Walking With the Dead

Emma had plans to spend the rest of the afternoon idly knitting or reading, but life had other plans for her. The days were growing shorter, and the nights colder. Summer was gone, and winter was just around the corner. With every passing day there was more work that needed to be done to prepare for what was sure to be the most difficult winter Emma had ever seen.

First Hershel needed help delivering a breech calf. Then Carl, Beth and Patricia asked for help harvesting the remainder of the autumn squash, which they were going to preserve in jars tomorrow. Then Lori roped her into cooking dinner, which consisted of a stew of sparse vegetables and stringy rabbit meat and a tough loaf of bread. Emma was on her feet all day long, and she was happy once dinner had been consumed and the dishes cleaned, because it meant she got to have her girl time with Andrea.

Emma climbed to the top of Dale’s RV. Andrea was already there, a dark bottle of wine in one hand and two large, clear plastic cups with bold blue stripes in the other.

“You ready to get this party started?” Andrea asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Andrea uncorked the bottle and poured a couple inches of wine in each cup. She handed one of the cups to Emma, and they clinked glasses.

“Cheers.”

Emma had never been a huge fan of wine. She only drank it at family dinners, and that was only because she felt cool and grown up being allowed to drink with adults. She’d rather have a cold beer any day of the week. But, beggars can’t be choosers, and halfway through her first glass of wine Emma didn’t even mind the acidic taste of fermented grapes.

By the second glass Andrea’s cheeks were pink, and Emma could feel her own face was flushed. The wine made their voices louder, and they were quicker to laugh. Then, inevitably, the conversation turned to sex.

“When was your first time?”

The question was so unexpected Emma almost spat out the sip of wine she’d taken. “Excuse me?”

“When’d you lose your v-card? C’mon, there’s no need to be shy about it. We’re both women.” Andrea reached over and topped off Emma’s glass.

“Alright,” Emma said, and she took a quick drink of wine for some courage. “I was seventeen.”

Andrea put her lips together and whistled. “Tell everything!”

Emma’s face was red, both from the wine and from the conversation topic. “You go first.”

“Fine.” Andrea drained the rest of her glass. She could really put away her alcohol. “It was prom night of my senior year. No one asked me to be their date – I wasn’t that popular back in high school. I was known as a feminist and, believe it or not, high school boys don’t fall for that stuff.” Andrea smirked and poured some wine in her cup.

“I wasn’t even going to go to prom, but my neighbor, Bobbie, invited me with his friends. Bobbie was the stereotypical boy next door. Dorky, but a good friend. Never thought about him in a romantic way. I mean, when we were five he tied a piece of grass around my finger and said he was going to marry me one day, but every kid does that.”

Emma nodded. She could still remember Mikey Caulfield, grabbing her during recess and proclaiming his love. His palms had been sweaty, he was missing two front teeth, and there was a crusty mustard stain on his shirt. But from that moment on, Emma was in love. At least she was until Mikey pushed her down in the sandbox later that week. She didn’t talk to him for two months after that.

I wonder if Daryl ever had a girlfriend when he was a kid? Emma wondered. She imagined him running around on the playground, the sleeves torn off his shirt, teaching girls how to use his slingshot. His youthful face would still have that scrutinizing squint, and he would shake his head and mutter things under his breath whenever she did something wrong. The image in her head was so laughably perfect Emma had to shake her head.

“Anyways, one cheap bottle of champagne and a trip to the lake later, I was a woman. Simple as that.” Andrea gestured her arms in a small curtsey. There was a playful smile on her lips. “So I told my story. Now it’s your turn.”

Emma took a deep breath and a large gulp of wine. “It isn’t really a happy story.”

“No one’s ever is.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Emma said, trying to joke. It did lift her spirits. A little. “Alright. Well here it goes.

“Every summer my family vacations at Lake Tahoe. My brother and I are each allowed to bring one friend. Well, the summer after my junior year of high school, my brother brought a friend from college: Kyle. He was the coolest guy I had ever seen. Tall, athletic, handsome and, most importantly, a college boy.

“I didn’t even know what I was doing. He was such a smooth talker. Made me feel special. Some guys are really good at doing that, y’know? Always telling you how beautiful you are. How you’re different from every other girl.” Emma put the cup back to her lips and found it empty. Funny. She hadn’t even realized she’d been drinking.

Andrea, recognizing the cue, tipped the wine bottle into Emma’s cup. Emma smiled her thanks.

“It wasn’t hard for me to fall in love with him, or at least think I had fallen in love with him. All it took were his soft smiles and the way he held my hand. One afternoon everyone except for Kyle and I decided to go for a hike. We were just hanging out at the lake. One thing led to another and…” Emma paused and raised her eyebrows. “You know.”

Andrea said nothing but mimicked the notion with her own eyebrows. Yeah, she did know.

“We texted for a couple weeks after that. We actually made plans to meet up on Labor Day weekend. Go see a movie or something. But he never showed. He stopped returning my texts, too. He completely iced me out.

“The next summer Kyle joined us on our trip to Tahoe again. He didn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t even look at me. It was like the previous summer had never even happened. I was so upset that I left for Seattle a week early. And that was the end of that.”

Only Emma knew that wasn’t the end of that. She saw Kyle on two other occasions, only she had the security of having Jake by her side to lessen the pain of his presence. Sometimes Emma wondered if she clung onto Jake so tightly just because he made her feel wanted. Like Kyle, Jake had been kind to her and made her feel special. And like Kyle, Jake had ended up breaking her heart. Twice she let someone make her feel special, and twice that someone broke her heart. Maybe I’m not so special after all. The sudden realization put a sad smile on her face and an icy knife in her chest.

“Well, you know what they say, you gotta kiss a couple pigs before you find your prince.”

“Toads,” Emma corrected.

“What?”

“The saying is: you have to kiss a couple toads before you find your prince.”

Andrea gave a disgruntled sigh. “Pigs is much better. Toads make them sound small and harmless, but pigs are fat, smelly and loud. Much more appropriate.”

Emma smiled. She had to admit comparing her exes to pigs was a much more fitting metaphor.

“So where does Daryl fit into all this?”

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

“What’s Daryl? Is he a pig, or a prince?”

Emma raised an eyebrow. Well he’s certainly no prince. But was he a pig? Emma didn’t think so. Or at least she hoped he wasn’t. “I think that we live in a world where it doesn’t matter if someone is a pig or a prince. The only groups that matter are the living and the dead; us and the walkers.”

That statement hovered overhead, the solemnity slowly sinking in. It was no easy thing to acknowledge that what was once important in the old world didn’t matter anymore. Last year, Emma’s biggest concern was how to make a living after dropping out of college with just a semester to go. Now she wakes up every day not knowing if she will live to see tomorrow.

“It sucks,” Andrea said, effectively voicing aloud the thoughts crossing through Emma’s mind.

“Yeah. It does.”

The wine was almost gone, and Emma no longer felt joyful and carefree. She just felt numb. Emma stood up. “I think I’m good for the night.”

Andrea nodded, understanding Emma’s reasons for leaving. Emma swayed ever so slightly as she crossed the roof of the RV and turned her body around on top of the ladder.

“Emma?”

“Hm?”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Daryl’s a pig.”

Emma cracked a smile. It was heartening to hear someone voice what she was too afraid to even think. It made her feel like maybe her judgments weren’t as poor as she thought. Maybe this time, her instincts were right. Now if only she knew exactly what her instincts were telling her…