If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

To Krupa: With you, the answers are so damn easy. & for Connor: I will always be running through orchards, flashlight in hand, looking for you. ContentsAuthor’s NoteThe EndFourteen and Six Years to ImpactNine Days to ImpactFour Years to ImpactNine Days to ImpactFour Years to ImpactNine Days to ImpactThree Years to ImpactEight Days to ImpactTwo Years to ImpactEight Days to ImpactOne Year to ImpactSeven Days to ImpactSix Months to ImpactSeven Days to ImpactFive Months to ImpactSix Days to ImpactThree Months to ImpactSix Days to ImpactTwo Months to ImpactSix Days to ImpactOne Month to ImpactSix Days to ImpactFive Days to ImpactFive Days to ImpactFive Days to ImpactOne Perfect DayFour Days to ImpactThree . . . Two . . .. . . one . . . ResourcesAcknowledgments author’s noteDear Reader,Avery Byrne, the narrator of my YA debut, If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come, doesn’t know how to keep living. Her depression is a state, a feeling, a place: where things will never get better, not ever. Where she doesn’t deserve anything better, anyway. Where the world keeps spinning in technicolor around her, but she’s trapped in her own little gray apocalypse, alone. Then she learns an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and she has nine days left to live. Suddenly, her own private apocalypse is not so private. It’s everywhere. It’s everyone’s. And they must all learn how to survive it, together.Isolation is depression’s greatest weapon. It makes us believe that our pain is our fault, that our struggles are personal failures. Young people are especially susceptible to this type of shame, since you have not had the chance to build communities outside your immediate environment. It may be especially hard for young people to imagine a better tomorrow because you have not lived it—and if you are queer or otherwise marginalized in society, you may have never even seen it.If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come is my small way of saying that you don’t have to hurt alone, and that even in your darkest, most painful moments, you are still worthy of love and all of life’s infinite possibilities. I want you to know that queer love is hopeful and holy. I want you to feel like life’s most spectacular, electric, perfect moments can come right after its worst ones. No one is broken beyond repair, even if healing is slow and nonlinear.The world may end someday, but not yet. Not today. For now, we’re all here together, and that can be enough. Tomorrow can be different. Tomorrow can be better. If we let it come.—Jen St. Jude the endI wanted to hide my body somewhere no one would have to find it.Midway through my freshman year, I settled on the Saco River—a hungry stretch of icebergs and fog that slipped by the edge of campus. I liked the river because when I stood on its edge, it always felt like morning, even at sunset, even at midnight. I also liked it because it was practical and clean. It would take me away, wash every part of me. Bury me in its silt.On a frigid February night, I cleaned my side of the room by moonlight as my roommate slept soundlessly. I deleted every photo of myself from social media and then sat on my bed writing goodbye notes on loose-leaf paper. I put the letters on my desk, tucked myself into my bed, and listened to an audiobook until our window glowed with the first sign of dawn.On my final morning, the morning of my nineteenth birthday, I put on my blue coat and gold sneakers, smoothed my hair in the mirror without looking myself in the eyes, and left my dorm room one last time. I crossed Eaton College’s campus in the shadows of mountains, and stumbled through a wall of evergreen trees to a dock winged by canoes. Everything looked so beautiful, but I didn’t know how to feel it.The boats crashed around me as I knelt on the icy wood, sadness like sand in my blood. In the broken glass of rushing water, I almost expected to see not my own reflection but the face of my aunt Devin, my mother’s sister who, on the day I was born, waded out into the Irish Sea and stayed there. Everyone said I looked like her because of my penny-red hair and blue eyes. But I didn’t see her face in front of me, only mine. I was alone.My jeans soaked through to the skin. My heart raced until my ribs shivered. I brushed tears away so I could see one more sunrise, but the sun blinked open too quickly for color.I’d always been a little broken, but at least before Eaton I’d fooled people into thinking I was talented, sparkling, and smart. Now, I felt like I wasn’t even a person at all. I didn’t want anything. I hoped for nothing. No one needed me. The sadness had spread from my brain to my bones. It lived in my body. I didn’t think it would ever go away. How could it? It could only get worse when my parents found out I had failed a class. When they discovered I’d been essentially kicked off the soccer team. It could only get worse when Cass fell in love with somebody new, and I had to watch it happen. Then what?Then nothing.I got to my feet and leaned over the water, ready to fall into the rushing, into the stillness. I tried to catch my reflection one more time, but I didn’t know the girl who flickered below me, and I didn’t know how to save her. I dared her to want something, to wish for something. Anything. I begged her. I missed, not for the first time, having someone to pray to.I inched to the very edge. Held my breath. Prepared to jump. And then my cell phone vibrated and Eaton’s emergency alert system started screaming.Even through the forest, I could hear the sirens blaring. That meant we needed to get into the