If We Were the Last

Tangerine light filtered through the pantry slats. I glared at the boy slouching across from me, my heart far too loud. 

"You know, I never wanted to play stupid spin the bottle in the first place. And I wouldn't... uh, you know... if we were the last people on Earth."

Alex rolled his eyes. "We agree on that, then."

I snap out of my ocean of memories – all too easy to drown in, even the awkward middle school ones – when a wet snout nudges my leg.

"Hey, Skittles." I reach down to pet the little raccoon. I found him a few hundred miles back hiding in an empty McDonalds, shivering in the last dredges of winter, and he's been glued to my side ever since.

Now, the August heat is baking an empty San Francisco to a tarry crisp. Greenery has exploded from the once-manicured sidewalk beds. A mean-looking cat glares at us from across the street. My bag is heavy with survival tools and suffocating loneliness and snacks (one perk of impossibly waking up to being the last person left on the planet: nobody's there to judge you for eating Pop-tarts for dinner), and a knockoff iPod thing I found last night that somehow still had juice digs into my side.

Just another day. (Just like the last.)

Skittles pokes my calf again, and with a sigh, I turn to see what's got him all worked up.

My heart skips a beat.

There's another human. 

A boy. 

Here.

Everything slows down. The dust motes, the bumblebees, the blood in my veins. 

Maybe it won't be like the day before.

Suddenly, he turns in my direction, and we make eye contact.

And – I gasp.  

I recognize him. Somehow, someway.

"Alex?"

"'The world ended and all I got was this lousy shirt.'" He raises an eyebrow at my (badly) Sharpied thermal. "Creative."

I grin, still in disbelief. "I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but I'm going to take that as a compliment."

The next hours pass in a blur. Despite the fact that we used to kick each other's lego towers in kindergarten and elbow each other during track practice, it turns out once you've been alone for months upon months, you're ecstatic to just find another human being.

After doing gloriously stupid things across the city that just aren't fun with only one – racing the trolleys, throwing donuts for the seagulls off the pier, running through the foamy edge of Pacific Ocean and tripping on sand dollars – the sky turns from peach to bruised plum.

Moonlight glitters on the water underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. 

"Hey, do you remember that party in seventh grade?" Alex turns to me. "The pantry?"

My cheeks redden. "Potentially."

"Ironic, huh?" 

We're close enough I can make out the green flecks in his eyes.

Suddenly, a beep sounds in my pocket. I pull out the iPod-looking device from last night's, er, borrowing.

Critical battery level. Terminate memory-based kinetic hologram?