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 door 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.