by JA Huss
Christ. I feel like I’m in a fucking Jack Reacher book or some bullshit.
“How long are they saying you’re going to be there, though?” Tyler’s standing in front of my bedroom door watching me pack. His arms are crossed. He looks like a sentry guarding the exit. Which, I suppose, he is. I know when it comes time for me to leave in the morning, he’s going to raise holy hell.
“Emily and Ricky argued about that. Ricky’s saying as long as it takes, Emily says that if I don’t have anything useful in two weeks, they should pull me and then I disappear.”
“Disappear? Fuck does that mean?”
“I dunno. Witness protection, I guess? I get the sense that she’s capping it at two weeks because that’s about as long as she was able to keep herself safe with that drug gang that held her captive, and she only feels like she’s got enough tricks to help me keep Carlos at bay for that long.”
I also get that sense that she and Ricky have a little something between them. Nothing I can prove, but the way she argued with him over the phone sounded familiar.
“This is fucking stupid!” Tyler yells. Like I said, familiar. “And so you wind up in witness protection and then what? Do I ever see you again?”
He’s pouting a little, I think. Hard to tell behind the beard, but the voice sounds pouty. I cross over to him and put my hands on his chest.
“What? You won’t come with me?” I ask.
He looks at me, a little surprised. “I’m invited?”
“Of course you’re invited. Don’t be dumb. If I wind up having to spend the rest of my life on the run, I’ll want someone there to go the grocery store for me and shit.”
He laughs a little, and while I do too, I’m also struck by the gravity of this whole thing for the first time. Hard to believe it’s the first time it’s dawning on me that this might result in me never seeing anyone I love again. Which I guess really only consists of my mom and dad. There isn’t anyone else. Except Tyler. Which is still a new concept. That he’s here, I mean. Not that I love him. If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve known I love him for a long time. The fact that he’s here is what’s taking some getting used to. But he is here, and even though it makes me nervous to believe it, it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.
But that’s it. That’s the whole of my world. Hell, I don’t even really see anyone else. I haven’t seen Caroline and Diane for days now. I don’t know if they even still live here. I should poke my head in their rooms to see if their stuff is still there.
God. Have I really been so successful at walling myself off all this time? I guess so. Wow. Well, good for me. I suppose.
“Hey,” Tyler interrupts my thoughts. “Listen, if there’s a possibility we’re just gonna wind up on the lam for the rest of our lives anyway, why go through with this? Let’s just go now. I’ve got enough money to take care of us, and I’ve seen places on the planet where no one would ever find us. We could go to one of those, build a cabin and shit, and I’ll hunt food for us. It’ll be rustic as balls.”
He tugs at my arms, but I pull away. He’s being sweet and charming, and if I let myself I’ll just fall under his spell and take him up on the offer. And that would be the easy way out. And I’ve never been one for doing things the easy way. Which is fine. As long as you’re smart about it. Which I think I am. But which I haven’t been.
“Do you know the difference between hard work and struggle?” I ask him.
“What?”
“Hard work. And struggle. Do you know the difference?”
“Uh, yeah,” he says. “Hard work is, uh, so you’re working and, you know, it’s… hard. And so you do that, but when you struggle you have to, uh… Sorry. No. What’s the difference?”
Dork.
“Hard work,” I tell him, “is when you dig in and roll up your sleeves and you face down a problem. You engage with it and you figure out a way to get around it and even if it’s scary or difficult you do it anyway. I think it was Einstein who said, ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.’ And finding that new level of thinking requires hard work.”
“OK…”
“Struggle…” I pause, considering this carefully. “Struggle. Is what I’ve been doing for the last seven years.”
I let that sit there for a second so that I can make sure he’s hearing me.
“I’ve been hammering away at the same problems in the same way with the same kind of effort, not bothering to pay attention to the fact that all that struggling was getting me nowhere. And the worst part about it?” I take a breath, because this is the hard part to say. “The worst part is that I’ve been using Scotty as an excuse.”
“What?” Tyler says. “No. Hey—”
I cut him off. “No. I have. And you have too. Both of us used Scotty as an excuse not to move on. To just keep struggling away at the idea that we were moving forward, but both of us still stuck in the past. And I’m done with that.”
He nods, slowly, like this is the first time he’s ever considered this. It’s not the first time I’ve considered it. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. It’s just the first time I’ve voiced it.
“And so…?” he asks.
“And so, this is me doing something. Something that will help. That will, I dunno, have an impact on the world. And just as important, it’ll put a nice, hard period at the end of this chapter of my life. And no matter how it plays out, I can close the book on it and actually move forward. Or that’s my hope, anyway.”
That’s a word I haven’t really used a lot over these years. Hope. But there ya go.
“OK, yeah. Fair enough,” he says with resignation. “Hey, listen, I’ve got something for you.”
He reaches into the duffel bag of clothes he’s been keeping over here. “Clothes” is a stretch. It’s really just a couple dozen t-shirts in different colors and an extra pair of jeans. I’m pretty sure that when he’s done with them he just throws them out and buys more instead of doing laundry. Fuckin’ weirdo.
“Here,” he says, pulling out what looks like a cell phone and handing it to me.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a sat phone.”
“Why do you have a sat phone?”
“It’s for you,” he says. “I picked it up at Sat Phones ’R’ Us. It’s right next to the Drone Store.”
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“Um, I want you to keep it on you, and I want you to check in with me every night so that I know you’re OK.”
“No,” I say, waving the phone away. “No way. It’s too dangerous, and—”
“Too dangerous?” he shouts. “This whole fuckin’ thing is too dangerous! At least this way you won’t be some floating satellite that I can’t find! And you’ll have a way to reach me if shit gets out of hand. It’s encrypted and dedicated and untraceable. I paid for the fancy stealth package.”
“If they find a fucking sat phone on me…”
“They won’t. And even if they do, you can tell them it’s just a regular phone. They won’t know the difference. It’s top-of-the-line. Promise. Slayer told me.”
I try not to smile at that, but I fail. And then he’s smiling too. Sticking the phone in my hand.
“Take it. Please. OK? Just take it and promise that you’ll call me or at least ping me every night so that I know you’re OK.”
“How do I do that?”
He shows me the features on the phone and how I can press a button to send him, like, Morse code and everything. And then he presses it into my palm and wraps my fingers around it.
“OK?” he asks. “Please?”
I nod reluctantly, because I’m not sure this is such a great idea, but I have to admit that it gives me some small measure of comfort to think that I’ll be able to reach him.
“And take this,” he says, taking off his watch.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t have one, and because in case… I dunno. I j
ust want you to have it.”
I examine it. I’ve seen it on his wrist, but never really paid attention. I’m not a watch girl. But it looks expensive, which isn’t surprising. It also looks like it’s been to hell and back. Which it probably has.
“Nadir gave it to me,” he says, looking at it.
“Nadir, your business partner? The translator guy?”
“Sure. Yeah. That’s him. My business partner.” He somehow mocks himself in saying the words back to me.
“It’s nice,” I say, studying it.
“Yeah,” says Tyler. “It was a gift to him from a platoon he translated for before we met. I guess they gave it to him as a thank you.”
“Why’d he give it to you?”
Tyler blows out a breath. “I dunno. Um… After we shook on partnering up on the bomb robot idea, he took it off and said, ‘Tyler, please. You are doing a good thing. Please. Take this and always remember that I am grateful.’” He doesn’t really get out the word “grateful” before his voice chokes off to a whisper. But I understand.
“Ty,” I say, pushing the watch away. “No, you shouldn’t—”
“I didn’t do a good thing, Mads. I didn’t do a fucking thing. He gave me that because he thought I was a good guy and was helping him. And what I did instead was get him killed and spend the next few years fucking around and blowing money that was partially his. You, on the other hand, are about to do something brave and courageous and basically… good. Trust me. If Nadir had met you, he would’ve wanted you to have it.” He slides it on me. It dangles off my wrist.
“It’s too big,” I say. “You should—"
“I’ll take a few links out.” He cuts me off. “But just take it and promise to find some way to make contact with me at… I dunno… eleven o’clock every night. Please?”
“I… I’ll try. It might get kinda suspicious if no matter what’s happening, I steal away at eleven every night. Can we just say, ‘before the morning?’”
His mouth tightens, and he rolls his head, shifts his feet back and forth, but finally he says, “Fine.”
I give him a kiss and then go back to packing. Looking down at the sat phone in my hand, I’m struck by how small and compact it is. Not at all like the big, clunky one I used all those years ago when I was making calls to him when he was deployed. Calls that went unanswered. Just like the emails and letters.
And suddenly, a thought lands on me.
“I have something for you too,” I say.
“Yeah? What?”
As I walk over to my closet, my heart starts beating fast. I never thought in a million years that he’d actually wind up seeing this after all this time. I certainly didn’t think I’d be sitting in front of him when he did.
Reaching up to the top shelf, I fish around until my hand hits the shoe box. I swipe at it to bring it forward and it falls off the shelf into my grasp. I take a deep breath and turn around, placing the box on the bed.
“What’s that?” he asks.
I remove the lid and inside are all the memories I’ve held onto. It makes me a little sad that every recollection, every reminiscence in my life that I’ve cared enough to keep can fit into a box small enough to hold just a pair of shoes. There’s the business licenses from all the jobs I’ve failed to succeed at. There’s a photo of me, Scotty, Mom and Dad at the waterpark when I was probably four. There’s another photo of Scotty, and Evan, and Tyler, all gathered around me, finishing singing Happy Birthday on my seventh birthday.
And there, at the bottom, buried under all the other memories I don’t want to forget, I find it. I pull it out of the box, letting the other assorted images and papers fall away, and on one last puff of breath leaving my lungs…
I hand it to Tyler.
Chapter Ten - Tyler
I recognize it immediately.
The last letter I ever got from Maddie while I was deployed. The one I sent back unopened. The one with my handwriting on the back. Please stop sending me letters.
It’s still sealed, the words she wrote entombed inside. I have some idea what’s in here. She suggested a lot of things about it when she reminded me of its existence, the night we found out we’re us.
My hands are shaking, and I can’t pretend they’re not because the jittering of the envelope betrays me. I flick at the paper with my middle finger, and I don’t look up. Just keep staring at the hurtful and selfish thing I wrote, like if I stare hard enough the words themselves will start to mean something else.
“Shit,” I manage.
“Yeah,” she says.
After a moment I ask, “Should I open it?”
She shrugs. “Up to you.”
I nod and chew at the inside of my mouth.
“But, like I told you back on Halloween,” she says, “it’s a good one.”
She wears a half-smile that suggests she’s as nervous about me reading it as I am.
I continue to flick at the corner of the envelope, nodding my head ever so slightly all the while, like someone standing on the edge of a high dive, looking down into the water, deciding how they’re going to find the courage to jump.
And then, on a deep inhale—fuck it, I jump.
I slide my finger under the lip of the seal and rip a jagged tear along the seam. Looking up at Maddie, I can see no easily identifiable expression on her face. She’s caught somewhere between telling me to stop and breaking into a fit of nervous laughter.
When I reach inside, the paper catches on the corner that I didn’t completely sever with my finger and almost puts a rip in the letter itself. Which would be just fucking perfect. I stop tugging and reset my hands, like I’m performing delicate surgery. I rip away the rest of the offending corner and withdraw the contents, placing the envelope on the bed a foot from where Maddie sits, one leg crossed underneath her and the other dangling off the side.
It’s folded in perfect thirds. Almost as if she used a ruler to create the folds. Which, knowing Maddie, she very well may have. I lift the top flap and see her handwriting staring at me, the words “Dear Tyler” at the top. And for the first time in my thirty years on earth, it lands on me the way I suppose it’s intended. “Dear.” “Tyler.” Not “Hello, Tyler,” or “’Sup, Tyler?” but “Dear Tyler.” My dear Tyler. Huh. I never really processed that before.
I flip open the bottom third and then it’s just there. Staring me in the face. A page of words, sent to me by a friend in need, that I never bothered to read. I’ll bet these words never thought they’d see the light of day again. I’ll bet that when they found themselves being stuffed inside that shoe box they were like, “Well, that sucks. We’re good words. Somebody took the time to write us down and shit, and now here we are just being shoved in a dark fucking coffin never to get our shot at our job. Which is to make someone feel something.”
Because that’s all words are. Sounds that we put together to have an effect on another person. Like God/James Franco told me during the brief period I was in heaven: They don’t mean anything. Unless you give them meaning.
I wonder what meaning these words will have on me now that they’ve been set free?
Only one way to find out…
Dear Tyler,
Hi. It’s me. Maddie!
I hope that you’re well and safe, and that the other soldiers are being nice to you.
So listen, I’m writing because—as I’m sure you’re aware—we’re coming up on Scotty’s anniversary. That’s a shitty thing to call it, I know, because an anniversary usually implies something happy that you want to celebrate, but I really don’t have a better word for it. And I guess the idea that an anniversary has to be a happy thing is just something we made up anyway. People, I mean. Ugh. People. The worst. Amirite!? (LOL)
Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve gotten all the other letters I sent, because I haven’t heard back. It’s fine if you didn’t, they were mostly just, like, check-ins or updates about what’s going on here and stuff. A couple of them had little things I made tucked
inside. (I know you always LOVED the potholders that I would make. LOL. But seriously, you should actually try crocheting yourself. I mean it. It’s super calming. It’s really helped me a lot this year. No kidding.)
I hope, if nothing else, you got the package I sent with the chain. I found this gold chain (don’t worry, it was fake, I paid like five bucks for it) that had a nametag on it that said, “Asshole.” I thought of you the second I spotted it! (LOL) So anyway, I hope you got that at least.
I’ve tried to call a bunch too and sent emails and stuff, but I can’t know for sure if you’re getting the messages or if the emails are getting lost on some government email server or something. And if that’s what’s happening, or if the letters and packages I’ve sent aren’t being delivered, I guess I’ll never know, but I’m sending this one because… Because I’m not doing so good, Ty.
Now, I don’t want you to freak out and come running back to Vegas on the next plane out of wherever you are right now just for me! (haha) I mean, I kind of do, of course, because it’d be awesome to see you, but I don’t want you to like worry about me doing anything bad to myself or anything like that. Because that’s not what I’m saying and that’s not what I’m about.
I just feel… sad. Like all the time. And there’s really nobody here who gets it or who I can talk to. You know how Mom and Dad are (they say hi, btw). They just kind of shove shit down and pretend everything’s okay all the time. Which, don’t get me wrong, I love them and I’m SO grateful they’re here. I don’t know what I’d do if they weren’t. Sometimes I feel like they’re the only thing keeping me together. So, I mean, I have them. Thank God. And that’s great. But they’re my parents, y’know? Not my friends.
And I don’t have a lot of friends, Ty. Now, I’m not throwing a pity party. (OH, WOE IS MADDIE. haha) No. None of that. It’s just true. I feel like I was starting to make a few friends in my first semester, but then… Y’know. And that kind of fucked all that up, so.
