Dear Journal,

It’s the next day, but it might as well not be. I didn’t get any sleep last night, after all. I kept thinking about Daniel all night. After seeing so many bodies, I’m not sure why this one affected me so much? Like, I should be used to it, right? I thought I was over it, but there was something about his.

Maybe it’s that every other one had been either so burned that they just looked like Halloween decorations, or they were adults that I didn’t know, and while it was gross, it’s not like I could relate to them or anything. Or maybe it’s just taken this long for the apocalypse to hit me? Who knows.

Anyway, I really wanted to just stay in my mom’s room today and wait for her to come back, but like, what was I going to say if she did? Sorry I snuck off and saw another kid’s dead body and now it feels weird to be here? She’d just send me off to do chores like she always does. Did, before she started hanging out exclusively with Ben. But I didn’t want to have that conversation, and I didn’t think it would do any good anyway. If anything, it’d probably just get us both in trouble.

So instead I went down to breakfast, and it was no surprise that Rex was waiting for me. And I tried to play it like every other morning, but he immediately asked me where I was yesterday. And I didn’t want to snitch on Garrett or anything, especially since he was so worried about us being found out yesterday, and especially after what he’d shown me yesterday, so I just said that I hadn’t been feeling well and decided to stay in bed. And he was like “what do you mean by stay in bed? You don’t have a room, but any time I tried to come find you at night, you haven’t been on any of the couches. Where have you been sleeping?” And I was like “wherever I feel like, and why have you been trying to find me at night anyway?” And he was like “I’m allowed to do anything I fucking want inside my house, including find whoever I want. So where the fuck do you go?”

If Garrett hadn’t have taken me to see Daniel’s body yesterday, journal, I don’t think I would have been that scared. After all, my parents used to yell at me all the time, and while it’s not sure fun, it’s not really a big deal. But knowing that he’d been willing to at the very least beat up a kid and leave him to die, I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest. So I told him about my mom’s room, and how my mom had been staying the night with Ben, so I’d been taking her room, and he seemed like he immediately calmed down. I don’t know why he was so pissed that he didn’t know where I was at night, but I was just happy that he chilled out a little bit.

Anyway, he seemed to accept that I wasn’t feeling good yesterday, and I really didn’t want to hang out with him any more than I had to, so after I took a couple of bites of breakfast, I was like “you know, I’m not feeling super great today either, so I’m going to go back and hang out in my mom’s room.” He told me to feel better, but didn’t say anything besides that, which made me super relieved because he was creeping me out today in general.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

But instead of actually going to my mom’s room, I went straight to Garrett because I wanted answers about what he’d showed me yesterday. So I headed outside with my plate and wasn’t surprised that Garrett was already out.

He asked me if Rex had asked where I was yesterday, and I told him yeah, but I had said that I just wasn’t feeling well. Garrett nodded and said that Rex had asked him, too, but he’d said he’d just gone on a long run because he wanted to make sure he stayed in good shape for scavenging. He said Rex hadn’t questioned that at all, and had actually encouraged it, which I think he’s super lucky for. I don’t think any adult right now would be happy with me leaving on my own, much less encourage it.

But that wasn’t what I’d come out there for, so I asked him immediately what happened to Daniel. Garrett was like “what do you mean what happened, I told you that Rex killed him,” and I was like “okay, but how do you know Rex killed him instead of just like letting him go off by himself and him accidentally dying” and Garrett was like “his body was not where it was originally. Originally, it was over to the side, along with some debris we had pushed out of the way like it was garbage. I moved it so I could hopefully bury him, but you’d be surprised at how hard it is to find a shovel anywhere.” He said he’d tried to dig the hole by hand, but it had been too thick since it was so close to the water. But he also said that when he originally found him, he wasn’t headless. But what was left of his head wasn’t much, and it was right next to a super bloody brick. He also said that when Rex came back, he had a ton of blood on him, so it wasn’t exactly like he was doing a lot to hide it. Garrett said he thought Rex didn’t care about killing him at best and actively wanted to wear his blood as a threat at worst.

So I told him about Rex getting mad at me this morning for not sleeping where he thought I would sleep, and I swear Garrett cringed so loud I could practically hear his teeth crack together. Not a great idea when there aren’t any more dentists. But he was like “look, I know you don’t want to involve your mom in any of this if you can help it, but you should tell her that she should sleep in her own room tonight, and you should sleep in a hidden area of the kitchen or something. If he was that mad about not being able to find you, it can’t be good.”

He looked so worried about it that I agreed (which, side note, I knew he liked me more than he let on! You’ve got to at least kind of like someone in order to worry about their safety at night), sand I went right to Ben’s room to find my mom. When she opened the door, she looked so surprised that I swear she must have almost not remembered that I existed. But to her credit, she listened to me and told me that she would definitely sleep in her room that night, but instead of finding a place to hide, she said I should stay in there, too. Ben stepped up and said that he would stay there too, but my mom said that she wanted him available for the other kids in case something happened. Which I immediately wondered if she thought something might be happening tonight, but I think it was more of a parent thing of wanting to make sure the kids had someone to talk to if they needed it. Who knows.

But anyway, that’s how I’m here, back to sleeping on the floor again. But it’s actually been kind of nice - it’s been so long since I’ve been able to chat with my mom at all that we’ve spent the night kind of catching up. She just drifted off to sleep a couple of minutes before I started writing this, but she’s been tossing and turning, and I wouldn’t doubt that she’s going to be awake again soon. We’ll both be tired, but at least she had a moment where she remembered that she actually had a kid, despite everything else going on around us.

Love,

Kayla