Damage & Decay

Chapter 22

Part two: Zombie Cards (Collect the Whole Set!)

"Everyone carries around his own monsters."

- Richard Pryor

----

Nix and Eren swung and blocked, stabbed and evaded as the afternoon sun baked their skin and boiled the sweat from their pores. When Armin finally found a sliver of compassion and ended the session, they dropped where they stood. Marco lay like a beached starfish, arms and legs spread wide, mouth open. Levi crawled under the picnic table, curled into a fetal position, and appeared to pass out. Eren limped to the oak tree whose thick trunk anchored the whole yard, slid down with a thump, kicked off his shoes, and gasped like a trout.

"Here," Nix said, and Eren pried one eye open to see here standing there with two tall glasses of cold water. She held out one of them.

Eren hesitated.

"It's not poisoned," she said, "and I didn't spit in it."

"Thanks." He took the glass and drank half of it, then looked up again. Nix was still standing there. "Have a seat."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Sit down before you fall down."

She lowered herself to the grass and sat cross-legged in the shade. Armin was in the house. The yard was still. Even the birds in the trees were too overheated to sing. There was a faint rumble of thunder way off to the west, but if there was a storm coming, then the clouds were still on the far side of the mountains.

They drank their water. Eren waved a fly away. The moment stretched.

"I'm sorry," they both said at the same time. They blinked at each other, and they almost smiled.

"You first." Again, both of the said it at the same moment.

Nix held up a hand. "Me first," she said, but then she took a few seconds to get the words out. "Look . . . I'm sorry for being such a girl."

"No--"

"Let me get it out," she interrupted, "or I wont be able to say it."

"But--"

"Please."

Eren gave in, nodded. Nix flicked a glance across the yard to where Marco lay, apparently dead.

But when she spoke, she didn't say what Eren expected.

"Marco told me about the card you found. The Lost Girl. He said that the second you looked at it, there were little red hearts floating in the air around your head."

"Marco's an idiot." He said it as a joke, but in truth he wanted to go over and beat Marco to death for opening his big, dumb mouth. Especially since the Lost Girl card was lying under his pillow at the moment, and he'd planned to leave it there when he went to bed tonight. His face was wet hot. He hoped she would think that it was still the postexercise flush, but he knew that she was way to smart for that.

"Maybe," she said, "but is he wrong?"

"How could anyone fall in love with someone on a Zombie Card?" he said with a laugh, but he was at least a full second late in getting the answer out, and he knew it.

"So . . . you're not in love?" she said offhand, but Eren was already waiting for a snare, and he knew that this was it. The question had as much to do with Zombie Cards as their school textbooks on American history had to do with the world in which they lived. The question was a twisted path filled with thorns and bear traps, and he knew it.