Chapter 10

Hope

2 Weeks Later, Mississippi

Tyler

A soft hand held mine, our fingers intertwined as I walked Mia down the hall to French Class. I had an appointment with my guidance counselor about another scholarship possibility, but being a few minutes late wouldn't kill me. And anyway, Mia was important.

We reached the classroom too quickly. "See you," she said.

"Yeah, I'll see you after school, alright?" I asked.

"It's a date," she replied, laughing. Then she stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek.

She pulled back, and her dark eyes had turned to blue, her hair lengthened, her hand rougher in mine, tougher. "Just… try it," she said. "It might surprise you."

Then it wasn't a school anymore, but the place we had been a few weeks ago, in Kentucky, and my head was spinning as she faded from my vision, her words echoing through my head, like they were trying to stick but couldn't find any surface that had enough traction. "It might surprise you… surprise you… surprise you…"

I gasped as I woke up, sitting up straight and banging my head hard against Tanya's. She looked at me, clutching her forehead, teeth grit. "Sorry!" I said, quickly.

"Not your fault," she said, wincing slightly. "I should have known not to be bending over you."

"Why were you, anyway?" I asked, grumbling slightly, although glad to be awoken from my dream. It was the third time that I had had it… or something similar, since Aqua had talked to me. They always had her or Mia or some combination of the two of them in it, and those words. Aqua's words always came up at the end. It wasn't as though she had spoken to me much since then, anyway. She was giving me my space or something. How was I supposed to know? All I knew was that I was okay with it, at least for the moment. I needed to figure out what the hell I wanted to do about her.

"You were muttering in your sleep," Tanya explained. "It woke me up. Something about now wanting to try it?" she ended it like a question, raising her eyebrows.

"Oh, it was nothing," I lied. "Just about Mom forcing me to try some weird vegetable." I felt the wrench in my gut as I said 'Mom.'

Tanya must have felt it as well, because I could tell that she knew that I was lying, but she let it pass unspoken, which wasn't normal for her. Especially since I didn't tend to lie to her. Ever.

Tanya

I knew that Tyler was lying to me. It was so obvious that I would have had to be blind not to see it. He didn't meet my eyes, and there was that nervous twitch of his fingers that always happened when he lied. I knew him well.

Obviously, whatever he was lying about was really troubling him, though, so I decided not to push the subject… yet. First, I was going to try to figure it out myself. He had been acting somewhat… odd, lately, and it must have started when Aqua joined us. That was perfectly understandable, I suppose. It was a change, and we weren't really used to change at this point. It was always the same for us; keeping a low profile, stealing what we could, and moving on when we were there for too long. Nothing changed, so Aqua joining us was something radical.

He watched her a lot, too, like he was trying to figure her out, but he wouldn't talk to her. Oh, he'd speak to her, but they didn't talk, not really, despite her attempts. She was starting to give up, too.

I didn't understand at all why he was trying to avoid her either. She was… nice. She could be kind of blank sometimes, like she was lost in thought, and I didn't know much about her, but what I did know and see I liked. She was personable, could be funny when she wanted to, smart, and sometimes had a bit of a temper, not that it was easy to tell. She really had hit it off with Gabby too, looking at her drawings and answering her numerous questions without pause, although she tried to avoid the topic of her life before the invasion. I couldn't blame her there, Mom and Dad were painful memories for me, Carson too. Thinking about them was a sting to the heart and something that I tried to avoid, although they often appeared in my dreams.

I sighed. It was boring here. There wasn't much to do when we didn't need a raid, and the edge of this lake we were at was completely calm, nobody around for miles, which was perfect, of course, seeing as we were on the run.

"What's up, Tan?" Tyler asked, settling down beside me.

"I'm trying to figure out why you avoid Aqua," I told him bluntly.

"I don't avoid her!" he exclaimed, attempting to sound affronted. It failed miserably.

"Oh, please," I snorted. "I can see right through you. You avoid her. She tries to talk to you and you just end the conversation as quickly as possible and make up some excuse," I said, rolling my eyes.

He didn't say anything. I sighed. "You can tell me why, you know," I whispered. "I'm your sister. I care, Ty, and so does Gabby, and so does Aqua. We're all in this together now, the four of us. We can't have something stupid keeping us apart."

"It's not stupid," Tyler defended.

I raised an eyebrow. "If you're defending it, it's stupid. Just tell me," I insisted.

He let out a noisy breath. "Fine. I don't want to get close to her because then I'll care. And if I care, I'll get hurt," he said.

I laughed. He glared at me, eyes dark. "God, you're an idiot," I said. "If you care about getting hurt, then you already care. It's too late, big bro."

"Well then I'm going to stop it," he stated simply.

"You can't."

He finally gave in. It usually took me much less time to break him then that. "I know," he groaned. "What do I do?"

"Easy," I replied. "You talk to her and get to know her. Then you won't feel so scared—at the very least. Maybe you'll even see that she can actually handle herself pretty well."

"I've already figured that out," he muttered.

"Good luck," I said cheerily, standing up and giving him a false salute before going off to look for something to do.

1 Day Later

Aqua

"Hey, need some help?" a male voice asked from behind me. I was attempting to move a huge branch out of the way to clear some more space for us, but I had to admit that it was too heavy for me.

"So you've decided to talk to me?" I replied coolly, looking at Tyler with raised eyebrows and planting my hands on my hips.

"I've decided that you were right," he admitted grudgingly, sitting down on the branch that I had been trying to move. I glared at him. "Alright, so I didn't decide, Tanya convinced me," he clarified.

"She's a smart girl," I drawled in response, sitting down beside him.

"That she is," he agreed, nodding slightly. "She could have been great, a doctor or a scientist or something. You know, if not for the end of the world occurring much earlier than anybody expected."

"Yeah." I paused. This didn't seem like an adequate answer. "I always wanted to be a professional soccer player," I told him. "I was super competitive with my brothers when it came to sports, even though they're both a good bit older than me, and I was determined to make the varsity team as a freshman, which I did. They always told me that I was better than them, or at least, Ian did. Kyle would never admit that anybody was better than him at anything. He's far too stubborn for that. I wish you could see them playing together though. They're linked, almost like they can read each other's minds. It's amazing."

I stopped, realizing that I had been lost in my memories. "Sorry, I'm rambling," I said, standing up. I couldn't start telling him this sort of thing now. He had only just started speaking to me.

"No, it's alright. It's nice to hear about the good memories sometimes, before everything that happened," he said. There was a short silence stretching between us before he asked, hesitantly, "What happened to them?"

"I don't know," I whispered, my voice cracking ever so slightly. "We ran into Seekers. We-we had to split up. They told me to run, so I did," I answered with a shudder, remembering that day. "They could still be on the run, like us, but they could have worms in their heads by now."

"That sucks." I looked at him, confused about what he meant. Becoming a host to a parasite would suck, of course, but I didn't think that was what he meant. It was sympathy for me that he was giving. He'd never even met them. "The uncertainty, I mean," he clarified. "I mean, with Carson, at least we know what happened. It's not good, but at least we know that, in some twisted, way he's probably happy."

"Honestly, I think I'd rather be miserable on the run than have something stuck in my head and taking me over," I told him rather bluntly. He flinched slightly. "Sorry. I've never been known for my sensitivity, but that was pretty bad. I think it came with not being around people for a long time. I'm sorry about Carson and what happened to him."

"Nothing you could have done about it," Tyler quipped, trying to lighten the mood slightly. I decided to go along with it.

"Alright, get up and help me move this branch now," I commanded, standing up myself to set a proper example.

"Fine, fine," he said. He moved to one end and we each grabbed it, the rough bark scraping against the skin of my palms, and lifted. I was straining but it looked easy for him. Damn that boy and his muscles. Together, we moved it farther from the edge of the water and into the denser areas of brush where it was more out of the way, seeing as we couldn't easily pick our way through the brush anyway. That was something that was much more likely for a deer to be doing than us, and not even they would be around while we were in the area.

I grinned. "Success," I cheered.

Tyler rolled his eyes. "I suppose, but what was the point of that?"

"There wasn't one really," I replied, shrugging and sitting down again in the-now much clearer-clearing. "It makes me feel like I'm doing something, though, you know. I get antsy when I'm not on the move. It makes me think I'm a sitting duck, just waiting for them to happen across me."

"We're as safe as can be, here," Tyler pointed out, plopping down next to me once more and leaning against the shifted branch, which slid slightly with his weight before settling in the soil once more. "I mean, I'm sure there are safer places, but better here than out in the open on the move or raiding."

"We're going to need one soon." He looked confused. "A raid, I mean. We're running low on just about everything."

"We can last another week as long as we're careful," he countered. He sounded tense, like this was something he didn't want to talk to me about.

"Please," I scoffed. "Four more days and we'll be down to a box of cereal, a box of spaghetti, and maybe some jerky."

"Maybe I'll head out for a quick one so that we last another week after that. We can plan a bigger one that way, maybe make two or three stops in order to last a while longer. I don't like being too close to them more often than necessary."

"I'd be happy to help," I said. He gave me a long look.

"Alright. You can probably carry more than Tanya, anyway. But this is a test run for you. If you do anything stupid you're suspended from raiding until further notice," he said, but the warning turned into teasing towards the end.

"I'm glad that you have so much faith in me," I drawled. "I've been fending for myself for a long time, you know."

"I know, but working with somebody else is different than when you're working alone. And we're getting food for more than ourselves, too. We're their lifeline," he said, gesturing back to where Gabby and Tanya were with a nod of his head.

"I don't know how you deal with it," I told him honestly. "It's tough enough taking care of myself, let alone becoming a surrogate parent in the process, all in a series of minutes."

"It's tough," he answered, "but it's worth it. They're still here, you know, still happy, at least to some extent, and we're still together. We haven't lost each other. And now we have you, too."

"Yeah, now you have me," I confirmed. His remark on how they were all still together hit me hard, though. They were together, and Ian and Kyle were together, as far as I knew, and for the longest time I was alone. I lost my family, but had I possibly found a new one? I didn't want to replace my brothers, but Gabby and Tanya and Tyler, they were hope for me, hope that I wouldn't have to be alone again.

Yes, another chapter on time, you can now be happy.

Now that my moment of arrogance that my story makes your week (which is probably not actually true) is over, I shall say my usual thing. I hope you liked the chapter! Isn't it great that Tyler's opening up now? Yeah, it was kind of sudden, but I think it's one of those things that if you start it, it kind of keeps going whether you intend it to or not, which I originally didn't, but their conversation kind of kept going, so there it is.

Next chapter will be the raid, so be ready, there might be something... interesting that will occur during the course of it, but I'm saying nothing more than that. Please keep reading and review! I do love them so, and the new blue button is so much more prominent. *nudge nudge wink wink*