“Did you ever think about it?” he asks suddenly.
“No.” The answer is prompt, but not immediate. Not defensive, not reflexive. “Chavi was a very large part of my world, but she wasn’t all of it. However heartbroken I was, and am, I was equally pissed off. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“Even if it doesn’t, other things do. My sister was taken from me. But I didn’t lose my freedom. I didn’t lose my identity. I didn’t have a set day to die.”
An expiration date, one of the Garden survivors calls it. Like a gallon of milk.
He can feel his shrimp lo mein churn in his stomach.
“I lost my sister. Your Butterflies lost themselves. There’s a difference in that, at least.”
“We knew she was going to do it. We warned her parents, begged them to let her get the help she was offered.”
“Vic begged.”
“And Ramirez,” he says without shame, because begging isn’t a thing he does.
He’s always been better with suspects than with victims. Another thing that probably says more about him than it should.
“Knowing doesn’t change how you feel once it happens.”
But doesn’t it? Then again, that’s not a question she’ll hold too close. The man who murdered her sister is still out there; even if they learn who he is, it won’t bring Chavi back.
“So do I ever get to meet them?” she asks.
He blinks, almost pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at it. “Who?”
“The ones who’ll set the world on fire if they have to burn. They sound like my kind of people.”
It startles a laugh out of him. “Oh, they are, they—no. No, absolutely not, you are never allowed to meet them,” he says sternly, brain catching up to the implications of that statement. Christ, Priya would get along with Inara and Bliss without question. Like a fucking house on fire. No.
Her soft huff of laughter, little more than a breath, eases some of that knot in his chest, and it’s bizarre how he can feel simultaneously better and worse.
But for his own well-being, as well as the state of the world at large, he very much needs them to never meet.
Oh-shit-thirty Wednesday morning, I snap from sleep to panicked flailing as the bed drops out from beneath me. Or seems to. I bounce against the mattress, slapping at my eyes to get rid of the crust. My room is still dark, but there’s enough light from the hallway to silhouette my mother, standing over my legs with her hands on her hips in a Superman pose. The bed frame creaks under her added weight.
I groan and flop back, yanking a pillow over my face. “What the hell, Mum?”
She laughs and drops down next to me. I can smell the coffee on her breath, warm and familiar on my neck, as she wraps an arm around me. “Just because you can stay in pajamas for class doesn’t mean you can avoid getting up at a reasonable hour.”
“Is it still dark outside?”
“Yes.”
“Then it is not a reasonable hour.”
Mum just laughs again and lifts the pillow to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Up, my love. I’ll make you breakfast.”
She does make amazing waffles. They might even be worth getting out of bed for.
Mum leaves for work right after breakfast, and I spend the rest of the morning trying to pummel my brain into thinking in French for math and science and history. So much history—it never occurred to me how US-centric even my world history classes were until I had to start playing catch-up to the kids I’ll be in a classroom with this fall.
When my head starts aching from the language overload, I put everything away and bundle up in eight or ten layers to brave the world outside. It’s a clear day, but cold. Oh my God, so cold.
Part of me wonders why the vets bother with the space heaters rather than going inside. It’s still cold enough to freeze a tit off just outside the pavilion and they’ve got three different Starbucks in spitting distance, after all. But I’m not going to ask. This will be my first time actually playing with them, and I have to earn my place. It’s the same with any group.
“Here, Blue Girl, you’re playing with me today,” announces the red-nosed Vietnam vet before I even get up onto the grass.
Some of the others snicker at the name, but it’s apt enough. The bindi between my eyes is blue crystal set in silver, same as the stud at my right nostril, and as soon as I pull the knitted cap off, the royal-blue streaks in my hair are bright and clear. The one who named me blinks at the hair, then laughs like he’s acknowledging a point.
“So what do I call you?” I ask, climbing over the bench.
“You call this ugly son of a bitch Corgi, you hear?” howls the man next to him, ignoring the elbow Corgi digs into his ribs. Their hats are identical, and I wonder how it must be to go through hell with someone and have each other to lean on after.
Well, a different kind of hell, anyway. Loss is loss, and my mother and I have each other, but we didn’t come through their kind of war.
Some of the others introduce themselves while Corgi and I place our pieces—Steven and Phillip and Jorge, and next to Corgi, Happy, who may be a little bit drunk. The others are intent on their games. From what I suspect is his customary corner, Gunny gives me a small smile and a wave, then looks back to his game with the bland-faced man I spoke to last time.
As Corgi and I start to play, Happy and Jorge pay more attention to our game than to theirs, both of them coaching me with often conflicting advice. Except for Happy’s initial outburst, they’re on their best behavior, which is to say, they alternate between extreme and sometimes awkward courtesy and the kind of crassness that probably made their sergeants cry with pride back in the day. They stumble over apologies as soon as they remember I’m listening. But I laugh with them, and gradually they relax into something that must be closer to their usual dynamic, or at least as close as it can be with a female intrusion.
“I thought you said you loved to play,” Corgi says suspiciously after his second easy victory.
“I didn’t say I was good at it.”
“Good thing,” notes Jorge.
Dad was so genuinely bad at the game that losing to him was more challenging than beating most casual players. Once I realized other people were more likely to let me stay and play if I wasn’t a threat to their pride? Well. Maybe part of me keeps the losing streak alive for Dad, but it’s also a strange form of pragmatism. Playing to lose lets me keep playing without any kind of pressure or drama.
We reset the pieces for the next game, and Happy comes around the tables to take my place, threatening to beat Corgi black and blue for some perceived insult. Corgi’s grinning.
Men say I love you in the strangest ways.
“Come play with me, Miss Priya,” Gunny invites, nudging his pieces back into starting position.
Everyone rearranges, finding new partners and squabbling over colors. I take the nothing man’s seat, but he just slides down one to face a (relatively) young Desert Storm vet who introduces himself as Yelp.
I managed not to ask with Corgi and Happy, but Yelp?
He grimaces, cheeks pink and stretched in a sheepish smile. “Got the name in Basic,” he mumbles. “Sarge would sneak up behind and bellow orders in my ear. Jumped a foot damn near always. Named me Yelp.”
And those kinds of names stick.
The nothing man looks at me with a small smile, but doesn’t offer his name. I don’t ask—there’s something about him, and I don’t want to risk him conflating courtesy with interest.