The Other Side

by Joshua McCune

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He is,” she says. “Olivia would approve. I wouldn’t tell your father, though.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Two weeks ago. The stem-cell therapy is helping. He can form simple words now.”

  “He’s gotten my letters?”

  She nods. “You’re all he wants to talk about. You and Sam.”

  “Does he know? About Sam and that show?”

  She flattens the pleats on her skirt and frowns. “He wasn’t thrilled. None of us were, but it’s what Sam wanted.”

  “You know they’re doing the same thing to him that they did to me.”

  “I don’t think so, Mel.”

  I tell her about the CENSIR I saw.

  “He calls every week,” she says. “He seems happy. He feels like he’s making a difference.”

  They let him call? “They must be manipulating him.”

  She takes my hand between hers. “He volunteered, dear. For that CENSIR thing, for the show, for all of it.”

  No, no, no. Not Sam. “Did he even read my letters?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  For as long as I can remember, Sam played at hunting insurgents and dragons. Now he’s doing it for real.

  And I’m on the other side.

  15

  Aunt Sue says Sam calls every Tuesday around noon. I have one day to figure out what to say to him. Sitting at the desk in his room, surrounded by his Kissing Dragons posters, I run through draft after draft, then open the letters I’d sent him, looking for inspiration.

  “He was a big fan?” Colin says, startling me.

  I look over my shoulder. He’s staring at the near life-size poster of L.T., the newest of the fab four. Colin sets a tray with a sandwich and bottled water on the side of the desk I’ve been stationed at since morning.

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I say.

  He rubs my shoulders. I tense. He lets go. “I don’t think this is a good idea, but I’m done trying to talk you out of it.”

  Everybody tried to talk me out of it. Aunt Susan thought it would upset me; Uncle T believed it could endanger Sam; Colin, pulling me aside, warned that Sam could betray me to the authorities, hinted that I was jeopardizing the safety of my aunt and uncle.

  They’re all right, of course, but I have to do something. He’s my little brother. I need him to be my little brother again.

  Colin returns sometime later with a plate of spaghetti. “You need to eat.”

  “Later.”

  “Your aunt and uncle should be back soon,” he says. “Any luck?”

  “You’re right, this is stupid.” The sun’s setting on another page of hollow words, paper-ripping strikethroughs, and rampant doodles. I add it to my collection of uselessness and stare out the window at the black-brick dormitories across the street.

  “It’s not stupid, Melissa. Caring is never stupid.”

  I wad up the first letter I sent Sam, in which I apologized for the mess I’d made.

  “The last time we talked was during the interview.” Kissing Dragons: The Other Side. The posters taunt me with their presence, but I’ve yet to tear them down because they remind me of him. “I remember his last words. ‘You don’t talk to me.’ He was so angry. I didn’t mean to ruin his life, Colin. I just want to make things better, but I don’t know how.”

  “I can talk to him. Soldier to soldier.”

  “That’s nice, but he doesn’t know you from Adam.”

  Colin inhales, blows out a long breath, then knocks on the poster of Frank behind him. The rugged Kissing Dragons leader stands in the foreground, arms akimbo, legs spread. A dragon-slaying superhero. A tied-up Red lies in the background. The three other A-Bs crouch around it. Colin’s finger extends to the one wearing the cowboy hat.

  “I should have told you this earlier. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  I brace. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are many rules critical for a successful dragon hunt,” Colin recites the show’s famous tagline, dropping into that Southern accent. Thicker this time. I know that voice. I hate that voice.

  I get up, leaving my hands on the desk because my legs feel weak, and work my way to the bed. Dad bought Sam the Frank poster for his eleventh birthday. Sam had wanted J.R., the young cowboy who dashed into dragon battle with more bravery than sense, but Mom hated him most, so she and Dad compromised.

  J.R. I always assumed they were initials, but in Dillingham, in the delirium of waking from anesthesia, Colin had mentioned something about “Junior.”

  In the picture, Junior’s too small to make out his face, but I remember him well from my stay in the quarantine cell, where they tortured me with an endless loop of Kissing Dragons episodes.

  I squint at Colin, wondering whether he hid behind CGI or makeup. J.R. had had a Wyatt Earp mustache, a scar on his chin, and a darker complexion. I don’t remember the eyes because he wore his hat low—part wrangler, part rogue—but I do remember the accent, how much it grated on my nerves.

  “You died,” I mumble. “Season two. Episode thirty. The Scarlet Scourge killed you.” Fake. Everything’s fake. I almost let myself believe, too.

  “I wanted to tell you—”

  “Get out.” I suck in a hitching breath. “Get out!”

  After he leaves, I sit on the bed, arms around knees, rocking myself, closing my eyes tight to the tears.

  “Melissa?”

  I open my eyes, wipe away the wetness. Aunt Susan’s lowering the blackout blinds. The clock on the wall reads 8:15, an hour since the light went away. “Your father’s here,” she says.

  That’s right. She and Uncle T went to get him. Life goes on. I get to my feet. Aunt Susan takes my hand. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I mumble. “Do you have some makeup? I don’t want Dad to see me like this.”

  She leads me into her bathroom and pulls out her box of supplies. I blow my nose with a tissue she offers. “Why do boys suck, Aunt Sue?”

  “It’s their nature. What happened?”

  I tell her as she helps me fix my mess of a face.

  “That must have been hard for him to admit,” she says.

  I give a bitter laugh. “That’s something Mom would say. Or this grumpy dragon I know.”

  “He should have told you a long time ago, Melissa. Don’t pucker.” She glides a stick of Crimson Fire along my lips. “He does not strike me as a coward, though.”

  “No. I’ve never seen him scared of anything.”

  “So why not tell you about this?”

  I blot my lips on a tissue. “Because he was embarrassed. Because he’s been trained by the military to be secretive.” She waits. “Maybe because he knew they tortured me with the show and he knew I’d hate him if I found out.”

  She touches the tip of my nose, the way she did when I played guessing games with her as a little girl. “And yet he still told you.”

  “Can we stop? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Yes you do. If you had a choice, would you rather admit a dark secret to a stranger or someone you love?”

  I pull back. “Love?” The word hums in my brain, painful and persistent.

  “You should see the way he looks at you.”

  “I have.”

  “Then you know I’m right.”

  “Did I mention that I killed his sister? That reconditioned girl in those vids. Have you seen them?”

  “Horrible things we do to each other in the name of victory. History repeats itself not because we forget it, but because of who we are,” she says.

  “Is that what you teach your students?”

  “I try not to be so bleak. It’s bleak enough out there without the truth getting in the way.” She applies concealer. “Does he know?”

  “I told him.” Only after several weeks, only when I wanted him to leave me alone. But he didn’t. He never left me alone. I measure Aunt Susan’s curious smile and struggle ag
ainst the emotion. “You think I’m a silly girl, don’t you?”

  “That is our nature. Life would be so tedious if we weren’t,” she says with a gentle laugh. “Your uncle Travis is probably boring your father to death with stories about his writing, and it’s about time we saved him.”

  If not for my hair, I’d look halfway pretty. “You have something to cover this monstrosity?”

  She returns with a gray flat cap and tugs it down over my ears.

  I smile at my reflection. “I look ridiculous. You think they’ll like it?”

  Grinning, she mouths “They” and hooks her arm through mine. “Always a stunner. I got a little secret for you. Your father’s not going to care. And neither’s that boy of yours.”

  I want to apologize to Colin, want him to see me in a somewhat presentable state, but the door to his room is closed, and I’ve kept Dad waiting too long. I spot Dad two steps from the bottom of the stairs. Goose bumps break out across my arms, and my throat tightens.

  “Look who we’ve got here,” Uncle Travis says, waving at us from his position on the living-room piano bench. “The two most beautiful women in the world.”

  Dad rotates around, using a mouth tube to control the chair. His arms hang limp in his lap; his legs dangle on the footboards, skinny and crooked. But his eyes, oh, God, his eyes, they find me and they widen, and his lips move too, ever so slightly, but up in a hint of a smile.

  “Mel, Mel,” he says, a croak, but his voice, his glorious voice.

  Three quick strides, and I’m hugging him.

  “Dad,” I whisper, smearing makeup and tears on his U of M sweatshirt. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “You look good,” he says with some effort after I let go. I leave my palm on his cheek and sit at the edge of the recliner so that his face fills my vision.

  “I feel good,” I say, and laugh when I realize it’s true.

  “Trav says you have friend,” he says. “I want to meet him.”

  I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand and kiss him on the cheek. “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I race up to Uncle T’s office. I knock, but nobody answers. “Colin, I’m sorry.”

  No response.

  I turn the knob, expecting it to be locked, but when it gives, worry creeps over me. I push the door open to a depressing darkness. I flip on the light to a more depressing emptiness. Atop the folded blankets on the couch, beside the rolled-up sleeping bag and the pillow that looks unused, I discover a note, scrawled on an FBI-emblazoned notepad.

  Melissa, you know how much I hate running away, and I apologize for that. There are things I want to tell you, but I’m not sure how without making you hate me. I wish I had the strength to walk tall and speak the hard words loudest, as my father taught me. I must figure out how to make things right, if such a thing is possible.

  Please thank your aunt and uncle for me. When you talk to your brother, trust that beautiful heart of yours. You will always be in mine,

  Colin

  That night, after the curfew speakers quiet and the lights go off and I finish the bottle of Korbel’s on the office couch, I unroll his sleeping bag. I curl around the pillow and wrap myself in the blankets.

  Images of bodies falling into a ditch rage in my dreams. I am the gravedigger, forced to pull off hoods from the faces of the dead. Mom. James. Allie. And now Colin’s gone to sleep, too.

  I wake drenched in sweat. After toweling off with the blankets, I scavenge the house for more alcohol, find nothing but a case of beer by the sideboard. Warm and nasty. Fighting my gag reflex, I down two cans in quick succession.

  I stumble back to the office. The room spins a moment, and I’m vomiting. While drinking another beer, rambling to a rudely unresponsive Grackel, I clean the mess. I roll up the blinds, unlatch the window, and toss the towels onto the roof to cool off. The sleeping bag reeks of barf and liquor. I attempt to push it out the window, too, but can’t make it fit.

  I drag it outside and hurl it onto the lawn. I sit on the porch and drink. I return inside for another beer and a sweatshirt. When I come back out, I kneel beside the sleeping bag and sniff at it, imagining myself a determined bloodhound.

  Unable to locate a scent other than mine, I point myself in the direction of the highway and walk. The shadows of trees loom over me, the purr of distant wind and unseen drones accompanying my trek.

  I run out of beer and toss the can into a gutter, then the sleeping bag. A minute or thirty later, the dragons come, breathing fire and vengeance.

  The hallucination passes. I dig into my pants for Dad’s letter, but find only Colin’s note. Blubbering his name, I search for the sleeping bag without success.

  Lost, I return home.

  16

  The trill of the phone sends my heartbeat into apoplectic overdrive. I fold Colin’s note along the well-formed creases, jam it into my pocket, and head for the kitchen. Aunt Sue, phone pressed to her ear, waves me over to the table where Dad sits.

  I didn’t want him or anybody here for my conversation with Sam, but after Aunt Sue found me this morning passed out in the foyer, she insisted, and I was in no condition to argue.

  I take the empty chair that faces the tablet screen.

  “You linked in, Sam?” Aunt Sue says. My image pops up in the screen corner. I bite into my lower lip, furrow my eyebrows, loosely clench my jaw, trying to adopt an expression that conveys love, but I come off looking ill and constipated.

  A bright light draws my attention to the larger box on the tablet. It fades, and Sam’s face appears. For a moment, he’s my little brother again, but then his smile drops and the soldier from the video is staring at me, a statue carved of loathing. A statue with a CENSIR on his head.

  An hour ago, I settled on a script for different scenarios, most revolving around this reaction, but I cannot remember a word of it.

  “Hi, Sam. I’ve missed you,” I whisper without breathing.

  Silence. Infinite.

  “Say hi, Sam,” Dad says.

  Sam’s green eyes narrow a hair more, his thinned lips purse to near vanishing. “What do you want?” His voice is deeper than I remember. Harder, like the rest of him.

  “Are you okay?”

  Sam glances over his shoulder. “I need to go.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “You’re putting everybody in danger,” he says. “Nothing new for you.”

  “Sam,” Dad says.

  “And you dare use Dad as sympathy bait.”

  “Sam-uel All-en Call-a-han,” Dad sputters, drawn and slow.

  “Dad, please,” I say. He grumbles something unintelligible and speeds from the room.

  “What do you want, traitor?” Sam asks.

  “Sam, don’t—” Aunt Sue begins, but I wave her off.

  I feel at the scar under my tufts of hair. “They’re not hurting you, are they?”

  He snorts. “You think talking to dragons makes us special?”

  “No. I need to know you’re okay, Sam. Please.”

  He continues, not hearing me, or not caring. “We’re freaks of nature, Melissa.” He taps his CENSIR twice, hard. “This is our protection against their infection, and I will wear it until every last one of them is dead.”

  “What about Mom?” I say. “Was she a freak?”

  “Mom was misguided.” His features soften for the briefest moment. Then back to stone. “Look what happened to her.”

  “The dragons didn’t kill her, Sam. You know that.”

  “What I know,” he says, glowering at something offscreen, “is that without dragons, Mom would be alive, Dad wouldn’t be quaded in a chair, and you wouldn’t be on our hit list.”

  I remove the tablet from its stand, jerk it close, and peer into the camera. “Would you do it? Line me up and pull the trigger? Look at me, Sam. You know who I am. Dammit, look at me! Would you do it?”

  He glances up, eyes brimming with wet conviction. “In a heartbeat.”

  The scr
een goes black. I lay down the tablet and slump into the chair, hyperventilating.

  Aunt Sue squeezes my shoulder. “You tried, Melissa.”

  “I told myself I wouldn’t get upset. I meant to tell him I love him. No matter what happened, I promised myself I’d tell him that.”

  “He knows you do. Deep down, he knows the courage it took.”

  “Courage? I never feel brave,” I say. “Scared and sad top my list.” Courage isn’t even in the small print.

  “That’s what courage is, dear. Acting in spite of your emotions, not because of them.”

  I laugh so I won’t cry. “Philosophy 101?”

  “No. Your mother taught me that.”

  I leave immediately. Aunt Sue and Dad plead with me to stay, but it’s too dangerous now. Would Sam report them for harboring me? Would he give me up to the authorities? I’m not sure which hurts more, the fact that I don’t know the answer to those questions, or the look on Dad’s face as I pull out of the driveway.

  Figuring my way out of Ann Arbor keeps me distracted, but once I reach the interstate, I can’t hold back the tears. It wouldn’t be so bad if I were driving a different car, but the Prius has too many memories.

  We went on our family vacations to the Shenandoahs in this car. We drove to Arlington National Cemetery for Mom’s service in this car. We moved from Virginia to Kansas to start over in this car.

  We had more important conversations in this car, Dad and I, than anywhere else, because that’s when he had time to talk. We discussed dragons and Mom and my sessions with the grief therapist.

  I learned how to drive in the parking lot of Mason-Kline High in this car, Dad at my side, ever encouraging even as he held on to the now-faded door handle for all it was worth, even after I sideswiped a chain-link fence when I swerved to avoid a squirrel. I remember the excitement of getting my driver’s license, and how it was quickly tempered by my new role as chauffeur.

  Take Sam to his track meet. Take Sam to the movies. Take Sam to school. For a period of three months, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having a younger brother.