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A Dangerous City

"I don't get it."

Lori looked at me with a frustrated glance, a subtle sigh escaping her lips. "That's because you spend all your time complaining instead of trying to work it out."

I rolled my eyes at her, boredom evident in the action. The pencil I held slipped from my hand and onto the makeshift school table with a gentle clatter. Carl and Sophia looked at me fleetingly at the noise before going back to their own equations, fingers scribbling lightly on paper. "I don't need to know how to do stupid fractions, I've done okay without it."

It had been months since the world ended in a chaotic and unexpected mess. The dead coming back alive, governments and militaries cracking- even your local PTA falling apart with a simple bite. No one knew why it happened or how, but it was something we had to live with now. I just didn't expect it to be so damn boring. I thought with the normal world over, school would be the last thing on my mind. Now, I was sitting in our camp in the mountains being forced to learn the unnecessary skill.

Lori sat down next to me with a huff, picking up my work book and scanning the page. "Sweetheart, when was the last time you went to school? All these answers are wrong." She frowned with genuine concern.

I couldn't help but glare at her, the dagger-like stare aiming sharply. I knew the answers were wrong, I knew I was bad at math - she didn't need to tell me again. "A while, I don't know. Can't I do something else now? I'm bored." This wasn't the first time I complained and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

"No way! If we have to do homework then so do you. Right, Mom?" Carl protested. He and Sophia seemed to be excelling in fractions, at least compared to me, so of course he would insist I kept at it.

Lori nodded her head pointedly, her eyebrows raised at me. "That's right, baby. Okay, Annabelle, what was the last thing you remember from school? Maybe if we start there then we can work our way up to fractions." She suggested with a kind smile.

My brain whizzed, struggling to find an appropriate answer. What was the last thing I did in school? "I can't remember. It was, like, five years ago."

Lori's eyes widened in surprise. "Five years? What about your parents, didn't they enrol you?"

I internally scoffed before shrugging off her persistent stare. "I just didn't like it. I never had time for it, I guess." Both of those things were one hundred percent true. I hated school since the beginning- the bigger kids always picked on me, the teachers hated me, and it's not like I had the most encouraging parents.

"Maybe we should let her do something else, Lori. Dinners almost ready and we can't teach her the past five years of math in thirty minutes." Carol interjected when she sensed the high tension. She was a nice lady. She didn't talk much, so I guess that's where Sophia got it from. I had only met the mother and daughter a short while ago so I didn't know a lot about them, but I sure as hell knew Ed, Carol's husband, was a jerk. It didn't take a genius to figure it out.

"Sure. After dinner, I guess you can help Dale out. He could use the extra hand since Glenn left." Lori replied reluctantly.

I shut my work book in relief, the pages slapping noisily, before pushing my chair out with a scrape. "Thank you! You could've said that two hours ago."

"I said after dinner. Come on, I still wanna see how much you know." Lori patted my chair as she got to her feet, dusting the splinters of wood from her trousers.

I sat back down with a frown on my face, my arms folded frustratedly across my chest. Lori went to her tent to find some other work books, emerging moments later with a small stack in her grasp.