Aviva still keeps a room in the library, it's cozy and I think it used to be some sort of office. It is on the second floor, which was mostly a place for study halls for the high school students in the high school that was annexed to with a newly built walled-in courtyard. We're pretty lucky here. But luck can only go so far.

"The school is a little big, do you think we could strengthen it all against attacks? And I feel like we just don't need the space." Aviva says aloud, though not facing me as she pours over a large notebook.

"Better than getting a disease from close quarters." I counter as I walk over and sit in a working swivel chair (so satisfying to have). I roll it on over to Aviva, who tucks her brown hair behind her ear. I spin around in the chair euphorically. "Too many classrooms equals more space for the future, right? And also, if we wanted to truly make this place into a town or a moderately-sized community, space will not be a problem. And education won't be a problem either."

"Except for risk of famine, and then there's defending this place," Aviva says, her eyes never leaving the paper as she ends writing a sentence, before setting it down on the desk and leaning back in her chair (which also swivels--she is spoiled with good seating). "Yes, we will have enough people to man the walls too, but feeding them...I wish plants grew faster. And where can we find livestock in the apocalypse?"

"Domesticate wild turkeys?"

"I haven't seen a wild turkey since my a backpacking trip in the Appalachian Mountains and Smokey Mountains. In Tennesse and New York." Aviva mutters. And I smile faintly. She sighs and gets up, gathering the large teal-colored journal-notebook. She walks across the room, over to her couch pullout full-sized bed. I think there's a name for those couch-pullouts, but I forget. Vocabulary suffers without post-apocalyptic education. I whirl my black-colored, cushioned swivel chair around, to face Aviva (or Aviva's back). She pulls out a cardboard box and rests the notebook in it.

"Nat wanted me to talk to you," I tell her. I plan on laying it all out in the open.

Aviva sits down on the edge of her couch-bed. "Alright..."

"Well, he told me you changed from what you used to be," I say slowly. Aviva's expression remains the same--attentive yet neutral.

"People change all the time. Especially now. If you couldn't adapt to what things have become, you're dead." Aviva explains and I shrug, wondering if Nat is just not coping with his friend's change. However, the apocalypse has been happening for years now, and he couldn't've just noticed his closest friend changing only just now.

"Yeah, but, you've been unhealthily distant from emotions. According to...witness accounts, that is." I reason, hoping to get an understandable point across.

"You sound like a professional news writer turned tabloid interviewer, Em." Aviva rolls her eyes and smirks. "I really seem that way?"

"Unfortunately, you do," I say and Aviva looks down and purses her lips.

"Oh. Okay."

Ummm...

"What do I do?" Aviva looks back to me, but her eyes are expressive and I already know she has her own answer in a split second. I don't even open my mouth when she replies to her own question. "Oh, wait. I just have to actually show my emotions now, and reserve that mind-bending facial-expression intimidation psychology for quizzical discussions at Legion council meetings and negotiations should inside or outside conflict ever arise."

"Umm, yeah, couldn't have said it better." I laugh sheepishly. Just point her in a direction and she closes the distance between the start and the destination. "So, just become human again basically."

Aviva smiles. "I guess I was just a dead one until you pointed that out for me, thanks, Em."

"Thank your friend, Nat." I stand from the swivel chair. "Also, can I permanently borrow this chair."

"That's Kyler's chair, though!" Aviva exclaims though she wears a thoughtful expression for a second. "Wait, scratch that. You may steal the chair without repercussions."

I sit back down and use my legs to push off of the desk and sail towards the door. "Not 'steal,' Aviva, 'permanently borrow.'"

Aviva grins. "Forgive me for my mistake."

"Only if I get a second swivel chair."

"Don't push your luck or I'll disband the 'borrowing' agreement." Aviva and I share a smirk before I open the door and wheel myself out.

That worked out considerably well. I even got a swivel chair!

---------

"Where'd you get the chair?" Jo asks when she comes into our shared room when it became a long time after dark. I read with the light of a solar-battery lantern (again, found in that Outdoorsmen store off the nearest highway's exit).

"Gift of good faith, courtesy of Aviva," I tell her, looking up from my book as I lay on my stomach on a worn mattress. Joanna had to return her shelter's books because someone suggested that there be an organized system for books. So basically there was a check-in and check-out of books that was to be self-recorded by those getting a book. Another civilization point for us.

"Oh, sweet!" Joanna drops her bag by her mattress and jogs over to the chair and dives into it. She proceeds to lounge in it. "These are always fun to sit in." A silence follows as I immerse myself in a historical fiction fantasy book that is also set in the modern era. Joanna gets up from the chair, no longer entranced by the comfy spell of the cushioned seat, and opens the windows.

"This used to be a Double Honors English classroom." Joanna states and I raise an eyebrow, only sparing a quick glance at her as she uses the small crank (or lever?) to partially raise the lower half of the window, which is curtained by a thick beige sheet of coarse fabric that draws over the windows. You know, it's those weird blinds--or are they curtains?--in school classrooms.

"Huh. It's small." I notice. But I had hoped for nothing too big anyway. Too much space with nothing to fill it up with always bothered me. I do not know why.

"Guess there weren't many students smart enough," Joanna says as she settles onto her own mattress, unlacing and kicking off her hiking boots. She chucks her sweaty socks at my face, and I slap her head with my four-hundred paged book.

"Ha, it's paperback! Doesn't hurt!" Jo points out, smiling triumphantly. And I roll my eyes.

"Not if I hit hard enough!" I dog-ear the corner of the page I'm on, tired and glad that I am not at an intense moment in this addictive novel that would cause a cliffhanger, keeping me up all night.

Joanna ties a high ponytail at the top of her head to keep her hair from sticking to her neck in sweat because the night is annoyingly warm. I try to sweep my hair to one side of the shoulder, out of habit when sleeping in unpreferred warmth, until I remember I had cut my hair not too long ago. It now reaches around three and a half inches from my chin. So basically mid-neck length. I remind myself of what my friend Sophia looked like: with the hair; though hers was shorter when she was walker-ified. And my hair is a very dirty blond: like it is neither blond nor brown, like genetics had major indecision.

"Night Jo, don't let the undead bite," I turn off my lantern and lay my head against a pillow.

"Oh. My. Gosh. Shush, you." She grumbles and I chuckle a little tee-hee (as weird as it sounds as I think this phrase over again in my head). "I'm tired."

"Quick, conveniently yawn to prove your words!"

"Literally, shush, Ember."

-Katie

Zaremareth