Jaime, a high school student, has taken care of her paranoid older brother, Roland, for the last three months. They are in the apartment he is incapable of leaving. It is possible for the characters to be of any gender.

(Warning: Using this scene without permission is illegal, as is reproducing it on a website or in print in any way.)

(Jaime knocks at the door. Roland lets her in.)

ROLAND: Thanks for knocking.    
JAIME: Of course. I have food.
ROLAND: Thank you. Come here—I need to check you.
JAIME: I'm fine. I promise, I'm fine.
ROLAND: Let me check.
JAIME: Don't.
ROLAND: It'll only take a second. Just hold still.
JAIME: Don't touch me.
ROLAND: Okay, okay.
JAIME: I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm just really tired.
ROLAND: What's wrong?
JAIME: Nothing.
ROLAND: I'm not stupid. What's wrong with you?
JAIME: It's this pre-calc test on Thursday.
ROLAND: That's it?
JAIME: I already have a D in the class, so, I'm gonna be up for the next two nights studying. And I was already up all night last night, and I don't think I even understand what I'm cramming in my head.
ROLAND: A math test has you this freaked out.
JAIME: Not all of us can be born trig geniuses.
ROLAND: Is trigonometry what you're struggling with?
JAIME: Don't gloat.
ROLAND: I'm not. I skipped to calculus, but I think I can explain the basics. What section do you not understand?
JAIME: All of it.
ROLAND: Do you have any homework or a textbook I can look at? I'll go over it with you.
JAIME: You'd really do that?
ROLAND: Of course.
JAIME: You don't have to.
ROLAND: What else are born trig geniuses for?
JAIME: Thank you, oh my God, thank you. Here, I have a study guide in my backpack somewhere.

(As she rummages through it, Roland reaches over to check her neck.)

JAIME: What is wrong with you?
ROLAND: I had to make sure.
JAIME: So you lied to me?
ROLAND: You were the one lying about still going to school. Do you think I'm dumb? I would never fall for a Martian trick like that. If you were infected then—
JAIME: That's it. I will see you next Tuesday.
ROLAND: You're being unreasonable.
JAIME: Do you have any idea how hard it is to stay patient with you? You come at me with your apocalyptic garbage everyday, and you never ask me how I am, or how school is, or say thank you. I have to ride the subway from Brooklyn to get here. I only have one day off practice a week and I spend it with you. Do you know how much crap the other girls on the soccer team give me for that? Do you know how much Mom gives me for that?
ROLAND: Don't.
JAIME: She asked me four times today when you're coming home. She's out of her mind worrying. She thinks staying in Manhattan and being so close to all this is bad for you. It is bad for you.
ROLAND: I don't want to hear this.
JAIME: She says I'm enabling you. And she's right, I mean, I am.
ROLAND: You're not.
JAIME: I can't keep lying to her for you. That's the only reason she hasn't broken down that door. Because I keep saying that every week you're getting better, that you're almost there, that you're almost ready to see her.
ROLAND: I can't see her.
JAIME: Because you know she wouldn't play along like I do.
ROLAND: Because she's dead.
JAIME: That's really easier for you to think isn't it? You want Mom to be dead.
ROLAND: I don't want any of this to have happened. But it did. And it was real. I saw them, the Martians. They lit those buildings on fire. It was their invisible heat ray, just like in the book.
JAIME: God, I need to go home.
ROLAND: The aliens got you, didn't they? Didn't they?
JAIME: There aren't any aliens. They aren't real. All of this is in your head.
ROLAND: You're lying. They got to you.
JAIME: You've been here for almost three months. Mom wants you home. We want you home.
ROLAND: This isn't you. The Martians snatched your body out there where it's all burned to nothing. They implan—
JAIME: You're behind on your rent, your bills are piling up, you're flunking out of school—is that what's keeping you here? Every second you sit here it just gets worse. That's what's real.
ROLAND: Everything's gone. Everyone's dead.
JAIME: Two buildings, Roland. That's all it was.
ROLAND: No, I watched it from my window. I saw this huge pillar of smoke and these little dark shapes falling out of high windows faster than paper could fall and maybe they were just office chairs, but there were so many, and they weren't pieces of paper and they weren't chairs—they were people. They were falling or—or jumping out of the frying pan, but the frying pan was the fire and all they jumped into was the ground. I shut the curtains. I can't open them again. I can't leave my apartment; it's safe in here. Everything else in the world besides this room is gone. We are the only two people on earth.
JAIME: Here. I'll show you.

(She starts toward the window, which is the fourth wall. He tries to stop her.)

ROLAND: Jaime, no. I don't want see it all burned up. I don't want to see what's outside. No, you can't. It's all gone, it's all—

(Jaime makes a motion toward the audience like she's opening drapes.)
(A light brightens the stage the same way the sun would a dark room.)

JAIME: See.
ROLAND: It's there. It's all still. There.

(A breath.)

But the towers. Gone. I could see them from my window. Gone. Like God just picked them up and lifted them into the sky.
JAIME: No. I saw it on the news. They crumbled down on themselves.
ROLAND: What burnt them?
JAIME: Planes.
ROLAND: Oh. It felt real. Deep down I guess I knew it wasn't. But it made sense, somehow. To have the whole world be gone after something like this.
JAIME: But the world's not gone. Is that better or worse?
ROLAND: Both. How did people react? When they saw the buildings burning? What did they do?
JAIME: They started like this; everyone afraid, holding their breath. But then after weeks and months they. We. Could almost start breathing again. We went back to school. We walked down to the memorial. Then, slowly, we stopped wearing black. We walked our dogs down the street and bought coffees and complained about teachers and dates and movies. We danced at parties again. We lived.