Dear Journal,

I haven’t been writing lately because there’s honestly been nothing to write about. It’s been about five days, and every night, Rex comes to get me, makes me make him dinner, then brings me back here. I panic, and he leaves annoyed. It’s not the perfect system, but it works.

But tonight, right before we went to dinner, I came up with a plan, and it just might work.

And I really need you to promise that you won’t think badly about me no matter what. Because I kind of think badly about me right now, and I need some sort of almost toxic positivity in my life, you know?

So basically, what happened is that we walked to dinner like usual, he was kind of goading me about my friends still being locked up as usual (which, frankly, if he wanted me to stop panicking whenever he brought me back to my room, don’t you think he’d start by not being such a crappy person??), and then he asked for me to make him dinner, as usual. Every night it’s been something different, and usually it was some scrambled together mess that was maybe loosely based off my memory of the food that he was requesting, because he always asked for really specific things that I hadn’t made before the end of the world. But anyway, tonight, he asked for meat with barbeque sauce and some sort of vegetable side, which frankly was easier than a lot of the meals that he wanted me to make. I didn’t know how to make barbeque sauce, but I mixed some ketchup with a lot of the spices they’d found, and it honestly wasn’t that terribly far off.

But then I realized (and this is the part where I’m going to need you to not think badly about me, okay?) that he just said he wanted a vegetable, and we had that really sketchy jar of green beans that I’d saved in the back of the pantry. And I don’t know why, journal, but as soon as I had that thought, it just felt right. So I pulled that jar out, heated it up on a pan, and I only put it on his plate. He asked me about it, and I just said that I didn’t like green beans, which is totally not true, but it was true as far as he knew, because none of the meals that he’d wanted up until now had had green beans in them.

So, I sat and watched him eat them all, and I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I was probably going to make him sick to his stomach, but I was hoping that, maybe if he wasn’t feeling well, he’d forget to lock me in my room and then I could sneak out and get everyone out.

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But he wasn’t feeling bad by the time we were done with dinner, which I guess makes sense because any time I’ve had food poisoning, my mom always blamed it on something I ate the day before, so maybe it’s something that takes a full day to start? In that case, I guess I’ll know tomorrow if he’s not feeling well. Hopefully he’ll still come get me for dinner after all.

Anyway, I was so disappointed that he wasn’t sick immediately that I hardly noticed when he didn’t lead me straight back to my room. Instead, he started heading for the door, and I’ll be honest journal - I hestitated. Isn’t that so stupid? I finally get to go outside, and I had to stop to think about it. Granted, it’s not like I could really run away today or anything - I know Rex had kept up with Hansen and Garrett for miles, and I maybe could have kept up with one of them for like five minutes.

But I followed him out the door, and then instead of actually going somewhere, he just stood there, exactly like Garrett used to. So I stood on the other side of the door, just like I used to, and waited for him to say whatever he was going to say, because it was pretty obvious that he wanted to say something.

After what felt like forever, he was just like “you’re going to have to get used to living here whether you like it or not” and I was like “I was already used to living here and then you had to ruin it” and he was like “I wasn’t ruining it, I was trying to think about the future of civilization, but you kids are too self centered to think about that” and I was like “call it what you want, but taking a child bride for yourself seems pretty self centered.” He didn’t really argue with that, but he took out a cigarette carton that he must have taken from Garrett’s pack and pulled one out. He offered one to me, and I actually took it because I thought, why the hell not, you know?

It was fucking awful, though. I’d have to ask Garrett why he like them so much when I actually got a chance to see him again. If I got a chance to see him again. But I smoked the whole thing, because even though it kind of made me want to puke, there was something about the burn in my lungs that I actually kind liked. Like, it hurt, and I don’t think I would enjoy it on a regular day, but right now, it was the only thing I could control about my own life.

We stood in silence until we’d both finished our cigarettes, and then he walked me back to my room with the promise that he’d pick me up tomorrow for dinner. And as soon as the door closed, what I’d done started to set in. Like, I knew what I was doing while I was doing it, you know? But at the same time, now I have time to think about it. If Rex is sick, will he even come down to get me? If he doesn’t, does that mean I just don’t eat for the day? And what does that mean for the others?

I don’t want to think about it too much. Then again, it feels like I don’t really want to think too much about anything anymore. I used to always want to talk about shopping or boys or school or whatever, and now I was starting to almost like being in the silence of my own room. I don’t know what it says about me that I’ve changed that much. Hopefully nothing bad, but if any therapists survived the bombings, I’m sure they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Hopefully, tomorrow, Rex will be sick enough that he’ll make a mistake, but not so sick that he doesn’t come at all. It’s a narrow hope, but at least it’s something. A narrow hope is better than no hope at all, right? I guess we’ll find out.

Love,

Kayla