We're somewhere in South Carolina, and the evening's warmer than it should be.

I'm using the sunset light to clean a revolver that's now mine when Judith starts to cry from inside one of the cars. With the exception of Eugene, who sits with his legs crossed and freezes like a scared deer at the sound, I'm closest. So I put the gun away and go to the car. I've got the back door opened, a wiggling Judith in sight, when Carl pushes his way between her and me and lifts her up.

"I got her," he mutters, turning away while I stand holding the door open like a loser.

"Carl."

He stops and turns halfway back, face tight, eyes on car. Judith quieted down some when he picked her up, but she's still making soft whimpers, clenching his shirt, losing her grip, and clenching it again.

"I'll take care of her, if you want," I say. "I don't mind."

"She's already eaten." I couldn't pay him enough to look at me. "She's not dirty, she's just fussing."

"Okay, then I'll –"

"Look, I got her, okay?"

I was wrong. I just had to push him a little further to get him to look at me, to ram his eyes against mine with so much force that I have to fight not to fall back. I incline my chin with a swallow.

"Is it because of how I got after the hospital?" The words aren't easy to get out, but they're controlled. Probably too much so. "Because I'm better. Ask anyone."

"I've seen you get better before."

He uses that word like a knife, and he uses it well. I put my good hand over my heart for a second, but then push it across to grip my bicep like that was my goal all along. Now I'm standing here giving myself a strange half-hug with an arm that should be around Judith. Or Carl.

"We have to talk about this," I say quietly, evenly, because I can feel the group's scattered attentions gradually gathering in on us, and I'm not interested in making a scene. In making people think I think that the drama between a couple of little teenagers is the most important thing going on in life right now. Even though times like this it feels like nothing else matters.

Because it's Carl.

He's taken his eyes off me again. Put them back on the car. I can see the thoughts forming in his eyes, and the sentences dropping onto his tongue, and I wait as patiently as I can.

But then he turns and leaves me here.

I close my eyes for half a moment before pulling out the revolver and loading it from the almost-full box of bullets I've taken to keeping in my back pocket. I think about going to the van for my bow and arrows. Slipping the quiver onto my back. Strapping my trigger-release onto the wrist that doesn't know what to do without it. Gripping the precious bow itself . . . with three fingers.

No.

I pick a direction at random and head for the non-Georgia trees. Wonder who'll be the first to call after me – best bet is that it's Dad, all-seeing Dad, though even if he doesn't see me heading off one of the people who don't know me so well – Noah, Gabriel, Tara – might inform him of his delinquent daughter and her delinquent ways. If Dad doesn't call to me or come get me, it'll be Owen. Of course. If not Owen –

"Sydney!"

Then Leah.

I'm far enough into the forest to say I'm out of camp, though I can still see the cars and most of my people easily. Can't see my dad. Leah slows down as she nears me, strands of hair bouncing down in front of her eyes. The evening light makes her glow, and that combined with the shadows from the trees is a pretty beautiful – and fitting – sight. "What are you doing? Do you have to use the bathroom?"

"No. I'm just going for a walk."

She exhales. "You know better than to –" Click. She remembers who she is to me in the present day. Now that I can stand looking at her, I can at least appreciate how hard she tries to stay in the place her horrible choices have landed her, which, in a nutshell, is a place where she doesn't get to be my mother anymore. It almost makes me pity her.

It does make me pity her.

"Your dad doesn't want you out here by yourself."

Well, obviously. I knew that all along.

So what am I doing? What did I want from this?

"Come with me, then," I say.

Her eyes widen. My mother, she was never one to be at a loss for words, but this woman – sometimes she can be. But she says, " . . . Alright. But just for a little while."

That comment was walking the line a little between her place now and her place then. But she's trying. God, she's trying so hard, and when I step back and make myself be as objective as possible, I have to admire that.

Neither of us says a word on the walk. I don't know her reasons. I only have one: I can only push myself so much in a day. And I have to be careful, even now, even as Optimistic Sydney. Because I know, I can never let myself forget, how bad I break when I break.

. . . . .

I remember almost nothing about the first few days after the hospital. After Beth was killed. Most of what I know I learned after I came out of it, from what other people – mostly Owen – told me.

Owen, he used the word comatose.He said I lay wherever someone put me, like a doll . . . until I had an episode, also his word, one he seemed to regret and didn't use again. Apparently, I'd sometimes start screaming and swearing, diving at people that weren't there. Other times I'd just yell at someone else, alive or dead, to look out for someone or something. I'd start crying. Wailing. I had to be held still more than once, usually by Dad or Rick. It was virtually always one of them, actually, because they were the only ones who could bring themselves to gag me when I wouldn't be quiet. Owen said he tried. Said I bit him. Then he went quiet for a while and said that no, he just couldn't do it.

I gave clues during these episodes. Owen listed them off for me, best he could. I screamed about a walker in a swamp. I told people to run – I did that a lot. I begged someone to let me shoot her, to not do it himself. I asked someone how they could leave me alone, didn't they love me? I swore to someone I would kill them, destroy them. I sobbed apologies. I sang "Piano Man." I said I love you, and I hate you. I promised that I was trying, again and again, I insisted I was trying, then I promised I would try harder. I talked about Woodbury, and the prison. I said Don't tell Dad, don't tell Dad.

Owen told me that, aside from Dad, there was only one name I used consistently, said clearly: Beth.

I haven't told him, or anyone, that she's probably the only reason I ever came out of that hellhole I evidently was in. That she's the only thing from that entire time I can completely, vividly remember.

And I don't think I will tell anyone for a while.