Who was he to speak to her like that? Who was he to put it so plainly? If she didn't know any better, she'd say that he was dead, too. He didn't have time for bullshit or lies. If there was one thing that Laura was always interested in, it was the truth. There just weren't many living people who shared that same interest.
If she had been able to, she would have flushed at his question about how she knew so much about zombies. "I've done a great deal of thinking about it since I've been existing like this. I used to try to think of something to call myself, and zombie kept cropping up, and it made me mad. That word is so...stupid. I'm not like that. So I made a list of all the ways that zombies and I are not the same. And that's what I just told you. Also, I loved horror movies when I was alive. I don't think that there's a single one that I missed. I watched good ones, bad ones, ones from all over the world. I watched them alone and with people. Maybe that's one of the things that made me fearless. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I've never questioned being like this. It was in a movie. What's so weird about it actually happening somewhere? One of my favorite things to do that first year that Shadow was in prison was to sit down with a bottle of whiskey and a good stack of horror movies and waste the night. It's been a long time since I slept well."
Her brows furrowed slightly at his remark about L. Was that really how it sounded to an outsider? She hadn't talked to anyone other than Sarah about it, and Laura had never been famous for having female friends in life. Audrey was about it. She'd always gotten on better with the opposite sex. Guys had always made better friends. In the end, she'd been closer to Robbie than to Audrey. That was the tragic truth. But to hear it like that, it made her uncertain. Feelings weren't something she was good at, and only powerful ones got through. To have one brought into question, then, after she'd made an attempt at figuring out what it was, was difficult at best.
"I don't know," she said plainly. "I don't know how I love him. I just know that I feel strongly. The coin works differently for a living person. It'll keep you alive and young forever if you're already living. It'll make you just short of a god. But it's better if I stay with him, I've thought. After all, it's not like many people would be open to having a dead woman hanging around at all hours. It's not like there's many living people who'd be willing to let me touch them, cold and clammy as I am. To put it frankly, the dating scene sucks. And I'm not getting any younger." She chuckled softly. "Then again, if I could just find that damn bottle of water that was in my pack back in the shop, I could be right as rain. I could be beautiful. I could be lifelike, even for a little while."
When he said that she had a beautiful face, she almost couldn't look at him. How could she think that he was someone who dealt in truth? His remark confused her. "I was beautiful," she said, her monotone voice possessing a bit of a deeper, more quiet sound to it. It was Laura's remembering voice. "I was beautiful, and I was sexy. I was vibrant, and lively, and I was fun and hopeful." She stopped walking for a moment. It was happening again, the memories. They usually came in waves when they were her own. It was sad that it was easier for her to have other people's memories of late. "I'm older now, wiser now, more certain now," she murmured, "but I've lost so much in the fall."