Beyond the Point

by Claire Gibson

  Avery tapped her spoon against her glass. “Okay, my turn.” She stood, straightened her black silk top, and tucked her hair behind her ears. She was horrible at improvising, especially when she was a little bit drunk. But if she couldn’t get sentimental now, then when?

  “To West Point. The place that brought us all together,” Avery said. “West Point took a lot from us, but it gave us each other. And for that, I’m grateful.”

  “Here, here!” Dani said, looking shocked by the softness of Avery’s toast.

  Locke picked up where Avery had left off: “And to all the eighteen-year-old assholes who are finishing their applications and have no idea what they’re signing up for.”

  “Here, here!” said Tim, raising his glass.

  The toast ended and Dominic sighed heavily. “Well, I’m stuffed,” he said.

  “Amanda, your pie was incredible,” offered Hannah. “I wish I could make pie from scratch. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “I can show you how to do it,” said Amanda. “It’s actually pretty simple. Nothing compared to all this. I still can’t get over the meal, Dani. The sweet potatoes! That acorn squash was divine. What was that cream sauce on top? Did you make that?”

  “Didn’t you see the guy in there earlier?” said Locke. “Dani hired a chef.”

  Dani laughed. “Life’s too short to chop onions.”

  “Locke has told me so many stories from West Point,” Amanda continued, looking up and down the table. “You guys are in all of them. Especially you, Dani.”

  Avery fought the urge to cringe. This chick is so completely oblivious.

  “He told me one recently. What was it, Locke? Something about New York City and a tongue ring?”

  Locke pointed his fork in Hannah’s direction. “Didn’t Coach Jankovich make you rip it out when you got back?”

  “She did,” affirmed Dani. “It bled all over the court at practice.”

  Tim leaned forward to look at Hannah, whose face was nearly as red as the wine in Avery’s glass. “Wait a second,” he said. “How do I not know this story? My wife had a tongue ring and I didn’t know it?”

  Hannah shook her head in embarrassment. “It was when we were on our little break,” she explained. “Junior year. Locke and some of the other football guys went with us to the city for a twenty-four-hour pass. And you kept telling people . . . what was it?”

  “That I was—” Locke started.

  “That he’d just been recruited by the Ravens,” finished Dani.

  “The Ravens!” exclaimed Avery, bubbling over with laughter. “All the other guys with us were acting like Locke’s bodyguards. Which was annoying, because no guys would come near us.”

  Dani picked up where Avery had left off. “So, everywhere we go, doors are opening. Drinks are flowing. And suddenly, we look around and Avery and Hannah are gone—”

  “We were there to meet men, not to be protected from them,” added Avery.

  Dani continued. “—and no one can find them. And when we finally get back to Grand Central to catch the last train back to West Point, there they are—”

  “—and Hannah is holding an ice pack to her mouth,” Avery squeaked, barely able to contain her laughter. “You were, like, drooling and couldn’t speak in full sentences, because your tongue was so swollen.”

  “You sanctioned this piercing, Adams?” said Tim, looking at Avery.

  “Of course I did!” Avery said, holding up her hands. “I was trying to help her get over you! I guess I failed at that job. She needed help. Before that, she was begging to go to the Today show, all right? I wanted her to live a little.”

  Hannah’s mouth opened, like she’d just been stabbed in the back. She pointed across the table at Avery. “You know Katie Couric is my idol!”

  They were all laughing hysterically now. But when Avery turned to look at Noah, to ensure that he was having as much fun as the rest of them, he’d vanished from the table.

  “HEY, WHY’D YOU leave?”

  She found Noah on the balcony outside, talking on his cell phone and smoking a cigarette. The river was black, like the sky. Once she stepped outside to join him, he quickly ended the call with a brief, “Yep, love you too.” Stuffing his cell phone in his pocket with one hand, Noah put out his cigarette on the railing with the other, then pulled Avery in for a kiss.

  “You know I hate it when you do that,” she said.

  Smoking was a disgusting, carcinogenic habit. But then again, his bad-boy persona was part of the ethos that had suckered her in. “Who were you talking to?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “My mom,” he said. “I was wishing her a happy Thanksgiving.”

  Avery checked her watch. “Aren’t they still on a plane?”

  Noah nodded, looked down at his feet, and rubbed out an imaginary cigarette on the ground with his toe. “Yeah, it was delayed.”

  “Oh. That sucks. I bet your brother’s pissed.”

  “Yeah. They’ll be all right.” Noah reached for her waist and pulled her close to his body. “You ready to head out of here?”

  “It’s only eight o’clock. Dani has a whole game night planned or something.”

  Noah rolled his eyes. “Game night? What are we, five?”

  “Come on,” Avery said, cajoling him. “It’ll be fun.”

  While he nibbled on the edge of her ear, Avery looked over his shoulder through the window at Dani, Hannah, and Amanda, who were busy cleaning the kitchen.

  “I should go help them,” Avery said.

  “Okay,” he said. “I gotta make one more call. I’ll be right in.”

  Avery paused and looked at him quizzically. Who else would he need to call on Thanksgiving?

  “It’s a work thing,” he said. “It’ll be quick.”

  AVERY LEFT THE balcony and walked around a corner toward the kitchen. But when she heard her friends talking in hushed voices, she paused, standing behind a column.

  “He’s been on his phone the whole night,” Hannah said.

  “Avery seems happy,” added Dani. Avery felt a sudden surge of gratitude. At least someone was taking up for her. “But I keep wondering how old he is. He seems older, right?”

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” Amanda said. Locke’s girlfriend wore a black crewneck sweater with a white Peter Pan collar. Avery could see her from around the corner, with her little ballet flats and little ballet voice. Who did she think she was to weigh in on Avery’s relationship? She didn’t even belong here! “He doesn’t eat meat, but he does smoke cigarettes? In what world does that make sense?”

  Clearing her throat, Avery stepped into the kitchen. They all froze.

  “You know, you guys can say these things to my face,” Avery said.

  The silence persisted until Dani cleared her throat. “We’re just curious, Ave,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “About what?” Avery was suddenly overcome with a readiness to defend herself. Like she’d stepped into battle. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

  “Okay,” said Hannah. “So, nicotine aside . . . you like him? He’s treating you okay?”

  Avery groaned and poured herself another glass of red wine. “He came all the way up here.” She paused, taking in the sight of Hannah’s concerned eyes and Dani, who was staring straight at her, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Yes, he treats me okay. He treats me great. What is the problem?”

  Hannah looked at Dani pleadingly, which sent heat rushing to Avery’s face. “Stop,” she said, no longer trying to keep her voice down. “Stop silently communicating with each other right in front of my face. Just say it. You don’t like him.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Hannah said.

  Amanda stepped gingerly off the step stool she’d been using to put away dishes in cabinets she couldn’t reach. “I’m going to . . . let you ladies talk.” She tiptoed out of the room.

  “He’s been looking at his phone all night,” said Dani. “It just seems odd, that’
s all. We just want to make sure we’re seeing it clearly. Maybe there’s something we don’t know.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” said Avery. “He’s been on his phone because his parents have been stuck in an airport all day, trying to get to see his brother in Kansas City. He’s been trying to rebook their flights. I promise you guys, once you get to know him, he’s great.”

  At this they seemed to soften, and Avery felt a mix of relief and shame—relief that she’d won them over, and shame that she’d had to try so hard. She didn’t know for certain that he’d been trying to rebook their flights. But that helped his case, so the white lie felt justified.

  “So how serious is it?” Dani asked.

  Avery shrugged. “I don’t know. Noah . . . he’s different. He seems committed to things. To us.”

  “Good,” Hannah said. Stepping forward, she placed her hands on Avery’s shoulders. “He’s extremely lucky. Do you know that? You deserve for someone to completely cherish you. That’s what we want.”

  For some reason, Avery cringed at Hannah’s shower of compliments, her touch. Was it because she’d questioned Noah behind her back? Or because Avery didn’t believe the things Hannah had said were actually true? Ever since Noah had shown up in that tool shed, it was Avery who had felt like the lucky one.

  “And you,” said Avery, stepping out of Hannah’s embrace, toward Dani at the sink. She picked up a dry dish towel and snapped it against Dani’s leg. “You did so much to make this happen today. I don’t think I’ve had a chance to say thank you.”

  To Avery’s surprise, thick tears formed in Dani’s eyes. She turned off the water and turned to look at Avery and Hannah.

  “What’s wrong?” said Hannah.

  “I have to tell you guys something,” Dani said. “Don’t worry. It’s good news.”

  “Then why are you crying?” Avery asked, then whispered, “Did you poison Amanda’s drink?”

  Dani coughed a laugh. “No. I got a promotion. At work.”

  “That’s great!” Hannah sang.

  “Yeah.” Dani scrunched her nose. “There’s just one catch.”

  THE REST OF Dani’s guests hurried into the kitchen when they heard Hannah scream.

  “Dani’s moving to London!” Hannah announced.

  “London?” Locke repeated. “Like, England? Dude, I’m coming to visit.”

  Amanda looked at him as if this international visit was news to her but smiled and grabbed his hand, as if to say she was fine with it.

  “That’s crazy!” Tim said. “I’m not surprised. You were always the smartest one of all of us. Way to go, D.”

  Dominic started laughing. “You’re gonna do it, right? You’ve got to do it. Charles, tell her she has to do it.”

  While Dani rapidly described all of her moving plans, Avery tried not to let her jealousy show on her face. She wanted to be happy for Dani—she really did. But how could you celebrate someone else’s successes when your life felt completely stalled? In just a few short months, Hannah would be in Afghanistan, Dani would be in London, and Avery would still be stuck in Fort fucking Bragg. Her friends were moving on to bigger and better things: marriage, deployments, promotions. And she was . . . what? Here? In love? She looked outside at Noah, who had finished his second cigarette but was still on the phone.

  “You all better come visit,” said Dani. “Oh, Avery, why are you crying?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied. The truth was, she felt like she was being left behind. And unfortunately, all the questions they’d brought up about Noah hadn’t rolled off her shoulders like she’d hoped, but were sinking into the pit of her stomach. Everything suddenly felt very out of control. She had no idea how to express any of that except to say, “I’m going to miss you guys. That’s all.”

  Hands damp from washing dishes, they stood in the kitchen in a small semicircle with their arms wrapped around each other’s backs. If time could stop, Avery would have pressed pause right then and there. Before Hannah packed her trunk and put it on the back of a cargo ship headed to the Middle East. Before the movers arrived in Boston to pull down all the art from Dani’s walls and wrap it in paper. Before Avery put her purse over her shoulder, said goodbye to her friends, and walked out the door under Noah’s heavy arm, smelling the stale odor of cigarette smoke, masked by mint gum.

  They say hindsight is twenty-twenty. But what good is hindsight when all you want to do is look through the glass and shout at your old self to not take one more step?

  “Stop that,” said Dani. “We’ll be together again before you know it.”

  18

  March 2006 // Camp Buehring, Kuwait

  Prayer flags waved at the front of the bus, flapping against the air-conditioning vents. The driver, a bearded man wearing a tunic, turned up the volume on a recorded track of Arabic prayers, loud enough to drown out the sound of the engine. To Hannah, who sat in the third row behind the driver, staring out the window to the right, the prayers sounded ghostly, more like chants than prayers. Tim was the one who’d taken Arabic at West Point. When they’d said goodbye a few weeks earlier, he’d given her a phrasebook that he’d marked up and tagged, sticking little pink Post-it notes on the pages he thought would be most helpful. Now, staring out the window at an entirely new world, Hannah wished she’d memorized some of the phrases. At least then, the prayers coming from the speakers wouldn’t sound so foreign. She imagined that Muslims asked God for the same things she wanted: Help. Protection. Peace. They said there was nothing more genuine than the prayer of a man in a foxhole. And this whole country was one big foxhole.

  Hannah’s parents and her sister, Emily, all understood that this deployment wasn’t a disruption to her life. It wasn’t something that scared her or made her feel anxious. The night before she left Fort Bragg for the airport, Hannah didn’t worry any more than a child frets knowing they’re leaving in the morning for Disney World. To say she was excited would be wrong—because this was a war zone—but she felt ready. After years of anticipation, Hannah wanted to get started and get it over with. She kept a pocket calendar and had already marked off two days. Four hundred and forty-eight to go.

  The bus barreled down an unpaved road toward the entrance to Camp Buehring, where her unit would spend two weeks acclimating to the heat and recovering from jet lag, before their final flight into Afghanistan. Her silver cross rested between Hannah’s thumb and forefinger and she slid the charm right and left on the delicate chain, before hiding it away again under her uniform. The air inside the bus smelled stale and brimmed with the quiet tension of fifty soldiers on board, each one staring out their own window at the same merciless view. Sand stretched for miles in every direction. A woman in a long black cloak with only slits for eyes—a burqa—walked along the road in the dust. Where she was going, Hannah had no idea. And for the first time, she felt a jolt of fear. From this point forward, it was going to be nearly impossible to tell friend from enemy.

  Soon, the line of buses reached a security checkpoint and a crew of Army soldiers dressed in desert fatigues checked the buses for explosives, then waved them through.

  That was all it took to get to war. Five years of training and a wave.

  OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Hannah’s unit conducted a series of training events. They were instructed to drink a gallon of water a day to hydrate, and at night, Hannah fought to stay awake until it was time to go to sleep in Kuwaiti time. Each morning, she woke up before the sun, not because she was forced to, but because her mind hadn’t caught up to her body’s geography. Despite her surroundings, everything in her heart and mind believed she was still in North Carolina. One morning, she woke up in the darkness of her tent completely confused about where she was and why the air smelled like burning trash.

  She adjusted soon enough. They completed medical simulations and vehicle rollover simulations, and for two consecutive days near the end of their time in Kuwait, her unit practiced counter-IED training, to help them detect and disable roadside
bombs. Every time Hannah stepped outside, sand whipped up from the ground, into her ears, eyes, and mouth, as if it were trying to bury her alive. And everyone had the same complaint: it was so hot. In an e-mail to Dani, she’d tried her best to explain how it felt: like someone was blowing a hair dryer in your face. Temperatures stayed in the hundreds and regularly hit 125 by the afternoon. Breath stifled, pores full of dirt, Hannah learned to drink water before she was thirsty, to walk in the shade, and to stay inside between the hours of twelve and three P.M. The climate was as much of an enemy as the Taliban.

  By the time her unit reached Forward Operating Base Sharana in southeastern Afghanistan, thirty kilometers from the border of Pakistan, Hannah had marked thick black Xs through seventeen days on her pocket calendar.

  She carved out a routine, which Sarah Goodrich, who’d completed her first deployment, had promised would help pass the time. An alarm went off every day at 0530. She ran around the perimeter of the forward operating base, showered, and read a few pages in her Bible. Then she’d make it to the cafeteria for breakfast, before heading to the tactical operations center to meet with her superior officers and discuss tasks for the day.

  At times, it was easy to forget she was even in Afghanistan—that is, until she would walk outside, feel the dry heat attack her sinuses, and see dusty mountains in every direction. Afghanistan had a barren beauty that Hannah grew to appreciate and even admire. At night, the sky was so lit up with stars, it looked like a laser-light show and far outperformed the view from her grandfather’s porch. There, she could see constellations. Here, she saw galaxies.

  In an area this remote, snail mail was still the most reliable and consistent form of communication. Tim’s handwriting—dark, all-caps—became the thing Hannah most longed to see on the outside of a white envelope. They wrote often, filling the pages with minutiae like what they’d eaten the day before or their most recent workout. But every now and then, Tim would surprise Hannah by sending a poem or a long passage from a book he’d been reading, if he felt it applied to their situation.