Page 101 of Ash Fall

"She lost a great deal." He rubs the back of his neck. "We all did, but Marlene lost her church along with everything else, and that woman built her whole life inside those walls. She doesn't know what to do with any of this."

"I understand that, and you all have my sympathies, truly." Gigi's tone gentles maybe ten percent. "But she cannot be spewing that kind of nonsense at my girl. I won’t stand for it."

"You're right." He nods. "You're right, and I'll talk to her about dialling it back. You have my word."

"Thank you." I put my hand on Gigi's arm before she can add anything. "We'll see you tonight, then? Six o'clock."

"Six o'clock." The handshake comes back out. "And thank you for including us, Luna. It means something."

Gigi steers me toward the stairs, muttering about bitter dried up bible thumpers.

At the top step I glance back over my shoulder and see Clayton is watching us go. Nothing about his face matches the man who just shook my hand. It's flat and hard and looks a little assessing. He holds it there for a second, then turns his back and picks his clipboard up again. My stomach drops somewhere down around my boots.

Gigi goes down the stairs hard enough to make the handrail vibrate. "That woman needs an exorcism and a hobby."

"Gigi, let's not turn this into more than it needs to be." I catch up to her at the bottom of the flight. "We'll just be the bigger people about it. Then there's no conflict and everybody gets to keep living here."

"Hell no." She stops dead and points a finger at me. "Never be the bigger person with someone like that. All being the bigger person does is give them permission to keep doing it. No, if they go low, peach, we are going straight down to hell and dragging them with us in return."

"I don't think that's a good idea while we're all trapped in here together." My voice is tight and worried. "There's enough trying to kill us outside. We can't turn the inside into a war zone too."

Gigi makes a noise that isn't agreement, but she shakes her head and lets it go.

"Forget about them for now." She loops her arm through mine and starts us walking again. "I think we go ahead with tonight anyway, and I think we make pizza."

"Pizza?"

"We have flour coming out of our ears, and there are four ovens in that kitchen upstairs that can bake a bunch at a time. We can do the rest in the camper ovens." She's warming up to it, gesturing with her free hand. "Everybody builds their own. Kids love that and so do adults, and there's not a soul alive who doesn't cheer up over pizza."

"That's actually perfect," I tell her, and I mean it.

She talks the whole way down about toppings and who she's putting to work grating cheese. I nod in the right places while only part of me listens. The rest of me is back up in that cafeteria, watching a man shake my hand with his face doing one thing and his eyes doing another. I came up those stairs to try to build a bridge, to erase the line dividing us, and I keep thinking about which side of it everyone I love would end up on if it doesn’t work

The motorhome kitchen turns into a disaster area by two o'clock. Gigi has flour up to her elbows and a dish towel over one shoulder, working three bowls at once. She's trying to teach my best friend and Jules's little sister something that was never taught in their fancy rich people kitchens. It isn't going well but it is very, very amusing for me to watch.

"It's on me." Briar whines while holding both hands up in front of her face with her fingers spread wide. Dough hangs off every one of them in long gooey strings. "Why is it on me? I did exactly what you said."

"You did not do exactly what I said." Gigi doesn't look up from her own bowl. "You poked at it like it might bite you. Get in there, push it with the heel of your hand, and turn it a quarter to incorporate the flour."

"Eww, I can feel it drying on my skin." She makes a disgusted face and tries to shake it off sending a splat of it to land on Gigi’s cheek.

Kara is faring slightly better, which she’s smug about. Her sleeves are shoved up to her elbows and she's got the rhythm almost right, pushing and folding while the ball under her hands goes smooth.

"Am I doing it?" she asks.

"You're doing it."

"I'm doing it." Kara turns to Briar with pure delight on her face. "Briar, look at me. I'm a pioneer woman."

"You're a show off."

"Those things aren't mutually exclusive."

I'm cutting up the toppings at the table, which is the job I claimed on purpose because I've seen the two of them try to use a kitchen knife. Peppers, onions, and a mountain of grated cheese from the blocks we got during our SaveMart spree. Somebody found a case of canned mushrooms in the visitor centre kitchen, and Briar has already announced that she would rather starve to death than eat those.

Between the two of them there's probably a million dollars of education tuition but neither one of them can knead dough or chop vegetables. Crazy.

"Okay, but why does it have to be sticky at the start?" Kara asks. "That seems like a design flaw."