midnight in the garden of eden - carl grimes

XII

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xii.

motion picture soundtrack
"help me get back where i belong"

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Judith's bouncing with excitement, all bright eyes and eager smiles, and I can't help but feel her energy pulling me along. I'm not sure what the point of these games is—they feel so disconnected from the world we live in—but Judith seems to love them. We take turns, knocking over bottles, popping balloons, and aiming at targets.

After a few tries on some dart board game, I manage to get the first win, and Judith claps her hands. "You did it!" She beams.

The game runner hands me a small stuffed ostrich—a beanie baby ostrich, to be exact. They must have found someone's stockpile of them because the assortment of tiny plush animals seem to be the prize at every game. I, in turn, hand it to Judith. "All yours."

"Thanks!" She hugs the little bird close. "I'm glad you're friends with Carl, you're nice."

Nice. That word feels foreign. Strange. But it settles over me, warm like an old coat.

"He doesn't have any friends, you know." Judith continues as we walk away from the stalls.

I stop for a second, glancing down at her just as someone Judith knows, the woman named Carol—The Queen of The Kingdom—comes by and offers to show me where I'll be staying and Judith eagerly tags along. She explains this place use to be a military base and many people stay in either officer housing or barracks, which leads us to one of the several oblong buildings and a uniform blank slate of a room. She then takes us back to the festivities and hands Judith a bag of popcorn before departing with a kind smile. We take it and sit down in the shade beneath large mossy Virginian oak. I toss a few kernels in my mouth, savoring the salt. It's peaceful, the buzz of the carnival still around us, but quieter here. Judith's on her belly in the grass, munching away, her feet swinging idly.

I turn to her. "Why do you think Carl doesn't have friends?" I ask, my tone more casual than I feel.

She shrugs. "Maybe Carl's shy." She says between bites. "Or maybe he's just picky about who he likes."

"It's smart to be picky about that."

After a few minutes of silence, she looks up at me, her small face serious. "Can you keep a secret?"

My stomach tightens, but I nod, my voice more hesitant this time. "Sure."

"People are scared of Carl. Even Negan."

I pause mid-bite. "Who's Negan?"

Her eyes widen with that childlike certainty, as if I should already know. "He used to be in charge of a group that hurt a lot of people. But now he's in a cell back at Alexandria. He's nice now, though. He even ran away once, but came back."

I stare at her, the breeze blowing a strand of her hair across her face as she says it so casually, like it's nothing. But it's not nothing. It makes me think of me. Of my mother. Of all the things I've done. Of the parts of me that still feel like they belong to her.

I wonder if I'll ever escape that, or if I'll be like Negan—watched, judged, waiting for the day when people finally trust me. If they ever will.

"Why would even Negan be afraid of Carl?"

Judith's small face scrunches in concentration, like she's remembering something important. "Well, Negan said Carl wasn't afraid of him." She explains. "And he wasn't afraid to die to protect his family. That makes him really scary to bad guys like Negan was."