𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒍𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 ➪ «𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑦𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑥𝑜𝑛»

ch. VII - 《thanks, gracie hart》

oOo

Diana woke up to the first rays of sunshine on her eyelids, peaceful birdsong, and someone heftily kicking her shin.

She sat up hastily, thrashing in confusion, heart rate shooting through the roof, looking around in alert.

Were they being attacked? Her hand felt around for the bow until her vision cleared and focused and the sleep was mostly gone from her eyes.

The coast was clear, there were no zombies in sight and Alice had obviously been the one to kick her leg.

She winced, rubbed her throbbing shin and glared up at the girl, the beginning of a yawn rising up her chest. "Why d'you do that?"

The girl shrugged and offered a hand. "I called a thousand times and you didn't move. Drastic measures, bruh." To Diana's surprise, she didn't drop her on the way up, but she was sure she was lying, Diana was a light sleeper, any sound usually woke her up.

Up and on wobbly legs, she yawned and stretched thoroughly, her joints popping and her muscles elongating pleasantly, which almost made her yell out in contentment. Good thing she had been so used to sleeping on the ground that it didn't bother her, and she'd had her pack to rest her head on, so it hadn't been at all that bad.

But she was still a little chilled, her face felt greasy, her hair was disheveled, and her breath could probably kill small animals. Two of those minor problems were solved quickly by rubbing her face on the sleeves of her hoodie and redoing her ponytail.

Diana took a deep breath. Now back to suppressing all the negative shit, nice and deep into her psyche, piled up next to her shitty self-esteem, mild anxiety, and other unresolved issues that she chose to ignore were there. Ahh, life was a many splendored thing.

Today was a new day and she would be stronger. She was gonna do it, she was gonna exude so much positivity that it hurt, she was gonna be so aggressively upbeat that people would be forced to go along or think that she had some sort of mental damage or was having a breakdown.

She'd been pretending to be many things for years, this would just be another one of them. She didn't want her parents to worry about her, she wanted them to know that she could handle what was going on, that she could deal with it and was ready to be a productive member of the new society, however its state.

It was such a ridiculously 'Diana' thing to do that it might actually work.

She grabbed her bow, hauled her backpack and messenger bag with her and joined her family by the back of the truck, where they were putting away their belongings, greeting them with a voice deep with sleep, "G'morning."

"Those are for the morning." Sam's response felt so normal, that it almost felt like everything had been a dream.

She put her things away. "It's barely after dawn, I think I'm right this time." Diana punched his arm weakly with a challenging raise of her brow.

Sam started bouncing around, dropping into a boxing stance, poking at Diana's sides, throwing feints, making her squeal as she tried to defend herself and retaliate.

"You're so mean! Mami, pai's being mean to me."

"Ay, igual que niños tontos, que Dios me ayude." Irene rolled her eyes and fished inside Diana's bag for her husband's meds and then hers for food.

"She just ignores me, is this supposed to be the love of a mother?"

Sam grinned and pulled her to him to plant a purposefully slobbery kiss on her forehead, the stubble scratching her skin, making her cringe and shove him away to clean off the wet spot. He laughed like it was nothing and took the pill Irene held to his lips, swallowing it down with water from the flask she pressed to his hand.