Distantly, I consider doing it in here. I took my dad's lighter before he left. It's under my mattress. But I don't feel like leaving – I don't feel like I can – and I don't do that here. I only do it in cold places where everything on the outside of me matches up with what's inside. And anyway, I don't have the right feelings, the right thoughts. This isn't a lighter-and-a-knife kind of thing. There's no guilt attached to Beth seeing my arm, because she doesn't get it, she doesn't get that I had to do it because I deserved it. No one else will get it, either. Least of all my dad –
I curl up in bed with the covers pulled over me. I feel sick. Dad. He was never supposed to know. He was never –
He's never here these days. When he is, I barely talk to him. How can I? How can I, when the one thing I want most in the world is to go after the Governor, but Dad won't allow me to? How can I when it would be better for Dad all around if he would just forget I exist? He doesn't see things that way, though, so now when he gets back – if he gets back at all – I'll not only be ignoring him, he'll be freaking out.
God, there's nothing I can do to keep him from knowing about it, is there? I could beg Beth. But no, I couldn't even talk to her right now. And it's been at least an hour, it's probably too late. If she's told at least one other person, it's too late. That's the conclusion I've reached when someone calls my name from outside my cell. I know the voice well and my heart sinks. I break my head out from under the covers just enough to answer. "Yeah?"
Carol opens the curtain and leaves it open. It's night now, so even outside of my cell it's dark, but there are enough lamps and candles out there that there's at least a dim orange glow to cast a shadow over Carol as she comes to my bed and leans against it, her hands gripping the rails of the top bunk. I wrestle away from the blankets. It's hard – I feel like the me part of me is crooked inside of my body and I can't operate everything correctly. I'm sweating, but I'm not so out of it that I forget to keep my forearms buried under the covers.
"Dinner's ready," says Carol.
She wouldn't come into my cell just to tell me dinner's ready.
"I don't feel good."
She looks at me for a second. It's that look that does it – it blows away any bit of hope that maybe she doesn't know, that maybe this is just a visit between old friends. Her lowering onto the bed is just icing.
"Honey. Show me your arms."
"Why?"
"Just show me them."
"No."
Carol's eyebrows almost touch. Me going against her, that's not normal. It was long ago decided, wordlessly, that my dad's absence is not the same thing as the absence of an authority figure for me. Carol, Rick, Hershel, I'm supposed to mind all of them. But I'm not about to mind now. Not on this.
Carol reaches for the blanket. "Sydney, show me –"
Like hell I'll show her.
"No!" I kick myself back, pressing into the corner of the room, turned so my crossed arms are protected by my torso. "I said no! You're not my mother, you can't tell me what to do, just stay away from me! Stay away from me!"
I've braced myself, but I am not touched and there are no sounds beyond my panting and the far-away voices in the dining room. I risk looking over my shoulder, and Carol's still there. Her eyes are sad but her lips are in a line. "Okay," she eventually says. "I'll stay away from you."
Good. That's good. That's what I wanted, yeah?
She stands. She pauses. "But Sydney, when he gets back, I'm going to have to tell your daddy what Beth told me."
I say nothing. She goes and I collapse back onto and into my bed.
A few minutes later, someone else calls my name. I don't answer, but she comes in anyway.
"Sydney?" she repeats in that voice made for singing.
"I don't want to talk to you."
But my mattress dips down. "I'm only here as your friend," Beth says. "Please. We don't have to talk."
Good, because I'm not about to, not after she told.
But she takes my hand – she pulls the cover with it and then tucks it under my arm – and I don't take it back. Just because I don't have the energy, though. Not because it's comforting or anything. And I don't get any energy for a long time. I fall asleep with my hand in Beth's, and if I ever tighten my grip, it's only because I'm imagining my father getting the news.