The kids in the Dark

Part 10- 8/19/2127

A week later, and Sarion and I had seamlessly merged into the community. We were assigned daily chores, rotated out every other week, but they weren't hard and we were happy to do them.
I started out with feeding the guard dogs every day (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and cleaning the amphitheater and the path for our row of RVs.
Sarion has to pump drinking water for the square twice daily and check the fence every day for holes or weak points.
Within a few days, Sarion and Rayna clicked. They spent hours a day just sitting on one of the benches in the amphitheater and talking. He would make some grand gesture and yell something, and she would laugh. At first, her laughter was limited to a small giggle into her hands, but had quickly escalated into a full on howling laugh.
———
I was sitting on my bed in the RV, drawing a small flower on the corner of a page in the book I was reading. Sarion stumbles in with a goofy grin on his face, and I sit up to look at him.
"You look happy..." I say with a smile.
He turns around and shoots finger guns at me, causing us both to laugh.
"I think I like Rayna" he bursts, like a balloon being popped.
"Well yea. I could have told you that..." I shoot back at him.
A worried look crossed his otherwise nonchalant face.
"Is it obvious?" He inquires, sitting down on the bed next to me.
"No" I begin "you only spend every waking moment around her, trying to make her smile and carrying her bags" The sarcasm positively dripped from my voice.
Sarion flood down on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. "She's so pretty and she's so nice and smart and she laughs at all my jokes" he rambles, ending with a long sigh
Damn. Must be nice.
While Sarion had been falling head over heels for Rayna, I began to hang out with Billie.
It turns out our lives before we ran away we're fairly similar. Both of our dads were dead, and both of our moms were lawyers.
"Do you know how your mom is doing?" She asks, tilting her head.
"No." I respond, looking down at my shoes "I haven't talked to her since just before we left"
"Hey..." she says in a calming voice "that's good. " p