(The smoke finally resumed its path toward the sky, as if embarrassed for having forgotten the rules.)
The helicopters arrived. Metal birds slicing through the night with searchlights. Sunny grabbed his arm.
"We have to go. Now!"
On the sidewalk across the street, a four-meter-tall tree had appeared. Luminous insects swirled around it, leaving glowing blue trails.
They pedaled toward the center while loudspeakers repeated the evacuation protocol in a voice that was far too calm.
They turned a corner. A pack of wolf-like creatures was devouring something that no longer looked human. When they saw Thomas and Sunny, the creatures turned their heads in unison and began to chase them.
"Faster!"
"I'm going as fast as I can!" Thomas panted. But the urgency was no longer just in his legs. It came from somewhere deeper.
"Thomas… the moon."
The moon had turned a deep, bruised red, like old blood. Floating right beside it was a perfect blue sphere, impossibly sharp and clear.
Sunny's name burned at the back of Thomas's neck like an order. He gripped the handlebars so hard the plastic dug into his palms. He didn't want to look at the sky at first; he refused to. Some things became real the moment you looked at them too long. But Sunny was pointing, and he couldn't ignore her.
The red moon gave him back an image that wasn't an image — it was an old, buried feeling. The same cold he had felt six years earlier, when the house stopped having a father and the world decided to keep going anyway.
"Not again, he thought, and realized he wasn't talking to the moon. He was talking to the idea of losing something else. He was talking to Sunny. He forced himself to breathe, but the air came in ragged bursts, as if it, too, was afraid.
The bicycle hit nothing. For a fraction of a second, the only real thing was the emptiness. Not the crash — the instant before it, that "nothing" that steals the ground from under you. Thomas managed to yank Sunny toward him, clumsy and too late, as if his body already knew what his mind still refused to accept. And when they flew through the air, the first thing he thought wasn't "I'm going to die," but "Just don't let anything happen to her." Then came the asphalt rushing up, the world closing in, the sound fading from the inside.
The beasts leapt. Thomas felt teeth in his arm, weight on his back, claws in his leg. The pain arrived whole and then left too quickly.
All that remained was the image: a red moon and a blue sphere.
How is it that no one is looking at the sky?
A ridiculous peace washed over him.
He closed his eyes.