When it was her turn to share, she took off her jacket and rolled up her sleeve to show off her tattoos. She’d added KRISTY and, for the bombing, an angry smiley face with a burning wick. She’d stolen a pen and touched up the ink after every visit to the shower tent. The kids leaned in to study them.
“This is my story,” she said.
She’d set out to brag, but it poured out of her like a confession. It wasn’t an epic adventure story but a sad tale of survival, violence, and loss. By the end of it, she was shaking, her face burning with embarrassment and a deeper shame.
The kids didn’t care. They stared at her with admiration. They understood. To them, she was practically a figure of legend, one of the few who’d survived the ferocious assault by the First Angels and the bombing of the Liberty Tree line.
She hadn’t told them about Alex. That, she didn’t think anybody would understand. If she told them, they’d see her for the monster she was.
“I heard the Liberty Tree held the line,” Hannah said. “The siege is still going on. I really miss my sisters.”
“The border’s only a few miles away,” Mike said. “I’ll bet you’re itching to bust out of here and go back.”
She wasn’t sure about that but said, “Yeah.”
“Maybe we could go together.”
The other kids started yelling they wanted to go back too.
“Until then, we’ve got problems closer to home,” Tanya said.
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked.
“There’s a gang like ours in the camp. From the rebel side.”
“Sometimes, we scrap with them until the soldiers break it up,” Mike said. “We could use a fighter like you. You want in?”
Tanya said, “We take crap from nobody. You join us, we have your back.”
Hannah found it sad that the war went on even here, but it was a fight she couldn’t refuse.
She raised her fist. “Congress forever.”
Plywood frames and heavy curtains sectioned the prefab building into rooms. Therapists worked with children one on one in these spaces. Hannah waited her turn, then went into her allotted room to meet with Captain Foster for her weekly session.
Foster was a big woman, strongly built. She wore glasses and an olive-green Canadian Armed Forces sweater. Sitting in a folding chair, she looked up from her notebook and said, “How are you feeling today, Hannah?”
“I’m fine.”
“I heard you’ve made some friends.”
“Yup.”
“Anything new you’d like to share?”
“Not really.”
The therapist took off her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. Hannah massaged a bruise on her arm, a gift from the fascist gang.
“Other kids like you act out in counseling,” Foster said. “They brag about how they were big shots in the militia, how they killed people.”
Hannah wondered which of her friends did that. Maybe all of them.
“You’re different,” Foster added. “You hardly talk at all.”
“I have nothing to brag about.”
“Sometimes, I wish you were more like them. At least they’re an open book, even when they’re feeding me a load of bull. I can’t help you if you don’t help me help you.”
She couldn’t talk her way out of the things she’d done. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I might, if you let me try.”
“Have you ever fought in a war?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Then how could you?”
“By listening, Hannah. I’ve treated a lot of child soldiers from the USA. Before that, in Sudan and Mali.”
Hannah said nothing.
“You know, you’re romanticizing the militia you belonged to.” The captain checked her notes. “The Free Women.”
“Romanticize?”
“You look up to them in a way that isn’t real. Militias use kids as workers, fighters, spies, even prostitutes.”
“The Free Women fought for a cause that was right,” Hannah said.
“A cause doesn’t make people good or bad. It’s people who make a cause good or bad. Does that make sense?”
She said nothing.
“In the end, people use their cause to justify doing almost anything. They dehumanize themselves and the enemy. They end up doing horrible things and thinking it’s normal.”
“I know normal better than you do,” Hannah told her.
“Do you really think that?”
Nothing. The space heater purred in the corner.
The therapist sighed. “I’m not here to judge the Free Women’s cause. What I can judge is their using children to kill people. Whatever you did is on them, not you. You have to understand it’s not your fault.”
Nothing.
Captain Foster closed her notebook. “Let’s make a deal. If you open up to me a little, I’ll rate you as ready for group. How does that sound?”
If she attended group therapy, she could be with her friends. At the last session, they’d told her, they drew pictures of the war and plotted their next scrap with the fascists.
“Okay,” she said.
“Good. In one word, how would you describe how you feel most of the time?”
“Guilty.”
“Anything else?”
Hannah thought about it. “Sad. Scared. Alone.”
“These are all perfectly normal things to feel, though of course we want to figure out a way to feel them without so much hurt. It’s important to know what you’re feeling and put words to it. It’s how you start to heal—”
“The last day I was fighting, the commander gave me a bag,” Hannah cut in. “I was supposed to run across a street and throw the bag in a window. The bag had a bomb in it.”
“Yes. Go on.”
Hannah remembered the breathless dash across the street, feet pounding of their own accord. She paused to set the timer on the charge.
Seconds to go.
A silhouette appeared in the window. That’s it, she thought. I’m dead. The man fired at her twice but missed, and she kept going, feeling strangely detached.
Then the figure disappeared.
“I threw the bag in the window and ran,” she said. “The bomb blew up the house. I pulled my gun and shot a man coming out. Then I went inside to look for anybody still alive. I killed a man who’d forced my mom to do bad things.”
Captain Foster froze with her pen poised over her notebook, where she’d been furiously taking notes. “Is that all true?”
“I wouldn’t make up something like that even as a joke.”
“I’m so sorry, Hannah.”
“It’s okay. I got him.”
“Do you believe what you did was good or bad?”
She thought about it. “Both.”
“Whatever you did, it wasn’t your fault. None of it is your fault.”
Hannah flashed to Alex lying crumpled on the floor, helpless and dying. He was the figure she’d seen standing in the window. He could have killed her to save his own life but hadn’t.
If it wasn’t her fault, whose was it?
Hannah’s sessions didn’t make the hurt go away like Captain Foster promised. They only made her angry. Angry at herself, angry at the rebels.
Sitting at their table in the mess hall during lunch, Mike promised action after they finished gossiping about the latest war news and rumors. “I talked to Thompson.” The leader of the fascist gang. “We’re on for thirteen hundred.”
A boy they called Snowball said, “I don’t know what that means.”
Hannah didn’t know military time either but kept her mouth shut.
“That’s one o’clock for the newbs,” Mike said.
“Right after lunch.” Snowball grinned. They called him that because whenever there was work to do, he melted and disappeared like one. But he never shirked from a fight.
“We’re meeting at the Field of Mars, behind east-side construction. No knives or broken bottles. No hit
ting the face or head.”
Far from home, the child soldiers would go on fighting their war the only way they still could. For Hannah, it’d scratch a big itch.
“The usual star for fighting,” she said. She’d become the gang’s official inker, drawing stars on their arms after each fight, with extra stars for counting coup. “Extra star this time if you bring home one of their weapons.”
The kids nodded, some smiling, the rest glum. Not everybody liked fighting.
“Same tactics as last time,” Mike told them. “Me, Chloe, Tanya, Hannah, and Snowball in the center. We’ll charge in hard. The rest of you protect our flanks.”
Amped up now, Hannah fidgeted while they finished their lunch. At last, Mike stood with his tray. The gang followed his lead.
“Let’s get there early,” he said. “We can warm up.”
Together, they trooped out to the construction site, where they’d hidden their weapons under a tarp used to cover lumber. They’d used this wood to make clubs. What a fight that had been. The fascists had fashioned their own weapons in response, creating a primitive arms race.
Hannah pulled out her club and shield, which she’d decorated with the word INDY in black marker. Then she filled her pockets with rocks, which they’d agreed to use only if the fascists did first.
“Now let’s put on our war face,” Mike said.
Chloe produced a tube of blue oil paint she’d lifted from the group therapy art sessions. The kids crowded around to get some on their fingers and smear stripes across their cheeks.
“Somebody’s coming,” Snowball said.
“Oh hell,” Chloe said. “It’s Captain Foster.”
The kids dropped their weapons and formed a line to block the captain’s view of them.
“What did I tell you kids about fighting?” the captain said.
The fascist gang swaggered onto the scene. They caught sight of the Canadian soldier and veered off toward their section of the camp.
Hannah glowered at Foster. There were scores to settle here, plenty of steam to blow off, and it was none of the captain’s business how they did it. They bashed one another good out on the field, but nobody ever died.
“Hannah, come with me,” Foster said.
She sighed loudly. “Okay.”
The soldier led her toward the camp’s administrative area. “Somebody is here to see you.”
“Is it Gabrielle?”
“No, it’s her father. The Immigration and Refugee Board approved your application. You’re staying in Canada.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re going to a new home today.”
Hannah had been expecting Gabrielle to take her away at some point, but that possibility always seemed far in the future. Once again, everything was changing, out of her control.
She shot a look over her shoulder, but her friends were out of sight now. “I don’t want to go.”
“The Justines will take very good care of you. They agreed to let me continue our weekly sessions.”
“This isn’t fair. My family is here.”
“I’m a soldier,” Captain Foster said. “I understand that last part.”
“Then why are you making me go?”
“Because this is the best chance you’ve got at having a normal life.”
“There you go again,” Hannah spat.
“I’ll tell your friends where you went. I’ll make sure you see them again. I promise.”
The captain took her into an ugly prefab building crowded with Canadian soldiers and aid workers occupying tiny cubicle offices. In a waiting area, a tall man in a heavy winter coat turned as she entered.
His smile faltered as he took in her spiky hair, striped war paint, and purpled bruise on her cheek. “Hannah? I’m Ben Justine, Gabrielle’s father.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Justine,” she said.
The smile returned in full force. “Call me Ben.”
Ben and Captain Foster talked for a while, which Hannah tuned out, her hands playing with the rocks in her pockets.
“All right then,” the man said. “Lena’s waiting for us. Let’s go home.”
Your home, she thought. Fuming, she followed him out to his car and got in the back, where she hid behind the driver’s seat.
He angled the rearview to catch her reflection. “You can sit up front if you want.”
“No, thanks.” She had no choice here but didn’t have to pretend she liked it.
“We’ve got a room all set up for you at home. It was Gabrielle’s before she went off to university, but you can make it your own. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a girl your age in the house, so I hope you’ll bear with us.”
Hannah said nothing.
They drove through monotonous woodland until they reached a city called Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Ben pointed out the sights, but she wasn’t listening.
A different world appeared.
At a traffic light, she looked over at a restaurant. Past intact windowpanes, families ate with their coats off and without any fear of snipers or bombs. No bullet holes blemished the walls, no smoke fouled the air.
Cars crossed the intersection in front of her.
Hannah closed her eyes against sudden vertigo. Just miles from America’s endless war zone, people lived in an entirely different reality.
And she remembered: This is what peace looks like.
Hannah shot upright in bed and gripped the soft mattress beneath her. The nightmare dissipated, though its terror lingered. Drenched in sweat, she looked around the unfamiliar room.
“Hannah!” Lena called again from downstairs. “Breakfast!”
“Okay,” she yelled, at last remembering where she was.
The room had a bed, dresser, vanity, and writing desk. Movie posters and paintings decorated the walls. Sunlight flooded the room through the window.
Hannah got out of bed still wearing her ratty T-shirt and army surplus pants. After her long, hot bath last night, she’d put them back on before bed. She felt in her pocket for her pens. They were still there.
Lena had laid out a dress for her to put on. Hannah ignored it just as she’d ignored the pajamas last night. Instead, she pulled on the oversized Canadian Armed Forces sweater that Captain Foster had given her. Then she went downstairs slowly, taking in every detail and scanning for threats.
Dishes clattered in the dining room. The antique grandfather clock ticked. Ben puttered in his and Lena’s bedroom upstairs.
“Hi,” she said.
Lena’s smile faltered at the sight of Hannah in her militia uniform. “I put out something clean for you to wear.”
The woman looked like an older version of Gabrielle, beautiful but with the same fragile quality, as if she were a rare glass artifact.
Hannah didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t know what to get you. I have no idea what girls your age are wearing these days.”
“That makes two of us.”
Lena winced as she realized she’d said the wrong thing. “Oh.”
“We could find out together, maybe.”
The woman brightened. “Why don’t we go shopping today?”
“Okay.” Hannah wasn’t sure how she felt about putting aside her militia uniform, but she didn’t want to let Lena down. The woman was so nervously attentive, she didn’t know whether she found it irritating or adorable.
Dressed in a suit for work, Ben took his seat at the table. “Good morning.”
Hannah sat and fidgeted while he cracked open the newspaper and Lena went to get breakfast. The woman returned with a plate of bacon, eggs, and buttered toast. She set it down along with a glass of orange juice.
Hannah gaped at the meal, which was as wonderful and expansive as dinner had been last night. “Is this all for me?”
Ben put his paper aside and picked up his coffee cup. “Go ahead and eat.”
She smiled at her food, unsure where to
even begin. Then she began to wolf it down, cheeks bulging.
Lena took her own seat and frowned at the show. “Hannah, eat slowly or you’re going to choke.”
Hannah closed her eyes and chewed, savoring the rich flavors.
Ben said, “When was the last time you had a meal like this, Hannah?”
She shot him a wary look and shrugged. He echoed her shrug and tucked into his eggs. After breakfast, Hannah tried to help clear the table, but Lena wouldn’t have it. Ben excused himself to join Lena in the kitchen. Hannah heard them talking.
I don’t know how to speak to her, Lena was saying.
We need to let her be herself until she feels safe.
I just want to help her.
I know.
Should I let her help with the dishes? She’s our guest. I didn’t know.
Maybe it’s a good idea, Ben said.
I don’t want to ask her to work. I can’t imagine what she went through.
Hannah sighed with shame. This wasn’t her home. She didn’t fit in here. She didn’t deserve any of this. She just wanted to go back to her friends, people who understood her.
Lena returned to the dining room. “Would you like to help me do the dishes?”
“Okay.” Hannah wanted something to do.
“I’ll be off to work then.” Ben kissed Lena. “Have a good day, you two.”
Hannah grunted, already starting the dishes. She enjoyed the work. Work was honest. It wasn’t confusing. She didn’t feel caught between worlds. She didn’t want to smash something.
After they’d finished, they went out to the car.
She buckled up. “You don’t work?”
Lena tensed a little behind the wheel. “I work at home. I’m a technical writer. I’m taking a hiatus so I can spend some time with you.”
Hannah sank lower in her seat. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Nonsense. I wanted to do it. Business is slow anyway, with the economy.”
“What does Mr. Justine do?”
“Ben works in insurance. He doesn’t have the flexibility I have, and frankly, his profession makes more money than mine, especially right now.”
Hannah found her accent adorable. Frankly, she thought, saying it in her mind the way Lena had. Flexibility.
They pulled into the mall lot and found a spot to park. Inside, some of the stores were either closed or having going-out-of-business sales. Canada had its own troubles because of the war.
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