Olivia had told her much about when the world becomes 'right' again- "Whatever that means," she added- she wants to change how she looks. A few piercings or more on her ears and a tattoo somewhere on her arm from her absentminded doodles. Blue hair was another idea too, maybe just on the tips or go big.
There's never seems to be a real vision as Olivia daydreams about her future appearance. She said they're purposefully vague because she hasn't seen her options and knows better than to get her hopes up for an exact recreation when the time eventually comes.
Adele thinks she'd look great with blue hair, or whatever color she chooses regardless.
The landscape changes and yellow fields blur at their sides, and they ignore most turns and junctions but Adele has read the rotten signage on her previous trips. Knows the names of the towns around them but doesn't know if there's any people left in them.
Power lines on stiff poles inching further and further away from the side of the road. They see the huge towers on plains beyond the patches of woods, the ones Adele mistook for discount Eiffel towers when she was younger and then later thought they were for cable cars.
Olivia yells 'land ho!' when she spots the underwhelming crooked skyline of buildings marking the horizon. There's sign not far from their initial entry. It reads:
SAN RIBEIRO
Pop. 220
There used to be as many people living here as there are people living in Romsey right now. No wonder their numbers dwindled down so quickly, it's on the brink of abandonment. Until the well dries out it seems.
At least the baker hasn't seemed to move out, now essential to every town because nothing else could give you the joy of processed carbohydrates. It's hard to coordinate with suppliers, to get ingredients for the variety. The web of business is precarious, dependent, she's seen it fall apart.
This baker in particular had hollowed cheeks like he isn't eating anything he's making. There's only three options and he's probably sick of it, but she takes an early bite of garlic bread which he toasts fresh, tells him it's the best thing she ever had. Slides it back into the small burlap sack she brings for extra food.
Adele tips, advertises Lake Jade's farming scheme and the bathhouse, of course. He seems swayed. She almost offers her truck again, because she has a functional truck and because she's sick of traveling to the Pass all the time. People used to say the landscape of wind turbines were hideous and Adele disagrees at first, until she sees them enough times that they lose any sense of what them special.
Olivia catches her eye. "Look at you, Saint Adele," she doesn't say only with a knowing smile. It's not a jab, but she's just awfully predictable.
Saint Adele definitely tells him about the truck after that, maybe in some sort of spite? But that doesn't seem right. She could probably work out a deal with the other bakers to sponsor the trip.
They keep the rest of the bread for dinner. Picks up some cottage cheese from another vendor who also thinks of moving and puts it in the metal containers that used to have rice in them.
Olivia used to say, "You're too nice," at times like this. But that's not a flaw, being too nice isn't a bad thing ever, especially not in these years so she had it revised. She doesn't take her cue to say it now but Adele finds herself waiting anyways. She stares absently, like a nudge.
It doesn't go unnoticed. "What?
Adele doesn't waver, smile creeping. Anticipation.
Olivia scoffs. "Did you want me to tell you you're being nice?"
She grins widely, muses, "It's a free compliment." They're both predictable like that.
-
It's a park bench in the orange evening, basking in juxtaposed condition. Warm reddish hues but the approaching night tones down the temperature. There's a girl sitting on one side, pushed up against the armrest. Her hair is sleek, almost reaches her waist. What would usually be black is aflame with sundown.
She plops herself down next to her, but with respectable distance. It doesn't go unnoticed.
"Hi!"
"Hi."
"You're thirteen right?"
"I'm turning thirteen in November."
"Oh, but we're still the same age," she says because pointing out what people had in common made them like each other more. "I'm Adele."
The girl makes a face like she wants to leave this interaction but tolerates it enough to stay. "Olivia."
Adele thinks it's only appropriate if they shake hands but no, only adults do that. Settles instead for a wide smile, sits excitedly on the edge of the chair while Olivia curls into herself, watches her cautiously. Why does that name sound familiar? Oh-
"You're the girl!" she exclaims, "I live in the house in front of you. We're neighbors!"
"Oh." She doesn't match her energy. "I think I've seen you too."
"You do art, right?" Adele asks pointing, making sure the right person is the only person she's talking to.
Olivia inclines her head. This was not her original plan to charm her but it's a pleasant derailment.
"I saw your paintings, at town hall," she comments, nods enthusiastically. "You're really good."
They're trying to get communal activities off the ground again, the kids are restless but school is still teachable. She heard ideas of poetry slam too, but there's no poets amongst them. Even then, the angst of the apocalypse isn't the most fun to listen to.
They're not a philosophical crowd, really.
"Which one did you like?" Olivia isn't moving much while she asks. "From mine."
She thinks back to her trip at the exhibition, restrains herself from mentioning the stolen canvases.
"The one above the clouds. And the blue portrait." Adele decides, feels like she should ramble endless compliments like it helps her case, as if she's not convincing enough to tell the truth but Olivia would probably appreciate the lack of redundancy repeating herself. "But, I mean, I like all of them."
The compliments sink slowly. Olivia is shy.
"Do you paint?"
Adele swings her feet back and forth, alternating. The swing is already overtaken by the kindergarteners and their parents hovering nearby. She wishes she could go on the swing too. "Oh, no, no I don't. I'm really bad at it."
There's a child yelling enthusiastically. Olivia doesn't glance at the commotion. "Everyone says that though."
"Says what?"
"Everyone says they're bad at painting, the same time they say I'm good at it."
Adele reads between the lines but she doesn't know how to respond. That the only real reason she's good at something is because everyone else is bad at it. It's almost hurtful, trivializing. Maybe Olivia has spent time reassuring every passerby that their art can't be that bad, it's the effort that counts. A selfish takeaway.
Or maybe she doesn't comfort them. Olivia doesn't seem particularly snarky, but it's easy to imagine. Maybe with that expression.
Feeling a little guilty, Adele blurts out, "Sorry."
Olivia glances her over, blinks. Her eyelashes are really pretty. Not that they're long or anything, they just are. "What for?" She has the answer to that, but it's nicer not to know.
"Just because." The thought counts. "Y'know?"
Olivia hums, lets the wind blow her hair into her face. It's hard to tell what she's thinking but suppose it's just natural that humans haven't evolved telepathy yet. At least she hasn't looked a little bit annoyed, just overly concerned. She gets that a lot.
It's all the go ahead she needs. "Hey, can I be your friend?"
Olivia studies her and Adele really wants to know what she sees, but there's no mirror in sight.
"Okay."
-
Adele snaps her fingers. "You know where we should bike?"
They wheel their friends side by side and swiveled through the turns one handed for the exit to this town back onto the highway. They're passing through an old brick neighborhood and there's no red in the walls, coated in a thick layer of dust.
Olivia sees where this is going, swallows her bite of olive topped flatbread. "No?"
She lets the moment hang but her dramatic timing was a fraction too late. "New Wren!"
Olivia blinks.
"I'd die."
"No you won't," Adele counters. "I won't let you."
"You'd die before I do." She leans across the handlebars, points with her bread. Adele thinks that's probably the correct turn of events when it comes down to it. "I'm gonna have to bring a shovel to bury you in the desert."
"And you'd let me?"
"Til death do us part right?"
Adele mouths a gasp, puts a hand on her chest. "I feel betrayed."
Olivia snorts. She glances back where Adele had froze on the spot, keeping up her expression of total betrayal.
"I get it if you say, Meltwood. But New Wren?" she asks incredulously, "That's like, two months of biking."
"Three actually."
"That's even worse." Olivia sits on the curb, topples back with her jacket cushioning against the cement. She's looking at the wall behind her, almost upside down. She shoves the last piece into her mouth.
"No seriously, we can do it together." The encouragement comes out half-hearted, because it's supposed to. She's fully prepared to put herself in mild suffering to go to one of the biggest cities since the fall regardless if she'll regret her decision in the middle of the journey. She plops down next to Olivia, leans into her line of sight.
"You're gonna be signing your funeral papers, Adele," she enunciates, muffled. And then continues incoherently. She's not even chewing the damn thing. "And mine too."
Adele nods. "Totally."
Olivia pulls herself back up, brings her knees closer and swallows. They sit in relative silence and scrutinize the neighborhood. It's an untold agreement that they're both tired, lounging in the shadow of the building behind them. Adele pulls out the book again, down the winding path of the later poems that left her a little more than muddled.
A clank of metal. When Adele looks up, Olivia has a can of spray paint in her hand and the cap tossed on the pavement.
"I can't believe you brought that with you."
She shrugs, flips it rhythmically from nozzle to base. Olivia stands up, looks at the wall behind them absently then walks over to an empty space next to all the other tags this building has seen.
There's a piece of targeted artwork scrawled red next to where Olivia wants to spray paint, it reads; F**K HELIOS. Exactly with the star censoring and all, which she finds an odd choice, but the sentiment is very 1997. They've all moved passed that phase more or less.
Adele has more of a problem with the greek deity they chose to personify the sun, because Helios hasn't done much wrong, not really. His contemporary Apollo though...
She faces the wall to watch, folds her legs. "What are you gonna write?"
Olivia pauses. "I don't know actually." The ball tumbles in the aerosol can as she shakes.
"Seriously?"
"Quick, gimme a quote."
"What?"
"From the book," she urges.
Adele realizing this frantically flips through the pages, partly from being rushed, the other part from knowing she read a nice line back in the meadow. But she can't quite remember where it is, or even what it says anymore.
"'A heart is a mind that's only trying to think without an unconscious.'"
Olivia's face is inconclusive.
"No?" Adele says. "Too long?"
She makes a face and a weird sound.
"Fine." She scatters through to a random part and reads five more after going through the lines. 'After that, for us all, empathy was our only hope' and 'A spirit is a mess when excess spoils it,' among them. The former of which Olivia claims to be too uplifting- what else would someone want to hear from dull abandoned streets only to pass by it unperturbed? She might as well read her the whole book from the rate this is going.
This is the last one, because if it isn't this, Adele doesn't want to comb through every bit of the book for a quotable. "'I have never arrived into a new life yet,'" she reads, "'Have you?'"
Olivia murmurs the line under her breath. She could only chant. Don't ask for the last quote, don't ask for the last quote, don't ask for the last quote.
"That's good."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Olivia scribbles close to the wall in quick precise strokes for each letter, all capitalized as Adele reads and rereads the words with patient repetition. In another universe she'd probably be doing this for a living- not spray painting specifically, but something with the arts. But that's an ambition so far removed from reality now.
Maybe in that alternate universe, they don't ever meet. Maybe Olivia doesn't work at the bathhouse, and she doesn't drive a truck at seventeen. There's a lot of different variables, but she doesn't seem to like any option other than the one where the sun, essentially, sneezes the lights out of the planet.
When she's done, Olivia adds a little flair;
I HAVE NEVER ARRIVED INTO A NEW LIFE YET.
HAVE YOU?
🔲 I HAVE 🔲 NOT REALLY
No signature underneath. She puts the cap back on the can and steps back to admire her work. Adele stands next to her, it feels different now that it's on the wall in stark black. When she glances next to her, Olivia is looking back.
"So?" she asks, "Have you?"
Adele stares into her dark chocolate eyes, barely distinguishable from black. These past six years feel normal but distant and she could barely remember what childhood felt like. But the path feels the same, there are no bumps worth noting and it's been a long while walking.
Maybe things like these are supposed to be designed like dividers, the single incident that changed the course. Replaced the whole map. She doesn't really know better.
"I have."