It’s not real.
Harper turns around, her mouth moving with words I can’t understand. She hasn’t noticed anything wrong yet. I don’t want her to.
But it’s so cold.
So cold.
Her eyes catch mine and her sentence is cut short. My chest heaves too fast. My eyes fill with of a fear only I can feel.
“Kale.” Her hand is on my face, her skin warm against mine. “Stay with me.”
I’m afraid if I relax my jaw, it’ll shake.
So I only nod.
Harper looks down the aisle. It’s empty. “Maybe you should sit in the car while I check out. You’ll warm up faster.”
I nod again and force my legs to move.
“Just don’t leave,” she says behind me. “Promise?”
I turn back to her, pushing my mind to better places so my skin will unfreeze.
“I’ll try,” I tell her.
I don’t make promises I can’t keep.
I sit in the passenger seat of Harper’s unnamed car, soaking in the heat coming through the windshield. I watch people load their groceries and fight their children into their car seats.
My arm hangs outside, feeling the hot waves roll off the black pavement.
I’m still cold.
It’s set deep in my bones, slowly leaving with every passing minute.
I don’t understand why I was so eager to leave all those times before this. When I couldn’t stand being in the house with Dad. Couldn’t stand being anywhere but here.
Only a week ago, I couldn’t decide where I belonged.
I have little doubt now—with me and Dad making it better between us, and Harper … I do belong here. But I know I have to keep going back in time. Because somehow—in ways I don’t understand and probably never will—I belong in those places, too.
I try to think about the reasons I went to certain times before but none of them seem as significant as a war. Did I go back to those other years for a reason or is everything just random?
Harper opens her door, dropping the grocery bags in the backseat. She doesn’t move to start the car. “Are you all right?”
“Getting there. I’m sorry … about what happened in there.” I shake my head, daring the lump in my throat to grow. I haven’t shed a tear months, and I’m not going to start now even though this is frustrating as hell. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you, Kale. A lot of people have gone through what you’re going through now. Not many from the same war as you anymore—” I smile a little at that “—but I’m sure it’s no different. It is what it is—nothing to be sorry for.”
I lean back against the headrest and stare out the windshield. “It makes me feel like a different person, like I can do nothing at all to stop it from happening. The smallest of things can remind me of that place and it triggers something bigger.” Then I say, “I hate it. I didn’t think I did before, because when I’m there, I really do feel like I belong, but I hate knowing it’s inevitable. I am going to go back. It’s just a matter of when.”
“You really don’t think you can control it?”
I give her a look. “Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times, I lost count. Remember Libby’s tenth birthday party and how I wasn’t there? I knew she wanted me there—I knew it was important. But a couple hours before the party, I felt it coming. I took a hot shower, and I tried to keep myself busy to keep my mind off it, maybe hoping it was all in my head. Nothing worked.”
“I had no idea,” she says. “But we can figure this out, I promise. You might’ve given up, but I’m just getting started.”
I smile at that, seeing her stubborn side come out. “Maybe I’ll be able to once my time in the war is over. Right now, it feels hopeless.”
“When do you think that’ll be?”
I pause, coming up with no explanation. “Only the past can answer that. But I hope it’s soon. The war can’t last forever, right?”
Harper leans back in her seat, a small sigh escaping her lips. “I hope it ends soon, too. This last time you left … I couldn’t stand it. Every day I wanted you to come through that door.”
“And every day I wanted to,” I confess. I wanted nothing more than that while sitting in my frozen fox hole, counting the minutes until sunrise so time would go by faster. Nights are the worst. “I don’t want to go back. More now than ever.”
Harper doesn’t say anything, which I’m glad for. There is nothing to say. It feels fake when people try to make something seem better than it is.
“What’s it like? The war?” she asks quietly. I turn my head, but she’s staring at her steering wheel. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even ask. You’re probably—”
“Harper. It’s all right.” She’s still avoiding my eyes. “It’s … the scariest and worst thing I’ve ever been through.” And when I say those words, it really hits me how true they are. Every moment I’m there, I note an underlying fear is always present. Every time I fire my gun, a drop of remorse fills my heart. I dread every moment we enter a battle. I stare at my hands, remembering them covered with blood. “There’s no worse feeling than watching your friends die … knowing you can’t do anything to save them. I’ve killed people, and all I can ever think is that someone on the other side is going through the same thing I am. But I can’t hesitate to pull the trigger, because if I do, I’m dead.”
I try not to think of Adams more than I already am.
I finally say, looking over at her, “I just want it to be over.”
When Harper finally lifts her eyes, they’re glazed. “I know it doesn’t mean much that I hate the thought of you there more than anything else, but I need you to know I’ll always be here when you come back. I wish I could do something more.”
“It’s more than you think,” I say. “Really. Before I heard you were coming back here, there were times I didn’t want to come back at all. Not while knowing what waited for me.”
“And now?”
“And now, I don’t even want to leave.”
Harper wipes the corners of her eyes and wipes her fingers on her jeans, leaving wet streaks across them. “I wish you didn’t have to. At least not back to where you’ve been.”
“I’m hoping it won’t be much longer now.”
Harper starts up the car and heads back, glancing at me like I’m going to disappear at any minute. I might have felt the pull back in the store, but it’s gone now, replaced with the warm summer air.
A reminder of where I am and where I belong.
She slows down at the bottom of my driveway, engine idling.
I open my door, not yet stepping out. “See you tomorrow?”
“You promise?” she asks.
I can’t promise, even though I want to. It could change in an instant. Without warning. “You know I can’t. But I’m really going to try this time. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”
Harper nods. Something more is clearly on her mind.