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"Clem. Clemmy."
Clementine sighs.
"Clemclem? Ooh. Clam."
She shoots Gabe an unimpressed look, her lack of response causing him to look up at her momentarily, soon going back to peeling the skin off a carrot. "Orange."
"You suck at making nicknames."
"Says the one who just calls me 'dork' all the time."
Clementine watches the water in the pot, frowning when it just sits still, not boiling yet. "There's not much you can do with 'Gabe'!"
"Not much you can do with 'Clementine' either. I might have to refer to you as 'Orange' from now on."
She looks at him again and tries her best to glare seriously, bursting into giggles instead. "You wouldn't dare."
"I absolutely would!" He smiles. "What are you gonna do about it... Orange?"
"Oh my god. That sounds horrible. As if 'Clementine' wasn't a ridiculous name already."
Bubbles start to appear in the pot and Gabe skins the last carrot, moving on to cut them into small circle shapes instead. "It sounds like something a middle aged white mom would call her kid, thinking it's a unique and gorgeous name when it's really just basic and makes the rest of the baseball team look embarrassing."
Clementine takes the potatoes she cut up and pushes them into the pot gently. "That sounds oddly specific and concerning, Gabe."
"I had weird classmates."
"I had a girl in my class named 'Zodiac'," she stirs for a bit before adding in a little plate of herbs, motioning to Gabe to add the carrots as well. "It was really weird."
"Well, thank the Lord you have such a normal name, then!" He grins when she looks annoyed again, the scowl not reaching her eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "I meet folks named after a fruit all the time. Or was the fruit named after someone named Clementine? Or did someone crave clementines so bad during their pregnancy they just decided to name their child Clementine, resulting in a weird and kind of morbid name?"
"Shut up," she laughs, "My dad just liked it. I don't know how he managed to convince Mom but here we are."
Not knowing anything about her parents, Gabe leans against the table and stuffs his hands in his pockets, listening. "He sounds nice, especially since he was the one to name you after a fruit."
She nods as she stirs, meeting his eyes for a moment before turning her attention back to the soup. "He suggested it as a joke at first, but then just kind of rolled with it. That's what he told me, at least. And Mom didn't really know what else to call me, so she agreed. She was a bit indecisive."
"So was mine. Mari and I went to different schools because she couldn't decide between them." He smiles at the memory. "Moms are kind of like that, I guess."
She returns the smile, a pleasant silence hanging in the air before the door opens, a woman walking in and locking it behind her, a seemingly heavy backpack on her back.
Clementine watches as she takes her hair out of her little ponytail and starts laying out knives and other weapons she found on the kitchen counter across from them. "Everything okay?"
"Saw a few guys on the road, we might have to move."
Gabe and Clementine exchange a worried glance. "When," Gabe looks at the woman, dread filling him already. "When are we leaving?"
"Sooner the better." She turns to them and narrows her eyes at the pot of soup. "We're gonna need that in jars. It would be for the best if we could leave by tonight."
Clementine hurries past her to the living room where AJ was sleeping while Gabe nods and brings the pot off the fire and starts preparing the jars.
"And Gabe?"
The boy turns to her, slightly taken back at her scared expression. "We might be in trouble. I think it's them."
He blinks, taking a second to process. "Helen, what else could they want from us?"
"Revenge."
And with that, she runs off to help with AJ, leaving Gabe alone in the kitchen with her words.