Be Good

I explored the funeral home while Daryl slept. I didn't bother waking him, he hadn't gotten this much rest in a long time, maybe not at all in the time I'd known him. I giggled when glanced at him this morning. He snored quietly, slept peacefully, but his jaw hung open, and he laid halfway on his side.

I tucked my journal back into my back pocket and rose from the pews, and headed out of the service room into the white hallway. It was quiet, the faint tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer kept me company as I explored the first floor. We'd checked out all the rooms yesterday, but there were still things to be seen.

I stepped out into the foyer and rested my hand on the stair rail, and looked up the sleek white steps to the balcony that overlooked the front doors. The low ticking behind me kept me calm, as I was feeling somewhat giddy to be alone.

The last time I was truly alone, was ages ago, back on my dad's farm. When it was a common thing to walk up the driveway with your headphones on, listening to Waxahatchee, wearing summer shorts and sunglasses. Catching the bus in the fall, and riding to school with other kids, taking long walks in the woods, because there were no threats... Now it felt as though the true threat was being alone. No one could make it alone these days...

Everything was absolutely still as I climbed the steps, not a single one squeaked, regardless of the house's aged appearence. It was like the place had been frozen in time, trapped between releams, absolutely pure.

I drifted to the top. To my knowledge, Daryl had scoped out the upstairs yesterday before we'd settled in, but I hadn't seen it yet.

It was just like downstairs, everything was white, and open. The staircase opened into a large lounge space, the east and south walls were made of glass, and the carpets were pure white and clean. There were two corner sofas in the center of the room, revolved around a coffee table. A vase of living Cherokee roses sat on it, an uneasy reminder that someone had been here recently, or still was.

The very thought made my stomach clentch, and I spun around, sensing someone was there.

"There you are." Daryl says warily, narrowing his eyes slightly like he usually does, his blue eyes on my face. I sighed slightly in relief, relieved that it was no one else, but I couldn't seem to shake the feeling that there was someone else there with us.

"Should'a woke me up." He muttered, walking past me towards the windows, "My lazy ass don't need that much sleep."

"You looked like you could have used it." I reply, "Besides, you haven't slept much since..." I stopped myself there, and Daryl's back tensed up. Neither of us wanted to talk about the prison, but I understood that we needed to.

He didn't reply to my words, instead, he avoided them. "I won't need to hunt for a few days." He murmurs after a pause and a long, hard look out the glass wall. "There's 'nuff food here to last us a while."

"What if... What if they come back? The people that were here, I mean." I ask after a pause. I watch his body language carefully. But all he does is shrug, and turns away from the window, and heads for the stairs, and as he disappears, the room lapses back into silence.



I admired a painting of a young girl with pigtails, holding onto a bouqet of daisies and sunflowers. It hung in the foyer, and brought a bit of color and light into the room with her bright, cheerful smile, and for a second, you forgot what kind of building you were in.

"Beth! Chow's on." Daryl called from across the house. I took one last glance at the painting and headed to the kitchen. I couldn't help smiling when I stepped into the small room.

The table was set, nothing fancy, but still. He'd put together some sandwich ingredients, and two 2-liter bottles of Coke. Almost the same setup as yesterday, but it didn't matter when you were hungry, design and taste didn't matter so much. Still, it made me laugh that he'd bothered setting the table at all.

"You didn't lick the jam this time, did you?" I joked as I sat down, wrinkling up my nose.

He surprised me when he laughed. It was more of a spontanious burst of amusement, but still a laugh all the same. There was a light to his eyes as he sat down in front of me. "Did you expect me to?" He joked back.

I laughed, and shook my head in disbelief as I began to prepare my lunch.

We fell back into silence as we ate. Over a drink break, I mustered up the courage to ask, "Do you think we'll find the others?"

He pauses for a second, thoughtfully. A darkness cast over his eyes, and he purses his lips. "I sure hope so, Beth."

"I keep hopin' so, too." I reply quietly, looking down. "My Daddy always said, 'What's the point in living, if you ain't got hope.' I just... I'm having a hard time, too. Hope has been the center of my life, the very force that got me though those darkest days in the beginning. But, I know they're out there, it's just keeping the hope in my mind, that's the hard part." I admit. I surprises me that I tell him this, I always kept it in my head, where it was a safe thought. I glance up at him to see if I'd upset him.

"Ain't nothing easy these days... But keepin' your faith, that's gotta be one'a the hardest. Now your father -- he kept his until the very end. Beth, you gotta be strong, you gotta keep your hope." He looks down quickly after he says it, but I feel the connection. We both see it, and feel the same, he just does a better job at denying it.

I look down thoughtfully and consider that, "My dad... He lived his life, and it was full of love and faith. Maybe you are right, I mean, he kept it all until the end... He didn't let... The end change him."

"And that's gotta be some crazy level of strength, hell, most'a the people we've seen have forgotten what it was like to love someone, to have faith, 'n hope..."

I looked up at him, and he looked back at me. He didn't look angry or frustrated, he looked at ease, but slightly tensed by the topic. It was strange, though... I could look at his eyes, clear blue, and almost imagine what he might've been like back in the day, when things were normal. I wondered if he ever smiled, and laughed, and did he have a best friend? Did he go to school like I did and hang out with friends and study? Or was he always alone? Hunting in the woods with his brother like he always described.

Surely there was more to his life than that, some tiny thing that might have brought a smile to his face, and make him feel more alive than ever.

He dusted aside a strand of dark brown hair out of his eyes and looked back at me, eyes becoming wary, "What?" He asked, looking away abruptly.

"Nothin'..." I say, shrugging, "I was just wonderin' what you were like, I mean, before..."

"I already told you that." He fidgeted, and avoided my eyes almost as if he was embarrassed. "I was nothin', nobody-"

"But you were something." I persisted, certainty coloring my tone, "You are alive, you have a past, surely that accounts for something."

"No..." He shook his head, flattening his lips into a firm, thin line, "It don't. I wasn't like anybody else, I was me, and it was never good enough."

"It's good enough for me, it's alright to be different."

He scoffed, looking me in the eye, "Beth, I was a little more different than ya think... I did drugs for a while, I was a useless alcoholic and chain smoker, I grew up in some crappy moonshine shack in the woods, and never had nothin', 'cuz my family couldn't afford shit other than booze 'an Playboy magazines. I was destined to not have a future, Beth. That was just... That."

I thought about his statement for a second, "I don't believe that."

"I'm not special, Beth." He pushed back, looking me firmly in the eyes. While his body language screamed anger and discomfort, his eyes betrayed him, and in them, I saw pain, and the demand to be seen. The silent cry that he wanted to live out of his older brother's shadow, to be his own man with his own failures and past.

"Now that's a damn lie..." I chuckled, a small smile formed on my face, "I never thought it when I first saw you, showin' up on my dad's farm that day... But I know it now, you're one of the most important people in the world to me."

He waved his hand dismissively, "You don't have to butter me up and be nice, I don't deserve it, really." He was getting mad and uncomfortable, as he stood up from the table to abandon the room.

I reached out and grabbed his sleeve. "You do. Daryl, you got me out of there, and I might not have said anything before, but you're one of the reasons me and my family lived this long. You kept hunting even though there was nothing out there, and scavenging when there was nothing left to look for. We survived because of you, Daryl. Please don't forget that." I told him sincerely, the joking mood evaporated, and instead, I felt destined to tell him this, because he needed to know.

He pulled away slightly and looked back at me. I let go of his sleeve and stood up, walking around the table cautiously to stand in front of him, waiting for his reaction.

His eyes were wide, a splash of fear behind them, he did not want to believe the words I was telling him, maybe he did not want to feel any self-worth.

"You- You can't mean that." He whispered, a spark of panic in his eyes, all the things he was experiencing, he didn't know how to deal with them.

"I do." I told him firmly, "I would never lie to you. I mean it, every single word."

He teared up a bit, and rubbed them away quickly with the back of his sleeve. He obviously was not going to tell me anything else about himself. I saw more pain in his eyes, and like at the moonshine shack, I reached out to comfort him. I grabbed both of his hands and held them tightly in reassurance. "We can make today okay, we just have to." I whispered, searching his eyes for a sign.

His head fell forward, and hair fell across his eyes like a veil. I pulled him towards me and wrapped my arms around him again and hugged him firmly. "I know you're scared, but you don't need to be. You need to be strong, you have to be." I whispered into his shoulder.

He pulled his face back from my collarbone and looked me in the eyes. Among all the frustration and sadness, there was uncertainty. His left hand moved from my hand, and he rested it on my shoulder, his other hand, that was shaking, rose and rested on my neck, his eyes looked at mine, studying my face incredulously.

He leaned forward, and his breaths stopped. He held his breath like he was going in for the kill. A single, stealthly breath blew from his lips, across my jaw, and he pressed his forehead against mine.

Now it was my turn to be uncertain. In all the twisted signals I felt right then, the most confusing one was the one I felt in my heart, that this was right, that this was how it was supposed to be.

His eyes closed, and he proceeded to lean forward with slow, iching caution. His lips neared mine, and he paused. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I couldn't unscramble my own thoughts. All I could think was that this was the end.

The end of me.

The end of the girl who lived on a farm in Georgia, ten minutes from the nearest town, forty-five from Atlanta. The end of the girl who rode horses, dated two different boys and thought she understood the complications of love just because she'd read a few romance books. That wasn't even close. No author could ever describe the burning sense of nausea and anxiety in your stomach, that makes you feel like you'll curl over and vomit at any moment. The giddy excitement, that all at once, makes you want more.

His lips touched mine in a hesitant gesture, a pre-kiss. He was just as unsure about it as I was, and in a way, we were both just trying to find ourselves, and figure out who the hell we were.

Who was I?

I was the girl, who was sharing a single, simple kiss, in the corridor of a funeral home's kitchen, with a man I'd known for two years, but knew little to nothing about.

His lips pressed against mine for another moment of silence... And that was all it took. Two more careful, connected kisses, and I don't know what happened. He pulled away quickly and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I'm, ah..." He looked at the floor, scratching the back of his neck, "I'm going to hunt. I'll be back later."

He swiftly scooped up his crossbow before I could react, and was down the hall in seconds.

"We haven't even eaten lunch yet!" I shouted after him, but my response was the front door shutting.