_*_ 33 _*_
Dad emerged from his room after they left and joined me at the bonfire, carrying a six-pack of beer. He threw on a couple sticks of wood and sat on a folding chair without a word.
“It was nice of them to stop by,” I said carefully.
He picked a thin stick off the ground and threw it into the fire. “Yep.”
I pulled the buzzing phone out of my pocket. It was Finn:
“Friend from school.” I quickly typed:
yes plz
later
and put the phone away.
“Not what’s-her-name up the street?” Dad asked, cracking open a can of ten-o’clock-in-the-morning beer.
“Not Gracie.” I said. “A new kid. New to me, I mean.”
He grunted, beer can on his right knee, left leg jiggling like he was listening to fast music I couldn’t hear. He leaned forward and poked the fire with an old broom handle. “Thought you had homework.”
That was my signal to leave him alone. I couldn’t, even though I knew I should. Beer for breakfast was freaking me out. The wind rattled the dried cornstalks in the field next door. I tossed a stick onto the fire, sending up sparks, and tried for a safe path through the minefields of Dad’s mood.
“He said I looked like Mom.” I cleared my throat. “Roy did. It was weird to hear him say that.”
Dad grunted.
“So was he like a best friend or something back then? I mean, if he remembers what Rebecca looked like.”
He poked at the fire again. “He and his girlfriend lived in the apartment below us when you were born. I don’t remember her name. She and your mom were friends.”
“You never said I looked like her.”
“You don’t.” He drained the can and popped open another one. “You look like yourself. Nobody else. Trust me, that’s a good thing.”
I picked up a rock the size of my thumb and tossed it in the fire. “You don’t think I look like you? Not even around the eyes?”
He stretched his neck to the right until the bones popped. “Don’t do that.”
I threw in another rock. “What?”
“Sedimentary rocks can explode in a fire. The moisture in them turns to steam, then boom.”
“You’re not my teacher anymore.”
He poked at the fire again, lifting the logs to get some air underneath them. “Why are you in such a crappy mood?”
There was no way to answer that without getting into trouble. He was the one with the mood, with the crazy demands, chasing his friends out before they could eat the breakfast he’d cooked. He was the one acting like a kid, making me figure everything out on my own. Roy handed him the perfect opportunity to get his head straight and Dad basically spat on it. Made me wonder if he liked being a miserable hermit, if he enjoyed screwing up my life as much as he was screwing up his own.
“Are you gonna answer me or what?” he asked, daring me to mouth off.
All of his stupid anger about Roy was being aimed at me. I didn’t deserve it, not this time. I pitched another rock into the flames, trying to stay calm because this was dangerous, my heart beating this fast, my mouth bitter and dry. I’d been angry at my father before, but this was different. I’d leveled up without realizing it. This new landscape was cave-dark.
“Did you hear what I said about the rocks?” he demanded.
I scooped up a handful of pebbles. “Yep.”
“Ah,” he said as if enlightened. “You’re pissed, is that it? Have a crush on one of the soldier boys? You’re crazy if you think I’d let any of them near you.”
The north wind gusted again, stoking the fire and sending my hair writhing in all directions. A loud pop came from inside the flames. Dad flinched. A rock had reached its boiling point.
“How come you didn’t go with them?” I asked.
“Didn’t want to.”
My phone buzzed. I didn’t answer it.
“Talking to Roy might have helped,” I said.
Smoke billowed.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said.
“Roy thinks you should talk to someone from the VA.”
“They’re the ones who did this to me.”
“Dad—”
“Enough, Hayley. I don’t want their help.”
“Okay, so don’t go to the VA, but at least go up to the camp.” My phone buzzed again. “You were actually laughing last night, Roy—”
Dad roared, “I don’t like the woods, damn it!”
Oxygen swooped into the gap he’d opened under the logs. The bonfire flared. For a second, I wished the grass was still long and dry so that the fire would catch and burn everything—the house, the truck, everything—and force him to see what a jerk he was being.
I started to walk away.
“Get back here,” Dad ordered.
“Why?”
He cold-stared at me without answering until I walked back and sat on an upturned log. The phone vibrated again. Either Finn was texting me an entire novel, or Topher and Gracie had just broken up.
“You looked like you were having fun last night,” I said quietly.
“I was,” he admitted. “But when I went to sleep, the nightmares were still there, bigger and badder than ever.”
He sipped from the can and stared into the fire as if he’d forgotten me entirely. I took a chance and checked my phone. The messages were from Finn, asking if I wanted to go skydiving, if I wanted to hunt for gold, if I wanted to ski down Mount Everest. Part of me wanted to go in the house, call him, gossip, flirt, do anything except talk to my father. I wrote back quickly, told him I’d call when I could.
Dad put out his hand. “Give that to me.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m tired of listening to it buzz.”
The fire crackled. I fought to keep my mouth shut because if I said what I wanted to say, the nuclear fallout would kill everything for hundreds of miles.
I put the phone on the ground. “I won’t answer it. I promise.”
“I want to see who you’re talking to. I’m your father. Give me the phone.”
“You?” I stared at him through the shimmering waves of heat. “Act like a father?”
He stood up. “What did you say?”
Something inside me boiled. “You’re a mess, Daddy,” I blurted out. “No job. No friends. No life. Half the time you can’t even take the dog for a walk without freaking out.”
“That’s enough, Hayley. Shut it.”
“No!” I stood up. “And now you’re all ‘I’m the dad’ but it doesn’t mean anything because all you do is sit on your ass and drink. You’re not a father, you’re—”
He grabbed the front of my sweatshirt. I gasped. His jaw was clenched tight. The bonfire danced in his eyes. I had to say something to calm him down, but he looked so far gone I wasn’t sure he’d hear me. He tightened his grip, pulling me up on my tiptoes. His free hand was balled into a fist. He had never hit me before, not once.
The wind shifted, swirling the smoke around us.
I braced myself.
The smoke made him blink. He swallowed and cleared his throat. He opened his hand, let go of my shirt, and started to cough.
I let out a shaky breath but didn’t move, afraid to set him off again. He turned his back to me, bent over with his hands on his knees and coughed hard, then spit in the dirt and stood up. The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale . . . there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who I was.
High above his head, an arrowed flock of geese was flying south. The sound of their honking moved slower than their bodies, floating down to the bonfire a few heartbeats after they moved out of range. A cloud moved in front of the sun, dimming the light and shrinking the shadows.
My phone rang and Dad jumped up as if it had given him an electric shock. Without a word he grabbed it and pitched it into the fire.
good morning want 2 go 2 paris? “Who’s that?” Dad asked.
_*_ 34 _*_
Small, ancient men lead us up the mountain to their village. I can’t speak their language. My interpreter claims he can.
Yesterday, the enemy set up grenade launchers on the flat roof of a house here. They fired at our outpost, corrected the angle and fired again. And again. Every shot looked like a small, red flower blooming across the valley. They rained destruction on our heads, distracting us so that we weren’t ready for the men who poured into our camp, weapons blazing.
Nine of my soldiers had to be evacuated. Two died before they made it back to base. We killed four insurgents and captured four more.
At the end of the battle, our air support fired missiles through the front door of the house, turning it into a hole in the side of the mountain.
The old men take us there. A tiny hand, stained with blood and dust, pokes out of the rubble. The old men shout at us.
“What are they saying?” I ask.
“We got the wrong house,” the interpreter says.
We blew up a house filled with children and mothers and toothless grandmothers. The insurgent house sits empty, a stone’s throw away.
The ancient men yell at me and shake their fists.
I understand every word they say.