My friend Daisy found out first.

Funny, she wasn’t going to get hit. Nobody up north was; lucky people. Mom and Dad thought about driving up, but Jesse was too sick to make the trip—place would be hell in a couple of days, anyway.

She said all the neighborhood dogs started making this cacophony, and then came the news pieces about the epidemics, the viruses, all those riots. We still thought we’d be safe, way up in north Cali—but then they figured it out.

Nobody was gonna be safe.

I didn’t really like thinking about death. I still wore Disney princess Band-Aids and took those gummy vitamins Mom made Jesse and me take when we were really small—people laughed at me for it, but it made me feel all safe and young and happy, like nothing bad could ever happen to me with the smiling face of Sleeping Beauty staring up at me from bloodied knuckles.

Jesse’s last baby tooth came out the day we found out. Mom bought him a new dress to celebrate—those kinda things never fail to make him smile. It was this six-dollar spectacle from the supermarket, all pink and frilly with little diamantes all round the collar.

And as we sat in the front of the TV, Jesse in his brand new ballgown eating reheated lasagna, the news anchor started freaking out and they had to take him off—and when they came back, it wasn’t good old Jim Connolly, but the President in his big fancy chair with his big fancy hair.

Dad said it was a grown-up story and made Jesse go to bed, but he let me stay. My 14th birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks, and I was feeling really old. Mom tried to turn the TV off when they said it, but I’d already heard. I went to bed crying and hugging Mom, and Mom told me to say my prayers, and I said that I had.

We weren’t a religious family.

Friday comes and goes. Mom dresses me up really nice for school, and donates all my jeans to charity. She said she’d always wanted to get rid of them.

I skipped with three of my friends. Daisy told me over the phone she couldn’t come back down. She said it was because she had an ear infection, but I told her to shut up and write me the best damn eulogy the world has ever heard. We laughed for a little while.

We all went and sat by the creek and talked about the boy Millie liked. His name was Jake, and he wore glasses, and Millie never stopped talking about him. That Friday was no different. She said she wanted to be with him when it happened, so at least their broken atoms could be together at last. We didn’t say anything for a while after that.

Turns out Mom wasn’t mad I skipped when I told her. Dad let me drink champagne with them on the porch and Jesse had apple juice and told us about the boy he had a crush on, our neighbor Finn.

I chose to sleep in on my last day on Earth. I got out of bed at midday and made myself Fruit Loops and told my parents how much I loved them. I saw Millie and Jake kissing outside on the street, and Jesse gave Finn sunflowers.

I put on lipstick and my nicest dress and we all went out into the street and drank lemonade with our friends. There was a big countdown, like on New Year’s, but everyone was crying. I wasn’t. As I look at all the faces, some terrified, some gleeful, some panicked, others thoughtful, I realize something:

I’m going to miss being alive. It was sorta nice.

—By Sophia R., 13, Sydney, Australia