#asteroid strike

“Can I sit here?” Stephanie asked the girl in the khaki scarf and gray and acid green throw-up print high tops.

Rosie nodded, “Sure.” She went back to her banana bread.

She pulled up a chair and sat down. Rosie took one look at the chocolate bar Stephanie was eating and glared at her. “Did you know the widespread consumption of chocolate is only made possible by slave labour?”

Hearing this took Stephanie aback. Not the information itself, she already knew that; it’s a shock to her that Rosie never bothered to say hi or hello. “Who the fuck starts a conversation like that? I just sat down!”

Rosie narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “So, you’re a slavery apologist then?”

Stephanie stood up. “No, but what you said just caught me off guard.”

Rosie’s patience with Stephanie‘s attempt to appear bigger wore thin. “It's people like you who have a reason that this is a problem,” she growled in an angry hushed tone. “We're never going to get past slavery if we can't talk about it!”

Rosie desperately wanted Stephanie to sit back down. Stephanie stayed standing, as she didn’t think it was a good idea to stop looking big just yet. “OK, the reason it caught me off guard is that I wasn't expecting to have to talk about it, and I kind of don't feel like talking about it.” Her tone of voice was calm, but her body language suggested domination.

“That's not an excuse!” Rosie barked back, “If someone wants to talk about a serious problem, you're supposed to engage them; you're not supposed to blow them off!”

“I didn't blow you off, I just got a bit startled.”

Now, Rosie stood up. “Listen, asshole; you didn't just blow me off, you blew off every single enslaved human on the planet!”

Rosie kept trying to make herself look big. She was six inches shorter than Stephanie, so it didn’t work. “You look at me like I’m at all aware of what I have just done; like I hurt you on purpose,” Stephanie replied, speaking calmly but pointing aggressively, “Honestly, I didn't think you'd get so upset.”

“Of course you didn't!” blurted Rosie. Her face went red. “You don't think about anyone other than yourself!”

“You need to calm down.” Stephanie opened both palms.

Rosie aggressively slapped her hands together. “Don’t you dare tell me I need to calm down!”

Stephanie leaned against the wall like she was a cool greaser in a 50s movie. "I’m serious," she told Rosie in a firm but gentle tone, "I think you’re upset about something else, and it’s manifested itself as this incredibly pointless conversation.”

Rosie did not react well to this at all. She picked up an empty mug and threw it across the room. It hit someone between the shoulder blades, shattering on impact. The person turned around. Rosie hid.

They assumed Stephanie threw the mug. They picked her up and slid her across the bar. She rolled on her right ankle when they dropped her on the bar to slide her. Upon flying off the bar, she landed on the other ankle in such a way that she wound up rolling on top of her ankle. Long story short, she injured both ankles in a bar fight.

What happened next was a blur. Stephanie screamed. The screaming irritated the people sitting at the next table. A woman wearing a hijab with Winnie the Pooh printed on it and a Villanova sweatshirt got up, scooped up Stephanie, and carried her out to her second-hand Ferrari with a flaming skull painted on it. When things finally settled down, Stephanie found herself in the back of a car travelling down a country road with Forest on either side. She had no idea how she got here, nor did she have any idea where we were going. All she knew was the driver's name: Elizabeth. Elizabeth had just got off from chaperoning some ungrateful little kid's college tour of Villanova. Stupid little brat, she thought, they're so disrespectful. "Yeah, those kids think they're going to Villanova. Monkeys might fly out of my butt."

Stephanie looked towards Elizabeth and said, "no kidding".

"You know, that bratty, high-and-mighty attitude will get you nowhere."

While Elizabeth initially agreed to take her to the hospital to see if they really were broken or if it was just a pair of really bad sprains, she quickly changed her tune when she saw a sign that said: “hitchhikers may be escaping inmates” followed by a sign that said, “have a nice day“ with a smiley face underneath. "No good."

"What?" Stephanie asked.

"This is no good. I'm turning around." Elizabeth snarked.

"We just got here." Stephanie protested. Of course, they were nowhere near the hospital, but rather halfway there. At least, Stephanie hoped they were halfway there.

She swerved the car so fast that it did a donut. "And now, we're leaving."

Stephanie never did figure out why they had to leave so abruptly. “Is it because of that sign? Because don’t worry, we weren’t planning on picking up hitchhikers”

“It doesn’t matter, Stephanie, we’re leaving. End of story”

Stephanie felt worried. What if Elizabeth wasn’t taking her to the hospital like she said she would. Maybe Elizabeth only said she would take her to the hospital to keep the peace. No, she thought, what doesn’t make sense. The more likely explanation would be that Elizabeth felt bad for her and wanted to help out, but realized that it wouldn’t do much good.

She had heard it for herself on the radio. A large meteor the size of a semi truck hit downtown Philadelphia this afternoon, overwhelming emergency services all over the East Coast. Of course the hospitals are going to be overwhelmed if a chunk of metal that size hits a large urban center. Meteors can do a ton of damage. Even if they don’t hit the earth, they can create devastating shockwaves. Just ask the people of Chelyabinsk. Windows got broken, people got hurt, and the meteor didn’t even hit the ground.

Except that wasn’t Elizabeth turned around. She wasn’t trying to avoid going to the hospital because she didn't want to wait in line. Elizabeth had been asleep at the wheel for the entire journey. She may have had her eyes open, she may have spoken lucidly, but make no mistake; there was no way in hell she was conscious.