6:09 am
Clementine's voice shook Amelia out of an empty sleep. The surprise almost threw her off-balance; she was situated in the higher branches of a short pine tree, her back leaning into a large fork in the trunk and her legs spread out to find sturdy holds on the limbs around her.
She realized she'd dreamt of nothing in the few hours she'd been asleep. The first time in…a very long time that her sleep had been silent and peaceful, rather than a train wreck of memories and disorienting voices, belonging both to people she'd loved and people she'd hated.
Clementine stood below, on the ground. Next to Luke.
Jesus. Do you go anywhere without him?
"I was about to start throwing pebbles at you." Clementine informed her.
Amelia sat up. Her backpack, which she'd put behind her to act as a pillow, dropped to the ground. Neither of them moved to pick it up.
So things were still tense, after last night. She didn't know why she'd expected a few hours and a sunrise to make everyone forget. Maybe she'd been hoping more than expecting.
"We're moving out in five." Luke told her.
Amelia sat up further and stretched. She sighed. He didn't need to come all the way over here to tell her that. Whatever he really wanted to talk about couldn't have been good. She wondered if he would do it in front of Clementine, or wait for her to leave.
She swung her legs over the edge of her makeshift bed and followed her backpack, landing on bent knees and slowly standing upright. She tilted her head to one side, then the other, trying to pop a crick in her neck.
"That couldn't have been comfortable," Luke said.
More comfortable than sleeping in the camp. She hitched the bag over her shoulder and asked Clementine, "Are you coming?" as she moved to pass Luke and rejoin the group.
Luke held up a hand. "I'll just come out and say it then. Last night was rough, I know that."
That was one way to put it.
Nick finally spoke to her when they could see the camp, the first words either of them had spoken in the last hour.
He sighed, preemptively frustrated. "Here we go."
"What does that mean?" Looking ahead, Amelia saw the group's flashlights, cutting through the dark and homing in on the two of them as the others watched them approach.
Nick cut her a sideways look. He scratched the back of his head, adjusted his hat as they walked. Took a slight step away from her. It was small, but not so subtle that she didn't catch it. "They're gonna be pissed. I hope they make it fast." He mumbled. "Really don't want to deal with it."
"Why would they-"
Pete's voice blared through the darkness. They could see him, see his face and see how livid he was only when they got close enough that they were no longer blinded by his flashlight. "Where the hell have you two been?"
Nick's answer was quick, and defensive. "On a walk."
"'On a walk?' Did you really just look at me and tell me you were on a goddamn walk?"
Carlos cut in, his light aimed at the ground, while Pete had his in their faces like an interrogation lamp. A Good Cop-Bad Cop routine with two Bad Cops, and they were both Pete. "Were you followed?" he demanded, his voice sharp and severe.
"No." Nick answered honestly. "Can I just take my watch-"
"Are you sure?" Carlos asked again, anger bubbling somewhere beneath the surface of his voice. "Nick, if anyone followed you…"
"No one followed us." Amelia insisted. "I'm sure of it." She frowned, looking between the two of them and trying to understand. They hadn't told anyone they were leaving. Was that the problem, or was it the fact that they left?
"I'm used to seein' you do stupid shit," Pete pointed a finger at his nephew, then moved it to Amelia. "But I expected better from you."
Immediately, she became defensive. Walls up. Guns out. "You expected something from me?"
"Yeah, Amelia, I did. And you're makin' me regret it more with every word outta your mouth."
Luke stepped in from somewhere, arms crossed. Amelia rolled her eyes. Not this guy, too.
"We had no idea where you were. Didn't know what happened to you or if you were comin' back."
"Not you, too, Luke," Nick groaned. "Come on, give me a break,"
"Amelia?" Clementine had woken up while they'd been gone, and joined the conversation carefully. "What were you doing?"
"Nothing worth talking about," she said. Nick turned and looked directly at her. Didn't try to hide it or make it look like something else.
"Did you really just say that?"
Suddenly Amelia was alone, the common target of everyone's anger. Each person she looked at had a reason to yell at her, including the one she'd thought was…maybe not on her side, but at least in the same boat she was.
"…no, I just…"
"Forget it," he dismissed her, walking away and shouldering roughly past his uncle.
"You think we're done, here?" Pete snapped, turning to call after him.
"Yeah, I think we're done," Nick said over his shoulder, picking up a gun and sitting down at the camp's edge.
That had been the start.
"I'll forget about it if you do." She said dismissively. That was that. "Clem, come on." She gestured for her sister to follow her; she wouldn't admit to herself that it was because she didn't want them talking about her once she left.
Luke crossed his arms, but his gentle expression gave him away, as did the tone of his voice. "I just want to let you know, we talked things over and we realized…we didn't have all the information last night."
"What does that mean?"
"It was Clementine, actually. She gave us a lot to think about."
Amelia slid a wary glance to her sister. How well things would work out from here depended entirely on what she'd said last night. She quickly shook her sense of dread, reminding herself that if there was anyone she could trust in this group – in the world – it was Clementine. If she could've chosen someone to speak for her last night, she wouldn't have had it any other way.
Luke seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "She told us to consider the way you two used to live. You know, without anyone around to be affected by it when you go missing…or to wonder where you are." He seemed to be trying not to say the word "worry." He looked to Clementine, either for a reminder of what to say or for moral support, given the way Amelia was looking at him. "That's true, right?"
"Yes."
"You could've told us that." Luke said. His anger from the night before was gone. Unlike Amelia, he seemed capable of letting it go, and didn't carry any remnants of it into a new day. "Why didn't you?"
"It didn't seem like it would make a difference." Amelia stood by that. It wouldn't have, coming from her.
Pete regarded Amelia with crossed arms. She shifted under Carlos' glare and avoided eye contact. What was it he'd said? Don't make any more mistakes?
"You're tellin' me you didn't see any problem with walkin' off like that? Disappearing for three fuckin' hours?"
"I'm telling you it didn't seem like a problem at the time," Amelia answered, trying and failing to keep the sharpness out of her own voice.
Clementine came up to stand next to Amelia. "I told them that you had to go places alone all the time when it was just us, because it was too dangerous for me to go with you. And I told them after all that time looking out for me by yourself, you should be allowed to make a mistake."
Amelia smiled at her sister, and didn't expect to feel so much so suddenly. But the moments in which she felt understood and forgiven were few and far between, and she was afraid that if she tried to thank Clementine for what she did, she would get choked up before she could get the words out.
She looked to the ground, staring at three pairs of shoes, and shook her head.
"I didn't think I was putting anyone in danger." Was that close enough to an apology? Probably not.
"You put yourself in danger." Luke said. "Isn't that a good enough reason not to do it?"
Amelia lifted a shoulder, shrugging off the question in the process. "I understand now." She avoided eye contact. "So it won't…happen again."
"That's all we wanted to hear," he smiled. "I'll go tell them."
"Pete was pretty angry last night."
"Even he calms down with time. Just…be careful around the others for a while."
Amelia understood. "Thin ice."
"Not at all." Luke said. Amelia thought she saw a smile that barely made it to the surface; the constant walking and sleeping in shifts must've been catching up with him. "We all screw up, all the time. I told you from the beginning we're not perfect. And neither are you, which means you fit right in."
Amelia nodded and said quietly, "…thanks."
"So, anyway…" Luke cracked his knuckles, seeming hesitant. "Five minutes." He frowned, and something changed in the tone of this voice, something that told her he wasn't talking only about the night before. "Are you alright, Amelia?"
She wanted to ask him that. She wanted say a lot of things. None of them came out. So she nodded.
He didn't look like he believed her, but by now he knew better than to ask again. He nodded in return and left to rejoin the group.
When Clementine moved to follow him, Amelia spoke up.
"Hey. Thanks."
Clem turned back. She raised an eyebrow, and said without smiling, "Did you think I wasn't going to have your back?"
"I wasn't really thinking at all." Amelia threw an arm behind her head and pressed her elbow down, stretching as she fell into step with her sister. The hand she put on her own back reflexively reached for Hilda's handle, which wasn't there.
Right.
Pete held out a hand, and he didn't have to speak for Amelia to know what he meant.
"You're not serious."
"What about me makes you think I'm not serious?"
She gripped the strap with a hand across her shoulders, turning away defensively. He couldn't have Hilda. It was hers. Not hers, but…in her care. "…I'm not giving it to you."
"I'd let you keep it if I thought I didn't have to keep an eye on you. On top of everything else."
"That's not true. You know I can handle myself." She'd shown him. More than once.
"I can't trust your judgment, and that's just as dangerous. Hand it over and take a seat. I ain't tellin' you again."
She didn't want to know what he meant, what came after "ain't tellin' you again." A part of her wanted to keep it, to dare him to show her because Hilda was hers and she didn't let just anyone borrow it.
But she decided she'd caused enough trouble for one night. Pushed enough boundaries.
It didn't stop her from glaring at him as she handed it over. Pete gripped it by the handle and glared right back.
"Don't you start."
Amelia turned sharply, hitching her backpack over her shoulder and going fast for a tree on the outskirts of the clearing. She wanted to be alone for the night.
"Amelia," Clementine pulled her back to the clearing. "What were you and Nick doing in the woods?"
Amelia had been expecting to hear this question. Just not so soon. She dropped her arms and started rolling her head side to side. Something in her neck popped loudly.
"Nothing worth talking about."
"You said that last night."
"I did." Amelia said. "Are you hungry?"
"No," Clem said, looking quickly to her left. Pssssh. That's a yes. She crossed her arms as they walked. Tilted her head. "Why won't you tell me?"
The two were fast approaching the group. Luke stood with his back to them, speaking with Carlos. Alvin was crouched in front of Rebecca, who was sitting on a tree stump. Sarah was off by herself, though not far. Amelia noticed that Nick wasn't there.
"We went back to that old shed and broke stuff." She decided that her sister, of everyone in their group deserved an answer if she wanted one.
"Like what?"
"Like everything."
"Hm." Clementine said, sounding like she was thinking it over.
Amelia almost smiled. "You sound like you don't believe me."
Clementine stopped and looked at her, with no trace of a joke in her eyes. "Of course I believe you. You never lie to me." Then she noticed the look on her sister's face. "…is that…all you did?"
"…"
Luke interrupted by addressing the entire group. "Alright everyone. Let's head out."
Amelia knew better than to ask where Nick was. He came out of the trees a moment later; Luke held a rifle up, which Nick took as he passed him without making eye contact.
"You good?" Luke asked.
"Yeah, fine." Nick walked ahead of the group, starting into the woods without checking that the rest of the group was following.
As they set out, Amelia left Clementine for just a moment, to speak with Pete. She found him cramming a sleeping bag into a backpack, one that was near-empty because, like her, his food supply had hit bottom.
He didn't turn to address her, so she started the conversation herself. "I'd like my stuff back and I'm sorry."
Pete zipped the bag shut and turned, revealing Hilda strapped to his belt and hanging by his side. "That's as good as it's gonna get, isn't it?"
"I mean it, if that helps."
He sighed, and unhooked it, holding it out to her by the blade so she could take the handle. "I don't want you to be sorry, Amelia. You're a smart girl. Just want you to act like it."
She nodded. She didn't want to argue anymore. She kept in mind that if it were really true, she'd make it a point not to stir the pot again.
Turning around to follow the group, she saw that Clementine wasn't where she'd left her, and didn't have to look far to realize she'd found Luke in the thirty seconds Amelia had been gone.
"I told you she'd do it first," she said to him.
"Alright then," Luke said, smiling at her as she fell into step next to him. "First candy bar I find is yours."
"With peanuts?"
"With peanuts."
Amelia decided not to join them, and walked behind them instead.
11:44 am
She didn't have to tell the entire group. If she told just one person, the information would get around. Whether she wanted it to or not.
"Will you at least think about it?" Clementine asked, walking alongside her sister.
"You understand why we couldn't tell them at the cabin." Amelia said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "Please tell me you understand."
Clementine shrugged. "We're not at the cabin anymore."
Amelia had run through the list of potential candidates in her head, and only afterward admitted to herself that she'd done it to kill time. To stall. Because she knew as well as Clementine that only one person in the group was approachable enough for her to even consider it.
"I know you haven't talked to him much," Clementine said. "But he's really nice, Amelia. He won't…freak out."
Amelia didn't respond. She crossed her arms and ran the words over in her mind. Watched Luke walking at the head of the group and tried to imagine him "not freaking out."
Clem sighed at her sister's silence. "You don't have to trust him yet. Just trust me. He'll understand."
The group had made another stop. Amelia watched Alvin help Rebecca sit down on a fallen tree, Carlos sit down with Sarah, Nick start an argument with Pete, Clementine run over to Luke…and realized she was the only one standing, staring, doing nothing.
Stalling.
She decided one way or another, that it had to stop. She saw Luke crouch to talk to Clem at her height, then take his backpack from his shoulders and lift a sealed gallon jug of water from inside it. Amelia knew it was their last one. She made her way toward them – Clementine saw her coming after her first few steps – and by the time she got to them Luke was refilling Clementine's empty plastic bottle.
"Amelia," he said, tipping the gallon jug up when Clem's bottle was full. "Let me see your bottle."
She gave it to him, ignoring the look she got from her sister as he filled it up for her.
"That's, uh…" Amelia hesitated as she took it back. "That's the last one, right?" A quarter of it was already gone. After being split among the remaining seven people – Amelia doubted it would even stretch that far – that would be it. No more water. She tried to imagine how long they could make one bottle apiece last.
Not three days.
"Yep." He twisted the cap back on. "We'll distribute this out to the rest of the-"
"I'll do it!" Clementine said abruptly. She answered the strange way both Amelia and Luke looked at her with a smile and outstretched hands. "Let me do it."
"Alright…?" Luke handed it to her, not letting go until she seemed to have a grip on it. "You got it?"
"Mhmm." She nodded. She was gone the second he let go.
Like the roadrunner, Amelia thought. Zoom.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Luke said, watching her speed-walk across the field, starting her water deliveries with Nick and Pete. She wouldn't have taken it "the wrong way" even without the disclaimer; she doubted he was about to say anything mean. She doubted he'd ever done anything mean in his life. Mean had its purposes. Mean was useful, more often than people realized. Mean was a role she didn't play by choice, but could adapt to, and play well. Better than she wanted to admit.
Luke probably couldn't do it if he tried.
"But that kid is…real weird sometimes." He smiled, and she knew without asking that "weird" wasn't a bad thing. Not to him.
Amelia watched Clementine from a distance, and found herself smiling, too. She couldn't disagree and didn't want to. Clem was weird sometimes, to put it bluntly. She was quiet at times, loud at others. Particular about when she chose to speak and what she chose to say. Whip-smart and more grossed out by bugs than by dead bodies.
"She's special." Special was also weird, more often than not.
"Yes she is." He turned back to Amelia. "So what's going on?"
Amelia was suddenly reminded of something she'd told Clementine years before. One summer when they were kids, they'd gone swimming in a particularly cold pool. Amelia had taken the diving board. Clem insisted on stepping into the water, one agonizing inch at a time. Amelia had told her that it was better to jump in. It wouldn't change how cold it was, but it would stop her hesitation. Once you do it it's too late to turn back.
"I'm just…" Trying to tell you something because my sister adores you, and swears up and down that telling you won't be a mistake, and I want to believe her, trust me, I do, but she's eleven and she doesn't know how ugly people can get when they're scared. "Um…"
It had been so long since she'd seen patience like his. So long, that it still surprised her even coming from him.
"Are you alright, Amelia?" he asked, trying to make eye contact as she blatantly refused. "If you need something, just ask."
"It's not that." She said. "I'm just…"
The group might understand why she didn't tell them on the night they met, given the circumstances they were under, sure, but how could she excuse the last two days? She'd heard the group argue. She knew that this group could easily split itself down the middle and be left at a stalemate. And just as easily agree unanimously that she couldn't be trusted, or forgiven. Maybe Clementine was right. Maybe Luke would've been on her side in all of it. But if Luke could single-handedly sway the entire group he wouldn't have locked Clementine in a shed.
Luke waited, and when she didn't offer anything else he prompted, "Just…"
"Just jump. That way it's too late to change your mind."
And it's too late when you realize there's a broken telephone wire in the pool.
Amelia looked up finally, to meet his eyes. Right. Eye contact makes you honest. "Just worried that we're almost out of water. We're…going to have to do something about that."
"Don't worry about it. I got a couple ideas, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
An awkward silence settled in. It came suddenly, but still crept up on them somehow.
"Is that really what you came over here to talk about?"
"Yes."
She turned on her heel and walked away, without any idea what or who she was walking to.
11:51 am
Amelia wandered from the group. Out of earshot, but not much farther than that. She remembered the night before. She had quite a memory, something that had been a gift, once. Now, there were few prices she wouldn't have paid to be more forgetful.
She remembered the lecture she'd gotten with a scowl. And she remembered the promise she'd made with a reluctant turnaround, directing her wandering back into the clearing.
There. Not so hard, is it?
Turned around to face the rest of the group, Amelia looked out across each of them doing the things she'd come to know them for. They all had consistent habits, she'd realized, and they didn't stray much from them. Every time they stopped for a rest or to sleep for the night, they did the same things, in the same order, in just about the same way.
Has it really been this long? She thought to herself with an internal scowl. You're so out of practice coexisting with people you just sit at a distance and observe them like they're a fucking nature documentary?
Evidently.
Carlos checked on his daughter at least once every five minutes, frequently more often than that. He never turned his back to her for more than a minute at most. Not that she'd ever timed him. Sarah found things to do to occupy herself, small, harmless things – collecting leaves of the same color, playing "I Spy" with Clementine. Amelia could hear that Clem didn't find it as fun. Sarah's "spies" were exclusively centered on people in the group, and almost always involved bright colors, which defeated the purpose of the game.
"I….spy….something….yellow."
Clementine's guess was dry, and bored. "Is it Amelia's ice pick?"
"Okay, okay, how about this one. I spy…something oran-"
"Luke's shirt."
When they ran out of details to point out about the people around them, the game was short-lived.
"I spy something green."
Clementine pointed to the nearest tree, a thin pine. "Is it that tree?"
"No."
She pointed to another, on the other side of the path. "Is it that tree?"
"…yeah."
Alvin always ushered Rebecca to a nice place to sit down, then went into his backpack and got her something to eat and some water to drink, and always pulled them out of the bag in that order. Nick tried to do the same with Pete, though it was never received nearly as well. It almost always sparked an argument within a few minutes, and the argument itself could last up to five. Ten, if it was a bad one. Other than that, Nick didn't talk to anyone much, other than Luke. When the group stopped they'd sit down and have conversations about things Amelia didn't listen to, but she assumed they were fun, given the way they would lighten up. They even laughed, sometimes. She tried to gauge how long they'd known each other-
-instead of just asking-
-and decided it must have been a very long time. She wanted to join one of these conversations, but would never have dreamed of actually doing it.
Luke checked the map often enough to make Amelia concerned he had no idea where they were going. He asked Nick to confirm they were on the route he thought they were at least twice a day. She didn't bother to count the number of times he smiled, cracked a mildly funny joke, or asked someone around him, with genuine interest, how they were doing. She didn't have that kind of time.
And Clementine. She talked to Amelia while they walked – not that those conversations were very long – and every time they stopped ran straight to Luke. To ask him questions, to tell him stories, to help him look at the map or pass out food to the group. Any and all of the above. She just liked interacting with him.
Clearly, more than she liked interacting with her.
It left room for insecurities to worm their way into Amelia's mind. And she couldn't help but entertain them, no matter how ridiculous. Did she only tolerate spending time with me because I was her only option? Of course not. Does she like being around him so much because she's tired of being around me? That one was more plausible.
He was a man. He was taller than Amelia. Bigger. Stronger. There was no number of push-ups Amelia could do to match him on that front. Did something about that make Clementine feel safe? Amelia had always kept her safe…more or less. She'd let her guard down before-
-the static coming from the walkie talkie gives way to a quiet, sinister voice
"Hello, Amelia."-
She'd made mistakes. Grave, life-ending mistakes.
And she'd rectified them.
Teeth and nails and grabbing and screaming in a dark hotel room, somewhere deep in the Marsh House. Break a lamp. Knock over a stuffed chair. Crash through a closet door, break it in half, hands around her neck, a head-butt into the bridge of his nose. Throw him back against the wall, rush him because she's not done with him-
Runaway train.
Still. It had to be a change, watching someone take walkers out, push them away and split their heads open with ease when Amelia's tactics involved more…running. Hiding. Exhausted, blind stabbing. Sleeping in trees.
He was nice. And Amelia…wasn't. He told jokes, and, come to think of it, Amelia didn't know any jokes. Not good ones. She liked to think she wasn't…unbearable. She certainly wasn't mean.
At least not to her sister.
But she was always worried, always planning their next move. Always running on a few hours of sleep, always afraid of every possible thing that might go wrong. It all added up to one thing: she was rarely in a good mood. Almost never patient or in the mood to have a normal conversation. Maybe that was it. He was fun to be around. Amelia had forgotten that Clem was a kid, and kids appreciated fun more than she realized. They needed it more than ever, with the world the way it was.
So what was it she needed to change?
She stopped, frozen in her tracks mentally and physically. She smelled something. As strange and sudden as it was, a breeze carried a very specific smell straight into her face. She couldn't place it but she knew it didn't quite belong out here. It was sharp. Rancid. Almost sweet and very familiar.
She understood. Turned around immediately and took off into the trees at a fast walk. If she could smell it from here, it couldn't be far.
11:59 am
She approached the tree minutes later, confident that the group would understand why she walked off again as she stepped over the dead fruit on the ground. There were easily a hundred of them in the dirt, surrounding the trunk in a five-foot radius. She crushed them as she walked, breaking brittle red skins and squishing what was left of their soft insides under her shoes. The smell was acrid and hard to miss. The smell of fermenting fruit. Rotten apples.
There were hundreds on the ground…and two in the tree.
Two good ones. Bright and round and up high – apparently, too high to be reached by whoever had picked the tree clean.
But not too high for me.
Amelia tilted her head sharply, popping her neck. Laced her fingers together and turned her hands out, cracking every one of her knuckles at once.
Clementine loved apples.
She stepped up to one of the lowest branches. Reached above her head, hopped up, grabbed it with both hands. Swung her legs forward, back, forward, back. Did a pull-up on a forward swing, pulling her upper body above the branch and letting her legs ride the momentum up with her. She straddled the branch, looked to see how far she was off the ground – six feet or so – and straightened up to see someone had followed her out here.
Nick regarded her with his hands in his pockets. He took in their surroundings and nodded. Looked up at her.
"The hell are you doing?"
Amelia didn't answer. She shot him a look instead. This wasn't how she'd expected their first conversation after the night in the shed to start. That is, if they ever spoke in private again, which she didn't know that they would.
Nick shrugged. Looked around again. Looked to the ground and kicked an apple carcass, maybe expecting it to roll. It didn't go anywhere, and just smeared on the bottom of his shoe. Amelia would have expected herself to ignore him and keep climbing. But discomfort had settled into the space between them, like birds in the eaves. There was something to be said and neither one of them wanted to be the one to say it.
But both wanted it said, so where did that leave them?
Nick surprised her by speaking first. "Are you mad at me?"
Amelia tilted her head. Was she? She had a reason to be, but was she? "You got me in trouble."
"So this doesn't have to do with…"
Amelia realized what he was asking. Broke eye contact left, then right. "…no."
Nick grinned. Seemed to be holding back a laugh. At her, not with her. "So this isn't about…all that…it's because Carlos and my uncle yelled at you when we got back?"
Amelia didn't find anything about it funny. She was trying. Maybe it didn't look like it to people other than her sister, but she was. Laughing was easy for someone who was already accepted by the people he traveled with. Who already had a place with them.
"I don't know how you do things here. You said, 'let's go for a walk.' I assumed it wouldn't get me in trouble." She looked down and found herself picking at the bark of the branch she sat on. "I trusted you."
"Well that was stupid."
Amelia got both feet flat on the branch, and carefully rose to stand on it. She caught the branches above her and used the forks in the tree's trunk to climb up to the branches above, then another step to get to the branches above that.
Get up. Higher. Just get away from him.
"Okay," Nick said, and repeated himself louder when he realized she was ignoring him "Okay." He came toward the tree, looking up at a sharper angle to talk to her. "Okay, wait."
She stopped, three branches up and her hands on the trunk. It was a twenty-foot drop, easily. He looked short from this height. It was a change from the way he normally towered over her by at least six inches. Over Luke, even, by a few less than that.
Nick threw his arms out before bringing them back in, and crossing them over his chest. "My social skills are crap, too. I'm sorry. I just…my uncle is…he's not…okay. And he's driving me insane, and…" he shook his head, and to his credit, started to smile. Just a little. Amelia noticed it because she was paying more attention to him than she'd have liked to admit. He'd been sincere for a fleeting minute. Now he was letting her in on a joke, and hoping she would go along with it. "If I can't talk to someone who gets it, I'm going to lose my mind."
Amelia didn't answer right away. She shifted in the branches and tried to figure out how sincere he was.
Nick slid his hands back into his pockets. "So? You…don't want to see me do that, right?"
Amelia wondered if he was staring at her and running his hand over his jaw on purpose, if he was using his eyes and his five o'clock shadow to get her to smile back. She decided he wasn't. It was something Luke might've done, no question. Luke was an infuriating and endearing hybrid of modesty and conceit, all wrapped up in a twenty-something Southern gentleman. Luke, by his age, had to be aware of what he looked like, what a well-timed smile could do to the women around him. Unlike Nick, who was the opposite of his friend in just about every way Amelia could think of, including this one. Nick's charm existed in the fact that he didn't seem to think he had any.
Overt and intentional, or subtle and accidental; Amelia wasn't predisposed to any of it. She was a human being, one who liked blue eyes more than she would ever admit. Purposeful disinterest could only take her so far before she couldn't help but smile back.
She answered while she could still keep a straight face, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "I might. Is it entertaining?"
"It might be."
"Do you flip tables? I love a good table flip."
Nick smiled. He might have laughed quietly. She couldn't tell from her height. "I don't normally, but if you really want to see it…" Amelia felt herself smiling back. She tried to keep it mute. "So…" He trailed off. Cleared his throat. Amelia's smile dropped. She knew where this was going. "Are we gonna…talk about it?"
"What about it?"
He shook his head. "Don't do that."
Amelia gripped the branches by her head, looking around defensively. "Do what?"
"Act like you don't know what I'm talking about."
"I know what you're talking about." Her grip on the tree bark tightened. She suddenly felt nervous and it had nothing to do with being twenty-five feet from the ground.
"But you're acting like there's nothing to say."
"I didn't say that," she said, frustrated, feeling that her words were being twisted. They're only being twisted because you couldn't be less clear with him than you are right now. "I just…did you have something to say?"
She knew she was putting him on the spot, and hoped it would get him to back off. End this conversation where it started.
"I-" he stopped, looking away and tucking his hands into his pockets. "Not really. No."
Amelia stared down at her feet, her legs dangling from the branch she straddled. "Alright, then."
Nick spoke up again, looking up at her in the branches. She hadn't expected him to keep talking after that, after she'd intentionally asked him a question she knew he'd back down from. "Look…can you come down here? So we can…try to talk?"
Amelia pointed a finger up, above her head. "I'm…doing this right now." The apples were convenient, but had she not been in the tree, she'd have found something else. I'm tying my shoes right now. I'm loading this gun. I'm beating myself over the head with Clementine's hammer, come back later.
"Can we just…" Nick trailed off as he watched her climb higher. She lifted herself up another branch, swinging one leg over to straddle it. She was high enough to reach the apples. Now all she had to do was get close enough. "Hey, don't-" He cut himself off, sighing like he was frustrated with her. He likely was. "Don't break your neck. Please."
"Hadn't planned on it…" Amelia stood up on the branch, slowly, staring at the bright red prizes at the end of her balance beam.
"Come on," Nick said, sounding more urgent now. "Just...leave the apples. We don't need the food that bad."
That was so blatantly untrue that Amelia almost pointed a finger at him, called him liar liar pants on fire.
"I'm already there," she said. She'd gotten so close, she wasn't about to drop down and say she wasted her time. She wasn't about to tell Clementine she'd seen an apple and didn't pick it for her.
"Amelia, come on,"
"Relax," She took the first step. Then the next. One after the other. The further she got from the trunk, the thinner and less stable the branch felt beneath her feet.
Sure, she wouldn't have wanted Clementine or Sarah to see her doing this. She couldn't count the number of times Clem had tried something dangerous to do on her own. And therefore she couldn't count the number of arguments they'd had that ended with do what I say, not what I do.
But there was no one around to see her act like a bad role model. No one but Nick to witness her put herself in mild danger, and she wasn't worried about influencing him. If anything, he was the bad influence on her.
Because you're so impressionable.
She got her hand around the first apple. Gave it a twist and plucked it from its perch.
"Amelia?" Someone said from far below. It was a familiar voice. Her favorite voice.
"Yeah, Clem?" she called down without looking. She picked the second apple with her free hand. Twist. Pluck. "Heads up," she called, before dropping them one after another. Clementine reacted quickly, reaching out to catch them. She caught one. Dropped the other.
"What are you doing up there?"
Before she answered, another voice joined in. "Woah. What's goin' on here?"
Of course it's not just Clem. It's never just Clem anymore.
She spared a glance down. A fast one. But she was able to catch Luke looking up at her with crossed arms. Nick stood near him, his thumbnail between his teeth.
"Um," Clem looked up, watching Amelia carefully as she made her way back to the trunk, the branch shaking unsteadily under her tread. "You know how to get down, right?"
Duh. Amelia got her hands on the trunk again. Getting up wasn't half as easy as getting down. She crouched and stepped off the branch, catching it so she was hanging by her hands. Drop, catch the next branch. Drop again. She landed in wet apple mush, and almost slipped in it.
She took a moment to catch her balance, and as she did noticed Nick was leaving. She looked up just in time to watch his back disappear into the trees.
She walked to meet Clementine and Luke, and as she was wondering whether she should think anything of it, Clem offered her both apples.
Amelia didn't reach for either of them. "One's for you-" A short stutter. An awkward interruption in her normal speech pattern because she thought of it at the last second, and decided to say it against her better judgment. "-silly."
Clementine raised an eyebrow at the term her sister had never called her in her life. "Silly?"
Amelia rolled her eyes, and knew the second after she said it that cheerful lightheartedness didn't suit her, and if Clem allowed her to forget it she would never attempt it again as long as she lived. "Just take the apples."
"Why did you-?"
"Just…take them. Give the other to Sarah. Don't ask me things."
She smiled, looking down at it in her hands. Amelia couldn't remember the last time either of them had eaten fruit that wasn't half rotten. "Thanks, Amelia."
Luke said something about the group leaving soon. Clem mentioned to him that she loved apples, Luke said something charming, the two carried a conversation that Amelia didn't listen to because she'd been listening to it, in one way or another, for two days. She followed them back to the group and didn't ask herself why Nick had left so suddenly. She already knew.
6:21 pm
"No." Luke shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. "No, that's crazy, and you know it, Amelia."
"I'll explain it if you'll just listen," Amelia said, unable to keep the edge out of her voice. "It's not as dangerous as it sounds."
"Oh, I'm listening," Luke said. "It's what I'm hearing that's the problem."
Rebecca and Alvin were watching. Carlos was trying and failing to occupy Sarah by having her pitch one of the tents. Nick sat with his back against a tree stump, staring in the other direction and obviously listening. Amelia hadn't intended for this to become a fight, let alone one with an audience.
Idiot. She hissed at herself. What part of "thin ice" didn't you understand?
It started when they ran out of water. The group had been tearing through the last of their supply at a slow but constant rate, and most of their bottles had hit empty by now. They couldn't drink water from anywhere in the forest unless they boiled it first – no one had come this far to be killed by pond scum – which was problematic, given that they weren't starting any fires. Amelia knew what to do. And she knew in advance that the problem wouldn't be doing it, but pitching the idea to Luke and Carlos.
Kenny had come up with it, actually. When Amelia remembered that, she had to stop her thoughts from wandering back to Macon and into memories that weren't safe to think about. They did it more than a few times. Even gave it a name. It was the same procedure every time, fast and easy; one person took a cooking pot a few miles from the group, set up a campfire, purified a new supply of water. The rest of the group altered course to meet up further down the road.
Luke was unconvinced.
"I'm telling you, this works. I've done it."
"How many times?"
"Dozens." She said truthfully, "Without any…incidents." She had to stop herself from saying the word casualties. She didn't want to scare him further away from an idea he already hated.
Clementine had taken a spot near Amelia. "We called it the water run. Everyone did it at least once. Amelia did it a lot."
"Well, I'm sorry, Clementine, but giving it a name don't make it any less crazy." Luke turned his attention back to Amelia. "You're really trying to tell me that one person splitting off from the group is a good idea? That's suicide!"
"Not if you're quiet, and armed." Amelia said, hoping she didn't sound like she was obviously trying to keep calm.
"How are we supposed to find you again? What if we don't?"
"The river is to the west. We're heading north. I go out to the river, then head northeast. The rest of you go northwest until we run into each other. We don't cover ground that fast, so you shouldn't have gone too far off route by then."
"Amelia, this is…" Luke ran a hand over his head, pushing his hair out of his face. "This is an awful idea."
"You could be more open to doing things differently," Amelia said, her tone sharp.
Luke's reply was quick, and equally curt. "I don't need to be open to anything that's gonna get people killed."
That was it. She gave up. Clementine couldn't say she didn't try.
Fuck it.
"Never mind. I don't need your permission to-"
"-that so? You're just gonna do whatever-"
"-do this. I don't even know why I asked. What were you planning to do-"
"-you want? Damn it, Amelia, we talked about this-"
"-when we ran out?"
"-yesterday!"
There was another voice. It was familiar and small and sweet, but had never, for as far back as Amelia could remember, gotten this loud.
"Amelia Jennifer!" Clementine snapped, without a trace of a smile. No hint of a joke. She stomped her foot. Stomped. "I asked you nicely to stop fighting!"
Crickets. Amelia had had something else to say. Couldn't remember what it was now. Luke was quiet, too. As stunned as she was. No one watching had anything to say. They were still too surprised even to laugh.
"Wh…what?"
Did she just...
She did.
She was Clementine's age, and just cracked the plasma screen TV with the basketball she'd been throwing around inside the house.
Clementine was five. She'd managed to sneak the last cookies from the jar on the counter without anyone noticing, not even Amelia. It wasn't a crime worthy of two names until she tried to lie to their parents about it.
Amelia was fifteen years old, caught bringing her father's car home from a joyride when she only had a learner's permit. She'd been quieter sneaking out of the house than sneaking back in. Ed and Diana were waiting for her in the living room at 3:00 am.
There were very few times they'd ever made their made their parents angry enough to call them by two of their names, or God forbid, all three.
Amelia felt defensive, toward her little sister of all people. She didn't have parents anymore. She didn't want to tolerate being chastised by anyone else.
"Clem-"
"You're not the one in charge of all the decisions anymore. You have to listen to what the others say."
Luke crossed his arms. "Thank you, Clementine."
"Come on," Amelia rolled her eyes. This was ridiculous. She was about to take the frustration – the embarrassment – at being scolded into silence by an eleven-year-old and direct it into a few more shots at Luke. She was about to ask him if he was trying to act like her dad or if it just came naturally to him when Clementine surprised her, and turned on him just as quickly.
"And you need to listen to her."
He blinked, and didn't answer right away. Probably shocked she hadn't taken his side completely. Amelia's response was silent, but bitter and spiteful. I'm still her sister. She still likes me more sometimes. Fucking deal with it. "I'm listening, Clem-"
"No, you're not. She's right. I know it's not the way you do things, but she knows what she's doing. It works."
"Enough." Carlos intervened, silencing the both of them. "This…'water run' is not smart. But we are out of options. We have at least three more days of traveling and we won't make it without water."
Luke knew Carlos was right. And by extension, knew Amelia was right, even if he didn't want to admit it. He crossed his arms and seemed to think it over. Amelia was fine with it. If hearing the idea from someone other than her was what it took to make him consider it, she'd take that all the same.
"I don't like this. But if we have to do it, at least two people should go."
Amelia shook her head. Another person would slow her down. She didn't need someone trailing behind her, someone whose back she had to watch in addition to her own. "It only takes one."
"Well, we're sending two, just to be safe." Luke quipped, a sharp edge in his voice making it clear that he was tired of having this conversation with her. He took a breath and looked around the clearing, scanning across each of the people in front of him. "Nick and I will go."
"Excuse me?"
Luke addressed Nick, and not her. She felt it was intentional. "Get your rifle."
"Yep." Nick crossed the field to take his rifle from Pete. Passed Amelia without slowing down and without looking. Like she wasn't even there. Pete handed it off to him, close to cracking a smile. Not there, but close. Amelia didn't think she'd see it again.
"And there won't be any more arguin' about it," he said, his voice close to a chuckle as he slid a glance to Clementine. "If you know what's good for you."
6:25 pm
She decided to give it another try. Amelia was nothing if not persistent. Even when it was better for everyone around her that she not be.
"Hey," she said, approaching Luke and Nick as they were about to leave the clearing.
Luke turned and looked immediately cautious. Prepared for another fight he didn't want. Nick disregarded her completely, confirming for the second time that she'd done something to upset him.
She asked herself if she was tired of this – the two of them, taking turns getting offended. Back and forth, like tennis. But more passive aggressive and far less interesting to watch. The ball's in your court. Figure out what you did and send it back.
"You really should let me come with you," she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I…" She slowed when she realized she was about to sound like Clementine. "I can help."
Doesn't feel good to be on this end of it, does it?
"You can help by stayin' back with the group," Luke offered. "Keep an eye on things here."
"Luke, this was my idea. I'm the one who's done it before," she searched his face for a sign of change, some indication that he might be reconsidering it. Nothing.
"It's already decided, Amelia. Why don't you…go check in on Rebecca?"
Amelia stopped to ask herself what she knew about Luke, albeit a little late. She knew herself well, and knew that she responded to logical arguments. Strategies. Concrete plans with predictable consequences. So that was what she used to convince others.
She remembered that Luke could be strategic, sure, but he was just as emotional as he was logical, if not more. He smiled even when he had no reason to – when he had reasons not to – and seemed to think optimism was far more valuable than Amelia had ever considered it. He seemed to think keeping the group together was more important than finding water, that keeping people safe was…
That was it.
She crossed her arms. Broke eye contact and lowered her voice. The subject was a touchy one. Not easy to talk openly about but she hoped the effort would be noticed. "You're trying to keep everyone safe. I get it."
Finally, something in his face changed. It was a look she'd seen on him before, and she didn't have to try hard to remember where. It was the way he looked at Pete, when he wouldn't accept help he clearly needed. It was the way he'd looked at Clementine, listening to her talk about her parents.
And thinking back, it was the way he looked at Amelia more often than she'd realized, if she looked past the frustration.
She tried to meet his eyes and didn't quite get there. Looking straight at him was easier said than done. "Take me with you. I think it's the best way to…make sure no one gets hurt doing this."
Nick loudly shut the open chamber on his rifle, lifting it up to rest on his shoulder and walking from the clearing without waiting for either of them to speak. He stopped and looked back to Luke.
"Are we leaving, or not?"
Amelia started talking faster, realizing Nick was trying to rush his decision – or end the debate altogether – and that she was about to be out of time to convince him. "I haven't contributed much to your group since I've been here, and-"
"Is that was this is about?" Luke asked. She didn't want to think he pitied her, but it was hard not to with the gentle look on his face. "You don't have to prove anything to be here."
"I know," she said. That wasn't what she'd meant to imply. She tried to figure out what she did want him to hear, but the way Nick was glaring at them made it hard to remember.
What did she want him to hear?
I'm not trying to start any more fights with you.
I'm worried about how this water run will go without me.
My sister is all I have left, and the choices we make as a group will affect her, and if I don't get any say in those choices…
"Just…" She gave up on it, realizing asking again would be easier than baring her feelings. "I just…really should go with you."
Luke's hand flinched just a little, like he'd been about to lift a hand and changed his mind. Maybe he was about to put a hand on her shoulder, before he remembered the way she reacted to being touched.
"Amelia, you don't have to do anything dangerous to contribute to the group. We already decided this is what's best. You really want to be a part of this, then I need you to respect that."
Out of arguments and out of options, she gave a hesitant nod and turned away. She walked back to the clearing trying to figure out what she was missing, why she couldn't seem to tell any of these people what she felt.
Luke called after her, and Amelia knew better than to think it meant he'd changed his mind. "Amelia-"
"Don't," Nick said from somewhere behind him. "Don't get into it with her again. Let's just go."
6:38 pm
Amelia sat alone, on the ground up against an overturned log. The matter had been decided without her. Luke and Nick would return with a new water supply, sometime in the next two hours. Luke didn't like the idea of the group continuing to move while they were gone, and it would be dark by the time they got back anyway. So they were going to wait, then camp for the night.
Clementine didn't come to talk to her-
-because you're not Luke-
and apparently did not regret double naming her.
The next person to speak to her was Alvin, who approached her while leading Rebecca by the hand, gently guiding her through the grass until she sat down on the fallen tree.
"Amelia," he said to her pleasantly. "Would you mind sitting with Bec for a few minutes? I'll be right back."
Her first question was why a grown woman needed anyone to sit with her, for any amount of time. Yes, she was pregnant. But she was an adult. An obviously intelligent, obviously capable one. Her second was why Rebecca wasn't saying anything to that degree, because she had to feel that way as well.
Instead, she nodded patiently to her husband. "I'll be fine right here, baby. She's here if I need anything."
Alvin left his wife with a quick but loving smile, and Amelia with a "thanks."
Silence. Uncomfortable silence.
"I know that look." Rebecca said to her, looking straight ahead across the clearing. "You wanted to do something and someone stopped you from doing it. My dad did that all the time." She smirked, something about the memory replaying in her head on the verge of making her smile. "And I gave him that look all the time."
Amelia wasn't good at sharing. She used to think that anything would get easier with practice. Not the case. If anything, it seemed to get harder the more she tried to do it.
"They didn't listen."
"No, they didn't." Rebecca sighed. "If you ask me, they should've. But I'm not surprised they didn't." She sighed again, and it was so close to a laugh Amelia wanted to know what was going on in her head. It had to be more enjoyable than what was going on inside her own. "I knew how that conversation was going to go the second you walked over there."
Amelia hadn't. If she'd known how quickly Luke was going to shut her down – and how abruptly and intentionally Nick was going to ignore her – she never would have done it.
"Because they're stubborn." Rebecca slid her a sideways glance. "Bull-headed, the both of them."
"Is this the part where you tell me they mean well?"
"If you want to listen to it, yeah." Rebecca said calmly, sounding like she didn't have a preference either way.
Amelia stayed quiet, and decided to listen.
"They're good kids. Luke can be overbearing and Nick can be a brat sometimes, but they're good boys. Maybe I should say men," Rebecca shook her head slightly, at nothing in particular. "It's hard not to think of them as kids."
They fell into another silence, which Rebecca decided to break for the second time. Amelia didn't mind that she did; she was getting tired of loaded silence.
"You know, his mom…she could get overbearing, too. And that's the worst thing you'll ever hear me say about her."
Amelia didn't need to hear Nick's name to know who they were talking about. It sparked her interest so suddenly and unexpectedly – even to her – that she sat up abruptly, and looked straight at Rebecca. She wondered how well Rebecca knew the woman who raised Nick. The woman who meant so much to him that losing her left him so maladjusted and angry, had him trapped in a toolshed out in the woods and deciding he didn't feel like trying to make it out alive. From the faint smile on her face, Amelia guessed that Rebecca had known her well, or at the least had been very fond of her.
"It was because she cared. About everyone. I hardly knew her before we left Carver's camp. We hadn't been on the road for ten minutes but she pulled me aside and told me that if I needed anything, anything at all, I could come to her or Nick for it." Rebecca paused, looking straight ahead, maybe gathering her thoughts. Maybe just quietly letting the memory play out. Amelia wasn't about to interrupt. For once, she wasn't just passing time, sitting in silence because she had nothing better to do. This, she wanted to hear. "Everything good about Nick, he got from her and Pete. She had a temper, and he got that, too."
She got the sense that Rebecca didn't mind the temper, that it had been a part of her friend and something she wouldn't have changed.
Rebecca looked out across the clearing, sweeping her gaze across Carlos, Sarah, Pete. "Always talked about how important it was to help people. And eventually…she died doing just that."
And it was why Nick seemed to make a point of not doing it anymore, for anyone. Amelia found herself remembering more of their night trapped in the shed than she wanted to.
"Nick and Luke don't want to see anything like it happen again."
Ah. That was it. Here she was, thinking she was the one doing Rebecca the favor. Listening to her talk about a dear friend she'd lost, lending a quiet ear while she unloaded the heavy burden of absence and survivor's guilt. The entire time, missing the obvious point Rebecca had been trying to make.
Amelia took in a long breath and let it out just as slowly.
"They mean well."
"They mean not to lose any more people. Because they've lost a lot. They're just looking for someone to protect."
They should look somewhere else.
Amelia could tell by the way Rebecca spoke, the way she looked at her that she understood. They were alike, in ways that were immediately apparent, even on the night they met. Neither was the type to be comfortable with codependence, yielding their choices to others. Neither was the type to be put away for safe keeping when shit hit the fan. They were used to dirty hands, loaded guns, executing their own rescues because they'd learned a long time ago that no one was coming to do it for them. If you're looking for a princess to save, you won't find her here.
"I'm not…used to it."
"Neither was I, for a long time. I used to think I didn't need anything from anyone. And for a long time, I didn't. It works until it doesn't. Then what do you have?"
Nothing. An empty gun and a head injury and a starving kid with a dog bite.
Amelia shook her head, because she realized, once again, that she'd been wrong.
They waited in silence – comfortable silence, this time – until Alvin returned. He offered Rebecca a hand, and gave Amelia his thanks again.
Amelia found herself trying to speak up quickly, before the two of them left. "I'm sorry." She didn't know where to start to explain what she was sorry about, but she got the feeling Rebecca already knew. "I just…I'm sorry for causing you any trouble."
Rebecca turned back, Alvin supporting her by the arm. "Honey, we were in trouble long before you showed up. It's as much your problem now as it is ours." The two of them left her, maybe with a goodbye; she didn't catch it because her mind was somewhere else. It caught a hint of an idea, a minute spark, and was running with it, feeding it until it grew into a wildfire. She and Rebecca were finished talking about Nick's mom. They'd left the subject. But she brought it back up, dragged it out of its grave because no one was better at digging herself into holes than she was. She couldn't stop. She could do what she'd done last time this happened – willfully ignore it for as long as she could – but she knew it wouldn't last.
"I had to kill my mom."
Had to shoot her. Because she was bitten and she didn't want to turn.
But what if they'd waited?
Pete was immune. Who was to say his sister wasn't?
Who was to say Nick wasn't?
No one could say. No one would ever know because Nick had done something that Amelia could never do; she'd have turned the gun on herself before executing her own mother because she just didn't have in in her to do it.
But Nick did. And he may not have had to.
If – when – she told Pete what he needed to know, the secret would make its way to Nick. And he would piece this together, in less time than it had taken her. He'd learn the hardest decision of his life may also have been his worst mistake, and Amelia would be the one to tell him, one way or another.
The thought made her feel like she was going to throw up. If there had been something in her stomach, she might have done it.
6:52 pm
Amelia didn't move, slouched far enough to rest her head on the log while she stared up at the sky. The sun would set in a few hours and, provided she wasn't called to take watch before then, she had a great place to sit and watch it.
That was what she'd decided to do. Wait for the sunset and pretend this was a normal evening like any other. She'd see how long it lasted, and that was as far ahead as her plan reached.
Because, when she thought about the problem she had, she was only reminded that she had no fucking idea what to do about it.
Warm, gentle hands and "Is this okay?"-
Being left alone gave her time, too much time, to wander back into thoughts that demanded to be relived. They replayed in her head because she couldn't stop thinking about them, as hard as she tried. She pushed them away, tried to fixate on other things to distract herself, but they always came back. She was no stranger to this.
The fact that it was a good memory, one that was pleasant to recall over and over…that was new.
Still. She wanted silence. When the memory reared its head again she looped a piano wire around its neck and dragged it away. Now wasn't a good time. She didn't need clouded judgment, didn't need distractions, didn't need another thing scaring her…
That, and she had no place to feel anything like this, not when she knew what she knew about his mom.
"Amelia?"
She sat up abruptly, grateful to have been interrupted before she even knew who it was. If she'd been listening, she'd have heard the meek caution in the voice and known who it belonged to before she looked.
"Yeah," she said, adjusting to the surprise, the confusion as to why Sarah had come to talk to her. She talked to Clementine, all the time. But she hadn't said two words to Amelia, which she assumed had something to do with her father. She recalled making a promise to Carlos, which, given the events of the last three days, may or may not have still applied. "Um- hi, Sarah. What is it?"
"Hi…" she shifted awkwardly, standing alone and holding her arms. She seemed to have something to say, but hesitated to say it. Amelia waited. She didn't have anything better to do. "…are you okay? You look…really pale."
"Um," Amelia ran a hand over her head, pushing her hair out of her face, taking a rushed, uneven breath. "Yeah. Fine."
"You don't really look fine."
Amelia didn't answer her, not in the mood to start an incessant back-and-forth with a teenager. Sarah could think what she wanted. She didn't know when to accept a lie and pretend she believed it, something Amelia hoped she would learn later. Or not. It didn't matter to her.
Sarah dragged her heel back and forth on the ground, scraping up a small pile of dirt and rocks. "So, um….are you…still mad at Luke?"
Kind of.
Not really.
The way Sarah asked the question made her think. She was always mad at someone, for one reason or another. Sure, there were plenty of things to be mad about. But the common thread in all of her disagreements, every dispute she'd had with a member of the group…was her.
"No." she said. Sarah only blinked at her. "I'm not…mad at Luke,"
"Oh. That's good. I just wanted to check." She started fidgeting again, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, back again. She picked at her fingernails, trying to kill time before saying something that was obviously on her mind. Amelia waited. She'd wanted a distraction, and she'd gotten one. "It's just…Luke is the nicest person I know, next to my dad. He's always helping people and he takes care of me when my dad isn't around and he makes those…those things go away. He's my friend, and now that you're with our group, you're my friend, too. So I just…really hope you guys can get along."
Well. That was…unexpected.
"Um…okay…" Amelia wasn't sure how to process it, what to say. If anything should've been said to that.
"We are friends…right?"
She couldn't see any reason why not, so long as Carlos had changed his mind. Maybe he didn't like the two of them talking, but if he could tolerate it for Sarah's sake, Amelia didn't see any reason to disappoint her.
"Yeah, Sarah. Of course we are."
She broke out into a smile, the lights suddenly on behind her eyes. "Cool!" It seemed to be the invitation Amelia hadn't known she was waiting for. She crouched and sat down, back against the log just like Amelia was sitting, and before she knew it she was hearing about Sarah's favorite fruits and the splinter she got in her finger, which her dad gave her a Band-Aid for, and how she used to hate camping until this trip.
Is that what she thinks this is?
Sarah's eyes wandered up to Amelia's forehead and suddenly the conversation was about her head injury. Amelia noticed it wasn't the first time she abruptly changed the subject on a moment's notice.
"So do you think that's going to leave a scar?"
"Probably." Amelia couldn't imagine it wouldn't.
"A big one?"
"Probably about as big as it is now."
"Do you have other scars?"
"Lots of them." Amelia lifted a shoulder, hooking a thumb into the collar of her shirt and tugging it over her arm to show her the dark indentation of what had once been a bullet in her upper arm.
"Woah," she whispered, then looked up at Amelia with wide eyes. "What happened?"
"I got shot."
"Someone shot you? That's terrible!"
"It wasn't that bad," she said, glad that Sarah was too young to know what it looked like when someone was lying through their teeth.
"Why would anyone want to shoot you? You're so nice."
Amelia laughed quietly. Now that was funny. She took a breath and forced herself to stop when Sarah stared at her like she didn't understand the joke. "He, uh, didn't mean to, in a way. He thought I was someone else."
"Who did he think you were?"
"Never found out, actually."
"Oh. Well, I'm glad you're okay."
Amelia felt that she meant it. That was nice of her.
"I don't really have any," Sarah said, sounding, of all things, disappointed. "I have some on my knees from falling off my bike. And falling…on other things. How many do you have?"
"I don't know. It would take a long time to count them," Amelia sighed. "I've been collecting them for a long time."
"Collecting…like on purpose?"
"No."
"Well…I think your scar makes you look pretty. I found a broken mirror once, and I thought it looked so much cooler than a regular mirror. My dad made me throw it away though."
Amelia decided that she liked this girl. Not just because it was a change talking to someone too naïve to judge her. Sarah was lovely and strange, and she was happy to have met her. Carrying a conversation with her was easy. All Amelia had to do was listen, which was fine by her.
"I was the only girl in the group for a long time. Rebecca's a girl, but she's so much older than me. She never wants to play with me and we don't have anything to talk about." Smile. Nod. Uh-huh. "I can talk to Luke and Nick, but they're older too. And they're boys. It's so cool that you and Clementine are here."
"You don't think I'm old?"
"Not really. How old are you?"
"I'm twenty-three."
"Oh. I guess you are kind of old."
Amelia tilted her head with a shrug. "Sorry."
"That's okay." Sarah smiled at her. "We can still be friends."
Carlos called Sarah's name, somewhere behind them in the clearing. She quickly said goodbye and ran to meet him. Amelia hoped she wasn't in trouble for talking to her, and went back to waiting for the sun to set.
When Sarah was gone, along with her constant stream of ideas and favorites and random thoughts, it didn't take long for Amelia's fears to creep back up her spine, working their way into her head and reminding her that she was headed for a cliff, carrying a secret heavy enough to drag her down so deep she'd never climb back out.
She wished Sarah would come back.
8:31 pm
Luke and Nick returned about thirty minutes before the sunset, three once-empty gallon jugs filled with sterile water. Clementine and the others went to greet them. Amelia waited and continued to watch the sky. There were things to be said between her and the two of them, and decided the next conversation they'd have could come on its own. She wasn't about to force it. They looked tired.
That time came sooner than she'd expected, when Nick broke off from the rest of the group and came to see her. He didn't sit.
Amelia sat up when she saw him, and waited. Some paranoid, stupid, silly part of her worried that he could read her mind. Thought, now that she knew what she knew about his mom, that he would know just by looking at her. She kept her mouth shut and waited, equally paranoid that she'd let it slip the first time she tried to speak to him.
He looked like he wanted to speak first.
"I ain't going to make you talk about it." He said. "You obviously don't want to, so you don't have to talk. Just listen."
She did.
They slowed down only when they started to run out of things to break, when it became more difficult to find something that wasn't already smashed to pieces. Another idea had been looming over the horizon in Amelia's head; she'd been too preoccupied, too excited, and she'd been ignoring it until now. It took an unintentional moment of unbroken eye contact with Nick, as they stood in the remains of their cathartic tirade, to realize she'd been barreling toward it this entire time, whether she'd been ignoring it or not.
Nick didn't seem to know where to start, now that he had her attention. He bided his time, gripping his wrist, cracking his knuckles.
"I don't know what to say to you anymore. I used to. You were easy to talk to." He shook his head, at himself. Stupid. "I mean…not easy…to talk to, but…fuck…" He looked over his shoulder, as if they'd be joined any minute by a third wheel. They wouldn't. The two were alone, more or less. They could see the rest of the group but not hear them. No one seemed interested in the conversation they were having…or trying to have. "Struggling" might have been more accurate. "You get it." He said simply, hands out. "Nobody else here gets it. Not even Luke."
Amelia didn't ask him what "it" was because she knew. As brief and simple as the phrase was, she understood. She imagined what it must've been like, being like Nick and having a best friend who knew him better than anyone and still didn't understand certain things about him because they were opposites in every way. Who didn't understand when he tried to tell him he wasn't built that way, wasn't good at acting or thinking like him.
She thought about telling him this. But he'd already given her a free pass to participate in the conversation without talking.
Grief had a tendency to snowball. It demanded to be felt, and once it started it built in momentum and became harder and harder to stop. They'd already tipped it over the hill– done far more than that, really – and now it was hurdling downhill fast and wouldn't be stopped until it had run its course. They couldn't choose which emotions to feel, and which not to. All of it was on its way, whether they wanted it or not. They both carried multitudes – grief, anger, shame, regret, aggression, loneliness – and Amelia didn't realize how heavy the burden was until she'd released some of it, started to share it with another person who gave part of his burden to her.
"You need to stop bullshitting me." Nick told her. "Stop acting like there's nothing to say and…admit you just don't want to say it."
They both knew it was true. She didn't understand why he wanted to hear it. Of course there were things to say about the night before. There was plenty to say, too much. Amelia's problem wasn't a lack of words but the danger in saying them. It opened too many doors. Exposed too many things within herself that she'd spent her life building walls, forging armor to keep closed away and untouched.
She didn't realize how recklessness brought more recklessness, indulgence brought more indulgence until Nick picked her up by the hips and she happily met him halfway by wrapping her legs around him. She purposely knocked his baseball cap from his head and he gently backed her up against the shed wall, his mouth on hers in a sudden and strange and warm and wonderful collision of kindred spirits, finding each other and not being driven away by what they saw. Less like two freight trains hitting each other head-on and more like one broken body settling up against another, a body which fit theirs well and brought them closer to feeling whole again. She kissed him back, running fingers through his hair and knowing it wouldn't fill the gaping holes in her heart but it could damn well make her forget about them for as long as he was here.
Nick hesitated again. Broke eye contact with her and didn't seem to like what he was about to say. "'Cause I'm over here thinking it was something I did." He shook his head at the ground. "Thought maybe I pushed you too hard…moved too fast. If I did…I'm sorry."
No. No, no, no that wasn't it. Not even a little bit. Was that what she'd left him thinking all day?
He broke the kiss, and she immediately wanted it back. It was a knockout of a kiss, urgent and deep and sweet and she worried that it meant he'd changed his mind about her. That he didn't understand her, she'd been wrong about him and he wasn't anything like her.
"Is this okay?" he breathed. "Are you…are you okay with this?"
She answered him quickly with an enthusiastic nod, barely answered at all before she got her hand behind his neck and pulled him back in. A low, rough sound came from somewhere in the back of his throat and he stepped in, stepped closer, pressing her harder into the wall. He left her mouth to kiss her neck, burning a trail down to her collarbone and back up. She returned the favor, kissing him just under his jaw until she felt him shudder and tighten his grip on her waist.
She welcomed the pressure, the tighter grip, the electricity that pulsed in her chest and shot straight up to her head, liberated and thrilled by the fact that all of it hinged on permission she chose to give. Thrilled even more because he asked for it, and even further by the way he'd stared directly at her mouth when he did. She finally felt she had a body that belonged to her and she had a choice as to what to do with it, and this is what she chose and would choose over and over.
Amelia shook her head, trying to tell him that wasn't it, that he was worried over nothing. He didn't see. He was still staring at the ground, hands in his pockets and she couldn't bring herself to speak. Her voice was dry and useless and she couldn't make herself do it.
"I don't know why you won't talk to me. If you just want to…pretend it never happened, then I can't stop you."
Did she want that? She thought of the way she'd been pushing away her memories of that night, doing it not because she didn't like them but because she liked them too much. Because she was afraid of the choices she'd make if she let them replay in her mind over and over, leaving her feeling things she'd never meant to feel again.
Nick cleared his throat. Buying time, again. "But I had to tell you…I don't want to…do that. I don't know what it was to you but it wasn't just…nothing. To me."
The world had been ruined years ago. There wasn't a person alive who hadn't seen their loved ones die, who'd never had to murder to stay alive, who could say they were still the person they used to be. Amelia and Nick were part of a heartbroken collective, two of millions who'd experienced the unimaginable. They kissed each other for minutes at a time without coming up for air, a mess of tangled limbs and wandering hands seeking out warm skin, reminding each other that the fact that everyone else's trauma matched or exceeded their own didn't mean they weren't allowed to feel pain. The shed was a fortress that, for now, belonged to them and only them. The walls around them were a barrier that kept the world out; no one else could come in uninvited and neither of them had to leave until they chose to.
And they didn't, for some time.
"I'm…here to talk about it. If you change your mind. I hope you change your mind."
And he turned to leave. He didn't leave her with anything else, didn't give her any more time to come up with something to tell him. He was giving her space, after countless signals from her saying that was what she wanted.
She spoke, called out to his back as he was walking away because she could see a door closing in front of her. She didn't know what was on the other side, or whether she wanted to take it, only that it was something wonderful and high-risk and that her chance to take it was fading fast.
"I'll get there." That was the most she could offer, at the moment. She had things to work out, in her heart and in her head, a burden she had to find a safe place to bury before she could think about sharing any part of herself with another person. "I don't know how long it…I'll get there. If you can wait."
Nick stopped when he heard her voice, and turned back just far enough to look at her over his shoulder.
"…I can live with that."
She nodded. It was a deal, then.
Finally, because she felt comfortable enough to ask even if the answer was going to be "no,"
"Can I share your tarp?"