Chapter 9: Two months later

"Dear magic ball, will Ellie ever admit that I'm funnier than her?" Jack shook the big black ball "very doubtful. Hey, this thing seems legit"

"Jack, I am funnier than you" Ellie stated from the other side of the room.

They were exploring an old basement full of stuff. Anything deemed useless by the citizens of Jackson ended up there. They were surrounded by piles of mischelaneous objects, relics from a simpler past.

"Ellie, you are unable to say something remotely humorous that doesn't includes the words 'fuck' or 'shit'. Swearing gets old pretty fast, you know"

"Fuck you, that's bullshit." She made a pause to examine a small brass figure which represented a little winged kid. "I'm hilarious".

"Correction, the book you quote all the time is hilarious, you are just meh. Do you think Ellie is funny, magic ball?" He shook the ball again "Ask again later? Yeah you'll love that don't you"

Jack left the ball on the nearest pile of stuff and walked towards Ellie, avoiding all the objects around him. "Found anything interesting?"

"Look at this" she handed him a small cube "do you know what it is?"

Jack examined it, he have seen one of this before."Yes... it's a Rubik's cube"

"A Rubi-what?"

"It's a puzzle, you complete it when each face consist of one colour." He give it back to her.

She played with it for a second. "Oh, I get it"

"You want to make a bet? I give you one month to solve it"

"Deal. The stakes?"

"I'll think about them once you fail"

"Fail? Do you realize you just gave me ONE MONTH to solve this?"

Jack grinned, but didn't said anything.

He looked around him, there were so much interesting stuff that it was impossible to concentrate on something in particular.

"Why didn't you told me about this place before?" Jack have been living in Jackson for months, he founded weird that Ellie didn't even mention the most awesome place in the whole town before.

"I don't know... reasons?" Ellie opened the backpack she was carrying and left the cube inside.

Jack took a peek of the interior of the backpack, and before Ellie could do anything about it, he reached to the inside and extracted an old walkman.

"Hey, what the fuck!. Give me that back, NOW"

Jack ignored her complaints, he observed there was a tape inside the walkman. He took the headphones, put them on, and pressed the play button. Nothing happened. "Aw, that's disappointing, it's broken"

Ellie didn't say anything, she just took the walkman from his hands and throw it back into the backpack. "Don't you dare to touch this backpack ever again"

"C'mon, I just thought it looked interesting"

"EVER...AGAIN..." She was seriously pissed.

Jack struggled to find something to say, but just settled with a "sorry".

"We should go back home, it's getting late" She closed the backpack, putted it on and walked towards the stairs.

"I'm sorry, Ellie. Didn't know it would upset you so much"

"Well now you know, don't mess with the backpack" She said before going upstairs.

Jack standed there, thinking about what just happened. Invading her privacy like that was not a great idea, He thought about how he would felt if he found Ellie checking out his own backpack, he would be really pissed off too.

He went upstairs, the place was empty. He left the house and closed the door, a small sign nailed to it readed 'storage house'.

Without anything else to do, he headed to what now has becomed his home.


When Jack opened the door, he found Joel sitted on the couch, reading a supply list. Something was weird, then it dawned on him "Joel, your beard!" He was clean-shaven.

"Yeah, decided to get rid of it, at least for a while"

"I don't think I can get used to your face. Just grow it back, for your own sake" Joel was unrecognizable.

"Funny, Ellie said exactly the same thing"

"Where is she?" Jack's tone turned serious.

"Upstairs, she seemed upset. What did you do?"

"Messed with her backpack"

"You shouldn't have, kid" Joel said. And then turned to the list once again.

Jack thinked about what to do next, he decided to talk with Ellie. Maybe another round of appologies would calm her down.

He went upstairs and walked towards Ellie's room. He was about to knock the door when he noticed there was a small crack on it.

He turned his head and got closer to the door to hear inside, he didn't heard a sound. After a second of hesitation he crouched and peeked through the crack.

Ellie was sitted on the floor resting her back on the side of the bed. The backpack was opened right beside her. She was reading an old, yellow piece of paper, and she was crying. Big tears rolled down her cheeks when she flipped the piece of paper to read the other side.

Jack never saw her like that before, she always seemed unbreakable, a though survivor with a cheery exterior. But now she just seemed like a scared, little, defenceless girl.

He stood up and walked away.