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"I never knew your aunt Sorry" I looked over in ti

"I didn’t know her very well either She was really an uncle who beca with her"

"An uncle who becaed out ofbehind me this whole tiain, this tiust "She was a person, Bryn Not a transvestite You say it like she was a creature"

I instantly felt like an ignorant ass "Oh, yeah Of course she was I didn’tby it"

"My parents weren’t the most tolerant people in the world"

There was a world ofwrapped up in that simple sentence, and I wondered if I dared to ask for clarification He was stirring the beans around in his can, but not eating the So I did

"Was your uncle gay?"

He shrugged, , "I don’t know Maybe Is that a problem?"

"No Not for me Was it for you?" My ears burned for so asked or just unco to explain hiay myself, so I don’t have a proble the noodles "Well, that’s good I didn’t want to have to be forced into fending off your advances on hed "Nothing to worry about there"

"Hey!" I said, in ht it with a surprisingly quickit carelessly to the counter

"Nice reflexes," I said, nodding in appreciation Maybe he wouldn’t be hopeless to train after all

"I used to play a lot of ping pong"

I started laughing so hard, I snorted

After Peter had eaten his fill of noodles and beans, and I had joined hi in another jar of sauce to boot, we sat down in the living room and took stock of our stuff

He held up each book fro book My aunt said this one is specifically for Florida"

"Awesooes in the keeper pile"

"Then, she left me this one It’s an encyclopedia of natural re herbs and plants and stuff fro in South Florida"

"No way!" I said, taking it fro" My dad and I had talked about uess he’d figured with all the people dying off, there’d probably not be a lot of everyday diseases going around "I wonder if this has a cure for whatever killed all the adults in it," I said jokingly

"It doesn’t I already looked"

"Not sure how you could expect to find so when you don’t even knohat it is," I said sarcastically

"I have ant

I could totally tell in that moment that he was one of those kids on the science fair every year with so for cancer cures or whatever Inso uy could be valuable to have around At least when I got sick But that didn’t ive hi to cure the disease that killed ten billion people, when the sh?"

"No I don’t think I’ll need to The disease died with the to die e reach twenty?" That see

"No There are no more hosts We’re all resistant, for whatever reason"

"Our hormones"

"So they said But no one ever proved it And people taking hored "It doesn’t matter to me Either I live or I die I’ll do what I can to keep the death part froo"

"Easy to say when you’re healthy"

"Yeah I know" It was a sobering thought My dad was the coolest guy I’d ever known, and even he had freaked out in the end when faced with his own hts out of

"What else do you have?"

"Book on first-aid," he said, handing me a smaller one

"I have one of those already" I quickly flipped through a few pages "It’s better than this one"

Peter shrugged "Just toss it then, I don’t care"

I threw it into the abandon pile - the stuff ould leave in my house for the raiders to take if they wanted it

"This is a good one: solar power It sho to make an oven and heat water and stuff"

I snatched it fro infrequent, cold sponge baths without soap for way too long now The idea that I ht actually be able to take a real, and possibly warm shower, sounded like heaven to h the book showed s to find along our journey that would make a lot of the ite to be heavy," he said, looking at the keeper-pile It was er than the abandon-pile

"We’ll find a way I want to get a place that’s permanent I don’t want to move around all the time I think we’ll be safer if we just take the risk of traveling once"

"So what … are we going to build so? Because that’s the only way to stay safe that I can think of And it can’t bethat’ll burn because the canners like to start fires"