He takes a look at our small group, noticing the holes left by the men who are now gone. “I think we all are.” Then he turns to me. “Jackson, Captain Price is asking for you. He’s at the north end of the line.”
“Yes, sir.” I don’t ask questions, despite my curiosity.
I grab my M1 and start back through the camp. I keep my head clear of everything except staying alive. Keeping warm and making sure I eat, and finding more cigarettes. Right now, I could use them more than food.
Then somehow, out of nowhere, I think of Harper.
Seeing her down near the river. And then in the water, when her eyes reflected the sky. Just a glimpse. But then that makes me think of home and I almost get the feeling I could leave now if I wanted to.
I don’t.
A couple guys from the 82nd division stare as I stand there, waiting for that moment to pass.
I turn away from them and continue on, not stopping until I see Captain Price—his back is to me, facing the tree line. He’s with another captain who joined us in the night, but I don’t remember his name. I try to stand tall and keep my hands from shaking. They’re fine right now. They usually are when my mind is on the present—wherever I happen to be.
It’s what keeps me focused and alive.
“Private Jackson.” Captain Price nods and motions to the man next to him. “This is Captain Donavan from the 82nd.”
Donavan looks me up and down, seeming a little confused. “You’re the one they call Ace?” he asks.
I resist the temptation to shift my weight. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s quite a name to be given,” he says.
“And he lives up to it,” Captain Price adds. “He’s the best shot we have.”
Donavan turns to me. “What’s your range with an M1D?”
“Never used one, sir.”
“Just an M1?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looks at me funny. “Scope?”
“No, sir,” I answer. “Someone offered me one a month back, but I would rather use the eyes I was born with.”
Donavan laughs, unsure but still finding it funny. “What’s your range then? No scope, if you’ll have it that way.”
“Almost three hundred yards.”
He nods, and I don’t know if he believes me.
I was seven-years-old when I first fired Dad’s hunting rifle.
He took me into the woods behind our house, the rifle wedged into his shoulder with one hand holding it, the barrel pointed at the ground. And his other hand holding mine. I remember them being so much bigger than my own. They felt safe and strong.
I don’t remember a lot about that day except that.
And something he said before I took my first shot.
His arms were around me, his hands guiding mine. Then he whispered in my ear, “Aim small, miss small.”
Until recently, a year never went by without me going hunting or shooting with Dad.
Then he stopped asking.
So when I got here and they put a rifle in my hands and told me to shoot, nothing could come easier.
While Donavan and Price talk, my thoughts go numb. I don’t want to think about the time Dad and I spent together, because it makes me miss it more.
If I think of nothing, the pain goes away.
Novocain for my heart.
Everything is cold, and a war ranges around me. But I feel nothing when I let myself.
Sometimes it’s the best thing I can do.
9.
Kale
They’re waiting for me.
Waiting for me to take the shot and start a day of bloodshed. Every time I pull the trigger, I remind myself I’m doing it to survive. If I don’t kill them, I am dead. If I don’t shoot, my friends are dead. It doesn’t make it any easier.
My helmet sits near my elbow. The wind cuts through my hair. I look down the gun’s sight at the man I have to kill. They gave me a new gun with a scope today because they’re low on sharpshooters, and now I look at the man who they want me to kill. I try not to stare at his face so I won’t remember him later. So he won’t haunt my dreams.
It wasn’t always like this.
I used to like going back in time.
Different places, different people. Reliving history like nobody has before. I could’ve told Mr. Williams things no teacher has ever known if they hadn’t expelled me.
Things not important enough to make history books, or maybe too horrifying to.
I miss the days of unpredictability. Not months of the same war, coming back like I never left, time and time again.
I’m here for reasons I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter to me when I’ll be finished.
The truth is, sometimes I would rather be here than home. Even though I’m in the middle of a war, watching friends die every day, and not knowing if I’ll be alive to see the sunrise, it’s better than being with a dad who thinks I would rather tell him lies than the truth.
I miss Dad. The one I used to know. The father who hugged me when I got home and told me he was proud. Who used to take me out into the field to play catch or into the forest to hunt.
But I’m not there anymore, so I swallow down my anger and focus on what I need to do.
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?”