❝𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐝❞
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In a world taken over by walkers, ten-year-old Elodie fights to survive each day. But she's not just any survivor-she's a girl who happens to be hard of hearing. Her older brother Jamie isn't exactly supportive. In fact, he...
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Elodie tugged at her hair, a cringe on her face. Lori had insisted on putting her hair up into a bun because of the heat, claiming it would help cool her down a bit. But the bun was tied way too tight, causing Elodie's scalp to throb with discomfort. Lori reassured her it wasn't tied that tightly, just enough to keep it in place. Elodie wasn't convinced. She much preferred having her hair down.
She sat on a makeshift chair—a flipped-over crate—behind a wooden table someone had brought into camp for some reason. They had moved the table to where the tree casted shadows so to stay out of the scorching sun. Textbooks and notebooks cluttered the table, and Elodie felt overwhelmed with it all. She had never liked school before this all happened. She liked it even less now. It made her head hurt.
She couldn't understand why she had to do homework. The world had ended, so there was no school anymore. Yet Lori insisted she keep up with her studies just in case things returned to normal. Elodie didn't see the point.
Lori, Sophia, Carl, and Carol huddled around the table with her, their brows furrowed in concentration. Lori was helping Carl, while Carol tended to Sophia. Both Lori and Carol tried to help Elodie too, but her mind was elsewhere.
Her pencil scribbled across the paper, doodling little sharks in the corner of her notebook. Occasionally, she glanced up to see Jim sitting tied against a tree. Earlier, he had been digging, a lot. No one knew why, so Dale had gone to get Shane. When Shane attempted to talk to Jim, it seemed as though Jim was losing his mind. After Jim tried to attack him, Shane wrestled him to the ground, making Jim share a sad history about his family. Elodie felt a pang of sympathy for him, especially now that he was bound to a tree.
It wasn't as if Jim was being held hostage by Shane; he was given enough water by the man and even had some poured over his head to cool him down. Lori had explained that Jim was experiencing a 'sunstroke'.
"Elodie," Lori spoke, gently nudging the girl. "How far have you gotten?"
Elodie tore her gaze away from Jim, lifting her arms from her notebook. She glanced at her work, realizing she had only been doodling. She had maybe solved one or two math problems, which have been decorated with seastars and bubbles.
"Oh," Elodie muttered, offering Lori a sheepish frown.
Lori chuckled, offering Elodie a reassuring rub on the back. "Don't worry about it. It's hot anyway."
"Sorry if I scared your boy. Or your little girl, or Elodie," Jim suddenly interjected, drawing everyone's attention.
"You had sunstroke. Nobody's blamin' you," Lori reassured before returning her focus to helping Carl with his work.
"You're not scared now, are ya?" Jim attempted to lighten the mood with the kids, but they only looked at him uncomfortably.
