“If we were the last people alive on earth, do you think we’d get together?”

  I looked up from the books splayed out on my desk toward the girl sitting on the windowsill.

  Her normally dark hair appeared iridescent in the orange glow cast by the setting sun. It swayed back and forth gently in the ebbing autumn breeze.

  She was turned away from me, gazing out at the ruddy sky from our third-floor classroom.

  She looked like one of the porcelain dolls my grandmother kept in her antique display cabinet. Her mid-length pleated skirt and white blouse even looked similar to what the dolls wore.

  The breath I’d been unconsciously holding slowly leaked out as I pondered her wistful question.

  “Uh… Practically speaking we’d kinda have to… I suppose…”

  She’d caught me off guard and that was all I could muster on short notice.

  “Have to?” she asked dryly. “How very utilitarian of you. I mean… more like… romantically.”

  The last part sounded like she wasn’t sure if she should be asking it.

  This time, I chose my words more carefully.

  “Honestly, I think we’d rely on each other so much that it’d be a given that those feelings would develop.”

  She glanced back at me over her shoulder as the last words left my lips.

  Her large brown eyes were framed by a pale, round face splattered with light freckles. At the moment, those eyes looked annoyed, her brow slightly scrunched up and her rosebud lips pursed.

  “You make it sound like a foregone conclusion. What if I don’t like you that way?”

  “You don’t think you would, even if I were literally the last guy on Earth?”

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  “Just because you’re the last guy left, doesn’t mean I have to settle for you.”

  “I mean… it kinda does…”

  “Nope.”

  “Yep.”

  “Whatever,” she uttered, turning away with an audible huff.

  She always did that when she couldn’t win an argument. I suspect she thought it was cute. I guess it was. Just a little.

  I’d never tell her that, though.

  “Well, I don’t think we’d get together…” she said barely loud enough for me to hear.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d get sick of me.”

  I sensed an old wound behind those words. I knew she came from a family of divorced parents, so maybe that was the reason.

  “I wouldn’t get sick of you,” I answered honestly. “You already follow me around practically every waking moment as it is, and we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

  “That’s different.”

  She hopped down from the windowsill, her skirt fluttering as her feet thudded to the floor.

  She glided over to my desk with deliberate poise and extended a pale finger toward my face.

  “You don’t have any romantic feelings for me right now. You act like you’re my brother.”

  “How do you know I don’t?”

  Her eyes went wide for a second, and her hand dropped to her side. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

  I couldn’t hold in my amusement any longer and let out a belly laugh loud enough to pierce the still afternoon air.

  She groaned and slapped the desk, sending a book titled The Perils of Internet Commerce and How to Avoid Them clattering to the ground.

  “I hate you,” she snapped as she stalked away, only stopping in the doorway to give me a good look at her tongue.

  I wonder if I’d known, at that moment, that it was the last time I’d ever see her alive—would I have answered differently?

  Would I have rushed after her and begged for forgiveness?

  Would I have been with her as she breathed her last breath, instead of her dying all alone in that stairwell?

  Such questions are useless now.