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Back before the end of the world, Leo had to read a book called Brother in the Land for English class. It was about this kid, Danny something or other, who survived a nuclear war in England, and it was described as 'a moving post-apocalyptic study of human nature in the face of catastrophe.' Leo's personal opinion was that it was boring, creepy, and had too much in the way of embarrassing romance parts that the teacher, Mrs. Franklin, made them read out loud.
Leo shared Mrs. Franklin's English class with this really annoying girl called Ellen Bentworth. Ellen looked like a pig in glasses, with frizzy orange hair that surrounded her head in this perfectly round helmet - Leo knows, because he sat behind her and had to read the blackboard around her head - and she always had an opinion about everything.
"The thing is, post-apocalyptic is a useless term," she said one Tuesday morning, while Leo was digging holes in his desk with his pencil and trying not to fall asleep. "Apocalypse means, by definition, the end of the world, so there's no way for anything to be post-apocalyptic because there's nothing left for anything to be post-apocalyptic in." She sat back in her chair, the set of her shoulders smug and earnest. "Do you see?"
One of Leo's favorite daydreams involves him travelling back through time, appearing in that very same English class and beating Ellen Bentworth over the head with her own copy of the book, all the time shouting, "Kiss my post-apocalyptic ass, Bentworth!"
He tells Sarah this while they're hanging out laundry in what passes for their backyard, and she laughs for the first time in four days. Her hair is falling out of the plait she tied it in that morning, and the sun is shining, and she is the most beautiful thing Leo has ever seen.
***
Leo has been in love with Sarah for as long as he can remember - from the first time she pushed him into the mud when they were five, to the day he joined astronomy club just because she said she was going to. He didn't expect to be in his sixth month of marriage at an age when he should be worrying about whether or not she'd accept his invitation to the winter formal, but it's not like he didn't always know they were going to end up together. He did. He just thought it would take a lot longer, that's all.
Their wedding was weird - everyone cried, the way people do at weddings, but it was a lot less 'I'm so happy for them' and a lot more 'Oh God, we're all going to die.' Sarah and Leo spent their wedding night in separate houses, and Leo stayed awake until dawn, staring at the model airplanes hanging from his ceiling and hearing 'when I became a man, I put away childish things' over and over and over in his head.
He didn't feel like a man at all - and he still doesn't. He and Sarah shared their government-provided temporary lodgings with Leo's parents for a while, but Leo isn't afraid to use his name to provide for his family, and they have their own house now. Leo wanted to work to support Sarah and the baby, but his parents - while they did back down when Leo and Sarah refused to get their marriage annulled - were insistent that they both continue their education. Leo's mom looks after the baby when they're at the makeshift school, but Leo doesn't know what's going to happen after they graduate. He knows his parents always wanted him to go to college, but a) there aren't many left, b) he's married now, there's a kid and everything, and c) Leo feels like he should be out there, helping to rebuild the world with his own hands.
"You know, just because you saw the comet first, that doesn't make it your fault."
They're lying in bed, miles apart. Sarah is a dim outline in the dark, but Leo can feel her eyes on him.
"I know," he says, and they both know it's a lie.
"If you hadn't seen it, we might all be dead." Instead of just my parents, she doesn't say, but Leo hears it anyway. "You're a hero."
Leo does not feel like a hero. He feels like he did on his wedding night - like a scared kid who's been forced to put away childish things before his time.
Sarah reaches across the expanse of bed to take his hand, and doesn't say anything when Leo latches onto it like it's the only thing keeping him from drowning. She is holding on just as tightly herself.
***
Two weeks later, Leo is looking for his sunglasses and he finds a yearbook, which he must have packed to take to the caves, although he doesn't remember doing so. He sinks down onto the floor, flicking through the pages until he comes to row upon row of smiling faces, each one underscored by the name of someone Leo used to know. Someone who is now dead.
There's Matt Shepherd, who once slammed Leo into a locker and then asked Sarah out in the same week. Jason, who said that the whole comet thing would be good for Leo's sex life - it wasn't - and right there, two pictures away from Leo's own face, is Ellen Bentworth. Annoying, orange-haloed, pig-faced Ellen Bentworth, who Leo sat behind in English class for two years. He won't ever have to sit behind her again, of course, because she, like almost everyone else in the yearbook, is dead.
Leo doesn't even realise he is crying until Sarah pulls the yearbook out of his hands and wraps her arms around him, crooning wordless nonsense and stroking his hair as she rocks him back and forth.
"It's okay," she says, and Leo presses his face into her neck and cries harder, because it isn't okay, it isn't okay at all and it's been six months and he still doesn't know what to *do* about it all. "I'm here. I'm here. It's okay."
They make love for the first time that night, and Leo finds out that he is not the only one who doesn't know what he's doing. It's awkward and clumsy and unbearably sweet, and Leo wouldn't change it for the world.
***
Baby Jack isn't a baby anymore - he's crawling and curious and into everything, and Leo and Sarah find that they can spend entire weekends saying, "No, Jack," and pulling things out of his mouth. It's weird to them that Jack will never remember the world Before, and Sarah takes care to show him the few pictures they have of her parents every day, and to tell him everything she can about them, whenever she has a chance.
It's good for Sarah too, Leo thinks, to keep her parents' memories alive in this way. So much has been destroyed - Leo knows there are people whose very existence has been more or less wiped out, as though they were never on earth at all.
The President gives speech after speech about how the human race will prevail and the world will go on for the people who are left to live in it, but Leo is never so sure of this as he is when he hears Sarah telling Jack about how much their parents loved him. Her voice is strong and steady and clearer every time she tells a story. The day she actually starts to laugh, she is recalling the way her mom threw a dinner plate at her dad the day he came home with his motorbike. Leo is in the other room fixing a low shelf that Jack somehow managed to pull loose with his superhuman baby strength, and he stops and listens with a smile so big it hurts his face.
***
They celebrate their first wedding anniversary by hiking up to the hill that saved their lives, and watching the sunset. Leo tells Sarah that Before, he'd hoped to have at least taken Sarah out on an official date by now, and Sarah tells Leo that she wouldn't have waited this long for him to ask. She says she would have started going steady with Matt Shepherd just to make Leo jealous, and Leo can't stop himself from making a face, even after all this time.
They talk about Jack, whose most recent visit to the medical center ended with him hurling a small but surprisingly noisy metal tray across the room (he doesn't like getting shots, which Leo totally understands) and about the trees they want to plant when they get a backyard that's more than a few feet of scrub earth. Sarah says she wants to get a telescope of her own one day, and Leo secretly plans to buy her one with some of the money he earns from the interviews he still gets asked for, from time to time.
It gets colder when the sun has totally disappeared, and Leo wraps a blanket around Sarah's shoulders as she tucks her head into the warm hollow of his neck.
"It wasn't the end of the world after all," she says quietly, rubbing her thumb along the edge of Leo's wedding ring. "I guess post-apocalyptic really is a useless term."
Leo looks out from the hill where they watched as the world didn't end, and says, "Ellen Bentworth would be so proud."
***