"Are you sure?" I demand.

Daryl sighs resignedly and looks at me. "Been a while since she was 'ere. Ain't gonna pick up any tracks."

I cross my arms over my chest and look at my shoes. It's been a while since she was here. She may have gotten out of here but she may have died somewhere else.

Lucy.

"There's no way to know where she went?" I ask.

"Sorry," Daryl mutters "We gotta go back inside."

I should be happy that I have any hope that Lucy's alive. And I am. But I want her back. I want her here with me, right now. I want her safe.

"Yeah, we do," I reply morosely. I look up at Daryl and hold back the tears that have been threatening me for the past few minutes. He nods awkwardly and as we head back to the house he claps a hand on my shoulder. It's just for a second, but it's enough to send the butterflies fluttering so much I can forget worrying about Lucy for a few moments.

Flutter.

Shut up.

I trace the name on the bag. Lucy. She sewed that on nice and pretty after I gave her this bag for her eleventh birthday. She was good at everything. The name is perfectly dimensional, spelled out in pink cursive.

"She was your sister?" Hershel asks.

"Cousin," I reply "I thought for sure she was dead."

Hershel reaches out and grasps my hand firmly. I look up at him and smile. He's started growing a beard and it suits him nicely; makes his face look even kinder. "And now you know she isn't," he says confidently.

"She might still be…" I whisper.

"You can't think like that," he says "You have to hope. Hope is what keeps us alive. So you hope that she's alive, and you hope that we'll find her."

Hershel's such a good man. It's amazing that there's anything left in this world that seems so… untainted. Everything's been affected in some way or another, but Hershel remains himself. Maybe the apocalypse made him a better man than he was before; I wouldn't know. If that was the change he went through, though, I'd say it's a pretty good one. It's the kind of change that I wish everyone would go through.

"Yeah," I say, smiling again. "You're really good at that inspirational stuff."

He chuckles. "That's why you keep me around."

I wake up cold, which isn't unusual these days.

The unusual bit is that I'm snuggled up next to T-Dog.

I sit up and realize just how cold it is. I immediately lie back down next to T and curl into the warmth. It got absolutely freezing overnight; he must have pulled me over to him.

The light shining through the windows is brighter than I remember it being, but we've only been in this house for a day so I could easily not be remembering properly. But how bright it is just seems unusual…

"Dawson! T!" The door to the den flies open and I sit up. Beth is on the other side of the door, bundled up tight with a grin on her face. "It's snowin'!" she says excitedly "Come see!" And with that she's gone.

I nudge T-Dog's shoulder and he gives a grunt and waves his hand at me, which means that he's awake. "Beth said it's snowing," I whisper to him.

"You go see it," he mumbles back. "I'm sleeping,"

"Whatever," I say with an eye-roll.

It only takes me a few minutes to pull on some of the extra clothes that we've been picking up here and there. It's not exactly real winter apparel, but it's better than walking around in the freezing weather with nothing but normal clothes on. Mittens, a scarf, a hat, a second pair of socks and two sweaters.

When I get outside, most everybody's already out there, and indeed it's snowed. The ground is covered in a coating of about two inches and the tree branches are frozen, giving them the frosting effect that always made the best pictures. If this were a normal day, it would mean that everything was cancelled, the power might be out, and everybody would spend the day by their fires, drinking hot cocoa and playing board games.

I think it's a break for us, too. The Walkers probably froze.

Beth and Carl are having a snowball fight against Glenn and Maggie, all laughing uproariously. Lori and Rick have their arms around each other and are actually smiling; Hershel is watching the snowball fight with a look of joy on his face. Daryl and Carol are standing off to the side; Carol is laughing and Daryl looks like he might almost have a smile.

Snow. The answer to all problems.

Snow also means I've definitely turned fifteen. It's weird not knowing what day it is, but it's nice to at least be aware of that fact.

I'm fifteen. One-five. It feels a lot more grown-up than fourteen, which is kind of silly, but it's true. I'd be a freshman right now. I'd be in all of those fancy high school classes and maybe I would've actually gone on a real date.

I wonder how many of my old friends are dead. I never really thought about them; I was too focused on surviving by myself. Really, though, how many of them could be alive? I'm sure if any of them were asked, I wouldn't be the first choice to be surviving this long. Maybe one day I'll run into one of them. Wouldn't that be a sight?

I need to stop thinking about dead people.

I kneel down and carefully make a snowball. I've always been bad at this kind of stuff, but I might as well give it a shot. When I feel confident that my snowball might fly, I stand up again and pelt it at Glenn. It hits him in the shin.

He turns to me and says "Where's T?"

"Being a lazy bum!" I call back. A snowball hits me in the side and I turn to see Carl laughing maniacally. I rush over and kick some snow at him, which results in a bizarre trudging-through-the-snow game of tag.

After several minutes, the cold air and the exertion catches in my lungs and I have to take a few deep breaths. Cold air was never a big problem for my asthma, but I don't need to over-exert myself. I haven't had to use the inhaler in several weeks, and I don't want to use it any more than I have to.

I half-heartedly continue the snowball fight but eventually have to give it up. There's a small itch to go get my inhaler, but I recover soon enough.

After spending the morning outside we all retire to the house. Glenn, Maggie, Beth, Carl, and I are all soaking wet within a few minutes and spend about an hour trying to get warm again, but we still don't regret the snowball fight. It's nice to do something fun for a change.

I didn't notice Daryl go out hunting, but around midday he comes back with a rabbit and the news that most of the Walkers are frozen, and the ones that aren't are too stiff to do very much.

So it really is a break.

Most of us spend the afternoon pondering the benefits of heading north permanently.

"If we make it up into Canada," says Glenn "There's lots of big game, lots of guns, and not a lot of people. The cold will keep the Walkers frozen and they won't be a threat anymore."

"And how would we stay warm the whole time?" I ask "We're freezing already and this is warm for Northern winters."

"We'd start a fire," says Maggie

"A fire draws unwanted attention, that's why we can't build one here," says Hershel.

"But if all the Walkers were frozen—" Glenn starts.

"We aren't necessarily worried about Walkers," Rick says grimly. "There may not be a lot of people up there, but the ones that are left know how to survive."

"Gas heaters," says T-Dog.

"Require gas," I point out.

As we sit here debating, I remember why I lied about my age. Beth and Carl are in the other room playing their board games while I get to help make decisions. They think I'm an adult.

I am an adult. The age is irrelevant.

"Maybe we could head north for the summers and come back south for the winters," says Glenn.

"Like migratory birds," I mutter under my breath. Only Maggie hears me and she stifles a laugh as Rick starts talking.

"We can't spend two months a year moving back and forth. The benefits are good, but there're too many risks. What we need is a place where we can set up a permanent life, start farming, start rebuilding."

"Lots of schools are built like fortresses," I say slowly "I remember feeling like a prisoner when I still went to school. None of them are walled-in completely, but we could look around, see what we have to work with."

"My school wasn't like that," Maggie says, looking at me in slight disbelief "We were surrounded by fields."

"We were surrounded by barbed wire," I reply "I think they added those after kids started bringing knives to school. But I also grew up in a bigger town than you."

Maggie shrugs and looks to Rick, who's shaking his head.

"There are schools like that, but like you said: they're in bigger towns. Even if we could clear it out and seal it up, there'd always be way too many Walkers at the walls. We have to stay in the country." We all think in silence for a few moments before Rick tacks on "We could still try for Fort Benning."

"You heard what Dave and Tony said—" Glenn starts.

"They could've been lying." Rick interrupts.

I don't know who Dave and Tony are, but from everybody's reactions to the names, I'm guessing they were bad news.

"That's not worth the risk," Carol mutters. She leans forward and speaks a bit louder "Let's pause for a moment. Are we discussing long-term plans or are we figuring out what to do right now?"

"We have plenty of supplies and the Walkers are frozen," says T-Dog. "Let's stick with the long-term plans."

The next hour or two is spent in more debate. The general consensus of the meeting is that nobody has any idea what the hell they're doing, which really isn't encouraging, but we do get one idea across: We need to find a place for Lori to have her baby.

For now, that seems to be the most important thing. Lori is getting a lot bigger, and that baby is coming in a few months. When it does, we're going to have a completely helpless thing that is absolutely, one-hundred percent reliant on us for everything, and starts screaming every two to four hours. We need a place where we can make noise without worrying about the Walkers getting us.

Daryl and Carol try to bring up the prospect of having to get formula, but Rick won't even hear it. As impractical as it is, I really don't blame him; I can't imagine knowing that there's a roughly twenty-five percent chance that your wife is going to die in a few months.

"Maybe we should stop thinking about a place where we can farm," I say "At least for a bit. Maybe for the short term, while we wait for the baby to come and grow out of crying ten times a day, we just need to get well-stocked and find a big concrete building."

"Like what?" asks Glenn.

"Like… a Costco! Or a storage unit place, or—back to the school idea. Somewhere with walls big enough that we can just hunker down for a few months without the Walkers even knowing that we're there."

"And how are we going to get that much food?" asks Rick.

"I don't know!" I mutter, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms defensively "It's just an idea—isn't that what meetings are for?"

And now we're arguing again.

I talk a lot in the meeting. I don't think I ever realized how much I talked until I stopped. But I always talked. Talking was the only reason I ever got in trouble in school and why my dad always got mad at me when we were in line at stores. I talk too much.

At least in a meeting, most of what I say is constructive. I still probably talk too much, but I'm not babbling about nonsense, I'm giving ideas. But by the end of the meeting, we're all pretty much out of ideas.

And then T-Dog says "I have an idea." We all perk up and he grins "The Walkers are frozen; we don't need to keep watch—why don't we open that wine we've been saving?"

The idea is alcohol.

Fantastic.

"I'm done!" I announce, throwing up my hands and standing up. "Have fun with your drinking!"

Everybody laughs at me. "What?" asks Glenn "You don't drink?"

"My mother was an ER nurse," I reply "You wouldn't drink, either." Which actually isn't a complete lie. With the amount of stories Mom brought home, I promised myself a long time ago that I would never touch alcohol. The fact that I was underage had almost nothing to do with it.

"C'mon, live a little!" says T-Dog, who's already making his way to the kitchen for the wine.

"I am a good influence!" I call to him in the other room. He laughs.

"Well, if we're splitting up," says Hershel, standing up "I'm with Dawson. I already fell off the wagon once; I don't need to do it again."

"Thank you," I smile "Let's go play cards or something while these idiots poison themselves."

We do just that; join Lori, Carl, and Beth, who are all playing Monopoly. And that's pretty much how the rest of the day is spent. Five of us are playing games and wasting time while the other six drink and play poker. It takes me a while to notice, but Rick actually isn't drinking either. He's too concerned for our safety to drink, even if all the Walkers are frozen.

I definitely respect him for that.

By the time evening comes, it's snowing again. We decide to make a small fire in the woodstove; small enough that the night will be enough to cover the smoke.

And so, night falls on a strangely peaceful day. No Walkers, no danger, no hunger; just a nice day that we all spent together.

"You sure you don't want a drink?" T-Dog asks me later. Lori, Hershel, Beth, and Carl have already gone to bed and I've resigned myself to sitting around giggling with a bunch of half-drunk adults because what else am I going to do? I'm not in the least bit tired, and the group is pretty funny when they're drunk.

"I'm really sure, T," I assure him with a chuckle.

"C'mon," he urges me "It's the end of the world!"

I look at Rick, the only other sober person in the room, and we share an amused smile. He nods at me, as if he's giving me permission, and I'm only indignant for a few moments before I realize that I might want to have a drink…

No. I don't drink. Never have, never will. I'm not going to break that promise just because the world ended.

Just because the world ended. That's probably the stupidest thing I've ever thought. No, the stupidest thing I've ever thought is that Daryl is hot, but that one comes in at a close second.

I sigh. "Alright, give it here."

There's a general 'whoop' as the bottle is passed to me and I take it. I stare at it for a few moments, debating with myself about whether I really should take a sip. "Screw it," I mutter, and I lift the bottle to my lips, take a big gulp, and ugh!

I swallow as I move the bottle away and cringe. "That is disgusting—it's like… juice that burns."

Everybody busts out laughing; even Rick. I can feel a little heat coming up in my cheeks even though I know that they're not really laughing at me. It was just funny. Maybe the wine's already getting to my head, although that seems unlikely.

"Han' it back o'er here, then," Daryl drawls. I frown. I feel a bit stubborn, and I also have a small desire to impress Daryl—

—flutter—

—shut up—

—which I know is stupid… but it's still there. So I defiantly lift the bottle to my lips and take another large sip, which makes everybody whoop once more. It's slightly less disgusting this time, but it's still bitter and stings my throat. Still, I swallow it a bit easier and I think I almost feel a bit lightheaded already.

"What now?" Glenn laughs. I raise my eyebrows at his bright red face and the way he and Maggie are basically draped over each other and reply "I don't understand the appeal, but it made ya'll laugh, so that's good."

I pass the bottle away and lean back in my seat. I'm almost sure I'm feeling a bit lightheaded. I mean, I know that I must have a seriously low alcohol tolerance, but I didn't think that it would take effect this fast. Maybe it's just a placebo effect.

Some more time passes, jokes and stories are told, and at some point I think I'm absolutely sure that I'm at least a little bit… tipsy. Yeah, that's the word. I must be a lightweight if I'm already feeling it… feeling very… loose. Free and happy. I giggle quite a bit. The stories seem funnier and everything seems happier. I take the bottle back from Glenn and take another sip, which isn't nearly as gross this time.

I haven't got a clue why I've been so stressed lately. Why don't we all do this more often? This is fun… whatever we're doing. Hanging out, telling jokes, giggling, talking. I talk to Daryl, which makes everyone giggle and I can't figure out why, and at some point Rick convinces me that I should go to bed, which seems like a bad idea because I'm having a good time but I am feeling tired…

So I pick a spot on one of the couches and lay down and eventually my eyelids start drooping…