Heat lightning forked the sky above them.
“What?” she snapped, and then she heard the shrill sound of her own voice and the need threaded through it. Benny could see the awareness blossom in her eyes, and it was a shared experience, because she knew that he saw it. It was a sobering moment, and in a bizarre way Benny felt like it aged him. Matured him. Just a bit. Nix too; he was certain of it. Her green eyes lost some of their force, and her mouth softened for a second, as if her lips were going to tremble, and then her jaw tightened as she clamped her self-control into place. In an odd, distracted way Benny admired that. He loved that about her.
They sat there for a long time, their eyes shifting away and coming back, their mouths wanting to speak but uncertain what language was spoken in this strange new country.
“I—,” he began, but again she cut him off.
“So help me God, Benny, if you say ‘I’m sorry,’ I’ll kill you.”
She meant it. Even her freckles seemed to glow with dangerous heat. But at the end of her anger, there was the whisper of a smile that lifted the corners of her lips. Benny wished right then that things were different for them, that they had been given the chance to meet at this age rather than growing up together. It would make so many things easier.
He cleared his throat. “So … where does that leave us, Nix?”
“Where do you want it to leave us?”
“I want us to be friends. Always.”
“And are we friends?”
“You’re one of my best friends. You and Chong—you’re my family.”
“Me and Chong? What about Morgie?”
Benny shrugged. “He’s the family dog.”
Morgie raised his head at the sound of laughter. On the other side of the yard, in the shade of the big oak, Benny and Nix were howling with laughter.
“What the hell’s so funny?” he asked irritably.
Chong peered weakly out from under the picnic table. He saw the two of them laughing together, but he also saw that they were sitting apart. He sighed.
“I don’t like it,” growled Morgie. “That monkeybanger’s making a play for Nix.”
“Morgie,” Chong said.
“What?”
“Shut up.”
But Morgie was persistent. “What? You’re saying I don’t have anything to worry about?”
Chong considered. “Knowing you, your personal habits, your general hygiene, and your raw intelligence, I think you have a lot to worry about.”
“Hey!”
Chong grunted and closed his eyes.
Thunder rumbled again in the west.
After a while Nix took her journal out of her satchel, used a pocket knife to sharpen her pencil, and began writing. Benny watched her while pretending not to. He was particularly interested in the way her sweaty T-shirt molded to her when she stretched to grab the bag. And the way the sunlight brought out gold flecks in her green eyes. He banged his head against the rough bark of the tree. Twice. Hard.
What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered, and not for the first time.
Nix either didn’t notice him watching or—even at fourteen and three-quarters—was too practiced at being a young woman to allow anything to show on her face. She bent over the book and wrote for nearly twenty minutes, only pausing long enough to whittle a new point at the end of each full page.
When she stopped again to reach for the knife, Benny said, “Why do you write in that thing?”
“I’m writing a book,” she said, deftly shaving off a fleck of wood.
“About what? Love and bunnies? Do I get eaten by your attack bunnies?”
“Don’t tempt me. No, it’s not a novel. It’s nonfiction.” She blew on the sharpened pencil point. “About zombies.”
Benny laughed. “What, you want to kill zoms? I thought you guys were doing this sword stuff for fun.”