Cold Summer

by Gwen Cole

  Snow falls from the dark sky. Small flakes at first that grow into something more. Not a heavy snow, just one that leaves a white dusting on everything exposed. Half the buildings in this town have turned to rubble. Piles of brick and ash, covered in white to look like snowdrifts instead of memories. All painted over to mask the look of death.

  But I was here when they fell.

  And I was here to witness the screams.

  The town is still. Echoing a silence that has never been known in this place until now.

  Smoke drifts from the houses where the others have settled in for the night. The officers are in a bigger house toward the middle of town, and the rest of us get to choose between houses with caved-in roofs or crumbling walls. The townspeople are long gone—they were gone once the Germans came last week, expecting something worse ahead. Something even they saw coming.

  The sky is black overhead. My hands yearn for the warmth of a fire, and my eyes itch with sleep.

  But I’m not ready yet.

  I take a cigarette from my pocket, where I have a few stashed away. I’m about it bring it to my lips when someone appears beside me and I flinch, trying to salute without dropping the cigarette.

  “Captain Price,” I say.

  “Private Jackson.” I take my hand down when he touches his forehead. “You wouldn’t have an extra one of those would you?” he asks.

  “Sir?”

  He nods down to my hand, still holding the unlit cigarette.

  “Oh, right.”

  I dig into my pocket and hand him one. After I find my lighter, I light his before my own. The first drag is always the best. I exhale slowly, my head slightly tilted toward the sky. Snowflakes brush against my cheeks.

  Captain Price asks, “Were you always a smoker?”

  I shake my head. “I’m still not.”

  I show a smile with teeth.

  Standing here under an unlit sky, with a captain who would rather spend his time out here with me instead of by a warm fire, and the fact that I don’t go home until a few days from now, almost has me happy. Sometimes, even if it’s for a fleeting moment, it’s like I belong here. Like I have a place. A purpose.

  At home, I’m nothing.

  “Yeah, I get that,” he says, taking off his helmet and putting it under his arm. Pulling his fingers through his hair with the cigarette still between them. “I was able to go a year without smoking.”

  “A year?” I ask. “I barely made it a month.”

  His chest vibrates with a laugh. “I was hit in the arm. Just a flesh wound, but it scared the shit out of me. And this guy, Williams, comes up to me while I was lying on the stretcher and holds out a cigarette and says, ‘What about now, Price?’” He smiles to himself and keeps his gaze down the empty street. “I didn’t even realize my hands were shaking until I took it from him.”

  I take another drag, and then roll it back and forth between my forefinger and thumb to keep them from becoming too frozen.

  He speaks again, and for some reason it doesn’t bother me. Usually I would rather be away from idle conversations and laughs that don’t belong. But tonight I feel different. Better. “Where are you from, Jackson?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Never been.”

  “Not missing much.”

  He snorts a laugh. “Is your family still there?”

  I nod. “For the most part.”

  “I hear the guys say you never get any mail.” I wince at that, not even realizing anyone noticed. Of course I don’t get mail. Whatever relatives I have in this time don’t even know I exist. “Even though most families don’t like their sons joining up, they still care enough to write them. And if it’s not their family, then it’s always someone else.”

  I shrug and try to act like the question doesn’t bother me. “I guess I don’t then.”

  “Everyone has someone back home that they think about.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they’re thinking about me.”

  He takes one last drag and flicks the glowing butt into the snow. After putting his helmet back on, he gives me a long look. “Don’t be so sure about that.”

  I listen as his muffled footsteps fade away, wondering how often Dad thinks of me while I’m gone.

  20.

  Harper

  Sometime in the night, the phone rings.

  It barely rouses me from sleep, but I still hear Uncle Jasper’s muffled voice downstairs, his tone vibrating up through the floor. I turn over and face the window, my eyes almost too heavy to keep open. I’d been dreaming about something good, but when I try to think of it, it becomes more and more impossible.

  The front door opens and only the screen shuts on its own. Uncle Jasper leaves, not even pausing to let the engine roar to life before putting it in gear. I have an odd sense of déjà vu.

  I stare out my window for about three seconds before falling asleep again.

  It barely feels like minutes before something wakes me.

  This time it’s not with the phone ringing or Uncle Jasper’s voice. It’s from something louder, more abrupt. I sit up in bed, trying to make sense of what I hear, rubbing sleep from my eyes. I shouldn’t have stayed up so late playing video games, but it’s the only time my friend from Colorado is online.

  It was worth it.

  A car door shuts outside, followed by another and then the front door opens and slams. My heart really starts to pound when I hear the scuffling of feet and a table chair screeching across the floor, like someone sat in it too fast. Uncle Jasper talks, low and fast, but I can’t make out any words.

  I swing my legs over the bed and pull on a T-shirt. The hardwood stings cold into the soles of my feet, and my vision is still a little blurry from sleep as I find my way down the stairs, but all that is forgotten when I step into the kitchen.

  Kale is sitting in a chair next to the table, pressing his wadded up T-shirt to his ribs. It takes me a moment to realize it’s red with blood, because it’s the last thing I expected. His head lifts when he catches movement, his eyes glossy and his jaw tight. He looks away and stares at the floor, slightly trembling.

  Uncle Jasper brushes past me through the doorway and lays a tackle box on the table. “Harper, will you go into the bathroom and get the peroxide?”

  Kale still stares at the floor. There are blood stains on his shoes.

  “Harper, did you hear me?”

  I jerk my head up and nod, backing into the hallway. My heart makes uneven jumps into my throat, feeling that warm rush of adrenaline through my veins. I find the peroxide in the bathroom and hurry back to the kitchen where Uncle Jasper is pulling the T-shirt away from Kale’s side. A gash shows itself dug into his skin, across his ribs and reaching for his back. At least six inches long.

  Uncle Jasper looks at it closely before taking the peroxide from my hand, then he says to Kale, “It’s just a graze. I’ll need to stitch it, but I think it’ll heal fine. How long ago did it happen?”

  “Just before—” Kale hesitates and glances at me “—before I called you. Maybe an hour.”

  Uncle Jasper nods and unscrews the cap to the peroxide. Kale know what’s about to come—he grips the edge of the table, clenches his jaw, and flinches when it pours over the wound. A hiss escapes through his teeth.

  When I take a moment and really look at Kale sitting there, his chest bare and his dog tags hanging across one of his pecks—his face and neck stained with dirt—he doesn’t look like he belongs in this kitchen, but somewhere else entirely. And that gash looks like something only a bullet could do.

  My mind makes assumptions I don’t want to believe. Has he been mixed up with a gang? Does he have friends I don’t know about who get him into trouble? Even though I think them, I know it isn’t true. It’s something bigger than that.

  As Uncle Jasper opens his tackle box and reveals everything you need for a first-aid kit, I feel like I can’t watch any longer. It makes my stomach sick in a way I’ve never felt. I walk out the front doo
r and sit on the porch, staring into the dark yard where light streams out from the living room window.

  I can still hear him.

  Kale takes a sharp breath when Uncle Jasper stitches, and I also hear when he whispers he’s sorry.

  My thoughts wander to places I have always known to be impossible, and Kale’s promises prove they aren’t.

  I don’t know how much time passes until the screen door opens and Kale sits down next to me. He smells like dirt, rubbing alcohol, and winter.

  Neither of us says a word, just listening to Uncle Jasper clean up the kitchen behind us. Kale feels like a different person next to me than the one I met so many years ago. He has scars and secrets, things that have made him into the person he is now.

  I’m tired of not knowing him.

  “If I ask,” I start, “will you give me a straight answer?”

  “I think you already know the truth, Harper.” He looks over, his face half shadowed with the night. “You’re just afraid that it is.”

  “But I can’t ask, because I made a promise.”

  “And you don’t have to break it, because you already know.”

  Do I? Kale disappears without a trace for days at a time. Almost like he doesn’t exist here while he’s … somewhere else. Just gone. He comes back looking like he’s been through hell, or the closest thing to hell, which would be war. The same place where he said his dog tags came from. Where he got shot.

  He’s given me all the answers, and I just have to believe them.

  I look over to see him already staring at me, waiting to prove him wrong.

  I shake my head and say, “It’s not possible.”

  “How will you know if you don’t ask?”

  My heart beats fast and my mouth is dry. “When you leave … you really do leave, don’t you? Like … somewhere else.”

  Kale nods.

  “Like to the place where you got those.” I nod toward the dog tags around his neck, still barely able to believe it.

  He glances away, looking slightly uncomfortable. “It’s a place, but it’s also a time.”

  Kale opens his mouth again but no words come out, like he’s struggling saying what he wants to.

  “So you’re like …” I don’t know if I want to say it. “A time-traveler?”

  “If you want to call it that.” There’s a small lasting smile on Kale’s lips.

  A time-traveler. Kale. It’s weird that it feels so right.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  For once, he holds my gaze. “Honestly, because I didn’t want things to change between us. I didn’t want you to see me as a totally different person, because I’m still me … even though things have changed and we’re older. I didn’t want to mess things up.”

  He brings his knees closer to his chest and tucks his arms in like he’s cold. He still doesn’t have a shirt on, but even though it’s night, the air is warm. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you before now. Libby, Bryce, and Uncle Jasper are the only people who know, and I had enough trouble telling them as it is. Well, Miles knows too, but that was sort of a mistake how it happened.”

  “I’m not saying you should have,” I say. “It’s yours to tell, not mine. And besides, if you would have told me before tonight, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.”

  He looks over. “So that means you do? Believe me?”

  “Of course I do.” Then have to ask, “What about your mom and dad?”

  “I’ve tried telling them the truth for years, but they never believed me. So I stopped trying.” He shrugs once, clearly uncomfortable talking about them.

  I think about Kale being able to travel through time, something he’s been doing ever since he was a kid when everyone thought he was running away from home, and it just makes sense. Almost crazy and impossible, but for some reason believable.

  “So that day when we were eleven, and you promised you would be at the river …” I trail off.

  His eyes look up to the sky, thinking. “Hmmm, 1974. It was pretty weird.”

  Kale smiles, and I laugh.

  “I know there are a lot of things you want to know,” he says, “and I’ll try to answer everything I can. But it’s not as complicated as you might think.” He stares into the woods, in the direction of his house, and says, “I’m sorry I haven’t told you before now. I’m just—” He struggles for a word “—ashamed of it.”

  “Why would you be ashamed of it?” I ask. “You can do something nobody else can do—it’s amazing.”

  “But it’s also a burden.” Kale shakes his head more than he should. “I can’t control it, Harper. I got kicked off the baseball team because of it, and expelled from school. I can’t even get a minimum wage job. What kind of future can I hope to have?”

  I can’t think of something to say. “I—I don’t know.”

  For some reason he smiles a little. “Yeah … I don’t know either.” Then before I can say anything else, he says, “I should get home.” But when he stands, his right arm moves too fast and he takes a sharp breath and goes rigid with pain.

  “Kale—”

  “It’s fine. I just need some sleep.”

  We both hear Uncle Jasper before he comes outside. He glances at me and then Kale, his eyes going straight for his ribs. “You’re staying here tonight,” he says. “You can stay in the guest room upstairs.”

  “I really shouldn’t,” Kale says, for some reason avoiding Uncle Jasper’s gaze.

  “Did I sound like I was asking?” Uncle Jasper holds the door open wider and nods his head for Kale to go inside, not giving him a choice.

  Kale says, “I could start running, you know.”

  “And I would chase you down,” he answers immediately. “How far do you think you’ll get before those stitches come out?”

  The white bandage over his ribs stands out against the black around him. I can make out a thin line of red soaking through.

  Giving in with a sigh, Kale walks past him into the house. While Uncle Jasper finds one of his old T-shirts for Kale to wear, fussing over him as much as Aunt Holly would, I go back to my room and lie down, wondering if I can fall asleep again. The house soon becomes quiet and dark, the only noise coming from Uncle Jasper’s light snoring across the hall. When he actually does sleep, nothing can ever wake him.

  My mind won’t stop processing it all, asking myself how this is even possible. What places has he seen, what kind of events has he witnessed? How long has he been doing this?

  I have a thousand questions for him, but he isn’t here, and I know I won’t be able to sleep without them.

  I try to keep quiet as I get out of bed. I avoid the places in the floor where it squeaks—a foot from the dresser, the middle of my doorway, and the right side of the hallway. And then I stand before the guest room where Kale is sleeping, my thumping heart and breathing the only sounds I hear.

  I open the door and slip inside. He’s sitting on the opposite side of the bed, facing the window where the moon shines in. He’s got a T-shirt on now, still wearing his jeans. I sit down next to him, leaving a healthy distance between us.

  “I used to be able to sleep at night,” he says in a hushed tone. “Before I had to start worrying about my dreams.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  Kale winces with an unseen wound. “Nothing I want to talk about. Sometimes it’s the war, but mostly it’s other things … everything.” He shakes his head. “The only way I can sleep is when I think about the good places I’ve been. Times I wish I could live in instead of here. I’ve seen things nobody should.”

  “Will you tell me about it?” I’m too curious now to be left in the dark. “The places you’ve been?”

  The muscles beneath his shirt relax, glad of something good to talk about. “What do you want to know?”

  I smile. “Everything.”

  21.

  Kale

  The next morning I’m up before the sun is.

  My side throbs and a hea
dache brews at the base of my neck. I stare at the ceiling, just thinking.

  I’ll have to hide the fact I was shot when I go back in a few days. I can’t let them see me, because they’ll know something isn’t right when they see it’s already stitched. There’s a medic that would probably cover for me, but I don’t want him to become suspicious.

  I think about when I came back last night. The old house so dark and my fingers wet with what I couldn’t hold in. Barely able to make it to the gas station without passing out. Staining my shoes and Uncle Jasper’s floor.

  And then Harper saw me.

  I didn’t want her to see me in that way, but I’m glad for it, because without it, I’m not sure when I would’ve told her.

  Last night she asked about everything, and I had no problem talking about it. Having her next to me and telling her about my greatest secret plays over in my mind. Explaining about the different places I’ve been. What it feels like when I leave and the days building up to it. Such a strange series of words I never thought I would speak, because nobody has ever asked so much.

  I get a sick feeling in my stomach, thinking of a particular question she asked. Because it makes me realize how wrong things are now.

  Harper asked, “How often do you go?”

  “About every three or four days.”

  “I don’t remember you leaving that much when you were younger.”

  “I’ve been going more often since Mom left, and even more within the past six months.”

  “The last six months, meaning when you started going back to the same place? Where you’re still going back to, even now?”

  Then all I could say was, “ … yeah.”

  “Why do you think that is? Why do you think you keep going back to the same time?”

  I had no answer for her.

  I have no idea why I keep going back to the same time, and why I’m going more often. It’s like I’m meant to live a different life there. Two lives at the same time.

  It worries me.

  I get out of bed and grab my shoes and sweatshirt from the chair in the corner. My side still throbs, but it doesn’t feel any different from anything I’ve dealt with before.