.
It knocks the wind out of me.
The headline reads KING THEO DESPERATE TO IMPRESS, but I don’t agree. He’s surrounded by guards as he approaches the Canadian prime minister. They shake hands, pose for a picture, exchange smiles and pleasant greetings, and Theo looks like a fucking natural. He was born and bred for this exact moment: charming the crowd, acting as a familiar face in times of change and uncertainty, and reminding all the royal watchers out there why they’ve obsessively followed his family’s every move for generations. The Commonwealth may be in upheaval following the untimely death of the Queen and the almost-apocalypse, but some traditions are constant. Steadfast. Unshakable. Less than two weeks before his coronation, Theo’s presence is a reminder of that.
That’s what I see, anyway. My knowledge of the royal family consists mostly of what I learned when Theo and I spent a week together on a mad dash across Europe, and the stories he told me then—of a boy trapped in a life he couldn’t stand—hardly fit with what I’m seeing now. He looks destined, not stuck, and his future is clear as day. I feel a hot stab of envy.
I lean in, my nose inches away from the screen, trying to get a better look at his expression. Theo glances at the camera and grins like he wasn’t thrust into a life he was dreading, like his mom didn’t just die of an undetected heart defect.
My stomach drops.
Once upon a time, somewhere between a storm on a ferry in the Mediterranean and a flight home to Chicago, I thought I knew what made him smile. But maybe I was wrong.
Back in June, when a comet was on course to hit Earth and end life as we know it, Theo was on the run from his obligations. He was willing to give up his life to avoid becoming king, but by the time I found out that he was sacrificing his spot in his family’s cometproof bunker, it was too late. I was already halfway in love with him (or so I thought) and I couldn’t let him keep running. I sent him straight into the waiting handcuffs of the royal security detail, and I assumed he’d hold it against me for the rest of his life.
But maybe he likes being king more than either of us expected. Maybe now that he’s the one in charge, he no longer feels like the monarchy is antiquated and unfair.
While I’m pondering his unpredictable feelings, I can’t help but wonder how he feels about being my husband.
(“Husband”! Every time I even think the word, my brain short-circuits like an American blow-dryer in a London outlet.)
I drop my face into my hands as laughter and music float out onto the porch. All around me, all summer long, it’s felt like everyone has moved on from Comet Week. Like everyone else is focused on the almost of it all—but thanks to a very real piece of paper hiding under my mattress, my Comet Week choices have followed me home across the Atlantic in a way that feels more permanent even than Ethan’s Demogorgon tattoo.
I’ve gone through the motions of getting ready for this school year: I registered for classes. I completed the online checklist the school sent out. (At my sister Brooke’s insistence.) I bought a shower caddy and a microwave from Target. I’m going through the motions of becoming a college freshman and moving on with my life, but it hasn’t been enough. I can’t move on or forget or breathe a sigh of relief because of what “almost” happened. I dream about sinking boats and missed trains and stolen dogs, waking up each night in a cold sweat, my heart bruising my rib cage with every beat.
“Wren!” The front door slams behind me and I turn to see Naomi in her platform sneakers, a miniskirt, a crop top, and spiky space buns. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” She sits next to me and inhales deeply. “Does it smell like rain or am I getting my hopes up for nothing?” Naomi is obsessed with the weather and already has her future as a TV meteorologist all mapped out.
I miss that feeling.
“It’s usually the second one,” I say in a hollow voice.
She frowns. “What’s wrong?”
I waver. She knows about Theo, but she doesn’t know the full truth about the marriage certificate under my bed. “It’s nothing,” I say eventually, because I don’t want to kill her back-to-school buzz.
“We’re leaving.” She drags me into a standing position, and when I try to protest, she cuts me off. “I was ready to go anyway. Got your pepper spray?” She palms the small bottle of pepper spray attached to her key ring. I have a matching one—a gift from her mom. Naomi pops open the case to her AirPods and hands me the left one. “Do we need ‘sad girl music’ or ‘F-U music’ for the ride home?”
I don’t know if it’s the ride-or-die look in her eyes or the videos on my phone or the knowledge that Theo and I are on the same continent again, but the pressurized fizz in my blood finally pops.
“What’s on the ‘I’ve made a big mistake’ playlist?” I ask.
“Whatever happened, we can fix it,” she says immediately.
I rub my hands over my face. “Not without a divorce lawyer,” I mumble.
Her eyebrows furrow. “I don’t think I heard you right.”
I don’t blame her for being skeptical. It is hard to believe without the proof. I take a deep breath, ready to spill the secret that I’ve been keeping all summer. “I have something I need to show you.”
Copyright © 2024 by Kara McDowell
