He saw the asteroid coming. It hit the moon. In that moment, He realized his whole life was about to change forever.
In the book The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer, Alex Morales's life changes in front of his eyes. An asteroid hits the moon. The moon goes out of orbit, and everything changes.. for good. This takes place in 2003 in New York. It is the second book in the series The Last Survivors. The three main characters are Alex Morales, Julie Morales, and Briana Morales. Alex is a 17 year old kid. He loves school and is a straight A student. Julie is Alex's youngest sister. She is 12 and helps Alex with everything. Briana is the middle child. She is very weak by the middle of the book, so she can not do very many things.
"Alex confessed his sins, including homicidal thoughts, to Father Franco on Saturday and spent the rest of the day silently praying and fasting. He didn't eat again until mass on Sunday, and used the twelve flights of stairs he climbed by Bri's side to meditate on the twelve stations of the cross.
By Sunday night he'd made his plan. The only thing holding him back was his pride, and nowadays pride can kill.
He didn't think twice about the deceptions of Monday morning. Body shopping with Kevin, neither one of them doing much talking. Going back to the apartment with the little he had gathered."
This passage explains so much of the book in a few short paragraphs. He is fasting because he feels bad, but also because there is a shortage of food, due to the asteroid that hit the moon. There is rarely electricity, and that is why he had to walk up 12 flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator. Body shopping is stealing from the dead. Taking their belongings that could be worth something. This explains more than half of what the book talks about. It is written very thoughtfully and careful to detail, just like the whole book.
