“Harper.”
“I know.” And when I look at her, she explains, “Your uncle talks about you a lot. He said you’ll be here for your senior year in the fall?”
“That’s the plan,” I say, holding back a sigh.
Uncle Jasper and Grace’s dad finally get the car into the barn, popping the hood barely before it’s in park. Even when I was younger, Uncle Jasper always got excited when a new car came for him to fix. Aunt Holly would sit on the porch and watch him with an amused expression, a forgotten book in her lap but a small smile touching her lips. She would sit that way for hours, just watching him.
The empty porch now stares at my back.
“So look,” Grace says, finally turning to me now that the entertainment is over. “There’s a bunch of us going into the city tonight to watch the fireworks. There’s this cool place by the river where we go every year. You wanna come?”
For a moment, I’m confused about why there would be fireworks tonight, but then I realize it’s the Fourth of July. Between everything going on, I lost track of the days. And right about now, going out for a night couldn’t sound better.
I just can’t sound desperate. Don’t sound desperate, Harper …
“Yeah, all right. I mean … if I’m not imposing or anything.”
Nailed it.
“Not at all,” she says, shaking her head. “There will be a bunch of kids there from school, too, so I can introduce you. I hated starting school as ‘the new girl,’” she says, bringing her hands up as mock quotations marks. “It sucks not knowing anyone.”
I’m about to mention Libby and Kale when her dad calls to Grace, telling her it’s time to leave.
“I’ll pick you up at eight?” she says, taking backward steps toward their truck.
Her dad starts the engine, drowning my voice when I say, “Sure.” So I nod instead, in case she didn’t hear. She gives me a quick wave before they’re gone, the gravel crunching down the driveway to announce their departure.
I smile, because a month ago I would have said no, and a month ago nobody would’ve asked. For once I have plans with someone besides my Xbox.
4.
Kale
I wake to my name being yelled.
By the time my door opens, the doorknob banging into the wall, I’m sitting up. Half awake with my palms pressing into the mattress. I let out a breath when I realize I’m home and not in the middle of the woods in winter.
He surveys me and then my room. When I swing my legs over the bed, I’m suddenly aware of how sore I am. My whole right side aches when I move, and my head still pounds with a headache.
The clock over my desk shows it’s past noon.
“Dad said he heard you come in last night,” Bryce says, settling his gaze on me after eyeing my dirty shoes on the floor. “I guess I had to see for myself if it was true.” His tone is anything but friendly.
Bryce used to be okay with me leaving, but I’ve broken too many promises so I can’t blame him.
“Well, you found me, so what do you want?” When I look up, it hits me how much he looks like Dad—the same brown eyes and short dark hair, even the way he stands there.
“Dad wanted me to tell you that he’ll be home around eight.” In the other words, I’d better be here when he does. “He got called in today.”
“Wait, what day is it?” I know I lose track of the days, but I’m almost sure it’s a Wednesday.
The way Bryce looks at me makes me wish I’d never asked.
For a moment, I see myself through his eyes: I’m wearing the same clothes I was in the last time he saw me, I’m sleeping in the middle of the day, I’ve been gone for at least the last three days, and now I’m asking what day it is.
No wonder he looks at me the way he does.
I would, too.
“It’s the fourth,” Bryce says. When he turns to leave, he adds, “You have dirt on your face.”
For the longest time—after Bryce goes downstairs and the numbers on my clock silently change—I sit on the edge of my bed and try to think of reasons to venture out of my room today. Or out of the house.
I want to, but I shouldn’t.
It’s always worse between me and Dad after I get back. It reminds him who I am, and not who he wants me to be. It’s opening an old wound that would rather be forgotten.
Before I think on it more, I walk across the hallway and lock myself in the bathroom. The floor is cold and the light filters through the glass-tiled window. I turn on the shower and peel off my T-shirt. My arms are sore and my ribs still ache with every breath.
For the first time since I’ve been back, I take a closer look at my hands—at the dirt under my fingernails and in the lines of my palms. I want to believe it’s dirt. But wanting to believe isn’t making it true.
I look at the floor while I tug off my jeans, trying not to look at them. Then I step into the shower to wash away the evidence of something that happened over sixty years ago.
But no matter how much I scrub, the memories won’t ever fade.
I hear voices downstairs when I’m putting on a clean shirt. The front door shuts and Bryce’s voice echoes up along with his friends, Todd and Jeremy. One of them is laughing about something. A laugh that bounces off every corner of the house.
After I pull on my sweatshirt, along with my shoes, I go downstairs to find them in the kitchen.
They don’t notice me at first.
Todd—with his buzzed hair and button-up shirt—texts someone while leaning against the counter. And Bryce and Jeremy pull a few bags of ice from the freezer. They’re both wearing Tshirts and swim shorts.
I glance down at myself.
I’m dressed for a different season.
“Kale!” Todd shoves his phone into his pocket and smiles like something is funny. “Long time no see.”
While his friends laugh, Bryce glances at me uncomfortably, torn between wanting to keep up the act in front of his friends and defending me. It used to be different between us a couple years ago. Better. Every morning, he would come into my room to see if I was back. He would sit on the edge of my bed and ask about where I went and what I saw. Back then it wasn’t the war. It was places that weren’t filled with snow and gun shots. California, 1969. The cotton fields of Arkansas in 1950.
I would lie in bed and tell him all the funny stories about how I would mention something that nobody would be familiar with because it hadn’t been invented yet. Or how I had to spend nights in chicken coops or barns, waking up only to scare a girl coming out to do her chores.
Bryce was the first person I ever told and the first person to ever believe me.
Now he turns back to his friends to change the subject.
“We have to be there at two, right?” he asks.