Chapter Five

I went up to my room and pulled on a black and red long sleeve boat-neck shirt and jeans. There was a long day of work ahead of us. Cameron and I had been assigned to organizing the food, while Evan and Jesse collected the clothing from all three houses. Great, I thought. More alone time with her and those eyes. This should go well.

I trudged into the kitchen where Cameron was sitting on the floor with all of the food already laid out around her. She looked up at me. “Oh,” she mumbled. “You’re here. Well, I’ve started four piles. From left to right it goes breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. You have a shocking lack of sugary foods.” She picked up a bag of hamburger buns and moved it over to the middle-left pile. “Also citrus fruits, we should get some of those. I don’t think we need scurvy on our list of complications. That list is long enough as it is.”

I raised one eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Well,” she said quietly, leaning back onto her elbows. “There’s the obvious issue of the zombies wanting to eat us and, from what I’ve seen, growing faster and stronger as time goes by. We’re set as far as food goes, but neither Jesse nor I have anything to wear. We have few weapons, and the baseball bat isn’t going to do much damage. Our army consists of four kids between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. The odds that we will survive are about one in a thousand.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and raised my eyebrows. It had occurred to me that we might not survive, but I hadn’t realized how likely that was. “Okay,” I said. “Then we’d better prepare as best we can. I’ll take this side, you take that side.” I picked up a box of Wheat Thins and placed them in the breakfast pile. An hour or so went by in silence before I found a box of Chips Ahoy! cookies. I threw them at Cameron. “Eat up.”

Cameron looked down at the box. “I’m almost positive we’re supposed to be packing these for the trip. I might be wrong.” I laughed.

“I think we can replace a box of cookies. Dig in.” She pulled out three cookies and tossed the box back to me. I removed a cookie and bit into it. “Chocolate is the best of God’s gifts to the world. Putting them into cookies is just too much good for one person to handle.” I turned to look at Cameron. “You know,” I said, cocking my head to one side. “We have most of this work done. What do you say to watching some TV?”

Cameron grinned. “That sounds great.”

We walked into the living room and plopped down on the floor. I grabbed the remote and turned on an old episode of SpongeBob. At our age, we had learned pretty well every line in the episode, and we laughed loudly as we recited it. “Gold team rules!” We shouted in unison. SpongeBob was a masterpiece of a children’s show. No one in their right mind could watch an episode without laughing at least three times. “So,” said Cameron. "What other shows do you like?”

I looked up into the corner of my eye. “I tend to like kind of dark shows,” I said. “Things like Six Feet Under and Trueblood. Alan Ball is great. Also pretty much anything by Joss Whedon. Firefly is my favorite show of all time.”

Cameron looked at me with a confused expression on her face. “Who is Josh Whedon?” My eyes widened.

“How—What—His name is not Josh it’s Joss. And he is one of the best television directors the world has ever known! He made Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Firefly.” She shrugged. “Remind me again why I like you?” Cameron looked up at me.

“You like me?” She asked with a smirk on her face.

My cheeks flushed bright red. “I mean…you’re kind of cool. You’d be a lot cooler if you watched good television.” A mental pat on the back to me for that quickly thought up escape route.

Her eyebrows arched. “Excuse me? I watch good television. Better than your Josh Whedon, that’s for sure.”

“It’s JOSS!!! His name is Joss!”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever,” she laughed. “He is nothing in comparison to the glory that is Doctor Who. The Doctor’s British wit and charm far surpasses anything this Whedon guy could put out.”

“Ha!” I shouted and leaned forward. “Doctor Who was okay at best. The original made me chuckle a couple times, but I found the main character incredibly irritating. The funniest thing about that show was the girl’s gradual increase in the amount of make up she put on. The new show is just awful and entirely lacks any kind of comedic or romantic pull!”

“While I will admit that the new Doctor Who is not up to par, the original show was hysterical.” she leaned toward me. “The hidden romance between the Doctor and the main character was so well written and played out that one couldn’t help but fall in love with the Doctor. Well I could, but that’s for an entirely different reason.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “And what reason might that be?”

“Well that would be because…” Cameron’s eyes darted around my face.

“Yes?”

Suddenly Cameron jolted forward toward me and her soft lips were pressing against mine. She put one of her arms around my neck and I wrapped one of mine around her waist and we lay on the chair kissing for a few blissful moments. We pulled away from each other and my eyes met with her shining blue ones. The warmth of her body flowed through me and made me feel safe. We stayed there for a few seconds before hearing a voice from above us. It was Jesse. He and Evan had returned from gathering the clothing.

“God damn you,” Jesse said, turning to Evan. “You don’t think you could have been a little bit less vague when you said I didn’t have a chance with Emmy? I’ve been racking my brain trying to think what might be wrong with me that I would be so completely unappealing.”

Evan grinned at him. “You fellahs never suspect it. You’re too easy to mess with.” Then he looked down at me. “If you girls are going to do that, may I make the request that it not be on dad’s chair? …Or while I’m within a mile's radius? Seeing my little sister make out with some girl is not really my idea of a good time.”

Cameron and I laughed nervously as she climbed off of me and stood up. Evan rolled his eyes. “Go get back to work.” he said. He and Jesse walked up to his room to organize the clothing, Jesse hitting his forehead and muttering:

“Stupid, stupid, stupid…”

Cameron and I walked back into the kitchen and sat back down on the hard tile floor. She coughed and I looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have assumed you were…you know. I was out of line.”

I looked back down at my hands. “No,” I said. “I-I am. I really didn’t think you were. You just caught me by surprise.” I looked up at her shyly from beneath my long orange hair. She smiled at me. I smiled back. Then we went back to putting away the food in silence.