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Mac coughs. The air here — in whatever year it is — is thick and hard to breathe in. Even if it wasn’t about to be the literal end of the world, it would be impossible to last in these conditions very long.
“I didn’t want Wari and Jahpo to have to deal with my remains,” Qanta explains, but Mac’s having a hard time listening. Her mind is somewhere else. Her mind is still on that fucking rooftop with KJ’s arms around her and lips on hers.
Kissing another girl wasn’t supposed to feel so good, but it did. It wasn’t just kissing any girl, it was KJ — her best friend, her protector, her partner in crime — and now she’s gone. She’s somewhere else. Maybe still in 2171, or maybe she got back to 1988 and her life will just continue without Mac. Maybe she’s just fine without her.
KJ has a life outside of Mac, but what does Mac in life have other than KJ? A terminal illness? A shitty family? An unhealthy dependence on cigarettes? Crippling self-hatred?
Mac wants to cry. She wants to sob and scream but she can’t. She feels empty. It’s fitting, given that she’s in an empty, desolate wasteland.
Yet there’s still so much buzzing around in her head. She’s going to die in either thirty-eight minutes or two years. There’s no cure for her illness. She might never see her best friends again. She kissed a girl and she wants to do it again. Somehow, that fact overrides her impending doom in her head.
You really are a dyke, a voice in her head sneers. Mac sits down on the rough ground and pulls her knees up to her chest. She doesn’t have the energy to fight that voice, to assure herself that she’s not. How could she do that now, anyway? There’s no denying it anymore, no pushing it away and trying to pretend those feelings aren’t there.
Maybe it would be better if she just died right now, if her life ended with the world’s. She wouldn’t have to deal with these painful thoughts anymore. Everything could just... end.
“ — So please, tell me everything you can remember.”
Mac says the only thing she’s capable of thinking right now.
“I kissed a girl.”
“Oh.”