In My Blood (Completed)

CHAPTER 4: The Amy Effect

For the next week, Beca, Amy, and Jesse learned all they could about the settlement and how they could pitch in. Jesse and Amy pulled their weight and then some, with Jesse helping out most in the communal kitchen and Amy acting as a jack-of-all-trades, helping out with smaller projects about the settlement and making friends with everyone as she did so. While Beca was forced to continue healing up inside the house, she took on nightly watch duty upon her insistence (she wanted to feel useful somehow if they weren’t gonna let her hunt for them). Stacie removed Beca’s stitches after a week, though she needed to keep it dry and covered as much as possible.

After her first talk with Chloe, Beca retreated back into herself--especially when other people were around. With each passing day, it became clear that her plan to leave was the right one. Necessary. So getting more attached to anyone here, it didn’t make sense, and she tried desperately to avoid it. Much as she tried to keep people away entirely, she couldn’t shove Emily off when she sat by her in the sorority house to eat her breakfast or Cynthia Rose, whom Beca had grown to like, when she joined her to sit during watch duty. Her rare moments with just Chloe filled her with that same strange knotty feeling in the pit of her stomach, an impossible dissonant desire to pull her closer and push her away. She avoided the communal areas when possible, taking her meals back with her to eat at the house alone or with Jesse when he followed her, but he usually only made her feel guilty for not being social enough, for not giving the settlement and the people there a real chance. He didn’t get it. He wanted her to change, but she couldn’t. She’d never be enough for him.

On the ninth day, she slept later than usual, waking to an empty house. Her stomach growled with a reminder she’d missed breakfast, too, and she reluctantly pulled her jacket and boots on and made her way to the communal tent. What she found there didn’t surprise her--Amy standing atop a picnic table with Emily on one side and Jesse on the other, singing with shockingly impressive harmony as people played instruments to accompany their voices. (One dude had a beat-up guitar, another drummed on different sized buckets with branches shaped into drumsticks, another blew into a harmonica.) The strung up lights flickered low overhead, and when Beca lingered in the archway, watching the trio sing and the dozens of people drinking and dancing merrily--a rare and welcome break from the long hours of working to keep their settlement safe and functional, Beca knew--someone approached and offered her a bottle of pilfered beer. She examined the bottle and noted its high alcohol content--the higher the number, the less likely it was expired, and she popped the top off and took a sip, pulling a face. Warm beer. Well, better than nothing, she supposed.

*

After the first day or two, life settled back into much the same routine it had before. The community adjusted to integrate the three newcomers to their ranks, just as they had done for other travelers and survivors who had stumbled across their settlement in the past. They all proved to be assets in their own regard, and Chloe had witnessed several times how well people were taking to Jesse and Amy in their new respective roles when she'd been out and about around the community during the day. She knew that Beca was much more hesitant about opening up to new people, which was understandable, but Chloe was mostly just relieved that she seemed to be healing well (despite her stubbornness about joining the night watch rotation).

Chloe tried to be respectful and let all of them adjust and acclimate at their own pace. Jesse and Amy seemed eager to ingratiate themselves to the rest of the survivors, often claiming seats around the communal tent when big meals were held and regaling people with stories or lively conversation. The girls had all taken a liking to them, and it wasn't unusual to see Jessica and Ashley tugging Jesse along to help them with something or Stacie quizzing Amy with a myriad of questions like she was a puzzle to be riddled out. Chloe noted with amusement that Emily still seemed to view Beca with something akin to hero reverence, and she would often see the younger girl bounding in the door to find Beca or hanging on her every word when Beca did deign to speak. She was grateful to the girls for doing their part in making the new additions feel welcomed, but she was more heartened to see that they seemed to genuinely like them, rather than doing it out of some sense of obligation. Aubrey was still slow to come around--indeed, she rarely had anything to do with the newcomers except in occasional group settings--but she'd at least returned to a polite civility around the house and the community at large. Chloe knew better than to assume that meant all was forgotten or forgiven, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Her own time with Beca, at least in a one on one setting, had been more limited since that first nighttime walk. Chloe's responsibilities kept her busy during the day while Beca was resting, and Beca was gone during the night on watch, not to mention the fact that Beca seemed to avoid any occasion where the community all gathered together. Still, she'd had a few stolen moments with her, and she always made sure to smile and wave if she ever spotted her around the settlement while she was busy with something else.