“Why are you nice to me all of the sudden? I don’t think I like it very much.”
Sonya lost patience. “You know what? I’m just gonna fucking come in anyway. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad.” She turned the knob with her usual, almost uncontrollable, vigor and entered the room.
Lawrence sat on one of two armchairs with a quilted blanket wrapped over his shoulders, his head laid back, and his arms hung lazily off the armrests. He didn’t regard Sonya or move from his position. He almost looked asleep with his eyes open.
Sonya walked tentatively toward Lawrence. When he said he didn’t want to see her or hear her, he must’ve meant it, judging by his unresponsiveness.
“Just wish me a happy Thanksgiving and leave,” said Lawrence. “Don’t stress me out. I told you I’m not in the mood.”
Sonya took the empty armchair and sat with a stiff posture, not intending to stay beside him long. “Give me a chance to be nice to you right now. I think you owe me for saving your life outside.”
“You mean from that dead kid with the blonde afro puff? I could’ve easily taken him down myself. I don’t owe you anything, Sonya. I could’ve taken him out with my fists.”
Sonya so badly wanted to laugh.
Taken him out with his fists, he says. Oh my God that’s hilarious.
“Would you please, Lawrence?” She begged, even though she was always too prideful to beg. She owed it to Lawrence, from the night he and Kyle had snuck out. Lawrence had to fend off several of the dead things by himself to return to the house safely. That was after he was forced to kill his best friend. It was surely a difficult night for Lawrence, and Sonya never offered him sympathy, only blamed him for Kyle, telling Lawrence he was too weak to protect anyone. She had told Lawrence she wished it was
him
instead of Kyle laying with a bullet in the brain on Ian David’s bed. She later realized that her words were below cruel, below foolish, and had always been too ashamed and too proud to apologize ever since. Truly she was sorry. Lawrence was never someone she hated.
“Okay, Sonya,” he smiled, sneeringly and mischievously it looked, “be
nice
to me.” He sounded maniacally subtle, like a kidnapper flaunting a lollipop in front of a child.
“I was wrong,” Sonya went straight to the point. “Wrong about what I said and how I acted, I—”
“Sonya, just apologize,” Lawrence said flatly. “That’s all you have to do.”
Sonya was unsure of his response. Was he still mad? Was he ready to forgive? “If I do, will you forgive me?”
Lawrence finally stirred from his indolent stupor and faced her. “I’ve forgiven you a long time ago. I just want an apology because you wounded me with the things you said. I’m not weak and I’m not a failure—at least, I now try hard not to be. Just because I don’t act bitchy, like you, doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything.”
Sonya relaxed and slowly settled into the armchair, resting her head back. “I’m sorry, Lawrence. I’m really sorry for everything I’ve said.”
“I forgive you.”
“Happy Thanksgiving, I guess.”
Lawrence smiled, and this time it was a normal smile of contentment, not some up-to-no-good grin, which was typical of him. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
Sonya considered leaving the room, now that they’d reconciled (It wasn’t really reconciliation, the two were never close friends to begin with), but Lawrence became a new person to her, and she felt as if she made a new friend. In the past, she never knew what to call Lawrence, a friend, a housemate, maybe an acquaintance. She used to tell people he was her boyfriend’s friend, even though she had known Lawrence for well over a decade and had lived with him for nearly three years. “You mind if I stay and hang out?” she asked.
“Are we supposed to be buddies now?” Lawrence said.
“We’ve never really hung out, I mean, not really. It’s never been just you and me before.”
“Yeah, you can stick around here, but you have to say something nice about me first.”
“Do I now?” Sonya suppressed a giggle, fearing it would sound like flirtation. “How about you go first.” She began to feel that she and Lawrence had a close, yet odd, companionship. It was like visiting a long distance relative, you may not see them much, but there’s some comfort in knowing that they’re family.
“Well…” Lawrence began. “I have a pretty nice set of dark brown eyes, exotic I should say, because my mom was half Chinese. I used to get compliments—”
“I meant about
me
, stupid.” Sonya laughed. Lawrence did have a nice set of eyes. It was undeniable. They were almond-shaped, mysterious, and yet full of humor and expression.
“Oh, about
you
. Well, let’s see…Um…”
Sonya stared at Lawrence with eyes unblinking, anticipating his answer.
This is kind of exciting,
she thought.
Damn it, Lawrence, hurry up and answer.
“Well?”
Lawrence finally answered. “You aren’t afraid to take risks. I was never a risk taker, so I guess I admire you for that. In high school, Kyle would make me and Tristan go with him to your stupid volleyball games. You were always diving and jumping from out of nowhere to hit the fucking ball, unafraid of scrapes or bruises or crashing into your teammates. You played like such a badass. Oh, and I remember one time at Florence Park, when you climbed that tall-ass tree when some little girl’s birthday balloons flew away and got snagged on a branch. Kyle couldn’t even do it—he was chicken-shit. We didn’t even know that little girl. You could’ve fallen and died. That was probably the only time I was worried about you.”
As far as Sonya could remember, guys had always told her she was gorgeous or beautiful or sexy and blah, blah, blah. Those compliments got old quick. It was all superficial bullshit. No guy but Kyle really knew her, knew who she was as an individual. Apparently, Lawrence knew her, too. “It’s nice you remember that,” she said blandly, as to not give away the gratefulness she felt toward him. “Sometimes I don’t think about what I do. I just know it has to be done.”
“I envy your way of thinking. I dropped out of college—well, community college—became a janitor, and stayed a janitor, because I was afraid to go any further, afraid I’d fail. My dad, my mom, and my two older brothers, as self-centered as they all were, always seemed to win at everything. They used to think I was a joke. They thought of me as meek and useless. I sucked at sports, never won awards at school, and…”
“And so, you stopped taking anything seriously and just laughed about everything, and laughed at yourself.”
“Don’t pick on me, please.” Lawrence wrapped the quilted blanket over himself tighter and slouched deeper into the armchair.
“No, I’m not picking on you, Lawrence. The times I’ve failed, I wasn’t able to laugh at myself after.” Sonya had always feared humiliation, and sure, others could easily laugh off embarrassing moments or recover from a wounded ego, but to her it was damaging. She was envious of Lawrence in a way. True, Lawrence hadn’t achieved many goals or succeeded much in anything, but happiness followed him nonetheless. He was naturally charismatic and amusing, people used to gravitate toward him. He was often the life of a party, and when he told some random, bizarre stories of his experiences, people listened attentively and laughed with him. People loved him simply because he was Lawrence, and he never had to work hard for that. “I can never be like you. When everything goes wrong, you’re the type to say ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ and people listen to you. Kyle once said it and Ally’s said it before.”
“Said what?”
“Well, it’s my turn to say something nice about you.” Sonya thought for a moment, what to say, what Lawrence deserved to hear, and then decided not to hold back. “We’d be dead by now if it weren’t for you, Lawrence. Being stuck in this house isn’t exactly living, but we’re alive, and I suppose that’s good enough. You planned ahead. When this disease hit New York and Florida, I thought nothing of it. I thought New York and Florida are so far away, and that we’d be safe on this side of the country. I thought the government would figure something out and that the military would evacuate people to safe places, bunkers or military bases—whatever they do at times like this. I was naïve, thinking this would all blow over like SARS or Ebola or that bird virus, you know, all those illnesses you’d hear about in the news. You knew this was something different.”
“Like I said, I’m not a risk taker. That’s why I made plans. Plus, I could be intensely paranoid sometimes.”
“You’re smart, Lawrence. You have a natural ability to calculate possibilities. I remember back in middle school, for two weeks, about a fourth of the students at school were getting sick. I remember my home economics class only had eleven out of thirty-five students show up. The rest were absent. You told Kyle, Tristan, Jessica, and me that it was probably the peanut butter cookies in the cafeteria, and warned us not to eat them. Then, sure enough, one week later, there was a newspaper article on tampered peanut butter.”
“Oh yeah,” Lawrence chuckled. “I remember that. I didn’t tell anybody but you guys, because I thought it was funny that people were getting diarrhea.”
Sonya covered her mouth and giggled. “I don’t think anyone else knew it was the cookies.”
“I wonder what happened to Jessica.”
“I could only hope she’s all right.” Sonya thought of her old friend, who had moved out to San Diego after high school. She had lost touch with Jessica since then. “You remember how flabby and dumpy Jessica was in sixth grade?”
“Yeah. She was hideous.”
“You were always nice to her, though, so sweet toward her when no other boy was. She became smoking hot in junior year, didn’t she?”
Lawrence grinned and sighed with self-satisfaction. “Yup.”
“And you knew that, didn’t you? You knew she was an ugly duckling type.”
He shrugged. “Why else would I be nice to her? Under all the oversized clothes she wore in middle school, I knew she was developing a hot fucking body. Seriously though, she had such a hot fucking body. I miss her so much. I wish her body was here right now.”
“Wasn’t she the one you lost it to?” Sonya looked at Lawrence with a raised brow.
“Who told you that? Kyle? Tristan?”
“I overheard you telling Kyle that you banged the shit
out of her.” Sonya cackled. “You also told Kyle, ‘I just
Lawrenced
her, man, Jessica just fucking got
Lawrenced
.’ That was the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” She pressed her hand to her mouth as she giggled. Seconds later, she exploded into laughter.
Lawrence laughed. “Yeah, that chick totally got
Lawrenced.”
“Hey, guys.” Charlene stood at the doorway of the master bedroom. “What are you two giggle-gaggling about over here?”
“Get lost, Charlene,” said Lawrence.
“Tell me where the batteries are.”
“Is it for your vibrator?”
“You wish, Lawrence, you dirty asshole.” Charlene then muttered quietly, “I kinda wish, too.” She lifted her hand to show Lawrence and Sonya the object she held. “I need batteries for this…portable CD player or CD-Walkman—whatever the hell this dinosaur device is called.”
“Batteries are in the storage room,” Lawrence replied, annoyed.
“Where in the storage room? I don’t want a bunch of boxes to fall on me and shit.”
“Try the table drawers near the bed, Char,” said Sonya.
“Okay, cool, I’ll leave you two to lovey-dove-dovey in here.” Charlene turned around and made her way down the hall.
After Charlene left, Sonya and Lawrence refocused their attention back to one another.
“Are you coming with us when we go to Valley Market?” Lawrence asked.
“Wait,” said Sonya, “who’s
us
?”
“So far, Tristan’s volunteered, and I wanna go out there, too. I’d feel safer if you went, honestly.”
“Count me in,” she immediately replied, without any doubts. She longed to get out of the house. “When are we gonna do this?”
“I was thinking that we—”
“Aaaaaaaaaaggghhhhh!”
The piercing shriek came from out in the hallway.
Sonya shot up from the armchair. “That’s Charlene. Lawrence, come on!” She ran out the bedroom and into the hall. She heard Lawrence treading fast behind her.
Sonya saw the storage room door open, and as she approached, she felt the sharpness of a cold breeze. She heard a clamor of the guttural ramblings and grisly moans in various volumes, some deep and some shrill. They were moans of the undead, more desperate and frustrated than usual. When Sonya entered the room, the window was wide open. Charlene stood a few feet from it, with her back against a stack of boxes. She had her eyes shut tight and a hand covering her mouth.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lawrence said when he entered.
“Out there,” Charlene said and started to wail.
Sonya moved slowly toward the opened window, noticing a rope tied at the leg beneath the bed’s foot. The rope, a tightened line, led to the outside. When she looked out, she saw that the dead things, over twenty of them, had gathered at the side of the house. They crowded each other, collided with each other, and clumsily knocked each other around. Their hands raised high, swooping in clawing motions, and reaching toward a single direction. It was a like an audience at a concert, frantically wishing to touch the famed performer on stage. Sonya looked downward to see what they were after. She saw the top of a head, brown hair matted and soaked from rain. The rope, which led from the bed leg, was around the neck of the motionless body, tied in a noose. Therese had hung herself, and the dead wanted her flesh.