“He didn’t!” Chase said with sudden vehemence, slamming his fist down on the table. My spine straightened.
Silence.
A heavy sigh escaped between my teeth.
“I thought you said Tucker wasn’t drafted. That he enlisted.”
Chase’s eyes were dark and indecipherable. He looked right at me, but he wasn’t seeing me.
“Right… he enlisted…. I only meant that he didn’t adjust well.”
I lowered my eyes to the fist that had banged the table. I watched the way the gnarled knuckles couldn’t quite straighten.
His hands hadn’t been like that last year, had they? I would have remembered. They’d been calloused but still soft when he’d touched my face, gentle when they’d run through my hair. They were rough now. Fighter’s hands.
And just like that, all the mixed emotions I’d felt for the two soldiers during this story—the pity, shame, and anger—were tossed into the air like bingo balls, jumbled chaotically, and then suddenly reassigned to their rightful places.
Tucker, the career soldier. Chase, the broken rebel.
Once, soon after Roy had left, my mother and I had gotten into a horrible fight; the worst we’d ever had. It was about the same thing. How I’d made him leave after he’d hit her, how I should have minded my own business.
I hadn’t known what to do. I’d hated her for saying those things, for blaming me for Roy leaving, even though she was right: I’d made him go. I hated that she couldn’t see how terrible he had been and how I’d saved her—us—from more of the same danger. But when I looked at her red, swollen eyes, all of that fury burned into something different. I just felt terribly sorry for her. So I’d gathered her in my arms and squeezed her as tightly as I could and told her that we were both going to be okay. She fell apart, but I was right. We were both okay.
I had the overwhelming urge to do the same for Chase now. To hold him so tightly his ribs hurt. To tell him we’d both be okay. I didn’t though. Maybe because I still didn’t trust him. Maybe because I didn’t trust myself. The truth was, even if I held him now, even if he’d let me and he did fall to pieces, I would have no idea how to put him back together. I had no idea if any of us, my mother included, would be okay.
“You were right about the double bind,” I said softly.
He stood too quickly, the chair tipping and cracking against the floor behind him.
“No, wait.” I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t know what else to say.
And just like that, the gate closed. His eyes dulled, his mouth relaxed, and the connection that had just threatened to build between us disappeared.
Without another word, he grabbed his coat off the chair and was out the door.
“Chase,” I called, but my voice had little volume.
I sat down at the kitchen table and clicked off the static hum from the radio. Absently, I traced the thin, raised welts on the backs of my hands and I thought about his hands, and how deeply the wounds beneath some scars ran.
* * *
“DO you miss them?”
I regretted asking when he hesitated.
“Yes.”
“It was really awful, wasn’t it? The accident I mean. I-I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say.” I chewed my fingernails.
“No, not terrible. I just…” He scratched his head. “I’ve never actually talked about it.”
I remembered the police knocking on our door. Telling my mother what had happened. They had needed someone familiar to wait with Chase until his uncle arrived from Chicago. I remembered the tears that had stained his innocent face.
At fourteen, Chase had lost everything.
“I was so sad for you,” I told him. I thought of how his mother would let me braid her thick, black hair. How it stayed in place even without a tie. His father used to pat my head and call me “kiddo.”
“My sister was a nightmare,” Chase said, and laughed a little. “She was a little better after she went to college. She was on winter break when the accident happened, did you know that? They were going out to get dinner.”
I remembered. It had been the first freeze of the season. The other car hadn’t been able to stop.
“I was mad at Rachel because she’d taken my bed and I had to sleep on the floor. I stayed home that night because we’d been fighting. It was so stupid.” He scowled. “The last things I said to her weren’t nice things.”
“But if you hadn’t fought, you’d have been with them,” I pointed out. It hurt, hearing that guilt in his voice.
He sensed my sorrow and turned to face me.
“You know what I remember after the police came?”
“What’s that?”
“You sitting on the couch with me. You didn’t say anything. You just sat with me.”
* * *
THAT accident had taken Chase away from me. Had led him to Chicago, where his sorry excuse for an uncle had abandoned him in the wreckage of the War. Three years later Chase had come back home, a sturdier, more intense version of the boy he’d been, and my joy at his survival had led to something different, something deeper than I’d thought was possible. Something I’d only just discovered before he was drafted and had to leave again.
Of all the things he’d lived through, it was becoming a soldier that had torn him apart.
After a while I stood, leaving the pot still half full on the table, and went to rinse off the spoon. Still distracted and confused, I forgot my task as the water ran over my fingers. Slowly, a very different realization crept into my brain.
Hot water. The hot water heater was working.
I looked out the door for Chase again, worried. What if the carrier came while he was gone? What if he didn’t intend to come back at all?
He needs to be alone, I told myself. Reluctantly, I left him to his mood and went to check the shower. I’d clean up quickly, just in case we didn’t have a chance when it was time to go.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before starting the water. I’d grown thin in the last month—not starving thin, but lean, and more muscular. All traces of the girl I’d been at home had vanished. I wondered if Chase had noticed. Not that it mattered or anything.
Maybe Rebecca had been right. Maybe the MM had made him break up with me, but that didn’t mean he’d been chaste. Had he been with other girls? Sean had found a way, so surely Chase could. I found I detested this thought, and then I detested that I detested it. It was none of my business. In fact, Chase’s love life was the least of my concerns.
What was wrong with me? Even if some of his actions made a little more sense after an explanation, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still insufferable. And besides that, who knew if he was even telling the truth. His whole story had been under the guise of Tucker’s misadventures, after all. Even if he had seemed genuinely affected back there, it didn’t mean he was the same person he’d been a year ago.
I turned on the water and was just about to disrobe when a slam in the kitchen interrupted my thoughts.
Chase was back. And, I soon found, frantic.
He bolted into the room, nearly knocking the door off its hinges, and slammed off the valve. His eyes darted wildly behind me.
“What—”
Without a word of explanation he jammed us both inside the closet and jerked the door closed behind him. I became acutely aware of the sound of his breathing, of the feel of his chest pumping in and out and pulling me with it. Of the truth: We were in imminent danger.
It was a tiny space, barely large enough for us to stand. The shelves holding the towels cut into my knees and hips, but he’d still managed to wrap himself around my body. One hand was firmly latched over my mouth. When I automatically bit down, I could taste the salt from the sweat on his fingers.
The adrenaline was pouring off of him. My own heartbeat accelerated to meet his.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called from the kitchen. I went stiff in Chase’s grasp. He held me tightly against him, ang
ling his side and back toward our exit.
“Don’t answer,” he breathed into my ear.
“Hello? Is someone here?”
An instant later I heard a loud clang and splatter, likely our soup pot being knocked off the counter. Then the scrambling of footsteps across the wooden floor.
I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Desperately, I pried off Chase’s hand. He relaxed his grip slightly, only to press my face into his shoulder.
“Got him?” shouted a second male voice.
“Where you gonna go?” said another. There was a loud crash. Maybe the kitchen table.
“You going to arrest me?” the first man called. He sounded willing to bargain.
One of the others laughed. “You know we’re past that, old man.”
There was another struggle, then the sliding of something heavy across the wooden floor.
“No!” he begged. “Please! I’ve got a family!”
“Should have thought about that before.”
The other snickered. “Think they’re compliant?”
At the mention of compliance my body began to quake. These were soldiers.
We couldn’t run. We had no escape.
Click. The metallic sound that only a gun could make.
I jerked instinctively. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t die in this closet.
“No one is going to touch you,” Chase murmured into my hair.
I wanted to believe him, but as I turned my head, I saw in the crack of light from the doorframe that Chase had raised his own gun and was aiming it at chest height straight out into the bathroom.
I gasped. He continued whispering things I couldn’t make out. I wrapped my trembling fists in his shirt and bit down in the fabric covering his chest.
Someone walked into the bedroom down the hall.
“Clear,” he reported after a moment.
Don’t come in here. Not in here.
The bathroom door creaked open.
Footsteps moved across the tile floor, with just a little squeak. New boots.
With the door open, I could hear the carrier sobbing in the other room. He was begging for his life. He was crying for his little boy. Andrew.
“You try to take a shower, old man?” the soldier yelled from the bathroom. I pinched my eyes closed and tried to be absolutely still. Why had I turned on the water? What was I thinking? That we were at home? That mistake was about to get us killed.
The carrier continued bawling, and then grunted when he was struck with something. I smothered a sob into Chase’s shoulder.
“I was going to but… but t-the water heater… it’s broken… I forgot,” the carrier answered.
My stomach twisted.
Chase slowly eased back the slide on his pistol. It made a nearly unperceivable click. I prepared myself for the blast. I was ready to run.
The soldier abandoned the bathroom.
A second later, the deafening sound of gunfire split my eardrums.
It took me a moment to realize that Chase’s whole body, from the shins up, was cramming mine into the corner of the closet. He’d begun whispering again. I couldn’t hear him over my raging pulse, but I felt his lips move against my ear.
“Upstairs,” said a soldier. “Cover me. We’ll move the body in a minute.”
Footsteps ascending. The ceiling groaned under their weight.
I couldn’t hear the man anymore. He wasn’t crying for his son. I felt the bile scrape my throat.
The FBR was murdering civilians.
Before I could think through the ramifications of this, Chase was dragging me out of the bathroom. My legs didn’t feel right. Like they were pulling through water.
He halted unexpectedly at the entrance to the kitchen. I glanced down and saw a man’s denim-covered legs emerging from beneath the table. Before I saw anything else, I was again smashed beneath Chase’s heavy arm. His hand snaked around my face, blocking my vision.
But I could smell it. The metallic tang of blood. The peppery sting of gun smoke.
And I could hear the carrier gasping for breath.
I took a step, guided by Chase. I slipped on something wet. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sandpaper.
There was a change in the man’s breathing.
Chase paused. Leaned down. He did not release his grip over my eyes.
“Lewisburg… West Vir… ginia… two… o’clock… Tuesday…”
“Oh, God,” I sobbed. Imagining the scene below me was just as terrifying as the real thing must have been. The ceiling creaked again.
“Clear!” one of the soldiers called upstairs.
“Look for… the sign….”
That was all the carrier said. He sighed, a sound infused with liquid, and then he was gone.
Chase didn’t release me until we were outside, and even then, he didn’t let go of my hand. He pulled me at a run through the empty backyard, toward the woods. My legs, to my relief, were working again.
“Don’t look back,” he ordered, breaking the silence of our flight.
Frigid air needled at the drops of sweat lining my brow and neck. The grass crunched, frozen, beneath my rushed steps. I had to sprint to keep up with his breakneck pace as we crossed through the threshold of the woods. Neither of us made any attempt to soften the noise of breaking branches. My eyes stayed fixed on the pack over his shoulders; he must have grabbed it when we’d gone back through the kitchen. My strained hearing picked up only the sounds of the forest, tempered by the rush of my breathing. But my thoughts were loud, loud, loud.
The carrier was dead. Murdered.
My mother would have to find someone else.
Even if she’d already made it to South Carolina, she wasn’t safe. She’d never be safe again. I’d never be safe again.
I would never see Beth again. Contacting her would only invite soldiers to her doorstep.
And finally: It’s my fault. I hadn’t caused the carrier’s death, I hadn’t been responsible. But just as I knew this, I knew that he would never have been there if not for people like me.
They told us girls like you were dangerous, Chase had said after I’d run away. I hadn’t believed him then, but I did now.
I was dangerous. A man, a stranger, had just died to save our lives.
A commanding resolve shuddered through me. If I died now, his death would be in vain.
Focus. His last words had been to help us, but this plan was more thinly laid than the last. What sign? Surely checkpoints didn’t advertise their purpose. We didn’t know where we were going. We didn’t know who was safe to ask. We couldn’t even go back to the truck, now that the radio report had described it. We only had a time and a date, one that was rapidly approaching.
I kept seeing his legs, spread awkwardly over the kitchen floor. I could hear his sobbing plea to return to his son—to Andrew. My brain morphed the faceless soldier who had executed him into the guard Randolph. Then the scene changed from the kitchen to the woods outside the reform school, and I was the one crying out for my mother. It was my legs splayed out across the cold, wet ground.
“Ember!” Chase gave my shoulders a firm shake. I snapped alert. It was dark now. I didn’t know how long we’d been moving. I’d lost track of time.
“If we’re caught, that’s what will happen,” I said, refocusing on the present. He’d begun pulling me along again, and didn’t confirm or deny my statement.
I gulped down the frigid air. My heart rate was high from the exertion and the adrenaline.
“What if they catch my mother?”
She’d already been sentenced. And if she’d made it to the base, she’d already served her time. Would that matter if she was caught at a checkpoint?
He slouched but kept moving at a fast walk. The woods were growing denser; the line of houses no longer visible in the distance behind us.
“‘Multiple-offense Article violators are subject to trial by a senior jury of the Federal Bureau of Reformation and sentenced appropriately,
’” he quoted.
“What does ‘sentenced appropriately’ mean, Captain Jennings?” I said, exasperation rising above the panic.
“I’m not a captain. I was just a sergeant.”
“What does it mean?” I growled.
He didn’t answer for a full minute.
“The worst thing you can think of.” His voice was very low. “It might be worthwhile to consider the… reality of the situation.”
I slammed on the brakes; the inertia after so long in motion made my head spin.
“Worthwhile?”
He turned back to face me, eyes guarded and unreadable. His jaw twitched ever so slightly.
“Worthwhile?” I shouted at him.
“Keep it down,” he warned.
“You…” My voice shook. My whole body shook. The simmer had jolted back up into an overflowing boil. “I need your help, as much as I hate to admit it. You say jump and I’ll jump. You say run and I’ll run. Only because you know things I don’t have the time to learn right now. But you will not tell me what is worthwhile to think about when we are talking about my mother! Not a minute goes by that I don’t consider the reality of this situation!”
He stepped forward, grabbed my shoulder, and leaned close to my face. When he spoke his voice was grounded by a very controlled fury.
“Good. But does it ever occur to you that I don’t need you? That if I’m caught, I’ll be lucky to die as fast as that poor bastard back there? Here’s my reality: There’s no going back. I am risking my life to get you safe, and as long as I live, I’ll be hunted for it.”
I felt all the remaining blood drain from my face. He released me abruptly, as though he’d just realized he was clutching my arm. I focused on his Adam’s apple. It bobbed heavily as he tried to swallow.
The shame suffocated my anger. Hot, ugly, gut-wrenching shame. I could have melted from it, but with his eyes locked on mine, I found myself unable to look away.
“I-I haven’t forgotten how dangerous this is for you,” I said carefully, trying to control the hitch in my voice.
He shrugged. I wasn’t sure whether he was dismissing my apology or the worth of his own life. Either way, it made me feel worse.
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