Steel Horizon

Chapter Twelve

 Jude stared back at me, surprised and shocked, all at once. And to be honest, I was shocked too—at myself. He stumbled back after I'd hit him and now his hand was clutching his jaw. "What was that for?" he asked, still staring.

I shook my hand loose, trying to ignore the pain. "That's me telling you you're not something horrible, and you need to shut up." He looked taken back at my blunt statement. "Jude, seriously. They did something horrible to you, but you are not horrible. You're just you. Yes, you have a metal arm now, but you deal with it. You said living like this was no way to live, but it is if you know what to look for. The same goes with your arm. It's just the way it is now, and you shouldn't let that ruin your life."

His face wasn't changing. It made me a bit nervous. Maybe I had induced a self-shock coma with my sudden outburst. He blinked and rubbed his jaw one last time before dropping his hand.

"And what do you think life should be like, Morgan?"

"Whatever you want it to be."

"Maybe, but we don't have many choices," he said, shrugging. "It was a lot different four months ago."

I smiled. "There are more choices than you think."

Jude looked puzzled. "What kind of choices? Whether I would like canned peas or carrots? To me, that isn't the highlight of my day."

I couldn't help throwing up my hands in frustration. "You're hopeless!" I started walking away.

"Wait, Morgan. I'm sorry." He started after me but I spun around so fast his boots streaked to a halt.

"It might not seem like it," I said, "but there are still things to make this world better than it is. It might not be safe and it might actually get you killed, but doing them is better than not doing them. Have you ever gone into a store with so many breakable things that the hardest thing for you to do was walk out without touching anything? What about breaking into an expensive car and race down the road because there's no such things as police anymore?" Jude was just staring at me so I continued without hesitation. "Have you ever wanted to race around Walmart on those bikes they never let you ride inside? What kind of store sells bikes but won't even let you ride them?"

His mouth twitched, wanting to laugh. "You've raced around Walmart on a bike?"

"I wouldn't called raced since I was always by myself, but yeah."

"Okay, so you have a point," he admitted. "I could definitely get down on stealing a nice car to race down the road."

I smiled again, glad he finally caught on to where I was going with this. These days people had forgotten how to live. I'd been the same way until a couple months ago. How could you not forget how to live in a world like ours? We were running for our lives and there was never time to stop and take a look around.

Without a little joy in life, it was meaningless.

"I see you've finally caught on to what I'm trying to say."

Jude flashed a quick smile. "I think I have. I still think you're weird, Morgan, but a good kind of weird."

"Well, thank you."

I wandered down the grocery aisles, thinking of the times when Mom and I would go grocery shopping every Monday. She claimed she had two reasons for this: Nobody goes grocery shopping on Monday morning, so it's never crowded, and if she went on Fridays, the food she brought into the house would be gone by Monday.

"It's reality math, is what it is," she said. "It just makes sense this way."

I would push the cart and follow her down the organized aisles, pausing every now and then while she marked off items on her list. Sometimes I would grab things off the shelf and slip them into the cart when she wasn't looking. Often, she wouldn't notice until after we got home and started putting things away, and by then it was too late. She would roll her eyes and give me my string cheese or box of granola bars I had the urge to eat.