Turning Point

A Story by Ceara

Birthdays suck in the apocalypse.

You are sixteen, going on seventeen, and life really sucks.

Hazel shivers under her duck-taped coat, watching the time click by on the filthy face of the clock hanging on the wall. At least, she thinks its ticking. She feels like she's hallucinating, staring at this piece of old technology, eerily tocking away its rhythmic pattern. It doesn't feel real. Sometimes, the hand doesn't move at all. Or maybe its the fever talking?

Hazel doesn't need a thermometer to know that she's caught some kind of bug. Her teeth chatter in the silence, and the drafty house isn't making her feel any better. But Hazel's blaming her shivering on the pouring rain outside--she can't be getting sick. She can't. Because curled up on the couch behind her is the person that really needs medicine--medicine that neither of them have. Hazel's partner, a skinny girl with a tangled pigtails, is wrapped up like a burrito on this dusty, ugly sofa. She's normally a cute girl; with bright, almost crazy eyes and a wicked smile. But today she's pale as death; pale as the walkers that stalk the empty streets.

She's quiet, too. Hazel is surprised by how much she hates that. Usually, Jamie never shuts up. Usually, Hazel pretends to be asleep just to try to get some peace to herself. Today, Hazel misses that chatter.

She'd take anything. Insults, flirting, weird sounds that Jaime enjoys making to watch Hazel jump out of her skin. Anything to fill this deathly silence. Hazel looks over at the girl. She hasn't moved. She looks over at the only part of Jaime not wrapped up in the scratchy woolen quilt--her thin wrist peeks out of the blanket, and there's a rope tied to that. And on the other end of the rope is a table; heavy, wooden, and piled with random knick-knacks and crap. It's a feeble attempt, and Hazel knows it.

They'd argued about it, earlier.

It was heavy, but it was hardly an immovable object. Oak wasn't unbreakable, and Hazel had seen walkers try to claw through steel doors. She'd seen em break their arms to try to grab people, knew that "heavy" didn't mean safe at all.

Heavy didn't mean safe, but it made Hazel feel a bit better. It was better than Jaime's idea.

She starts to fiddle with her radio, if only to give her something to do. Sometimes the signal gets clearer, and Hazel can feel their goal--get to the radio, get to the tower, because someone is playing that music, and that meant safe.

She hopes.

It's a mix tonight; right now, its playing some classical song covered by a thick layer of static. The Thursday night special. Tomorrow will be something upbeat; maybe something 80's and edgy. They must have a limited amount of tapes left, Hazel muses. She can't really hear the song, and considers switching to her stored music. But batteries are getting hard to find, and she can't exactly recharge em.

Looking at that clock again, ticking drilling into her brain, Hazel blearily realizes that she has four minutes until its her birthday.

Birthday. That sounded weird. The image of a party, filled with balloons, bright lights, and cake felt so surreal. Cake. She wanted to laugh. When was the last time she's actually celebrated her birthday? What had she done last year? Hazel dimly remembers buying potions for everyone in her dungeon-delving team, and receiving a new horror movie collection from her mom. Along with a tight hug.

Hazel doesn't wanna think about that, so she thinks about cake. When was the last time she had cake? Any kind of cake. Her mom was a health nut, so the "devil's food" (and the angel food) was forbidden in the Florres household. She kind of remembers her mom trying to make a gluten free one, way back when. It had been terrible. Over-saturated with sugar-free frosting and denser than a fruit cake.

Maybe that's why I don't get cake, Hazel thought, a little delirious. Because mom sucks at cake.

She reaches up and palms Jamie's face. Hazel's hand can nearly cover all of it, since Jamie is so tiny. Tiny, but murderous. She's constantly surprised by the rage kept in this little package. She's also burning up, damp little cheeks burning up Hazel's palm. Hazel wonders if she should force her to drink more water--even if she throws it up again, it would probably help.

The fever scatters Hazel's brain. Pigtails. She thinks, and rubs one between her fingers. Pigtails, why do you like pigtails so much?

She's not sure how old Jamie is. Hazel has her firmly sorted away in the kid-younger-than-me category, but shes not sure if that's true, or not. It wouldn't be funny if she turned out to be older.

Hazel kinda knows how old she is. She's sixteen (probably) and turning (maybe) seventeen. The number looms in her head.

Seventeen feels like she should...know. Know something, anything. Know how to fix a flu bug without medicine, know how to tell someone things like "you're the closest thing I've ever had to a best friend, please don't die, please" without it coming out all garbled and insulting. Seventeen is so close to eighteen, which is when you're "an adult", and that feels so far away that Hazel's head spins. Or maybe it's the fever.

She hopes Jamie doesn't turn. Hazel would gladly clean up all the canned ravioli puke and whatever else came with this bug, as along she didn't turn. Her machete sits on the table of doom, waiting, but Hazel isn't sure if she could bring herself to do it.

Jamie could do it.

She knows that Jamie would kill her in a heartbeat, smash her head open like a pumpkin. The kid has a crazy arm, and an even stronger backbone. She kind of hopes that Jaime might hesitate, but the smart part of Hazel knows that its best if she doesn't.

She wonders if Jaime will cry.

Her head swims with the effort of trying to think, trying to stay awake. A dull headache pounds behind her eyes. Everything hurts, and her heart kinda hurts, and maybe she's dying, and maybe dying won't hurt so bad. She leans against Jaime's chained up hand, feeling the warmer flesh on her own clammy forehead. "Don't die, Pigtails. You got help me celebrate my birthday."
She mumbles, not really awake. Maybe if Jaime turns, she'll bite Hazel in her fever sleep, and then Hazel wouldn't have to feel anything anymore, and everything will be okay. She's sure that she can hear Jaime's snide tone, "You just want me to put you in my mouth", and then Hazel's eyes cant stay open anymore.

Turning seventeen feels a lot like dying.

~*~*~*

She wakes up to a tinny rendition of "One Week" playing in her ear, which is probably a sure sign that she's died and gone to wherever s****y nerds addicted to potatoes and ibuprofen go. She stiffly tries to sit up, and then gags. Her mouth tastes like rotten orange juice.

Somehow, the nerd-hell also has the same scratchy blanket she'd wrapped Jaime in. It's not much prettier in the daylight, but Hazel isn't shivering anymore. She tries to look around, but her head spins.

"--Chickity China the Chinese chicken,

You have a drumstick and your brain stops ticking--'"

She kind of wants to break her radio, but her arms feel useless right now. Limp. She tries to sit up again, and this time, something falls from her head with a squishy plop. She looks at it, confused. It looks kind of like a wet sock...

"Geeeeze~ You haven't even been asleep for an hour, Hazelnut. Lay down and go back to sleep."

Hazel jerks her head so fast that she gives herself head rush. Jaime is standing in the doorway, looking very not dead and kind of mad. She's doing that pout thing that she does--it would be cute if it didn't mean that Hazel was about to get smacked. Wisely, she tries to settle back into the dusty sofa, but keeps her head up. Jaime's alive. And up, and walking. That part both confuses Hazel, and makes her jealous.

"How--" Her tongue feels like sandpaper. Jaime shoves something into Hazel's face, a plastic cup that's filled with either rainwater or toilet water.

"Drink this first." Jaime instructs, and Hazel's never been happier to drink mud. It's cold, and it feels good. She tries to drink slowly, but the cup feels heavy in her hands. Eventually, Jaime seems satisfied and takes the cup. She puts the wet sock back on Hazel's head, and forces the bigger girl to lay back down with a push. Weakly, Hazel has no choice but to submit, and finds her eyes closing.

When she wakes up again, there's more water, but this time she can move. The clock says she's been sleeping for only an hour more, but its feels like a day's gone by. How long has it been since she's rested so long? She finally sits up, her bones creaking with the effort, and notices a can sitting in front of her, on the doom table. It doesn't have a top, and there's a fork inside of it. Gingerly, she reaches for it, and gives it a sniff.

The smell is so sweet is nearly makes her gag again.

"What is this?" Hazel wonders out loud, and jumps a little when she gets a response.

"Birthday cake." Jaime is sitting on the floor next to the couch, re-wrapping the bandages around her trademark bat. The pigtailed blonde isn't looking at her, but at least she sounds like she's in a good mood. "Eat it slowly, or you're going to throw it up."

Birthday cake tastes a lot like canned peaches, Hazel thinks as she sips the syrup. She can't help but make a face, but it's honestly the best thing she's had in a while. Hazel wonders where Jaime found this...or if she's been stashing it, saving it for a special occasion. Three tiny sips later, and Hazel puts her can down.

She has so many questions.

"How did I get up here? Where did you find this? What happened to your fever? How did you know it was my birthday?" She says the last one with a bit of a panic in her voice, because Jaime had ways of knowing things, and Hazel wasn't ever really sure how.

Jaime smiled, ticking off the questions on her fingers as she answered them. "I picked you up. You're aren't that heavy." To which Hazel would very much like to call bullshit--she's not as fat as she used to be, but she's no leaf in the wind, either.

"Found the can in the kitchen. One of the few things that hadn't gone bad. For dinner, we have spam~" She's quite pleased with this, even as Hazel tries not to groan. Canned meat just never sits right in her.

"I'm a quick healer, always have been!" Again, Hazel would like to punch something. Damn kids.

"Aaaaaaand that's a secret~" She put her finger to her lips coyly, which simultaneously attracted and scared Hazel. Damn scary kid.

Barenaked Ladies turns to Meatloaf, and Jaime is now cuddled up with her on the couch, in the name of "recovery", and totally not because Pigtails likes to rest her head on Hazel's b***s. But Hazel can see the fatigue in her eyes, so just for today, she won't push her off the couch. It's been a while since either of them could really chill like this--later tonight, they'd move on, because staying in one place for even day was risky. She sips her peaches.

"Hazy." Jaime's voice feels weird on her shirt, but the girl seems too content to lift her face up. Hazel gives a kind of grunt as a reply.

"How old are you now, anyways?" The question feels weird, and Hazel isn't sure what to say. She finally answers as the song slips into its chorus, feeling sleepy again.

"Old enough." She feels ancient, like a mummy wrapped in wool instead of bandages. The answer seems to irritate Jaime, who lifts her head up to look at Hazel with her big green eyes.

"How'm I supposed to give you any birthday kisses, if I don't know how many to give you~?"

Hazel decides Jaime's rested enough for now, and unceremoniously dumps her off the couch. "Too old for you." She corrects, putting her hand up to block any kisses that pigtails might try to grace her with. "You're gonna have to wait till you're eighteen. And that's a maybe."

She can feel Jaime's scowling, and tries to placate her with peaches. It's honestly pretty cute, watching her eat them. Hazel's stomach feels like its going to die, and she feels like she might smell like garbage and death, but it's something of a pleasant moment. Jaime's hand, no longer tied anything, finds Hazel's as she closes her eyes again.

Maybe seventeen wouldn't be so bad, after all.