For a while, my eyes stay closed. 

It's a choice, I tell myself. A choice to keep myself in this strange sort of self-imposed purgatory that comes with nothing but feelings of hunger and noises of talking, the voices almost recognizable. 

One of them more than the others--it's not deep but it feels as if it is getting there, and it is warm, and oh my god, it's Jamie. 

This realization cracks my eyes just a bit, lets them take in the room, lets them find Jamie. I don't want to look for him, don't want to acknowledge his presence at all, but it's impossible not to. He is there, and he is here, and he did not forget about me and he does not hate me. 

Everything seems impossible recently. 

My eyes

                  open

                             open

                                        open

and then,

close again, blinded in a way that makes me wonder if I will ever be able to see again. 

But it is Jamie there. That I am sure of. It is Jamie's familiar voice, and it is Jamie's familiar head of blond hair, and aren't those fluorescents familiar, too?

They are. They are because he has brought me back. He has scooped me up off the pavement like roadkill, and dragged me back to the cave that will be my prison, that will be the prison of everyone left alive. We will run out of food and supplies and we will all be too blinded by our cowardice to even attempt a mission outside. 

Currently, though, it is not cowardice that blinds me, but those fucking lights. They tear into my retinas and I turn over to my side, groaning. The quiet conversation stills, and I can hear two people holding their breath. 

I am still for another moment, and a hand brushes my shoulder. My body tenses, thinking it is Jamie, thinking why did he touch me, how did he suddenly work up the nerve to touch me didn't I reject him, but it is not Jamie. It's Logan, delicate fingers calloused with scars that I recognize. My eyes sting as I realize they are heavily akin to the ones my own mother carries, that stem from years of plucking strings on a guitar. 

For a moment, I let myself pretend that Logan and my mother are one and the same. 

But then the warmth on my shoulder lifts, and the lights dim just slightly, and I know that I have to open my eyes.

So I do. 

Logan stares down at me as I sit up, head groggy and foggy and everything 'oggy.' I blink once, twice, and still her figure is blurry in front of me, a dark blot of woman sitting on the edge of my bed. She does not look like my mother, and my fantasy is ruined. 

Alternatively, Jamie stands in the corner of the room, fiddling with his sleeve. Jamie, who I have seen look awkward and out-of-place so little times since I first arrived here, fiddling with his sleeve. Jamie, whose personality I have attempted to investigate many times during the dark when sleep has not yet caught up to me, defying everything I have ever thought I knew of him. 

I stare at him for a second, and he stares right back. I am sure that no emotion shows on my face, a blank slate, but then again, my resting face can often look pretty bitchy, and with the blur still stealing my vision away from me, I can't see his reaction. 

I look away. My eyes find Logan's, instead, who has suddenly gotten closer, scrutinizing me with large, dark eyes, squinting at the specks of blood on my forehead, the tears in my clothes, the haze in my expression. 

"Why did you bring me back here?" I say, the question directed at Jamie and Jamie only. My tone is not harsh, but my words suggest that it should be. I've decided that Jamie has gone through enough today, as is evident in his demeanor, and who am I to make that even worse?

Oh, fuck it. I've made his mood worse plenty of times. I have brought people down often during my short time on this earth, and although I am not proud of it, I would be more ashamed if it was hidden, a secret whispered throughout the school, taboo and dangerous. My eyes narrow.

"You're safe here," is his only response, arms crossing over his chest, covered by a long-sleeved shirt in pale yellow that I haven't seen before. I blink, and see that Logan has also found a new set of clothes: a violent purple sweater that is completely new to me, and a classic pair of blue jeans. They both seem worn, but they fit well. Logan, I mean. They fit Logan perfectly. 

This must mean that Jamie either took a few of them up to the lost-and-found, where I found my outdoor clothes, or he chose the outfits himself--which doesn't seem as likely, of course. 

And my making this revelation must mean that my brain is working correctly again. Lately it just seems to stumble over itself again and again and again, repetitive and chaotic. My mind has always been this way in some part, but who knows (who knows), maybe car accidents really do something to your brain. 

I inwardly smile at my morbid half-joke, one my mother would not approve of but would share my smile just the same. 

"I would rather be with my mom than here," I say, letting the disdain in my tone flow. "I don't care if it's not safe to leave. I won't just rot down here--I won't, I won't." 

I force myself to sit up, eyes stinging with the intensity of my feelings. Neither of them move, although I swear Logan flinches. 

"The door's locked," Jamie says eventually, and now that my vision is clear enough again, I can see that his expression is stoic, uncaring. He is such a far cry from the boy who tried to save me that I wonder if he's been replaced with an imposter. Is it so crazy to imagine that Jamie's had an evil twin brother all along?

Yes, I tell myself. Yes, it is so crazy. Just like the thoughts I am conjuring up once again, a plan on how to get out of that fucking door--this time they include less seduction, more violence. Could I threaten Jamie into giving me the key? Find a crowbar, pry the door off its hinges? Last resort, would a barrel work as a battering ram?

But then again, there must be a reason this place is so fully stocked with everything a small group of humans may need--it must not be built solely as a storage room (or multiple storage rooms). Maybe it's a bomb shelter, too. Maybe the hospital anticipated something like this happening. 

Maybe they knew all along. Maybe we were doomed from the very beginning. Maybe all this overthinking really isn't helping my growing anxiety. 

I fall back onto the bed, groaning softly, feigning defeat. My weak-girl strategy worked the first time, who's to say it won't do the same a second? I'm pretty convincing. I'm a good liar. I can make this work. 

Jamie takes a step closer, and I know I have succeeded, if only partially. "Are you okay?" he asks, and I ignore the partial lack of concern in his tone, deciding instead to focus on the nature of his question, and rub my forehead. 

"Just... a headache. God, it feels like my forehead is being split open." 

It's not a lie. I have been plagued with headaches ever since my (first) motorcycle crash, but right now, they are not the most important thing. That's just what I want Jamie to believe, and so he does--hook, line, and sinker. 

"Pretty sure there's Advil in one of these rooms," Logan says, and uses that as her cue to leave, supposedly on a mission to find me some painkillers, wording her comment vague enough that she could be gone for seconds or hours, depending. 

On what? I don't know. I won't claim I'm always the best at reading people (which is obvious, look at Jamie!) but Logan is especially closed-off to me. I don't know what she's thinking. Her face is a stone wall, impenetrable even to those most willing to try. 

I wouldn't know, though. I am not of the party of those willing to try to break into Logan's fortified mind. Her thoughts are her own and only her own, and I have no business knowing anything about them. 

The way Jamie looks at me makes me begin to believe he has broken into my own mind and is stealing my thoughts away from me as we speak, grabbing them one by one and throwing them into the incinerator or maybe the shredder, never to be seen again. 

It's working, though. Does his hair seem blonder? Are his eyes bluer, his hands gentler? Or is that all my imagination, hallucinations formed by the memory of Jamie?

I look away, and snap out of it --or so I think. 

"You're safe here," he repeats, reiterating his previous statement, and, uncharacteristically, I don't even mind. 

Not that I agree. I don't think I will ever agree that there is safety in cowardice. And yet, when his hand lands softly on my shoulder, I don't pull away. I don't push him off. 

I let him stay. 

And, almost, I smile. 

***

sorry for not publishing anything in a while! this story is really special to me, especially because writing it is just really fun. sadie is not okay (like at all, she's got serious issues), which honestly makes her altogether more interesting.

also, if you've actually read this much, i'm so so proud of u (and i love you a lot!!). i know this is only chapter ten--so it's not a super long story so far--but these chapters are crazyyy long (this one's 1658 words) and are also taking a while to make for honestly absolutely no reason. 

in short, thanks for reading, and i really appreciate you <3<3<3