Walking Amongst Them (Among Us, Book 2)

Hunting

I found myself wishing I'd put on a second jacket as we walked through the wooded area around the campsite. Michael looked as if he was wishing the same, pulling his coat closer to himself as he stepped over a fallen log.

We were quiet for a while, watching the woods and hoping to find some sort of life. Even a squirrel would have been helpful at this point. As it was, the woods were quiet. They weren't what I would consider a forest, and the trees thinned out the closer you got to the nearby town, but they had to hold some sort of life.

My mind wandered as we walked, and I thought about Mabel. What would she have done if she were here? If she'd seen our father. Would she have run into his arms? I didn't think so. Mabel wasn't the type, and our father had never really shown that much kindness to us.

Growing up in the house, there had been little affection that went around. I could remember my father one Christmas. He'd gotten Mabel and I a bike to share. She had fallen off and gotten road rash, and he'd told her to suck it up. To quit crying and be a big girl. Of course Mabel hadn't, and when her mom- our mom, found out... well the bike was gone the next day.

I stepped around a sticker bush and put an arrow to my bow. I didn't see anything but it wouldn't hurt to be ready.

I recalled the way my father had trained me, and tried to train Mabel, to defend ourselves before he left. The memories were faint, and I couldn't decide if he'd done it for us, or for himself. To ease the eventual guilt, if any, of leaving us alone. I had so many questions that I wanted answers for, but up until a week ago, I'd decided he was dead. I'd accepted this new family I'd made with Sam and Beck and Cody, and everyone else at the compound who'd shown me kindness.

Seeing my father, realizing Clarke was my sister, complicated it all in my mind.

"I'm not seeing anything, are you?"

I shook my head, "No, but I'm not going back until I find something."

Michael pursed his lips but didn't say anything.

"You can go back to Abby if that's what you need to do."

He was quiet for a moment, long enough that I thought he might not respond. A breeze filtered through the trees and went straight through my coat, chilling me enough that my teeth threatened to rattle. When he did speak, his voice was soft and careful.

"You know, Clarke's nothing like Mabel."

I looked away from him, towards the ground where I was walking. As if trying to pay attention so I didn't make too much noise and scare off any waiting prey.

"She's actually pretty nice, if you give her a chance."

I sighed, "It's not that I don't think she's nice, or could be nice. And I'm not avoiding my dad because I'm mad at him," I admitted slowly, eyes on the world around us.

"Then what is it?"

I stopped walking, and Michael followed suit, eyeing me in a way that made me feel like he already had his own theories about my answers. I looked away, focusing on a nearby tree instead of his intense eyes.

"I'm just not ready to lose anyone else I care about. That and my dad already left us, Mabel and I at least. He left and wasn't going to ever come back. However he got here, he made it just to protect this other kid that we never knew about."

Michael waited a moment before responding, "I get that, but Clarke didn't do anything..."

I laughed, "you don't get it though. I don't want to know her, because it'll prove that life could have been better. You know for a good portion of when I first met the guys, I thought they would sell me off as a sex slave?"

He shook his head.

"My mother, who wasn't even my birth mother and hated the idea of being my mother, was so crazy in how she raised us. She used to corner me in the kitchen and demand to know if I'd spoken to any boys at school, and then proceed to tell me about all the nasty things they would do to me if I did. After a while I realized that her words weren't entirely true, but it still left its mark.

"When I met the guys things started to change. I started to change. Clarke might be blood, she might not be. But what I realized back in the compound, especially with Mabel, is that blood isn't everything. I can choose my family, and my father chose Clarke over me. Which is fine, because if he hadn't I would probably still be in the house they found me in. Or dead."

"You can't just close yourself off, Kodi. You haven't even spoken to Beck, who I thought you liked. He's in love with you, you know."

I stayed silent, recalling the way he'd told me how much I meant to him. And all these days later it still didn't feel right to tell him I loved him back. I wasn't sure what love was, but I was pretty sure you're supposed to be able to say it back without feeling like it's somehow wrong.

Instead of responding to this, however, I raised my bow and let my arrow fly. It found its mark and a large owl fell out of a tree from where it had been sleeping. I felt sick to my stomach as it did. As if the kill was somehow wrong for not being what people traditionally hunted.

I'd never been hunting, but I'd heard people in school talk about it in passing. Owl's weren't on the list.

"Good shot," Michael said, and walked over to the fallen bird. Apparently the subject had been dropped. Much to my relief.

We stayed out for a little longer, but after finding nothing and snow starting to fall again, we decided to head back to camp. When we arrived Elliot took the bird and started to pluck its feathers while Michael walked into the tent with Abby.

Trish was cleaning some sort of fish, and Sam was sitting by the fire. Everyone else was nowhere to be seen, so I joined Trish.

"Hey," I said, feeling tired and ready to do something at the same time.

She glanced at me, seeming to sense my mood without asking. Her hair had grown a little since I'd first met her, and while we still weren't what I would call friends, we seemed to have an agreement of survival. Or at least that's what I called it in my head.

"Want to learn to gut a fish? I spent all morning at the stream and managed to get lucky," she nodded towards the two other fish in her basket.

"Might as well," I knelt down beside her.

"Nice owl," Trish said as she passed me a knife.

I didn't thank her, or say anything really. Instead I simply watched what she did, and tried to do the same on the fish that she handed me. We worked in silence, not needing to fill the air with any sort of conversation. It reminded me of Cody, and for the millionth time, I wished he would simply show up, unharmed.