Past and Present

Broken and Wishes

Maggie put together a plan on how each of us would have a living space in the house.

Glenn would be sharing with Maggie while Beth, Allie, and Key took Glenn's old room. Rick and Lori would take a room and be with Judy. My mom would be with Daryl, Denise and Jacob. And lastly Carl and I would share a room.

My mom tried to protest, but Lori and Daryl argued that Carl and I were good kids and that they could trust us. When my mom gave up, Daryl gave me wink and walked into his room.

I walked back up the stairs and into the room that I had just left. Plopping down on the bed, I sighed. I used my feet to take off my shoes and rolled onto my side to sleep.

I heard the sound of footsteps in the door way and then a weight on the bed. The person's shoes fell from their feet and landed on the floor with a quiet thud. I closed my eyes and succumbed to the tired feeling that had been threatening me since I got home from school.

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I awoke to the sun shining through the opened shades. I saw a shadow standing right in front of the window and figured that they had opened it and that's what woke me up.

The figure moved and I saw that it was Carl. He was wearing the same clothes from yesterday and he was barefoot.

"You're up," he said with a smile.

"I'm not sure that that is a good thing," I said as I sat up.

His smiled disappeared,"What is that supposed to mean?"

I backed up against the headboard of the bed and brought my knees to my chest,"I'm just sick of this crap. I don't want to live in the apocalypse. Did you not see what it does to people? It changes them. Whether they become a walker or they survive it. They change. They become broken."

I looked up at him with the tears in my eyes,"I'm broken. The apocalypse broke me. I don't think I can do it again."

Carl sat down on the bottom of the bed and reached his arm over to place his hand on my knee,"You're not broken."

"But I am. I adapted to that world. You used to tell me that you were a monster, but that was never it. It was because that world broke us."

He looked at me like I was an alien,"How can you say that? I thought that I was a monster because I had killed my own mother. You're saying that your broken. I don't believe it. You're the same person that you were when I first met you three years ago."

I lowered my tone so that he couldn't hear me,"Maybe I was broken then too."

"Jocelyn April Matthews, you are not broken." he practically screamed.

"What else do you call it when you know that you may not survive to see tomorrow and you just want your life to end because that's the only way for you to be happy? What do you call it when you want to just give up because you don't want to face today because there's a chance that you may not see tomorrow?"

He looked me in the eyes and shuffled so that he was sitting right next to me,"Stupid. I call it stupid. You are going to survive this world because you're good. My mom once told me that I was going to beat this world and she was right. I beat it. And we're going to beat it again."

I looked at him and he pulled me into a hug.

"Maybe we are broken,"Carl said as he looked down at me,"You may be broken, but I am too. We're broken together."

I lay in his arms for a small while when my mom came up the stairs,"What's going on up here?"

I sat up,"Nothing. Carl and I were talking about how we were going to go around the neighborhood and see if there was anybody that needed aid or anything like that."

She nodded, but the look of disbelief never left her face.

We got out of the bed and went downstairs. We both grabbed an apple and made sure that our weapons were within an easy access area.

Carl picked up his hat and placed it on my head.

I took it back off and held it out,"This is the 'I got shot' hat. I'm not in that club."

He pushed it back to me,"Today, it's the 'it's hot as hell out there' hat and I don't want you to get heat stroke."

I took the hat back and placed it one my head as we walked out the door. Carl was right. The sun was blaring today.

"Why aren't you wearing a hat then?" I asked him referring to his bare head.

He shrugged,"If you're that worried, we can stop at my house and go get some of the beanies that I left there."

I thought that the beanies would just make it worse, but I also thought that it would block the sun and that would be better than nothing.

We walked to his house and opened the door. We were both shocked at what we saw.

There was a whole herd of walkers all around the house. Neither one of us missed a beat. We pulled out our weapons and started to dispose of the undead beings.

When there were only a few left, I ran past them and into Carl's room. Opening all the drawers, I looked for the beanies.

As I was going through the drawer with all of his socks, I came across a picture.

It was a picture that Carl and I had taken after he had gotten out of the simulation. He must have gotten it developed after we all left and went to our respective houses. I heard a moan and looked over to see a walker with dirty blonde hair coming for me.

I dodged her bared teeth and lifted my knife to her head. She collapsed to the floor as I removed my knife which was protruding out of it's head.

I picked up the picture and moved to the next drawer. I sighed in relief as I came across the beanies.

I grabbed them and ran down the stairs to see Carl lying on the ground with a moving walker layign on top of him.

Closing one eye, I lined my knife up with the walkers head and threw it. Like I planned, the blade landed in the back of the creature's head.

Carl pushed it over and took my knife out. As he handed it to me, he asked how I learned how to do it.

"My dad used to teach me how to do it before my parents divorced," I said as I wiped the knife off with the hem of my shirt and handed Carl the beanies. He put one on and shoved the other in his pocket.

I couldn't help but think about how attractive he looked with it on.

There was a long silence before Carl asked me,"Aren't you glad that you were ready for this world?"

I walked past him,"I would rather it never happened at all."