Angle
The point of the dances is to boost morale. Tommy will say it's all about cutting loose and having a good time and blowing off steam, Maria will say it's about tradition and forging bonds and giving those shy young couples a chance. But Pike will say—correctly—that it is about morale. Objectively. End of story.
Even with everything Jackson has accomplished over the years, there’s no mistaking that it’s a delicate project. It can be shaken by such simple things: a bout of sickness—cholera, dysentery, influenza; a patrol that goes wrong; a poor yield of crops; a bandit with above-average aim; a damaged water filter; a trade deal that doesn’t pan out; a divorce, a miscarriage, a stillbirth. And winters are, without fail, the most grim of the seasons.
There is rarely good news so they must make their own. This is a source of ceaseless consternation for Pike.
Consider the present moment. Salvo is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed coolly, trying to look like he has every reason to be there. Pike sighs and looks up from re-measuring out the biofuel reserves. “You need something, Salvador?”
He scoffs, as if that were not the reason he had been awkwardly loitering about for the last ten minutes. “What gave you that idea?” He speaks in that always-half-sarcastic way that Pike can hardly comprehend. Dina calls it "post-ironic," but Dina being Dina, she also could have been being... sarcastic. To Salvo's credit, he does tone the sass down for Pike. Most of the time.
“You. You gave me that idea.”
He glances around, checks the door, and his tough-young-rebel front evaporates. Salvo becomes Sal. “Pike, please tell me you’re going to the dance Saturday night.”
Pike snorts and returns to her bookkeeping, shaking her head in amusement.
“This is serious!”
“Are you sure? You should double check. I don’t know if it is.”
“It's not a—okay, okay, look. It's like this. You know Jess?”
Pike’s brow furrows. She's good with names, especially spelling, but bad with faces. When Joel and Ellie first arrived she inexplicably called Joel "Tommy " for a month, and then for the next year he was "Tommy's brother." Joel took it in stride. Ellie thought is was hilarious. “Jesse? Robin’s son?”
“What? No, no! I'm talking about—girl Jess! As in Jessica!" A beat. "You know Jessica, right?”
Another pause. “I know of her.” Everyone knows Jessica, and everyone likes Jessica. She's the flower girl. She has a talent for growing things, had taken to agriculture quickly. Had an unsettling ability to detect pests or diseases in the crops, like she could sniff them out or something. But what brought her the most joy was growing flowers--all varieties, all colors. Cactus, rose, sunflower, orchid—if it grew and flowered, she loved it unconditionally. So naturally in late spring, on the dot, she goes around putting flower arrangements in all the stores and common areas and gathering places, making wreaths for doors, garlands for the youngest kids. The older residents absolutely adore her, the children think she's magical because she claims she learned how to garden from the "fey." Whatever that meant.
Pike thinks she's sentimental, simpering, sanctimonious, and outright annoying. Jessica's also quite squeamish (she balks at blood and cries whenever a beloved pet is put down), which Pike considers a mark of unacceptable weakness. Admittedly, Jessica has never caused problems (especially compared to the constant mischief of Ellie and Dina and Jesse, the prank-hellions), she's just... the kind of person who irritates Pike by simply existing. That may sound unkind, but that's not an insult or a moral judgment. It's just how things are.
Unfortunately, because Pike's life is just someone else's comedy, Salvo likes the girl. So Pike leaves her critiques insinuated, unspoken. Deadpan tones and blank expressions. Salvo was quick to catch on, all the same.
"She's going to the dance."
Pike waits.
"... She's going because I asked her to go!"
Pike waits, less patiently. There's a tiny flower tucked into the front pocket of his jacket, held in place by the zipper. Easy to miss. She squints at it.
"Hello?! This is me we're talking about! I've never asked someone to a dance! Not in, like, a real date way! I don't know what the fuck to do!"
"You dance," Pike says flatly. "That's why it's called a—"
"When do I meet her? Do I talk to her parents? Do we have dinner first? What am I supposed to do?" Salvo rambles on, not seeming to have heard her. "The movies aren't any help, like—you saw Grease, right? Or maybe not, you'd probably hate it—but what the Hell was all that? None of that shit is realistic! And it's not like the library keeps books on this!" As if Salvador would have the bravery to look the librarian in the eye check out a book called "How to Date Girls Like a Normal Boy" anyway.
Pike looks up from her logbook. Salvo has paced around the entire room about five times, based on the stomp of his boots. This is irksome, considering that he keeps passing in front of the space heater and blocking the warmth Pike needs to keep her writing hand fine-motor-skill functional. She sets down her pen, aligning it exactly parallel with the edge of the logbook. "Why did you ask her to the dance, then?"
"Because—!" He throws up his hands. "Fuck! I don't know! I just—I just saw her, and we were talking, and I just felt—I don't know, okay? I just did it. I wasn't thinking."
"You just felt what?"
"I don't know! Oh, God. Is this what they mean when they say love makes you crazy? Is this what all the love songs meant? Oh my God, this is the worst. Getting shot was better than this."
Pike blinks. And, briefly, she gets a deep sense of... pity. When she was eighteen years old, she hadn't sprinted a gauntlet of cruelty and brutality—she had just lived. Salvo had spent his years surviving, and as such, never had time to learn anything else. He lost his parents just weeks before the three of them could make it through the gates of Jackson, and—as things turned out—Pike unexpectedly found herself the main source of Salvo's village-elder wisdom. Most boys saw the heroics of Joel and Tommy and Eugene and followed in their footsteps. But Salvador—then Sal—now Salvo—just had to go and become Pike's apprentice, for some reason. Her, out of everyone! Pike! The unsmiling woman old enough to be his grandmother. As it was, she always resented it deeply.
Not him. The world in general.
"No," Pike says, voice suddenly stern. "You getting shot was worse." Because the whole town worried. Because Pike worried, and that never happens. Pike didn't worry at all when she was cornered by Clickers in an electricity station a decade ago and was about to be ripped limb from limb (she had felt oddly... relieved?). But... when she saw Salvador's pale face, his body unmoving on the stretcher... the clothes sheared back with trauma scissors, the creeping tangle of reddened bandages. She can still feel it like yesterday in her fingers, arthritis be damned—the fumbling with his slippery dog tags to find his blood type because she would always fucking forget, her hands shaking when she lifted the steel plates to the light—
"That's why you need to be at the dance! If I say something wrong or do something stupid, you can send me a signal, or interrupt, or—"
Pike holds up a hand to halt Salvo's pacing just before he crosses in front of the heater again. "That sounds like something that would be in a movie. A dumb comedy movie."
Salvo sighs. "Shit. Yeah... yeah, it does. Well, that's it then, I'm fucked. I'll embarrass her in front of everyone, Jess will never talk to me again, and—"
"Has anyone invited Jess to a dance, before?"
"Uh, yeah. Have you even seen her?" Salvo nearly sounds offended at the idea that other boys wouldn't be fighting to the death over his totally-not-girlfriend.
Pike resists rolling her eyes, somehow. "I meant in a..." Pike makes exaggerated quotation marks in the air with her fingers. "Real date way, as you said."
Salvo cringes at the gesture. "Don't do that again, that hurt. And, I mean, maybe? Probably?" He becomes pensive, eyes darkening as he studies the floorboards. "Like, at the time, she acted like she was excited, but... that's her being polite, right?"
"Has she turned people down?"
"... Well, sure." He smirks. "You know back when Steve's brother—"
"No, I don't care about Steve's brother. You asked Jess because you wanted to. She said yes, because she wanted to." Pike stands up and stretches, joints faintly popping. Her ass is a bit sore from sitting too long. "So in a way, it's kind of like..." Pike makes the air quotation marks again. "Hanging out."
"Stop," he groans.
"Am I wrong? You're hanging out at the dance instead of at the park or the bar or..." Pike waves vaguely. She has no idea what little miss Jess sees in Salvo—he's a smart dumbass on good days, a dumb smartass on bad days, and doesn't show any sign of evolving into a proper cultured wiseass. But he's her kid. She's fifty nine years old, so all of Jackson's kids essentially declared themselves her nieces and nephews, sure, but Salvo is in some ways her late-to-come firstborn. And like Hell is Pike going to let this girl make a fool out of her charge.
"It's not that simple," Salvo complains. He does that a lot, too: complain when she tells him the truth.
"It is. Dating, courting, and so on. People like people. Don't overthink it, and don't let her intimidate you. Some things don't change."
Salvo snorts. "So that's how they did it in Canada back in the day?"
"Yeah, exactly that. And then the next summer we'd have our babies, so we were doing something right."
"Gross."
Pike shrugs. "Life." She pauses. "Go ask Dina and Jesse how they got together. Learn something." Not exactly a model relationship, something more fit for the movies than reality, but still.
Salvo shook his head. "Oh, yeah. I did. I kept asking 'em, but... they're... not really sure?"
Pike closes her eyes and nods, unsurprised. Romance is the same as it ever was.