“Brian!”
I spun around at the sound of a very familiar voice calling my
name. Sure enough, there stood my wife,
Leighanne, waiting for me with open arms.
I ran to her and flung my arms around her, holding her close.
“Oh, Leigh,” I whispered, pressing my face close to hers. I breathed in deeply, taking in the sweet
scent of her hair. Oh, how I had missed
her.
My flight had just landed in Atlanta, and although I was tired
from flying non-stop, ever since our bus had left the venue in Caracas,
Venezuela, I was relieved to be finally home, holding the woman I loved more
than anything in my arms.
“Brian, what are we going to do?” Leighanne asked. I could hear the tremble in her voice and
knew she was talking about the comet.
“Shh, calm down, honey,” I said, trying to soothe her. “We’ll think of something soon. I really don’t want to talk about it now
though, okay?”
“Okay,” she sniffed, pulling away to wipe her eyes.
I put my arm around her, and we gently walked off towards the
baggage claim to pick up my luggage.
But as we walked, the comet was on my mind anyway. How could it not be? After all, unless we were picked to go live
in the shelter, we would only have one month left alive. And even if we were picked, there was no
guarantee that we would survive the comet anyway.
My thoughts drifted to my friends and family, the people I
loved. I had Leighanne with me, but what
were the rest of them up to? I thought
about my poor parents. They had to be
frantic. And what about my brother
Harry and his family? He had a lovely
wife and a baby daughter. What would
happen to them? And of course, Nick,
AJ, Kevin, and Howie. They were all
devastated to hear the news, just as I was.
They had all flown away to be with their families too. I wondered if we would ever even see each
other again, let alone make music together.
It was so unfair. I kept
asking myself, Why is this happening to us?
I had no answers.
***
It was going on midnight, and I sat beside my mother at the
airport. The building was nearly
deserted, and the atmosphere was very eerie.
It felt weird being up so late on a Thursday night, which would normally
be a school night.
I didn’t know if the schools would bother being open the next few
weeks or not, but I had already decided I wasn’t going. Not tomorrow, anyway. Probably not ever. What was the point, when we only had a month
left to live? School was the last place
anyone would care about being.
I held my hand over my mouth to stifle back a yawn, as I glanced
out the window. I couldn’t even see out
into the night because of the reflection of the lights inside, but I stared
anyway, hoping to catch a glimpse of the plane that would soon land and bring
Sammy home.
As I stared, a million thoughts ran through my head. I thought of my family, of my grandparents,
my aunts and uncles, and my two little cousins, who lived so far away in
Arizona. Would I ever see them
again? I thought about my friends. What were they doing right now?
And then, out of the blue, I thought of the Backstreet Boys, my
favorite music group. I had tickets to
their show on July 21st. Now
I would never get to go. I wondered
what they were doing now, where they were, and what they were thinking. Probably the same thing I was. I imagined pretty much everyone in the world
was thinking the same kind of thoughts as me.
After all, we were all in the same position, on the verge of death.
My thoughts drifted from the five men I loved to the one boy I
loved. Michael. I remembered seeing him that afternoon when
I was waiting in the parking lot. Was
that just that afternoon? It seemed
like centuries ago, when actually, it was only hours. We had no idea then of the news that would
reach us that night. I wondered if I
would ever see him again either. Would
he ever know how much I loved him?
“Julie,” my mom said, interrupting my thoughts. “Here it comes.”
I pressed my face close to the window and squinted out, just able
to make out the lights of a plane landing on the runway a ways out from the
building. I stared at it, half wanting
to smile, and half wanting to cry.
Sammy was home.
***
I don’t know how long we all stayed up that night, my whole
family, just talking, crying, everything.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the next morning that we all got to
bed. And even then, I couldn’t sleep,
despite how tired and emotionally drained I was.
Tired of tossing and turning in bed, I got up and crept to the
stairs that led to the basement, where Sammy’s room was. I silently opened the door and carefully
walked down the stairs in total darkness, not wanting to turn on the light in
the stairway and risk waking my parents, whose room was right down the hall,
up.
Sammy’s room was dark, but I could see the pale light from her TV
shining through the crack under her closed door. Quietly, I opened the door and stuck my head
in. Sure enough, Sammy couldn’t sleep
either. She sat up in bed, staring at
the TV, her expression emotionless.
“Sammy?” I whispered.
“Hey, Jules,” she said softly.
“Come here.” She scooted over,
making room for me. Grateful for the
invitation, I sat down on the bed next to her.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I guess,”
she replied. “How about you?”
I shrugged too. “I dunno,”
I said. “I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither. It’s weird
being back home in my own room again.”
I nodded. “So, Broadway,
huh? How was it?”
She smiled wistfully. “It
was awesome,” she replied. “Hard, but
fun at the same time.”
I nodded. “Well, at least
you got to do it for a little while,” I said.
She shrugged. “Hopefully
I’ll be able to do it again.”
“Yeah, hopefully,” I echoed.
But at that point, things didn’t look too promising.
***
“Brian! Brian, come
here!”
I walked into the kitchen to find Leighanne sitting at the
kitchen table, holding something in her hand.
A letter, it looked like.
“Look at this,” she said, handing it to me. I saw that her hand was trembling, and tears
had filled her eyes. A feeling of dread
came over me, as I took the piece of paper from her hand and glanced at the
first few sentences:
Mr. and Mrs. Brian Littrell,
You have
received this letter as an invitation for you and any other immediate family
members living in your household to come to live at the United States National
Refuge…
Total relief washed over me, as I realized what this letter
was saying, and my knees went weak.
“We’re in, baby!” I cried to Leighanne. “We’re in!”
“I know!” she gushed, leaping up and dancing around the
kitchen.
I let the letter fall to the ground and took her in my
arms, kissing her. “We’re gonna make it,
Leigh,” I told her. “We’re gonna survive
this thing.”
Letting her go, I bent down and picked up the letter again,
the precious piece of paper that was our ticket to survival.
***