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mark zuckerberg

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They burn the stuffed animals - and it probably says something about Wichita that she's equal parts relieved and disturbed by the event, but she decides to attend, to make sure she watches as each carnival prize, all in varying stages of destruction, burn away as the bonfire rages on, button eyes and plastic melting and stuffing turning black under the flame before it too turns into ash. It's only a slightly comforting sight, and it's still serving to remind her that crazy shit like this happens all the time, without warning. Zell had mentioned the zombies arriving before, but somehow he'd been all too casual in his delivery, or at least more carefree about it than she thinks it deserves. How many people are ready for something like this if it happens again? she'd asked Columbus, wondering if any of the people she starts to care about will ever truly be prepared: Olive, Santana, Eduardo, Mark. They're all people she's starting to become closer to, and she blames herself for it, for letting each of them in long enough to start to care in the first place, because if something happens - God, this isn't how she's supposed to survive here. She isn't supposed to have to care about anyone else, to have to worry.

She makes sure to leave a note for Columbus this time (ever since the night she'd gone out for a run, she realized he'd almost started to think she had disappeared completely), but she only specifies as much as simply going for a walk, not really stopping to predict where she'll wind up. It ends up being the pier, on the western side of the island, the long one that stretches out over the water, and she walks to the very end, until she can sit down with her legs dangling over the side. She jams her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, finds a joint in one, and lights up, giving herself ample time to inhale deeply, and keeps inhaling until the tension in her shoulders starts to ease.

The sound of footsteps behind her doesn't have her whirling around like she would be under normal, non-high circumstances, but she's still got the small pistol tucked into her waistband, if it turns out she needs to use it. She doesn't move to speak when the sound of footsteps stop and she senses someone standing over her, instead leaning back to brace her weight on one hand as the other lifts the joint to her lips.

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I've been taking more walks lately. Sometimes people ask me how it is that I manage to get around the campus as quickly as I do. I'm even able to outrun the Winklevii, with enough obstacles around and if I really put my mind to avoiding conflict. I don't really know the answer. I'm not a regular jogger, and I fell off the boat with fencing after college, but all the same, I'm still in better shape than most programmers I know— and believe me, that's not a small feat anymore, not with recent health studies continually pounding on the fact that the lot of us need to get out more and in the sun. There are always a few health nuts in each coding group.

Regardless, it's easy to pick up walking again. Sometimes breaking into a run, jogging. I think I do it because when I run, the only thing I need to think about is where that next step is going to be placed. And lately, getting that clear mind is just about as rare as anything.

I stop when I see Wichita, though. As far as distractions go, she's not a bad one to have.

The smell of pot is familiar to Mark as he steps a bit closer, quickly tucking his hands into his pockets. For once, the hoodie has been abandoned, a mere GAP T-shirt in its place. Flip-flops have been exchanged for sneakers. Back home, it'd be rare for Mark to set out with the intention of walking about and altering his outfit for that sole purpose; here, it's been happening with greater and greater frequency, a restlessness that doesn't settle well on his skin, that leaves his chest feeling taut most days. Strangely, the smoke from the joint just reminds him of campus, of school. He was never really much of a smoker, didn't see the appeal, especially after trying a joint or two himself— whatever minute amount of relaxation he's able to manage doesn't last long. But it doesn't stop him from stepping closer, glancing at Wichita with a concerned eye.

She doesn't look like the type to need a hit.

"You okay?" he asks first, and maybe it's presumptuous of him, but if there's anyone who might forgive him for that on the island, Mark's almost sure that she's one of them.

Wichita doesn't need to be a mind-reader to hear the level of concern in his tone, the worry in his voice. He's no doubt seen - and smelled - this particular indulgence of hers, but she's not about to justify herself to anyone, him included. Five or six years ago, she might've shied away from it, but that was a different girl with a different name and a much lamer sense in fashion, and she has no intention of ever revisiting that past, even if it meant she could go back to a pre-zombie life. Things had been good back then, but they hadn't been better. Maybe it's better right here, right now, she thinks to herself, taking another small hit and holding it in for a beat or two before subtly exhaling, the joint still posed between two fingers as she drops her hand down to her side.

"Peachy," she murmurs, squinting slightly as she glances out over the water and the glare the sun creates overhead, almost too bright to stare at directly. Somehow, she manages to do it for what feels like a long time before her eyes start to water and she glances away, back and up at him.

"So, you sitting or what?" she asks, nodding to the space next to her, at the end of the dock.

There's more going on here than what meets the eye— and even then, what meets the eye certainly hits Mark somewhere in the chest, tight and constricting— and he finds himself following her gesture until he's able to sit directly beside Wichita, gaze sweeping over her again, as though combing carefully enough might expose something he's missed. At a distance, he realizes that he's never been the best person for offering support. Never been the best type of friend to much of anyone, and only by the good graces of fate has he found people over the years who've been as loyal as his are. It's a fact often forgotten in the moment, when he takes people for granted, when he assumes they'll stay, even through his tirades and flights of fancy— but here, with the world calm around them and the oceans smooth ahead, he sees it in greater relief.

Decides to stay, see if he can't set things right, even if it only ends up being for a day.

"Sure," he replies belatedly, as though he hasn't already sat himself down, and glances at her from the side. "You don't look like hell, just to make that clear. But you look like you're going through it. No offense."

The statement, given as starkly as he has just now, receives a sweep of a tongue over his lips before he looks away again, and out over the water. "Something going on?"

Truthfully, she breathes an inner sigh of relief when he finally decides to join her, but it isn't so much at needing the company as it is being more comfortable with having someone else on her level as opposed to towering over, looming over in her periphery and casting the kind of shadow to block out the sun that would create a chill if her arms were bare. Instead, she curls into her jacket a little more, hunching her shoulders and flipping up the collar at another slow breeze, her arms sliding over her front in a small self-embrace until he comments on her appearance and a small chuckle escapes her, despite her attempts to keep her expression neutral.

"God, you don't waste any time, do you?" she replies, but her voice doesn't carry any bite, and she doesn't mean for it to. She takes another hit, holds the smoke in for a beat and then exhales. It's only visible some inches away from her mouth before the wind takes it away.

"I keep thinking about all those toys we burned. Pretty fucked-up, right?" she adds, pinching the joint between her fingers and turning it, wordlessly offering it to him.

I find myself staring at her. You know, I don't want to place too much weight into it, I don't want to make you think like she's this person who I can't keep my gaze away from or something like that. Yeah, sure, she's got a pretty face— but she's also got the face of Wardo's girlfriend, so I can tell you exactly how much that matters. Which is, preferably, not at all.

Realistically, it's probably something that would normally send me turning in the other direction. But she keeps me around in spite of it. Because of who she is.

And when she tells me that I don't waste any time, like she's expecting it, I feel myself smile for a second. I guess this is what they mean when they say it's like someone knows you.

"Didn't think wasting time would do either of us any good," Mark replies with a raise of a shoulder, a casual movement, quick to the eyes. His eyes linger on the blunt, the smoke that the breeze carries away, like it was never meant to be hers at all, and his attention barely pulls away in time to catch her words.

"You're thinking about more than that," he accuses, even though the tone is light. "I mean, I hope you are, anyway. I get that Chucky isn't something any of us want to have become reality, but I also took you for some pretty stern stuff."

She almost has to laugh at his remark, the truth of it surprising her into a reaction she hasn't exactly planned for, a small chuckle followed by a duck of her head as she shakes it, the breeze blowing pieces of hair into her face that she doesn't bother to push away right then. Columbus would be reaching over to do it for her if he was here right now. He totally gets off on that chivalrous shit like tucking a girl's hair behind her ear, but the way he does it is almost reverent, not out of some ulterior motive of moving it so he can stick his tongue in her mouth.

And then she starts to wonder if there's anyone, anyone at all that she'd actually let close enough to even attempt something like that, and the reality of it socks her all over again when more than one name comes to mind.

"It never used to be this way," she admits, almost distantly, and when he doesn't reach out to take the blunt she tucks it back into her fingers, looking down at it, looking right through it and past the end of her feet, swaying lightly, down to the water below. "Never had to bother even thinking about people, not anyone - nobody except me and her, and we really ever only needed each other, anyway."

They aren't precisely the same situations, the ones that Wichita and Mark are facing right now. Not precisely. But that doesn't stop Mark from letting his gaze linger, on the fact that she's out here not thanks to the nerves, not thanks to the frustration of how limited this island is, but instead in want of a person. Breaking eye contact, he thinks of his own family, the family that he manages to be far closer to than most people would expect. With a small breath, carefully masked, he tilts his head and continues to watch her, again. There's very little that's in his power on the island; returning home isn't one of them, nor getting other people there. Even trying to predict departure dates leaves him with ranges so varied than he can't even manage to get an estimate accurate to a month, let alone a day.

But he can, at least, listen. Reason. Things that don't require far too much sentiment, as it were.

"I don't know if it's good to pin all of your hopes on... a single person," Mark admits, his gaze wandering from side to side. "I mean, tempting. Definitely tempting. But I mean, even you can see how futile it is. Most of us aren't made to live so close to people without liking someone along the way, I guess."

He pauses, then adds, more quietly. "But I'm sorry. I bet you miss her."

"It's not that," Wichita blurts out, feeling the need to clarify even as another part of her brain starts to scream at her. She shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't allow herself to even be concerned over whether or not she needs to offer him the truth. There was a time when it wouldn't have mattered. Either she and her sister would be focused on moving on, sticking together (no outsiders) or he would've been dead before she'd ever met him, killed long before by zombies or whatever else went hand-in-hand with the end of the world. It says something that even the thought of it happening is enough to tie her stomach in knots, unsettling to the point that it almost starts to make her feel dizzy, and she looks over at him only after she thinks she's calmed. Key word: thinks.

"I miss her, obviously," she adds, because it isn't a question of that, not really. There are times when she misses her sister enough that it feels like she can't breathe. "It's everyone else, people that never used to matter, never should've. It was easier then, simple. Safer, probably, for everyone involved."

I can't say that my situation falls exactly in line with her own. I mean, I think I understand what she's saying. I think I get it. I'm fortunate enough to have the unconditional love of about half a dozen people, and probably uncompromising love from dozens more now that I am who I am, so it's never really been about me and one other person. Still, I think I get it. How it's easier to hang yourself on the welfare of those closest to you. The more people you let in, the more of a burden it becomes. You're not used to it, caring. You're not sure what to do when caring isn't enough.

I don't know if it's the stuffed animals that made her think of this, but maybe I get it. Kinda.

Maybe that justifies the impulse I have to reply.

"Because things were so dangerous. Because another person in the group meant another few seconds that you couldn't focus on everyone else, and in that kind of situation, I guess that ends up being make or break," Mark muses, a somber tone to his voice, and the slight edge of disbelief that comes every single time Mark tries to remember the desolation that Wichita came from. The type of city that he can't even see in the dustiest corners of his mind, reserved for wild stories and adventures written on the leaves of a book. "Even when it isn't really do or die, though, I get it. Caring for people is. Tiring. But then again, you seem pretty made for it."

Pausing, he adds, "Or maybe I'm biased. Three sisters."

"Yeah." She looks up, over at him, sweeping strands of hair out of her face with her fingertips, her expression equal parts surprised and grateful that he seems to get it, understands the whole situation. There's a part of you that has to shut down when you're facing the end of the world. Emotions get you killed, or worse - and she'd seen what happens to people who wound up bit, or scratched, and she knows it is worse than dying. It's why she'd made the pact with her sister - the one they'd based the loose con around, managed to pull off several times in quick succession - that if one of them ever got bit, the other would know what to do. Maybe that explains why she'd been able to summon up such convincing tears in the midst of pretending her sister had been bit, because she'd known the reality of the situation wouldn't have been much different.

"I'm not used to this," she adds, faintly, abruptly, turning her face away, taking another hit when she starts to feel her shoulders tense up again. She's smiling when she looks back, mostly at his side admission. "You? Really?"

"Didn't say you were used to it. Said you were made for it," Mark reminds her quickly, arching his brow, half-tempted to reach out and bump a fist against her shoulder, only the movement seems like it'd be trying too hard. (Maybe he is trying too hard, he someitmes thinks to himself, with a girl who isn't his to flirt with, a girl who isn't at all attainable in the long run. She's got a boyfriend who knows her well, and even if they broke up, seems like it'd just be asking for trouble if anything happened. He attempts to remind himself that.)

(Really attempts.)

"But yeah, three sisters. So, you know. Getting lost in my own world, namely that of the laptop, probably wasn't that much of a stretch. Better than trying to follow their reasoning as they obsessed about their Barbie dolls and the like. Though, they're cool. Divergent interests aside, I get along pretty well with all of them."

"Is it, though?" she replies, and she has every intention of it sounding teasing in response, but it comes out a little less so, to the point where she scoffs at the truthfulness behind the rhetorical question. She's wearing the joint down to next to nothing, but it doesn't stop her from drawing from it again, one last time, before she's down to pinching the remainders between her fingertips. It's quality shit, Murray-grade, and she'll be damned if she's going to waste a single ounce of it, but what it's supposed to be doing a good job of doing isn't working at all. It's failing spectacularly, matter of fact, and she flicks the remnant away, down into the water, where it floats for a split second and then sinks.

It's easier for her to talk about him. It's always simpler to bring up the topic of someone who isn't her, and she latches onto it eagerly, swiveling to face him, smiling slowly as he provides a little more detail. "You mean they never suckered you into playing Barbies with them? Not even once?" she prompts, her grin looser now. If the weed gives her nothing else, it gives her that, at least.

He watches her for every minute detail, the way she doesn't flinch from the heat of the joint, the way that the ash crumbles between her fingers, the color of it streaked across her skin. It's not always one's facial expression that shows their emotions, after all. It comes in the way that they walk, in the way they carry their weight, and for all that Wichita's able to smile at him now, try to shrug everything else like it's nothing at all, it continues to strike him as an act. Question is whether or not he wants to pry under it. There's a part of him that wants to try, his mother's voice sounding from some indistinct point, nosing into his affairs, forcing him to hammer them out with as much diligence as a masseuse kneading into the knots of his shoulders. He always felt better for that, the subtle mental beating and deconstruction.

But not everyone is him, and so he takes a few seconds' pause before turning to her with a soft grin. "I don't get easily zuckered into things," he remarks with a quirk of his brow, before the smile passes some. "But honestly, Wichita, I don't think you have to feel guilty. And I know that it's going to feel hard. You're making an adjustment, and a couple of joints won't fix that for long. If you want to talk through it, I can throw rationale at you until your head spins. Or you can promise that you'll try to trust me when I say that you're doing fine. Better than you think."

"Oh, no, you didn't just say that," she groans out loud, but the degree to which that phrase amuses her, the ease with which she smiles in response before her mood sinks again and she tampers it back down, is something that surprises her for a beat or two, to the point where she dwells in it longer than maybe she should. She's had every excuse to be carefree here, to avoid anything resembling responsibility aside from the classes she's elected to go to - hell, it's expected to a certain extent. And before, it was rare that she laughed, rare that she even smiled and meant it, even rarer that she experienced a tightness in her chest that she couldn't begin to describe.

She knows he'd be willing to talk this subject into the ground if she gave him an inch, and he'd probably be one of the first people to tell her that she isn't crazy for trying to enjoy herself and for caring, for worrying when the bomb falls and she has to think about where everyone else was standing. Maybe she can trust them. Maybe she can trust all of them. Maybe she's tired of lying. And maybe she's still opening herself up to more pain and disappointment than she's prepared for. Then again, it still beats dying via evisceration.

"Krista," she murmurs, so softly that even she isn't sure she's said it at this point. She flips her hair back over her shoulder, tossing her head slightly to flick more out of her eyes when the breeze starts up again. It's a name that means nothing to her now, but she still wants him to know it.

He's not sure what to say at first. He catches the name, so quiet that he wonders if it's his own imagination running on overdrive, but the look on her face is what tells him otherwise, tells him that what hangs between the two of them now isn't silence. It's a secret, one held close to her chest, that now suddenly breaks away and makes itself known to him. And he's overwhelmed in the wake of it, feeling his breath grow strangely shallow. His hand moves, shifts just a touch where it rests on his knee, and although he doesn't know to acknowledge it as such, there's a pull on Mark's end that tells him that he should embrace her. Now. That he should mold himself into normalcy, not leave quiet hanging in the air.

But he can't, because that's not him. Instead, he just surveys her, presses his lips tightly together, and resolves to keep this secret for her, too.

"Krista," he nods. "It's a pretty name. Suits you."

She doesn't have to tell him, and she doesn't know why she has. There's no big moment, no second of revelation where she's overwhelmed by needing to tell him before it becomes too much to continue keeping this secret. Then again, once the name is out, she doesn't experience any great loss afterwards. It's a name that means less and less to her as each day passes, each day that she leaves her old life behind and keeps walking into this new one - and it's a changing journey made all the more dramatic now that she's been completely uprooted into a world that doesn't carry a single remaining shred of her old life. Zombieland wasn't a life. Not really. But Columbus was there, and he'd made it bearable. He's here too, and no amount of talking about it will ever make her feel like she's being grateful enough, but now there are others, and some she feels like she owes this to more than others. She draws in a breath, then sighs, shrugging casually.

"It suits me about as much as a pink frilly dress would," she replies, giving him a look. She knows what he means by it, though, and the smirk on her face implies that much.

"Never did understand why they say that redheads can't wear pink," Mark admits, cocking his head to the side, as though trying to picture her in any shade of pink, laced or frilled to the nines. It's not half as hard as he expects it to be, which draws his lips into an amused grin. The easiest part of the whole picture to see in his mind is the unamused expression of her face, somewhere between a scowl and a tiredly tolerant glare. "If we're talking about distance on the spectrum of the rainbow, it's not like red and pink differ any more than blue and aqua, lime and yellow. But I guess that's why Wardo made a crack about me once, about how I was kind of the last person to speak on fashion."

His voice falls quiet for half a second, but he presses on, because if there's anything that he'd hate more than being at odds with Eduardo, it's being at odds and having the world know.

It's just none of their business.

"Anyway, don't you take ballet? Isn't that a part of the prerequisite? Learn ballet, tolerate the starched frilly tutu."

"Okay, don't even act like you're thinking about it right now. I've seen that look on your face before, I know when those wheels are turning," Wichita declares, eyes narrowing slightly as her mouth falls open in a small look of protest. She doesn't have to take significant advantage of their proximity to lean over and nudge his arm with hers, but she does, a slight jostling of her elbow against his own before she settles back into her own space with a small roll of her eyes. There's nothing mordant in her voice or expression, not beyond the surface level, and by the time she starts listening to his color analysis, any remnants of potential annoyance are gone completely.

"Please. You should know that ballet is not strictly limited to frilly tutus. Some of us go with the black leotard and eighties leg warmers look," she adds, chin tipping up in a mock-haughty defiance.

"If I wasn't thinking about it before, you've sealed the envelope," Mark informs Wichita with a quick shake of his head, a laugh just waiting on his lips, even as it gets lost in all of the frenetic movement. It comes undone at last, when her elbow bumps against his, a chuckle that falls under his breath as he arches a brow in her direction. "And now you've done it. Jostled me just enough that my imagination's gone on hyperdrive. Never thought I'd be able to picture so much pink and frills and taffeta in one go."

He leans back, one more attempt at trying to see her cope with pink— he can see magenta, actually, but probably nothing powder pink— before he remarks, "Besides, black leotard and eighties leg warmers is jazz, isn't it? I was always under the impression that's why the two types of dances were formed. Some people got tired of the pointe, the pink, and the tutus."

She raises a disbelieving eyebrow at his decisive categorizing, giving him another nudge. "You know, you might be one of the smartest people I know, but when it comes to dance fashions, you are so close-minded." A part of her can't believe they're even having this conversation - something so casual, almost so trivial. Six months ago, she might've talked about something like this to distract herself from a tense moment, to take her sister's mind off of being in a dangerous situation. Maybe. The reality is that it'd be pushing it a little bit, talking about dance.

"Jazz, ballet, tap, modern, interpretative, whatever. You can't just categorize ballet as frilly skirts and pointe shoes. I mean, obviously there's pointe shoes, but that takes someone with greater training than I've got," Wichita points out, shrugging. She's seen one or two girls doing just that at the studio, though she figures they were probably dancing long before the island plucked them up. "Besides, you don't see the guys wearing tutus."

"You have to realize that about eighty percent of the dance that I've been exposed to over the years is through Dance Dance Revolution. Or, well, that recent stint here with the internet also exposed me to Microsoft's Kinect, which seems pretty cool and has a better dance game, but they're still all games. So." Mark shrugs helplessly, a small smile on his lips as he tries to run through each one of the dances proposed by Wichita, finding that he doesn't have a mental image for each. "Interpretive dance makes even less sense to me. The point's to tell a story, but I don't really see how any other dance doesn't do the exact same. As far as I know, all ballets come with their own story."

He shrugs.

"It's just not a very intuitive naming system. Modern won't be modern in a few decades. Tap makes the most sense, but can't you also tap dance to jazz music?" He breaks into a brief laugh, amazed at the current topic of conversation— it's not one he might've had the patience for with anyone else.

"Nerd alert," Wichita counters, in a soft sing-song before flashing a quick grin in succession. She knows his recent exposure to the internet means he probably caught up on all kinds of new inventions, flashy upgrades or whatever else, but when she refers to him as such, there's no mean intent behind the words, just a complete and genuine disbelief that they're even having this kind of conversation right now. There is a part of her now, however small, that's been curious about expanding her knowledge to some of those other forms of dance since she joined the ballet class - her original intent was to improve on her overall clumsiness, for starters - but that's something that she might not ever voice to anyone until she's signing up for the classes in question.

"We're thinking way too much about this," she sighs, giving him another brief jostle with her elbow. "Point being: ballet is not tutu-exclusive. Mind blown yet?"

He's been called a nerd countless times in the past, even learned to accept it for the compliment that it holds, for the pride that he's allowed to have even in things like this, which so often come at the cost of being social. Of learning the norms. Of adhering to them. Even though his brand of nerd doesn't hold a regular schedule and instead spends all their time browsing the internet and inevitably improving upon their WPM, the way that Wichita jibes doesn't make it seem like a bad thing, nor does it threaten the way his chest seems to expand at the thought of all the thought and innovation between the walls in Palo Alto. Sometimes, Mark Zuckerberg likes who he is, and what he's done. It's not even necessarily a majority of the time, and especially not as of late, given all that's happened.

But he feels good today, and he knows that he can thank her for that.

"Mind totally blown," he nods in earnest. "It'll be tough to beat this particular revelation. You've outdone yourself."

She's momentarily relieved when he doesn't take offense to her words. In general, she's not overly concerned about whether ot not she offends someone, but over time, new exceptions to the unwritten rule have showed up, not the least of which is the guy sitting next to her. It's one of the reasons why she's out here in the first place, sucking down a joint and trying to calm her nerves - it's just further proof of the fact that she seems to care now if she hurts anyone, or if anyone winds up hurt even if she's not directly involved. The reality closes around her heart like a hand squeezing tight and she clears her throat quietly, forcing a faint smile.

"Well, feel free to come on over if you're ever in need of any future enlightenment," she replies, legs resuming their absent kicking. "Always happy to provide."

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