It begins to snow right after you arrive at Jackson.
The snow is nothing but small flakes, dry white things that fall hard from a grey November sky and you're cold, in your thin jacket and your dirty old sneakers and not enough layers. You're cold and you're tired and you're so damn hungry you could devour a whole cow.
There is a kind of hush in the unfamiliar town and you are intimidated by it, but it's not the silence of the woods or the pregnant hush of a scared QZ, so it doesn't bother you too much.
You feel sleepy and exhausted, riding the last drops of your fast-vanishing adrenaline. The people of the weird town look exhilarated.
Kids are running around in the mud, wearing colourful coats and summer shoes and no hats, their bare hands stretched to the falling snowflakes, their heads thrown back.
Someone is rolling on the ground with a scruffy dog and it fills you with a kind of strange rapture.
It's a happy picture.
(Joel huffs).
Tommy and Maria come to greet you and there is some talk about houses and meals and meetings in the local pub and Joel growls and hums and sighs and you can tell he isn't happy.
Tommy has a thick denim jacket with a wool collar and Maria wears something similar. They are stunning together. Tommy with his crooked nose and wide shoulders and lopsided smile, and Maria with her arctic blue eyes, sharp jaw, and long legs.
(Joel's hand tightens on your shoulder).
The house Tommy leads you to is on the other side of town, through a muddy road with white wooden houses and empty porches and comfortable looking life. There are dogs and small children and lonely chairs and smiling people, on your way to your designated house.
It's a simple place, a big farmhouse, small-town thing with a porch and big windows and you find you like it.
Tommy hands Joel a key and leaves, patting him on the shoulder, and it falls upon Joel to show you the back yard and a structure with its own roof, a little to the side. A concrete block is sunk in the mud for a stepping stone so you can get to the wooden door.
"It's for you," he says, chewing on the words. "A place of your own. Maria and Tommy figured you could use some privacy".
You nod because you don't know what to say.
The house is hardly on a street, more like a muddy field, and very close to what looks like a park or a cemetery, and your new exposed room is hidden in the back yard.
Inside, the structure looks daunting. There are doors and windows and walls and the toilet actually flushes. It's dirty and has a yellow ring around the inside of the bowl, and the water in the sink is reddish when you turn the tap.
The floor of your new place is not polished and it's made of concrete, there is a big desk in the corner and an empty bed and a lot of dead flies around the corners.
Joel makes a face.
"I kinda like it." You tell him and you do.
Dust is everywhere, there is a tiny counter and a bare sink, and despite the rawness of this place, you feel your chest expanding and (you really really really like this place).
Joel scartches the back of his head and gives you a nervous smile. "You know," he says, very carefully. "I'm sure there's enough room for both of us in the big house".
"I'm good here." And you don't mean it to sound harsh or ungrateful but you think it sounds a little biting.
Joel nods, awkward and lost. "Yep," he says. "Yep".
The first few nights you sleep on the empty bed with your clothes on and you tip off into the floor. Night after night you fall out of the bed and when you wake up, for almost a minute, you don't remember where you are.
You are excited to have a space of your own. Joel is knocking on your door whenever he's stepping by and you find that you like this type of privacy.
But when you wake up with the sun in your eyes, you feel lonely and something in your chest aches and aches and aches at the loss of the company.
(Joel is still making vague suggestions for you to move into the house. There are a lot of empty rooms and he assures you the second floor is at your disposal. You always decline).
Each day things appear in your new home. A chair and a small refrigerator and some shelves. A TV. A couch. Fresh sheets. You have a sort of fireplace that works and in his spare time, Joel hammers away at the interior of your new house. He's whistling around the nails he's holding between his teeth, squinting and groaning, and making stupid jokes about the state of mess around him.
The place looks more and more like home and when you are not busy dragging old crap from garbage piles in the corners of the town, you scrap your knees and skin your knuckles helping Joel around.
It doesn't take long for your place to look like a home and you fill it with comic books and old toys and boxes and notebooks. You put posters on the walls, you line boxes above the front door, you hang clothes on old crooked hooks and you clean and clean and clean.
You like it. It feels like home.
//
Joel's house is big and has two stories. It has a dining room and a living room and too many washrooms that he never uses. (The one he does use is a small bathroom on the second floor which he decorated by taking the mirror off the wall and leaning it against the wall, facing away). The colours in his home are bright and light and nice, blonde wood and beige and velvet and flowered.
It smells like wood and lace and Joel.
Most of Jackson looks like every other small town you have ever passed by, only it inhabits people and Maria reigns her subjects with hard but just fist.
The buildings are nice and clean and covered with skeletal veining. Some has long hallways and most have hardwood floors, stained and worn from years and years, and years of slushy winter boots but kept polished.
You like it. There are staircases which creak and banisters you slide down on and iron radiators that make banging noises and are either stone-cold or blazing hot and you press your arm to one and an idea sparks in your head.
Joel nods his head 'no' but you don't really care. He is huge and familiar and very very tired and it's not his job to look after you anymore and
(You're not sure how you feel about it).
The town is full of gruff men and stout women and happy kids you don't know. There are horses and cowboy hats and "ello's" and "howdy's" and the sort of things Joel joked about on your way from the university.
Joel's always checking on you. "You doin' alright there, kiddo?" and you always nod 'yes'.
//
It drizzles and everyone looks cold.
(You've got a new coat and a good pair of boots. Joel gave you a hat and Maria brought you mittens and gloves and a scarf you really like that keeps you warm).
You watch the life of Jackson with a kind of childish fascination.
There are meals and food you never tasted, butchers shop and vegetables and a small restaurant with different types of foods. There are cakes and jerky and freshly baked bread and Jackson smells like vast, echoing, spicy ancient forlorn but also like comfortable old wood, like furniture polish and sweat of familiar bodies.
Joel is always worried about you, but you like your new relative solitude. You are happy to be left to your own devices, your own messes. You eat haphazardly now, snack on junk food and take-outs from a local restaurant, and you don't worry about balanced meals or nutrition. You go to bed when you like, let your dirty laundry rot, neglect the dishes.
//
You get assigned to a couple of jobs around town, farming, and cleaning, and stables, though nothing potentially dangerous. Sometimes you help in the kitchen, sometimes you carry things for the shop owners, learning names and memorizing routes and getting to know the streets, but what you really want to do is go on patrols.
Sometimes, at night, you draw with half-sharpened pencils and fill your journal with thoughts and ideas. Sometimes you forget to go to bed and find that it's dawn already and you have to go to whatever bullshit work you're assigned to do this day.
You are groggy and grumpy and you're having trouble hearing what is being said to you but nobody notices.
You are walking some distance in the mornings to school, past the cemetery, across long muddy streets, along a wide curving park lined with something that will be a fence soon enough.
You walk down unpaved roads and over a hill, and you try your best at school, not used to sitting still at a desk.
It's an old building and unlike the other homes, it's tall and made of liver coloured bricks, with high ceilings and long wood-floored hallways and separate bathrooms for boys and girls.
You meet new people every day and it's overwhelming to remember their names. Most of them are nice and happy, some are a little estranged, some are regular bullies that you aren't scared of.
A sandy coloured boy is pushing you in the yard (he has blond hair and blond smile and blond attitude) and you push back. He is crying and then a teacher scolds him and Joel makes a face and nobody tries to fight with you again.
You meet Dina on your second day of school and you eat lunch together. She's a little older than you and she has a boyfriend of a sort (a handsome older boy with dark hair and an easy smile who makes friends with you easily) though they pretend they are not together.
She's very pretty and dark, with tanned skin and dark freckles and some scars that indicate an interesting life. She blows smoke through her mouth and breaths it through her nostrils without a second thought and she has a frequent easy laugh. She makes fun of you in a friendly sort of way and you exchange stories and tease each other and you find that you don't miss Riley quite that much when Dina is around.
(The stories you exchange are easy and nice and light. Never dark ones, never brutal or bloody or deadly).
(You remember Joel's warnings and don't talk about you situation. Nothing about almost dying. Nothing about cures. Nothing about bite marks that never heal).
You feel awkward around Dina and Jesse, but they are too nice for you to be uncomfortable. Jesse is a true cowboy, with a little southern drawl and a friendly manner and a gentle way of teasing you, and Dina is sassy and smirking and your heart sinks and flatters when she pushes your shoulder and
(You never stood a chance).
Jesse lives in some old house on the other side of town, closer to the weaponry than to school and he's part of the patrol party. He has a small commanding role that you're very impressed by.
Dina says she'll be joining the patrol routine next month and Jesse makes a proud face and nods and teases her about not being a straight shot.
"You're just jealous I'm better than you," is what she tells him.
(You think they are cool).
Jesse likes Dina to the point of embarrassment and she doesn't seem to notice.
She is too popular and too pretty and too free to be bound and you make a point of being an ass. She has a never ending string of drooling fools following her, and they make Jesse look like a young demigod from one of your comic books.
Jesse calls the boys Dina goes out with 'pal' or 'him' or 'idiot'. You treat her boyfriends with a scorn because you like Jesse and they have a bond you don't really understand (and very much envy) and you prefer to see them together than having one of those soft boys tripping over his own legs in the pursuit of her.
You think the boys Dina meets are unworthy of her attention and you make fun of their names and make bets on how long each will last.
They never last.
//
Love, you think, is obsession, with undertones of nausea and a pinch of frustration.
You don't want it.
//
You have a mean mouth and no regard whatsoever for politeness. Bullies try to pick at you, but you're too tough and too smart and too angry to let them. You don't fight, instead you open your mouth and short and devastating comments do the trick.
Bullies are just scared stupid kids who think they know your soft spots, but they don't know how to act when served a taste of their own medicine and you make sure to surround yourself with the aura of potential verbal danger.
(When they don't settle, you throw fists and it's good enough, because you had some practice and the shielded, soft, safe kids of Jackson cannot compare to QZ cadets).
The teachers snap their fingers at you to get your attention. They call your name more than a couple of times, but because you have the answers to most of their questions, they don't say anything, just make faces and pat you hard on the shoulder.
(You doodle too much and you don't pay close attention).
"Man," Dina says and sounds like she's proud of you. "You're bad news wrapped in a small cute package, aren't you?"
You laugh. She makes a sound like air coming out of an inner tube
You nod. You understand it.
//
Dina walks you home after school, through different ways, along back streets and across dried muddy paths and down shadowy alleys and you talk and talk and talk and you've never met someone so interesting. So intelligent. So kind.
"What you really need is a TV," she makes suggestions now. "You need a good lamp" she's happy, making those small changes in your otherwise messy room. "You need a carpet!"
Your place is slowly becoming home. Now you have curtains and a cloth draped over one wall, added just because you like it. You have a shower curtain and a cup for your toothbrush and a nightstand.
Your place remains in a raw state, but it feels like the right thing to do and you and Dina lay in your bed and look out the window at the huge house across the yard, illuminated by the light from the street.
"You don't want to live with Joel?" she asks.
"Sometimes. But I like the quiet".
"You miss him?"
"When I don't see him, but I see him every day".
"Papa Bear." Dina laughs but her face is sad and pained and you don't touch her.
She doesn't stay sad for long. She shakes her head and says something about some of your furniture and then gets up and rearranges some of you things.
You are at peace.
//
Dina's place is much like yours, a cubical in the back yard of Jesse's parents' house.
"That's so cool of them," you say.
The smells in her place is a little strange and a little familiar and it's nice and soothing. In the corner, she has a big gold coloured candlestick like a tree, and everything in this small room blends into an image of sophistication.
"What’s this?" you ask.
"It's a Menora. A Hanukkiah. It was my sister's".
"To light the room?"
"Only on Hanukkah. It's a Jewish holiday".
"A holiday of light," you say and there's a warm feeling in your chest, spreading through your limbs.
Dina's smile is something watery and something excited.
"Yeah," she breaths and you feel like you said something important. "Exactly".
You stay at her place for hours and she tells you about her first few weeks in Jackson. She tells you about Jesse and his parents and her sister, and there is a sad undertone to her stories before Jackson and it's only later that you realise her sister is dead.
(You tell her about Joel and about months of travel. You tell her about Boston QZ. You tell her about Tess. You don't tell her about Riley).
//
You are in your bed and it's cold and dark. Even in the daytime, it seems to be too dark. When night falls the lights spark and the streetlights are far apart and not very bright and you like it (you like it you like it).
"Have you signed up for training?" Dina's voice is low and raspy and you turn your head and look at her.
The small lamps around your room cast a yellowish light, hot and buttery, and dim and it mixes shadows on Dina's beautiful face. The coloures in your room are all a little dirty, maroon and mushroom beige and yellowy-brown, and the air inside is a little heavy, thick with breath and unsaid truths, and your heart hammers in your chest.
"Ah-hmm." You say in affirmation and Dina smiles.
(You did. You have been working hard and making progress and one night Joel commented on how well you've been doing and how proud of you folks around the town are and tentatively, as to not make it a big deal, he offered you sign up for patrol duty).
But trainings haven't started yet and you'd have to complete a program before you can actually do something important, so in the meantime you read comics, spread on your stomach on the bed, pointing out certain plot twists and characteristics and having a pleasant argument with Dina over something unimportant.
You doodle and draw and colour and paint, filling your notebooks with sketches and diagrams and vivid dyes: hot pinks and violent purples and radiant blues and neon yellows. You sketch Dina's face and Tommy on his horse. You try to capture some of Jackson's buildings and a couple of people and you're improving.
Now, you're busy sketching a rough imitation of Dina. In the distance, Joel is listening to some old country music and you smell ink and paper and a hot scratchy tinge of wool and (Dina, Dina, Dina).
When she focuses on her comics, or her book, or her own journal, you watch her.
She has dark freckles and dark hair and dark eyes which glint with dangerous intentions and defiance and hope. She smiles a lot, lopsided smile, and she dismisses your awkwardness with a playful wink and you call her a jerk.
(She calls you stupid).
Everything about her is easy and wild and she has a certain air of power around her that you can't quite understand.
She wears dark shirts and light blouses and warm jackets. Her hands are rough from work and washing, skin often raw and bleeding with some new cuts from trainings of her hobby in electronics.
A little sharp wince of pain (jealousy) goes through you when she talks about Jesse and you hate it because you like him (you really do). You make yourself listen closely because it aches but it's also compelling.
It's curious and hungry and scary and thrilling, like a forbidden thing. Like a horrible treasure.
When you meet Kat, Dina's eyes dim and she doesn't talk about Jesse all that much anymore. Instead, she does her best to focus on safe topics and you don't really understand the problem until you see the way she acts around Kat and you think you might know what's going through Dina's head.
(You pretend not to see the same green glint of jealousy in her beautiful sinful black eyes).
(You recognise the look).
(You ignore it).
//
Sometimes you feel warm and boneless when you're with Dina. She is glowing like a plum in sunlight and you are deeply comforted (you are deeply moved).
She is richly coloured, perfect in form and it's almost physical, the pain in your chest.
You run your eyes over her like hands. Your adoration is physical and wordless and you refuse to call it by a name.
//
Joel sometimes paces your small room. He explains that being home on time is like being on time for patrol because if you are late, people who depend on you will be hurt.
You blink, teenage angst fest at its best, and you pretend not to understand.
"But who am I hurting by not being on time home?" You ask all big eyes and tight smiles and innocence.
Joel growls and jingles something inside his jeans pocket and frowns. He is exasperated. He is exhausted.
You can tell he's angry but he doesn't know why.
"I worry." He finally says, brows drawn down over his gnome eyes. Angry lines and a dark expression and squeezed fists.
"About what? I'm not going anywhere outside the walls".
"Damn straight".
"Jackson is safe".
"Just do what you're told." It's a plea more than anything and it makes you feel bad.
When Dina is around, Joel wears his old plaid shirts and hangs on his back porch with a hammer or a saw or a gun that needs tending and he grips her hand in his bear-like paw and shakes her and shakes her and shakes her.
(He does it to Jesse, only much harder and rougher. He does it to Kat, as well).
Joel assess Jesse with shrewd twinkly ironic eyes and calls him "boy". He calls Dina "kid" Kat "honey" and they answer him with a polite "sir".
Joel is acting like an embarrassing big brother, blurting out humiliating things that you can't anticipate or control. You feel older than him when he acts this way and when you tell this to Maria, sulking and angry, she laughs and smoothes your hair and tells you it's his way of showing love.
Dina tells you it's alright because that's what dads do.
"He's not my dad," you say stupidly and Dina stares.
Jesse is blunt. You like him. "Seriously?"
"Yeah," you shrug. "He's just my... he's just Joel".
They don't really understand the difference.
//
The sun lasts longer and longer and longer and goes down golden-red. The trees drop yellow leaves, falling twirling to the ground. The air is warm (warmer) and a little humid like an invisible mist and you wear lighter clothes and join the patrols.
You like going outside of Jackson. You often paired with Joel or Tommy, but sometimes you are riding with Jesse or Eugene and you find the new company rather happy.
Jesse is fun and easy and when you shoot random Runners and rummage through buildings for supplies, and the mournful cries of the infected doesn't bother you much. There is a pleasurable terror in being outside of Jackson, with a shotgun and a purpose, knowing tonight you'll sleep in the same bed you slept in yesterday, belly full and mouth laughing.
You collect Savage Starlight comic books and trading cards. You stack the comics in boxes and carry the cards around in your pockets, held together with thin rubber bands.
You don't have anyone to trade them with, or win them or play them. You just collect them, scavenging through old rooms and damp houses and broken children's drawers in bright bedrooms and wooden shelves. You enjoy your little rummaging and when you find a card you haven't seen yet, there is triumph in it.
Dina makes paper crowns and carboard figures of construction paper and she paints them pink and purple and blue. They are magnificent and Dina's face colour when you tell her that. She tries to teach you something about electronics, but you can't quite understand all her explanations and she gives up eventually, nocking her knuckles lightly against your forehead.
On your patrols, you find different items you're allowed to keep and you think of them as ancient artifacts like something dug up out of a tomb, but they are not ancient, just old and forgotten.
They are silly little things you enjoy.
You prowl around abandoned towns and among trees, looking for trespassers and loose infected. Joel and Tommy teach you to read the earth, mind the marks, look at the outlines of buildings and watch for danger. Maria teaches you to shoot better. Jesse shows you how to properly ride a horse and eventually you adopt a beautiful animal that goes by the name Shimmers, to be your patrol buddy.
Dina makes fun of you but you find out she has a horse of her own, Japan, and it's worth throwing this at her just to see her face shifting, reddening, splitting into a horrified expression.
You are laughing and Dina swats at your arm.
"Jerk," she tells you and when you only laugh harder: "Asshole".
(You shoot things. You're always cautious and you check before you pull the trigger).
(You shoot things).
(Nothing human).
//
You're wearing a striped red shirt and jeans, sitting out on your small house's roof, watching the sun and the sky, and some birds in the distance.
(Joel doesn't like it when you climb up here, but you do it anyway when he's not around).
Your burned arm is aching but the new bandage is a good sign because you won't have to hide your bite mark anymore. You've done it one night, and it hurt like a bitch but it isn't anything you can't handle so you keep it to yourself.
Kat is sitting next to you. She's older than you by a couple of years but you have more than few things in common and lately, you spend more and more time together.
You look out at Jackson's rooftops, talking about everything and nothing. You don't talk to Kat the same way you talk to Dina, but the difference doesn't feel bad.
You're excited.
Your ears are pricked and sniffing, like a dog, when you listen to Kat. She's talking about art and machinery, about oils, about history. She's tucking her silky black hair behind her ear, and you're fascinated.
You walk around town with her. People stand on street corners, outside general stores, and small shops. They have their hands in their pockets, fingers looped in belts. Some have dark faces, others merely tanned. Almost everybody wears a cowboy hat and they hide their curious glares under the brim of their hats. When you and Kat pass them, they walk slower and speak less and you and Kat laugh and laugh and laugh as you progress to the middle of the town.
Dina doesn't find Kat as interesting as you. On patrols, with melon-coloured sunsets and animals calling in the distance, the drown out rising note that sounds like wolves, she shrugs her shoulders and makes a face.
"What?" You ask but she doesn't explain and the rest of the patrol goes without commentary.
Despite her silence, Dina is poised, alert, the corners on her mouth tensed and you wonder if your eyes gleam like hers in the relative darkness.
"Off to see Kat?" Dina asks when you are back in Jackson, on your way to the stables.
"Maybe," you shrug your shoulders, nonchalant as if it doesn't bother you. as if it's nothing worth mentioning. "Why?"
Dina puts on the same indifferent act. "No, nothing. Just checking".
//
Joel, quite and sulking in Jackson's boundaries, is turned back to himself when you two paired for patrol. He has on his old jacket, his laced up boots, his plaid shirt, and he stomps through the woods with his axe looped through his backpack straps, and you can see it fills him with glee, makes his dark blue gnome eyes shine.
"You're hopeless." You tell him.
"Look who's talking." He barks back, smiling a wide smile.
The infected are everywhere in the woods and they crawl and click and moan and make their wobbly way around. They are many and you're few but you fought in worse places and with less ammo and Joel comes to life when he slips through their numbers like a dark angel of death.
"Like this, kiddo," Joel says when he teaches you, when there is no immediate danger in a fifty-mile radius. "And now, turn. Turn, Ellie! C'mon! Duck! Yeah! Now, stab, kiddo. Stab. Stab".
He's teaching you to fight, talking about strategies the way people talk about forest fires and war. He has a tone of respect and wonderment mixed with the sense of catastrophe and you let his knowledge and his teachings and his experience wash over you like a wave.
(You don't know it yet, but later, when he's gone, this isn't how you'll remember him. You will learn to find these memories much later on after his bloody image is somewhat blurred).
//
You learn and you dance and you read and you read and you read.
You spend your days with Dina and then other days with Kat. You patrol and you work inside Jackson and you learn to play guitar.
When the sun beats down and the heat coming up off the ground and you're sweating throughout the days and the nights, you and Dina and some other kids swim in the lake.
The leaves are fully out, the irises are in bloom and there's a heatwave. Your small place heats up like an oven and you sleep on top of the covers in nothing but your underwear.
In the afternoons Joel teaches you to swim and you don't like going over your depth but he pushes you on, gentle and serious and safe and it doesn't take long for you to glide through the water, though you don't like when the ground drops away beneath your weightless feet and it's deep.
Kat is a good swimmer, just like the rest of your friends, and you stay in shallow waters and watch them, with Dina by your side.
"You don't have to stay here," you tell her when you sit on the shore, toes digging in hot sand.
"Ugh," she groans. "Don't be stupid." And you know it means she'd rather spend the whole evening on the shore with you rather than in the middle of the lake with the others.
Some boys write in pee on the edge of sand and the pee arch makes a loud sound in the warm air.
Jesse is annoyed but Dina just laughs and when a boy flushes his penis in your direction, hot red anger spikes in your chest.
But Dina is calm. Her eyebrow arched up, a knowing taunting smile on her face and she doesn't have to say anything for the boys to know she isn't impressed.
(You punch their leader anyway, in the shadows of the trees. Your hands are shaking and you push your knee-high, between his legs, and he cries out in pain).
(He doesn't lower his pants in your presence anymore and when you swim in the lake, he keeps his distance).
Joel's house is cooler than yours inside. The house is silent and feels empty, even when Joel is home.
"Hey!" you call into the empty hall. "Anybody?"
"Here!" comes the booming reply. "Make yourself comfortable!"
You don't go into the living room, instead you walk past the stairs and through a door frame into the kitchen. Joel is there, in dark blue t-shirt and with a cloth over his shoulder and he's humming some tune. When you flop yourself on a barstool at the kitchen island, Joel rummages through his fridge and makes you freezing cold lemonade.
You don't talk about the past. You don't want to. It's painful and dark and it seems to you that Joel does his best to protect the both of you from your memories. Instead, he's talking about work and about Jackson and about Tommy and patrols. You tell him about beating up some boys and the latest plot of the newest Savage Starlight comics and you both do your best to pretend you're not hurt.
//
The leaves are turning dark red, bright yellow. The air is cooler and you spend more and more time with Joel, watching old movies about spies and ninjas and secret agents while eating crap, tucked into his side.
His scruffy face is dark and he has more and more experience wrinkles. His eyelids are heavy, world-weary, and not very tolerant. He grunts at the TV. He calls you "kiddo".
"Stop being so grumpy," you tell him. "It doesn't work. I know you love this movie".
"Wait till you see the third".
"There are three?" you're really excited. It's dumb and unrealistic, but you're having a good time and the plot has some really nice twists to it.
"Five." He says in a funny voice and you howl, head thrown back. It makes him laugh.
At night you walk outside and you look at people through their farmhouse windows, eating or sitting on sofas or playing with kids. They can't see you and you like it.
In the middle of September, Kat kisses you and you freak out. You drag her to the forest and spend your day by her side, watching closely for any signs of turning.
(You've read the old pamphlets about the infection, about the spread of the disease. And you are infected, in a way. The fact that somehow your body doesn't process the infection doesn't mean it isn't inside you).
In the forest, there is a sweet smell to the world, cidery, and drunk, like rotten apples.
Kat is smiling at you, unaware of the jumble of terrifying thoughts in your head. Her black shining hair falls into her black shining eyes and her mouth is slightly lopsided.
"What's up? She says and you shake your head, distracting her.
She thinks you have never kissed anyone before.
You don't correct her.
//
Kat touches your hand and cold shoots up your arm, into your stomach. Her hand is covering yours.
She shakes her head like she's giving up or has no choice. Then she pulls you down, draws you between her knees. She's sitting and you kneel on the floor before her and you tilt your head back, her hands are on your neck, caressing the back of your head.
It's foreign and dangerous and exciting, with some degrading potential. With some fear.
There is no fooling around. There is no nonsense. She kisses you and you kiss her back.
You feel shy with Kat. You're hyper-aware of your grubbiness, your unwashed hair, the lack of boobs on your thin muscular frame.
When she touches you under the shirt, you shiver but you don't swat her hands away. It's new, and a little scary, but it's something you want.
The dirt paths are dry and dusty and leafs on the trees are dull green and worn out from the summer and Kat kisses you on the lips in the middle of the town and you try not to squirm.
Kat smells like fresh paint and burned wires and you spend more and more time with her and less and less time with Dina.
(Dina smells like earth and mangos and flowery shampoo. She smells like leather and gun powder and sometimes like fresh dough).
(You miss her when she's not close).
You touch Kat with owe and excitement. She pulls your clothes off and you undress her eagerly and feel the length of her body.
You open up to her exploring touches, amazed and scared and young.
"Will you do anything for me?" She whispers.
You are swaying, your mind a misty jumble of far away thoughts. 'Yes' would be an easy answer at this moment.
"No." You say and it's unexpected and stubborn and truthful and you're afraid you hurt Kat.
She laughs, easy and light and her laugh touches you deeply. It seems like this is the answer she wanted, though you don't understand why. You don't understand a lot of things about Kat.
"Didn't think so," she says, nothing sad and everything proud.
Kat is fun and she offers you escape, running away from your duties with her big cat-like dark eyes. She offers a mess. She offers mischief.
You are aching but Kat is pure energy. Solidified light.
//
Kat isn't shy about you.
At first, you're scared about your friends' reaction. You're scared of her mother's disagreement, of Joel's harsh words.
There is none.
She calls you her girlfriend and her mother (a beautiful Asian woman with dark purple hair and an easy smile) hugs you tight. She doesn't think less of you. There is no ridicule. No danger.
Their home is messy and it smells like acrylic paint and socks. Their bathroom is dark with red footprints painted up the walls, across the ceiling. The living room is stark white, Kat's bedroom is glossy black.
Her mother is a sort of artist in her free time and there is a huge amount of canvases lying around. Some are colourful paintings and they hang on the walls, like beautiful abstract birds. Some are less definite, more realistic, and they pile against the walls in the corridor and the living room. She works in construction, but before the outbreak, she was a famous painter. She also makes huge paper sculptures.
Most of the art is nothing you can recognise. They are a moment of the process. They are pure painting.
When you tell this to Dina, her shoulders sag and she crushes the paper she's holding between her hot hot fingers.
"She sounds wonderful," is what Dina says. You know she doesn't really mean it, but you can't figure out what exactly is the problem.
//
You and Dina are often paired for kitchen jobs and you peel potatoes and carrots and onions, crying and laughing and being overall disgusting, throwing things around, and carefully cleaning the mess before someone catches you.
Peel falls from Dina's brown fingers in long pale spirals and the kitchen is steamy and smells like onions and soup and bleach.
(You smell like sweat and fried chicken. Dina has a faint outdoors smell about her. Tar and leather and sunny skin).
Dina turns to you and smiles. You are fifteen and anxious. You like having her close to you, even though Kat is a little hurt by your closeness. Not exactly jealous, but something similar. Something less.
"There's a party on Friday, at the edge of the town," Dina doesn't look at you, instead she focuses on the potato between her palms. She's caressing it, nervously. "Bonfires and music and that sort of things".
"Okay," you say.
"Don't 'okay' me," she throws you a dirty look. "You're going, too".
You scrunch up your face. "That's not really my thing".
"C'mon!" She almost whines. "You never show up to anything fun".
"I go on patrols. It's fun".
"Are you kidding me right now?"
You smile, a crooked smile, just to taunt her. "We go to the lake, sometimes. And we went together to last week's movie night. Don't you think it's fun?"
"Yes, it's fun, but parties are different".
"Pfft. As if".
"They are. Don't pretend like you don't know it".
You laugh again. "Okay".
"Whatever," she huffs. "You're annoying".
You laugh.
You laugh and Dina groans. Loud.
"Okay. How are parties different?"
"Well... Jesse steals a bottle of vodka from the stock and we dance".
"Jesse does that?" You're having trouble imagining Jesse stealing things. He's too good and too smart and too responsible to do something like that.
"Yep".
"Don't mention it to Joel. He thinks I'm in love with him, or something. He doesn't need more reasons to hate him".
"seriously?" Dina is laughing so hard his voice is cracking.
"Shut up." You groan and you don't talk about the party anymore, instead you have to explain why Joel has this weird misconception of your relationship with Jesse and it's hard to make Dina stop laughing long enough for you two to get back to work.
"Think about it," she says that evening. "Kat will be there. And also, vodka".
"Don't count on it".
But you can hardly take your eyes off of her and you know you'll be there. Kat and Jesse and vodka has nothing to do with your desperate want.
//
Some days you feel like a child. You run around with boys and girls, with a dirty looking Dina, and you all smell of grubby flesh and scalp and leather and sweat.
You run and play and practice. It's almost as good as being out. You gain wounds and you bleed and you call Dina names and she punches your arm playfully and you're free.
On other days you feel too old and too mature for clowning around and you sit with Kat and talk and talk and talk, serious and fascinated and still.
Kat has a vision and with her mother's help, she builds a tattoo machine and rearranges your moth drawings.
"You sure about that?" she asks one more time, hands smelling like alcohol and the needle in place.
You nod. "I'm sick of this scar".
She dips the needle in black ink and works on your scarred arm. It's your idea and the horrified look on Joel's face is annoying and satisfying all at once, but you get angry when Dina reacts with a cold scorn.
"The fuck is that, El?"
"It's… a moth?"
"A moth?"
"Yeah…?" you try to play it cool.
"A moth?"
"You know… like the ones I like to draw".
"Only this moth is tattooed on your arm".
"Yes, except for that".
"Tell me it wasn't your idea".
"Then who's idea was it, to tattoo my arm?" there's a lump in your throat and you're almost sneering at her.
"Kat's?"
"Fuck you, man".
"Yeah, fuck me. But you're the one who's stuck with a moth on her arm for the rest of your life".
"Or until I have an accident." You aim for light but land far away from it.
Dina looks horrified. You walk away.
Dina is causing you some anguish as well as excitement lately and you try to pour it all into Kat, even though you only partly succeed.
After a few silent days, Dina is at the back of your mind, sometimes almost forgotten and far in between. When you meet her you're always surprised. She isn't the same and you feel like you're pretending to be a grown-up when she actually is, and the fact that she's always glancing at your right arm doesn't help your anxiety around her.
Dina has full breasts and is heavier in the hips and face now. It's a lovely round addition that makes her look even more beautiful than before. She wears dirty jeans and cut off shirts and it's working for her and you can't shake her image for hours after you part ways.
You feel clumsy next to her. You're thin and flat and your jeans don't have the same cool air hers does, even though yours are equally as dirty.
You like Kat. You like her a lot. She has some magic to her you can't explain and she's making you stupider and more nervous than anybody else.
(Anyone, except for Dina).
You try to tell yourself it's the same.
(It isn't).
For the Christmas and New Year Joel gets you posters of space and a star map and you pin it to the wall and you sit and watch the sky with an open window, in the cold, with a heavy coat over your night clothes.
Kat knows a lot about space and she spends time with you. She teaches you new names and reference them to charts.
"The stars are like echoes," you tell Dina one night when Kat is busy and Jesse is out on a two-day patrol, and Joel is in the lookout outside of town. You've started hanging out again. She's even staying the night, now.
"We don't actually see them, just the light they sent thousands of years ago".
You and Dina have your heads tilted up and you both are squinting into the cold and infinite darkness, into the blackness where the ancient flaming lights boil and boil and boil.
"I love it".
Dina smiles a soft smile and your heart aches for her. She has a protective coating you like, a light air about her, immunity of her own sort.
Your throat feels tight and sore and your feet hurt.
//
Kat's kisses have a dark, satisfying, nasty air to them, something mysterious and something repulsive and something exciting blooms in your chest when she kisses you and it's terrifying and amazing and your head is spinning.
You fidget a lot during those times, nervous and sweating, and with your heart in your throat. You think you are doing it wrong, clumsy and needy, and not as poised as Kat, even though she smiles and hums and kisses you harder when you tell her how you feel.
Your stomach contracts, your hands go cold and it's difficult to swallow.
Kat is smiling her special smile she reserves for you.
She kisses you. She kisses you. She kisses you.
//
What you do with Dina is nothing to worry about, but Kat acts jealous and Joel has a crease in his brow and Jesse is looking at you from the corner of his eye, concerned but silent.
You watch movies and smoke weed and talk and talk and talk. You don't touch her. you don't kiss her cheek.
There is a crust of ice over the ground, where the top layer of snow has melted and unfrozen. The air is filled with light and cold and you feel the pressure against your face.
You spend more and more time with Dina, now. She and Jesse are breaking up and going back together and breaking up again and Dina (fun laughing carefree Dina) is looking kinda sad and agitated lately and you're having trouble not punching Jesse in his beautiful tanned face whenever you see him because (what an idiot).
She spends more time with you and on days when you stay in bed, when she's lying next to you and mocks you and lets you laugh good naturally at her expenses, you feel relief.
When you are with Dina you feel as if you've been running for a long time and have reached a place where you can rest.
Having her around is pleasant and exciting. It's something like danger without the edge.
You lie in bed, propped up on your elbows and you listen to Dina talk over the sounds of The Clover 4 or Scribbling Kids Concept or The Sick Habit. Winter sunlight slants in through the window, between the half-drawn curtains, and your new tattoo (not so new now) pulses and aches and throbs.
Later, you can't tell what was it exactly you spend hours talking about, but it's nice and soothing and she doesn't look so sad anymore.
Time is passing. The future is taking shape. You drink in Dina's beautiful face, her curvey body, the slope of her nose.
You hope for courage.
You don't pray.
//
The snow is melting from the lawns and Joel circles you warily. He's anxious and wide-eyed and you laugh at him.
"You're really shitty in keeping secrets".
"You won't think that once you see it".
"See what?"
"Nah. It's a surprise".
He takes you on a trip for your birthday and it's stupid, how amazing it feels. There are huge dinosaurs and ancient bones and old museums and space crafts and you wonder around the place, excited and happy and childish, heart in your throat and tears in your eyes.
You are walking around free and light, daring, so damn happy.
Joel gives you a present and you choke on tears. He gives you another and you sniffle a cry.
"Welcome to earth, kiddo".
Back in Jackson, Dina drags you by your hand to a secret hiding place, a mile or two outside of Jackson, and she gives you a beautiful paper crown and a kiss on your cheek and you feel lightheaded.
The summer comes and goes and then it's autumn and then winter.
//
The winter melts, leaving grubby scum of cinders, wet leaves, soggy old garbage.
Joel is always sad, always searching for an opening but you're too angry with him. He lied and lied and lied and you can't look at him without seeing Riley, Tess, Sam, their faces rotten and sad and your own shortcomings a painful reminder. You can't look at him without feeling stupid, like a fraud.
You feel selfish, because of him.
You are so damn angry.
Kat is distant and sad, too. Dina and Jesse are bickering all the time. Sometimes she stays at your place, eyes red and wet, and you say nothing, just play her songs on your old guitar, trying your best not to pry or cross any lines.
"What happened to Kat?" She ask.
"Nothing. We kinda drifted apart".
"Because you spend too much time with me?"
You shake your head. "No. I don't think so".
The sun shines, the marbles return. The voices of the children rise in the streets and you realise you're too old to run around with them.
They sound like ghosts. Like animals trapped. They sound like pain and you focus on Dina Dina Dina.
You go on patrols and you clean areas that belong to Jackson and you ignore Joel. The daylight lasts almost till midnight and heat descends over the streets like a steaming blanket. You ignore Joel.
The annual bonfire takes place one night and you sit close to Dina. You play on your guitar and you watch her smile and you are so deeply in love with her you can barely contain your need to kiss her.
(You don't kiss her, and she looks sad).
You are paired with Dina often, so often it's known by now that you are patrol partners.
On one particular swipe, you leave Jackson behind, a smear of brownish air on the horizon. When you're far enough, you turn on Shimmer's back and look.
The air is crispy. Ravens pick at some dead animals between the trees, and granite and concrete rocks that used to be buildings rise straight up out of the ground with the road cutting through it. You see a small lake, a fire tower, and an old gas station that smells like gasoline and old cheese.
You feel relieved, glad to be away from town (away from Joel). Your throat is no longer tight, you don't clench your teeth any longer. You don't have to swallow foul words.
You spend time with Dina.
You clear the grounds of Runners and Stalkers and two or three Clickers. You smell them from afar. They smell like rot and rust and sweat. They smell like dried saliva. They smell like death.
"Good job, El." Dina smiles her big smile, dark eyes shining, blood smeared on her cheek.
You wipe your arm with the coat sleeve across your face, which is wet because you too are bleeding, and you smile.
"Almost had me, the fucker".
"I would never let something happen to you".
"Yeah," you breathe. "Same".
And you climb back on your horses' backs and move on.
You dream a lot. Your dream of old dead people you used to know. In your dreams, they are alive and look dead and you wake up with your heart beating fast, tears staining your face.
You dream about blue stars falling from the sky. They fall on you, in you, and they are not huge and burning hot, but small and cold like stone and you wake up on the floor, tangled in your blankets, not knowing where you are or how you got there.
You dream about deadly barriers. When you touch them they burst and blood is running over your fingers, filling your palms, and you wake up crying and wheezing and you miss Joel.
You dream that you kiss Dina and she kisses you back. You take her clothes off and you touch her between her legs. You wake up tossing and turning and wet and you are glad it's dark and you're alone.
You dream about broken bridges and burning sand, you dream about dams, you dream about big cities, you dream about Halloween themed stores and talking skulls and ravens and dark-skinned girls who you know are not Riley.
You know they all just silly dreams and they mean nothing but you're scared out of your mind anyway.
You start avoiding sleep altogether.
//
On patrols, the nights are cold and the leaves beginning to turn, but inside Jackson's walls, it's still hot, still damp. It's astonishingly noisy and stinks like gasoline and horse shit and melting roads. The air inside your house is stale and flat and you don't visit Joel in his big house, but you know it smells the same, like air that's been trapped in the heat.
Misery washes over you. Sometimes, at parties, you isolate yourself. You listen to the bursts of laughter that get louder and louder and you drink alcoholic drinks that burn the inside of your mouth and you watch Dina dance with boys and you get angrier and angrier.
Patrols are easy, but you're so fed up with everything, even the outbursts of energy and the occasional violence is not enough.
You and Dina fight.
She glares at you. "You're a fucking idiot".
"You don't need to be such an asshole," you reply and you can feel the anger builds in you and you know shit's gonna hit the fan (it's something Joel would say, and it doesn't make you feel better).
Something flashes in Dina's dark dark (beautiful) eyes, but then her gaze is cold and she moves away.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" It's nothing more than a breath, angry and freezing cold and seething.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" You're not thinking, just spitting words and Dina shakes her head.
There is silence and you fidget with your bitten fingers, lick the dark scrabs on your lips where you pulled off patches of skin, the small gushes from an earlier encounter with some hostile infected.
Dina has blood on her forehead, not much, just a cut. She must have been hit on the head by one of the Runners, or by her own savage swings. The skin around her dark brown eyes is red and puffy, her black heavy hair sticking out in all directions from a messy bun.
She looks furious. She looks wild. She looks done.
(She looks darker than usual, her teeth shine and shine and shine, but it's an angry look, not a happy smile).
There is guilt on your hands and you feel like a fool. You want to be good and kind and loving, you want to be gentle. To be soft.
You are not good. (You are not gentle and you are not soft). You've seen too much and done too much and know too much to be anything but cruel and vengeful and greedy and sly.
This is what you tell yourself.
Dina should know better.
There is a strange foreign energy around her, a simple rage. Reckless anger. Careless spite.
"You're a fool. You're doing it on purpose. I know you're so much fucking better than that".
"You know shit!" You answer in an angry snarl.
"Well, then. You should know better. What the fuck were you thinking?"
The unfairness of her words hit you like a kick. A hot wave moves through your body, a wave of shame, and of hatred with a particular shape. It's white-hot and heavy and thick and it frightened you because you don't want to hate Dina.
You stand in front of her, frozen with anger. Your head is empty except for her words and you don't know why she's so mad.
"Fuck you." Is what you say and Dina stares.
"Fine. Fuck me." She says and walks away.
//
It feels rebellious and dangerous and almost blasphemous, though you don't believe in anything like a higher power.
You're nervous and your heart beats harder, your hands are cold.
You knock on Dina's door. Ones. Twice. Three times.
She opens the door and you stare at her, mouth open, jaw hanging low. You stand there, defiant and dry-eyed and without hope.
You want to tell her you're sorry, but she just takes a step toward you, wraps her arms around your shoulders and presses close.
It's nothing happy and nothing grand and something hopeless and you squeeze your fists in her shirt when you hug her back, so hard they hurt, and you bury your nose in her neck and stand and wait and breathe.
You fight sometimes, but it's never so bad.
//
The sky thickens and sinks lower. You and Dina walk to your place under the low thick sky, the grey and black clouds bulge with dampness.
"If it rains, tomorrow's schedule is cleared".
"That's lucky".
"It also means I'll have to stay over. Sorry, El. I'm not swimming through Jackson again," and you both laugh at the memory of a drenched Dina from a year or so ago.
"Deal. But you can't be mean to my music".
"Was I ever?" She has a mock-hurt look on her face and you punch her shoulder playfully. When she doesn't react, you push her and she tumbles, almost falls over.
There is no wind and your laugh is carrying through the unpaved streets.
"You and Joel are still on bad terms?"
"Kinda," you shrug and you don't want to talk about it.
"Oh, man. Where are we going to make hot chocolate and watch scary movies, then?"
"Erm... excuse me, but what is wrong with my TV?"
Dina quirks her eyebrows and she has a very nice, very pretty, mocking look on her face.
"Are you seriously comparing it to Joel's flat screen?"
"My TV has a flat-screen".
"Dude," she breaths. "You're hopeless".
(You're in love).
//
Nothing hurts and at the same time, everything hurts. You run through the broken buildings, Runners, and other infected chasing after you. They are shouting and roaring and groaning.
You are up in the main path to Jackson now, the lights from the town are near, somewhere above you, and you are dirty and wet and cold.
You are not running straight, but you insist on moving your feet one in front of the other.
Up ahead are people and the main gate. As you reach it, Dina is walking towards you very fast. Her jacket is flapping, her boots half fastened, her hair a mess. You can see she's wearing a plain tank top under the jacket, which means she was asleep and somebody woke her up. You think, in your half daze, that it's too cold for her to walk around like that.
(She has a gun and when she sees you, she begins to run).
You stop, watching her running figure with the flapping jacket on either side of her.
She comes up to you and you see her lights, large and gleaming with wet, unspilled tears, her face a mask of panic and terror. She throws her arms around you and when she does, the pain and the cold shoot back into you. You start to shiver violently.
"Fuck!" She whispers in your ear. "Ellie!"
"They surrounded us," you say in a haze and she smooths some hair from your forehead, smears blood all over your face. "Jack..." your voice sounds thick, the words mumbled. Something is wrong with your tongue. "He didn't make it".
Dina doesn't say anything. She takes off her jacket and wraps her around you. Her mouth is tight, her face is frightened and angry at the same time. She puts her arm under your armpit, wraps your hand around her neck, and drags you inside.
She puts you in a bath of warm water and then feeds you a cup of hot tea and puts you into your bed with two extra blankets on top.
"You want me to call Joel over?"
"No".
"I'm gonna stay here tonight, okay? I know you're all rough and tough and shit, but I'm still gonna hang around for a while".
You're too tired and too hurt and too shocked to argue, too tired and hurt to try your usual soft bullying communication. You just smile and she looks more worried by that.
You close your eyes.
She stays the night.
//
You walk around Jackson a lot. Past stables and strip of shops, a mile to the north, then back to the cemetery. You walk through the main street, past rows of stores, all of them in two-story flat-roofed brick and wood buildings.
Dina sits on the sofa, in your room, and rolls her eyes with ecstasy as some country singer's disembodied voice appears, sliding on the tunes like someone slipping on muddy sidewalks.
Kat hangs out in your place too, though not when Dina is there. After your little run with the infected, you and Dina drift even closer together as you and Kat drift slowly apart.
Kat calls you sweet names and she is charming and beautiful and airy and she finishes your arm tattoo, her delicate fingers soft and her touch a little scared, like she's already gone and doesn't know how to communicate with you any longer.
She isn't on patrol duty and she hasn't ever fought off infected. She makes faces and shakes her head when you try to explain it and you keep your bloody stories for Dina and Jesse and Tommy.
When you feel inspired, you try to talk to Joel but his eyes remind you too much of lies and dark deeds and you find that there is no pressing need for you to hang around him.
So you don't.
You smoke and drink and lie upside down and play video games. You read comics and argue with Dina about your favourite characters and blow smoke from your nose, feeling light-headed and sleepy, and fourteen (even though you're seventeen now).
When Dina mentions girls, you flush. When she's talking about breaking up with Jesse you feel sorrow and when she's too close you imagine what it would be like, kissing her.
Dina likes to make faces in the mirror, and it's not vain and when you laugh and ask her if she cares to unglue herself from her reflection, she flips you off and points at her face and says "look at this. How can i?" And it's a part joke and a partial truth and you don't tell her that you'd spend your days looking at her, too, if she'd let you.
When you're not busy with admiring Dina's face or trying not to kiss her, or die a gruesome death on your patrols, you consume alarming amounts of space facts and you draw and write and occupy yourself.
Time, you read, is a dimension and you can't separate it from space.
You read about how there are no discrete objects which remain unchanged, set apart from the flow of time. You read about how space-time is curved and the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line but a line following the curve. You read about time being shrunk and time being stretched and how it can run faster in some places than in others. You read about how space is mostly empty and how matter is not really solid.
This one is super fun to speculate about and as you draw you think that if you knew enough you could go faster than light, or move through walls because you're a solid light, you're just a pack of atoms moving at a certain speed, just like the wall, and if time becomes space and space becomes time, you would be able to travel to the past.
(Past fascinates you more than the future these days).
You talk with Dina about whether the universe is infinite and unbounded or infinite and bounded and it's a heated argument you can't settle, though you try your best.
You tease each other, just a little, but the air is too thick and there is something heavy between you. You want to touch Dina. Her eyes glim and you think she wants to touch you, too.
Neither of you make a move. You keep talking, keep laughing, keep teasing. Both of you are stubborn. Both of you are scared.
//
The trees look temporary without their leaves. Much of the ground is untouched and Maria dropped her attempts at making you talk to Joel.
(Joel, with his craggy eyebrows, his wolfish look. He is ironic and scary and full of terrifying charm you miss so much. He doesn't push anymore and your heart is aching for him).
(You're too proud to do something about it and so you are stuck with his slumped shoulders and mournful look).
Now you're out, away from him and from Jackson and from Kat. Away from Jesse. Away from nightmares you only get inside the walls.
There are scar-like giant claw marks on the ground and nothing makes sense. The buildings here are few and recent, blockish oblongs of too many stories without any attempt at prettiness.
You're having trouble focusing because today you ride with Dina. It's a very quick scout and you have your knives and rifles and shotguns ready.
You ride through unmarked gravestones and bared trees, pointing out possible places to gather supplies. The world is cold and grey and oafish.
You see houses, check doors, jump over small fences, and through chain links. It's strange and oddly pleasant, the quiet of the vast wintery world.
The place with the few buildings stretches out before you, acres and acres and you pass a small stream, frozen at the sides, cold and clear.
Nothing about this place is scary. It's too pragmatic. Too ugly. Too empty to frighten you. It's neat and abandoned and Dina presses at your back, shivering from the cold, her knee digging painfully but pleasantly at your thigh.
You ride for a while without speaking, not knowing exactly where you're going. The trees are tall and the buildings are old and there are birds chirping somewhere on the empty branches.
"Why did the moron threw the clock out the window?" You say over your shoulder and you can't wait for Dina's groan.
She's caught off guard. "Why?" She says, puzzled.
You grin. "To see the time fly".
She laughs. "Man," she says. "This is awful".
"What did the moron say when he saw three holes in the ground?"
Dina furrows her eyebrows. She shrugs. "Dunno. What?"
You can hardly sniffle your laugh. "Well well well," you say.
She snorts. "Ha ha".
"Come on! I know you think it's funny".
"It's actually horrible. Don't tell me it's from this book of puns".
You grin. She rolls her eyes.
//
It's not cruel or resentful. You and Kat are just sort of falling apart. You are no longer sleeping together. Sometimes you try, sometimes she lets you, but you crumble and by the end of the year you think of her as someone who used to be your friend.
You are no longer a couple, even though things were never really that explicit between you. When you were together, you were together and that's about as far as it ever went.
You smile at her and she hugs you and you talk a little when you meet. There are no hard feelings. She has a new girlfriend and you are too busy thinking about Dina for it to bother you.
You are happy for her.
//
You're aware that writing songs about Dina is not fashionable and you might get teased, so you do it in secret. You pour too much of yourself into it to be comfortable enough for anybody to read it.
You find out it's easy for you to think about music and so you write and write and write, playing all kinds of variations on your guitar. You don't think about it as songs or original music. You just do it to keep Dina out of your system.
(It has the opposite effect, but you keep trying).
You feel silly. You feel like you're imitating something, but the process is nice and it lifts a heavy burden off of your shoulders and even though you think about it mostly like a random sampling from your memories of Dina, you keep on.
//
"Get fucked, you fucking fucker!" Your face is red and you're done being nice and happy about bigotry.
Your hands are fists, your chin is trembling.
"Dyke!" The man screams back and you don't know what the word means, but Maria is forming as if out of thin air, her features are wild and angry and you see how the line is crossed, between histrionics and murder, and you get the notion.
(It has something to do with your sexuality, no doubt. You've been getting some shit about it from some fathers as if you're the only problem in the equation).
"Shut your gap, Jebadiah," Maria says, low and scary and Tommy is right beside her, looking as angry and wild as she does.
(Behind their backs, you flip Jebadiah off and Dina makes a gasping sound).
Dina has her arms secured tightly about you. She's pushing you away.
"C'mon," she greets through her teeth. "Let's go".
"Or we could teach this fucker a lesson!" you scream over her shoulder and she pushes you harder.
"If you were a man," she says in a low voice and a proud smile is tugging on her lips when you are far from the forming crowd around drunk Jebadiah and his idea of modecty. "He would have shot you".
You smile sweetly, though you don't feel like smiling. "But I am not one".
Then there is a rustle of clothes around you, you are soothed and consoled, patted by rough warm (loving) hands.
//
The air is soft, autumnal, the sun shines far in the horizon. You are standing still, leaning against the dark wooden bar, watching the moving bodies in the unmoving wind.
Out of the window you see the sun sinking in a murderous, vulgar, unpaintable, and glorious display of red and purple and orange, the dark night is already rolling forward.
The bartender is polishing glasses behind the long bar and you extract a glass of golden whiskey from him.
He doesn't approve of you. You can see it in his eyes. He is nonchalant but implying with tight lips and squinted eyes.
(His eyes are eyes they say 'look at me' and say 'i see you' and say 'you don't belong here', even though that you know you do).
(His eyes are considerable malice and mockery and discretion, but also uncertain and melancholy and defeated and you don't really care what he thinks).
(His eyes are the eyes of someone for whom God is a sadistic old man. His eyes are the eyes of a small-town decency. His eyes cannot see beauty or love or friendship).
You walk slowly along the bar, sipping on your whiskey, permiting yourself to look at the dance floor, seeking out the only person you really want to see.
You crane your neck, seeking through the crowd, peering. Disappointment is building in you, and impatience. And then, anxiety.
You spot her on the dance floor. She's laughing, flushed with excitement. With exertion.
There are the ends of fingers, only lightly. She is dancing with some lucky bastard you can't remember the name of. You drink whiskey and watch her and try not to wince at Jesse's sadness, when he slumps next to you, hair damp, smelling like a fresh bouquet.
"She's putting on quite the show." He says, guestering to Dina.
"I give you two weeks before you're back together".
He snorts, quiet and sad. "Not gonna happen," he says and there is no hope.
Dina sneers when she makes her way toward you. She's dripping with sweat and she smells like Dina, a little like burned wood and new leather and sun kissed skin and flowery shampoo. It's a good fresh girly smell and you are swaying on your feet.
"Dina," Jesse says with hopefulness in his voice. There is effort and rainbows.
"Jesse," Dina says with such venom you barely recognize her.
She drags you to the dance floor, slowly and out of breath. Neither of you wants to be caught in this magical wheeze.
"How bad do i smell?" She says in mock seriousness and her face splits in a wide smile.
You sniffle her, playfully. She smells good but you can't expose yourself like that, so you do your usual thing.
"Like a hot pile of garbage." (You're smiling, too).
"Oh! Okay!" and she puts her cheek on yours and rubs herself on your skin. Her skin is damp and sticky.
"Gross." You groan.
She laughs, bright-eyed, and conspiratorial and familiar.
"You love it." She says, gleefully, and her eyes are dark and sinful and they spell trouble.
(You are drowning in them. Black pools of desire. Or ink).
She puts your arms on her waist. It's familiar there, like knowing where the light switch is in a house you lived in but haven't been back for years, though you never touched her quite like that.
Dina puts her arms around you. She jokes lightly, very messy and fun, everything like your usual soft teasing, and you try to do the same, keep the situation light, but then she puts her nose in the angle of your neck and it's a gesture of desire but also of fatigue.
When she kisses you, you are surprised. It's a kiss with a certain gravity, with some selfishness and relief. It's a comforting kiss, with Dina like rhythm, with greeting.
For a moment you're too shocked to move, but then you are kissing her back with a sort of tender jealousy, with an edge of darkness.
You are kissing and it feels like falling downstairs. You're stumbling, clutching to her, holding on tight. The balance is lost when she pushes her tongue into your mouth and you both plunge down headlong, noisily and without grace.
No suppressed anger, no childish anger, no false calm.
//
It's full night, clear and moonless and filled with stars. They are not eternal lights but echoes of something that happened millions of years ago, shining in the middle of nothing.
Making love with Dina isn't the same as with Kat or any other girl. It's not sweet or like an agonizing trance. It's fast and hot and dirty, like puppies in the mud. Like street fighting. Like in jokes.
This night is shaped like love but it's also coloured with harsh war colours and metallic and the old light of thousands and thousands and thousands of stars are not much, but it's enough for now and you kiss Dina.
And for the time being, you are happy.