Without waiting for my permission to enter, the door opened. I looked up: Troy.
"What do you want?" without much welcome, I began.
He was still in his military uniform. I used to think men dressed like that were aggressive and probably dangerous. Probably because my whole life consisted of men in civilian bows: I worked in a psychology lab, and the only uniforms there were white coats. My husband was in business and never got out of classic suits, because he was always in some kind of meetings with negotiations. And after the apocalypse, most people I met didn't wear camouflage. I didn't understand why people now here wore those military suits in the heat? It seems useless nowadays. It's much more comfortable to wear a light shirt and pants.... Even so, I liked Troy's look. Even more, when he was in uniform, I wanted to stare at him.
"You want to go your sister?" he said it in his usual indifferent way, letting my intentional rudeness slip past his ears.
"Now?"
"No, at night," he continued in the same indifferent way, "everyone will be asleep, my guys will be in the cordon, I don't have to explain anything to anyone.
"Okay, Alisha will be at Jake's, probably won't notice I'm gone, as usual."
Troy smirked and rolled his eyes for a second, but then he returned the indifferent look.
"Great, I'll come by at eleven to pick you up, don't fall asleep," he was about to leave, but he looked back into my room, "by the way, what are you reading?"
I showed him the cover of the book, he squinted and read the title in a half-whisper:
"I haven't read it."
"Advice."
"Reading is a useless thing for slackers these days, don't you think?"
I raised an eyebrow, expecting an argument, but instead I heard it:
"Jake's always reading stupid books, too, with poetry in them," he shook his head disapprovingly, "sometimes I think he should have been born a girl."
I stood up abruptly and walked over to Troy, he was surprised by my actions, but kept his gaze cold. After looking into his indifferent eyes for a few seconds, I shoved him in the chest, he flinched out the door, then I slammed it shut and heard a muffled theatrical-aggressive voice:
"I'll remind you of that at the worst possible moment!"
Next his footsteps headed into the room, after another second I heard the door slam loudly.
Alisha return in pretty quickly, I hadn't even managed to read ten pages, apparently she realized I was upset about something and decided to talk to me. To be honest, she didn't look too happy herself, so I beat her to the punch with a question:
"What's wrong?"
"What about you?"
"I asked first, so you're first," I said with a laugh.
She smiled sadly.
"Was it because of those people they found this morning?" I decided to speculate.
"No. I mean. Not really. It's about Jake."
"Did something happen?"
"He's going to Walker's camp tomorrow."
"What? Why?"
"To talk to them, to make peace with them. I don't know, I think it's stupid!"
"Who's he going with?"
"He wants to go alone."
"Well, it's definitely stupid to go alone."
"So I want to going with him."
"Alisha! What?"
"Well, what can I do?! I don't want to let him go alone."
"I know, but it's better to tell someone he's going, don't you think?"
"No one's going to support him in that decision and he's going anyway."
"Alisha, don't go with him, it's dangerous! If they did this to the Trimbolls, what can we expect from them?!"
"I know, but we have to do something."
"I'll tell his father."
"No! Don't tell anyone. There'll be panic if people find out he's decided to make peace with them after this! Maybe I can still talk him out of it. So please don't say anything. At least not yet."
Suddenly Jake interrupted us by suggesting that Alisha go on a date with him.