Things are getting worse all the time. I know more people are getting sick, even if no one really wants to tell me anything. If lots of people weren't sick, they would let Carl and me out of here, plus all the other kids. But more and more people are sick, and the more people get sick, the more people die. Sometimes, I can hear loud echoey screams from other parts of the prison. I can only assume those screams come from people who are in the cell block for sick people. Because people must die in their cells, and then wake up as walkers.

It must be terrifying, being in there. I'm glad I'm not. I'm lucky enough not to be sick, but I'm extra lucky that I don't have to be in there with walkers. I'm better at handing them than before. I'm way better. But my way better is, like, a thousand times worse than other people's way better. I'm still bad at it. I'm still scared. I still avoid it at any chance I get. I don't know how I'd handle having to be in that cell block with people turning into walkers left and right, especially because they're all people I know.

Beth told me, earlier, that Glenn has it. The sickness, I mean. And that's about the scariest thing I've heard all day. It's Glenn. Glenn can't turn into a walker like the others. He just can't. I can't even imagine it in the deepest, darkest parts of my brain. It just feels impossible because he's Glenn. One of the nicest people in the history of time. Maggie would be crushed if something were to happen to him. I wonder how terrified she's feeling. I'm worried about her. I wish I could hug her or something, but I can't.

I'm trying really hard not to think about any of it. I tried doing that by convincing Carl to play a card game with me, but Carl is obsessed with walking the halls. He's in the type of mood where he feels like he has to protect everyone. So he refuses to take a break.

Still, though, I don't want to be by myself, so I don't think Carl wants to keep being by himself, either. So when he walks, I walk along behind him. I got him to play I Spy for a little bit, but he got bored of that really quickly. Now we're just doing Would You Rather.

"Would you rather..." Carl hums as he thinks of something to say. "Would you rather be a bird or a fish?"

I laugh a little at that question because it's not one I would have thought of. It's a good one, though. "Um, maybe a bird. 'Cause the ocean is all dark, and that sounds kind of scary. But birds are in the sky, which is super bright. Plus, they can fly," I explain.

"Yeah, but birds eat worms, June," Carl says. He turns to look at me, wiggling his eyebrows just to make sure I know how gross eating worms is.

"Don't even say that," I huff, narrowing my eyes at him. Just the thought of eating a worm makes me feel like I'm about to pass out. That's just totally disgusting. But I bet my dad would eat a worm. Not even if he had to. I bet he'd eat a worm if you just dared him to. Because he's gross. "No more talking about eating worms or I'll puke on your shoes," I threaten Carl.

"Okay, okay," Carl laughs. We keep going through the halls, which are pretty dim now because I'm pretty sure it's around nighttime. Carl has his flashlight, though, so that's good. I still don't like the dark. Even if Carl has his flashlight shining in front of him, there could still be things in the dark corners, or around a corner, or behind, or behind a door. It's scary, thinking about that, and I think Carl can see the nervousness on my face. His next question is, "Would you rather keep walking the halls in the dark, or go help the sick people?" And his voice isn't as lighthearted-sounding as before. It's real now. Carl does that a lot—going back and forth between a good mood and a bad one randomly.

I sigh a big, heavy sigh to make sure Carl hears it. "Don't ask questions like that."

"Why not?" Carl asks me. He shoots me a look that feels almost challenging. Like he wants to argue with me about it. I think, secretly, he really just wants to argue with his dad. "It's a real life question, June. We're not little kids anymore. We have to be brave."

"I know what you're doin', Carl," I grumble.

"I'm not doing anything," Carl argues, shaking his head.

Sometimes, Carl is a hard person to be around. But he's also my very best friend. He feels like a brother, in a way. And I love him like he's my brother, and I love being around him most of the time, even when we get into trouble sometimes. But when his mood changes so drastically so quickly, it's hard for me not to get frustrated. I think it's mostly just because he lost his momma like he did. He feels like he needs to protect everyone, all of the time, no exceptions, or else they'll be gone just like Lori. And sometimes, like right now, I think that that thought goes too far into his head, and he gets afraid and angry, and he loses himself for a little bit.

I know he is trying really hard, though. I know he is. He didn't touch any guns for a really long time. Same with Rick. It was what was best. But now he's got his gun again, and he's protecting all these little kids in her with us, and I think the anxiety might be getting worse again. I would say this to him, but I don't think that would help. I think it would make him mad. Someday, maybe when we're older, I'll tell him about it. Tell him that I see him, and I've always seen him trying.

For now, though, all I say is, "Never mind. I just don't like questions like that. This game is supposed to be fun."

"Alright. I'm sorry," he says back to me. And I accept it because lots of people don't even apologize like that. But Carl's good, even when he's frustrating, and he says sorry when he knows he's done something that bothers you.

All of a sudden, Carl grabs my arm, stopping me in my tracks. "Do you hear that?" he asks me.

I hold my breath for a moment, listening as hard as I can. And then I hear it. Pops in the distance. More of those fireworks sounds. Those can only mean one thing right now, and that's gunshots. That means that there are walkers, and whether they came from the fences or the sick people, it puts an awful, horrified feeling in my gut.

"C'mon," Carl says quietly. We run through the halls, trying not to slip on loose pieces of paper or trip over knocked-over office items lying around the floors. It's scary, just trusting Carl and not knowing exactly where we're going. It isn't long before he grabs my arm to stop me once again, this time flicking off his flashlight.

We both stay frozen, just for a few seconds, staring at a light shining at the end of the hall we're walking down. It ain't Carl's flashlight, because he just turned his off, and it ain't mine since I don't even have one on me right now. It's someone else's flashlight. But all the other kids should be either in bed or getting ready for bed right now.

Then, we hear a voice, soft and loud at the same time. A raspy sort of whisper-yell. "Carl!" And just by the voice, both me and Carl recognize it as his dad's voice almost immediately.

The two of us rush to the end of the hall, only stopping when we see Rick a good ten or so feet away from us. "I heard gunshots," Carl tells his dad.

"Hey," Rick breathes out. Seems like he's been running, which isn't a good sign. He looks at me, a nervous and sympathetic-seeming expression on his face, and then at Carl. "I need your guys' help. Come on."

Carl doesn't hesitate to rush after his father, desperate to help and protect in any possible way he can, but I can't get rid of the terror I already feel. I don't even know what Rick is going to ask us to do, but I know it's not gonna be something I want to do. If he's taking us out of quarantine to help him with something, even after all of the times he said no to Carl, it means that it's something important. Something scary. Still, though, I have to run with them. I have to, no matter how scared I am.

"What's goin' on?" I ask Rick as we run. I'm a low runner, too, so it's hard for me to keep up with them.

"Fences need reinforcement," Rick explains very briefly as he leads us outside.

I don't see what he means until we get out to the yard. Far, far down to the fences, I can see that one of them is starting to give. It's bending inward as more and more walkers pile onto it from the outside. And I'm sure the gunshots going off inside will only draw more of them in. I'm glad, though, that all we have to do is add wooden beams for reinforcement, or whatever Rick called it. I really thought it was going to be something much, much worse. I still don't like doing it, though. Being so close to all those walkers, with their snapping jaws and hissing.

One by one, me, Carl, and Rick work together to set up wooden beams, one end pushing up against the fence and the other being staked into the ground. It takes a good, long while to do it, too, because so much of the fence needs the beams.

"Think they're okay?" Carl asks as he hammers one of the stakes into the ground.

"If things were going bad, we would have heard more shots. Maggie would have gotten us," Rick answers. Carl nods in agreement.

It's hard to hear him, even from only a few feet away from him, due to all the walkers growling behind him. I hate that noise. It never really goes away these days, since there are so many of them, but it's much worse having them right in your ear than it is having them be background noise, like chirping crickets in the summertime.

Carl finishes hammering the stake into the ground while Rick goes to grab another beam. "We have to do this," Rick adds. He grunts as he lifts one of the heavy, heavy beams from the grass, and me and Carl rush over to help him.

"Let's do it," Carl says.

"I got it," Rick suddenly tells us.

Me and Carl furrow our eyebrows with confusion. "We're s'posed to help," I remind Rick.

Rick swallows, but then looks at us and nods. He gives us a proud-ish kind of smile as we help him with the beam. It makes me miss my dad a whole lot. I don't think he's back yet from the run he's gone on with a few others. I think, if he had gotten back, he would have come to see me through the window, just like my momma did earlier. I would've shown Dad my cool new pink streaks in my hair that Beth helped me with, and maybe he'd roll his eyes, knowing I've begged for that for ages, or maybe he'd say it looked nice. I don't know. I just miss him, and knowing he's not here makes me nervous.

Out of nowhere, I hear a cracking noise. The cracking noise you hear when you snap a twig in half for the fun of it, and it's coming from behind us. Rick and Carl must hear it, too, because when I turn around, so do they. My eyes land on a specific beam, watching the wood begin to splinter before it suddenly snaps right in half.

My heartbeat gets super fast and my head feels woozy as I watch Rick try pressing himself up against the fence to hold it still, but it's not any use because soon, another beam snaps, and then another. And then the fence breaks through, and walkers come stumbling in.

"Run!" Rick screams.

Carl grabs my arm, tugging me away from the walkers, and we start running as fast as we can. Rick isn't far behind us, pushing through walkers and stabbing a few in their heads. When we all get to the guard tower, Rick slams the door shut, leaving us in almost complete darkness. All we can listen to is the sound of angry walkers outside, just waiting to tear us to bits.

"What do we do? What do we do?!" I instantly start to panic, my voice getting wobbly and my eyes getting watery. This is the type of moment that I want my dad to be here for. He always knows what to do, and how to make me feel safe.

Luckily, Rick is pretty alright at that, too. He puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard enough to be a bit grounding, but not hard enough to scare me even more. "We're gonna handle this, alright? You'll be okay. I won't let any of them get to you," Rick promises me. I take deep, but fast breaths, trying to calm myself down. "I just need you to be brave and help us, okay? Can you do that for me, June?"

"Okay. Okay," I breathe out.

"This way!" Carl shouts. Rick puts a hand on my back, gently pushing me toward the sound of Carl's voice.

We walk rush through a door on the other side of the guard tower. Now, different fences are keeping us separated from the walkers. But if the walkers could take down the fence they already did take down, they can surely take down this one, too, and then, soon enough, they'll be in the yard with all of us. Then it will all be over and Daddy won't even be here for me to say goodbye to him. I need to find my momma, but Rick keeps a firm hold on my shoulder. Not because he doesn't want me going off to get my momma, but, I think, because he doesn't want me going through any part of the prison by myself. We don't know what's happening inside. I don't want to find out on my own, either.

"Dad, what do we do?" Carl asks as he catches his breath.

"Maybe I could back the bus up against the fence."

"Will it hold?"

The answer to Carl's question is almost a one-hundred percent no. I know this because instead of answering, all Rick does is stare at the walkers, a look of panic in his eyes. The walkers get louder, the fences creaking under their weight, and the louder they get, the more I feel like my whole head is going to pop under the pressure of everything happening at once. Things were good for a while, but I should have known it wouldn't last.

"Come on." Rick, Carl, and I all run, run, run away from the walkers and over towards the weapons storage. The guns and ammo are all kept in these really large bins, and just the sight of the guns makes me feel even worse. "Pockets," Rick says to us, giving us handfuls of ammo to slide into our pockets for reloads.

He hands Carl a gun, and then me one, too, and I know what this all means. It means we're going to have to shoot all these walkers, right through brains. I'm going to have to shoot them, even if tears start making my vision blurry, and even if the sight makes me feel sick. I'm gonna have to shoot them, even if the gun is almost the size of me, and even if the kickback almost breaks me in two. I'm gonna have to shoot them because Carl was right. We're not little kids no more. Not like the little kids inside who I was reading little books with. Not like the ones sleeping like nothing's wrong. We're older, now, and we have to be brave, even when it feels impossible to be brave.

"Alright, listen to me," Rick says very, very seriously. Me and Carl watch him with wide eyes as he demonstrates how to use the guns he's given us. "Magazine goes in here. Release is here. Make sure it latches. Pull back the operating rod and rounds feed up. Keep squeezing the trigger for rapid fire, okay? You shoot or you run. Don't let 'em get close, okay?"

If it weren't for having been around hunters all my life, I wouldn't know what half of what he's saying means. I do know, though, and it all makes sense, but I still don't feel like I can do it. I feel like I'm going to pass out. I can't handle stress like this. I just can't.

"June." Rick grabs my shoulders again. "Can you do this?" he asks me. I can't even bring myself to answer, because the truth is, I don't know. "It's okay if you can't, sweetheart, but I need you to tell me."

He has that voice he gets when he's really stressed. The one where it feels like he's yelling at you, even though he's only trying to protect you, and it makes the lump in my throat get worse and harder to hold back. I don't like people yelling at me, I don't like all the pressure, I don't like using guns, and I don't like having to be brave. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

I don't even have to answer. Rick has made my decision for me. "Stay back here for now. I'll get you if we really need you, but for now, just stay back where it's safe. Alright?"

"Okay," I whisper in a cracked voice.

Carl is looking at me and I can't quite read the expression on his face, even though that's something I'm usually pretty good at. His eyebrows are furrowed, either because of the intensity of all of this or because of me, and it feels like his stare is digging into me. I'm not like him. I'm not brave enough to do what has to be done when things go wrong. I'm not brave in the same ways he is, and I don't know if I ever will be. I watch him turn away from me and go running with his dad toward the walkers, towards the danger, toward the fight. He fires off shots like it's second nature to him, killing off walkers faster than I can blink.

With every bullet, a walker's head snaps backward. Blood and brains spit out the back of their heads as they crumble to the ground, piling on top of each other. And I don't do anything. If it were only me, I'd be one of them. One of the walkers attacking people mindlessly because I would have been killed in the very beginning.

The walkers go down faster than I could have imagined, and soon, Carl and Rick are sticking rods through stragglers' heads. With my face buried in my knees, I'm sitting off to the side, my gun abandoned on the ground a few feet away without a single bullet fired, when I hear the rumbling of an engine approaching.

"June," Rick calls out my name, and I look up from my knees. "That's your dad. Come with me."

My bones weigh a thousand pounds, but I push myself up off of the floor and walk with Rick to the gate. I watch from the side as he pulls the gates open and a green-ish van drives inside. Dad and Tyreese have the doors open before the car even stops.

"Sasha? How's Sasha?" Tyreese asks, getting out of the car.

"I don't know. I'm sorry," Rick answers.

"Get in there. We got this," Dad tells Tyreese, who goes running off instantaneously to check on his sister. The second Dad gets out of the car, I grab onto his hand, catching him before he can get too focused on some other task. When he sees it's me who's grabbed him, his face softens just a little bit. "What happened to your hair?" he asks as he gently tugs one of the pink strands. I don't answer him because, if I did, my voice would just keep wobbling and breaking like it was doing earlier. I just hug him because I feel like I gotta, and he hugs me back without hesitation. He tries pulling me away after a moment, so he can see my face, but then he and everyone else would see that I've been crying, and I don't want that, so I don't let him. I cling to him like a leech, trying not to cry hard enough that my back shakes. "What's wrong, angel girl? What happened?" he whispers into my hair.

Usually, what's wrong is a thousand things at once and I can't even identify one real reason. But I know the reason right now. What's wrong is that I'm scared because I'm weak. I'm not brave and I'm not strong, and when things go wrong again, just like they did tonight, I won't be able to save myself. Mom and Dad will lose their daughter and I'll lose myself. Because I'm not brave like Carl is.

"What happened?" Dad asks again, but this time louder, like the question isn't directed at me.

"Fences came down. She's fine, but it scared her pretty bad." That's Rick's voice answering the question. He doesn't get it, though. Not fully. And I can't truly describe it, either. The only way to get it is to be me, and that's a very lonely thing to know.

Maybe, someday, I'll be trusted to protect other people, like Carl sometimes is. But if I am, I won't be able to save them, either. Sure, maybe sometimes I can have random bursts of courage, but I can't control them, and I can't be sure that I'll have braveness when I need it. Dad's right, I think. I'm weaker than I should be, and when it comes to it, I don't know if I'll survive things going wrong.

I'm not made to survive real life, I don't think.