I can't express how hard it was to stop myself from laughing at that moment. All I could do was watch. Watch as Glenn drew his eyebrows together as he looked back at Merle. Watch his head snap back to look at the grease on my arm now concealed by the sleeve. Watch as his eyes bulged out of his head when he finally realised what happened.
His eyes flew up to meet mine in a silent question.
It was you?
Fidgeting in my chair, I pursed my lips.
It was me.
I stood up, quickly rushing past Glenn to leave my bowl on a table outside the RV. I had to leave; if Merle had seen me there, he would have known. I needed to clean the rest of the grease off my arm in case anybody else saw.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Shane at the Dixon camp. He was trying to calm Merle down, who just kept arguing with him. Shane looked fed up, just trying to quieten Merle down so he didn't wake up the rest of the camp.
I left quickly, following the dirt road down towards the quarry so I could clean the grease from my arms. As I was walking, I heard footsteps behind me. Fearful that it might've been Merle, I glanced back over my shoulder.
Glenn was the one following me. "Are you insane? Do you have a death wish or something?"
I didn't answer.
Rolling back the sleeves of my hoodie, I rubbed at the splotches of grease still on my arms. I missed so much the night before, I would never have been able to get rid of all this with a single rag. It was lucky I was wearing the hoodie, because the sleeves concealed most of them.
"Why would you do that?"
"I don't know," I shrugged.
There was a pause before Glenn spoke again. "You don't know?"
His tone sounded more concerned than anything, like he actually thought that Merle was going to kill me. Not that I doubted it for a second, why else would I be running down to the quarry to wash my arms?
I wasn't going to let Glenn know that. "I was bored, I guess."
"So bored that you wanted to be killed?!"
Stopping in my tracks, I spun on the heel of my feet to look at him. "That's a little dramatic."
He didn't get the chance to speak before I turned back to the quarry to continue my journey, swinging my arms as I walked. He followed me, walking at my side. His silence told me he was less panicked than he originally was.
"Why do you care anyway?" I asked. "It's not like he's going to kill you."
"I can't keep secrets," he told me. "I suck at lying, I can't play poker, it's too much like lying."
I stared at him for a moment, wondering if this was really the excuse he was going with. "You wouldn't be lying if you don't speak to him."
"You don't understand," he told me. "I'm going to tell him."
My eyes widened, and I turned to look at him. "Why?!"
"Not on purpose!" He defended quickly, raising his hands in defence.
"Glenn," I started, "you never even talk to him. Why would you suddenly just tell him now?"
"Just . . . because!"
"That's not an answer."
It took us a few minutes to walk to the quarry, neither of us speaking as we finally made it to the water's edge. I kneeled, dipped my hand in the cold lake and started scrubbing at the black marks that covered my arms.
Glenn sat on one of the rocks behind me, bringing a knee up to his chest. He didn't say anything for a while, and just looked off at the quarry in thought.
"How do you know about fixing things anyway?"
I decided to be honest with him, he already knew that I fixed Merle's bike anyway. "My dad was a mechanic, he taught me everything I know. I worked in his garage."
I stood up when I was done cleaning the grease. I grabbed my hoodie from the floor next to me and I tied the sleeves around my waist. Some wind blew my hair in my face, which prompted me to look around for my bandana, but it wasn't wrapped around my wrist like it normally was. I must have left it back up at the camp somewhere, which sucked.
When I was ready to go, Glenn stood up. He placed a hand over my shoulder as we walked back across the pebbly ground and back to the quarry.
I glanced over at him, before talking in a babyish voice. "Are you okay now?"
"I just don't understand why you wanted to help Merle. He's so . . . mean," Glenn's face contorted into disgust at the mention of his behaviour.
"Like I said, I just got bored," I explained. "Besides, I kind of needed a distraction."
I stayed quiet for a while. My mind kept replaying the moment when Merle started yelling, and I couldn't help but grin. I looked over at Glenn, who kept his eyes on the ground as he walked.
"One good thing did come out of this morning," I told him, the smile only growing. "I am never going to forget the look on your face when Merle started shouting."
Glenn rolled his eyes and scoffed. "It just shocked me, okay?"
"No way!" I laughed. "That was the look of pure terror."
It was quieter when we made it back to camp; Merle seemed to have calmed down a little. Everyone who was once sleeping that morning were now up and doing chores. None of them looked happy about it.
"Make sure to stay away from Merle today," Glenn told me.
I rolled my eyes. "I'll be fine."
"I'm just making sure."
I turned to look at him. "Well, how about you just make sure that you don't actually end up telling him anything? As dramatic as you're being about this whole thing, I kind of don't want him to find out that I fixed his bike."
He let out a small laugh. "I'll try."
Glenn walked over to the RV, and started speaking to Dale who was sitting on the roof.
When I looked over at Merle, he was just staring at the bike, trying to wrap his head around who could have possibly fixed it during the night. I kept walking further into camp, knowing that if he saw me looking it would probably be a dead giveaway.
Before turning away, I did notice that Daryl was awake now. He looked just as pissed off as Merle sounded when he started yelling, so I guessed that Merle probably woke him up.
Wait.
Daryl saw my hoodie a couple of days ago. Would he know that I fixed the bike? Would he tell Merle?
I glanced down at the hoodie, the badge clearly visible on the clothing. I unravelled it from my waist, turning to my tent to leave the hoodie inside, getting rid of the evidence that could lead to Merle killing me.
After spending the day around camp avoiding any contact with Merle, I ended up joining the rest of the women to do the laundry. I ignored their conversations half of the time, most of it was just camp gossip about the rest of the camp that I had no interest in. There was one question that did, however, catch my attention.
"Did you all hear Merle this morning?"
Amy was leaning forward to look at the rest of the women. I looked up from what I was doing, and straight over at her. I stared for a moment but turned back to the washing when the other women started to pipe up.
"How could you not hear him?" Jacqui answered. "The bastard woke me up."
I had to stop myself from chuckling, keeping my head down and tucking my chin into my chest. I loved Jacqui, she always had the best sense of humour. Some of the other women chuckled at her complaint, showing that they all had also been disturbed by Merle's yelling.
"Who do you think did it?" Amy questioned again. "Maybe Jim? He's a mechanic, isn't he?"
Andrea scoffed. "Yeah, but why would he? I don't know why anyone would've wanted to. I mean, look at how he reacted; it didn't seem like he was all that grateful."
I never expected Merle to be grateful when I fixed the bike, that's why I did it in the middle of the night, so no one could see me. Merle seemed like the kind of person that didn't want help from anyone, let alone a teenage girl.
When I worked at the garage, there were always people that didn't want me fixing their cars, like my age somehow meant I was inexperienced. I quickly learnt that some people would never be okay with me being a mechanic, and swallowed down the anger it gave me.
"Well, who else could've done it? Dale?" Amy asked.
"Whoever it was must've been sick of him complaining," Jacqui hummed to herself, agreeing to her own statement, "the man didn't stop."
"Well it's worse now," Andrea chimed.
I frowned.
I was just trying to help.
"I think he's just mad that someone was able to show him up," Jacqui argued. "At least with the damn thing fixed, he's run out of things to get worked up over."
"Please," Amy grinned, "this is Merle Dixon."
"We should probably just stay out of it," Carol said.
"You're right," Andrea answered.
Part of me was relieved that they'd finished talking about it. It would only be a matter of time before someone caught onto the cheesy grins I gave when they talked about it.
"You know what else I saw, though?" Jacqui gave a devious smile and looked between the rest of the people. "Lori running off into the woods again."
Amy gave a frown of confusion. "What for?"
"A certain officer is my guess," Jacqui had the same smile on her face, raising her eyebrows at the others.
Amy gasped. "Really?"
"It's the second time now, right?" Andrea asked. "Didn't he follow her out last time?"
"Yep."
"Is that where she is? I thought she was meant to be helping us today?" Andrea questioned, a little agitated.
"Well she got back earlier, and I left her with the kids. Didn't want them running around down here while we're working," Carol explained, scrubbing a red shirt on the washboard, "I didn't want to watch them at the same time."
"That makes sense," Amy shrugged.
Lori was with Shane? I guess I'd never really noticed it, but they were together most of the time. Carl told me that Shane wasn't his father, so they weren't married.
I pushed the thoughts away from my mind, pulling the grey hoodie away from my body to cool myself off.
The women continued to talk when I finished washing my set of clothes, and when I was done I wiped my hands off.
"You can head back to camp if you want, hun," Carol reached over to grab my basket, "I'll bring those up on my way."
"Oh-uh. . . Okay," I gave a nod, "thanks."
I didn't know what to do when I made it back, and I stood around for a while as I tried to think about where to go.
Before I could decide anything, I saw Lori. She was sitting outside of the RV, and when she saw me, she waved me over,
"Hun, I asked Glenn to look for some clothes in Atlanta," Lori told me, before giving a pause.
I just stared at her for a moment, trying to wrap my head around what she was telling me. Okay? I didn't answer aloud, knowing that Lori would probably think of it like talking back, even though it kind of was.
"Do you want to look through them?" She questioned. "I noticed that you don't have many clothes with you."
"Um. . . okay," I smiled.
"I'll ask Glenn to bring the clothes," she told me. "Just wait here."
I just realised as I sat down that Carl and Sophia were not with Lori like Carol said, and I assumed that they were in the RV, out of the sun.
My mind then wandered back to what Jacqui said about Lori and Shane. I could not see Shane anywhere around, but he had to be somewhere around camp because he was not at the quarry when I was down there.
I wondered how long they had been interested in one another. They were close when I joined the camp, maybe they were even together by the time I joined the group. I forced myself to stop thinking about it when she returned, for fear that I would keep staring at her as I tried to make sense of what happened in my head.
Glenn emerged from the RV minutes later, and I realised that I hadn't even noticed him go in there.
"I just grabbed what I saw," Glenn said, placing the bag of clothes down in front of me and Lori. "I didn't get a chance to look through any of it."
"I'm sure we'll find something," Lori smiled at him. "Thank you, Glenn."
Out of all the clothes, I kept a T-shirt that was my size and a pair of dungarees that fitted as well. When Lori showed them to me and called them overalls, which I thought was the name of the suit I wore in the garage to keep my clothes clean. I had to take a second look to understand what she meant.
"This is nice," she pulled out a white top.
It was a plain white, woollen shirt, with floral patterns crocheted into the sleeves. It was nice, which is why my main concern was getting it dirty. I needed things to wear, so I couldn't be too picky.
Looking through all the clothes made me think about my bandana. I couldn't remember where it was at the time, and I wanted to keep my hair out of my face. I tried thinking of the last place I had it, before Lori interrupted me from my thoughts.
"Make sure to try these on later," Lori folded all the clothes, putting them into a neat pile.
I nodded, taking the small pile of clothes. "Thank you."
I turned towards my tent, taking the clothes back to my tent so I could try them on later. The crochet shirt excited me, and I hoped that it would fit. It reminded me of something I would wear before all this happened. Now I just had to worry about keeping it clean.
Placing the pile of clothes on the sleeping bag, I noticed that my yellow bag was in the back corner of my tent. I remembered that I still hadn't read the book that day, and decided that I wanted to do that to fill the large gap in my day.
The sun had started to go down by the time I started to read my book, but luckily it was still bright enough to see. I sat outside my tent, legs crossed with the book in my lap. I wanted to read the chapter before food was done and before it got too dark.
When I was about halfway through the chapter, I was straining to see the words a little, but they were still visible. It didn't help when a shadow blocked my view of the book, but I didn't take any notice of it. I did hear footsteps, but I assumed it was just people passing until they stopped.
"The fuck did I tell ya 'bout touching my bike?"
I jumped at the sudden sound of another voice. It was Merle. His voice was laced with anger, and when I looked up from my book to meet his eyes, his face wore the same expression.
I scrunched up my eyebrows, making myself look as clueless as possible. Maybe there was a chance Merle would believe me. "What are you on about?"
It wasn't a complete lie, he never said that I couldn't touch his bike. He only said that he didn't want me messing up his things, which I didn't do.
"I think you know," Merle answered in the same tone as before.
It made me a little uneasy.
"I don't know—"
"—The fuck, you don't," he interrupted. His hand reached inside his pocket, and he pulled out a red material.
My bandana.
Oh yeah, I thought. That's where it was.
I flinched when he threw the bandana down at me, landing it on top of the book in my lap. I didn't know what to do. Talking didn't seem like the right thing to do at the time, but he looked pissed off. I wanted to apologise, to explain myself.
"I—"
"—shut it!" He growled.
I nodded quickly, my lips tightening into a thin line to stop myself from talking anymore.
"Don't touch any of my shit again, ya hear me?!" Merle jabbed his finger in my direction, his face twisted into an angry glare.
I nodded again, leaning back a little in an attempt to get away. "O-okay. . . I'm sorry."
Merle spun around on his heels and stormed off in the direction of his camp. I watched him leave for a second, before taking a deep breath to try and calm myself down. There were plenty of times I had to deal with bad customers in the garage, but this was different.
"Fuck. . ." I whispered, reaching up to place a hand over my heart.
Okay, it's here.
I had Penn read this while I was editing, and she told me to post it. I'm not sure I even finished editing, but I knew that I would never post if I didn't get it out.
Let me know what you think and I hope you enjoyed :)
