by Naomi Niles
“How’d what go?”
“You called him last night, didn’t you?”
“No, I fell asleep.”
“You what? You have to get ahold of him.”
“I know. I grabbed my phone the second I woke up, but he hasn’t texted me yet. I’m worried that it’ll be too late.”
“Maybe he’s busy. He works late, doesn’t he? He’s probably asleep.”
“He’s still at work. He doesn’t get off until nine. He knows I texted him, and he’s ignoring me.”
Lexie marched right up to me. “Don’t you dare give up. I don’t know if he’s the one — I don’t even know if I believe in that — but he’s exactly what you need.”
“What should I do? He doesn’t want me.”
“You stupid, stupid girl. Do you really think that he doesn’t want you? If he’s mad, it’s because he wants you. Hunt him down. Do whatever you have to do to. Just don’t give up.”
I knew Lexie was right. It was all I could think of during class. Our private lessons went by slowly, dragging on through the afternoon. I wanted to run out and find Dwayne, but there was work to do, and Lexie couldn’t handle the girls on her own. She needed me.
When we’d finally finished our lesson for today, I left as fast as I could to drive down to Dwayne’s house. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. This was my fault. I was the one who broke things off with him. He was probably so upset that he didn’t want to see me, but I couldn’t let things stay the way they were.
Part of me thought he would understand. We were so close. Something as stupid as this couldn’t possibly break us apart, but I’d really hurt him. The look on his face when I drove away was heartbreaking. I couldn’t keep going back and forth. At some point, he was going to get tired of it and leave.
When I turned onto his street, my stomach jumped. My skin was tingling. He had to understand. He just had to. This couldn’t be the end. The closer I got to the house, the more anxious I got. My worries were taking over, blocking out everything else. I was convinced he would get mad at me for coming and throw me out. If he had any sense, he would. I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve anyone. I was a terrible girlfriend.
The neighbors had a hedge blocking my view of his front yard. When I passed it, I slammed on the brakes. His car wasn’t in the driveway. That didn’t make any sense. He was still working nights, so he should have been home. I pulled my phone out to call him to be sure.
“We’re sorry. The mailbox you’ve reached hasn’t been setup yet. Goodbye.” The machine hung up.
Why would he leave his phone off? He was always so methodical. He wouldn’t leave it off the charger. Goosebumps popped up on the back of my neck. He was in danger. I could feel it. I called Michael.
“Hello?”
“Michael something’s wrong. I’m trying to get ahold of Dwayne, and his phone is off. He’s not at home, either.”
“I don’t have time for this, Gillian. You’re freaking out over nothing.”
“No, Micha-”
“I mean it.”
“Just listen to me.”
He hung up. “Ugh,” I raged and dialed his number again.
“Will you stop?”
“Don’t hang up just listen to me.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“He’s in danger. Somebody’s after him.”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. They’ve been trying to sabotage the security system at his work. Then they called him and told him to quit. They know who he is.”
“How do you know something’s happened? Maybe he’s just at the store.”
“He’s not. He’s been working graveyards for more than a week.”
There was a long pause. “How can I help?”
“Call him. We had a fight. Make sure that he didn’t block my number.”
“What makes you think he did that?”
“It just goes straight to voicemail. It’s not like him to leave his phone off the charger.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. That doesn’t sound like something he would do, but I don’t think he’d block your number, either, not over some petty fight.”
“I broke up with him.”
“You are by far the dumbest girl I have ever met.”
“I thought you didn’t like us together.”
“Mom’s right. You’re happy. You better hope you didn’t screw this up.”
“Michael, it’s not about that right now. I’m worried.”
“I’ll call him. I don’t know what else I can do.”
“I’m not giving up.” I hung up and pulled into the driveway. Maybe his car broke down and was in the shop. The thing was ancient. I knocked on the door and waited for a response. I couldn’t hear anything, so I pressed my ear against the door. All I heard was the hum of the air conditioner.
I knocked again. “Dwayne!”
Nothing.
I slumped against the door, tears welling up. He could be dead, or trapped somewhere. What if he never came back? I’d spend my life in mourning. I don’t think I’d ever cared about anyone the way I cared about Dwayne.
My phone rang. It was Michael. “What happened?”
“His phone is dead. It has to be.”
“What do I do?” I was sobbing now, pleading with him for an answer.
“I’m headed out now.”
“Michael…”
“Yeah?”
“Bring two guns.”
“Way ahead of you.” He hung up.
I looked inside the front window. The living room was empty and the lights were off, but that didn’t mean anything. If he was there, he was sleeping. I walked around the carport into the backyard so I could look into his bedroom window. It was too high for me to reach, so I went to pick up a rock next to the tree. I ducked down, hoping to lift it, but it was too heavy, so I used my foot to roll it over so I could stand on top of it. I could see his bed through the blinds. It was empty.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Dwayne
The cold burned through my clothes, under the skin and into the bone where it had settled. I opened my eyes, and found myself sitting in complete darkness. Something was over my head. I could feel it pulling at a scab when I shifted. I tried to reach up to touch it, but my hands grated against something rough, and I couldn’t move.
I was tied up and the rope was digging into my wrists. Blood was streaming out of them. I must’ve struggled, but I couldn’t remember anything. Suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled the canvas bag off of my head, ripping the scabs of with it.
“Ah!”
I was laying sideways on the forest floor in a makeshift lean-to, staring at Jason, who was standing over me with his gun out. The barrel was less than three inches from my face. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to do this.”
“What are you doing?” My voice was raspy and distant, over the sound of my head ringing and the haze of tranquilizer.
“I’m killing you, Dwayne.” He laughed and took a seat on a camping chair in the corner.
“Wh-why?”
“Because you betrayed me. I told you to leave.”
“Betrayed you? I’m trying to stop you from committing a felony.”
He stared past me, outside the entrance, past the trees. I knew that look. “I have to.”
I tried to lift my head up, but black spots were marring my vision and the world started to spin out of focus. I fell back down before I realized it’d happened, and even then, the sensation of the impact was dulled.
“Remember…” His voice caught in his throat, and a sob rushed over him. His eyes went blank, and I knew exactly where he was.
“Jason…it’s not real.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” He flew up out of his chair and kicked me. His foot caught me in the gut.
“No, it’s not.”
“You wanted to go. You told her we…” He was trembling. “You told her that we could save them.”
/> “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah…” He ducked down and pulled a flask out of his combat boot and took a swig, then threw it on the ground. “It’s too late now, isn’t it?” He sat back down and grabbed his gun.
“Not for you.”
“You don’t get it!” He lunged forward to get down in my face. “It’s all around me. I can see the sand, the heat. I can still smell the shit from those fucking pots they used to throw out.”
“You think I don’t?”
“You didn’t see what I saw.”
I saw the burka. I saw the children who never had a chance at life. They couldn’t even get rid of the fleas and ticks feasting on them, much less rise above the hell they grew up in. They couldn’t read. They couldn’t write. They didn’t even know how to bathe themselves. The Americans had to teach the Afghani forces just so they could stand to be around them, and even then they refused. Those children were lost souls, broken and battered from the time they came out of the womb.
Jason was talking, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. His words drifted away like a dream that I couldn’t remember, and the CO was sitting across from where we were standing at attention. She pushed a manila folder across her desk and opened it.
There was a picture of two men, wearing white headwraps and the long, stained, white robes common to the clergy at that time. I was intrigued by their faces — sunburnt and grimy, covered in acne and dirt.
“These are Abdul and Assaf al-Fulan. They’re brothers. Yesterday, they were caught stealing an Afghani transport vehicle, with nearly a dozen children held captive.”
I could see Jason shake his head out of the corner of my eyes. “Is there something you have to say, Harris?” she barked.
“Sir, no, sir!” He kept his eyes straight and off her.
Jacobs was a woman in a male only division that’d fought a long political battle to keep women out. It showed. “You are to remain at attention. Is that understood, soldier?”
“Sir, yes, sir!’
“Good; these children are located in a classified Taliban base. You are to retrieve them and bring them back for transport to their village. Is that understood?”
“Sir, if I may, sir.” Jason was beet red, strained from the effort it took to control himself.
“You may not. Your orders are clear. Now get out of my office.”
The cold came back, accompanied by the wet, mildew smell of rotting leaves and wood. “I asked you a question?” Jason slammed me in the head with the butt of his gun. When he drew it back, it was stained with blood, and the world was beginning to fade away again.
“This is bullshit!” He kicked his footlocker and whipped around to confront me. I laid back down on the bunk and closed my eyes. “Why did you go?” He was sobbing, back in the lean-to, nursing his flask. “Answer me,” he shrieked and got up to grab his gun again.
“She ordered us. We don’t have a choice,” I was repeating what I told him that night.
“You see it, don’t you? Do you wake up at night screaming? Do you fade in and out? I almost shot somebody on my way here because I thought they were one of those fucking sand monkeys.” He took a long pull from his flask. “And, it won’t stop.”
“It will.” I was losing sight of the lean-to again. I had to stay in the moment. I couldn’t fade out. I opened my eyes wide and caught the stench of his unwashed body. It shocked me back.
“No,” he laughed bitterly, “it won’t.”
“Jacobs said it stopped for her.”
He lunged forward to get in my face, and the smell of the whiskey on his breath poured in. “That’s because she’s a fucking monster.” He stood back up. “She made us go. You remember the way she talked to me in the office. I begged her not to send us in there, and she wouldn’t listen. She threatened to have me court-martialed for fuck’s sakes. How sick is that?”
“It’s the system. It’s how things work.”
“And, you were both puppets to it. God, I can’t believe I tried to let you off. You deserve this as much as she does.”
“Jason…”
“No,” he shuddered. “You don’t know what I saw.” He took a drink and sat back. “The little girl — she must’ve four, maybe five years old. She flew out of the school. Her head…it landed at my feet. She was looking up at me. I knew she was still there, and… I couldn’t help her, Dwayne.” His head fell into his hands as the sobs rolled through them.
“Jason…” He looked up, but he didn’t look at me. I knew where he was, and what he was feeling — the terror of staring down at a mangled corpse, the way their eyes seemed to bore into you, reminding you of all the lives you’d taken. Their spirits were clinging to him, shrieking in his ears when he slept at night, talking to him while he patrolled the forest.
Jason was different. He never left that world. He was too deep. Reality was a dream, and he was still living like he was there. That’s why he didn’t have a house. He preferred to live in a shelter. It was a familiar comfort that he was clinging to from the time before. It was mobile, easily dismantled, and he could cover his tracks if he wanted to leave. That’s why he dressed the way he did, and why he kept his liquor close. Alcohol was the only thing that could calm him down enough to drown out the voices.
“P-p-lease,” he was whimpering. I knew exactly what he was seeing. He was standing in Jacob’s office, and I was outside listening.
“What is wrong with you, Harris?” I could still feel the disdain in her voice.
“They’ll kill them. You know that.”
“There’s a chance that you can save them.”
“It’s too much of a risk.”
“You have your orders. You ship out at fourteen-hundred. Get out.” I ducked my head in. She was pointing at the door staring at him.
He didn’t move. Her eyes went wide, and she started to get up, a clear sign that he had to run, and he did. He cared about those kids, but he wasn’t dumb. She wasn’t going to change her mind. In the military, a CO’s word is literally law.
I followed him back to the dorm, where he was gathering his things. “This ain’t right!”
I got up in his face. “I need to know that you’re not going to do something stupid and get us both killed. With the way you’re acting, I’d have you court-martialed, just to make sure. You’re lucky she’s soft. Now sit down and calm down or else I will put you down.”
He puffed his chest up, his eyes went wide, and he kept his posture, then backed down and laid on his bed. He didn’t say anything until after we made the jump, but I could see the gears grinding in his head the entire time.
He shot up out of his camping chair, with his gun angle towards the ground, his legs bent. He was at the school now, darting to the entrance of the lean-to, then back to where I was laying on the ground.
He pulled out a make-believe grenade, then ran out, wailing at the top of his lungs. I tensed up. I was walking towards the school when this happened. After he threw the grenade, there was a gunshot. I knew it was his, I recognized the weapon, but I didn’t know who he was shooting at or where he aimed. He was going to kill me no matter what, but…
He marched up, his gun in his hand and pressed it to my temple. “Fucking sand monkey,” he reached for the trigger.
“Jason, no!” I screamed. “No! It’s me, Dwayne. You’re not there. You’re here with me. You need to snap out of it. Come on.”
He laughed. “You thought you could get away with trying to kill those poor children?”
“JASON!”
“Shut up!” He slammed me in the spine with the barrel of his gun.
“Ah!”
“You’re gonna die, and I’m gonna laugh.” He was staring down at me as if he recognized me, but I knew that he didn’t. I knew Jason for what he was now. He was a young, innocent boy in a man’s body that had no business enlisting. He was too pure, and he couldn’t handle it. Now he’d never move past the trauma.
I slammed down on his foot as hard as I could. T
he gun blast crashed into the wall of the lean-to and sent woodchips and mud flying through air. I felt the bullet rush past me and kept my body as flat as I could.
When the silence fell over us and he sat down on the ground next to me, I looked up at him. He was lucid. “You see what happens?”
“It happened to me, too, but I found out that once I learned to calm myself down, I could stop the visions.”
“Calm down? Oh, that’s rich. How could I possibly be calm when every time I close my eyes, I see that poor girl staring up at me?”
“You think I don’t see those kids? I saw a little girl get blown to pieces by an IED. Do you remember that? You had to drag me out of there screaming. I’m not going around living in a fort and shooting people. What’s your excuse?” I was too angry to care how I talked to him. He was going to kill me anyway. He deserved to hear it.
“Justice.”
“Justice?”
“I know you think you’re better than me. You keep your bed nice and all your things organized just like they tell you, so that makes you a good person — but you’re wrong. A real man does the right thing. I should’ve killed that bitch when I got a chance.”
“Jason, that’s crazy. You can’t get to her.”
“But I can get to her family.”
Realization flashed over me. He wasn’t after the building. He was after Jacobs’ brother. He knew that if he kept sabotaging the building, the office manager would end their contract. I had to admire his resourcefulness, but it was an obvious sign of his insanity. “I see the same things. I see the girl’s head rolling towards me and the children staring at me. I was inside the school.”
“Then you’re a monster because nobody could see the things that we saw and move on.”
“What do you think you’re going to get out of this? You can kill me, her brother — everyone, and they’ll catch you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course, it matters. You’re giving your life up.”