HEART FOR BRAINS • the walking dead

009: from the sidelines

Realisation washed over Carl's face. "Oh yeah, sorry."

Rio just looked over at him, silently reminding him of their conversation yesterday.

"What's that?" Carl asked after a while, knocking Rios knee. He pointed to the book under his leg.

"A diary." Rio replied.

"I didn't know you kept a diary." Carl smiled, he began to ramble. "I tried to keep a diary once but forgot about it all the time, and I never found something interesting to—."

"It's not mine." Rio cut in, letting out a harsh breath.

"Who's is it?" Carl asked, more cautiously this time, like he already had an idea.

"My brothers." The other boy replied

His idea must've been right by the expression he had. "Oh."

"It..." Rio trailed off, considering wether to tell Carl or not. "He was bit, he left me on purpose because he didn't want to hurt me when he turned."

He pulled the book from under his leg, where he'd tried to hide it and opened it up. Carl took it from his hands, asking if he could beforehand. Rio just nodded, turning away.

There was pages of writing, one page sometimes covering four days. It was all about Rio, or most of it. Rio did this, Rio did that, today I helped Rio, I saved him today, he saved me. There were only three entries from before the outbreak, the rest were from after. There was never a day missed.

Carl flipped through it aimlessly, trying to find the most recent entry. The book wasn't even half full.

"I think I'm going to finish it." Rio said, distracting Carl from reading any of the pages properly.

"Really?" The other boy asked.

"Yeah," He replied. He was tapping the back of his hand nervously as Carl just looked at the book. "I guess it's a way to continue his memory... or whatever." Rio sounded unsure of what he was saying but continued anyway. "Writing in here would feel like writing to him. I can tell him about everything that's happened."

"That's cool." Carl replied. "What are you gonna write about first?"

"I think he'd be happy to know that I made a new friend. I was bad at making friends before. I can tell him about that."

The other boy smiled, knowing that Rio was talking about him, so Rio took the opportunity to mess with him.

"Yeah, I think him and Glenn would've gotten along great." He teased, a small smile peeking through his words.

"You're so mean." Carl complained, sinking down onto the floor. He smiled at the fact that Rio was smiling again.

Rio looked at him, "He'd like you too."

"Really?"

"I think he'd like you because I like you." He explained. "He always made an effort to like people I liked."

"Sophia would've liked you." Carl replied, hesitantly. "She liked anyone, but she'd actually like you."

"You think so?" Rio asked, genuinely.

"Yeah, you're nicer than me. She would've liked you more." Carl joked, or tried to. The other boy didn't think he was really joking.

He nudged his shoulder. "You're not a bad person."

"Hm." Was all Carl said.

"You can read it if you want." Rio said after a while, noticing Carl had been looking at the diary. He opened it for him, turning to the last two pages.