You want to know what it’s like to be a teenage girl? Just imagine you’re trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a freeway in Bakersfield with your family (who drive you totally nuts) while a nuclear missile heads toward you at a speed of ten-thousand miles per hour. That’s what it’s like for me at least, because it’s my reality.

Like, actually. There’s a nuclear war happening. Sirens and everything. Way too loud, by the way. Like we get it. Everybody got the thing on their phones. Why do we need sirens too?

This sucks.

The only thing I can take comfort in is the fact that I only have to endure five more minutes of it. Make that four, actually, since dad always has the clock in the car set one minute behind the actual time. Why does he do that?

Who knows why he does anything. Why are we even on this trip? Death Valley for Christmas? Huh? And I mean - of course he got us stuck here. Anyone with half a brain knows that in the event of a nuclear strike, you’re supposed to stay on smaller roads or follow an evacuation route because major roadways jam up immediately. But what does dad do as soon as our phones tell us there’s a missile coming? He rushes us out of the Holiday Inn Express, into the Pathfinder, and then… gets on the freeway. But don’t worry, he’s got things under control. Right now he’s working on repairing an impossible traffic jam by laying on his horn and shrieking for people to move. So at least there’s that. Three minutes.

Dad’s not the only one completely freaking out, of course. Mom’s pulling more than her weight in hysterics, which is typical. Last year, when we got a flash flood warning - not a flash flood, a flash flood warning - she literally had a breakdown. Like, sobbing uncontrollably on the kitchen floor breakdown. Over a warning. So you can just imagine how she’s handling global thermonuclear warfare. She’s crying all high-pitched and panicked, which results in a sound close to someone’s first attempt at opera. It would be funny if it wasn’t so dramatic. “Oh my God,” she keeps saying, “Oh my God David get us out of here! Get us out of here!” What do you think he’s trying to do? This is the woman who accused me of overreacting when she took my phone away for texting a boy. For notes. Chemistry notes.

And my little brother Ben, he’s… well, he’s not really doing anything, honestly. He’s just sitting in his carseat playing my old DS. He seems totally unbothered by this whole thing. Must be nice. But oh my God, ew - he smells. Like, we haven’t even done anything today and he smells… musty? How does that happen? I’m on the other side of the car and it’s like he’s right up in my nostrils. Is it his Crocs? I think it’s his Crocs. This whole thing is so dumb.

Like why are they even nuking Bakersfield? What strategic gain do they stand to make by wiping this place off the map? And who is they? Who’s even nuking us? I’ll probably never know. If we’d stayed home in Berkeley, I could have at least died somewhere kind of nice. Kind of. But instead we’re dying in Bakersfield, because mom wanted to see the stars. I’m not trying to say this is her fault. But it’s not not her fault, you know?

Two minutes. Through the sunroof I see missiles tear across the sky. Little points of light followed by thin white contrails, bound for some target in the east. The midwest maybe. Or Colorado or something. We all track their progress past the clouds above. When the missiles disappear over the horizon, mom literally screams. Like, an actual horror movie scream. I look around, instinctually embarrassed, but thankfully no one is looking at us. All I see in the other gridlocked cars are horrified O’s pointed east. I don’t get why she felt the need to scream like that. My ears are literally ringing. One minute.

I do honestly feel kind of sad that I’m about to die. And that my family and everyone I know and pretty much everything else on Earth is also going to die. I feel sad that I’ll never graduate or get my driver’s license or kiss someone - although I guess Ernesto and I kissed. But really he kissed me and I know he likes me and yeah, he’s sweet I guess, but I just don’t feel that way about him, so I don’t count it. I feel sad that I’ll never get to see Ben not be a dumb little kid. I feel sad that I’ll never get the chance to not be annoyed by everything, to not feel like everything is stupid. I feel sad that my whole life was taken from me by a notification I got on my phone as I was getting out of a shower in a Holiday Inn. I feel sad that I’m going to die with wet hair.

But it’s not all bad. I really mean that. My whole life I’ve always had this feeling like I was headed toward something horrible, toward some shapeless, nameless disaster. Basically nobody knows this but I used to have panic attacks in kindergarten about it. My mom would ask me what was wrong, what was bothering me. And I would think for a while and then I would tell the truth and say I didn’t know. I thought for a while that this dread would go away. But it never did, and I spent so much time dreading it, wondering where it would come from and when it would come and what shape it would take that it’s a genuine relief to know that it’s this. Being vaporized in Bakersfield with my family.

But it’s hard to appreciate this with mom shrieking at the new little point of light blooming over the western horizon, growing closer, closing its arc. And it’s more or less forgotten as she struggles to twist around in her seat and reaches out to me, saying, “Please Stephanie please sweetie please pleasee,” struggling against her seatbelt, trying to reach me. And even though she really is such an embarrassment sometimes, I do love her. I do. But as I take her hand in mine and see a smile bubble to the surface of her smeary face, I can’t help but roll my eyes.