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Ellie begins her morning tripping over Jen Carter’s big-ass boots in the mess hall. Despite the early hour, it’s busy today, and a crush of people are jammed up by the front doors. She and Jesse are trying to push their way forward to get eyes on the line when Jen shifts her feet around and Ellie nearly eats absolute shit.
“Fuck—sorry, Ellie!” Jen whirls around at the contact and snags a hand out to grab her around the elbow, keeping her upright. Ellie watches, though, as her eyes track the large patch of reddish, corrugated skin on her forearm. At the sight, Jen snatches her hand away with a soft, “Oh.”
Yanking her arm back and straightening up, Ellie presses the scar—hides it—against her abdomen and pushes forward into the mess hall. “It’s fine,” she throws out over her shoulder, feeling like one big, giant, vulnerable bruise.
It’s June 3rd. Ellie burned herself back in January, and still, hardly anyone has seen her wound (or the resulting scar) until today. Just Joel and Dr. Bev and Jesse (and she only showed Jesse because she figured he’d think it looked cool. He did).
Ellie’s memory of the whole thing is a little fuzzy—getting fuzzier with time, too—but her mind can still conjure up the image of a gray bottle of metal cleaner sitting on her bathroom counter. It was old and dust-laden, and the label had nearly faded away entirely, but the smell of it alone was a sure sign it could get the job done. After, when she was cradling herself away in her bathtub, her eyes kept fixating on the bottle. While she shoved her arm under the faucet and threw up into the drain, the metal cleaner stood resolute on the cracked laminate. She’d passed out by the time Joel found her, and—from the way he tells it—he carried her to the clinic and absolutely, totally, was not crying the entire way there. (He’s such a liar; when she woke up his eyes were rubbed raw, glassy with leftover tears).
Apparently it was pretty bad, the worst chemical burn Dr. Bev had seen. But after five months of Joel playing nurse and six whole jars of Stacy Wu’s salve, her arm finally healed in entirety. New (though ragged) skin has grown atop the old wound, and Joel has finally stopped trying to have heart-to-hearts and come-to-Jesuses about why she did it.
Despite whatever Joel may think, Ellie didn’t want to burn herself. Well, she did, but not in an I want to hurt myself sort of way. The whole thing began last December, when Daryl and Ms. Patrick and Joel and Tommy all finally agreed that she was ready to graduate from patrol training. As winter began to settle, she started joining a group patrol once a week, with a plan to start paired patrols when she turned seventeen at the end of May. Ellie was good—capable—and took well to the responsibility of having her group’s back.
On one particularly mild morning, she went out in just a sweatshirt. And when she clambered on top of an old, rotting barn to get eyes on a small horde on the trail ahead, she fell through the eroding wood onto the hard dirt below, landing on her bite arm. After everyone rushed in, Rebecca gently grabbed her wrist and began to pull up her sleeve. Ellie realized nearly a half-second too late which arm she was holding and snatched it away, refusing to let anyone look her over. Becca made her go home—made goddamn Chad follow her back—but the whole thing left her with a pit in her stomach for days. So close. She was so close to getting a bullet through her eyes.
After the initial panic of it all subsided, Ellie was left with nothing but the feeling that she wished she was normal. And she was tired. She’d already spent two summers in Jackson sweating through the lightest long sleeve shirts she could find at the swap—two summers of Carlos Lager asking her if she can’t wear t-shirts because she cuts herself. It felt important to her—suddenly then more than ever—that she give herself the opportunity to be normal by the time she turned seventeen. And that’s when she started making plans.
When Ellie woke up this morning—the morning of her first paired patrol—and tugged her window open, the sweet rush of warm air on her face felt like a sign from the universe—or maybe a blessing. That what she did to herself was okay because it granted her this: the ability to throw on a t-shirt and not worry about anything in the world besides how long the breakfast line will be.
As she wades through the mess hall crowd, though, it’s hard to hold onto that breezy confidence. Each pair of eyes latching onto her scar sends a new fissure of doubt, guilt, and insecurity through her chest.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Jesse says lowly into her ear from behind. Ellie turns toward him and vaguely wonders if he’s a mind reader before pushing the thought aside. It must show on her face because he presses a thumb into her forehead. “I can speak your language, even if you ain’t talkin’.”
“People are dumb,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She peers at the long line ahead, glaring. “Like, what is this line? What kind of person is so lazy that they can’t make breakfast at home?”
Jesse looks at her sidelong, utterly impressed. “I’m willing to bet the same kind that has to get dragged out of her bed a half hour before she’s due at the stables.”
“Shut up. You’re the worst, do you know that?”
“So I’ve been told lately.”
And, well, that kind of makes her feel like shit. A few nights ago, Jesse got broken up with—again. And even though the mere sight of Dina makes Ellie’s heart feel like it’s kicking rocks around inside of her ribcage, she still kind of has to be on the side of her best friend. It’s the principle of the thing, and she hasn’t exactly been handling Jesse with care.
“I’m kidding.” She bumps her shoulder against his, hard enough that it takes some of the pity out of her words. “I love you and all that mushy-gushy bullshit.”
“Just for that, I’m gonna get you an extra scoop of home fries.” Jesse’s returned smile is wan, but it’s there.
They don’t have long to eat—they’re going to be late as it is—but Ellie’s much more adept at scarfing down food than Jesse. By the time she’s finished, half of his plate is still full, so she lays back on the cafeteria table bench seat, plopping both feet on his lap. Exhaustion still pulls at her, tries to convince her to close her eyes.
Jesse frowns, circling a vague hand in her direction. When he speaks, his words are muffled through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “We really don’t have time for all of this.”
“All what?”
“Ellie melodrama.”
She closes her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest like a mummy. “Tired.”
Hearing heavy-booted footsteps draw closer to her, Ellie peeks one eye open. It’s Joel; she shuts her eyes and readjusts her mummy stance.
“Ellie? What the—”
“She’s pretending to be dead,” Jesse interrupts matter-of-factly. Ellie doesn’t move an inch.
“Why—”
“‘Cause she’s annoying.” Jesse digs an elbow into her shins, and she fights against the twitching corner of her mouth. “No offense.”
Ellie hears Joel sigh, then a small thwap, like he’s hit his hands against his thighs. “Well, none taken, I guess.” A moment passes. “Y’all going through Elk Creek?”
Joel’s asking like he doesn’t already know, but he’s been worrying over her all week about it. Ellie would bet her entire Savage Starlight collection that he’s only getting breakfast here, at this exact time, so he can see the two of them off.
Opening both eyes this time, Ellie lands her gaze on him. “We’re gonna be fine, dude. Jesse here—” she digs a heel into his thigh “—is an old pro.”
“Just,” Joel sighs, “be careful. I know y’all will, but we took out a bloater through there a couple weeks ago and there’s probably more infected in the area.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Ellie says. At the same time, Jesse nods sagely: “I’ll keep an eye out, Mr. Miller.”
-
They get to the stables four minutes after their call time, but Daryl only chews them out a little. (“If you ain’t early, you’re late.” It’s such a common refrain from him that it’s almost lost its meaning; Ellie’s going to talk to him about finding a new guilt slogan at some point). Within fifteen minutes, they’re through the walls and squinting into the early morning sun. The horses snuffle and snort, happy to be out stretching their legs.
It’s shaping up to be a dry summer. At least, that’s what Big Andy is saying, and—even though Joel calls him a tinfoil hat guy—he’s usually right about these kinds of things. Each clop clop clop of Shimmer’s hooves kicks up little clouds of dust in the arid heat.
Ellie takes a hand off the reins for a moment to tug at the collar of her t-shirt. It’s her Kennedy Space Center one—originally Joel’s, until she took it and tie-dyed it rainbow. She’s not sure how she managed in long sleeves the past two summers; as it is, she can feel her underarms and forehead dampening with sweat, and they’ve barely been riding five minutes.
When she peers over at Jesse, Ellie clocks dark circles under his eyes and a subtle slump to his shoulders. A pang of something like pity rushes through her.
The night of the breakup, Jesse came climbing up the tree outside Ellie’s window and poked at the glass until she shoved it open.
“What the hell?” she’d grumbled at him. When she blinked away her bleary exhaustion, Ellie saw the dried tear tracks on his face and the thin line of his downturned mouth. Her stomach dropped into her toes; she’d never seen Jesse cry before.
“Want to get drunk?” he asked.
And that’s exactly what they did. Under the cover of the stars, Ellie and Jesse snuck down her tree and across her yard and into Joel’s woodworking garage. They passed a mason jar of Tennie’s shitty moonshine back and forth until the story finally slipped out.
Jesse and Dina, split up again. Another, shitty, egregiously stupid fight, but Ellie wasn’t about to tell him that. She was just there to be his best friend.
Last time they broke up, it only took them three days to get back together. The time before that, it only took Jesse two to find someone else to make out with at parties. This time, it’s neither—at least so far. Ellie can’t help but wonder what’s changed.
“You talk to Dina at all? Y’know, since?” she asks. Beneath her, Shimmer whinnies—it nearly sounds disapproving.
Jesse doesn’t look at her. “No.”
“Maybe if you just apologized—”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he interrupts sharply. Then, after a moment: “Sorry.”
Ellie shrugs, even though he’s still not looking at her. “It’s fine, I just…it was just a stupid fight, right?”
“Ellie, Jesus Christ.”
Jesse finally snaps to face her, and she finds that she can’t hold his gaze. She looks the other way, towards the Tetons on her left. The rocks are shimmering in craggy shales of orange and blue. Annoyance drags its way through her chest.
“You know, you can be a real idiot sometimes.” Ellie shakes her head at the mountains.
Jesse snorts, but it comes out all snarky and sardonic. All wrong. “Thanks.”
“Jesus, I mean, if I…” she trails off.
“If you what?”
“Nothing.”
Silence falls between them, charged with suffocating heat. It feels like he’s waiting for Ellie to continue. She heaves a deep breath and tries again:
“It’s just—If I—I’m…Nothing, nevermind.”
Shame colors her face pink. Then her ears, then her neck. Ellie can’t bring herself to say what she really feels and ruin everything. If I were with Dina, I’d do anything to keep her around. She can’t say that. But Jesse’s watching her; he sees her blush. He knows her too well. Ellie digs her fingernails into the saddle horn and silently begs him to drop it.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on. You like Dina?” Surprise seems to eclipse Jesse’s previous irritation towards Ellie. His eyebrows have shot up so high they’re pushing wrinkles into his forehead.
Ellie feels her stomach lurch with sudden nausea. “What?”
“I mean, you like-like Dina?”
“Are you five? No, I don’t like your girlfriend.”
“Not my girlfriend anymore.” Jesse’s voice turns rough again, words cutting.
“Oh, come on. You’ll apologize and get back together within the week; you’ll be fine.”
“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”
Ellie’s head swims. She can’t quite piece together how they got to this point; how their conversation has tumbled and derailed so quickly.
“What?” she balks. “No.”
“Because you—you always act like me and Dina are just, like, stupid puppy love kids or whatever. That’s not what we are.”
“Dude, I don’t care what y’all are.”
“It seems like you do.”
Ellie doesn’t respond to that. An all-too-familiar rage rears its head somewhere in her throat, blocking her words. Jesse’s breathing sharply through his nose, gearing up to snap at her again. He’s always been slow to anger and slow to calm; it’s hard for him to let a fight go once someone’s thrown the first punch.
“I can’t believe you like my girlfriend and you kept it from me,” he finally snarls.
Ellie scoffs. “Thought you said she wasn’t your girlfriend.”
“Ellie, just shut the fuck up for once.”
“You’re the one trying to pick a fight with me right now, dude! Just chill the fuck out. I shouldn’t have told you shit about me.”
She didn’t tell him shit about her. He just knew. That, Ellie thinks, is the worst of it all. Her entire body buzzes with energy, fury tickling at her spine. When they finally break eye contact, something fizzles between them, just a little. Jesse sets Oca at a canter.
“C’mon.” He jerks his head forward. “Let’s just get the rest of this fucking patrol over with. I need a break from you.”
-
Miller Cabin’s their first checkpoint on this route. Only a twenty or thirty minute ride from Jackson, it’s easy to spot. The horses trot along the cracking asphalt road, flat ground nearly the whole way. The first time Ellie came here—tagging along on a patrol with Tommy and Astrid—she made Miller-related jokes until her brain deflated.
When she imagined her first paired patrol—this location, Jesse as her partner, the underrated ability to wear short sleeves without getting killed—she did not picture the barely-bridled, stoic silence shoved between the two of them like a wedge. When they pull up to the old, corroded wooden fence that lines the cabin, Ellie and Jesse dismount and tie off the horses without a word, running on an autopilot that would suggest they’d done this twenty times together rather than one.
Jackson gutted the cabin years ago when they mapped out the Elk Creek route, clearing out most of the furniture and replacing it with a logbook, some rations, and a small weapons cache. They’re full up on ammo and they just ate breakfast, so Jesse pushes the creaky-as-fuck wooden door open and leans against what used to be the living room wall. Ellie rolls her eyes and tries not to stomp over to the logbook.
The large, leather-bound journal is already open on the tawny kitchen table. She skims the notes on some of the previous entries.
Bloater in the green split-level on Summerduck Road. Took it out, no thanks to Tommy, who couldn’t be bothered. -Joel
That was two weeks ago. Ellie purses her lips to fight a smile. The next entry, a week later:
All clear. You take that bloater out with a rifle, Joel, or just those big-ass arms? Asking for a friend. -Rache
“God,” she groans under her breath.
“What?” Jesse spits.
For half a second, Ellie forgets she’s mad at him and exhales an almost-laugh through her nose. Then she shakes her head. “Just…nothing.”
He sighs, and she quickly scribbles her own note into the next blank space: All clear. -Ellie.
With a jerk of her head towards the door, Ellie heads outside, Jesse following behind.
The sun is beginning to shine high overhead, the heat and light making the road ahead play tricks on Ellie’s eyes. The disturbed edge between the asphalt and the yellowed grass appears almost squiggly, curls of heat distorting her vision. She didn’t put sunscreen on this morning—Heather’s homemade stuff makes her feel like she’s wearing a second, gooier, skin—and the oppressive sunlight on the peaches-and-cream skin of her scar is making her itch. Dr. Bev will eat Ellie alive if she gets a sunburn today.
Shimmer and Oca chuff and shuffle their feet as the two teenagers draw closer. Ellie re-adjusts the strap of her rifle over her shoulder and takes Shimmer’s reins from off the wooden fence, mounting the sun-cracked leather saddle. Jesse does the same and clucks twice at Oca until he pulls away in a trot; he doesn’t look back to see if Ellie follows. She does.
After ten or so minutes, they pass a small cluster of houses set roughly alongside the Elk Creek path—the same area where Joel and Tommy found the bloater. It’s an odd little neighborhood, if you can even call it that—the houses are not in the same Western style as what they’re used to within the walls of town. They’re more modern, with composite siding in a few eclectic colors—one blue, a couple olive. Most likely built as an offshoot of Jackson Hole, cheaper places to stay when one went skiing.
Ellie’s still staying a few yards behind Jesse, and she sees in the harsh hunched line of his shoulders that he’s not done yelling at her. She can sense the yet unspoken words lurching up between them—it’s so suffocating that, if she were less prideful, she would snap at him just to break the tension. As it is, she knows he’ll crack first if she just waits long enough.
Sure enough: “Keep up. I don’t want to be out here all day.” He spares a fleeting glance her way, just long enough to see Ellie not-so-subtly pull back on Shimmer’s reins, slowing her down to a walk. “Ellie.”
And finally, blissfully, she feels her resolve snap. “You’re the one who has a fucking problem with me, dude. Deal with it.”
“Fuck off, man.”
“All because you think I want your stupid fucking girlfriend.”
“Shut up, Ellie.” Jesse’s fully turned Oca around to face her, holding the horse in place.
Ellie pulls Shimmer to a stop, too. “I don’t give a shit about you or Dina.”
“Yeah you fucking do, just admit it!”
“No I don’t!” Distantly, she recognizes how childish they both sound, but Ellie can barely think beyond the furious buzzing in her ears, the shame that’s making her face burn.
Jesse’s knuckles go white against Oca’s reins. “Why won’t you just be honest with me?”
Neither of them hear the stalker’s cry. Not at first. Neither of them see where its putrefied, mummified flesh unsheathes from a bed of fungus plates, spread wide against the hidden side wall of the small, gray house on the path behind them. By the time Jesse sees it, by the time he yells Ellie’s name, by the time she turns her head, it’s already hurtling toward her, its speed bordering on inhuman.
Twin guttural screams ring out into the scorched heat—from Ellie, from the Infected—and her right hand scrabbles for her rifle, her left still gripping onto Shimmer’s reins. It’s too late, though; she can’t seem to close her hand around the sleek, hickory wooden base and the stalker is already crouched in front of her horse, pushing onto Shimmer’s chest with two graying, gnarled hands. Long, thin tendrils of fungus grow out of its face and arms like newly planted saplings.
Shimmer rears back onto her hind legs and Ellie’s inner thighs clench on instinct, her right hand arcing down to clamp onto the saddle horn. A gunshot rattles in her eardrum, the bullet hitting the dirt several feet to her right. Jesse’s shooting wide, too afraid to hit her in an attempt to hit the Infected. Shimmer bucks again, and again, and again, turning her auburn body in little arcs until she shoots off at a run, heading away from Jesse and Oca in the opposite direction of the stalker. Ellie, after being thrust airborne one final time, lands at an odd angle on the saddle, and her right foot shoots straight through the stirrup until the ring of leather and metal encircles her mid-calf.
More gunshots behind them as Shimmer bolts down the Elk Creek path. Ellie doesn’t dare look behind her. After a few dozen yards, Shimmer bucks again, and Ellie’s unseated once more, the force sending her body backwards, sliding down the back flank of the horse. Her first thought is something along the lines of holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
And then, of all people, she thinks about Winston Asher.
Winston, the QZ soldier who didn’t look anything like his peers—consistently clad in a gray trapper hat and navy bomber jacket, his dirty blond beard full over his wide face.
Ellie first met Winston when she was 13 years old, the very first night she snuck out to the mall with Riley. He was a permanent fixture in the crumbling mall, a hermit who’d only consider interacting with them if they brought him booze. He was weird and lazy, but also cool and very nearly shy. That first night, he let Ellie “ride” his horse, Princess, walking them around with the reins in one hand.
As he led her past various storefronts (they always had strange names, to Ellie—Wet Seal, Limited Too), he began to talk. Not about himself, only about horses, or the “fucking FEDRA higher-ups” who ignored him when he said he needed backup for all the Infected cutting through the mall.
“Feet in the stirrups,” he chided at one point, though not with much conviction. He mostly sounded bored. Taking her sneaker in his free hand, he placed it back where it belonged. “You’ll lose your balance. And don’t ever get your feet caught in them, either.”
Ellie sighed. “This all seems counterintuitive.”
“You ever see any old western films?”
“Dude, I’m thirteen and I basically live in child jail. What do you think?”
“Right. Well, these cowboys would fall off their horses, get their feet caught, and get dragged for miles through the desert.” Winston talked with his hands a lot when he really got going on a topic. “But that isn’t how it happens in real life.”
“What happens in real life?”
Winston pulled gently on the reins, bringing Princess to a halt. The horse chuffed, as if in protest. Winston stared at Ellie, his mouth set in the same grim-ass line it always was. “You’ll be dead as soon as you hit the ground. And if you aren’t, you’ll wish you were.”
When Ellie hits the dirt on the Elk Creek path, she lands hard on her side. Before her nerve endings can begin to process anything other than the intensity of the impact, her head slams into the ground. It feels like her brain is being spun from the inside. Her vision goes gray, then completely black. When she comes to—it can only be a couple of seconds later—Shimmer’s running further down the path, Ellie in tow. The momentum has shifted her onto her back, and her leg—still stuck in the stirrup—feels weirdly loose, like her bones have been stretched too far apart.
You’ll be dead as soon as you hit the ground. And if you aren’t, you’ll wish you were.
When Shimmer passes back over that disturbed edge—the place where the grass meets the asphalt—the impact pushes Ellie’s shirt up in the back. It rises, rises, rises, until finally it’s just her bare back against the road, scraping. It’s hard to know what’s happening between all the sensations pressing up against her, invading her body. Everything just feels too much, too fast, the world tumbling and blurring around her.
Ellie thinks she hears another gunshot, but her ears are already ringing, blocking out almost everything except the rushing sensation in her head. Distantly, she thinks that the stalker must still be alive, that Jesse must still be shooting at it. Or, worse, that the noise attracted a horde, that they’re all going to die out here. You’re not immune from being ripped apart. Tess’s words, even years later, stick to Ellie like glue. Jesse isn’t immune from any of it.
But then, Shimmer goes down.
Through blinking eyes, she sees her horse’s knees crumple, sees the hearty barrel of her chest fall forward. Shimmer’s neck goes slack just before her head reaches the pavement, and it’s that final pull of momentum that sends Ellie forward once more, one last tug against the asphalt. It’s that which finally beckons the pain.
Everything crashes down around her at once, agony taking hold of Ellie like an imploding star, sending her inward, inward, inward. It feels as if planes of fire are licking up her back, the heat stealing her breath. Her head lolls to the side, left ear pressing toward the road. Feeling as if her skull is spiraling outward, she lodges her blurred gaze on one of Shimmer’s dirt-clumped back hooves. It’s less than a foot from her face. Shimmer. With monumental effort, she shifts her vision downward, on her right leg. It’s still lodged in the stirrup, the back of her ankle hooked against the friction-warmed metal. Her leg still feels oddly loose, the pain now radiating squarely from her kneecap.
A voice cuts through the slogging whir of her brain. “—llie? C’mon girl, you’re alright.”
Large hands grip her face, turning her head to face the sky. Ellie squints, and the hulking figure above her comes into sharper clarity as he covers the sun with his body. Jesse’s not crying—he’s always been good in a crisis, it’s what makes him a great patrolman—but his face is pale, his hands restless as they pass over different parts of her body.
“Okay. Okay, I’m gonna pick you up, okay? I’m gonna get you back to Jackson.”
Ellie doesn’t answer; the most she can manage is a minute trembling of her lips, a hollow, desperate whine. Every part of her body feels too-full, prickling at the edges. Colorful starbursts begin to cloud her field of vision, and she screws her eyes shut in an attempt to dull them.
“Alright, open your eyes.” When Ellie manages to follow these instructions, she realizes that Jesse’s freed her leg from the stirrup. One hand cupped under her knee and another curled around her sneaker, he lowers it to the ground with a gentleness that is in such polarity to the frenetic energy surrounding them. “I’m gonna get you up.”
Ellie tries to shake her head, because no, because it’s going to hurt. Either Jesse doesn’t see it or doesn’t care, because he wraps his hands around the tops of her shoulders in an attempt to pull her upright.
She screams.
“Okay—fuck—okay, I can’t see what’s going on. I’m going to pull you by your arms.” Jesse’s words become more babbling with each passing, panicked moment. As he winds his hands around her wrists instead, Ellie—though she isn’t crying—finds herself breathing in little, halting sobs.
When Jesse pulls her up, hard and quick, to a seated position, her vision goes gray and spotty again. In a surge of momentum, uttering hushed okay, okay, okays under his breath, he stands and draws her up with him, hands under her armpits. Ellie slumps forward against his chest, the dull impact sending another crush of pain behind her eyes.
She’s not quite sure—even much later—how he lifts her, carries her all the way back to Oca, hefts her up behind his black leather saddle. She’s not sure she sees any of it, her eyes a shimmering kaleidoscope of color—her ears still ringing something awful. She might be screaming again.
It’s not until Jesse’s climbing up onto the saddle in front of her that she sort of comes to, grounded by the large, sturdy frame of his shoulders. He grabs the reins and clicks his tongue against his teeth, urging Oca forward into a run. The momentum puts Ellie off balance and she curls in on herself, forehead bumping against Jesse’s back before she’s flung back, nearly falling backwards off the horse.
One hand at a time, Jesse yanks her forward again, her front shoved into his back. His t-shirt smells like the lemon laundry detergent they have at the market in Jackson. It smells like every single person she loves, and Ellie lets the scent wash over her, momentarily blunting the pain entwining her body. Jesse clicks his tongue again, working Oca harder, and settles holding both of her hands in one of his own, the other white-knuckled on the reins.
Ellie’s whole body pulses in time with the rhythmic jostling of the horse’s gait. The heat of the sun beating down on her makes her stomach turn over. Her mouth fills with saliva, and she swallows back sick. One more jolt from Oca, though, and it all comes out anyway, vomit sliding down Jesse’s shoulder.
“You’re okay. I gotcha, bud.” She feels more than hears his voice, rumbling through the planes of his back. “Stay with me.”
Then the world turns over on its belly and her vision goes black.
-
It’s a slide more than a jolt back to consciousness. Ellie’s on her stomach, one ear pressed to something not-quite-soft—that’s what she notices first. Strange, because she sleeps curled up on her side most nights. One blink, and the pain sets back in. Sharp and ragged and blinding, her entire body feels like it’s flaking apart and then coming back together, over and over again with each breath.
She whines, and then a hand is passing over her ear and across the back of her head. This small touch dissolves the ringing still in her ears, and voices—familiar, but in a way she can’t quite place right now—float in from above.
“You’re okay, baby girl.”
A woman’s voice: “How long was she dragged?”
“Couple dozen yards. Mr. Miller—”
“Jesse, focus.” The same woman again. “This is important.”
The rest of the conversation falls away as the pain reaches a crossroads within Ellie’s body. The keen ache in her right knee, the flames licking up her back and arms, the pricking, pulsating sensation in her head—it all coalesces in the back of her throat. As the vomit climbs up her esophagus, she can still taste a lingering sourness—not the first time she’s thrown up, then.
The energy in the room—she still can’t figure out where the fuck she is—becomes more frantic after she pukes, footsteps louder and more crosstalk.
A particularly sharp, probing pinch erupts from her back, and Ellie feels hot tears falling, across her nose and down by her ear.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” This voice belongs to a woman, though different than the first—younger. She still can’t figure out where she knows them from. The woman continues, louder: “We need to start debriding this. We’re low on antibiotics and there’s—” a steadying breath, “—there’s a lot of asphalt and dirt here.”
“Not before I set the knee,” the older woman replies sharply. “Help me turn her over.”
The hand still curled around the back of Ellie’s head presses ever-closer.
“Hold on.” Joel. The name sinks into her mind like a coin dropped into a fountain. Joel’s here. “Y’all haven’t given her anything. Look at her; she can’t take it.”
The older woman replies, all business. “We have no intravenous sedatives right now. The best I can do is oxycodone, but I’m hard-pressed to waste our supply when she’s actively vomiting.”
“She’s hurtin’,” Joel snaps. The demand lingers beneath his words.
“Mr. Miller—”
“Fucking waste it. Give it to her.”
As if illustrating his point, Ellie’s body begins to shudder. It’s involuntarily, and she wishes it would stop because it only worsens the pain yawning wide inside her.
There’s some tense shuffling around, and then a shadow crouches in front of her. Through barely-open eyes, Ellie makes out dark, straight hair, a kind—if tense—smile. It’s Melanie—the resident training under Dr. Bev in the clinic. Dr. Bev. That’s who the voice of the older woman belongs to. The two of them worked on Ellie’s chemical burn for weeks.
“Alright, honey,” Melanie begins, voice hushed. “I’m going to ask you to open your mouth. I’m going to give you something for the pain, and some water to help swallow it. It’s going to feel a little awkward drinking it sideways.”
Ellie can’t reply—her tongue feels thick and heavy and fuzzy in her mouth—but she manages a small moan that she hopes comes across as agreement.
Melanie’s voice is firmer now, and Ellie feels the woman’s thumb press against her chin. “You need to keep it down, okay?”
Ellie sniffles once and parts her lips. Melanie tugs her jaw open wider with gentle hands, and then a small pill is being placed on her tongue. She can taste the latex of Melanie’s gloves, and the sharp, chemical tang of the oxy, already beginning to melt on her tongue.
Water is trickled into her open mouth; about half of it goes out the side and down her cheek, but Ellie manages to take in enough and swallow, hard. And again, when the pill seems to get caught at the top of her throat, making her gag. A hand comes down over her mouth—not Melanie’s—and she only has a second to panic before Joel’s hushed voice is in her ear.
“Keep it down, kid.” He sounds strangled, hurt. “Please.”
Ellie swallows again, and again and again, and finally, the oxy goes down. Joel’s hand backs away from her mouth, landing instead amongst the other one in her hair. Breathing out a sigh of relief, she presses the backs of her hands against the padded examination table; it does almost nothing to mitigate the pain, but it’s a small distraction.
This time, it’s Dr. Bev who crouches in front of her, bracing one hand on the edge of the cracked pleather cushion holding Ellie up. Her gray hair is nearly white under the fluorescents. “Listen, Ellie. That oxycodone isn’t going to kick in quite yet. This is still going to hurt like hell, but we have to do it now.”
Confusion ripples through her. What are you going to do? She tries to ask it out loud, but, of course, the words don’t come. She thinks they may have explained earlier, but her mind is cloudy and tangled.
Dr. Bev stands. “Turn her.”
Ellie only has one moment—enough for an exhalation of breath—before hands are on her. And then it’s all agony. Bev pushes her by her shoulders while Melanie keeps her knee stable. Joel’s at her head, pressing her sweat-clung hair away from her eyes with hands that are just as clammy. He murmurs things to her she can’t hear, even after she’s situated on her back.
The burning torment increases tenfold now that the sharp points of her body are digging into the exam table. Shoulder blades, ribs, hips, elbows—they’re all pushing waves of pain through her, hard and fast like strikes of lightning. Ellie’s not even sure what happened—her memory is only just beginning to trickle back to her, though only in remembrances of feelings, terror and rage and shame. Still, she knows she hurts.
“Ellie,” Dr. Bev calls. Somehow, she and Melanie have swapped positions in the room. Ellie uses much of her remaining strength to loll her head forward and stare at the older woman, poised at her feet. “Your knee is dislocated. I’m going to set it on the count of three.”
Bev shifts her gaze to Melanie and nods. “Hold her, please.”
Humming a sorry, honey under her breath, Melanie braces one hand each on Ellie’s arms and pushes down. It steals her breath, the renewal of pain, and she immediately begins to writhe.
“C’mon, baby, be still now,” Joel urges from behind her. “Makin’ it hurt worse.”
Ellie can’t bring herself to stop, though. Wordlessly, Joel takes Melanie’s job of holding her arms while she instead pins Ellie down by the waist. Briefly, somehow, Ellie remembers that Jesse was in the room before, and she whorls her head back and forth, searching for him. He’s gone; someone must have ordered him out. She’s not sure what she would’ve done had he been there—perhaps begged him to take her and run. (He wouldn’t. He loves her too much. Loved. Maybe).
“One,” Dr. Bev counts, and Ellie snaps her head back against the exam table, once. The impact jars her so badly that she stops squirming and just lies there, letting the throbbing pain pass through her like mud.
Bev sets her knee the moment she gets to the count of two. There’s a sick snapping sensation that jolts its way up her leg and through her spine. Liar liar liar. Ellie feels herself scream, and then she melts into oblivion.
-
When she wakes, she’s back on her stomach. Someone is prying their way into her back. The only sounds in the world are the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor—hers, she manages to gather—and the small, tinkling clinks of metal tools. She feels open, exposed; she thinks her shirt might be cut away from her back.
Ellie doesn’t open her eyes (doesn’t think she can even if she tries—fucking oxy), but instead searches for meaning amongst the jumbled mess of memory and sensation that is her mind. The insides of her eyelids glow scarlet, and she feels sun-warmed, as if beams have been shining on her through a window. It must be late afternoon, though time seems to be running around her in circles.
A small but strong jet of liquid is being sprayed onto the back of her neck. A burning sensation alights as it runs in rivulets down her chin, into her mouth. It’s warm, salty, with a tang of metal. Then, the feeling of something being dislodged from underneath her skin, the twinge of tweezers on her raw back. Though she feels it all, it’s like she’s hovering over the pain in a tingling sheen, somewhere just beyond the sharpness of before.
Someone wipes the liquid from her face, her lips. It feels like knuckles covered over by the worn cotton of a t-shirt. “Go on back to sleep, kiddo,” Joel murmurs.
His large, calloused palm ghosts her forehead, thumb running between her eyebrows, down the length of her nose. Like magic, that small bit of movement covers her in exhaustion like a too-big blanket, and she’s pulled under the lip of consciousness once again.
-
It’s the pain that draws her out of sleep this time. Ellie shifts her eyes open, and finds the room swathed in dim lamplight. Her entire body feels stretched tight, radiating heat. A dull ache roves around her head like a lighthouse, squeezing somewhere behind her eyes. She’s still on her stomach—something light, maybe a sheet, has been draped over her back—and there’s a pinch in her neck that indicates she’s been lying like this for hours.
It takes another half-moment for her to realize where she is. The clinic is familiarly unfamiliar; every exam room looks practically the same. This particular one is larger than most, and the lamp—perched on a fold-out card table in the corner—is small, with a robins-blue egg base. It looks like it would belong better in a living room than a hospital. Though, everything about the way the clinic is decorated speaks more to scavenged furniture than an actual medical setting.
The air feels stagnant, stuffy; there’s no overhead fan and the door’s closed. When Ellie looks down toward her feet (she has to shift her eyeline and chin in a way that makes the pain in her head go haywire), she finds the soles of two boots—one crossed over another—resting on the exam table near her hip. They belong to Joel, who’s leaned back in a pinewood chair, neck bent uncomfortably across the back, eyes closed.
“Joel,” she whispers. He doesn’t stir, so she tries again, a little louder. “Joel?”
His eyes blink open, and Ellie can tell by the set of his shoulders and the way he grinds his teeth that he’s kind of panicking until he sees her in front of him, awake.
“Ellie.” Joel puts his feet on the floor and scoots the chair forward, leaning over her until they’re face to face. “You’re awake. Are you—I didn’t realize I fell asleep.”
She hums sleepily. “Me neither.”
One corner of his mouth quirks up. His eyes are shining in the near-dark.
“Are you okay?” he asks, sounding for all the world like it doesn’t even matter what her answer is, as long as she’s alive. Like, everything else is fixable. It’s oddly comforting.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh. Bev said you might not remember what happened. Do you—what do you remember?”
The longer Ellie’s awake, the more her mind begins to feel murky, her focus slipping away into quicksand. She furrows her eyebrows. “What time is it?”
Joel furrows his eyebrows back at her. He glances at the far wall behind her head; there must be a clock there. “Half-past eight.”
Through the window, she can see the blue tint of the night. From underneath the lights of Jackson, it can be difficult to see the full scope of the night sky—the huge stars emitting soft glows of cyan and carnation pink and butter yellow—but you only have to venture a little outside the walls for it. From her padded cot, Ellie can almost imagine them.
“What’s going on?” she asks again.
Joel sighs and curls one hand around the edge of the exam table. He brings his other hand up, hesitates, then curls a strand of hair behind her ear. “You have a concussion. Your right knee was dislocated, but Dr. Bev set it. The worst—” he inhales deeply through his nose “—the worst was your back, kid. And your arms.”
Ellie considers this, and comes to the conclusion that she agrees. Everything back there is burning, itching with pain.
“It’s called road rash. The parts where you’re real bony—”
“You always say I’m nothing but bones,” she interrupts. Joel clucks disapprovingly.
“The skin is completely torn off there—your shoulders, ribs, and elbows. It’s gonna take time to grow it back. And there’s—there’s patches all over the rest of your back and arms where you got real bad scrapes.”
“Do I have to lay on my stomach forever?”
Joel shakes his head, frown back in full force. “Reckon you’ll be sitting up soon, and it’ll be less uncomfortable once your skin grows back.”
Ellie wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”
“Yeah.”
The two of them are silent for a moment, letting the encroaching darkness wash through the room.
“You hurtin’?” Joel asks.
Ellie nods. For some reason, the question makes her eyes burn. When she sniffles, Joel cups her cheek and murmurs an alright, baby before getting up and grabbing something from the card table.
Settling back down in the chair, he offers two scarlet pills in one hand, a mason jar of water in another.
“Same as before,” he says, sounding apologetic. “Gotta give it to you sideways.”
Ellie’s not sure what he’s talking about, but opens her mouth when Joel offers the pill, then the water. He wipes her mouth with his sleeve.
“What is it?” she asks, after she’s done swallowing.
“You should really think about asking that question before you take unknown pills.”
She tries to roll her eyes, but the movement hurts her head so bad that she winces halfway through. “Boring.”
“Tylenol.”
“How?”
“FEDRA factory, if I had to guess.”
“No,” she shakes her head, digging her cheek into the exam table. “How did this happen?”
Immediately, Joel looks uncomfortable. Ellie can practically see the elevator doors closing in his mind, and it makes a pit form in her stomach.
“What happened?” she demands. (She can’t really demand, per se. Her voice is too weak. But she tries).
Brows furrowed, he rubs the pads of his fingers over his lips. His hair is kind of wild, Ellie realizes, the way used to get on the road when he was stressed out about something. He would spend half the day running his hand through it.
“You…remember going out with Jesse?”
Ellie nods. “My first paired patrol.”
Her words seem to send something faltering in Joel. “Right. What else do you remember?”
She closes her eyes and tries to visualize the morning. It all comes to her in flashes of light and sound and feeling. The sun beating down, making her sweat. The call of a red-tailed hawk above her head. The metal of her stirrup digging into the sole of her sneaker. There are a few images, too. The sun rising above the Gros Ventre range, The wooden table with the patrol logbook. Shimmer’s hoof, pushing up dirt into Ellie’s face.
Shimmer.
It feels like she’s falling, like the cot’s been swept out from underneath her. It feels like her entire body is being squeezed toward its center; her throat becomes thick and tight. Her eyes are still closed, but her face crumples.
“Hey,” Joel soothes, carding his hands through her hair, catching her tears with the pads of his thumbs when they finally fall. “I know. You’re alright.”
“Is she dead?” Ellie asks, though she already knows the answer. Memories begin to trickle back—the stalker, the gunshots, the way Shimmer’s eyes stayed open as Jesse dragged her toward Oca.
Joel stares for a moment, like it’s not what he was expecting her to ask.
“She…yeah.”
A low keen gurgles up from Ellie’s chest, and she shuts her eyes again to hide her embarrassment. More tears leak out anyway.
“I’m sorry, baby.” His voice is hushed, subdued. He wipes her face with his sleeve again, snot and all.
It hurts to cry—it hurts her whole body, but Ellie can’t seem to stop. “Jesse killed her,” she nearly wails.
Everything is beginning to slot itself into place in her mind. Jesse’s words latch onto her memory, dig their feet in. Why won’t you just be honest with me?
She sniffles. Joel keeps wiping her face. “I hate him,” she mumbles thickly.
“Ellie—”
“No, I hate him,” she presses.
Joel shakes his head. “Kid, he had to do it. I know you learned this in patrol training.”
She did. It’s the easiest way to prevent death if someone gets dragged. The most important thing, she remembers Becca saying, is that the person is dragged for the least amount of time possible. Shoot the horse.
Ellie didn’t think much of it at the time; she couldn’t imagine it ever happening. Not to her, not to anyone she knows.
Still, the objective morality of Jesse killing Shimmer does nothing to mitigate the fact that her horse is gone. The sweet, soft curve of her ear and the way her hair shone like cinnamon in the sun. All gone.
“She was mine,” Ellie cries.
She wasn’t, and she knows it, but Joel’s doesn’t correct her. And even though she sounds like a little kid, he doesn’t chastise her or make her feel like shit for being upset. He just nods, kisses the top of her head, and runs his thumbs over her hairline. He lets her cry soundlessly until she’s used up all of her energy. When she falls asleep, the last thing she remembers is the soft rumble of his voice.
“Love you, kiddo.”
-
“Can you get me paper?” Ellie asks. “And a pen?”
Joel looks up at her from his perch. (A La-Z-Boy that came with their house; it’s sun-bleached as all get out. No matter how many times Ellie’s watched him go nuts with the leather conditioner, new cracks appear on it every day).
“Why? You writin’ out your last will and testament?”
She wrinkles her nose. “What’s that?”
“A paper that says if you die, I get all your money.” He uses his calves to press the leg rest back into the front of the chair.
“Don’t let Maria hear you say the m-word.” Ellie pauses to yawn. “But you can have my Savage Starlight comics.”
“Great.”
Sighing a little as he gets to his feet, Joel leans over to grab two half-empty, long-cold mugs of tea from the coffee table before heading into the kitchen. They keep their spare paper and pens in one of the cabinets—an all-purpose junk drawer.
Ellie mirrors his sigh and pushes onto her hands and knees, doing a weird rotating crawl until she’s laying in the opposite direction as before. Her sunglasses slide down her nose and she pushes her face into the couch to adjust them. (Joel makes her wear them for her concussion, but she actually sort of likes the way they make the world go dimmer).
A week and a half since her injury, she’s mostly still resigned to the couch, laying on her stomach—sitting up hurts too much after a while. Even so, her neck gets sore pretty quickly when it’s turned in one direction, hence the rotations. They’re frequent enough that Joel’s started calling her his little rotisserie chicken, which was even less amusing after he had to explain what it meant. Her right knee protests all this movement greatly, but it’s actually the thing causing her the least amount of trouble right now.
The coffee table’s been pushed right up against the couch, so Ellie can reach her water and her food and the TV remote. Joel has to change her bandages once in the morning and once at night. It only entails adding more petroleum jelly to her scrapes and putting a new dressing on them, but it takes forever because—with the clinic still lacking in antibiotics—he’s crazy careful about infections. She had to stop him from washing his hands a fourth time the other morning. About once a day, he gathers a huge bag of ice from the Tipsy Bison, drapes a towel over Ellie’s back, and lets the ice lay on top of her, cooling the burning pain that still lances over her 24/7. It’s the best part of her day.
It’s nice that she gets to live in giant t-shirts more often than she already does—mostly Joel’s, some of her own, and one of Jesse’s that he gave her a while back when she threw up on herself after drinking too much stolen whiskey. They’re the only items of clothing that give her injuries space to breathe.
Mostly, she’s bored out of her mind. It’s hard to read the with the way she’s laying—hard to focus when she’s still taking an oxy once a day. Even though she’s spending more and more time sitting up and even walking around the house a bit—doctor’s orders—it’s not enough. Being reliant on Joel for almost everything makes her feel claustrophobic and smothered, and he’s been sending any and all visitors away, insisting she’s too tired for it. (She’s pretty sure he’s just being a freak about infection again).
Sometimes, she’s grateful for it. Miss Lindy was nice enough to drop off a huge Tupperware of her ice cream a few days ago, and Joel endured the thirty-minute conversation about nothing so Ellie didn’t have to. Casseroles, ginger tea, freshly sharpened colored pencils—it gets overwhelming sometimes, the compassion of her neighbors. She’s glad she has Joel to be all gracious and southern and accept things on her behalf. Still, there are some people—Tommy and Maria and especially Nicky—that she misses quite a bit. Dina’s attempted to come by twice, and twice Ellie’s yelled at Joel for not letting her inside.
And, of course, there’s the matter of Jesse. He’s been by every single day, including the day she spent in the clinic. And every single day, Ellie tells Joel to send him away. There’s some part of her that wants to see him, mostly because she wants to kick his teeth in. The anger—for Shimmer and for their fight and for quite a few things she can’t quite make sense of yet—still rests too close to the surface, bubbling up before she can even think straight. Still, there’s another part of her that just wishes she had her best friend to keep her company. She shoves that part down every time it tries to rear its stupid, soft head, though. Yesterday, Joel told her that Jesse was crying when he came by (Joel hasn’t said so, but Ellie thinks he really wants them to make up). In lieu of a response, she shoved her face into a throw pillow for the rest of the afternoon, feeling a little war play out somewhere inside her gut.
“Here you go, kiddo.” Joel rests a paper and pen in front of her on the coffee table. Ellie hates the paper in Jackson; it’s homemade, all thick and flaky. The pen is bright orange and has Bank of Jackson Hole printed along the side. (Like the La-Z-Boy, it came with the house).
“Thanks.” Ellie pushes herself until she’s sitting up and leans over the coffee table, even when it makes her budding skin stretch. She winces, and pretends she doesn’t hear the way Joel inhales sharply. For what it’s worth, he doesn’t comment.
Grasping the pen in a sort-of-shaky hand, she clicks it and scrawls a multiplication table on the paper: 24 x 11. Joel rests his hands on the back of the couch and looks over her shoulder as she works out the problem.
He tuts. “The hell?”
Ellie writes down the answer—264—and circles it twice, twisting around to shove the paper into Joel’s face.
“264 hours is how long I’ve been stuck here.”
He rolls his eyes, entirely unamused by her. (Good. Making Joel get all huffy is just about Ellie’s only form of entertainment lately).
“Well, thank Christ we ain’t bein’ dramatic about it or anything,” he says.
“It’s not dramatic! It’s true.”
“Well, I reckon you’ve been asleep for about half of that time.”
“Even when I’m sleeping—” Ellie throws her arms out to the sides “—you’re right fucking there in that stupid chair!”
Joel stares at her, hard. It’s the look he gets when he’s deciding whether or not to take her bait. Usually, he just ends up grounding her. Ellie rushes to make her point before he can come up with something to say.
“I know you’re supposed to be on patrol today. Colten Bay? I heard you talking to Daryl last night.” (Ellie can’t believe Daryl came by their house; she didn’t know he existed outside of his chair in the stables).
“I told him I couldn’t do it.” Joel crosses his arms.
“I know. I heard you.”
“And? You got something you want to say?”
Ellie huffs, and mentally shifts gears. Maybe a nicer approach. “Go, Joel. Go and get me out your hair for a bit.”
“You ain’t—”
“Dude. Come on.” She points to the paper in her hand. 264 hours. She shifts onto her knees—ignoring the way her right one screams at her for it—and faces the back of the couch so she can plead with him more directly.
He shakes his head. “I ain’t leavin’ you here by yourself.”
“What do you think I’m going to do—throw a party? I can’t even walk upstairs by myself. It’s just Colten Bay, you’ll be back before dinnertime.”
“You not being able to walk up the stairs is why I ain’t leaving you here by yourself.”
“Joel.” Ellie stares at him, pushing as much meaning as she can into her words. “I’ll be fine.”
He’s silent for a long time. Hands on his hips, staring at the ceiling, a whole show. Then he sighs, and she knows she’s won.
“Lay back down,” he grumbles. “Gonna make you a few sandwiches so you don’t have to get up while I’m gone.”
Ellie grins.
-
Four firm knocks on the front door jostle Ellie out of sleep. She’s drooling onto her throw pillow, and the tape Joel put on for her—season five of Will & Grace—has since ended, the TV screen gone fuzzy. There’s two and a half sandwiches and a glass of water still on the coffee table in front of her. The clock on the VCR displays 5:27 p.m., and Ellie blinks at it twice before it fully sinks in that she slept all day long.
Two more knocks.
“Hello?” a muffled voice calls from the other side of the door. Dina. “Ellie?”
Fuck. Ellie scrambles up so fast it makes her back scream; the dressing shifts uncomfortably against the raw skin. She limps the short distance to the door, realizes at the last second that she’s still wearing those fucking sunglasses, and rips them off her face. She flings them across the room; they hit the staircase and tumble to the wood floor.
Taking a deep breath and thanking the universe that she made Joel wash her hair in the sink yesterday, Ellie edges the front door open. Dina’s in a pumpkin orange tank top and cutoff shorts, and she’s holding a small cluster of daisies in one hand. Staring at her, at the twin curls falling over each one of her ears, makes Ellie’s heart do cartwheels.
Before Ellie can even say anything, Dina’s got her hands on her shoulders, shoving her way through the door and leading Ellie back toward the couch.
“Oh my God!” she chides. “Ellie, I didn’t want you to have to open the door.”
“Then why did you knock?” Ellie still feels a little dazed. She lets Dina guide her onto the sofa, resuming the position she left just moments ago.
“Because I’m not a crazy person!” Dina shakes her head. “I swear, you take years off of my life.”
Ellie smiles, feels her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Hi, Dina.”
“Hi, Ellie.”
“Joel’s not here to kick you to the curb.”
Dina puts her hands on her hips. Some of the daisies get crumpled at her side. “I know that. I saw him on the patrol roster yesterday. That’s why I came.”
“Oh.” Ellie’s heart moves from cartwheels to backflips. She feels the tips of her ears burn.
“Are you okay?”
“Are those for me?”
Dina follows Ellie’s gaze, staring down at the daisies as if she just remembered she’s holding them.
“Oh God, yeah—” she holds them to her chest, inspecting them “—I’m totally ruining them, too. Where are your cups?”
Dina doesn’t wait for Ellie to respond. She marches into the kitchen and starts yanking open the cabinets. Ellie peeks over the arm of the couch to watch. When she finds a cup to her suiting—a stout glass from Disney World—Dina sticks the daisies in and fills it with water. She strides back into the living room, leaving every single cabinet door open. (Ellie can’t wait for Joel to see; he hates it when she does that).
“Figured you were getting bored of looking at the same old shit.” Dina shrugs, plunking the daisies down on the coffee table. Ellie stares at it, and an engraved Mickey Mouse stares back at her.
“Thanks, Di.”
Unceremoniously, Dina yanks the coffee table away from the couch and parks herself in the now-empty space between. They’re only about six inches apart like this; it makes Ellie feel heady. Dina rests a forearm on the couch between them and leans her cheek down so their faces are level, horizontal.
“I was really worried about you. I mean—the entire town was worried about you.”
“Really?” Ellie raises her eyebrows. “You’re telling me Graham was worried? What about Chad? He real worried, too?”
Dina rolls her eyes. “I didn’t exactly get everyone’s opinion on it. I didn’t go door-to-door.”
Ellie sighs, like it’s the most disappointing news she’s heard all day. The effect is kind of lost when she can’t stop smiling. For a moment, they’re quiet, Dina patting the tips of her fingers on the couch in a rhythm Ellie can’t decipher.
“Do you think you’ll be back in fighting shape for the autumn festival? I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m short a date.”
It feels like someone took her brain and turned it upside down. Ellie can only manage one word. “Dina.” It comes out like, don’t make fun of me.
“What?” Dina grins wolfishly. (No one grins quite as wolfishly as Dina; she’s got the canines for it). “You don’t want to dance with the likes of me?”
Ellie hums, like she’s considering it. “I mean…if only you’d gone door-to-door.”
“Shut up. You’re awful.”
“Your mom is awful,” Ellie replies. Like a child. She feels like a little kid when she’s alone with Dina, like she’d be more comfortable cutting off a piece of her ponytail than kissing her.
Dina tilts her head forward so she can look under her eyelashes at Ellie, exasperated. Then she blinks, and it’s back to business.
“Is it bad? Lemme see.” She’s already shifting away before Ellie can reply, coming up on her knees so she can peel away the corner of one of the dressings on Ellie’s arm.
Ellie still doesn’t know what the skin (or lack thereof) looks like; she hasn’t wanted to look in a mirror. But it feels raw when Joel reapplies the petroleum jelly. In some places, Joel says, there’s still no skin at all.
If she moves her head down and shifts her eyes low, Ellie can watch Dina watch her wound; she’s all concerned eyes and puckered lips. God, her eyelashes. Ellie wishes she could rub her cheek against them just to feel how soft they are.
Dina sits back on her haunches, brings her gaze back to Ellie’s face. “Looks pretty gnarly.”
“It’s fine.” (It hurts so bad). “Probably gonna scar like a motherfucker, though.”
“Scars are chick magnets.” Dina shrugs. Then pauses, long and awkward. “That’s what Jesse says.”
Ellie frowns. “Jesse’s a big dumb idiot.”
Mouth quirked, Dina’s eyes drift down Ellie’s spine and back up to her eyes.
“Not always,” she says softly.
Ellie watches Dina shift onto one hip. Their faces are close again. Hovering. Ellie’s never seen Dina look so very close to shy. It makes her feel brave.
“Dina,” she breathes.
One of the straps of Dina’s tank top slides a little down the curve of her shoulder. Ellie’s eyes flicker down to it, only half-involuntarily. When she meets Dina’s gaze again, she’s leaning even closer. For just a moment, their noses brush.
The front door swings open.
It’s Joel; Ellie can tell by his gait, heavy and sure in his boots. The girls break away from each other; Ellie pushes onto her knees and looks over the back of the couch. Joel’s already staring back, the collar of his t-shirt damp with sweat.
“Uh,” he begins.
Dina interrupts him. “Sorry, Mr. Miller! I know I’m not supposed to be visiting Ellie.”
“That…it’s alright. Hi, Dina. Do you—” He looks toward the kitchen and frowns at all the open cabinets. Ellie has to poke her tongue into her cheek to keep from laughing. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No, that’s alright.” Dina shakes her head. “I’ve got to get home for dinner; Mr. Parrish is making split pea soup.”
Joel scratches behind his ear, crosses his arms. “You living with the Parrishes now?”
Ever since her sister Talia was killed, Dina has kind of become the town orphan, living with this family and that family. For the last year or so, she’s been living under Jesse’s mom’s roof, even when her and Jesse were more off than on. If she’s moved into Parrish’s house, they might really be broken up for good this time. Ellie tries not to let the thought fill her head with hot air.
“Yeah,” Dina says. “Jesse and I broke up. His mom wanted me to stay anyway, but, y’know…”
“Oh. Well. Sorry to hear that.” Joel pauses, shifting his feet. “You know if you ever need a place to stay you’re always welcome here.”
From her spot on the couch, Ellie bulges her eyes at him, like, what the fuck? Joel looks between the two girls; he opens his mouth and then closes it.
Dina grins. “Thanks, Mr. Miller.”
Ellie shoves her face into the back cushion of the sofa. (At this rate, she’s going to asphyxiate herself, and she’s not even upset about it).
-
When Ellie wakes, she’s bathed in the glow of the living room TV. She can’t have been asleep for very long; the very end of The Parent Trap is playing, the part where they’re on a camping trip with their dad’s awful girlfriend. (If Joel ever started dating someone like Meredith Blake, Ellie would take him out to the backyard and execute him by firing squad).
To her right, Joel’s got the La-Z-Boy reclined as far as it will go. He’s still sleeping there every night to watch over her, even though Ellie knows it fucks his back up. His old man stretches and groans and grumbles are only multiplying. He’s asleep now, but when Ellie shifts around to a seated position and rubs at her eyes, his mouth twitches. When she yawns, he wakes, blinking so hard his crow’s feet crinkle back towards his hairline.
“Y’alright kiddo?”
Ellie bites the inside of her cheek and wonders how many times she’s heard those exact words, in that exact gravelly, sleep-stricken voice. She wonders if she’ll ever run out of reasons to wake Joel up in the middle of the night.
“Can’t sleep.”
He hums. “You want some tea? Want me to read to you?”
She does, but she can’t bring herself to admit to it. Instead, she shakes her head and lets her mind wander, snagging on the first memory that comes to mind.
“Remember that day in Nebraska?” she muses. Ellie doesn’t have to elaborate; it’s her favorite story to bring up with Joel.
He laughs through his nose. “The damn Molotov cocktail.”
“Why the fuck would you throw it over your shoulder?” Every word is punched with giggles. “You didn’t even try to aim.”
“We were being chased!”
“Yeah, setting the newspaper stand on fire really helped that situation.”
“Least you lived to tell the tale, smartass.”
Ellie shakes her head. “Such a waste of alcohol, dude.”
“Ellie,” he chides, but he’s also sort of laughing.
“It was a full bottle! We shoulda just drank it.”
Joel’s really laughing now. “Who’s ‘we’?”
Ellie giggles too, and then she can’t stop. She’s half-delirious with pain and Joel’s half-delirious with sleep deprivation, and the sound of each other’s laughter is the funniest sound in the world.
“Stop,” she whines, breathless. “It hurts.”
Joel lays back down onto the recliner; his eyes are closed but his mouth is still curled up into a grin, lips pressed together. “They say laughter is the best medicine.”
“Fuck you, you sound like a fortune cookie. Oxy is the best medicine.”
He shakes his head. “Too right, kid.”
They’re silent for a while. Ellie lays her head down sideways on the back of the couch.
“Sorry if I overstepped with Dina earlier,” Joel murmurs. “I know you…well, I know you and her and Jesse are thick as thieves, and I don’t want to get in the way of that.”
She looks down, twiddles her left fingers in her right. “I don’t it’s going to be like that anymore, so.”
“Kiddo, you can’t stay mad at Jesse for what happened to Shimmer. It ain’t his fault.” When Ellie glares at him, he continues. “It ain’t no one’s fault.”
“That’s not—” she sighs. “That isn’t what this is about.”
Joel stands from the La-Z-Boy and moves instead to sit on the coffee table so they’re eye-to-eye.
“It’s about Dina, right?”
Ellie shifts. She feels too watched, like an ant under a magnifying glass. Something in the shift of Joel’s thumb against his own fist, in his kind expression, makes her throat feel tight. They’ve never talked about this, not in any real sense. But what happened between Ellie and Dina earlier felt really fucking real.
“We were fighting before I even fell,” she explains.
“Y’all seemed good that morning, though.”
“We were. It just…happened on patrol, I guess. He thinks I like Dina.”
Joel tilts his head. “Well. You do like Dina, right? I think Dina likes you.”
Ellie puts her head into her hands and groans. It makes Joel chuckle.
“It’s alright,” he says. “I got a pretty keen eye for these sort of things.”
She bites the inside of her cheek, not-quite-smiling. “It’s complicated. It’s all complicated.”
“Yeah.” Joel sighs, but not wearily—it’s the way he sighs when he and Ellie make it through a tough conversation without attempting to kill each other. “Reckon it is.”
-
Two days later, the heat decides to break in the valley, and a cool breeze swims through the streets of Jackson. Ellie migrates out onto the front porch to continue doing nothing all day. She’s tired of all their VHS tapes and has listened to all her music twice; Dina’s flowers begin to wilt so she presses them between the pages of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and stacks all the other books she owns on top of it.
Joel’s making her stop taking the oxy, so she’s resigned to a rotating schedule of Advil and Tylenol. She doesn’t really stick to it, though, because it makes her feel wasteful. Needy. Instead, she sits on the rocker with a hefty six inches between her spine and the back of the chair. She watches people walk the dirt path to Main Street; sometimes they wave to her, sometimes they even stop to chat. It’s sort of nice, Ellie has to admit. After almost two weeks of Joel (after two days of talking herself up and down the wall about what happened with Dina), it’s not bad to see other people.
That is, until Jesse comes ambling up the pathway, kicking a rock ahead of him as he walks. He’s got something held between his hands.
“Fucking fuck,” Ellie whispers under her breath. She stares down at her hands for a second, as if Jesse won’t be able to see her if she can’t see him.
When she looks up again, Jesse’s staring back at her, squinting a little into the sunlight overhead. It makes his hair shine mauve-y blue. He closes in on the porch steps, leaning into one of the bannisters. Ellie resists the urge to stick her thumbnail into her mouth.
“Hey,” Jesse says.
“Hey.”
“Dina said you were allowed to have people visit you now.”
Ellie shrugs and looks down at her hands, shoved into her lap. “I mean, I wasn’t, but she sort of broke into my house. Think Joel took pity on me and released me from solitary confinement.”
“Oh.” Jesse studies their surroundings, like the right thing to say will show up somewhere in the air.
Her next words come out before Ellie even realizes she wants to say them: “When’d you see Dina?”
“She had to move the rest of her stuff out.” He shrugs. “Mally’s taken it upon herself to be my number one enemy.”
Ellie glances sideways at him. It tracks; Mally Parrish has always had a bit of a sanctimonious streak. She’s Ellie’s age; they were in patrol training together. Anytime Ellie found something cool on one of their runs, Mally always gave her shit for keeping it rather than taking it to the swap (as is the official patrol protocol). Still, she’s absolutely lethal with a shotgun; more than once, Ellie’s seen her turn a runner into a shower of blood and body parts.
Ellie’s not about to give Jesse the satisfaction of commiseration.
“I like Mally,” she mumbles, realizing as she says it how much she sounds like Nicky when he’s not getting his way.
Jesse rolls his eyes, like he forgot he’s supposed to be meek and apologetic. “I like Mally, too. I just think the feeling’s not very mutual. Seems to be a common trend right now.”
A warm breeze passes through the porch. Ellie sighs and, once again, trains her eyes on her lap. She lets the silence linger awkwardly between them. If Jesse wants to apologize, he’s going to have to work for it.
“Can I sit?” he finally asks.
She shrugs, and Jesse takes it as a yes. He makes his way up the steps and sits on the porch railing in front of her rocking chair.
“I—” he glances down at the parcel in his hands (opaque Tupperware, now that Ellie can see it up close) and then back to Ellie “—I brought you this. It’s from my mom. Well, from my mom and me.”
Wordlessly, Ellie holds her hand out for it. Jesse passes it to her.
“It’s soup,” he says, shrugging a little. “I’m not sure what kind; she threw a bunch of vegetables in there, though. She wanted to put chicken in it, but I told her you’re a vegetarian.”
Ellie tilts her head at him. “Yeah?”
She’s not vegetarian. Not really. But she hasn’t been keen on meat since Colorado. Everyone knows, but no one really knows why, besides Joel. And probably Tommy, if she had to guess.
Jesse remembered. It’s this small detail that unfurls a little bit of the anger she’s been harboring.
“Yeah,” he replies. “She thought it was kind of weird, but.”
“Well, I’m kind of a weird person. It seems to be a common trend right now.”
When he speaks again, Jesse’s voice is improbably soft, subdued. “Hey. You know I’m sorry, right? Not just about Shimmer. I mean, I’m really sorry about Shimmer. But, I’m sorry about everything.”
He plops his hands down in his lap, palm up. “I’m sorry we fought,” he says.
“I mean, it’s whatever. I lied to you, so.”
Ellie’s not sure what makes her speak so plainly. Mostly, she’s just tired; a headache’s been piercing behind her eyes all day, and her back has been itching like hell ever since new skin began to tentatively form around her injuries. Jesse, Joel, even Dina. It all exhausts her.
“It’s not whatever.” Jesse shakes his head, squinting at her. “I was mean. And, y’know insensitive. It wasn’t right.”
Again, Ellie just shrugs, like she’s already over it. Jesse sighs, exasperated by her indifference.
“Ellie,” he pleads. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay! I get it, okay? I forgive you, or whatever.”
“Do you?” He sounds incredulous. Fair.
Ellie throws her hands out to her sides. “I don’t know. I mean, I—I, I do like Dina. And—”
“Dina likes you.”
“What?”
“She hasn’t said, but…I think she likes you.”
Ellie shakes her head, frown pulling on the corners of her mouth. “No, I think she’s just being Dina.”
Jesse shakes his head right back at her, like she’s being silly. He doesn’t reply.
“I didn’t want to tell you—” she sighs “—because I don’t want shit to be weird between us. Any of us.”
“Ellie, I’m not upset that you like Dina.”
Her frown turns upwards into a sardonic smile. “Really?”
Jesse ignores her. “I’m upset that you tried to lie to me. I’m upset that you felt like you couldn’t tell me stuff like that. I’m your fucking best friend.”
“Elouise is your best friend.” Ellie knows this isn’t true, but she says it anyway, just to piss him off a little more.
“No, Ellie, you’re my best friend.”
She sighs, and feels something like anger wiggle loose and fall apart inside her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just hard to talk about shit like that.”
“I know. You’re like the most closed book of all time. You’re practically glued shut, bud.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Listen,” he says after a moment. “If you and Dina want to date, I’m gonna be fine with that. It’s gonna be weird, but I’m gonna be fine.”
Ellie frowns. “How would it be any weirder than you guys dating? You’re such a homophobe.”
“Ellie you told me you were gay, like, two years ago. How would I be a homophobe?”
A little muscle in the corner of her mouth twitches upwards. “Just—you’re kind of being a dick about this.”
“I’m still just surprised. You know, Dina and I have dated like five times and she’s never given me daisies.”
The absolute fucker. Jesse tilts his head and smiles that stupid fucking smile at her. Like he knows everything.
“I actually hate you,” Ellie deadpans.
“Come on, I think it’s cute. Should I suggest that to Dina as a pet name? Daisy?”
“How do you even know about that?”
“Come on, now. Who do you think she came to when she was wondering what your favorite flower was?”
Ellie squints at him. “Daisies aren’t my favorite flower. I don’t have a favorite flower.” (She does. Desert Globemallow).
“Oh, shit.” Jesse shrugs. “Well, now you do.”
“Have you two always talked about me behind my back this much?”
“Why would I ever talk about you behind your back?”
“Because you hate me.” After a second, she adds: “And gay people.”
Jesse considers this. “I don’t hate gay people. I hate—” he holds up a pointer finger “—one gay person. And that’s just because she’s super cagey about her budding relationship with my ex-girlfriend.”
Ellie smiles like there’s a lemon wedge between her teeth. “Shut up.”
Leaning forward a little on the porch rail, Jesse kicks the tip of his shoe into her socked foot. He smiles back.