without her.”
My heart pounded in my chest. Beside me, Sean exhaled.
THE first batch left for the Indiana checkpoint, and though I’d made my decision to stay, I couldn’t bring myself to watch them leave. For the first time since I’d learned the truth about my mother, I wanted to go to the coast. I wanted peace.
In Truck’s absence, a grim anticipation settled over us. It thickened, until someone finally joked about how a guy named Stripes had cried like a baby when the bombs went off.
“You think that’s bad,” a bald man with a goatee responded, “you should have seen Boston sprint for the exit. You’d have thought his boots were on fire.”
Some nervous chuckles.
They called one another girls’ names. Sally. Mary. They laughed about who pissed their pants and who broke down. It was sexist and crass, but I didn’t even care. You said what you could to pull yourself out.
I thought of how Jack had laughed in the tunnels after the blast, and wondered if he’d had it right. When things got really bad, the horror came full circle, and even violence got to be funny again. It didn’t have to make sense.
We inventoried the supplies, ate salvaged rations of crackers and canned mix-meat, and waited for cover of darkness to sneak to Rebecca’s rehab. In our quest to stay, we’d been granted a break from the accusations and were donated fatigues, rations, and two handguns. The boy from the supply room, still lightly dusted and streaked with sweat, approached me shyly and handed me a Sister uniform he’d salvaged from the supply room.
“Thought you might need this again,” he said, face filled with hope.
I paid him a guilty thank-you, knowing it was far too late to say anything to the contrary.
THERE were two water drums from the delivery truck that were brought inside the hideout to make more room, and since the water was too dirty to drink, we used it to clean the grime and blood from our bodies.
As I waited in line, Chase’s presence pulled at me, drawing my attention to where he and Sean had removed themselves from the others. Against the wall, behind a ripped curtain of gray insulation hanging from the ceiling, they conspired. Though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, Sean’s movements were animated, as if he were trying to make a point, and curiosity had me leaving my place in line to see what had set Chase’s shoulders in a defensive hunch and his thumb tapping against his thigh. Before I reached them, Chase broke the conversation and stalked away.
“What was that about?” Sean’s head jerked up as I spoke. He glanced after Chase, then, in a low voice, explained how we were to break into the facility.
When he was done, my head was throbbing even harder than before.
No one removed a patient from the premises without the presence of a Sister, so Tucker and Sean would claim that they were assisting me with transporting Rebecca to a Sisters of Salvation home, where she could dedicate her life to service. Tucker knew the soldier managing the facility and felt confident he’d let us through. Just as long as he hadn’t heard about the dishonorable discharge.
Chase was not going to be coming in with us.
“It took twenty seconds for an AWOL to make him,” Sean tried to reason. “Don’t you think there are soldiers at the base who still remember him?”
So now Chase was the liability, and the rescue plan depended on me.
He was going to love that.
Without a word, I sought refuge in the women’s bathroom. The minutes lost their meaning as I stood before a sink, knees locked, eyes unseeing. A blank expression fixed itself onto my face, and it was no lie. I felt nothing. Not rage. Not despair. Nothing. I’d placed a bucket of water in the bowl, and absently washed my hands, my arms, my hair, now crunchy with dried blood, and watched as droplets of red and black splashed the old, forgotten porcelain.
The mirror before me was marred by black, mutated roses of corrosion, and within one of them something moved— a reflection from the empty stalls at my back. I spun, and the world spun with me, forcing me to grip the sink behind with white knuckles.
Tucker sat on the floor, his legs bent at sharp angles, his hands clasped between his knees. He leaned back against a stall door, shrouded by shadow and so still he could have been a fixture in the room. Still, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him.
We stared at each other for a long moment, until I finally asked the question ringing through my skull.
“What are you doing here?”
His shoulders rose with a long, drawn-out sigh, but his voice was weak. Defeated. “Same thing as you. Taking some much-needed me time.”
“What are you doing here?” I repeated. And when he didn’t answer, I asked again.
He looked down, and his legs fell straight.
“I don’t know.”
He crumbled forward, folding over himself like a discarded marionette, and began to shake. At once, conflicting desires rose within me. To leave. To force him, however I could, to tell the truth. To crouch down, and lower my voice, and say something soothing. And because they were all equally strong, I didn’t dare let go of the sink.
I slowly dropped down, careful that I could rise quickly if necessary.
“Tell me something you do know then.”
He looked up, his eyes red and his face stained, and for a moment he looked so young I barely recognized him. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“They cut me,” he said with a weak laugh. “I was everything they wanted, and they cut me.”
“The FBR,” I realized.
“Every test. Every level. I was perfect. But all they saw was Jennings. They wanted him. He screwed up everything, on
Chase had told me he bucked the system trying to get home, but that had made his officers even more intent to break him. When he finally did comply, it was for my protection. It was unsettling to hear Tucker speak of it now.
“You know I enlisted early? Before my senior year,” he continued. “The first day I could. I was waiting for that day. I’d been waiting since I was nine years old.”
“What happened when you were nine?” I found myself asking.
“The War,” he said bitterly. He rolled his ankle in a slow circle, winced. “My dad managed a grocery store. It was a small place, not one of the chains, one of the first to go under when the economy tanked. We lost everything.” He looked up. “My dad’s car. Then our stuff. The house. My mom lost her job, too. We had to get rations vouchers and stand in lines for food we used to sell.”
My calves were falling asleep, and reluctantly I kneeled, feeling a strange connection to his story.
“It takes a toll,” he said, and his jaw twitched. “That’s what my mom used to say.
I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for
“And then the soldiers came to town.” He was wistful now. “And Dad got a job with Horizons, and things got all right after that. His boss knew a recruiter, and he’d come over to the house and talk to me about joining up. It made sense, you know? This officer, he had everything we used to have. Cars and a house and nobody screaming at each other. I made up my mind right then that that’s what I was going to do.”
“And when you saw what they did? What
His eyes blazed into mine with a sudden sharpness, and he stood, as if suddenly remembering who we both were.
I stood, too, and asked one more time. “Why are you here?”
