Part I

~*~ For A Doll ~*~

I was alone in the woods. I cried myself to sleep. I went hungry. I tried to find my way back.

Now here I am, sitting back in camp with my mom and everyone, my belly's full, I was a sleep before I was even in the RV. I was brought back but all of that; the crying and the hunger and feeling lost isn't going to stop. It won't end in the forest. It never started in the forest.

I'm alone in this. I can't tell anyone why I cry myself to sleep after I wake up shaking and in a cold sweat. I go hungry 'cause I get so nervous I can't keep food down. I try to find my way back to who I was before…

A chord tightens around my throat. It takes everything I have to keep still. To keep from screaming out loud.

The foul smell of beer chased by cigarette smoke.

My fingers curl into my shoulder.

A fabric image of a flower, an ugly brown hole is burned in the middle.

Everyone is moving around me, clearing up dishes from dinner. The chord keeps getting tighter. I try to push it all away. I can't do anything

Burning.

The woodpile is a mess. It's uneven and the ends of the split logs stick out all over the place. I start at one end and pull out the thinner pieces and put them in their own pile off to the side. After I'm sure I've picked out all of the thin pieces, I start stacking all the other logs at the back, at the end further from the fire pit because the thick logs go on in to the fire later.

It's become a lot tidier. Stacked four logs high, it becomes an even bridge with a mostly flat face instead of the disorganized pile it used to be.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone come up behind me. I clumsily drop the halved, heavy log I was lifting to put on the last spot on top. My hand doesn't move fast enough, it gets sandwiched and crunched in the pile.

"Are you alright?" asks T-dog.

"Yes. It's fine," I cradle my hand against my chest. It's throbbing, but it's the kind that will pass after a few minutes. There will be a few scraps but they won't be any worse than the ones I got from my time in the woods.

"Hey Dog," Shane calls him.

T-Dog gives me one more look of suspicion before he goes over to where Shane and Andrea are stringing cans for our new camp on the edge like we had in the quarry. There are seven of them.

Keep it together! I scold myself.

I look around camp, hoping that no one else saw that.

Dale is up on his usual spot on RV, binoculars hanging around his neck. Glenn is with him.

Carl and his dad aren't back from their walk.

My mom's doing dishes while Lori dries them. She sandwiches a plate in amongst several cups instead of with the other plates even though there is room for it with the other plates. I fight the sudden urge to go over there and rearrange the whole damn drying rack.

Daryl noticed. He's watching me with a look I can't place. It's blank except for his eyes, interested and judging.

One of the last logs is a lot longer than all the others. I move it to the back of the pile but then there is five in one column. I try swapping out some logs in the middle section but wherever I put it, it sticks out horribly. It doesn't fit in anywhere.

It has too. I have to find a place for it.

"Here," Daryl holds out his hand.

I give him the odd log and he lays it across the chopping stump, wincing when he picks up the axe and has to set it down. He has fresh stitches in his side because I ripped up some old ones. I feel guilty about it. I told him not to pick me up but I didn't mean to hurt him.

Especially since he looked after me last night.

He could've hurt me if he wanted to. It would've been really easy for him, he can lift me up like I weigh nothing and I was too tired to put up much of a fight. But he was so nice.

He holds the piece steady with one hand and with one small swing of the axe in his other, he takes a chunk off the odd log and hands it back to me. I place it in the empty spot.

It fits perfectly with the others now.

It's a short relief.

Everyone is watching now, looking on with curiosity. They can sense that there is something wrong with me. Who takes the time to arrange something that is just going to get burned?

My throat tightens up again.

I'm different and I try hard to act normal, to not let the little things bug me but I can't help it. If I don't do something, I get torn apart.

"Thanks," I whisper to Daryl.

I walk quickly to our tent and duck inside. Once I close up the zipper. Once I'm alone. I stop fighting it and cry.

I sit on the floor beside my cot and cry and cry and cry.

When I'm all out of tears, I feel calm. I move up on to my cot, wrinkling the blue sleeping bag but I no longer care.

I can hear them talking on the other side of the canvas. The odd time a shadow walks by. They can't see me.

"Sophia," my mom starts calling, "Sophia,"

I grab my red sweater as an excuse for my absence and go back outside.

My mom is sitting beside the fire, I sit down beside her in a big lawn chair. She brushes my hair behind my hair the way she's done ever since I can remember.

As the fire starts to get bigger, more people are drawn over to its warmth. Until the only one missing is Glenn, whose on watch.

"I can't express how good it is to see you sitting there, Sophia," says Rick. He pats Daryl on shoulder.

"I told y'all I'd find her," Daryl says.

Everyone laughs and agrees that he did say that or agree that it is good to see me here.

They wouldn't be saying that if they knew. If they knew what happened to me. They wouldn't want me here.

People don't like dirty things.