Global Warming

I am on vacation with my family and the Kolpacks. We stop and park our van behind a cedar-shingled house and one-by-one go inside. I think it must be a gift shop, because there are lots of distracting object hanging down at eye-level, making me repeatedly forget what my goal is.
Eventually I make it back out to the van, and now my mother is impatient because we are going to be late for Christmas. I remember that the reason I went in was to retrieve her.
We make it home in time, but I get impatient waiting for Christmas to get there, and all I want to do in the meantime is take a nap, but the door to the spare bedroom will not close.
I end up in the basement, sitting at a circular table next to the piano. Kris and a girl that resembles Beth, Sarah, and Deb from Napoleon Dynamite all at once sit across from me. We are having a conversation about my plans to rent a house with Kris and some roommates. We are all giddy. He is saying, "I just don't know why we have to live there as separate couples."
"What do you mean." I say.
"Well why couldn't we exist as one relationship? Because I love you-" At this point he leans across the table to kiss me, but I'm starting to feel less giddy."And there's no reason for you to be jealous, and I love her too."
"So what then, Kris? All I need to do is love her-"
"No!" he cuts in, as if that is the silliest thing, but what he is suggesting is not. "You just have to be okay with us. Look!" And he kisses her shiny pink gloss-coated lips tenderly. She giggles.
My reaction is the thought "Do it again". I'm not sure if this is because I don't know yet if I feel jealous; or if I mean it as a threat. He's watching my face, I'm watching her shiny pink lips. "Do it again, Kris." This time it's sounding more like a threat, but I almost say it as a request, when he leans in and kisses her again anyway.
I feel it physically that time, as if I'm swallowing vomit and getting the wind knocked out of me at the same time. I jump up, crying out, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else!" and run away.

Now I am in the Art building, room 301. I am collecting my things now that the quarter is over. There are a few grad students there, doing self portraits, and the model Robert, just taking a nap, not wearing clothes. Lucas from my class comes up to him and examines his face as he sleeps. Robert wakes up and asks if he needs anything. I feel bad and want to tell Lucas that now that the quarter is over he's not modeling for drawings anymore. Lucas says, "Man, I need to work on facial features." He shows Robert his point drawing, and it's very good, so I don't feel as bad.
Joel is over on the other side of the room, curled up on a couch reading. Remembering what just happened with Kris, I go over and say, "Joel, I wonder if maybe you can help me understand something." He says sure, and I begin repeating the conversation with Kris word for word. As I repeat it, I begin to realize that when I said, "I can't be in love with a boy who is in love with someone else", that has and always will be true for me, no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise. I tell Joel and he nods, but then I wonder what "can't be in love" means. I'm still wondering that, actually.

I stand on a beach with many of my friends, I think it is graduation. I am skipping stones. Then: some powerful figure ( possible my geology prof) has declared that there is no possible way to stop Global Warming. I watch that shoreline and think, "Well then if we can't stop it, why can't we at least stop it from dragging out so long and get it over with? We could all use a little adventure."
The air warms, the alpine glaciers melt, and the sea lazily rises. We all skip up to the parking lot where are two orange VW camper vans are waiting for us, ready to transform into houseboats. The water is rising more quickly now, and we all pile on top of the vans. Matt gets annoyed with Kellen or something and decides he doesn't want to be a part of our van, so he jumps off, but I grab him before he can float away, because we had a deal: I need him to tend to the sails.
We've got quite an assortment my friends on the boat. No one over twenty, all vaguely acquainted. When the water stops rising we float around, observing the new landscape. No one knows who exactly survived, if our families survived.
Some people who formerly lived on a cliff in Normandy park now have a volleyball net set up where people on jet skis joyfully play a game in the "yard". Even though there is a potential for tragedy, starvation, and suffering, everyone shares the air of giddiness, and we soon discover that oral sex is actually the best way of sustaining ourselves. No, really.