Dear Journal,

Garrett was right, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Or, I guess I shouldn’t necessarily say that Garrett was right. After all, he seemed to be pretty doomsday about the whole Rex thing, but I’m still glad that I took his advice, because maybe like a half hour after the midnight alarm went off, I woke up. I’ve always been a light sleeper, and that kind of sucks when you’re living with this many people, but I was happy about it in this instance, because the sound that had woken me up was the sound of the lock being clicked open. I immediately grabbed my mom’s arm, and she shot up like she’d just been waiting to move all night.

The handle turned at the same time that my mom grabbed a book off her nightstand and threw it at the door. Then she grabbed a scorched 2x4 from under her bed, which I guess she must have just been keeping there in case she needed it in the first few days, because I hadn’t seen her bring it into the room? Either way, I’m glad that she had it, because she held it up, ready to strike anyone who entered the room.

And Rex did open the door just enough to poke his head in. His eyes focused on me first, and then on my mom, and then on the 2x4. And then he was like “oh hey, I thought you were staying in Ben’s room?” and she was like “I’ve stayed the night in there before, but is it such a crime to want to spend time in my own room?” And he was like “no, not a crime, I just wanted to see what was going on and make sure that Kayla was feeling better, because she said she was sick earlier.” And my mom was like “she was sick earlier, but I’m taking care of her now, so you can go back to bed,” and while the words she said sounded friendly, she said them like they were kind of a threat. And she didn’t drop the 2x4 either.

Rex looked like he was going to come into the room anyway, but then he looked at my mom again and was like “okay, well, as long as everything’s alright in here, then I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow Kayla,” and my mom was like “we’ll see if she’s feeling up to breakfast, Rex.” Rex was like “she seems to be feeling better now, so I expect her to come meet me,” and my mom was like “I didn’t realize you got your doctorate along with your coaching job” and Rex just rolled his eyes, but he closed the door again and left us alone. My mom stayed awake for quite a while, though, still keeping the 2x4 close at hand, as though she was expecting him to come back.

Finally, she sunk back into bed and was like “I think I’m going to have to stay in here from now on, if you’re not super offended by having to sleep on the floor?” and I was like “I don’t love sleeping on the floor, but as long as I don’t have to deal with Rex creeping in in the middle of the night, I can deal with it,” and my mom was like “maybe we can have Ben stay in here, too, and then we can take the mattress out of his room and you can sleep on that,” and honestly journal, while that’s not quite as good as just sleeping on the bed, it still sounded pretty great.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Anyway, I end up going own for breakfast, but my mom and Ben went with me, which I was really glad about because Rex was already down there waiting for me when we went to breakfast. He looked super disappointed when I showed up with my mom and Ben with me, but he managed to hide it quickly, and just started talking to my mom while I was making breakfast.

And it was super creepy, journal - Rex was like “this is great, because I’ve been wanting to talk to you about starting a sort of partnership program within the people here, because we’ve got to start increasing the population of the world if we’re going to sustain this long term, considering we’ve already had a few people die on us,” and honestly, every time he said partnership program, I’d never thought he meant that. But luckily my mom was like “aboslutely no way, you’re just being a creeper to try to make people sleep with each other” and Rex was like “no, it’s not me wanting it, it’s for the good of what’s left of the world,” and my mom was like “and I’m sure you just happened to have paired yourself with most of the women in this scenario, am I right?” and he was like “absolutely not, I would never do that,” which even I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at.

But it didn’t really matter, because my mom told him absolutely not, because it’s not like we even really knew how many people were left in the world - like, if there’d been at least two places just in this city, there had to be a lot of places where people had ended up surviving the bombs, and we just had to go out and find them. She said it might take a while, but since most of the resources around here were already picked through anyway, we could send a group of people on a longer scavenging mission, maybe to another town, just to see if there are any other survivors. And Rex was like “if there are any other survivors, how do we know they’re not just looking to kill us?” And my mom was like “if they are, then we’ll deal with it at that point. It hasn’t been that long since we were a civilized society after all, so not all of us will immediately devolve to rape and murder.”

Rex definitely didn’t like my mom saying that, because his face turned bright red and he turned and left the kitchen without saying anything. My mom and Ben were talking about how hopefully that would get him to leave me alone for a while, but after what Garrett had said, I really doubted it. If anything, I thought it might make things worse, but I couldn’t really blame them for trying.

After breakfast, I went outside with Garrett, and I didn’t think my mom was going to be willing to leave me alone, but she looked Garrett in the eye and asked if he’d be willing to protect me, and he said yes and that if anything went down, he’d take me and run, which seemed a bit ridiculous to me, but I’m glad that they’d both so worried about me that they’re making contingency plans. I don’t know where we’d even run to, though, if something did end up happening. The coffee shop would make the most sense to me, but if Rex was going to come looking, wouldn’t that be the first place he’d try? Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the day hanging out with Garrett until my mom came to pick me up. It made me feel like I was about five years old again! But when I told Garrett what had happened last night, he didn’t really respond. He just silently nodded, like he was resigning himself to something.

I’m happy that everyone wants to protect me. I just wish they’d let me know what they were planning before they did it. Seems like a vain hope, though.

Love,

Kayla