Litza refocuses her eyes onto her image. Even faintly reflected back, she can tell her eyes are tired. She is suffering from a huge case of jet lag. She never really got a handle on how to prevent it, even though she travels by plane usually twice a year. She understands the logic of matching the amount of energy left in the body before needing sleep to the time of day of the city you are flying into. In that, if you arrive in the morning, make sure you have enough energy to last to dusk. If you arrive at night, be so beat that you have no choice but to fall asleep when you get in. Litza's flight got in at three in the morning and she was completely tired out of her mind. From the airport to her parent's house, it was another hour; she didn't get to sleep until about a half past four in the morning. Activity around the house started around nine o'clock in the morning and unfortunately Litza is a light sleeper. She also can't sleep at all on a plane, no matter now much she hopes and tries to.

Twenty-two hours on the plane is how long it takes to fly from New Chicago to New Sydney, with a stopover in New LA. Add on the car ride and amount of time one has to be early to the airport to go through the hoops called security, Litza has been traveling for over a day. Thanks to the International Date Line, in name she has traveled two days: leaving Saturday Chicago time and arriving Monday Sydney time.

Right now her body is telling her to lay down and sleep, but that would only continue the jet lag. Litza could try to take a nap but she knows herself well enough to know that a one to three hour nap would turn into a eight or nine hour sleep. Then she would be wide awake and rested, just as everyone in the area were preparing for a night's rest or at least tucking their children into bed. No, she would have to tough it out and stay awake for those eight or nine hours and go to bed then, all in the attempt of matching the energy of those around her.

Normally she doesn't drink coffee. The caffeine makes her heart race or did when she drank three cups a day up until college. Her doctor at the time told her to lessen the intake of coffee, her absolute favorite thing in the world. She did and immediately felt better; the sensation of her heart beating a mile a minute was gone. Only occasionally does she drink it again when she knows she can handle it, and even then only one cup. With that said, in her hand now is a mug of coffee; half-filled or half-drunken, it's the same difference. The coffee that remains in her cup is light brown after being mixed with lots of milk and a ton of sugar. It's a shade lighter than her eyes.

Three years ago she bought a book on how reading your own eyes and the light and darkness of them, you can detect what nutrients your body is missing. A sort of self-doctor's exam if you will. Before the book, her eyes were a darkish brown. She wondered if the book was yet another quacksalver of the modern age. Today her eyes are a light brown and her new favorite feature. Litza brings the mug up to her mouth and sips more of the now lukewarm coffee while watching herself do it from the reflection in the window. A child runs past the window and catches Litza's eye. It's her niece Olivia, clad in boots and a snowsuit for the winter weather outside. The world today has become a world of extremes. Extreme temperatures around the world and extreme swings of atmospheric change. The winters are unusually warmer overall but when it decides to get cold, it gets freezing. The summers are unusually hot and spring and fall are shorter than ever; the seasons seem to be skipped, summer turning into winter quickly and vice versa. Storms are more intense but with the intensity come brevity; wearing themselves out, ending as fast as they start. Rainfall at all is hard to come by and droughts are ongoing. Forest as a whole shrink; either drying up or igniting on fire from the heat. Deserts expand and the extreme wind aids in irritation. The already dry Australia has become even more barren of life, humans now huddled in one area; that being New Sydney. New Zealand, that once gloriously beautiful country land is now uninhabited; mostly due to the fact that most of it is under water. Oh, and when you do go outside, be sure to put on a shit load of sun block; sun screen is a thing of the past.

Technically the Kavans, Litza's family, don't live in New Sydney, but in an outpost an hour outside of the new city as was said before. Her father, Lloyd Kavan, is chief of the mining projects that are ongoing in the whole of Australia's Outback, now taking up the rest of the continent. They have scratched and dug and squired the land, sucking out all the vital ore and minerals that can be found. This is the last year of the project; it ends in March of the next year, just as summer is ending. Then five years from that date, the plan is to have evacuated the continent. Most will have to move to other New Cities and some will travel to their final home in one of the many space stations now orbiting the rock called Earth. Just trying to take in the idea that a whole continent will be deserted in six years is overwhelming. Next in line is South America, then Africa. Since there was much grumbling and arguing over which continent gets the "honor" of being the last, North America, Europe, and Asia are to be deserted at the same time. The general public is not aware that Antarctica will actually be the last continent to have a human set foot on its soil. This is due to the fact that newly thin ice shield is at last giving humans access to her soil. That is where Mr. Kavan is to go next, to Antarctica to head the mining operations; he in fact will be among the last humans to leave Earth.

But that is a few decades into the future. For now, the occasion is the celebration of her parents' 30th anniversary. The house is alive with relatives, jammed into rooms hardly used. Litza's sleeping post being the living room couch that a green sleeping bag now rests upon, its red and blue plaid inner design exposed. Litza is the oldest of four and three of them are now under the roof of the house, including Litza. Younger sister Tabitha and her husband Peter and their five-year old daughter, Olivia, are in Tabitha's old room. Sixteen-year old brother Kyle has been kicked out of his room to accommodate Uncle Nevin and Aunt Paulina. Aunt Julie is in Litza's old room with her new beau Bryce. College senior Angela is to arrive later that night, along with her wife-to-be Hanna.

Olivia has jumped onto a pile of snow she made with the little bit of snow on the ground. All around the small mound of snow she made are claw marks of gloves that expose the dead and brown grass beneath. Litza takes another sip from her coffee and turns back to the living room.

"Litza, please roll up your sleeping bag and put it away," Litza's mother says for the third time while walking through the room.

"I know."

"Then do it."

Wanting to yell at her mother to back off came to Litza's mind but her superego stopped her mouth from speaking. With a sigh she put her mug down on the coffee table in front of the couch she slept on and proceeded to put away the sleeping bag.

The actual party is tomorrow and the mothers of the family are making the final preparations to make sure everything is made and brought to the pavilion the celebration is to take place at. Litza made the mistake of going into the kitchen upon waking up to get some coffee and was ordered to do fifteen different chores before she could sneak out with the coffee she came in to get. Tabitha, or Tabby as the family calls her, and Aunt Paulina are in a heated discussion over what to do with the many kids in town for the event. Litza knew better than to get involved lest the issue come up that she doesn't have kids of her own come up or why she doesn't at this point in her life. She is the older sister in years but Tabby acts in every way her senior.

However, the real reason for Tabby's anxiousness is the subtext of this scene. A subtext that all the siblings share, along with their dad, and a secret that all know except Mrs. Kavan. Litza found out from a phone call from Angela, very late at night Chicago time.

"Litza," called her roommate Abby. "Phone." Abby handed the phone to Litza and went back to the room with the TV in it, on the other side of the apartment they lovingly call The Cottage.

"Hello?"

"Litza, it's Ange," Angela said to her in a voice that was weak and wavering.

"Ange? What's up? Is something wrong?" Litza could tell something was indeed wrong.

"Dad's cheating on Mom."

'That's just one of the many things we take for granted. Seems like that lesson would have been drilled in, in this time of limited resources. How well can you trust your memory? I once thought I had been to this one party, witnessed this very interesting thing with my own eyes. After a conversation a week ago I figured out that I wasn't even there, that I only even knew about the interesting thing from a story a friend of mine told me. Upon trying to recall the details of the event, I had convinced myself that I must have been there since when I recalled the details I pictured the scene in my head.

'I had a friend, Heather, who wasn't told she was adopted until she was 17 years old. Imagine having your picture of your family being completely broken into a million pieces. How would you deal with it? At the time, I could only sympathize with Heather. Now I can empathize with her.

'The thing is if you asked me what exactly I was feeling the week after I learned my father was cheating, I wouldn't have been able to. At any one moment I was feeling every emotion at once. At other times I wasn't feeling anything at all, kind of numb all over. I've lost count how many times I burst into tears out of nowhere. I felt like the stereotypical hysterical woman character in some movie with these cartoon-like outpouring of emotion that came and went like the turning on and off of a light switch.

'I think my soul was waiting for my mind to figure out just what it should feel. My mind was racing a mile a minute. Questions about how this made me feel about men in general came up again. As did the whole issue of the sanctity of marriage. How vows seem to have little importance nowadays. The pride I felt knowing that my parents were still together and maybe this whole mess was punishment for such proud thoughts. The different scenarios played out of how I thought the future for my family would play out. I thought that my mom would be told by my dad and that he'd move out of the house an into a hotel room. Then soon afterwards the divorce papers would be drawn up and perhaps my younger brother would choose to live with my father. Alliances may have been made within the family and relationships would have been tested; although they are being tested at this moment anyway.

'My family is throwing a celebration this summer. Celebrating the marriage of my parents for lasting 30 years. Celebrating the 25th anniversary seems like more sense but the extended family as a whole was too busy collectively five years ago so that's why we're having it now. Except now the whole affair, pardon the pun, just stinks to high heaven. The whole thing is a fraud and I cannot believe I'm actually going to the thing when I know how much of a sham it is. And I have no idea how I'm going to behave at this thing. How am I going to act around my father? Will I be able to hold it together and keep up the fa�ade that all is peachy keen? Or will I not be able to hold in the gag reaction and vomit up these mixed feelings in a huge momentous monologue confessional, spilling out the family secrets for all to see?

'Aunt Paulina would love it since she already regards me as the black sheep of the family. It fits that's she's an equestrian nut; her being on her high horse all the time. I can't blame her, she's just set in her ways and got it into her head that her way is the best way. But at the same time I have no love for people with closed minds. She would love for me to be the one to break the dirty secret at the party. That way she could openly criticize me and tell all the "I had the feeling about that one the whole time's" that she wants to tell. It's for people like Aunt Paulina, and now for Dad, that I must be the epitome of manners. Although God knows I wish I could just rebel like everyone expects me to and become the bad ass I know I could be if I didn't care so much about what my siblings think of me.

'Speaking of God, that's another thing that surprised me during this whole thing. So I find Dad's sex date book in his brief case (just asking to be caught, don't you think?) and it takes me four whole days to work up the courage to talk to my Dad. Litza told me that she already spoke to him on the phone and that the conversation with him was a roller coaster of emotions. Now it was my turn to take the ride. The thing was, during my confrontation, which was located in the garage late at night; I made a lot of Bible references. I'm not a religious person. In fact, I'm Agnostic if you really want to know the truth although I never admit being one to anyone; instead I just say that I'm a watered down Christian. But I'm not; I'm Agnostic all the way. So, there I am, in the garage with the tool shelf in between us two, alternating between having my back to him and looking him straight in the eyes, and all I can think of doing is preach the moral teachings of the Bible. You know, Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife and all that stuff. I must also make clear, that although I am a full-blown Agnostic, that doesn't mean I think the Bible is all bad. The teachings at heart are good. I mean, that's all that the Bible is: moral lessons wrapped up in fables and stories. Some of the so-called moral lessons came from twisted people with their own agendas, but by and large a lot of it makes sense. At the core it says to treat everyone with respect and love and understanding and to not judge each other so God damn much. At least that's the way I see it.

'The thing was I wasn't retelling these teachings to him like I hoped they would open his eyes to what he had done. I told them to hurt him plain and simple. I was mad and hurting to an unimaginable level and all I wanted to do was to make him feel as bad as I was. I'm sure he was on some level since he did seem really hurt and genuinely sorry about the whole mess. However, he might just be sorry he got caught. I don't know, I didn't really pay much attention to him, other than to view him as a target to throw my anger to.

'Right now the only people that know about this whole thing are Litza, Kyle, Tabby, myself and, of course, Dad. Oh, and I've told Hanna and I'm willing to bet that Peter knows too, him being Tabby's husband and all; yeah he knows. Mom doesn't know. She doesn't have a clue. And I know this would absolutely destroy her. Litza claims to have seen some inner strength in Mom, that she would be deeply hurt but wouldn't crumble, but I don't think so. That's part of the reason none of us have told her. Dad has said that it should be he that tells her, if she is going to be told this at all. He doesn't want to but he said he would if we forced him to. None of us are racing at the chance to get him to come clean.

'That's what makes this celebration thing so sad. That Mom is going around believing that her marriage is solid when in fact that it isn't. It's like taking a pet to the vet to be put down, the poor thing has no idea what is going to happen and just the thought of it being out of the loop makes you want to burst into tears.'

"Honey, we're almost there." Hanna had tapped Angela on the shoulder and she stops writing her letter and takes off her headphones, which piano based classical music can faintly be heard coming out of.

"Where are we?" Angela asks.

"Pretty close to Kingston Station." Hanna is stuffing her book, The Catcher in the Rye, which she is rereading for the sixth time in her life, into her book bag.

Angela looks out the window and sees familiar looking houses and apartments stroll by. Kingston Station is indeed very close. She likes the style of the roofs of the neighborhood. This makes her think of her home, which lead to thoughts of the situation there, to the internal evaluation of her energy, to the wonder of how she looks. Do her eyes look tired? Her eyes refocus on the window so that she can see her reflection in the glass. It's still too light outside to get a good reflection. She starts to fold up the letter she was writing but stops suddenly to write one last thought down.

'It's time like these that I'm glad I have Hanna in my life. I love her so.'

She tri-folds the pages and stuffs them in an envelope already addressed to its recipient: herself. Angela doesn't keep a journal per say. Instead she writes to herself and actually mails the letters. She never opens them when she gets them back; she just puts them away in a shoebox. She has 12 shoeboxes full of unopened letters back at her off-campus apartment.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees the man looking at her again. Uh oh, he checked her out again. And he has decided to plant himself this time a little closer to her. Litza imagines him asking her for the time to engage her in conversation. She can just feel the tension in the air and if it's one thing she doesn't want more of, it's tension in the air. She then imagines that if he does ask her for the time, she will talk and move in slow motion. Slowly moving her arm up to see her watch and making a sound as if a slow moving arm made a sound. Then "iiiiiiiiit'sssssss fiiiiiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvve thhhhhiiiiiiirrrrrrrtyyyy-twooooooo" would come out. This makes her smile. Uh oh, the man smiled back. Next thought: "wwooooouuulld yaa liiiiike toooo buyyyy aaaa monnnnkeyyyy?"

Litza lets out this huge guffaw and pierces the cold winter air. It startles the man. He goes to move away, then to the edge of the platform to check the incoming train again, and then decides to go on a stroll down the platform away from Litza. Ha ha! Mission accomplished. "He thinks I'm crazy" Litza thinks to herself and smiles a most mischievous grin.

Three minutes later the train finally pulls in and the passengers, the couple dozen or so that there are, shuffle out of the cars. Many carry luggage and a few emerge with huge burka packs. Most are in twos and threes, only a few are walking to the station alone. Half are greeted by people waiting for them while many more of those that were waiting for the train board it. Mr. Irritated greets two other men that have just exited the middle car and they walk to the station and leave Litza's sight. To her right the two people she was waiting for finally exit the last car. Litza knew they would be on the last car because her sister has a thing with always being in the last car.

"It's not a form of insanity," protests Angela from the front passenger seat of the car Litza is driving. Hanna laughs in the back seat directly behind Angela.

"It is. It is," Litza says while laughing also.

"Explain your steel trap logic then."

"Because you think that it's always going to be your train that crashes into one ahead of it."

"That's not my reasoning."

"Yes it is. Yes it is."

"No- no it's not."

"You never think that maybe your train will be the one rammed into."

"I have never said that it was due to collisions."

"Yes you did."

"I did not. I did not."

"You told me- yes you did. You told me so yourself back in-"

"When? When did I ever say such a thing?"

"Back in, in high school. It was-"

"I never said it to you in high school. You weren't home when I was in high school."

"I mean when I was in high school silly. You were probably in elementary or middle school."

"Well I still never said such a thing."

"Wanna bet?"

"Bet? Bet what? I know my own memory."

"So do I and mine is much better than yours."

"I hardly think so. Your memory is withered and decaying 'cause you're so old."

"So old? So old? I'm not old, I'm only seven years older than you Missy."

Angela laughs and laughs. She barely is able to get out "I know, but on the phone last week you were bemoaning how old you were, making it sound like you were decrepit. It was so funny."

"I've got bad knees."

"Bad knees." Angela laughs again.

"I do. They crack when I kneel and stuff. I've always had bad knees. Ever since softball."

"You hardly played."

"Oh, thank you for bringing up that old wound. Thank you very much."

Angela laughs and laughs again. Sisters together again. Litza and Angela always did get on much better than they did with the rest of the family. Tabby got along great with her father and Kyle with his mother. After being amused so much by watching Litza and Angela silly argue, Hanna speaks up. "So exactly why do you always have to sit in the last car?"

"Are we still on this subject? I thought we moved on to something else," protests Angela.

"Because she's crazy," Litza injects more towards Hanna than Angela.

"We were talking about- look who's talking Litza," Angela replies with. Litza laughs one of her guffaws again.

"Yeah, leave my girlfriend alone you,� Hanna demands in a fake tone. �She's crazy�crazy like a fox."

The whole car erupts into more hysterics. "I never get that statement, 'crazy like a fox.' I really don't." Litza states in all seriousness.

"I know. I half said it because I don't get it either," responds Hanna.

"Do foxes, as a species, tend to become insane more than other animals? I just don't get it."

"Yeah, in fairy tales, foxes are the clever ones," Angela says.

"You mean in fables, honey," Hanna says to tease Angela.

"Fables, fairy tales, same difference."

"No, there is a difference. That's why they have different names." Hanna awaits the tickle attack.

Angela tries to reach her arm around the seat while facing forward, as a kind of sneak attack, but Hanna has swung her legs to the side and on the rest of the back seat. "No fair. No wonder you sat directly behind me. You strategy fiend." Hanna grabs Angela's left wrist and holds her arm back as Angela tries to bring it back to her side of the chair. "Let me go, strategy fiend," she says in a fake low voice.

"Never Agent 42," Hanna says back in the same type of voice. "Not until you tell us why you must sit in the last car of a train."

"No, I'll never tell."

"We have ways of making you talk."

"Are they sexual?" Angela giggles as she always does when she makes sexual jokes. "I've told you before why," she says returning to her normal voice.

"No you haven't."

"I thought I did. No, it's because of derailing, not collisions. Collisions are very rare nowadays."

"So are derailings, Ange," offers Litza.

"Well, yeah, but derailings could happen and collisions are less likely. At least that's what I think. And since I'm in the back car, I'm farthest away from where all front cars and the pile-up they usually end up in."

"I don't think derailings always happen in the front of the train," Litza says.

"Of course they do. The engine is the first thing to go over a bad patch in the rail, it would be the first to derail."

"I know, that's what I think too, logically. But I think in actuality that derailments can happen anywhere along the length of the train," Litza says, half wondering if that's exactly what she remembers on the subject.

"Huh," Angela lets out. Then her mind steers her away from thinking too much about it. "Well, I feel safer in the back of a train and that's all that matters."

"And if you feel safe, I feel safe." Hanna says while holding hands with Angela.

"Thanks Honey."

The car, a very old and faded mint green in color, turns off the paved road and onto the dusty, snowy, and gravel dirt road that leads to the Kavan house. Its faded blue vinyl siding can be seen in the distance through the bare branched trees. The mood in the front two seats of the car changes considerably as they catch sight of the house. Litza slows it down and stops close to the mailbox and gets out of the car to check it. Hanna undoes her seat belt and puts her chin on Angela's chair, just behind Angela's left shoulder. She watches closely her fianc�e as she in turn stares off into space. For a very short moment, almost a perfect moment, all that can be heard is the chime of the car to signal that the door is ajar. Very shortly Litza returns to the car, gets in, and shuts the driver side door.

"No mail," she states.

"You know what?" Angela asks.

"What?" inquires Hanna.

"The other day I was reading about how a firefighter in Paris saved a little boy from a burning house and he didn't know at the time that another kid was up there in the next bed. That kid died. And the firefighter was so distraught at this that he took his own life recently. The fire happened months before I mean and only recently did he commit suicide. Anyway, it makes me think 'cause in a letter he wrote, the firefighter I mean, he wrote to his mother. In the letter he said that he wished he could have seen the other kid and saved that one. But other firefighters were saying that he was only one man and he could only save one kid at a time. So if he did see both kids, which one would he have picked to save?" There is a pause as Angela uses her hand to put a strand of loose hair that was in her face behind her ear. "This made me think of what I would have done, if I had the chance to save someone. Say mom and dad were in the bed, which one would I have chosen to save?"

"Ange-" Hanna says softly, not wanting her to go on but also not wanting to repress Angela's feelings.

"And I would have picked Mom. I would. I would have picked Mom and have left Dad in the bed to burn. And I hate myself for thinking these thoughts and I hate Dad even more for making me even think them in the first place." Angela cries but doesn't care at this point and lets the tears run down her cheeks. "I really don't know how I'm going to act in that house, I really don't."

Litza puts her hand on Angela's shoulder and soon after that they are hugging each other for support. Hanna has sat more upright on the edge of the back seat and rubs Angela's back to sooth her. Hanna then moves back in her seat and looks out the window. She can see in the reflection of the window that she has been crying too. She wipes the tears in her eyes away and looks back at the sisters, still embracing. She tits her head to the right to rest her head on the window, shuts her eyes and just breathes. This weekend will require a lot of strength from her and she needs to be there for Angela. This is a role reversal for Hanna since Angela usually is the strong one. Good thing Hanna has taken her Paxil recently.

"Thanks yous," Angela says after the hug is done.

"Nose worries," Litza replies with.

The three women all look at the house at the same time. Now it's a perfect moment.

"God, you could cut the tension in here with a knife," Angela says.

"Yeah," concurs Litza. "We could use a good fart joke."

One-one thousand, two-one thousand, they all burst into laughter.