I shared this story to my email list and I got a few emails back saying they loved it! So I’m posting it here too in case you missed. it
Enjoy!
—Joanna
The Sun Fell
By Joanna Reeder
Last night, the sun didn’t set. It fell.
And so did I.
Yeah, that’s the perfect line to a cheesy Hallmark movie mixed with a Sharknado vs. Squid-monster plot, right? Okay, so I’ve never a Sharknado film, but you get my point.
And technically, it’s true. But let me back up…
24 hours previously... (another great plot device)
Beep, beep, beep, beep. My four least and most favorite sounds in the world. It merely depended on which part of my shift the time clock blared at me while I punched in my employee number.
I didn’t hate my job, but making turkey avocado on rye—add cheddar cheese—for a living wasn’t exactly my calling. But it paid for my ridiculously expensive textbooks and gas for my car. Fortunately my “good grades” scholarship paid my community college tuition, and Mom and Dad graciously didn’t charge me room and board since I was a contributing member of society and was furthering my education. So I had some flexibility with my budget to have a social life.
With the hair elastic around my wrist, I pulled my hair into a ponytail and threaded it through the back of my baseball hat, then tucked the loose strands up into the sides of the cap and behind my ears. I secured an apron around my waist, then dutifully washed my hands in the hand-washing sink, glimpsing my reflection one last time in the mirror above it before getting to work. Satisfied that my eyeliner wasn’t smudged and my nose wasn’t too shiny—not that I could have fixed either at that point—I slid into my current favorite station and grabbed a new ticket order to prepare.
“Didya hear the crazy news this morning, Jane?” Alex asked without looking at me.
“Sorta,” I said, feeling a sudden strange burst of thrill, but succeeded at sounding normal. “I was listening to a book-on-tape on my way to school, but I heard about it after in my first class.”
“Yeah, at first I thought I was late for work and that my clocks were all wrong,” he said, slathering mayo on two thick slices of whole wheat bread. “You didn’t even notice that it looked later in the day while you were driving? Even if you weren’t listening to the radio?” His tone was teasing.
“I guess not.” I shrugged, feeling my face flush as I sliced the finished sandwich I’d been working on. Fortunately, I had to turn my back on him to wrap it, but I still couldn’t come up with a witty comeback or any explanation that didn’t sound absolutely stupid.
“Well, they say it’s moving twice as fast as it should,” he said, his sandwich also complete and wrapping it in the square paper.
I’m not that observant. My sunglasses are deceiving. My brain was coming up with all the things I could have said, but it was too late to rewind the conversation now.
“Or I guess we’re moving twice as fast as we should,” he continued, moving on to another order. “The earth, I mean.”
“What’s causing it, do you think?” I asked as I studied the ticket hanging above us longer than I normally did… since you know, my brain was moving at half the speed today.
“They think it was all of those major earthquakes that happened yesterday…”
As he talked, I remembered I had heard that fact from my classmates but allowed him to continue.
“I guess a nine-pointer can speed up the spin of the earth a fraction of a second.”
“But there were like twenty of those, weren’t there?” I added, borrowing the information I’d heard secondhand from my peers in statistics that morning.
“Maybe more. I can’t imagine what those people are going through,” Alex said, suddenly sober. “The ones that survived, that is.”
I shook my head and made a sympathetic noise. Again, tongue-tied.
That was exactly the mood of my co-workers and every customer that day. Sober. Quiet. No laughter. Polite smiles. I spent some time taking money at the drive thru and handing out orders. Every car that came through had different variations of the same news-story, reporters recapping the same information because they didn’t know more. There wasn’t much chatter to be heard other than anything related to placing and fulfilling orders for our customers. Our manager even allowed us to break the no-radio rule and let us have one of the streaming news stations updating—with no new updates—in the back by the industrial sinks for when we were washing dishes, counting the lunch rush tills, or taking our breaks.
“A few of us want to drive up to Trapper’s point to watch the sun fall,” said Erin, another one of my co-workers. I was eating my roast-beef on sourdough—hold the tomato—out front after the rush while she swept underneath tables. “Do you want to come?”
“Are we closing early?” I asked. “Because I’m not supposed to be off until six.”
She nodded. “Marissa wants us to close at two, but I bet we’ll be out of here by two-thirty.”
This conversation made it all seem even more real. That listening to the radio felt like some sci-fi show we were binging on, like a new Netflix original. Like it was fiction. And to be honest, I’d been avoiding looking outside too much for fear of noticing the strange lighting differences.
But I glanced out now. If I didn’t have a clock, I’d say my shift was almost over.
“Alex is coming, although he kind of made it sound like…” she trailed off until I looked at her, then she smiled. “I think he wants you to be there.” She said with a wink.
“He… wants me to come?” I felt my face flame and avoided looking over my shoulder to where he continued preparing orders.
Erin rolled her eyes, “C’mon Jane. It’s kinda obvious that you two are into each other.”
“Obvious?” I heard the absolute surprise in my voice, so I know I was convincing. “Not to me!”
“Uh huh,” she said, then shook her head and continued sweeping.
I agreed to join my coworkers and, to my delight, so did Alex. Okay, so I was into him. I just wasn’t sure about him being into me.
I felt almost nothing as I heard the familiar beeps of the timeclock as we all punched out at 3:05, not like I did when I punched in. My head was too pre-occupied with the apocalyptic feeling as we walked outside to an almost-sunset and everything that entailed. Plus, Alex said he’d pick me up from my house in fifteen minutes—the first time he would ever pick me up for anything.
I obeyed the speed limit as I drove home and turned on my phone’s GPS as Alex suggested. I knew my way home, of course, but that way I was able to avoid all the car crashes around town.
No one was at home when I arrived, which I counted as a good thing because Mom might’ve asked me to stay home if she had been there. So I quickly changed and let out my hair to straighten the kinks my ponytail elastic had made. I’d barely re-touched my mascara when I heard a knock at the door.
“That was fast.” Alex’s infectious smile met me when I opened the door. He looked different without his work hat, his hair gelled into curled spikes, and I smelled a tiny whiff of sporty cologne coming off of his fitted-collared shirt. “Are you ready?” He asked, a little unsure.
“I’m ready,” I said, moving to shut the door behind us. But I didn’t miss his surprised look. I knew I readied faster than most girls.
It sort of felt like a date, but I was grateful that he didn’t open the passenger door on his black jeep for me because I was already feeling very self-conscious about my just-discovered (thanks to Erin) stirring feelings for him.
Alex’s jeep had the top off, so I quickly wished I’d kept my hair in a ponytail as it whipped my face so I could barely see. But the wind also prevented awkward conversation, so I wasn’t too upset about my hair.
Alex drove up to the rich part of town—up on the hill that overlooked the valley. He parked along the most eastern-boulevard, but to my delight he waited while I combed through my tangled strands before we both got out and joined the rest of our coworkers at the trailhead to Trapper’s point.
It wasn’t a long hike, but it was pretty steep, so I was winded within a few minutes and quickly realized my cheap-fake tennis shoes didn’t have the traction the trail required. It was embarrassing the several times I slipped—but luckily recovered my footing—and I knew my face was red from it, but I hoped Alex and the others would think it was because of the exertion instead.
When we were almost to the top, where it became the most steep before plateauing off, I stared at the incline with dread. Suddenly, I felt a warm hand grab mine and my heart hammered. Neither of us said a word as he helped me to the top, and when the terrain was no longer dangerous—he kept my hand in his.
We settled onto a blanket Erin had brought to sit on, sitting side-by-side, with our knees pressed against each other, and without letting go of our hands.
I hardly dared look at him, but when I did out of the corner of my eye, he had a glint in his eye and a small smile on his lips. When he noticed me looking at him, he re-adjusted our hands so that our fingers laced together. And my insides fluttered.
We stared at the setting sun. The falling sun.
Up here above the city and the buildings and the trees, it was obvious without even looking directly at it that the sun was definitely setting quicker than it ever had before.
It was scary and thrilling and the future was unknown because of it. But it didn’t feel bad or like end-of-world type of stuff. Maybe it was because I was holding the hand of a guy I’d known for several months and crushing on without realizing until today that I was crushing on him.
And he was likely crushing on me too, which was exciting and thrilling, though the future was unknown.
I glanced at the clock on my phone. It was barely three-thirty. The sun wasn’t supposed to set until almost eight since it was September, but it looked like it would barely make it to four… if that.
Alex squeezed my hand gently as we watched the last of the bright orb sink below the horizon. I returned the gesture and pressed my chin against his sleeve to look at the screen on his phone that he’d illuminated.
3:42 it read.
Alex tilted his head until it touched mine and whispered, “Do you think all the restaurants closed early today like we did? Or do you wanna see if we can find one that’s still open?”
“Let’s find one,” I said, even though I wasn’t hungry because of my late lunch. But I wasn’t going to say no to prolonging our time together.
The End
