Alyssa Chávez has felt alone for most of her life. She was never good at making friends. She always felt a distance between her and her family. So when the apocalypse happened, her social life didn't take much of a hit. After losing her family, Alys...
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Chapter Two Mario Kart
A hand shaking her shoulder pulled Alyssa out of her deep sleep. She was dreaming, actually dreaming. Vague flashes of her home in Phoenix floated through her mind as her vision cleared up. She woke up in the prison cell, perfectly fine, with the familiar face of Maggie. A small smile was spread across her face. She had a different set of clothes and some cuts on her skin were cleaned up and patched. Judging by the lingering scent of strawberry perfume, she'd taken a shower since their last interaction.
"Sorry to wake you up," Maggie started, removing her hand from Alyssa's shoulder. "You must've been really tired. But it's noon and we're gonna eat in a bit, thought you might be hungry."
Only there a night and she was already treated like part of their community, or maybe she was just grateful that Alyssa helped her out, perhaps a bit of both. It didn't matter, it felt nice either way.
"Yeah, thanks," Alyssa mumbled, rubbing her eyes with her palms. "I'll be up in a bit."
"And who knows, maybe you'll make a few friends," Maggie suggested with a shrug. "There are a couple kids there about your age. My sister's a bit older, but I know she'd like having another girl around."
While having a possible companion seemed nice, friends were the last thing Alyssa was concerned about. She hated going through the process of getting to know someone. It was too awkward and uncomfortable. Whenever she met someone new before, she just already wanted to be best friends, because then they'd have a lot to talk about. Not much had changed about her attitude towards friends since then, only that she knew with a friend you could sit in silence and it wouldn't feel weird.
That stage of getting to know someone took so long. It certainly didn't help that she didn't like talking about herself anymore. Everything reminded her of her lost family. And if she did tell them about those things, she'd get stuck with sympathetic looks and "oh, I'm so sorry".
For Maggie's sake, Alyssa decided to just play along. "Sure," she nodded. "I'll try to talk to some people."
"Great." Maggie grinned. "See you there," she called as she left her cell.
Alyssa rolled out of bed with a sigh. Her mind dreaded leaving the comfortable bed, but her stomach strongly disagreed. It was desperate to get food so it could get moving again and provide her with the energy to survive another day. As she got dressed she made a mental note to look through her notes to see if there was anything in it about keeping up her training by herself, just to make sure she could still go out there any time.
As she walked through the hallways she found them to be mostly empty. A lot of the residents had gone out to eat or spend some time in the sun and get some fresh air. It didn't take long to find the people gathered around some sort of grill. Some had plates in their hands and some were still waiting for theirs. Despite promising Maggie, she had no intention of talking to any of them. She did, however, enjoy watching them just having conversations and eating like normal people.
