Chapter Text
Dina and I found this cool old campground today. She said kids used to go there in the summers for fun. We found all these art supplies. She cut colored paper and made some crowns for us while it rained outside. It was a good day.
When Ellie wakes up on the first day of summer vacation, it smells vaguely like the house is burning down, but she knows by now that it’s just food burning. Anything that doesn’t come from a can is not in Joel’s wheelhouse.
She’s lived in Jackson for a year now, and one thing she knows for sure is that people in Jackson are obsessed with old things, traditions and stuff from before the outbreak. Admittedly, some old things are cool: block parties, record players, Christmas trees, Easter egg hunts, ice cream, a library that she’s allowed to go to any time she wants.
Other old things are so fucking boring and stupid that it makes her glad that the world ended before she was born: staying at the dinner table while the adults are finishing their conversation, parent-teacher conferences, not being allowed to have her own gun, not being allowed to swear, being forced to learn to swim. (That last one is less boring and more of a direct threat to her life and well-being, as she explained to Joel multiple times last summer.)
A new old thing for her is the concept of summer vacation. In FEDRA school, they had the same schedule year-round. Here, school ends in June and they don’t go back to class until September. The kids her age have to help out with job rotations around town, but that feels like a small price to pay for nearly three months without school.
“Breakfast,” Joel announces, gesturing apologetically towards the plate of pancakes, which range from lightly scorched to charred, when she walks into the kitchen. “First day of summer, felt like we should celebrate.”
Ellie grins. The whole no school thing felt like a reward in and of itself, but she’s not going to turn down pancakes. Pancakes definitely fall into the cool old things category, even if they are a little burnt.
She’s eaten four pancakes and is dousing her fifth with maple syrup by the time Joel finishes cooking up all the batter and sits down with his own plate.
“Where are you kids gonna go today?” he asks.
She and Dina got permission ages ago to go outside the walls today, take one of the horses and “go exploring,” Dina keeps calling it, like they’re Lewis and Clark or something.
Ellie shrugs. “We don’t really have a plan. Not far, though. We’ll be smart and stay in the area that’s been patrolled.”
“I know, I trust you,” Joel says.
She pauses mid-bite. He says that a lot, and every time, the same mean little voice in the back of her mind asks, If you trust me, then why aren’t you telling me what happened at the hospital?
She slices her pancake with the edge of her fork and glances over at him, wondering for the ten millionth time what would happen if she just asked him again and told him that she knows he was lying, or at least not telling her the whole truth, that she knows something is off.
He locks eyes with her and frowns, concerned. “You alright, kiddo?”
She nods, stuffing the last few bites of her breakfast in her mouth so she doesn’t have to talk, or maybe to keep herself from talking, she’s not sure.
He nods in return, not fully convinced, but convinced enough to drop the subject. “There’s a couple cheese sandwiches on the counter if you wanna take some for your lunch.”
Would someone who makes you cheese sandwiches and pancakes lie to you? Would it matter if he did?
“Cool,” she says, her words muffled by the mouthful of pancakes. “Thanks.”
Joel shakes his head at her poor table manners, but she can see the smile in his eyes. “Chew your damn food.”
Dina is waiting for her at the stables, waving at her wildly as if they hadn’t just seen each other at the bonfire at Jesse’s house less than twelve hours ago.
Laura, a middle-aged woman who came to Jackson with her two little kids a few months after Ellie and Joel got there, is on the early shift at the stables.
“Your parents know you’re going, I assume?” she asks cheerfully.
A funny look crosses Dina’s face. “Talia’s not my mom, she’s my sister. But, yeah, she knows.”
Ellie frowns, wanting to say something to make Dina feel less awkward, but she’s not sure what. If anyone knows how it feels to have everyone assume someone is your parent, it’s Ellie. She never corrects them, though, because there’s not an easy explanation like Dina’s. Joel’s not my dad, he’s a random guy who was supposed to take me across the country to some Firefly doctors because, oh, by the way, I’m immune to cordyceps, but that didn’t work out for reasons that he’s still definitely lying about, and now I live in his house and he makes me pancakes and teaches me guitar and puts my drawings up on the fridge.
“You’re good to go?” Dina asks Ellie.
Ellie waves the note Joel had insisted on sending with her above her head triumphantly in response before handing it off.
“Not even forged or anything,” she says.
He was hesitant about the idea at first, he likes the concept of there being a large wall containing her here, but he also is a sucker for Ellie socializing with her peers and being involved in the community, so ultimately, this was a no-brainer. It also helps that Tommy’s out on patrol duty today and is just a radio call away.
She goes to coo over Shimmer, who’s still too little to ride long distances, while Dina helps Laura to tack up Scout, an even-tempered older mare.
Dina hops up first and then scoots back so that Ellie can take the reins.
“Alright, ladies, back before sundown, radio if you need anything, gun is for emergencies only,” Laura says, pushing the large wooden gate open and then handing a walkie and a handgun off to Dina, who stashes them both in her backpack.
Ellie’s been outside the walls a handful of times since they got to Jackson, on a few school trips and a couple of weekend outings with Joel and Tommy, but there’s something exciting about going with just Dina. She subconsciously touches the scar on her eyebrow and her chest tightens a bit. But this isn’t sneaking out, she reminds herself. This is different. Nothing bad will happen.
“Do you wanna go out by the lake?” Dina asks. “Jesse told me he heard there was some cool stuff at the campsite out there.”
Ellie rolls her eyes, glad that Dina can’t see her face. All Dina ever talks about lately is Jesse, and vice versa. Every conversation with either one of them always leads into talking about the other one, laughing about the funny thing they said, asking Ellie about what she thinks they might have meant by some completely meaningless comment.
“Ellie?” Dina says now, leaning forward to peek at her.
“Yeah, the lake would be fun.”
Dina rests her chin on Ellie’s shoulder, humming contentedly. Ellie hopes Dina can’t feel the way her heart is suddenly pounding, hopes her ears aren’t as bright red as they feel. This is normal girl stuff, this is how Dina is with everyone, it literally means nothing, dumbass. Don’t fuck up your friendship.
“I’m gonna lose my balance,” she says, shrugging Dina off with a laugh. “You’re gonna make us go in fucking circles or something.”
They both giggle, and talk for a while about nothing, making goofy jokes, rehashing some of the dumb things that happened at last night’s bonfire, rejoicing about their three months of freedom from algebra, Dina’s least favorite subject. Ellie actually doesn’t mind it, she kind of likes math now that she doesn’t get in trouble when she gets the answers wrong, but she is glad to have three months off from listening to Dina complain about algebra.
“How long have you lived in Jackson?” Ellie asks. They don’t talk a lot about their lives before Jackson, but she knows that Dina hasn’t lived here as long as some of their other friends.
“Talia and I got here when I was twelve. My mom died a while before that, when I was ten,” Dina says, her voice suddenly serious. Ellie wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to explain if she doesn’t want to, that wasn’t why she was asking, but Dina keeps talking. “We lived in a little settlement down in New Mexico for a while, a lot smaller than here, and raiders came, and— I think me and Talia were the only ones who made it out.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. We got here about two years later. Stayed a lot of different places before that. It’s crazy, though, thinking back on it, she was only seventeen when we lost our mom, which— I can’t imagine having to fend for myself and also be responsible for an annoying little kid.”
“Were you pretty annoying?” Ellie teases, sensing that Dina’s ready to move on to lighter conversation.
“Oh,” Dina laughs, “I was obsessed with knock-knock jokes.”
Ellie smiles and entertains the thought that she and Dina would have been friends if they’d met when they were little girls, if Dina had somehow ended up in the Boston QZ or if Ellie had somehow been in New Mexico, if they’d both gotten to Jackson a decade sooner. She’s pretty sure they would have been friends anywhere, any time they met.
“I used to have this pun book, you’d love it,” she says.
After a while, they stop along an old dirt road where a large wooden sign reads Camp Lakeview.
“Not a super creative name,” Ellie quips, gesturing towards the small lake in the distance that certainly is in view.
She gets down from the horse and Dina follows her, using one of the sign’s posts as a makeshift hitch to tie up Scout.
“I think this is a summer camp.” Turning around and seeing Ellie’s blank expression, Dina explains, “It’s a place kids would go for fun when school was out in the summers.”
Ellie shakes her head. Joel told her once, somewhere on their way through Nebraska, when she was bitching about how much she missed sleeping in a real bed, about how people used to voluntarily go camping, how they would leave their nice, cozy houses and choose to sleep on the ground for fun.
They follow the path, and sure enough, it does seem like it’s all set up as a place for kids to play. There’s a playground, a dock where a few half-sunken canoes are still anchored, a weathered basketball hoop, a bulletin board with tattered scraps of sun-bleached paper still stuck to it, nothing legible except for a note in a child’s messy handwriting that just says Capture The Flag Monday 7:00 on it.
Signs written in hand-lettered block letters hang over the doorways of the different small wooden buildings. One is labeled Archery, but when the girls peek inside, it’s clear that it had been picked over, probably years ago.
Ellie shrugs. “Figures.”
They wander around some more, peeking into the boathouse and the supply shed and the cabins with bunk beds where the kids must have slept.
As they snoop around, Dina pulls a thin book out from under one of the beds, grinning as she turns it around so that Ellie can see the cover. Savage Starlight, Issue #1.
“Oh, no way,” Ellie whispers, reverent. “The first one? Dude.”
They sit down on one of the beds for a minute, flipping through the pages. Dina slips her backpack off and scoots closer to Ellie and starts reading aloud, doing goofy voices for each of the characters until both of them are doubled over laughing.
“That’s so cool,” Ellie says after a while, slipping the comic into her backpack. “Between all of us in town we might have a whole set. Jesse has some of the later ones, Cat has a few. I used to have a bunch, but—”
“Is that what you and Cat were talking about all night?” Dina asks, an almost accusatory edge to her voice.
Ellie wrinkles her nose. Dina is not a fan of Cat, which Ellie doesn’t really understand. Cat’s a year older than them and she’s cool, she’s given herself tattoos and she’s super good at art and she knows all about all kinds of music and movies.
“I guess,” Ellie says. “That, and art stuff and school and stuff, I don’t know. She’s starting patrol training this summer.”
“That’s cool,” Dina says, in an icy tone that makes it clear that she actually does not find it cool at all.
There’s a crack of thunder outside, making both of them jump.
“Well, shit,” Dina grumbles, looking out the doorway at the dark clouds forming overhead.
Ellie grins. She’s never heard Dina swear before.
They rush to go get Scout and get her to shelter before the rain comes. She whinnies at Dina, annoyed, as she walks her through the double doors of the boathouse, the only place where she’ll fit. They both are laughing about what a drama queen this horse is when Dina’s eyes suddenly widen with panic.
“Ellie, I think I left my backpack back over by the bunkhouses.”
Ellie frowns, not quite sure why Dina’s so freaked out about that, and then she realizes. The radio. The gun. She turns on her heel and tries hard not to full-out run back there, hearing Dina hurrying along behind her, although she doesn’t turn around to check. Nothing bad is going to happen , Ellie repeats over and over to herself. This is different and nothing bad will happen and—
“Ellie, Dina, do you copy?” Tommy’s muffled voice is calling from inside of Dina’s backpack, which is still propped up against the bunk bed. Ellie recognizes the thinly veiled worry in his voice. She digs through the bag, letting Dina’s stuff fall to the floor, and pulls out the walkie-talkie, stepping outside as soon as she finds it, suddenly claustrophobic.
“Hi, sorry,” she says, walking a few yards away and sitting down at a picnic table. “We’re okay, we just accidentally left the radio behind for a second.”
There’s a moment’s silence and she figures he’s probably cussing her out off-air. The radio crackles back on. “We were radioing y’all for a couple minutes, kid. I was about to send out a search party.”
Ellie cringes.
“Does Joel know?” I’m never going to get to go outside the walls again. I’m never going to get to leave the house again.
Tommy snorts. “No, that is not a call I was gonna make until I absolutely needed to. You’re sure you’re alright, though, Ellie? Is it raining out there yet?”
She glances up at the sky. “Not yet, but I think it’s probably going to in a minute.”
“Okay. It just started over here. Eugene says he thinks it should roll through pretty quick, is there somewhere y’all can take shelter?”
“Yeah.”
Dina’s by her side again, gripping the straps of her backpack like it might just up and walk away.
“Alright,” Tommy says. “Y’all come right on back once it lets up, you don’t wanna get caught in a thunderstorm in the dark.”
Ellie nods, then realizes he obviously can’t see her over the radio. “Okay. Sorry.”
“It was my fault,” Dina adds, leaning in to talk into the radio. “I left my bag behind—”
“We’re good now, though,” Ellie cuts her off before Dina lets it slip that that means they left the fucking gun behind, too. “Thanks, Tommy.”
“Yep. Just glad you’re okay. Be smart. Over and out.”
“We will. Over and out.”
Dina sniffs and starts to apologize to Ellie, who shakes her head.
“It’s okay. We’re fine. No use crying over spilled milk.” It’s an expression Joel uses a lot, but based on the bemused look on Dina’s face, it must just be a Texas thing or an old person thing, maybe both.
A drop of rain plops on Ellie’s nose, another on her hair, and the girls duck into the nearest building, labeled with a sign that says Arts & Crafts.
“Fuck,” Ellie whispers, frozen in the doorway, realizing that they didn’t clear the building first.
For a split second, she’s back in that fucking mall in Boston and she’s holding Riley as she’s turning, watching her shake and twitch, watching the tendrils creep their way up the inside of her arm and up her neck, waiting for her own body to feel any different at all, and Riley, in her mind’s eye, has turned into Dina, and she’s lost another person because that’s all she ever fucking does—
“Clear,” Dina calls from the back of the small building, from behind a shelf.
Ellie forces herself to take a breath, scoping the room and trying to do the stupid thing Tommy tried to teach her a while ago: five things you can see, four things you can touch— or maybe it’s four things you can hear?
Dina pops back into her line of sight and she can breathe again, sort of. Five things. A red paintbrush in a jar, a half dozen painted wooden chairs, sheets of colored paper, a jar of silver glitter, Dina.
“This is so fucking cool,” Ellie says, willing the shakiness out of her voice.
It is fucking cool. At FEDRA school, they had barely half a closet dedicated to their sad excuse for art supplies, a few pencils and dull crayons and a couple stacks of scrap paper, and the rest of the closet held extra ammo for target practice. Here, there are rows of shelves of fabric, yarn, sheets of cardboard, glitter, crayons, bottles of tempera paints and tubs of clay long ago dried out.
A pair of scissors, the two blades still connected in the middle with a screw, sits on a stack of colored paper on a table. Out of habit, Ellie reaches to stash the scissors in her backpack.
“Wait, can I see those?” Dina asks.
Ellie nods, handing them over. Dina takes a sheet of yellow paper and cuts it down the middle in a zigzag pattern. Ellie watches as she takes the two pieces, cuts into the top of one and the bottom of the other and interlocks them, and then she’s gesturing for Ellie to turn around so she can wrap it around her head and fasten it, making a paper crown. Ellie finds herself holding her breath like a fucking idiot when Dina’s hands brush over her hair and gently tug her ponytail down to the nape of her neck so the crown will stay on.
“My mom died, too,” she says while her back is still to Dina. “I was a baby, I don’t remember her. Joel isn’t my real dad.” She pauses, not sure whether she likes the wording, which implies that he is still her dad in some capacity even if he’s not her real one. “I lived in a FEDRA orphanage for a while.”
“So, you’re adopted?” Dina pats Ellie’s finished crown, takes another sheet of paper, blue, and starts cutting one for herself.
“Kind of, yeah.” She thinks back to the ultra-condensed version of the story that Joel had shared with her teachers after her first freak-out at school last fall. “He and Tess, his— partner, they knew a friend of my mom’s, and they were doing her a favor by taking me in— it’s kind of a long story.”
Dina nods, maybe waiting for her to say more, it’s not like they’re pressed for time or anything, but Ellie stops herself there because she knows she’ll slip up and say too much if she lets herself keep talking.
“It’s nice—” she says instead, not quite sure how to phrase what she wants to say, “I mean, shit, it’s obviously not nice that you’re an orphan, too, but—”
Dina looks up at her, her eyes big and understanding. “It’s nice to have someone here who gets it.”
“Yes,” Ellie agrees emphatically. “Everyone here is so normal, and it’s so fucking weird.”
Dina laughs and nods, placing the blue crown on her own head. “Well, we can be the queens of being a normal amount of weird.”
The rain patters on the roof and the girls, in their crowns, going back to their conversations about nothing and eating cheese sandwiches (only slightly squished after a morning crammed in Ellie's backpack) until the rain lets up. Ellie is pretty sure, all things considered, that she is well beyond the normal amount of weird, but she won’t complain if Dina wants to think of her as being the normal amount of weird. She won't complain if Dina wants to think about her in any way at all.