Full Measures

by Rebecca Yarros

  I shook my head. “Not ready, yet. I will.”

  He nodded. “It’s okay to do things at your own pace.” My brother, the sage.

  “Did you like yours?”

  He nodded, his head stuck further into my DVD collection. “He loves me, but I already knew that. He said he sent me my own soldier-guardian almost-angel. At least, that’s what he called him. How cool is that?”

  Sometimes I just didn’t speak seven year old. “Awesome, buddy.”

  “Iron Man?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” We popped it into the player, and I pulled him back onto my lap. I breathed in the sunshine scent of his hair, like taking a shot of pure joy, and smiled as it raced through me.

  Sam came back in, freshly showered and perky, with a towel wrapped like a turban around her head. “That shower sure helped you.”

  “Well, I figured we’d have to get ready for the hockey game, right?”

  Gus slurped at his Sprite, but I didn’t bother to correct him. That’s what moms were for. Big sisters were for movies and contraband soft drinks.

  “I don’t think I’m going tonight.”

  “What?” Sam dropped her jaw. “You’re like the girlfriend of the star player, and you’re not going? What’s he going to think? I’ll tell you what. He’s going to think that he’s awful in—”

  I threw a pillow at her face before she could finish the sentence. “He’s doing something for his scholarship and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

  “Well, that sucks. What do you think he’s doing?”

  “Not sure.” As I shook my head, my chin rubbed across Gus’s head. He leaned further against me, more engrossed in Tony Stark and his soda than anything. “I’m just hoping it’s not his leg. I don’t know what he’d do if he lost his scholarship.”

  “You and Coach Walker? That’s cool. Gross, but cool. He got shot, you know,” Gus announced. “Coach Walker did.”

  I hated that Gus had already been exposed to so much of the ugliness in the world. “Yeah, buddy, he did. But he’s okay.”

  “It almost killed him, but he was super lucky.”

  Apprehension raced up my spine. “Did he tell you that?” Josh was really private about his injury. So private he hadn’t even told me the full story.

  “Dad did.”

  I turned him in my arms to see his face. “He what?”

  “Chill out, Ember. I’m not crazy.” He craned his neck back, but couldn’t see the movie. “Dad took me to hockey, so he knew Coach Walker. He talked about him sometimes.”

  Don’t be a moron. Of course my brother wasn’t talking to dead people. “Yeah, sorry, buddy.” The movie sucked him right back in.

  Sam took a seat on the couch next to us. “So what do you really think is going on? Do you think he’s hurt again?”

  “He’s at drill,” Gus answered with a huge slurp.

  My stomach fell through my body and a gaping hole opened up that cried out desperately to be filled with any piece of logic. “Drill for what, Gus? Like construction?”

  His head swiveled, and he gave me the my-sister-is-dumb look. “No, like drill, Ember. You know, for the army. That’s why Dad liked him. Josh is a soldier like he was.” Gus turned back around like he’d announced that his hair was red. So matter of fact.

  “Drill? Soldier?” No. No. No.

  Gus sighed and stood up. “Seriously? You’re going to have to rewind the movie if you keep talking, Ember. I’m missing the good parts.”

  Sam grabbed the remote and hit the pause button. “He’s in the army, Gus?” she asked softly.

  He nodded. “How do you think he got shot?”

  Where the gaping pit in my stomach had been, now was a sense of crushing, of everything imploding into me like a black hole had opened up in my soul. Once a month. He disappeared for a weekend a month. Drill. “He’s in the Guard,” I whispered.

  “Yup! Sergeant Walker!” Gus plopped down on the floor in front of the TV.

  Sam pressed play and then pulled me into my bedroom, shutting the door behind us. “Talk to me, girl.”

  It all made sense now. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d only failed to mention that the wrong place was half a world away and he’d been in uniform. He’d been lying to me from day one.

  Oh God. I was in love with a soldier. I couldn’t love a soldier. I swore I never would. I would never put my heart in the hands of someone who threw his life away in a foreign country, fighting for people who didn’t even want us there, and left for months at a time.

  I couldn’t love a soldier. I couldn’t sit home and wait and wonder if he’d ever come back. I wouldn’t answer the door when strangers knocked. I wouldn’t fall apart. I wouldn’t hang a gold star in my window.

  I wouldn’t be my mother.

  “You’re not speaking, Ember.”

  I snapped my focus back to Sam. “He’s wrong. He’s wrong! Josh would have told me. He knows how I feel about the army. He would have told me!”

  I was on my feet before I realized I’d wanted to stand. I had to know. “Gus, stay with Sam!” I flew out the door, not bothering to shut it behind me as I pivoted and pounded on Josh’s door.

  “Hold the fuck up!” Jagger shouted, ripping the door open. “What the f— Oh, Ember. Hey, did you forget something?”

  I shook my head and pushed past him, stumbling through the apartment like a drunken crazy woman. Maybe I was.

  “Ember?” He followed me into Josh’s room.

  “He’s not right. Gus can’t be right,” I muttered, opening Josh’s drawers. “He’s just a kid. What would he know?”

  “What are you looking for? Right about what? Josh isn’t seeing anyone else, if that’s what you’re worried about. Hell, he’s barely looked at another girl since you showed up in December.” He closed the drawers once I was done rummaging through boxers, jeans, shirts, and socks, trying to find something that would prove Gus wrong.

  “Gus, he told me . . .” I glanced up at the photos. There were no pictures of him with other soldiers, or deployments, or in uniform. Uniforms.

  “Where is your flaw, Josh Walker?”

  He laughed. “I keep it in the closet.”

  Right. I sidestepped Jagger and opened the closet door, flipping the switch just inside.

  “Ember, no!” Jagger yelled.

  He was too late.

  My eyes skipped over the various hockey jerseys and sparse dress clothes and were drawn to the ACUs like a magnet. Two steps and a reach, and I could touch them. The fabric was as foreign and familiar as it came, the backdrop of my whole life. “No, no, no,” I whispered, praying I was wrong.

  The uniform slid from the hanger, and I held it out in front of me. On the left shoulder was the patch for the Colorado National Guard, on the right, signifying he’d been deployed, his combat patch was identical. The stripes of a sergeant were fastened across the chest, and across from the US ARMY tape was the word that froze up the love and hope in my heart.

  “Walker.” The whisper left me broken. I crushed the fabric in my fists, wishing I was strong enough to rip it at the seams, to shred the future I knew it stood for. The one I refused to be a part of.

  “He wanted to tell you,” Jagger said softly. “He just . . . couldn’t. He couldn’t lose you.”

  “Get out.”

  He sighed, and his footsteps retreated.

  The room spun, or did my racing heart make it seem that way? How could something so perfect, so exquisite be so damned? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I wasn’t supposed to live like this!

  A primal scream ripped free of my throat. I tore the remaining two sets of ACUs off their hangers, unable to cope with them in my sight, and slid down the back of the closet onto them. Pain lacerated me, shredding the joy I’d had just an hour before and replacing it with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Maybe this is how all love ended up, crushed beneath the weight of something darker and stronger.

  Maybe the tears would come and release me,
prove I was processing what I’d learned. But there was nothing. I’d cried so much in the last three months that maybe there was just nothing left to give. I was hollow and empty.

  I kneeled, scooping up the uniforms, but my hand hit a hard object toward the back of the closet. The light caught the dark green case folder, one I had seen too many times to count. It was an award.

  I pulled it off the stack of abandoned binders and opened it. “Order of the Purple Heart, awarded to Specialist Joshua A. Walker for wounds sustained in combat in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.”

  Exactly where my father had been killed. Wrong place. Wrong time.

  Just like me at this very moment.

  I brought it all up into my arms and carried it into his room, leaving the uniforms on the bed and propping the award on top. He’d been the one wounded, but somehow I’d taken a fatal shot straight through my soul.

  The state championship picture mocked me from the wall, so I pulled it down and left it next to the award. I had been wrong. We hadn’t been fated since I’d been fifteen; we’d been doomed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My phone dinged, announcing yet another text message. In another twenty-nine seconds, it would ring four times and then go to voicemail. Another ten minutes or so later, it would begin again.

  “You gonna answer that?” Sam asked as she passed me a plate of spaghetti over our bar.

  I spun the noodles on the plate, but I couldn’t manage to eat them. “Nope.”

  She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Ember—”

  “Don’t. Just . . . don’t, because I can’t.” I spun another bite and let the spaghetti fall off the fork.

  Sam sat on the stool next to me and studied me thoughtfully as she chewed. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday. You’re not crying. You’re not talking. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  Everything was numb, chilling me from the soul outward. There was no hurt because I couldn’t feel anything. At this rate, my arm could have been ripped off, bleeding pints onto the floor, and I wouldn’t have noticed. All the color had drained out of my world, taking with it my ability to feel . . . anything.

  I played with my food and watched the digital clock on the oven changing. Six more minutes. Five more minutes. Four. Any minute now he was going to call again, and I still wouldn’t know what to say. Who was I kidding? There was nothing left to say.

  Fists struck our front door three times, and I cringed. “December!” His voice was rough, strangled.

  Sam raised her eyebrow at me, but I couldn’t do it. I shook my head without raising my eyes from the red-checkered plate. How nice that the spaghetti sauce matched it. She sighed purely for my benefit and scraped the legs of the stool across the floor as she scooted back.

  I heard the door open. “She doesn’t want to see you, Josh.” She sounded sad, like she was siding with the guy who’d just broken my heart.

  “Please, Sam. I have to see her.”

  I closed my eyes against the pain I heard in his voice. Letting it in would lead to madness.

  “I can’t.” The door shut with a click, and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “December!” he shouted, the sound slightly muffled by the closed door. “I have to talk to you! I will pound on this door and scream your name until security arrests me or you come out!”

  Sam sat back down and shoved a bite in her mouth. As she chewed and I spun the noodles on the fork, he continued to shout. Pain ripped through my stomach at the misery in his voice, but I quickly shut it down. The moment I acknowledged it, the rest would overwhelm me, and I wasn’t ready for it.

  “December!”

  “For fuck’s sake.” Sam grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Before he gets arrested?”

  I couldn’t let him get in trouble, not over something as trivial as me. I slid from the bar stool, wearing the same tank top and pajama pants I had been since yesterday, and made my way to the door.

  “I’m not opening the door,” I spoke to the wooden frame.

  “God, December. Please, we have to talk.”

  I shook my head like he could see me or something. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “There’s everything to talk about!”

  He was angry. Good. It was good that one of us still had emotions.

  “One question.”

  “Whatever you want.” Something knocked against the door, and from the position and sound, I guessed he’d leaned his head on it.

  “Are you in the army?” I reached my hand up and pressed it to the door, where I knew his head was on the other side.

  A long moment of pause passed, condemning him more than the uniforms had. “Yes. National Guard.” His reply was soft, broken.

  I didn’t realize how much I wanted him to deny it until he said it. “Then we’re done talking, Josh. There’s nothing you can say. We’re just done.”

  “December, please!”

  “Go. There’s absolutely no chance for us.” I managed to keep my voice flat, unemotional.

  I waited several heartbeats until something slid along the door. His hand? “I love you.”

  “Good night, Josh.”

  The door to his apartment opened and shut, and I leaned back against our front door for the barest of seconds before I slid my back down it. Once my butt hit the floor, I drew my knees up to my chest. There were no tears, no anger, just an overwhelming sense of weariness.

  I wanted one thing: Joshua Walker.

  But I wouldn’t do it. I would never become my mother. I would never love a man whose love could destroy me.

  Monday morning wasn’t any easier. Wasn’t it supposed to get easier? This hurt worse than losing Riley, but maybe I was so lost in my grief over Dad that I hadn’t really noticed Riley’s loss? That wasn’t true. Riley hurt, but I didn’t love him like I loved Josh.

  “Good morning, Ms. Howard.” Professor Carving nodded to me as he walked in the room just ahead of me. Perfect timing.

  I slid in behind him, skipped my eyes right over where I usually sat, and spotted an empty chair in the back of the room. Bingo. I studied the tiles on the floor and dodged backpacks on the way to the back and claimed the seat.

  One Mississippi.

  Two Mississippi.

  Three Mississ—

  “Ember.”

  My body physically reacted to his voice. Chills swept down my arms, and my throat tightened. I shook my head and reached for my notebook.

  Josh beat me to it, pulling the purple spiral out of my bag and laying it on my desk. Before I could protest, he’d lined up one pencil and one pen exactly how I liked them. “You have to talk to me. Let me explain.”

  Heads pivoted in our direction. The only thing more gossip-worthy than going home with him was our obvious break-up. I couldn’t speak. Hell, I was lucky to still be breathing with this pressure crushing my chest.

  “Ember, please?”

  “Mr. Walker?” Professor Carving said, saving me. “Could you take your seat?”

  Josh sighed. “We’re not done, Ember.”

  But we were.

  I took meticulous notes, like always. Other than the gaping hole in my soul, everything on the outside was as normal as could be. The clock gave me another ten minutes to make it through this class. Then I could beat Josh to the door, run to my car, and get out of here before he had a chance to confront me. Yes. If I grabbed my stuff immediately, I could escape before everyone else had packed up.

  As Professor Carving wound down his lecture and started to talk about our assignment for Wednesday, I slipped my notebook and pens into my bag and pulled it into my lap. I was half off my seat when he dismissed us.

  As quickly as I could, without looking insane, I passed by the other students in my row and threw open the door in my exit. “Ember! Wait!” I didn’t turn around, didn’t pause, but instead launched into headlong flight. Well, extremely fast walking.

  The halls filled with students, and I wove t
hrough the crowd. I would make it to the car. I wouldn’t have to see him, or face everything I couldn’t have. I could hold it together for one more day. The early March sunshine hit my face, and I took my first deep breath. I’d made it out.

  “Ember! What are you going to do? Run forever?” Josh yelled out.

  Half the students turned to gawk. My cheeks stung as blood rushed to my face, but I kept walking, picking my way down the path between the academic buildings to the quad. Keep it together. Stick to the plan.

  The moment he touched my arm, I knew it was all about to fall apart. I stopped, took three breaths, and focused on anything else. The snow had melted, and the grass lay brown and bare. It was the ugliest time of pre-spring, when the pristine white had faded, but nothing had come to life yet. Everything was still cold and numb.

  “Ember.” His voice was soft, pleading.

  “Don’t.” It was all I had in me.

  He stepped around me, but I refused to look up into those eyes. “Please. I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Pieces of me cracked into a fault line, and every word he spoke expanded it. The blissful, numb feeling that kept me together was melting, leaving me bare. I swallowed back the need to look at him, to reach out and touch him.

  “You have to talk to me about this. I’m not going to lose you over a job.”

  I broke, snapped in half, my logic and reason flying away. “A job?” I stepped back, needing the distance. I finally looked up at him, but the misery on his face didn’t dispel my anger. He looked like shit. Good, that’s how I felt. “It’s not a job! And you hid it from me! You know how I feel about it!”

  “When I saw you burn the West Point gear? I knew you would never accept it, that you’d push me away as soon as you knew, and I couldn’t let you go.”

  “You selfish fuck!”

  He paled. “Yes. I needed to be near you. I had to.”

  “Why? Why the hell are you in the Guard? You had a full ride! And you just join up and go over to get yourself killed?” The idea, the word struck me with nausea. Josh in uniform. Josh in a cold box draped by a flag. No.