Cold Summer

by Gwen Cole

  Thinking of Dad does nothing to help me here. But the lessons he taught me …

  “Aim small, miss small,” I whisper.

  My finger rests on the trigger.

  I wait for my heart to slow. It matches the rhythm of the flakes of snow landing around me.

  I aim high to account for the range.

  I pull the trigger.

  My life is slipping away through my fingers.

  I cannot catch it.

  10.

  Harper

  I wake in the night, and my cheeks are wet with tears. The blankets tangle around my legs, evidence of the dreams that turned into nightmares, and my heart beats frantically, trying to escape the thoughts haunting my mind.

  The door creaks open. “Harper, is everything all right?” Uncle Jasper asks. “I thought I heard you yell something.”

  He stands in the doorway, unsure, still dressed from the day like he never went to bed. The familiar smell of engine oil drifts over.

  I try to wipe away my tears before he sees them, but it’s too late. Instead of meeting his gaze, I stare at my comforter, thinking how it’s the same color of my one back home, the one Mom bought me. My home that is no more.

  “I can’t help thinking if—” I swallow, finding my mouth dry “—if I made the right decision. Leaving her, I mean.”

  The floor creaks under Uncle Jasper’s weight as he walks over and sits down on the bed, facing me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know what good that will do,” I say, my voice coming out shaky and weak. I hate it. This isn’t me. I don’t cry, and yet here I am.

  “It’ll help more than you think,” he says. His face is shadowed with night, but I’m still able to see the seriousness in his eyes. “I know you too well. Sometimes when you go through things, you bottle them up inside and try to act like everything is fine. Because you want to forget they ever happened. But you have to trust me when I say that doesn’t work. In order for you to move on, you have to let them out. Or one day they’re gonna come out whether you like it not.”

  “Better to do it on your own terms?”

  “It’s easier to win the battle.” He smiles. “Come downstairs. I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”

  Without arguing, I slip off the bed and follow him down the steps. The television is on low, the baseball players silent as they try to hit the ball. The bright light hurts my half sleeping eyes, and it’s a relief when we get into the kitchen, where only the light above the stove is on. I sit down in my regular chair, and Uncle Jasper puts the kettle on the stove and turns on the burner.

  He sits down and folds his hands on the table. “So what’s on your mind?”

  “Mom.” My throat feels tight. I throw up my arms and say, “Of course, Mom. Even here, I can’t get away from her.”

  He asks, “Do you regret coming here? Is that what it is?”

  “I don’t know … no. I don’t think so.” I pause and then start over. “I just … I always hoped we would get through this, because we always got through everything together,” I say. “We were fine until a few years ago. Things kept getting worse and we got more distant from each other. It was like we were roommates, and not mother and daughter.”

  I stare at the lines in the wooden table, continuing, “She would go to work and I would go to school. A couple days would pass and we wouldn’t say a word to each other. Then those days turned into weeks. She started going on business trips without even telling me. I think that’s when I realized something was really wrong between us. It’s just … I never thought it would come to this. And why?” Then I look at Uncle Jasper and say, “It feels like I did something wrong. Like I missed my chance to make things right between us.”

  “None of this was your fault, kid,” he says. “You have to understand that. Your mom has been going through something for a long time, ever since your dad died. Some people fight through it, and some people choose not to by ignoring it. It’s up to them to get through it, and we can only support and love them. But sometimes that isn’t enough. No matter what we do.”

  “I wish there was something I could’ve done,” I say. “Leaving her … it felt like giving up.”

  “It’s not giving up, Harp. Sometimes two people drift apart, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. And you accepted that by coming here, even if you didn’t know it.” He reaches forward and puts his hand over mine. “You made a choice, and I couldn’t be prouder of you for that.”

  Even if I did make the choice in coming here, I’m still not sure if it was the right thing. I have so much doubt brewing within me, making me second guess myself. I want to know if I did anything wrong, and if there was anything I could have done differently. I miss her, but I don’t miss anything more than what I won’t have with her.

  Uncle Jasper speaks up again, “And believe it or not, this might be the start of something good between you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Maybe this is the fresh start that you and your mom need.”

  “By her moving to a different country and leaving me to live at my uncle’s house?”

  Uncle Jasper half smiles at my tone. “Sometimes being apart can start healing before it begins.”

  The kettle hisses behind him. He pushes his chair back and I watch him turn the burner off, get two mugs out of the cupboard, tear open two packets of hot chocolate, open the refrigerator to find the milk—filling a quarter of each mug before putting it back—and then finally pouring hot water until each is filled.

  He makes it the same way Aunt Holly did.

  With a spoon in each one, he puts them on the table and pushes mine over to me. It’s the mug that has the DeLorean from Back to the Future on it, with black text under it saying, “I know the world doesn’t end in 2012 because Marty McFly traveled to 2015.”

  He’s had this mug for years.

  I absently stir until the chocolate is dissolved. But I don’t drink yet, still thinking about what he said. When I left to come live here, I was sure I would never talk to Mom again. I never thought it was a possibility until now. It gives me a little hope I didn’t have before.

  “You know,” I say, still stirring the hot liquid in my mug, “sometimes you’re pretty good at this. And maybe you’re right. Maybe this is the start of something good between us.”

  “I know it will be,” he says. Even though I know he doesn’t, I like hearing him say it.

  “I miss her.”

  The instant I say it, emotions flood me before I can push them away, too strong for me to ignore. I can’t help it—I start crying, small tears leaking from my eyes before I can stop them, unable to hold it back. There’s a deep ache within me, wanting to be let out. Waiting to be let out.

  Uncle Jasper leans over and wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. More tears spill over my cheeks, dampening his shirt. I cry more because I can’t remember the last time someone held me. Not like this. Even though I can’t bring myself to hug him back, it’s the closest thing I’ve come to it. It’s like after all these years, I’ve forgotten how.

  “I love you, Harper,” Uncle Jasper murmurs into my hair. “Nothing will change that…. Nothing,” he says again.

  For some reason, I feel relief when he says it. Like somewhere deep down I’ve been waiting to hear it.

  Uncle Jasper holds me the same way he did when I was younger, comforting me when nobody else was there. He always has been … but then so was Mom before all this began.

  11.

  Kale

  I stare at the sky and know I’m back.

  It was so fast.

  I barely remember it happening.

  It was only about twenty minutes after I pulled the trigger and we started our attack. I’d been taking out as many snipers as I could find until they needed me deeper in town, targeting sharpshooters from around corners under covering fire.

  We needed to take the town—that’s all I knew. I can’t even remember its name.
r />   I just follow orders.

  When we were nearing a corner of a building, getting ready to clear the next half of the town, an explosion came from nowhere. It could have been a mortar, or tank.

  I’ll probably never know for sure.

  The guys in the front weren’t as lucky as us near the back. I was thrown to the ground, the air leaving my lungs the moment I hit the frozen earth. Dirt and rock showered from above.

  I could only lay there in the snow, trying to breathe and hoping I was still alive.

  Then I was gone—

  —and now I’m here.

  Back to wearing my jeans and T-shirt like I never left at all. The only evidence of the past are the dog tags around my neck and the scratches and dirt left from the explosion.

  Any wound I get there stays with me.

  The very first time I go back to a certain year, I’m still in my clothes from the present—a little shock to anyone who happens to see me. I’m forced to find clothes from that time, but when I travel back to my time—the present—I’m back in my jeans and short sleeves. But when and if I go back to that same time in the past, I’m instantly brought back in the clothes I found there—like I never left at all.

  So these past few months in 1944, I appear like I never left. Boots cold and helmet on my head. If someone happens to look close enough, it’s probably like I flicker—faster than the blink of an eye. A second has passed for them, but days have passed for me. A soldier made a double take once. I had just gotten back and he was there looking at me like he wasn’t sure what he saw. Probably thought he was hallucinating but I wasn’t going to correct him.

  So for the past six months, I’ve been going back to the same year. The same time.

  I don’t feel any pain right now, but I’m not feeling much of anything. Still shocked from the blast and trying to breathe regularly. It’s not going to be pleasant when I go back. The blue sky stares down from above. Through the caved-in roof, the sun tries to warm my frozen skin, as it always does.

  Still, I shiver. I lay there on my back, feeling the grass beneath me instead of the snow that had been there seconds earlier.

  I push myself up, aware of any pain I could be feeling, but there is none. The blast knocked the air from my lungs and nothing more. I’m lucky this time. I may be dirty and cold, but I’m breathing. Not bleeding. That’s what counts most.

  I take a few minutes to get my bearings. Wait for my head to stop spinning enough to stand up, and my heart to slow down once it realizes I’m really here. This is the only place I ever come back to. Like a rubber band snapping me back into place.

  I leave the house with the sun high overhead, and start down the overgrown driveway through the field. It’s about a mile from here to the gas station. But it’s not like I’m in a hurry to get home. I stuff my hands deep in my pockets in an attempt to get them warm and follow the empty road toward town.

  The cracked asphalt and gravel shoulder are too familiar.

  I pass trees I’ve seen hundreds of times.

  Pass mailboxes I know by heart. I’m still cold when I reach the main road and cross over to the Phillips 66.

  A truck passes behind me, blaring its horn even though I’m already off the road. Besides the only car in the parking lot—owned by the person behind the counter—I’m alone.

  I take one last glance around before walking around the building where the phone booth is. Names are scratched into the metal, others used a Sharpie as their graffiti tool.

  L.B. <3s SARA.

  Skool suckz.

  Kirbylicious—whatever the hell that means.

  Then of course the various profanity scrawled everywhere. Things I don’t even like looking at, much less reading.

  But among the scrawls of past people, I look for the same initials. The two letters I can always count on to be here.

  J.W.

  Scrawled in black Sharpie at the top right corner behind the phone.

  Two letters of someone’s name who I’ll never know. I take a long look at them before I dig the few coins from my pocket. The ones I keep stocked, never knowing when I’ll need them. I used to have a cellphone. But then I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea for someone in the past to see it. It’s not like I can afford to pay the bill anyway. Now it’s cold and dead under my bed.

  The dial tone sounds in my ear and I punch in the numbers, half wondering why they aren’t worn off yet.

  It rings so many times, I’m afraid he’s not there. The walk home is long when I can’t get hold of him, but I wait, still hoping.

  Right before I think about hanging up, he answers. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  There’s a moment before he speaks. I close my eyes and lean my head against the phone booth, feeling exhausted—the past few days are now catching up to me. The metal doesn’t feel any colder than I am.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  From the tone of his voice, I can tell he really wants to know. It’s something I don’t often hear.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  I slip into the bathroom without making eye contact with the man at the counter and wash my face. I don’t look in the mirror, knowing I won’t like what I see. On my way out of the store, the cigarettes behind the counter catch my eye, making me pause just long enough for the guy to look up. Without giving him a chance to say anything, I duck my head and make my escape out the door. Back outside, I settle down on the curb and stare at my shoes. My dog tags weigh heavily around my neck. A constant reminder of what I’ve become.

  After a while, the truck pulls up. The brakes don’t squeak and the engine doesn’t complain.

  Uncle Jasper sits behind the wheel, staring ahead even as I get in and close the door. He pulls away from the gas station without saying a word.

  He’s good like that—not pushing for answers and not caring if he doesn’t get any. He asks questions that are easy to answer. About things I actually want to talk about.

  I already feel calmer sitting next to him. My heart warms, slowly spreading to the rest of my body. But despite Uncle Jasper’s company and the summer heat, I still shiver.

  “Do you want me to turn on the heat?” he asks.

  “No, I’ll be all right.” I stare across the passing fields, trying to keep my thoughts away from home. I can’t help but ask, “It’s gone … isn’t it?”

  There’s a moment of silence. A moment where I dread the answer.

  “He took it to the dealer the day after you left,” Uncle Jasper says.

  My finger taps against the seat like I need a cigarette, thinking about the ones back in the Phillips 66, ready for me to buy. But I don’t smoke here. I’ve never had to, but I’m not sure how much longer that will last.

  “What did I miss while I was gone?”

  “Royals won again last night,” he says.

  “Oh really?”

  Uncle Jasper nods, unable to hide his smile. “I think this will be their year. Last year was just a trial run. Going all the way this time.”

  I laugh and shake my head then ask, “How’s Harper? Is she doing all right?”

  “She will be,” he says. “I think she just needs some time.”

  I turn away and watch the fields again, the golds and greens blending together as we pass by. The corn keeps growing as summer passes. A summer in which I wish I could spend more time with Harper.

  I’ve lost dozens of friends in a war I wasn’t meant to be in. I know what it feels like to lose people who will never come back. The deaths I’ve seen weigh heavier on my heart than anything I’ve ever felt. Adams more than anyone. Every time I think of him, my hands shake and my throat goes tight.

  But I have no idea what Harper is going through. I’ve never lost a parent or a sibling. She lost her dad years ago, and now she’s not even living with her mom. The pain I see in her eyes is so evident even when she tries to hide it. I only live with Dad, but at least both my parents are st
ill alive.

  “She’s lucky to have you,” I say, still staring across the fields. So many times I’ve wished Uncle Jasper was my real uncle. And so many times I’ve wished my father would see me for me, and not the kid he sees when I walk through the door after I’ve been gone for a while. When he sees that kid, he sees nothing.

  It does no good to wish for impossible things.

  Uncle Jasper feels my tension and says, “Kale—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And ignoring it isn’t going to help.”

  My fists tighten. “It’s my problem,” I tell him. “Not yours.”

  He says nothing because he’s good like that. Then he says something I never expected to hear. He says, “You should tell her the truth.”

  I stare at him, not knowing what to say.

  Uncle Jasper nods in response, letting the subject drop. We ride the rest of the way in silence, watching every familiar mile pass by.

  He usually drops me off at the end of my driveway, but he finishes the half mile toward his house.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have something to show you,” he says.

  “You aren’t building another plane in the barn like you did after watching that movie, are you? I think that lasted a total of two hours.” I shrug. “It would have been funny to watch you fly it, though.”

  “You’re just not going to let that go,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s not like you haven’t done anything that only lasted a day.”

  “Well, you could use your one free pass and I would never speak a word of it again.”

  “And as I’ve said before, I’m saving it for something worse.”

  “So now you’re admitting you have something even crazier in mind?” I ask. “More than building a plane in your barn?”

  He grips the wheel and tries not to smile.

  When the driveway clears away from the woods, the house looks the same as it always does. The big trees around it and the faded paint on the siding. It’s one of the unchanging things I can count on. There aren’t many.

  The tires fit into the dents in the gravel where Uncle Jasper parks every day. I get out of the truck and stare at the house. Even though it’s so familiar to me—and now feels like more of a home to me than my own house—there’s one thing that’s different about it now. Harper.