by Gwen Cole
The mortar lands close, before I can get back to our hole. It’s death to those of us who aren’t fast enough. The world goes black, and I’m thrown to the ground by a force nothing could compare. The air rushes from my lungs, leaving my body as fast as I want to leave this place.
I wish I could go with it.
And I will. But not yet.
Nothing but a high-pitched ringing invades my ears. The medic always tells me that’s a good sign; my hearing will come back when there’s ringing.
And while the darkness consumes me, thoughts enter my head without reason or order. The chaos on the outside coming in.
Ringing and blackness and the fact my heart is still pounding and maybe I’ll live to see the next day and what I’ll see when I open my eyes. It’s so black even my thoughts are lost. My eyes are heavy. Something hard presses against my body. Everything is cold. Always cold.
I want summer again. I want warm afternoons at the river, lying under the sun with a bare chest, soaking in the heat with the cool grass under my fingers. It’s easy to forget summer here. Easy to forget the things I live for.
I force myself to wake.
I open my eyes, feeling the crumbs of dirt fall from my lashes and onto my face. The ringing in my ears has lessened—I can hear someone yelling far away. The snow is frozen against my cheek, so cold it hurts. My fingers respond and twitch, curling into the dirt and snow, telling me I’m still alive.
I see Adams not far from me. For a moment, I’m glad to see he’s still alive, staring at me differently than the dead do. But something’s wrong. He tears his gaze away from mine and looks past the trees, toward the clouds with glossy eyes. His helmet has fallen off, left forgotten next to him.
His body convulses, dark blood dripping from his mouth. I push against the ground, somehow using the adrenaline to work my legs and arms. I can’t feel myself walking toward him, but I am. I can’t feel anything. Somehow I yell for a medic, hoping one is nearby and close enough to save him.
I fall to my knees beside him, curling one of my frozen hands under his neck.
He still stares at something above me.
“Adams.” I can finally hear myself and my voice shakes. “Adams, look at me.” I want to tell him he’ll be all right, but I can’t. I can’t so much as look down to see what’s there and what’s not.
Someone kneels next to me, and I get a fleeting glimpse of a white Geneva cross. His hands are flying and cutting, covered in red as he tells me something I can’t hear. The medic yells to someone else and a stretcher comes.
The only thing I can do is stare into Adams’s eyes, wondering if he’ll look at me one last time. They’re as gray as the sky—something I never noticed before now. My mind reels through the things he’d told me, of his home and his family, of people who want him to come home alive.
“You’re gonna be all right, Adams,” I hear myself say.
Finally, after so long of getting nothing, he looks at me and tries to smile. It’s hard for him, I can tell. His body still shakes and his skin is cold. He’s in shock. The medic and another soldier put him on a stretcher and carry him away, leaving me kneeling in the stained snow.
I am numb.
I look down to see my hands still shaking. Covered in red.
The blood of my friend.
3.
Harper
Uncle Jasper leaves sometime after midnight.
I’m lying in bed—my sheets tangled around my legs and my eyes heavy—when the phone rings downstairs. I stare at the moonlit ceiling and hear him walk down to answer it, saying a few muffled words before hanging up.
His truck pulls away moments later.
I have no idea where he has to go in the middle of the night on such short notice, and my foggy brain doesn’t care. After he leaves, the house is quiet and still, feeling so empty with only me to occupy it. The moonlight is bright coming through my window, followed by a breeze that tries to drag me back to sleep. It’s like I’m nine again, waking up in the night and wondering what tomorrow will bring.
But I’m not nine anymore, and I’m not going home.
Whatever anyone says, growing up sucks.
The next morning at the kitchen table, Uncle Jasper doesn’t say a word. He eats his toast and drinks his coffee across from me, looking tired but not acting like it. He says nothing about leaving in the middle of the night, and I don’t ask.
My Rice Krispies make more conversation than we do.
He scribbles another word into the crossword puzzle he’s bent over, silently mouthing the letters as he does. The clock ticks from down the hall. The refrigerator kicks on.
“So …” I start. He erases one of the words, swiping the paper with the side of his hand. “Do you see the Jacksons much? How’s Libby doing?”
“I see them every now and then,” he says and takes another sip of coffee from a mug that has a T-Rex on it trying to do push-ups. “Libby is actually living with her mom this summer, but she’ll be back before you start school.”
“Oh,” is all I can say. I have my video games, but like I told Uncle Jasper, I can’t stay in the house all day. I’d go stir crazy.
“I’m sorry,” he says, finally looking up from his paper. “I know you were hoping to see her, but she agreed to it before she found out you were coming. Otherwise, she never would’ve gone.”
“Yeah, that’s all right. I understand,” I mumble. “What about Kale?” I try to say it like I couldn’t care less, but really just asking about him makes me nervous. I’ve been more anxious about seeing him than anyone. The boy version of Kale was always smiling, his eyes as bright as the stars. The boy who was always gone. When we were younger, his dad claimed it was a phase because all kids try to run away from home, one that would pass with time. He would get angry when Kale would go, and his mom would worry, but they never paid too much attention to it, probably hoping he would eventually stop.
I wonder if he did stop, and then grew into a Kale I probably no longer know.
“I see Kale quite a bit,” Uncle Jasper finally says. He traces another word on the paper. “He comes over to help me on the cars when he’s around.”
I nod and chew my inner cheek. It can’t be more obvious they were the only friends I have here—I could go see Bryce, but we were never close and that would just be awkward. Besides seeing pictures on Libby’s social media accounts, I haven’t seen either of them—or even spoken to them—in years. I should really text Libby, assuming her number is the same.
Before I can say anything else, Uncle Jasper sighs and gets up from the table.
“I’ve got to get going,” he tells me. “I should be back in an hour or two. And remember, if you get hungry, don’t be afraid to help yourself to anything you want.” With a glance over his shoulder at the fridge he says, “I know there’s not much right now, but we can go grocery shopping later. Sound good, kid?”
I nod again, studying my melting cereal as he walks out. Minutes pass after I hear his truck pull down the long driveway. The house feels like a shell that holds nothing but loss. The chairs are cold and the sink is empty. The refrigerator only has condiments and milk. This is—and isn’t—the house I once knew.
I don’t know what to do with myself. If nothing had changed, Aunt Holly and I would be working on the garden or going to the thrift store to find random kitchen utensils. Or Libby and Kale would be over here, forcing me to go swimming with them.
I drop my head on the table and say to nobody, “This is going to be the longest summer of my life.”
Sometimes I can be melodramatic.
After I rinse my bowl in the sink, I go upstairs and start unpacking my gaming console. I make sure I have all the right cords and work on setting up the TV. The remote’s batteries are dead, of course, so after searching for new ones for ten minutes, I’m back to work. When everything is plugged in and ready to go, I start up the Xbox and let out a groan when it says it has to update.
To kill time, I pull out my
phone, which has no new messages or missed calls, something that begs me to think about Mom, but I will not open that box right now. That box is tucked away and locked. That box is invisible.
I go through my contacts and scroll down to look for Libby’s name. I can’t remember the last time I texted her. I go for the ice breaker approach.
Hey friend, I’m here in the empty house wishing you were next door so I won’t go crazy with boredom. Miss you …
I glance up. The update is only at fifteen percent.
Aunt Holly was always adamant about having good wifi, even way out here in the country, so it must be a big update if it’s taking so long. Or maybe I think it’s taking so long but really, it’s only been forty seconds.
My phone buzzes with a text.
:(I’m so sorry I’m not there to entertain you. Mom’s house is just as boring, trust me. Have you seen Kale yet? I know he’s not as exciting as me but …
I smile at that.
Haven’t seen him yet, hopefully later.
Car doors slam outside and I go downstairs to see who it is. Uncle Jasper’s truck is near the barn, and parked by it is another truck with a trailer hooked up to it. There’s an old car on the trailer with a man behind the wheel, trying to back it off. There’s smoke coming from the cracks in the hood, but neither of them seem surprised by this.
That’s the Uncle Jasper I know.
I don’t have shoes on, but I walk down the steps anyway, knowing the grass is soft.
“A little to the right!” Uncle Jasper calls from his place behind the car. He uses his hands to direct him off the ramp like someone would an airplane.
Then a voice says next to me, “You never stop watching, because a small part of you is hoping something bad will happen. It’s like watching Nascar.”
I turn to find a girl standing against the porch with her arms crossed, watching them try to navigate the ramp. She has the same dark hair as the man behind the wheel and she’s probably around my age. Brown freckles are splattered across her cheeks and nose, complimenting her olive skin.
“That’s kind of true,” I say, agreeing. “It’s basically the only reason to watch—to hope for an accident.”
“Because who actually likes watching cars go around and around in circles?”
I lean in and say, “Don’t let Uncle Jasper hear you say that. He secretly watches it when I’m not around.”
She laughs and gives me a wink. Her hair is on the unmanageable side of curly, pulled back into a ponytail like it’s the only thing she can do with it. She wears a flannel button-up shirt, rolled up at the elbows, something that’s usually too warm to wear during the summer.
“Unfortunately for us,” she says, “they’ve done this hundreds of times and are very experienced in the ways of ramps. But one of these days …”
I smile. “We’ll just have to keep watching.”
“I’m Grace, by the way. That’s my dad, behind the wheel.” She nods her chin at him, her arms still crossed.
“Harper.”
“I know.” And when I look at her, she explains, “Your uncle talks about you a lot. He said you’ll be here for your senior year in the fall?”
“That’s the plan,” I say, holding back a sigh.
Uncle Jasper and Grace’s dad finally get the car into the barn, popping the hood barely before it’s in park. Even when I was younger, Uncle Jasper always got excited when a new car came for him to fix. Aunt Holly would sit on the porch and watch him with an amused expression, a forgotten book in her lap but a small smile touching her lips. She would sit that way for hours, just watching him.
The empty porch now stares at my back.
“So look,” Grace says, finally turning to me now that the entertainment is over. “There’s a bunch of us going into the city tonight to watch the fireworks. There’s this cool place by the river where we go every year. You wanna come?”
For a moment, I’m confused about why there would be fireworks tonight, but then I realize it’s the Fourth of July. Between everything going on, I lost track of the days. And right about now, going out for a night couldn’t sound better.
I just can’t sound desperate. Don’t sound desperate, Harper …
“Yeah, all right. I mean … if I’m not imposing or anything.”
Nailed it.
“Not at all,” she says, shaking her head. “There will be a bunch of kids there from school, too, so I can introduce you. I hated starting school as ‘the new girl,’” she says, bringing her hands up as mock quotations marks. “It sucks not knowing anyone.”
I’m about to mention Libby and Kale when her dad calls to Grace, telling her it’s time to leave.
“I’ll pick you up at eight?” she says, taking backward steps toward their truck.
Her dad starts the engine, drowning my voice when I say, “Sure.” So I nod instead, in case she didn’t hear. She gives me a quick wave before they’re gone, the gravel crunching down the driveway to announce their departure.
I smile, because a month ago I would have said no, and a month ago nobody would’ve asked. For once I have plans with someone besides my Xbox.
4.
Kale
I wake to my name being yelled.
By the time my door opens, the doorknob banging into the wall, I’m sitting up. Half awake with my palms pressing into the mattress. I let out a breath when I realize I’m home and not in the middle of the woods in winter.
He surveys me and then my room. When I swing my legs over the bed, I’m suddenly aware of how sore I am. My whole right side aches when I move, and my head still pounds with a headache.
The clock over my desk shows it’s past noon.
“Dad said he heard you come in last night,” Bryce says, settling his gaze on me after eyeing my dirty shoes on the floor. “I guess I had to see for myself if it was true.” His tone is anything but friendly.
Bryce used to be okay with me leaving, but I’ve broken too many promises so I can’t blame him.
“Well, you found me, so what do you want?” When I look up, it hits me how much he looks like Dad—the same brown eyes and short dark hair, even the way he stands there.
“Dad wanted me to tell you that he’ll be home around eight.” In the other words, I’d better be here when he does. “He got called in today.”
“Wait, what day is it?” I know I lose track of the days, but I’m almost sure it’s a Wednesday.
The way Bryce looks at me makes me wish I’d never asked.
For a moment, I see myself through his eyes: I’m wearing the same clothes I was in the last time he saw me, I’m sleeping in the middle of the day, I’ve been gone for at least the last three days, and now I’m asking what day it is.
No wonder he looks at me the way he does.
I would, too.
“It’s the fourth,” Bryce says. When he turns to leave, he adds, “You have dirt on your face.”
For the longest time—after Bryce goes downstairs and the numbers on my clock silently change—I sit on the edge of my bed and try to think of reasons to venture out of my room today. Or out of the house.
I want to, but I shouldn’t.
It’s always worse between me and Dad after I get back. It reminds him who I am, and not who he wants me to be. It’s opening an old wound that would rather be forgotten.
Before I think on it more, I walk across the hallway and lock myself in the bathroom. The floor is cold and the light filters through the glass-tiled window. I turn on the shower and peel off my T-shirt. My arms are sore and my ribs still ache with every breath.
For the first time since I’ve been back, I take a closer look at my hands—at the dirt under my fingernails and in the lines of my palms. I want to believe it’s dirt. But wanting to believe isn’t making it true.
I look at the floor while I tug off my jeans, trying not to look at them. Then I step into the shower to wash away the evidence of something that happened over sixty years ago.
But no m
atter how much I scrub, the memories won’t ever fade.
I hear voices downstairs when I’m putting on a clean shirt. The front door shuts and Bryce’s voice echoes up along with his friends, Todd and Jeremy. One of them is laughing about something. A laugh that bounces off every corner of the house.
After I pull on my sweatshirt, along with my shoes, I go downstairs to find them in the kitchen.
They don’t notice me at first.
Todd—with his buzzed hair and button-up shirt—texts someone while leaning against the counter. And Bryce and Jeremy pull a few bags of ice from the freezer. They’re both wearing T-shirts and swim shorts.
I glance down at myself.
I’m dressed for a different season.
“Kale!” Todd shoves his phone into his pocket and smiles like something is funny. “Long time no see.”
While his friends laugh, Bryce glances at me uncomfortably, torn between wanting to keep up the act in front of his friends and defending me. It used to be different between us a couple years ago. Better. Every morning, he would come into my room to see if I was back. He would sit on the edge of my bed and ask about where I went and what I saw. Back then it wasn’t the war. It was places that weren’t filled with snow and gun shots. California, 1969. The cotton fields of Arkansas in 1950.
I would lie in bed and tell him all the funny stories about how I would mention something that nobody would be familiar with because it hadn’t been invented yet. Or how I had to spend nights in chicken coops or barns, waking up only to scare a girl coming out to do her chores.
Bryce was the first person I ever told and the first person to ever believe me.
Now he turns back to his friends to change the subject.
“We have to be there at two, right?” he asks.
Todd pulls out his phone again, probably checking an old message. “Yeah, we’re supposed to meet them at two. That way we can get to the lake on time.” Then he turns to me. “You coming, Kale?” He smiles again, teasing, and warmth spreads up from my neck.
