I meet Lori first.
She's washing a pale blue shirt in a metal bucket of water when Rick leads me to her. Coolers are scattered around the trunks of trees, most likely filled with water that doesn't consist of the dirty muck that I've been consuming for the past four days. I'll have to look in one of them later. I'm too scared to ask about it at the moment.
Lines cross over my head, tied to trees and sinking under the weight of damp shirts. My old group didn't wash clothes. When our outfits got too dirty, they would be sent out on runs to get new clothes and when they came back, we'd trash the old ones and repeat the process with the new ones. Now, seeing the other method in front of my eyes, I understand how stupid that was.
Rick doesn't even have to say anything to draw Lori's attention to me.
The shirt in her hands is discarded for a dry towel before she turns to me with a soft smile. "Hi!" She says brightly, squatting so that I have to look down at her for once. "Carl told me about you. I'm Lori."
Although I'm sure Carl already told her my name, I say it anyway. "Nevaeh."
Her eyes scan me and her smile turns wistful - just for a second - before it's gone. I don't question her about it, deciding it would be best if I don't delve into people's business. "You must be hungry. When's the last time you ate somethin'?"
"Uh, last night?" At the realization, my stomach grumbles. I had those two cans of peaches in my bag, but I'd woken up and started on my path this morning. I didn't give myself time to have breakfast.
Lori must've heard the sound emitted by my stomach because her expression turns amused. She tenderly takes my hand and this time I don't flinch at another person's touch. It makes me feel warm; cared for. "Let's get you some food. Rick?"
They exchange a few whispered words that I can't hear even though I'm practically right beside Lori. She eventually nods and the man sends me a look that clearly states, 'Behave'.
I surprise myself by sending him a grin.
Lori takes me to a small fire pit, the interior still alight with burning embers. A picture of the campfire before the herd tore my group apart flashes across my eyes and I will it to go away with a heavy heart. Concrete wall, I remind myself. Concrete wall.
She reaches into a brown paper bag lodged between twin grey stones and pulls out two thin strips of meat. Jerky. My selfless side bubbles up to the surface before I can stop it. "I don't need any-"
"Take it, sweetheart."
How she made the term sound so threatening, I don't know. I take the jerky from her hands. It feels like it's been forever since I had any kind of meat and I devour each one hungrily.
Lori looks smug. "Good. Now, let's see if we can get you cleaned up, alright?" I'm unused to this kind of treatment. Even before everything went downhill with my group, I wasn't this cared for. I may have been the only kid, but that didn't matter all that much.
I start to nod my head, but freeze. "Um, I don't have any other clothes."
Lori pauses, purses her lips. "That's fine. I'm sure Beth wouldn't mind givin' you some. She'd be the closest to your size."
"Beth?"
"Hershel's daughter." I'm about to ask who Hershel is when she continues, "He's the owner of the property."
Oh. The one who doesn't like guns.
"He'd be fine with me just asking his daughter for clothes?" He seems kind of scary to me despite the fact that I've never seen him.
Lori smiles, her hazel eyes sparkling in the minimal light peaking through the leaves above us. "Yes. I'm sure he would."
"Okay." I say slowly, hesitantly. I look down at myself. Dark red flecks compromise the yellow material of my shirt. Dirt runs over them, camouflaging the dots under a dusty brown. My shorts are a dark denim, but you can still make out the small amount of blood splattered on them. The streak of dried blood from the decapitated walker head four days ago is still visible on the side of my calf. A disgusting reminder of what happened that night. "And you're gonna...wash these clothes?"
I don't want to give up Mason's jacket, not quite yet. Not for a prolonged amount of time. It's the glue that's keeping my fragile pieces connected, the only way I'm able to smile and joke around right now. I'd rather not discover what would happen if it was taken away from me.
Lori's eyebrows crease in confusion, but the lift of her lips show entertainment. "Yes, honey."
"Okay. Yeah." I gulp. The bubble of panic in my stomach doesn't go away. "Where would Beth be?"
She wraps an arm around my shoulders, guides me forward. "I'll take you to her."
On the walk to wherever she's taking me, I lean into her touch little by little. It's motherly and already I miss the feeling of being in my mom's arms so badly. If for just this moment I can pretend she's still alive, then I'll take it with greedy hands.
"So, where'd you live before all of this, Nevaeh?" I notice how foreign my name sounds on her tongue.
"I was born in King County, but we moved to Washington D.C. when I was just a baby. We didn't move back until I was seven."
"King County?"
"Mhmm."
"That's where we lived. Rick, Carl and me. Rick was the sheriff there. You ever see him?" The way she talked to me made me feel like a kid, but I guess to her eyes, that's what I was. It didn't make me angry like Shane's words did. Maybe it was because she reminded me so much of my mom and with her, being a kid was always fun. Princess dresses and Disney movie marathons surrounded my childhood.
I'm brought out of my flashback with teary eyes, trying to catch what she'd said. I'd definitely never seen Carl before. I know I would've noticed him. He had one of those faces that would be fun to draw. With the cutely curved nose and the freckles and the eyes, my fingers are already wanting to reach for my pencil. Rick, however, did seem slightly familiar now that I thought about it. Like I'd seen him in a picture or something.
Picture.
Sheriff.
The black and white page of a newspaper comes to mind. "He...he was in the newspaper. Wasn't he?"
"Yeah." Lori sighs, forlorn. "He was shot on the job, put into a coma. And when things started to go bad, we had to leave him. We were headed for Atlanta-"
"But they bombed it." I finish for her, remembering the explosions against the skyscrapers, the sound of the planes. I was confused as to why she was me telling her story. Perhaps it was a way of building my trust.
"My dad died two months before the walkers came," I start as a white farmhouse comes into view, tall windows covered with clean curtains. A balcony is visible to my eye and I absentmindedly wonder what the view would be like. A metal windmill sits next to the structure, the metallic blades reflecting the bright sun. I would've thought it was peaceful if I knew the sword on my back wasn't for flesh eating monsters that could attack at any moment. "We had just buried him when things started going crazy. My mom and brother wouldn't tell me anything. They just shoved me into the car and told me to listen to music. We were almost to Atlanta when we got caught in a traffic jam and they tried to hide what was going on from me, but I saw the explosions, heard the screams." I feel Lori's arm tighten around me. "We traveled together after that until we found a group. They took us in and everything was fine until...it wasn't. And then I was alone."
Lori stops suddenly, pulling her arm from my shoulders and once again kneeling in front of me. "Sweetheart, look at me." I'm not aware that tears had fallen from my eyes until I feel the pads of Lori's thumbs flicking them away. I look into her eyes that have now switched from hazel to a green that reminds me of needles on pine trees. Her lips are drawn thin and the seriousness of her expression scares me. "You see me? I'm here. So are all of those people back at that camp. We don't let each other end up alone, we're a team, we're a family. You're a part of that now, you got that? From the second Carl found you, you were a part of what we have here. I could never understand what you went through, but I can help you through it. All of us can. We're your family now. Okay?"
My eyes are wide in the seconds of silence following her words. Every member of the Grimes family had managed to help me in some way. Carl brought me here in the first place, to people, to a new home. Rick let me stay here, and Lori was right in front of me willing to be my shoulder that I desperately needed to lean on. All in one day, this family had changed my life.
A sad smile overtakes my lips and I sniffled, nodding. "Okay."
Lori smiles delicately and tucks a strand of dirt-covered hair behind my ear. She returns to her normal height after and extends a hand. "Back to the search for clothes?"
I take it, inwardly cringing at the contrast between her pale skin and my sun-kissed grimy hand. But on the outside, I'm grinning. "Back to the search for clothes."
The worn floorboards of the porch creak under our weight, a reminder of how old this house is. The white paint on the wooden railings and the siding is peeling, leaving light brown patches hidden amongst the sea of yellowed color.
A screen door is the only thing keeping me from entering the household. I can see the antique furniture from the outside. Lori knocks her fist against it, rattling the plastic frame.
A girl appears in my view quickly, blonde hair pulled back in a high ponytail, a single braid weaving through the side of her head. Bright blue eyes welcome me without words. She smiles kindly as she comes up to the barrier between us. "Lori, hey!" She greets, her voice even more southern than Rick's. Her gaze is kind, but turns confused when it strays to me.
"This is Nevaeh," Lori quickly explains. "We were hopin' you'd have some clothes that would fit her."
I doubt that. She's taller than me, almost as tall as Lori.
But she surprises me by nodding. "Yeah, of course. I have tons of clothes that I grew out of years ago. I kept on reminding Daddy to take them with him when he went out, but he never got around to it." She sounds so nice and innocent - just like Carl - but even though her eyes are kind, they're shattered. She'd lost someone.
"Perfect."
"They're right up in my room. Come on in." She opens the door for us and as I step in the space, I'm assaulted by the smell of perfume and something else. Something...old. It's a nice change from the scent of rotting corpses that usually fills the air. It actually makes me feel almost normal again.
Lori stops me in the entryway. "I'm gonna go back to the camp. You come find me after you're done here, alright?"
I don't want to be left alone with a person I barely know, but then I realize that Rick did the same thing to me with Lori and it turned out just fine. I force a smile onto my face that hopefully appears uncaring even though my eyes are red-rimmed from the session I just pulled outside and I probably look like a porcelain doll that will fall apart at any moment. "I will."
She thanks Beth before leaving the house. I watch her figure move through the deserted fields before Beth taps my arm and motions me through the doorway to a separate room. The furniture is floral and old; the type of stuff that my mom loved to get from those antique shops. I liked the bright colored things. Like neons and pastels, but she favored the faded and the aged. I still went with her when she went on a trip to one of them. I found the vintage perfume bottles with the things - I think they were called atomizers - fun to mess with.
Picture frames made of distressed wood sit on a table to my right. I want to look at them, but I'm afraid Beth will send me a judgmental look and kick me out if I do, so I keep quiet and follow her up the stairs.
Her room is painted a light yellow. It's comforting, especially in the small light slipping through the white lacy curtains covering the window. A bed is pushed into the corner next to a short nightstand, overlaid with a colorful quilt. A white dresser with flaking paint sits between two doorways that I assume are a closet and bathroom. The frames that sit on top of it are the same as the ones downstairs, except they're decorated with lively stickers.
I decide to look at them this time.
One of them is of Beth - clearly slightly younger - in a short blue dress, blonde hair curled and a yellow flower peeking up out of the strands. She's sitting on the brick steps that I just walked up outside next to another girl. Her brown hair is held back from her face with a forest green headband that matches her dress. The color brings out her light green eyes. They're both laughing, their heads thrown back and looking completely oblivious to the camera savoring the moment.
I haven't seen anybody that happy in a long time.
Little suns that are beginning to lose their stick and peel up adorn the perimeter of the cheerful photo. I smooth every single one of them down.
"That's Maggie," Beth says, making me jump. I'd forgotten she was there. She doesn't seem to mind my snooping. Nostalgia overtakes her features and her amiable eyes have turned sad, appearing even more damaged than they had when I'd first seen her. "My sister."
It emotionally pains me to think about asking if Maggie is still alive, so I gently put the frame back down and move on to the next one.
The stickers are hearts on this one, ranging in all sizes. A boy sits in a rocking chair on what looks like the porch of the farmhouse, smile wide. A cowboy hat is perched on his head, being tilted up slightly by Beth, who's placing a kiss on his cheek. Even she looks like she's trying to keep a smile at bay.
My heart melts. My parents were always like that. All smiley and in love all the time. I thought it was kind of gross until I turned ten and realized instead of a prince and a castle I only wanted what they had. I've been searching for it ever since. I doubt I'll find it now, me being young and in a world where human beings are kind of rare. I'll probably die before I know what that kind of love feels like.
My relief is large when I recognize the boy in the picture as the one I saw beside the car earlier. "Boyfriend, obviously." I mumble in what I hope to be a teasing way.
I'm glad to hear the smile in her voice when she replies, "Yeah, Jimmy." I return it to it's spot. "Here, let me see your shirt tag." She pulls away my jacket and goes for the neckline of my shirt. I didn't realize how sweaty I was until I felt the cool air hit my skin from the loss of material. I don't want to even know what my hair looks like.
She checks my shorts too before venturing to her closet to search through her old clothes. While she does I continue my journey through her pictures.
The next one must have also been covered in heart stickers, but most of them are torn completely off, leaving little white pieces of adhesive behind. The other ones are left half ripped as if she was trying to make them look like broken hearts.
It's a wedding picture. Maggie is recognizable despite looking exceptionally younger, standing next to a couple sharing a kiss under an arbor wrapped in lavender flowers. The woman's dress is beautiful, poofing out from her waist in a display of lace and ruffles. She holds a bouquet of the same purple plants from the structure behind her. The people on either side of them wear multicolored clothing and have smaller bunches of flowers clutched in their hands, the colors varying. The farmhouse is barely visible in the distance.
The only thing marring the lovely photo is the large crack spreading diagonally against the happy face of the bride. I run my finger over it. This has to be her parents. I think back to what Lori said.
Hershel's daughter.
There was no mention of a mother. That must have been who she'd lost. It made sense. I would get mad too if I saw my parent's wedding picture. It was a symbol of how happy my life used to be and now I'm standing in the rubble of what's left. I'd do more than leave a crack.
I practically throw the frame down when Beth leaves her closet with a stack of clothes. She sends me a small, polite smile and I force myself to send one back. How is she so happy and nice when she doesn't have her mother anymore? I'm hardly hanging on right now.
I take the blue and white striped tank top and pair of capris from her arms. "I'll show you the shower."
My jaw drops. "You have showers?!"