I am going to write a review soon however I currently have exams so I won't be able to, but because I can't write a review, here is an excerpt from Alone out Here published by Disney books:
[Epigraph]:
"Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are." —Julie Buntin, Marlena
"We long only for the world we were born into." —Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
I remember one night more clearly than the rest. It was the hottest July on record, and I was fifteen, lying awake and sweaty on the faded linen sofa in Lilly’s basement. With the way the crickets were squalling, Lilly couldn’t get to sleep, which meant no chance of sleep for Marcus or me, either. So the three of us were talking ourselves out into the universe, fantasizing in scratchy voices about God and death and the first day of sophomore year, and around two a.m., we wound up whispering about the end of the world.
We’d kicked the questions around before. Maybe you did, too. If the apocalypse hit tomorrow, which five people would you pick for your zombie survival team? Which three things would you take down to the nuclear bunker? What would you save from the wasteland?
We never settled on answers. Lilly drifted off halfway through, and the next morning, Marcus kept swapping his choices back and forth, clarifying the rules over breakfast. “Is there internet in this wasteland?” he asked, thumbing his glasses up. “If I brought my headset, could I have unlimited games?”
Lilly rolled her eyes and said, “God, Marcus, what kind of amateur apocalypse do you think this is?” and I lay back in her window seat and laughed, loose-limbed, careless, because everything we were saying felt unreal.
That was three years ago. Now, most nights, I lie awake and watch those moments replaying across the backs of my eyelids. I retrace the pikes of sunlight angled through the kitchen window or feel the frayed threads of the sofa, the patches that Lilly’s golden retriever pawed to death when he was too young to know better. I hear the way my best friends sighed after they laughed, deep and contented, like they’d just taken a cold drink on a hundred degree day. It hurts to remember, knowing that two months later, the announcements froze that world like amber engulfing a living thing. But I can’t make myself stop.
I wish I could show it to you, too—really show you. I wish I could scan my old life out into VR space so you could walk all the way inside. We’d step through Lilly’s messy little kitchen like archaeologists through some perfectly preserved temple, and I’d pause the scene, point to the scar on Lilly’s chin, and tell you that happened when we were thirteen, the day she hacked off a foot of her hair with a pair of garden shears on a dare from Marcus. He wasn’t even being serious, and as for me, I stood there and watched with a stupid grin on my face, not believing it would happen until it did. And maybe you’d say Lilly sounds reckless or impulsive, and Marcus and I should have known better. And I’d say, probably, but that’s Lilly, that’s Marcus, that’s us.
That’s what I’d save.