A Million Miles Away

by Lara Avery

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  To my brother, Dylan

  You know you’re in

  The choicest of spots,

  When, staring out the window,

  You feel a gaping void wheeze

  Inside you. Bang, bang, bang,

  Flounders a bluebird against

  The plate glass. Slap, slap,

  Thump, drops the sad truth

  Through your bones. So there

  It all is.

  —Alex Lemon, from “And the Wing Sings Boo,” The Wish Book (Milkweed Editions 2014)

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Cops?”

  “Where are my shoes?”

  “Turn the Beyoncé back up.”

  Just a few blocks from Massachusetts Street, under the branches of century-old oaks, across a yard full of dozing sunflowers, silence fell over a peach-colored house with a wide porch. This was the Maxfield house. It had been the Maxfield house ever since Rob and Melody Maxfield returned from their honeymoon thirty-odd years ago, and filled the rooms with two daughters.

  It was Friday night, and their Subaru was absent from the redbrick driveway. Inside, a hush had fallen over the room, punctuated by the static of girls laughing behind the shoulders of their friends, while plastic cups of Bud Light were emptied and tossed aside.

  Kelsey Maxfield moved through the crowd, holding the sweaty hand of a younger girl not so different from herself when she was that age—no hips, no boobs, body-glittered and hair-sprayed. Kelsey had been the one to turn down the music, and with a reassuring glance back at the nervous girl, who was still wearing her Lycra dance team uniform, she cleared a space around a silver beer keg resting in a bucket of ice.

  “Y’all,” Kelsey yelled. She gave them a Crest-commercial smile.

  Kelsey’s husky voice carried through the house. Her dark eyes changed color in the light from the kitchen. Her hair—not quite blonde, not quite brown—was pulled into a high, tight bun, left over from their halftime performance at the final football game of the season. The younger girl beside her adopted Kelsey’s hand-on-hip pose, following her captain’s lead.

  “Hannah T. here has a proposition.”

  A few catcalls from the male voices.

  “Shut up,” Kelsey said, flipping the bird with a blood-orange nail. “As I was saying, Hannah thinks she can break my keg-stand record. Twenty-four seconds. You know it’s twenty-four, right, Hannah T.?”

  Hannah whooped, and a chant began, building volume.

  “Hannah, Hannah, Hannah…”

  Hannah gripped either side of the keg, while Gillian and Ingrid took her legs.

  “You ready, Hannah?”

  “Ready,” Hannah’s small voice called.

  “Go!”

  Kelsey could picture the beer, flowing steady from the keg into the spout, into Hannah’s mouth, into her stomach, probably full of lasagna and Gatorade from the pregame dinner.

  “Three… four… five…” the onlookers chanted.

  Funny, Kelsey had always been the one to do the first keg stand. She felt kind of nostalgic. They used to count for her.

  But she was a senior now. She was cocaptain of the dance team. She had to be responsible, or, you know, as responsible as possible. She had put the jade Buddha statues from the living room under her bed, pulled down the wooden Venetian blinds, and then called her mom and dad to make sure they wouldn’t be coming home early after another pointless argument with their friends over sauvignon pairings. (All had seemed well, or well enough, on the only vineyard in Central Kansas. They wouldn’t be home until tomorrow afternoon.)

  Kelsey had also promised her sister she would lock her bedroom door. Michelle didn’t want anyone spilling beer on her paintings. But wouldn’t that give them more character? Kelsey always joked. Michelle didn’t find it funny.

  “Ten… eleven… twelve…”

  Oh, shit. She’d forgotten to lock Michelle’s door.

  “Thirteen… fourteen… fifteen…”

  Hannah was really getting up there. Close to Kelsey’s record. Too close. Kelsey looked at Hannah’s concentrated, upside-down face. “You had enough, Hannah T.?”

  Hannah responded by continuing to swallow beer.

  Kelsey knew how to deal with Michelle. She imagined her sister’s fist forming when she saw her sticky stereo equipment. They were a couple of punchers, the two of them. What did their parents expect, making twins share a room most of their lives? No head shots, no kidney shots, but the rest was fair game. The fights usually ended in split lips. It’s how they show affection, their parents had told suspicious teachers when they were younger. It’s healthy.

  “Eighteen… nineteen… twenty…” Shoulder to shoulder, red-faced partygoers crowded the keg, getting louder.

  Kelsey forced herself to chant with them. She started to plan her concession speech. And so the time has come. I must pass the keg-stand mantle.…

  But right at twenty-three seconds, the younger girl lifted a finger, the universal Lawrence High keg-stand symbol for defeat. Guiding Hannah’s skinny legs back down to the floor, Kelsey allowed herself a celebratory swig and a couple of fist pumps.

  “Don’t worry, Hannah,” Kelsey’s cocaptain, Gillian, said. “Kel’s keg-stand record is higher than her ACT score.”

  “Shut up,” Kelsey said. “Nice job, Hannah T.”

  Hannah made an elaborate, tipsy bow, and accepted a glass of water Gillian had gotten her from the sink.

  Ingrid draped a long arm around Kelsey’s neck and spoke in the terrible British accent she always adopted when she had been drinking. “My deah, I see an extremely attractive college fellow in the corner. I believe he belongs to you.”

  Kelsey searched the dim room. Davis’s parted sweep of dark hair was towering above a couple of baseball players and the yearbook editor.

  She could hear snatches of his baritone. “And I was, like, gimme the hammer. You’ve obviously never held a hammer in your life.…”

  Kelsey maneuvered toward him. Michelle’s security emergency could wait.

  Everyone was down here, anyway; even Michelle’s friends, who were standing in the corner, looking like anthropologists studying a youth species from under their asymmetrical haircuts.

  But no Michelle, nor her boyfriend. Not boyfriend. More like object-of-temporary-and-obsessive-lust. Kelsey had even offered to pick Michelle and what’s-his-abs up after the game, but she never answered. Because of him, Michelle didn’t even respond to the Facebook invite for a party at her own house.

  Davis caught Kelsey’s eye, flashed a smile. “And then I walked out of there with a free shelf. Hello.”

  He bent to Kelsey, all other conversations now over.

  “Hello, handsome,” she replied. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. His skin smelled like he’d been partying. “When did you get here?”

  Davis lifted her up and pulled her into a piggyback. “Just now. All the frat row parties were, like, if you don’t have a girl, you can’t come in. So.”

  “Lucky for me!”

  “Lucky for you.” Davis advanced, causing her to accidentally kick a cheerleader or two.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Beer Land!” Davis called.

  Hannah T. st
ood swaying near the keg, sipping water. She looked at Kelsey on Davis’s back, to her arms around his solid chest, and back to Kelsey. “Who is that?”

  Kelsey laughed and took on a late-night radio DJ voice. “My lover.”

  Hannah T. shrugged, half of her mouth lifting in a lazy, incredulous smile. “Why do you have, like, the best life in the world?”

  “She bought it on sale at Sears,” Davis said.

  “Please don’t tell people I shop at Sears.” Kelsey slid down to the floor, winked at Hannah, and gave Davis her Solo cup. “Refill me, please? I have to go do damage control.”

  The sisters’ rooms were a recent addition to the Maxfield house, after Michelle had given Kelsey a bruised rib, fighting over the remote when they were fourteen. As soon as their parents were sure Melody was tenured and Rob’s second restaurant was going to survive, they had knocked off the back upstairs wall and built the girls adjacent dwellings, complete with locks on the doors and a back porch. Kelsey used her side of the deck to tan; Michelle, for drying the hyperreal paintings she did of their neighborhood, perfect replicas except for the colors: Everything was neon or reversed or slightly out of focus. Kelsey didn’t get it, and she liked it that way.

  Once at Michelle’s room, she would have to lock her sister’s door from the inside, exit through her balcony door, and climb through a barrier of small trees that acted as a “fence” between the two sides.

  But when she got to Michelle’s door, it was already locked.

  “Yo!” Kelsey called, banging on the still-unfinished wood.

  No answer. Movement. Laughter. It sounded as though someone was using Michelle’s room as a temporary brothel.

  Kelsey banged on the door again. “Hello! It’s Kelsey.”

  More laughter. Still, the door remained shut.

  “Hey!” Kelsey called. She jiggled the handle.

  Lost cause. This would have to be a rescue mission. She stepped through her own dark room, over piles of discarded leggings and sports bras, and opened the screen door to her side of the deck.

  Light poured onto the wood on Michelle’s side of the porch. Slipping between the trees, Kelsey looked through the glass to see her sister stretched out on the bed. A sandy-haired dude in jeans sat in her desk chair, bent over a book. He was reading aloud.

  Kelsey yanked open the screen. “Oh,” she said loudly. “Interesting.”

  Michelle turned her head, brushing the same lumber-colored hair out of her eyes. “Oh,” she said, echoing Kelsey. “Hey.”

  Michelle’s new boyfriend closed the book and smiled at her. “Wow, you guys really are identical.”

  “Yeah,” Kelsey said, still looking at Michelle. It was probably better she didn’t see his face up close, as she was going to have to forget it anyway. “Come out in the hall for a sec, please.”

  “Okay.” Michelle was doing that thing where she talked and moved slower than necessary just to piss Kelsey off.

  When Michelle emerged, Kelsey closed her sister’s bedroom door with a bang.

  “Is he sleeping over?”

  “Yeah, he has to. He’s on his way to ship out from Fort Riley. Can you believe it?”

  “I don’t know! Why didn’t you respond to my texts?”

  “I was busy.”

  “You could have at least come down and said hi. Some of your townie friends are here—”

  “Hi!” Michelle said, giving Kelsey a double wave. Her dark eyes lit up with fake enthusiasm. Something was different about her sister. She was wearing mascara. Kelsey’s mascara. “Can I go now?”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  “I’m not. Thank you. I’m sorry. Whatever you want to hear. I haven’t seen Peter for two months, and he’s about to be halfway across the world.”

  “So? You’ll just find another, like, film school student or something.”

  Or a Brazilian on KU’s soccer team, Kelsey thought. Or a theater major who looked exactly like a brunette version of Woody Allen, or a record-store employee who had to wear prescription yellow-tinted glasses.

  Kelsey was there for all of them. She knew how to listen politely to Michelle over the dinners their father cooked, as she went on about how each one was “love at first sight,” and to watch her get in their cars after school, sit on their motorcycles, balance on their handlebars. Then, to watch for the silent signals that her sister had stopped caring—the drifting eyes, the legs crossed and recrossed. Last, she would stand on the deck with Michelle, composing the breakup texts for her, because Michelle was terrible at typing anything less than a novel. And then they would walk back to Massachusetts Street, where it would start all over again.

  But none of that had happened with this one. Kelsey shot him a quick glance through the door, his toned, pale arms resting on his knees as he flipped the pages of an Andy Warhol coffee-table book.

  Michelle sighed. “Peter is different. You haven’t been paying attention at all, have you?”

  Gillian came up the stairs and yanked at Kelsey’s arm. “Time to get back. Who’s that?” she said as she glanced through Michelle’s cracked door.

  “Don’t know,” Kelsey said, letting out a snort. “It’s kind of hard to keep track.”

  Suddenly, Michelle’s fist shot out. Right to the solar plexus. Kelsey seized up in pain as Michelle went back into her room. “A soldier, huh? Don’t get syphilis,” Kelsey choked out.

  Kelsey straightened, rubbed her stomach, and made her way back to the party with Gillian.

  “He’s cute,” Gillian said.

  “Whatever.”

  Michelle hadn’t even introduced them.

  On the stairs, Kelsey stopped to survey the crowd congregating around the beer, the coupling off, hands in the air bouncing to the music. Ingrid was doing a handstand against the wall. Davis was surrounded by girls in UGGs. He found her gaze and beckoned.

  Kelsey took another step down. “Hey!” she yelled. Heads turned to behold her tanned arms lifted, her legs silhouetted in tight jeans. The world’s eyes were on her. Well, her world’s eyes, at least.

  “Who wants to see me break my own record?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The party had emptied in the wee hours of the morning, leaving a silence that throbbed through the house, the rooms dotted with red cups. Kelsey woke up next to an openmouthed Davis snoring like the revving of a Vespa, with memories of her drinking beer out of a boot. Shifting his weight, Kelsey kicked past their clothes scattered on the floor. Something smelled like bacon.

  She made her way to the doorway of the kitchen and rubbed her eyes, about to warn Michelle not to burn it like she always did.

  “Bacon” was all she could get out.

  “For you,” a voice said. “Hope that’s okay.”

  Kelsey lifted her head with a start.

  Peter was standing at the stove, eating a bowl of Life cereal. The mysterious Peter. And without a shirt. He was very pale, wasn’t he? But not in a bad way. Kelsey found she was running her fingers through her hair. She stopped, opening the fridge for the orange juice.

  “Hang on,” he said, his voice ringing with tenderness. “I thought you were in the shower.”

  Kelsey straightened. Oh, God. Not him, too. It still happened in the hallways, at Thanksgiving with relatives, at La Prima Tazza when Michelle’s barista friends started making her hot chocolate, as if Kelsey would drink hot chocolate.

  When she could feel him behind her, just inches away, she turned, a pasted smile on her face. “Kelsey,” she said, putting a hand on her chest.

  Peter narrowed his eyes, put a hand to his lips, and sat down at the table. With his mouth full, he looked up at her.

  “You’re not going to believe me, but I realized that a millisecond before you said your name.”

  “You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

  “Let’s pretend it didn’t happen, then. Oh, hi,” he said, tilting his head. “I didn’t see you there. I’m Peter.”

  “Yeah, well. Michelle used to h
ave creepy mermaid hair down to here so it was easier to tell us apart. Then she stole my haircut.”

  She looked at him over the orange juice carton. She was finding it very difficult to keep her eyes off his bare torso, which was lined with muscle but not to the point of excess, as if it were carefully drawn and then erased. Like one of Michelle’s sketches.

  He moved back to the stovetop, glancing at her. “I like your shirt.”

  Kelsey looked down at her braless chest, inscribed with the words MY MOM WENT TO A SHIRT STORE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS SHIRT. Michelle had found it at Wild Man Vintage. She crossed her arms. “Thanks.”

  He picked up a fork and poked at the bacon in the pan. “What do you think?”

  She moved next to him, the smell of the grease simultaneously turning her stomach and making her aware of how very empty it was. “They’re ready to be flipped.”

  As he moved, Kelsey noticed Peter’s forearm was tattooed with the simple black outline of a dove. The symbol of peace. That was ironic.

  “So you’re on your way overseas.”

  “Right.” He looked at her, revealing dark blue eyes. “First to Maine, then from there we get on an air force plane to Afghanistan. I am not excited.” His eyes were sort of sad. “I’m scared as hell, to tell you the truth.”

  “Where in Afghanistan?”

  “They’re not telling us. I’m sure Michelle explained.”

  “Not really,” Kelsey said. “You don’t live here, right?”

  Peter ripped off a paper towel. “Out west. Near the Colorado border. I had a little time after infantry training to see my family, and I figured… Where are the plates?”

  “Cupboard above you.”

  “I figured I would swing by. You don’t know any of this?”

  “We’ve been busy.” Kelsey decided not to go into Michelle’s penchant for attracting lonely souls like pixie flypaper, or the raised eyebrows their parents gave her when she brought another one home. It kind of made sense now, why she didn’t talk about Peter.

  He told her their story as he laid pieces of bacon on paper towels with the same attention one might give to laying a baby in a crib. They’d met at the Granada at an Avett Brothers concert.