Chapter Text
Thirty-one days.
To be honest, Ellie thought he would give up much sooner, that he would’ve come running to tell her the truth. There was no way he wasn’t aware of what a shitty liar he was, and Ellie wasn’t stupid at all. Maybe.
She waited, she waited for him to crawl and beg for forgiveness for all he had done, waited for the satisfaction to have that man, who had always seemed so imperturbable to everything around him, finally admit his faults, for it to make her feel like everything she had done had been worth it in the end.
Instead, there was nothing.
Why did he lie to me?
Ellie asked herself the question constantly, even now that she was adjusting the hay in the trough for the horses while Shimmer’s muzzle tickled her neck.
But Ellie knew the answer to her question, and the fact that she knew annoyed her tremendously: the girl would have not taken it well, and Joel knew that much. Better to pretend everything was fine, wasn’t it? Why bother to tell her the truth when she had been so masterfully tricked by his lie?
A sudden wave of anger clouded her mind, and Ellie forced herself to stop for a moment, to close her eyes and remember to get air into her lungs.
“Everything alright?”, Tommy asked her, on the other side of the stable.
Oh, he was there too.
“Sure”, and she kept her sarcastic answer to herself because Maria and him were kind and patient with her, and she knew she couldn’t blame Tommy for the behaviour of his asshole brother. Nevertheless, the desire to shout at him was still there.
She wondered if he knew. She longed to ask him, but she pushed the thought away as soon as it came. No, she wouldn’t ask because, if she did, Tommy would have pretended to not have any idea of what she was talking about even if he did know about it, and if she had told him, he would have told Joel everything soon after. She couldn’t blame him, he had no allegiance towards her.
Then, eventually, Joel would have crawled to her only because he couldn’t pretend any longer, not because he realised he had made a mistake, and then what satisfaction would she get?
“How was school?”, he asked again, and Ellie wished Tommy would stop trying to make conversations with her every time he had the opportunity.
You don’t have to pretend, I know you don’t care.
“I hate it, but I must go”, simple as that. It was the umpteenth decision an adult made for her.
How much older do I have to get to have full control on my life without having someone make decisions for me? What else do I have to do?
“Someone’s bothering you?”, his voice had gotten closer, and instinctively Ellie turned around to see where he was, to make sure he didn’t get too close. Tommy had moved to the centre of the stable, retrieving the horse brush form the table to use on one of the horses. The one he was working on had the same colour as Callus. A nauseous feeling started to spread in her throat.
“No”, and she wasn’t lying. The kids in her class didn’t dare to talk to her (good for her, she had no desire to talk to them too), and they limited themselves to launching weird glances in her direction. Only once a girl tried to talk to her, but Ellie used her worse glance to scare her off, and she stumbled back to where she came from. No other attempts after that.
At least no one wanted to kick her ass at every mistake. Maybe that was the weirdest thing, that everything was too peaceful.
“Then what’s the matter?”
“There’s no matter”, she replied with the annoyance she felt every time someone tried to ask that question. That had become her answer, like a preregistered message impossible to edit.
You are my problem, you fucking adults.
If she started to talk, she wouldn’t be able to stop, and that was the last thing she wanted.
A drop of sweat ran down her temple while she arranged the last hay ball, hugging her jaw as it went down.
“I remember Sarah had some kind of problem with some kids when she was little, she always came back home crying, Joel used to tell me. I don’t know what he did, but the whole matter got better after. Maybe you should try and talk to me, see if-”
“Good thing I am not Sarah, isn’t it?”, she stopped him, wiping away the sweat and the grim from her hands with a rag. Everything is always about him. “I’m done. I’ll see you.”
She was already out when he bid her goodbye.
Joel asked her if she minded eating at home and Ellie was surprised that he had been sensitive enough to ask her opinion on something that concerned her. She didn’t want to admit, but she was grateful they didn’t have to go to the hall to have dinner with other people.
Most of the days it was still difficult to pretend to be a perfectly normal girl who didn’t have the urge to puke every time she ate some unspecified meat, and she knew today would’ve been one of those days.
“How was school?”, he asked her while digging his fork in the chicken’s meat he cooked. It was one of the few Ellie managed to eat without many problems, and Joel knew that.
There it was the snare. Damn you, Tommy.
She was never able to stay at peace for the whole day, there was always someone who managed to get on her nerves. And there she was, only a few hours after the temper she got with Tommy, Joel was the last thing she needed.
And despite the anger, the worst thing was that she couldn’t stop her heart from soaring every time Joel showed the minimum interest towards her.
“It was cool!”, but her voice didn’t match the expression on her face.
“What did you do?”, his mouth was set in a line. He knew she was lying.
See, asshole? How does it feel to be bullshitted in the face?
“We talked about space”, it was so easy to lie when you didn’t know how to do it. “The others in the class are cool enough, we all enjoy staying cooped up in a room for seven hours straight”, she put another piece of chicken in her mouth, but this one tasted different, sour and bitter. Ellie kept chewing.
“Ellie.”
When she looked over, Joel was already glaring at her without batting his eyelids. Her stomach always turned when he looked at her like that.
“What’s now?”
“Why are you telling me bullshit?”, and his voice betrayed his fatigue from the workday.
“I’m not lying”, she replied with just as much seriousness. “I swear.”
No reaction. Joel looked at her for another second, then he drew his attention back to the plate.
Ellie got up and put her empty plate in the sink, making the water flow on his surface to clean the fat off. She remained there, staring at the water stream until the white swarm around the corners of her eyes. Her fingers itched.
“I’ll go in my room, your turn to wash the dishes”, she laid her hand against the back of the chair where she had been sitting a few moments before. “Anything you need to tell me?”, she studied him like she did with a prey when they went hunting.
Just say it, I know you’re dying to do it. Just say it!
The man turned, and Ellie could see the wrinkles on his tired face, the greyish beard she so desperately wanted to run the palm of her hand against. “Your hair, they really suit you like this”, he spoke and then his attention went back to the plate.
Fuck you.
“Okay”, was what got out of her instead, while that annoying feeling in her chest sprung back to life. The knuckles went white because of the strength with whom she was holding the back of the chair. Her hair tie had snapped that morning, another moment of the day where she got pissed for a stupid reason. She knew she had other ones in her room, but she couldn’t remember where she had shoved them.
“Goodnight”, he spoke while Ellie had started to walk away.
“Tell Tommy to mind his own fucking business next time.”
She didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t fucking mad.
It turned out Tommy had actually minded his own business. It bothered her to not be right, mostly because she still couldn’t figure what it was that Tommy wanted from her. But it was done now and, as she did with all the things that made her mad, she ignored it and moved on. This didn’t mean she could always swallow the bitter pill.
Joel and Tommy were on duty to go on patrol, so that morning she had barely had the time to lay her to get her sleepy eyes on him when he informed her that breakfast was ready and ran away, Tommy probably on the verge of leaving without him.
Mornings when Joel was patrolling were the worst for her. She spent too much time alone, and too much time alone meant getting lost in her thoughts, and getting lost in her thoughts meant Silver Lake, human flesh, Dav-
The heaves went up in her throat, but she was used to the feeling, and she swallowed it down so quickly no one in the classroom noticed.
In the after, though, she remained with an inflamed mouth all day, until she hid in a corner, or in the bathroom of the house when Joel was away – like that day – and she shoved two fingers down her throat. She didn’t have to stifle the heaves, then.
The first few weeks, when Joel had started being on duty while Ellie had been allowed to rest for another bit, there was no way to block her intrusive thoughts, let alone keeping her lunch down for more the half an hour.
When Joel came back, she would become his shadow, and wouldn’t leave his side not even for five minutes. The man didn’t need more than one glare at her to know she’d been sick, and he wouldn’t say anything about it, but the girl knew he understood because his movements got slower and his voice softer and lower, and he didn’t waste any occasion to touch her shoulder or bury his fingers between her hair, and then the guilt took her. She hated being so dependent on him.
From the classroom’s window she could see the main gates. It was too soon to see anyone ride back; it wasn’t even noon. Nonetheless, her mind would play tricks on her, and she would see the barriers lift and the gates open and the horses ride back. Even in the distance she could see Joel’s tousled hair and broad shoulders. Then she would blink, and see that the gates had never been opened, that not even a grain of dirt had been lifted by the horses. Everything was perfectly still.
That surreal peace sickened her.
During the break, Ellie went to the bathroom and, even earlier her brain could make her think, her hand was almost all the way inside her mouth. She immediately felt better – the images of a severed ear that she’d been forced to eat vanished from her mind –, even if it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
At the end of the day her head throbbed, and, as if she hadn’t puked enough at school, she sure finished her work when she went back to the house. She didn’t bother to go the hall for dinner: she wouldn’t have eaten anything, and if there was something a girl born post-Outbreak did not do, it was waste food.
She lied on her bed, closed her eyes to block the light coming from the window.
She couldn’t understand why she felt so exhausted.
She had duty at the stable in less than half an hour, so no chance for a quick nap. The nightmares would have kept her awake anyway, so no risk taken.
Or, at least, that was what she told herself.
When she opened her eyes again, the sun had set, and Jackson was lit up with the few lampposts that the electricity managed to reactivate. The awareness of having completely fucked up her tasks caught her instantly, and Ellie jumped out of the bed, with the risk of breaking her neck while she climbed down the stairs.
The light in the living room was on and Joel sat on the couch with his back turned.
“You’re back”, she mumbled, and when the man turned, Ellie was relieved to see him untouched.
She didn’t even give him the time to open his mouth that she was babbling again.
“I gotta see Maria, I’ll be back”, she shoved her feet inside her Converse.
“It’s late, Ellie. You can see Maria tomorrow, what’s so urgent?”
But Ellie didn’t finish listening to him, she was already on the porch, the boards creaked under her weight.
The light inside the house were still on, so at least one of them was still awake.
It was Tommy who opened the door, dressed in his pyjama pants and t-shirt. He seemed alarmed as soon as he saw her.
“Is Maria still awake?”, she asked him as soon as he opened the door.
“Yeah, we were about to go to bed. Something happened? Where’s Joel?”, he studied her from head to toe.
“Everything’s alright. Can I talk to her?”
Maria wasn’t dressed much differently from her husband, but she was less surprised than him to see her.
“I screwed up the shift, I know. I’m sorry”, she cut it short, the guilt was devouring her.
Since when she worried about things like this?
“You didn’t show up at dinner, too”, the woman replied, like her apologies weren’t enough.
“I fell asleep.”
Maria looked at her for a few moments, then a small smile appeared on her face. Maybe this time Ellie could get away without any punishment.
But why would she have to give her any punishment? Ellie didn’t owe her anything.
“Pay more attention next time.”
She nodded and said her good nights. Tommy went with her.
“You sure you’re alright?”, he asked on the doorstep.
“Relax, dude. You’re worse than Joel, and we’ve known each other for, what, like two months?”, she brushed him off, even if she hated to admit that she actually enjoyed all that worry for her. “How was patrol?”, she asked, suddenly shy enough to not look at him in the eyes.
“Everything smooth. Joel could not stop talking about you.”
Damn those fucking butterflies in the stomach.
“Yeah?”, she tried to sound like she didn’t care. “What did he complain about, this time?”
Tell me everything, was what she wanted to say.
“He told me you’re not even a month into school and you’re already with the head buried in a book all day!”
“Bullshit! He’s never seen me with an open schoolbook before!”, but after one glance at Tommy, Ellie knew he was messing with her. “Fuck you, Tommy”, and her smile got even wider.
Keep your secrets to yourselves. I don’t care.
But she cared. Damn, how much did she care.
When she got back to the house, she heard the faint whistle of the kettle. She exhaled a breath before meeting Joel in the kitchen.
“I found some more camomile today, drink some”, he said when Ellie appeared on the threshold. He handed her the mug, the one with the stupid sheep drawn on the front. She remained with the steaming hot mug in the hand for a while, knowing that was Joel’s way to tell her “I see you.” She stared at the bottom, where some of the grinded flowers had collected in floating grainy clumps. It had the same colour of the liquid that had come out of Joel’s stab wound, dense and shiny, when the man had been one step away from leaving her forever.
It had created a coat on the wound that Ellie destroyed everytime she thread the needle in his flesh.
Her mouth started filling with saliva at the thought. How messed up did her mind had to be to jump on those thoughts like that?
Hesitantly, she took a sip, and it didn’t matter how sweet its taste was, she still had to drop the mug on the countertop if she didn’t want to throw up for the third time.
“Tired?”, came the voice from the man in front of her. She nodded.
That small encounter with Tommy and Maria had already used up all her charge. “How did it go on patrol?” she spoke.
“The usual. I was waiting for you at the gate.”
I’ll do better next time, I promise.
“I know”, she kept staring at the liquid in the mug, even if the sight made her queasy.
“What did you need from Maria?”
“I didn’t show up at the stable. I fell asleep.”
She waited for the earful, but it didn’t come.
“How many times?”, he asked then, and he didn’t need to specify what he was talking about.
“A couple”, she whispered.
“At school?”
Ellie nodded again, not mentioning that little detail of her showing her hand down her throat. “Here too.”
She felt the touch, and Ellie hated the way she automatically leaned into the hand on her head like a cat.
“I’m sorry I’ve been away so long today.”
Don’t say that, you make it hard to stay mad at you.
“It’s not your fault”, she replied, lost in his touch. Reluctantly, she leaned away, feeling empty at the loss. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good night, kid”, and Ellie forced herself not to look at him one last time before disappearing on the stairs.
There would have been other occasions to see the doe-eyes he had every time she was sick, because sure it was, she would get sick again.
In that moment she only hoped to go to sleep and not wake up to the feeling of a hand around her throat.
Her back hurt.
It was a sensation she was learning to recognise more and more throughout the day, of how her muscles were always tightened. As soon as they started to loosen pain would irradiate all of her body, and the immediate response was to seize up everything again.
When they were on the road, Joel and her, she had never had that kind of problem because they couldn’t afford to let their guard down. Even in the half an hour they took for themselves to bathe in the river nearby, when they stopped for ten minutes to eat something, especially in those ten minutes, her shoulders were more tightened than ever.
But Jackson was different.
There was no need to keep watch at night or worry about searching for food for the next couple of days. Damn, she didn’t even have the problem of worrying about taking a piss and wetting her clothes. Her period had come back after months of its absence (not that she missed it at all).
During days like those, especially on Sundays, when neither of them had to do anything and Joel stayed at the house with her, her back loosened more, awakening a pain she didn’t know she had been holding until then.
Feeling it was almost comforting, it distracted her from the other thousands of complaints that lingered inside her.
Sit on the porch steps, Ellie released her back against her knees she kept tight against her chest, and a small breath came out of her lips when her muscles stirred. Her body was welcoming that pain.
She was sweating, her clothes sticked to her skin due to the sweltering hot weather. The long sleeve of her shirt was so sticked to the skin she could almost trace the outline of her scar.
Joel wasn’t doing much better; his grey t-shirt had left a dark stain all over his back, and his hair, usually brown, were black and glued to his neck. He was grafting a tree.
“Figs”, he said, and he couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. Ellie had never tasted one, and she didn’t understand what was so exciting about planting a tree.
Joel babbled about the man who had sold it to him, already grown of a few months. He lived on the other side of Jackson, and Joel had been surprised at the number of leafy branches that emerged from the back of his house. The man had been a gardener Before.
Joel had promised to repair the leak on his roof in exchange for the graft, so, basically, he had sacrificed two weeks’ worth of his spare time.
“But it’s worth it”, he mumbled out of breath. Ellie smiled at that.
She listened diligently, not really knowing what to say for fear of spoiling his enthusiasm, and when Joel saw she didn’t replay, he would start speaking again, telling her all sort of things like “you’ll see, you’ll like them!” or “figs are the sweetest when they ripen”.
He was working fervidly, despite the litres of sweat trickling down his body.
Ellie got up and out of the shadow under the porch. She handed him the glass of water she was keeping beside her. A smug grin appeared on her lips when she saw the man surprised by her gesture.
Under the sun, the warmth was even worse.
“You have nothing better to do that to see an old man work?”, he asked.
She didn’t like when he started joking willingly about his age without any stimulus from the girl. It meant he was trying to cheer her up, to…to make her understand that he saw, that he read her. It made her feel exposed.
“No”, came her only response.
On the road, she would have come up with a sarcastic retort or some joke, but she couldn’t think of anything. It was different, everything felt so different in Jackson. And she didn’t like it at all.
“How long will it take to grow?”, she said.
“A year before the first fruits, more or less”, he kept tying a slim green string around the trunk, through the bamboo stick he had driven into the ground in support. The first leaves of the tree reached her shoulder. “Then, it will keep growing, more figs will come out and the roots will grow to the point where they’ll crack the ground. Maybe I’ll live long enough to see it.”
So, this is what they ought to do: stay there and age. Ellie wondered if she too would live long enough to see the roots stick out of the ground. To see Joel grow old.
Inside her head, he would stay like this forever. If everything had gone to plan, things would have really gone that way.
But it was late now, Joel had decided differently. And that was her suffering: watching his hair become greyer day by day, his skin age and his back bend under the weight of time, while she would just grow and grow.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.
It should have gone in a different way.
She was mad, furious, but seeing Joel like this, all grins and smiles over a stupid tree, it just dulled every kind of rancour she had towards him, in spite of the fact all she wanted to do was yelling at him.
Just for a second Ellie felt peace, contentment, and she drank in his sight.
And then she just felt robbed.
One day on that terrible and hot summer, Joel told her she should find ‘her people’.
He was getting better at doing those speeches and had the cheek to give her lessons. The surges of anger she felt in those moments were so strong that her only wish was to slap him.
“I don’t need anyone”, she had replied acidly, and ignored the way the man had called her back while she slammed the front door.
Fuck you, fuck you. It was her mantra to calm down.
What the hell did he mean she ‘had to find her people’? What the fuck had they been doing all that time together, playing cards?! As if Ellie had done something else all those years, like she hadn’t had to see her people die one by one.
I’m not his people, I’ll never be.
Joel was for her though, despite everything.
The paths in Jackson were busy at that time of the day. It was now dusk, and everyone was heading home before going to the hall for dinner. There was a cool wind that made the air more bearable.
She heard chattering, and then the main gates opened while the patrol came back from the shift. She caught sight of Tommy’s dark curly hair: he was getting off his horse and was talking to another of the men of the group. It was painfully familiar the resemblance he had with his elder brother.
Before she could stop and fucking think, Ellie was already going straight towards him, convinced that the poor imitation of the man she had been on the road with for a whole year could be ‘her people’.
He wasn’t a replacement, abso-fucking-lutely not.
It was maths, really: she got along with Joel (she had something so say about it at the moment), so she would get along with his younger brother too.
Because they were blood, right? Ellie told herself her reasoning made sense.
Tommy was surprised to see her arrive; she could read it all over his face.
“What’re you doin’ here?”, he had a grin on his lips.
“I saw the others coming in, and I thought it would be rude to not to check if you were still in one piece.”
Tommy lifted his arms in response. “Still in one piece, thanks for the concern.”
Neither of them said anything else. Ellie hadn’t realised the conversation had to keep going to not make it awkward.
“D’you want to come with me to the stable? I’ll let you get on Thunder, if you want”, he proposed.
“What kind of name is Thunder?”, she asked as she moved closer to the horse.
“It’s a stallion name. Do you need a lift?”, he didn’t try to touch her without her consent.
“No, it’s fine.”
She should have thought before accepting his proposition.
The moment she sat on Thunder the atmosphere mutated.
It wasn’t summer, but a freezing and snowy winter. Her hands that held the reins were covered with a thick pair of gloves. There was no one on the road, Silver Lake was deserted.
Callus moved calmly, despite of the blood pouring down his side under the saddle. He didn’t hint at any sign of pain. Ellie was looking for something, and a weird sense of urgency was tickling the back of her head, but she didn’t know exactly what he was. She let herself be guided by the animal, watching for any sign of infected.
She felt the anguish all over her skin, but she couldn’t get it off because she didn’t know how.
The snow was starting to blur her vision. Then she heard a noise, a voice from the distance, and a limping man appeared in front of her. He held his side while the blood gushed onto the pure white snow.
Her heart stopped inside her throat when she recognised the man as Joel. Finally, she understood what the reason of her anguish was: Joel was dying. She wanted to dismantle the horse, but for some reason her legs were glued to the saddle, and she couldn’t get off.
Go back inside, what are you doing out here? Go back inside!
“Ellie, come with me”, Joel was now close enough to her, at the feet of Callus.
I can’t, I must find something to make you feel better.
“Ellie”, he repeated, his look was empty when she looked at her, begging her to come down.
The man extended his arms out towards her, both the clean and the bloodied one. Ellie wanted to get away, but her body was frozen in place, and for some reason Callus didn’t have any intent to move.
The red hand grabbed her first, staining her coat with blood, then the other one. Joel was lifting her as if he didn’t have any mortal wound on his side, as if he hadn’t been stabbed by a bat’s handle.
Then, it was hot again. When she landed on her feet it was still daytime, even if the sun was threatening to disappear any moment now, and Ellie had her sweater on still, no coat that blocked her movements, no blood stain to dirty her clothes. Facing her was Joel, who was watching her like one might watch a ghost if it was in front of him.
“Ellie, it’s all good. You’re with me.”
Of course. Why would anything be wrong? I’m with you.
Next to her, Tommy had the same worried expression, but there was something in his eyes that Joel didn’t have, like he knew something. Why the hell were they watching her like this?
She got dizzy for a moment, nothing special.
She looked at Thunder, who was unbeknownst to what was happening.
“Thanks, Tommy, we’ll see you at dinner”, Joel had started talking, and in doing so he was gently pulling Ellie against him.
“No, I was gonna go with him to the stables.”
If the man had wanted to say anything, he didn’t. He just looked at her without opening his mouth.
“Maybe you should stay here, rest a little”, Tommy interrupted.
“I’m fine, let’s go”, but the younger brother didn’t hint at any movement. Only when Joel gave him a sign, Tommy did finally move.
I’m fine, Joel is fine. No need to turn it into a tragedy.
“Can I pull Thunder?”
While she walked to the stable, doubts started haunting her mind. She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, and if forced herself to remember too hard a sharping pain would start just between her eyes. Maybe Joel wasn’t fine, he’d had a weird look all the time.
Maybe he’s starting to feel guilt for what he’s said.
Her people, duh. How dared he!
Her plan wasn’t working very well, Tommy was silent beside her.
Eventually, he opened his mouth when the two were leaving Thunder in his box.
“I don’t want to mind your business, but you should really talk to Joel”, he said.
Not again.
“What should we talk about?”, she was tired of having the same conversation over and over again.
The man didn’t reply. When Ellie looked over, he looked like he was carrying the weight of his years.
“I don’t know what happened, okay? I just got confused for a moment”, but she wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know…”
It was hard finding words to describe something you didn’t even know had happened.
“You were muttering something. I didn’t hear what”, he quickly added. “This is…”, it was the first time she saw him at a loss for words.
Bad, that’s what he wanted to say. It should have scared her, but it didn’t.
She moved her hand against Thunder’s neck, looking deeply into his huge black eyes. He was the one whose mantle looked just like Callus’s.
“We should go to the hall”, the girl said, even if all she wanted to do was going back to the house.
“Ellie, are you sur-”
“I swear, Tommy, if you ask one more time! I’m perfectly fine.”
But, of course, he could not drop the topic, not even on their way to the hall.
“I just want to tell you – no, let me finish – I just want to tell you that I know what happened because it happened to me too, back from the war. E Joel knows too because it happened to him too a few times. Now, I don’t know what happened out there, but Joel knows it and sure as hell he doesn’t want it happening to you too.”
“Joel doesn’t know shit”, Ellie muttered. He was half dead on the mattress in a basement.
“He’d surprise you, you know”, Tommy retorted.
Maybe Joel would finally understand how horrible it was to want to know something at all costs and keep being told bullshit in the face.
“Talk to someone, Ellie”, the man continued. “If you don’t, it’ll only get worse.”
“I will”, and she said it like it was a promise.
Obviously, she didn’t. And, obviously, things got worse.
Tommy wasn’t so bad after all.
The time they spent at the stables, when they had shifts together, ended up being one of the few moments when the rage and resentment left her body, and Ellie was finally able to breathe again without the feeling of carrying the world on her shoulder.
In those moments, Jackson didn’t seem just as bad.
Tommy told her all kind of things, mostly anecdotes from Before: his job, the occasional fight at the pub, the times Joel went to rescue him from prison and somehow things always went wrong.
Talking to him was waaay easier that talking to Joel, because when he spoke, it didn’t feel like words had any weight, they were just there to be told, to be remembered. Tommy was not afraid of talking about Sarah, her name wasn’t taboo like it was for the older brother, who sometimes suddenly stopped talking because he realised his story wouldn’t have made sense without mentioning her.
So, Ellie dropped the topic, she asked another question to relieve the tension, even if the mood had been inevitably ruined.
When Tommy mentioned her, Ellie felt jealousy cling to her chest for a few moments, then, it went away just as it came. It was stupid, really, feeling jealousy for a dead girl who couldn’t harm her in any way.
Somehow, though, her memory was like a reminder for Ellie: she’d never have what Joel and Sarah had.
And Ellie realised, as the days passed by, that her plan had been ruinous from the beginning because she hadn’t considered a crucial factor: Tommy already had his people, he didn’t need her.
He had his son, Maria, Jackson’s people, and now Joel too. What was he supposed to do with a fourteen-year’s old girl at his side?
He didn’t need her, no one did. She could be of good company, sure, but no one would miss her.
Realising that small insignificant detail didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. It was more like a tickle against her neck, nothing she couldn’t sleep on.
And yes, she was jealous, but she also envied Tommy, who had the time and the means to get to know Joel in a way she’d never have. Those times he spoke about his older brother Ellie was bewildered listening to him, her ears stretched out to hear any word that left his mouth, like each one was a piece to a treasure map she had to put together. Nothing could touch her on those days.
Those moments of mirth ended on the way to return to their respective houses, when Tommy said farewell to her to go back to his people, his family. Ellie, instead, went back to those four walls she lived in that felt more of a cage than anything else.
Joel would be on the couch waiting for her, and when he turned, he wouldn’t know Ellie had been there staring at him for the past few seconds, in the attempt to catch a glimpse of those details on his face Tommy had told her about. She never managed to find anything.
She took a step, then another one, and while she sat next to him waiting for dinner time, the rage was back in her body, flowing like lava in her veins, slow and relentless. The only way she had to fight it was letting Joel put an arm around her and pull her against his shoulder until her head rested on him.
She’d never admit how much she loved being with him in that spot.
His fingers would grab locks of hair that got out of her ponytail, and he’d move them behind her ear, brushing against the shell and sending shivers all over her body. Ellie would talk enough, tell some puns, say some bullshit, enough to reassure him she was fine, enough to avoid the doe-eyes look he’d put on otherwise.
How much easier would it be if you just told me the truth?
“It’s dinner time”, he always announced after a while they’d been sitting there, and in those moments everything was well.
Of course, it had to happen on a bad day. Ellie would’ve been surprised if it had been any different. When she thought things couldn’t get any worse, there was always more shit adding to the pile.
Her eyes were bloodshot because of the nightmares that kept her awake all night. Her hands itched at the lack of the knife in her hand, but that had been another thing she had to part from, the umpteenth part of herself scattered across American territory. She felt emptier every time she thought about it.
The heat was going away, replaced by lower temperatures and winds, who announced the arrival of the autumnal season. The rain threatened to fall any moment now.
Joel had gone on patrol and Ellie had tried her best to leave her mind empty all day long, and she had done a great job at it. But now she was simply exhausted. Maybe, if she asked Joel to remain at the house tonight, he’d understand and would make a fuss out of it.
Her steps were heavy while she walked to the gates – it was fair to say she was dragging herself there more than walking – and the first raindrops started falling from the cloudy sky, creating small puddles of mud. The stable was on the road, so she thought to stop by to see if Tommy was there, if the idea of going with her to the gates didn’t disgust him too much.
When she walked inside, she immediately felt the air change, a thick layer of tension engulfed the room. She recognized the voices she was hearing right away. They were talking about her.
“…the more I try, the more she slips away. I don’t know what else to do”, she was surprised to see that Joel was back already.
“Start by being honest with her”, her own limbs froze at that word. Honest. “She deserves the truth”, it continued.
“I can’t.” “How d’you reckon she’ll react when she’ll find out everything? She’s a smart kid, if you tell her she’ll understand.”
“No, you don’t get it, Tommy. Telling her would break her”, she recognised the sign of broken voice. “More than she already is.”
The other one didn’t reply.
“I couldn’t let them do it.”
“You need to b…” the last of Tommy’s words got lost under the sound of rain. Ellie had her confession; she didn’t need anything else. She had quite a skill to overhear conversations that involved her.
She walked, completely undisturbed by the water soaking her head to toe, she just needed to put as much distance as she could between her and everyone else.
Telling her would break her, more than she already is. That’s what Joel thought of her.
Until then, Ellie had never been sure Joel had lied. The most stupid and irrational part of her had hold on to that flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, Ellie had been a complete idiot all that time and she’d been pissed at something that had never happened, that Joel had actually been honest and hadn’t ruined anything.
That had been the only thing keeping her rage at bay.
But not anymore, she didn’t have any reason now. Joel, the man she thought would never betray her, had done just that.
She didn’t realise she had gone back to the yard back in the house, in front of the fig tree which had been growing for weeks now, slim but daring next to its bamboo stick. She stared at it undaunted, the rain on her eyelashes blurred her vision, while the hatred burned through her veins, slow and white-hot, fuelling her completely. It took her breath away, the strength it awakened inside her, that animal urge she had kept quiet all this time. It was so intense her knees almost buckled under her.
She wanted to scream, to growl, she wanted her voice to scratch against the back of her throat violently enough to make her bleed, she wanted that burn she was feeling to tear her skin and spill outside of her, anything to soothe her just a little. She wanted people to see all the sorrow she was carrying.
But nothing of that happened. She remained quiet, watching the drops fallings from the fig’s leaves, her knuckles white in her fist. Ellie wanted, wanted, wanted. She wanted something that put and end to her misery.
She wanted him to suffer, her beloved Joel, wanted to see him suffer as much as she was. She wanted him to understand.
You have a violent heart, Ellie.
Later, among the secure walls of the building she had been living inside for weeks, and the following days, Ellie still analysed for some time what had happened in the moments after that new awareness.
It hadn’t pure anger that made her snap the slim trunk between her hands. No, it had been the horrible feeling of betrayal that made her do it, so brutal and disgusting to make her skin crawl.
The look Joel had on his face after the events was something she’d very much rather forget, the loathing she felt for herself was like a layer of filth on her skin, and she couldn’t wash it off.
He didn’t even raise his voice, actually he didn’t seem angry at all. It was his confused and pained face that unsettled her.
Watching the blood seep out of the hundreds of splinters in her hands had felt like the right punishment for a violent person like her. She hadn’t even let Joel touch her to remove them.
She thought that seeing him suffering for something he cared about would make her feel better, that it would give her that cry of relief she was looking for so adamantly. It only left a bitter taste in her mouth.
In the following days, she found out the bile was still there, it’d never left, and the find paralysed her. It was there, simmering like it did in the early days. Her scratched red hands were evidence to what that bile could do.
She avoided Joel mostly, even if he tried to talk to her. Ellie would come up with an excuse and would get away, incapable of looking at him in the eyes.
She didn’t want to hear the delusion in his voice, the sound it made when Joel told her she couldn’t stay with him anymore, that she had to find some other accommodation.
It was amusing how, the day after his confession, he was already unblemished.
Now it was just her coming to deal with the ugliest part of her: her soul.
And her soul was violent, so fucking violent.
Ellie wasn’t sure she would win the fight this time.