I’m walking with about fifteen other students as we walk into the school building, having to push past the piece of the roof hanging over the side doors I go in through everyday, simply because I get to see her. Charlotte. I watch her walk in with her group of friends, who make me want to rip my hair out as I hear their obnoxious giggles about the most unnecessary things at six thirty in the morning. Except Amelia, she’s been my best friend since birth, she knows everything about me and I know everything about her. My family and her grandma live right next to each other. Amelia lives with her grandma ever since the attack, when her parents died. As I start to think about the day we found her parents, I hear Charlotte call out Amelia’s name, “Amelia! Get over here!” and watch Amelia run up to her immediately after she pats my shoulder bye. I watch her run up to her as Charlotte gives her a hug and her eyes glance at me just for a second. With that second of eye contact stuck on my mind, I walk through the doorway into my first period and sit down in my unassigned, assigned spot, that I’ve been sitting in for the past two weeks since sophomore year started. “Peter! My man.” I hear from the front of the room of the math class, “You’ll never believe what I got last night.” I hear walking closer up to me about to sit down, “What is it now Max.” I say with my ‘it’s seven in the morning’ voice. “Nah dude you gotta be excited about this one.” he says with wide eyes staring right at me. It’s a few seconds of silence as I stare back at him with my dead eyes, “What is it!” I exclaim with a sarcastic tone as he reaches into his bag, “I, Max, show you, Peter, a 2019 magazine!” he shouts out as if he’s a TV show host. “Woah...” I let out as a breath, “where’d you find this?” I ask him as I reach out to look at it. He snaps his hand back not letting me touch it, “I thought you didn’t care.” he says with a smirk, “Shut up.” I laugh as I grab it and flip through the pages, “Seriously, where’d you get this.” He looks at me with a blank stare for a second, then begins to talk, “I bought it at the 2019 museum.”, I look at him for about five seconds when he lets outs “Fine. I stole it. But you can’t get mad at me for that! I can’t buy a magazine for $1.8k!”. “You stole a magazine that’s almost 2 THOUSAND dollars!” I shout out and second later he punches me in the arm as he grabs the magazine with his other hand and stuffs it in his bag. “If you tell anyone you’re dead meat.” he says with a stern voice as the bell rings and my teacher shouts the door.

I sit in my usual spot on the bench next to the half missing swingset when I look up and see Amelia standing two feet away from me, turned around, shouting goodbyes to all her friends. I look over at them for a good 10 seconds before Amelia kicks me in the knee, “She doesn’t like you Peter.” as if she hasn’t reminded every day since 7th grade. “C'mon we need to pick up Calvin before he starts to freak out again.” she says as if my younger brother is her’s, even though he pretty much is. We start to walk around to the opposite side of the school to the trailers where the elementary schools have taken place in since the real school was burned to the grounds 31 years ago. “You’ll never believe what Max showed me today...” I start to say as I can see her roll her eyes from the side, she’s never liked him since he chopped off a good 7 inches off her in sixth grade. “he stole a magazine from 2019 that was almost two grand. Isn’t that insane?”. I continue to say before she cuts me off and says, “Yeah. Along with stupid and dangerous.”. “I don’t get why you don’t like him Amelia. He’s fun and always knows how to have a good time.” I tell her as I stop and wait for her to turn around, but she continues to walk so I have to jog up to her. “His fun” she says, “consists of little amature pranks that’ll get you in a lot more trouble afterwards than fun in the first place.”. “Well what’s something you have in mind that’s not so amature like .” I say as I tilt my head at her, but before I can get a response Calvin run up to us and jumps into her arms. “You know eight is a little too old for me to keep picking you up like this.” Amelia laughs, setting him down. “What were you guys talking about.” Calvin questions us, looking back and forth at us as he cuts between us. “Well I was just asking Amelia a question and still haven’t received an answer.” I say as I look over and see a smirk on her face. “Well Peter, I’ve got the perfect answer for you.” she says with a confident voice, “Only, you won’t find out until tonight. After it’s dark out.” she says as a demand. “Interesting. What will I need?” I says with my most professional sounding voice. I see her look down at Calvin with the puppy dog eyes he gives every time he thinks he’s about to be excluded. “Just you and Calvin. I’ll bring the flashlights.” she says and then giggles herself up the lawn and into her house.”Race ya to the house!” Calvin screams and starts to sprint down the sidewalk with his backpack bouncing up and down his back.

The second our parents closed their door to go to bed, Calvin and I climbed out the window in our room and slid down the slide we created when we were little out of the junk lying along the streets. The second we hit the ground we found Amelia looking down on us. “So what’s the plan Amelia.” I smile at her as she hands us a flashlight each. “Tonight boys, we’re going to the special exhibit.” She exclaims. “You’re funny.” I say with a sarcastic tone but she stares back at me with raises eyebrows, “The exhibit that costs $800 per person to see the luxuries of 2019?”. “Yes sir!” she whisper-shouts “Now let’s start moving so we can get in with the normal entry price of $15, then we can hide until the guards leave the exhibit entrance.” She reassures us as though it’s as easy as it sounds.

We approach the musuem doors and Calvin grabs my hand with his sweaty palms as Amelia hands the woman behind the glass window $45, “The musuem closes in 5 minutes. Whatever you plan on looking at, make it quick.” the woman says. “No going back now.” I let out with a crack in my voice. “C’mon we can go under these tables and wait till everyone leaves to make our way to the exhibit.” Amelia says. “There are cameras everywhere.” I tell her but she quickly slides under the cloth hanging over the table in front of us so I knell down following her as I drag Calvin behind me. “This place is so clean!” Calvin whispers as he peaks through the space between the cloth and ground. “I know.” Amelia says, “Only if they kept care of our schools and town like they do this place”. “Everyone who is still in the musuem, please evacute by leaving through the doors you entered. The musuem is now closed.” the animated voice says over the loud speakers. Amelia puts her pointer finger over her mouth looking at Calvin, “Once they close up the doors to the exhibit we’ll have to quitelyquietly run over.” she whispers. “And how are we supposed to get in?” I question her knowing the doors are locked by a keypad, “Don’t worry about it.” she says as we hear the guard make his rounds into the next room. “Now.” she mouths as she lifts the cloth up and tiptoes over to the entrance as we follow her behind, eyeing the room the guard is in. She quickly pokes at buttons on the keypad and the doors glide open, taking our hands and pulling us after and she very quietly closes them back up, “Woah.” Calvin and I let out in misbelief, “What-” Amelia cuts herself off as she turns around the see what we’re looking at. A room filled with the beautiful things we see in textbooks that we question were ever real, covering the room, filling it with color. Life. Still in misbelief, Amelia and I stand there paralizedparalyzed  as we warchwatch Clavin walk up to a tree with leaves the colors of red, orange, and yellow, unlike the leafless trees in our world, that are half burned to ashes. He sees one leaf fall down and as he reaches for it, the second it touches it, the leaf disintegrates into ashes and before he knows it, the ground starts rumbling and Amelia whispers “What’s happening?” and I yell over the increasing sound of rumbling, “Calvin what’d you do? Did the nightguard find us?”, “Maybe it's a special effec-” Calvin screams out before the branch of the tree hits him as the room starts spinning and before Amelia and I can even make sense of the situation, we all pass out on the ground.

“What the-” I whispers under my breath as we look around and find ourselvesoursleves in a police station with an officer with shrugged arms looking at us confused, “Don’t worry kids, you’re not in trouble. We found you all asleep in the middle of the field next to Forrest Rd. and just wanted to make sure you’re all safe so we can call your parents to pick you up.” says the officer. “The last thing we remember was being in the museum and then the ground started spinning and before we knew it, we were here.” Amelia tells the officer. “Museum? What museum? The closest one is the art one 17 miles away from the field. There’s no way you all walked out that far” the officer says. “We were at “The Pre-war museum, we were in the 2019 exhibit.” I tell him. “Are you kids just here to mess around with these lies? I have more important cases to be following up on, go to the front mess and ask the lady to call your parents to pick you up.” the officer says as he aggressively sets down his clipboard on his desk. “This place is so nice too!” Calvin shouts out, catching a few people’s eyes. “He’s right.” I say as I nudge Amelia with my elbow, looking over to see her already look at the working clocks on the walls and computers on the desks. “How’re these working.” she says as she glidesglids her fingers across the side of a computer in front of us. “C’mon let’s just get home.” I say trying to act brave allthough this place is creeping me out. We walk up to the lady in the front and ask to call home but she just hands us a sheet to fill out without saying a word. We go to sit down and see the first question asking the date. Calvin points out a calendar behind us reading September 17, 2019. “Now this isn’t right,” Amelia says as she leans over to the lady next to her “What’s the date?”, she picks up her phone and says “September 17. Shouldn’t you kids be at school?” the lady says looking the three of us up and down, but all we can looks at is the phone in her hand. Phones are very rare now days since the service towers were all shut down and electricity is saved for my important things. I drop the clipboard and we all run out of the station. The second I shove the doors open, the sun blinds us causing us to squint. As our eyes adjust we can see the sun among the clear blue sky. I’ve never seen the sun because it’s always been hidinghidng behind the clouds of smoke that make up our sky. To be honest, I thought it was a myth. I see Amelia step forward from the corner of my eye and hear her say “Where are we?”, as we all take a deep breath of the clean air. “No wonder this exhibit is so expensive!” Calvin lets out in a shout. “I don’t think this is a part of the museum...” both Amelia and I say as we start to walk down the sidewalk. “This looks exactly like home, everything is the same, expect it’s cleaner, and there’s more people. It looks just like it does in the textbooks.” Amelia says. “We’re in the world before the war.” Peter says . “We can’t be.” Amelia lets out in denial “It’s impossible. In silence Amelia and I walk to explore the world we’re in as Calvin points out all the colors and life. After looking for a while we start making our way back to wherewere out home is. We go through the way we always do which is a forest that’s all torn down and covered in caution tape, except it’s not like that anymore, it’s filled with tall trees creating an umbrella over the forest, with little spots of sunshine peeping it’s way through. When we make out way to the end of the forest where we can see our homes. We see kids around our age chasing each other in the street. After a few seconds of watching them we begin to recognize them, “It’s mom and and see their parent’s their age, amelia is especially shocked because of her parent’s death. She says “I could stay here for a while.” and they boys look at each other and shrug their shoulders and start to follow her.