Beth was right. Lots of people are dead. All of them were either bitten or fully torn up by walkers. Rick says one of them was Patrick. Actually, not just that Patrick was one of them, but that it was Patrick who started it. He'd gotten sick—something about the flu and pigs and stuff—and died in the middle of the night. Nobody knew. Nobody was there to stop him. So his dead body wandered through cells, taking bites out of every living person he could get his hands on. The more he tore apart, the more walkers there were. That's how fast outbreaks can happen. It makes sense now, how the world fell so quickly. All it takes is one person.

Lizzie and Mika's dad got bit. Right on the back of his neck. He's gone, now, and I haven't seen Lizzie and Mika to know if they're okay.

Knowing that Lizzie and Mika's daddy was there and gone again just in a couple of moments is making my eyes burn and my body feel shaky. Because that could have been my mom or dad. They could have been gone in just a few moments. And what's even worse is that I can't even see my daddy. I'm not allowed to go near him. I haven't been allowed to ever since he came out of the sick cell block.

When he first came out of the cell block, I went running towards him to make sure he was okay, but Momma came out of nowhere and grabbed me. I didn't know why then, and it made me a little mad because I just wanted to make sure Dad was okay. But I know now. He and all the other people who could have been even a little bit exposed to whatever sickness Patrick had aren't allowed to be around the people who haven't been exposed. My dad has been exposed and I haven't. So I can't be near him.

And although not being able to go near my dad makes my whole entire heart hurt, I'm at least lucky to have my momma. I thought she'd been exposed at first, too, because I thought she went to help in the other cell block. But she says that when she went outside, she saw Michonne, Maggie, and Carl fighting walkers in the field, and she had to go help them because Carl ain't supposed to be fighting walkers no more. I'm just glad I can be with her.

Now, Rick's got me and Carl locked away out of our cells, not even with any of the adults anymore except for Hershel. We're in charge of keeping an eye on all the kids we've got quarantined with us. It kind of sucks, but I like having an important job to do. Carl hates it. Only thing he likes about it is that he can have his gun again.

I have a gun, too. My parents are making me keep it on me. I don't like having it on me, because knowing I could kill anyone with just the pull of a trigger makes me feel dizzy, but I know it's important, with this whole sickness going around and walkers and everything. It's just been a while since I've had to keep one on me.

Right now, I'm sitting in the corner reading a book with one of the littler kids. Beth has Judith in her arms and she's talking with Maggie by the door. I'm trying real hard to listen, so I can know what's going on, but I can't hear Maggie and it's hard to pay attention to what Beth is saying when the kid I'm reading with keeps asking me questions. I can't ignore the kid. She's too sweet to ignore. So I keep having to answer her questions, and then I miss big huge chunks of the sentences Beth is saying.

Luckily, it isn't long before it's my turn to talk to someone from the other side of the door. Beth comes back into the main room with Judith on her hip and she gives me a little bit of a smile, but I know Beth's real smile, so I know she's not actually happy. "Your momma's at the door, Juni. Says she has somethin' for you," Beth tells me.

I hand the book over to the girl next to me. "I'll be right back," I tell her. "Keep readin'."

After that, I hop up off of the floor and hurry over to the door. That's where all the kids talk to their parents and other family members. Us kids are all quarantined from the adults, because apparently kids are more susceptible to sicknesses or something. I don't know. I just do as I'm told.

Anyway, when I get to the door, I can sort of see my mom through the window, except it's not all completely clear because it's one of those windows that has texture. So the shape of my mom is little bit warped and weird. Still, though, it's my momma and that makes me happy.

"Hey, Juni," Mom says to me in a sort of sing-songy voice when she sees me through the warpy-window.

"Hi, Momma," I say back to her with the same kind of sing-songy voice. It doesn't even take a full five seconds before my worry breaks through my happiness upon seeing Mom. I can't help but blurt out all my questions. "Is everyone okay? Are you or Daddy sick? Where's he?"

Mom makes a face on the other side of the glass, and I think it's a frown but it's hard to tell. "Lots of people are sick, baby. But me and your dad are fine," she explains to me.

"Who's sick?" I ask. It's not that I'd rather some people get sick over others, but I just know it would hurt me a whole lot more if someone I love got sick over someone I barely know. But that's just my brain being selfish.

"Glenn. Sasha, Lizzie. Lots of other people you don't know so well," Mom tells me. Her voice is quieter than before, like she doesn't want anyone else to hear. Bet she knows the other kids are wondering, too, and she doesn't want them to worry. She probably wouldn't tell me either if she didn't know I'd be worrying incessantly either way. I'm just a ball of worry, sometimes. Mom knows that and she knows just what to tell me to make me worry the least possible amount. "But Dad and a few others are going out and getting medicine. It'll be okay, Juni," she says.

I nod my head, trying to shove all my bad thoughts right out of my brain. "I hope so."

"You got your journal?" Mom asks.

Again, I nod. My journal was one of the first things I shoved into my backpack when Rick first decided all of us kids would have to leave our cells. I've only written a little bit, though, because the little kids won't stop bothering me. They really like me, for some reason. Probably because I do whatever they want me to. I just feel like they've earned it. They're locked up in some room so they don't get the deadly sickness going around, for heaven's sake, of course I have to play with them. I can't just not play with them when they're being so brave.

"What about food? You've been eating, right?" Momma asks next. She's got this warning sort of tone to her voice, like even though she just asking a question, she's really wagging her finger in my face and saying, you better be eating your food, girl.

"Yes," I say exasperatedly. And it's true. I had breakfast this morning, even though the cereal was quite stale.

"Well, good. 'Cause that means you've earned this little gift I brought you." Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about Beth saying my momma brought something. Now that I'm really thinking about it, it makes my stomach ache in a good, excited sort of way. "Michonne brought it back from a run a little while ago. Thought it'd lift your mood with everything that's goin' on. Now, back away from the door for a sec, so I can slip the box in without givin' you all my germs," she says, stretching out the word germs to make it sounds all creepy.

I do as I'm told and step as far backward as I can until my back is up against the opposite wall, but that's only a few feet away, still, since I'm in a hallway. Mom twists the doorknob and cracks open the door before sliding a little box through on the floor. When she pulls the door shut again, I dart over to the box and drop down on my knees to see what it is. It's a little box with a girl's face on the cover. She's got pink hair, which is cool. The brand is a fancy word with letters that have apostrophes on them for some reason, but what I am able to read is the label at the bottom. Pink hair dye.

My eyes light up like fireworks and I can't stop myself from bouncing on my toes. "Is this for me?" I ask.

Momma giggles at that question. "Who else would it be for, JJ?"

"I don't know!" I exclaim, even though that's not an exclaim-y type of sentence. "Daddy never let me dye my hair before. He said it was too much work and it was gonna dye our tub!" That's a true fact. I've asked him a bazillion times, but he's always said no.

"That's 'cause your dad is a lazy bum," Mom says with a laugh. It's not fully true. My dad isn't lazy. He works his butt off now and he did before, too, with whatever jobs he had when I was growing up. He was at work a lot, and when he got home, he didn't want to help me dye my hair; he just wanted to lie down and watch TV. I don't blame him, I guess, but it's still annoying. "He used to say the same thing to me when we were younger and I needed help dyin' my own hair. I convinced him, though. Or annoyed him until he caved."

"That's just 'cause when you annoyed him, he couldn't tell you to go to your room and play, or somethin'!" I tell her, still bouncing on my toes. "What colors did you do when you were younger?"

I've seen lots of pictures of my mom. Dad used to keep them sort of all over the place. There were some in picture frames, scattered on surfaces throughout our little apartment, and Dad always had a picture of Mom in his wallet, too, and then there were photobooks of when I was a baby that Mom put together when she was still at home, and I could see her in those, and in Dad's old yearbooks if I could convince him to let me look at them. I liked looking at my parents in the yearbook, but I didn't like reading the notes other people left on the last page. People are mean to Dixons. Anyway, I remember somewhere in Daddy's room, maybe on his dresser or something, there was a picture of Momma and him when they were in high school. In the picture, Dad had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and his face was all crunched up, kind of embarrassed seeming, and Mom was kissing his cheek, and there were pink streaks in her hair. So, I know for sure that my mom had pink in her hair before, but not any other colors.

"I did pink for a while, had purple once, and some blue at one point," Momma explains, looking up at the ceiling as if that's where all her memories are kept. "One time I did my whole head fully red. That took forever to come out. And the blue left my hair looking a little green, too, and your uncle Merle would tell me my hair was moldy. What an ass."

Moldy hair sounds so, super duper gross. I'm glad Mom's hair wasn't ever actually moldy.

"Make sure you have Beth help you, okay? And don't try and do your whole head, or you'll run out of dye and look like a goof. Just streaks, alright, baby?" Mom tells me. I nod my head because all those rules make sense to me. "I gotta go help Rick with somethin', but I'll check back in with you later, okay?"

"Okay."

"Be good, sweet girl."

I think it's a little bit funny when my parents say that to me because why would I be bad? Why would I do bad things on purpose, especially when someone else other than my parents are in charge of me. I already feel bad enough when I do something my parents don't like, so you can imagine how devastated I'd feel if I made someone like Beth angry. That'd be totally terrible. I guess be good is just something all parents say to their kids. It just seems like it should be implied all the time.

"I love you," I say, putting my hand on the glass.

Mom puts her hand across from mine, and I swear the glass gets just a little bit less cold. "I love you, too. See ya later, JJ."

"See ya later, Momma."

With that, Mom turns and walks off, and I watch her from the window, fidgeting with the hair dye in my hands. I wish she could help me with the hair dye. I'm still grateful, though. I just wish none of this were happening and everything could go back to normal.

♡

A few hours later, I sit with Beth in the bathroom. All the little kids are either asleep or playing with each other in the other room, which means that I finally have a little bit of a break. And that means that I have time to do the hair dye, now. I'm sort of nervous. I wonder if dyed hair feels different from regular hair, and I'm worried I won't like it, even though I've wanted to dye my hair for ages. That's why it's good that Beth is doing it for me. If it was me doing it, I bet my hands would be all shaky and I'd get hair dye in the wrong places, and I'd mess it all up.

Plus, my hair is a lot longer than it used to be. Daddy never cut it since the fall of everything, and Momma hasn't cut it, either. They've both suggested it, but I say no every time because I want my hair to be real long, so then I can put little braids in it like Beth sometimes does. Anyway, if I had to do it by myself, I'm not sure if I could reach to the ends of my hair without accidentally making the streak in a diagonal or squiggly line. Moral of the story, I need Beth's help for really real.

And that's what Beth is doing now. She's got some of the dye in a little bowl, mixing it up with a brush that came in the box. She's got a big smile on her face, which sort of makes me think that she's just as excited as I am.

"This is gonna be so cute, June," Beth says as she holds the bowl in front of me so I can see the color. "It's so lucky Michonne found this, huh? You excited?"

"Yeah," I say, even though it sounds more like I'm laughing. I'm not meaning to. I just really am super excited, and also nervous.

"Okay, hold this." Beth places the bowl and brush in my hand and takes a few hairclips out of her own bag, which is really nice of her to let me borrow. She's always been really good at doing braids and ponytails—really all sorts of hairstyles. Which, as she's pinning back certain parts of my hair, makes me wonder if she ever thought about being a hairstylist.

I bet she would be a great hairstylist, but I also bet she would be a great babysitter or teacher, or really anything she ever wanted. So, I ask her, "What did you want to be when you grew up? Like, before everything happened."

Beth kind of smiles at the questions, but it's more like the sad smile people do when they're trying to make up for the aching they feel inside. Or maybe that's just how I feel when I do that smile. "I wasn't a hundred percent sure. I knew I wanted to be a mother, but I kinda wanted to be something different every other week. I was always changin' my mind," she explains before taking the bowl and brush back from me.

I nod my head in understanding, but she puts her hands on the back of my head and holds me still.

"Keep still."

"'Kay."

"What about you?" Beth asks. I feel her put the brush on my head, and it feels really cold. It almost makes me shiver, but I make sure to keep still like Beth said.

For a moment, I just hum a little bit, thinking about it. "Well, me too. I always changed my mind," I answer.

I used to want to be a teacher at one point, but I don't think I could do that. I'm not good at math or reading, and to be able to teach little kids math or reading, you have to be good at it. And sometimes I wanted to be a baker, but Merle said that involves a lot of math, too, which is super surprising because it's just baking. I also thought about being an actor before, but actors live in California, and that is way too far away from Georgia. I never wanted to move too far from Dad, Mom, or even Merle, despite how mad they could make me.

"I guess it's kinda nice we don't have to worry about that anymore, though," Beth says, continuing on brushing color through my hair.

That doesn't sound right. It makes me feel heavy. "But it's how life's supposed to be," I say a bit quietly. I don't want her to get annoyed with me. "We were s'posed to be able to be whatever we wanted to be. Now we don't even know if we'll get to be grown-ups."

"That's just how life is now," Beth tells me very firmly. It sounds like the words don't phase her, which is strange because, a few months ago, I don't think Beth would ever say something like that. "We have to be brave about it. Right?"

"Yeah. Guess so," I murmur. I feel like I'm shrinking, in a way, but I'm not. I'm still me. Not sure if Beth is still her, though.

I think Beth can tell, even if just a little bit, that what she said kind of dampened my mood. She puts her smile back on and takes a deep-ish breath. "I thought about being a vet before, like my daddy. A nurse, too. I think I'd be pretty good at that."

"Like in a hospital?" I ask. She nods her head, confirming it. "I think you'd be good at that, too. You're really good at taking care of people."

It's really, super true. Beth takes care of Judith all the time, and when people are sad or hurt or something, she's good at helping them, too. In my experience, she mostly knows how to make people feel better. I think she'd be good at making people feel better in a hospital. At least, she would make me feel better if I was ever in a hospital. It doesn't matter anymore, though. If we end up in a hospital ever again, it will probably be an abandoned one. That's just how life is now.

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these past few chapters haven't been super eventful and i'm sorry for that !!! but i promise more will be happening the further we get into s4. the beginning is very slow. <3