by Max Lockwood
"Are you sure it will be okay?" she questioned, voice small.
"I'm sure," Clara said with conviction. She'd had time to deal with her sister and her infamous moods. "It'll blow over in a few days," she insisted when Viola didn’t look like she believed her. "This happens all the time. Just give her some time. If she takes too long taking the first step, then you can talk to her, because at least then she would have calmed down."
She nodded again, pulling in a deep breath and firming her lips. "All right. I'll give it a few days. But I think I'll go back to my room now."
Clara wanted to follow her, but she probably wanted to be alone like Tessa did in that moment. She let them have what they wanted.
What she wanted to do, on the other hand, was to go after Tessa herself and make her see the error of her ways. Viola had been under a lot of stress lately, because of her condition and because of the attacks that had been happening. Clara wanted her to be able to relax, not to have something completely new to worry about because it wasn’t good for her.
But would Tessa care if Clara went into her room without permission to tell her this? More than anything she would still be annoyed, and they would end up having a shouting match. The possibility of that, when Tessa's room wasn’t that far from Viola, was the major reason why Clara chose not to go.
She knew she would talk to her sister before another argument started with their grandmother thrown in the middle of it. Tessa might end up cooling down on her own, but she would still need someone to tell her what she had done wrong before she even entertained the idea.
Her sister had been like that since long ago, for as long as Clara could remember, and it only got worse with her condition. Clara was really tempted to get her sister and beat some sense into her, but she was going to have to do it some other time. Going right then would only make her madder at both of them.
Clara and Cooper went upstairs to her room, with nothing left to do in the living room, and Clara stared out the window. The wreckage of the invaders’ van was still outside. The pile of metal couldn’t even be recognized as having been a van, let alone one that actually ran.
She wondered, idly, if they could have gotten all the women out of the vehicle without damaging it if it could have been useful. Well, it should have been so they could have a further reach out of town when sent out on volunteer missions. But she had seen what cars could be used for, other than helping their town. They were the fastest means of transport if they could be found at all, and with everyone else stronger, it gave them an advantage over whoever didn’t own one.
Her nose wrinkled. The attack that put cars and planes and everything electrical out of commission might as well have pushed them back by decades. Those with cars could use them for nefarious purposes, considering all the times they had encountered people with vehicles, it hadn't ended well for them.
There had been Mayor Charleston, a mayor in a neighboring town who sent a truck full of food for them—with food either bad or nearly there, and only a small portion of it safe enough to even feed people. Then there had been the women that attacked her street, and now this. If the world had been fair, all cars would have just shut down. Because this gave them a fighting chance, a good one, yet all people could think of was how to exploit it for their own gains.
But the mass on their street was no longer usable, and Clara thought the police were still looking for some in their town. They didn’t have anything to move it with, and it would be too much trouble to have people do it by hand. It was, however, a symbol of what they'd been up against, what they'd survived once before.
It made Clara paranoid that someone could make an attack on the house. It was closest to theirs, after all, and maybe someone would find it suspicious and they would be under attack again. She'd do her best to take care of it as before, of course, but still, It wouldn’t be that easy. Not that she had any intention of giving up and not doing anything.
"Hey." Cooper scared her, taking her by the tops of her arms and speaking directly in her ear. But then she was sighing and relaxing back into him, letting her eyes slide closed. "I think it's time we went to bed now. You can think about whatever is on your mind in the morning, can't you? You need to take care of yourself too, you know."
"It's not that simple, Cooper," she protested lightly, ignoring his coaxing and tensing her shoulders. "I just really hate all this, that things have to be this difficult. Why couldn’t we just have the time to relax for a little bit? We've earned it, haven't we?" she asked, unsure.
What more could they possibly go through before the world let them rest for more than a few days, if that, at a time? She would have loved to just drop in her bed and go to sleep without having to worry about getting any nightmares. The chances of that were looking grimmer as time went on.
"You need to rest, Clara," Cooper insisted softly.
She shook her head stubbornly. "I can't when I'm not sure what could happen while I sleep."
He sighed, tugging her carefully. She resisted a little, before doing as he said. It was still light, barely twilight outside, but she didn’t protest as he pushed her to get in the bed, under the covers, making no move to join her.
"I promise to keep watch," he said. "So, you don’t have to worry for the time being."
He sat down beside her on the bed. She wanted to fight against it, but she was hit by sudden drowsiness. Or maybe it had been there, and she just hadn't noticed. She heard him murmur something, stroking her hair while she went to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Clara woke up with Cooper sitting beside her, still on watch. She felt him there before she saw him, though he'd stopped stroking her hair, her eyes blinking open. She didn’t move, not wanting him to know yet that she was awake.
Clara lay still as her mind slowly booted up. She grimaced to herself as the memories from the previous day came back to her. Getting members of the town together for a discussion on what to do about the invaders and the longer than necessary meeting. Then there was going home to report everything to her family, only to have Tessa start an argument.
Her teeth clenched for a moment as her anger flared. Clara had to do something about Tessa. It wasn’t the first time she had thought that, and she had a feeling it would just exhaust her to actually try.
Tessa had been getting better, or so she thought. Clara felt that parts of Tessa were changing, and that worried her more than anything. Seeing her sister outside had scared her. Seeing how she'd opened up a little and was talking to others around her more—when she wasn’t mentioning anything about visions and predictions—had given her some hope that her sister could get better.
Last night made her question that thought. It could be that Tessa's condition was just evolving. Considering both times she had been out, Clara had found her gathering disciples and preaching something to them. She had only heard part the first time, but Clara couldn't make heads or tails of what Tessa was trying to accomplish, what message she was trying to get across, and how so many people could so easily be attracted by her words.
Clara remembered being out on patrol, and seeing Tessa in the town square, in the middle of a crowd, just after she'd had a different disaster. There her sister was -- the girl that had shunned her friends, and even her family to an extent, except they lived together so she couldn’t avoid them. She stood on top of a car, shouting to a crowd of people as they responded to every word she said. Like they were starved people, and she'd told them she knew exactly what they had to do to meet their needs the easiest, fastest way possible.
Whatever it was, Clara didn't buy into it. She was tempted to ask her sister what the talks had been about. Considering Clara had met her sister outside three times, she wondered if there were other times when Tessa had snuck out while Clara was off doing volunteer work. The two times they met had been later in the evening, bordering on curfew. But whatever her sister was up to, Clara ignored it because she didn’t want to get sucked in. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life c
leaning up after her sister, especially when she did things on such large scale.
Clara took a deep breath and let her body relax. She had been growing steadily tense as thoughts of Tessa swarm around her mind.
For the time being, she didn’t know what to do with her sister. She'd only met one person, well recently anyway, that had told her a bit more about Tessa's condition. Felicia's sister had been the one to help after Clara asked Felicia only to be told she couldn’t do anything but knew someone that might. She had even been kind enough to prescribe medication for Tessa to take that would help her to some degree.
Tessa hated taking the medicine, but Clara could tell when she took it that it made her a little better. Her appetite was still poor, and she didn’t seem to care much about her appearance, but at least she was calmer. Then she claimed the pills had some side effect that she didn't like, and balked about taking them. Clara was still making her take them for the moment, checking her pills every few days just to make sure a few of them were gone every time she checked. Sometimes, she even had Tessa take the pill in front of her, and check to make sure she hadn't hidden it in her cheek or something.
There was too much to think about when it came to her sister, too many worries. At one point, her worries for her sister had even overshadowed her concerns for their grandmother. Somehow, she had to look after them equally. And it occurred to her that she could almost understand how Viola had felt when Tessa had accused her of having Clara as her favorite.
She sighed quietly. Why did she keep thinking of things that would only annoy her? She didn’t think she could go back to sleep, but neither was she ready to get up yet. Instead, she focused on the warm presence near her and let it calm her heart down.
Still, she couldn’t fall asleep. Well, she would have felt worse about it if it wasn’t Cooper sitting beside her. She remembered his promise to her, and she was both surprised and pleased at how he'd actually kept it so strictly. When was the last time he had slept?
He must have his own anxieties. Clara felt bad, momentarily, that she hadn't even thought about this before. Of course, Cooper had things he worried about as well, and most of them seemed centered around her. How could she have forgotten to check up on her best friend, like she used to?
Well, the world wasn’t exactly the same, and at some point, they would all have to change. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t tell her things, he just told her things that she thought were impossible. She wanted to offer as much help as she could, and while he stood by her in the end anyway. A lot of the times he was against her helping because he didn’t want her to push herself too much, or put herself in danger.
Clara was so grateful for him, more than she could ever possibly say. That he could still sit here with her like this, when he was trying to reassure her, even after they'd argued before, pleased her greatly. They would probably have to talk about things at some point, but the opportunity hadn't presented itself.
She missed how they used to do that. Back when everything was all right with the world, and Cooper was just her best friend. They'd go out sometimes, but usually, he asked her to his place to watch one game or another. While Clara wasn’t really into sports, she had always gone just for the private time to get away from her responsibilities. They used to talk a lot about life, and Clara had found herself being honest with him about a lot of things she would never tell anyone else. It had drawn them closer until they'd made the meet ups a routine thing. They hadn't had that in a while, and it was one of the many things she learned she was beginning to forget about and she knew that she didn’t want to.
But Cooper was here now. Everything was different, and she didn’t think they could talk as freely as they did before, but they were still close and she would let that be enough for her at the moment.
She wanted to snuggle into him. His warmth was so tempting, and he was right there. But as soon as the thought entered her mind, she knew she couldn’t move. Cooper held affections for her, and she didn’t have a definitive answer for him yet. She could always pretend she was still sleeping and move closer to him, but that wouldn’t be fair. To either of them. She wanted to, but she also didn’t want to lead him on.
Some time later, when everything finally cooled down, she was going to have to come up with an answer for herself, and then decide whether or not she could tell him. Until then, they had too much on their plate to be thinking about any kind of relationship.
But… what if she was just stalling, making excuses so she didn’t have to think about it? It wasn’t like she hadn't had time to think about his final words on the matter. He had given up on using leaving as an ultimatum for the time being, and currently, neither of them were committed to anything so they wouldn’t get hurt. But they would have to at some point. It would be too awkward to go on as they were, especially if Cooper went back to using her room instead of sleeping on the couch, as he'd taken to doing since Dante cleared out.
Could they even be happy, if they decided to try? It was dangerous to let themselves get too comfortable. So, could a relationship in those kinds of conditions end up anywhere, anyway? Probably not. Then again, she was just making more excuses. If this was something she truly wanted, she would have gone for it already.
Then again, she wasn’t exactly a normal person, so she didn’t always do what she would if the situation had been different. Once upon a time, it had been her dream to find a man to settle down with and start her own family. But all the people she ended up dating wouldn’t exactly be the kind of guys that would go for settling down. Then she ended up in an affair with her married neighbor.
The truth was, she was scared to be happy. She was okay with things as they were, with them being friends and Cooper staying with them. Adding romance to a good friendship would only complicate things, and things were bad enough, to begin with.
But wasn’t that her just coming up with more excuses…?
Stop thinking so much, she chided herself with a sigh, bringing up a hand to rub her face. She was only exhausting herself with trivial things that could come after their safety was assured. That was all she had to keep her focus on for the moment, instead of letting herself get sidetracked because she was letting herself get sentimental. There was nothing she could do about the past, but if they were to have a future, she had to give this her all.
When she looked up, it was to find Cooper's eyes on her. Well, it was too late to keep pretending to sleep, and Cooper was probably tired himself. Besides, she did have other things to do than sleep, now that she'd made the decisions she had. They had to get things over with quickly before they got out of hand.
"I need to get up and go into town to begin preparations for the next attack." Judging by the lightness of the room, she must have been sleeping for a while, so she should probably already be on her way.
Cooper sighed. "I wish you'd just relax. You finally got your first good sleep in a while. Do you realize that? You're always on the go, either too calm or too stressed, and it hurts just watching you sometimes."
She touched her fingertips to his side in apology before pulling her hand back quickly.
"I'm sorry about that." she chewed on her lip. "It's not like I'm trying to neglect myself, you know. It's just that there's so much to do, and I don’t…" she stopped, frowning when she noticed he was looking down at her with a look of amusement. "What?"
"I understand. You can't just sit back and let things run their course. You always have to interfere if you can help somehow."
"Not always," she muttered, remembering last night and the argument between her sister and grandmother. She hadn't done nearly enough in that situation, not as much as she should have. Cooper gave her a confused look, and she smiled up at him. "Never mind. And I really should be going now. Don’t want to be late."
"Do you want me to go?" he asked.
She sent another smile up at him, more sincere this time. "I do, but I need you to stay at home with Viola and Tessa. I know it's because of me, but I
don’t like how they ended things last night. I don’t want them to be left alone for the time being. And they still need someone to look after them."
He sighed and leaned back against the headboard, his head falling back with a light thunk. She got out of bed to grab some clothes so she could change. She moved to the bathroom, where she kept some water for a quick clean up, then quickly changed and was back in the room. Cooper hadn't moved, but when he heard the door, he raised his head to look up at her. Then he stood up as she got closer.
"I'll fill you in on everything when I get home."
It was too tempting not to touch him at all, if only for comfort instead of anything more. She reached out her arms, and he held his own open for her to walk into them. She sighed as his arms wrapped around her, burying her face in his chest and closing her eyes. They shared a long hug before she thought it was time for her to leave and made herself pull away.
"I'll see you later," she told him as she left the room and the house.
In town, they met in the same location as last time, only fewer people were present, most of them representatives from their areas and different streets. Everyone was trying to come up with ideas of how best to protect their town.
Clara mostly just listened. She was thinking up solutions herself, but it wasn’t like she had any definite plans. This wasn’t her forte, not quite. Back when she'd been a simple high school teacher, she'd found it hard to control a bunch of high school children, and this was nothing like that.
Were they even taking this seriously? Because all Clara could hear was them trying to talk over each other, and the words that she could distinguish didn’t sound like any solid plan that they could actually carry out. If everyone in the town that would lend a hand, they could have good numbers. But they didn’t have enough weapons to build an army, considering they were up against people who already had several advantages over them. They had people, weapons, a vehicle, and had already succeeded in putting fear into a lot of the people in town. They had to catch up somehow, so Clara didn’t think she had to tell these people how serious they needed to take their current situation. But she felt tired, so she was keeping quiet, sitting out of the way of everybody else.