I’ll Meet You There (16 page)

I opened my eyes and shouted into the truck as I clutched the bottle. “Don’t stare
at my ass.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

I gave him a look, but he pointed up the road. “Just throw as hard as you can.”

Every muscle in my body was tense, ready to spring. The asphalt beneath sparkled as
we sped by, like a river of black diamonds. We came up to the gas station, and I let
the bottle go, throwing it with all my might toward the building. As we drove by,
I thought I heard it crash against the wall. I screamed at the night and laughed at
the stars. I heard Josh’s “Hell, yeah!” from inside, and it made me laugh harder,
which hurt my empty stomach, but I didn’t care.

I slid back inside. My blood was carbonated, and I was awake and young and alive,
and screw everything because this moment was
mine
.

“I’m warning you, it’s addictive,” Josh said. “You’re gonna be begging me to take
you out again, just you wait.”

I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. “You’re right. This is the dumbest
thing ever, but
damn
.” I wanted to throw another one, but this time at Billy Easton’s truck. Or Aunt Celia’s
house … wherever it was.

“I kinda get why you were such a hell-raiser before you left,” I said. It was silly,
but throwing that bottle made me feel a little more in control of my life. I couldn’t
sit around and wait for Mom to magically get better. I had to take everything into
my own hands.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Thank you for kicking my ass into gear. I’ve felt like a total wimp these past
few weeks.”

“You are anything but wimpy, Sky.” His lips turned up. “But if you
really
want to get your ass kicked, you could always join the Marines. You’d look good in
uniform.”

“
Oorah!
” I pumped my fist in the air, and he laughed. “I saw a movie where the Marines were
always saying that. What does it mean?”

“It can be loosely translated as
fuck, yeah
. One of my buddies says it’s Jarhead for
let’s do this.
” He smiled. “You used it right.”

Oorah.
I needed some of that in my life.

Josh did another U-turn, then went down the dirt road beside the gas station.

“Are we the kind of delinquents who pick up after ourselves?” I asked.

“Hell, no. Takes the fun out of it.” He slowed down as we drove past the station.
“I’m taking you to my favorite restaurant in town.”

The gas pumps were eerie in the moonlight, like forgotten toys. Graffiti covered the
boards on the windows, and the ground was littered with beer cans and probably cigarette
butts. I couldn’t see them from the truck, but it seemed like that kind of place.

Josh parked behind the station and turned off the ignition. The instant silence was
almost loud. Other than the occasional car on the highway, the only sound was the
breeze and a few crickets.

“If I didn’t know you, I’d be pretty freaked out right now,” I said. It felt like
we were the only people in the world. There weren’t any houses or buildings around
for miles. Just fields and the jagged outline of the mountains in the distance.

“Well, at least you know that if I try anything, you can outrun me.”

“True. That’s comforting.”

He laughed and we got out of the truck.

“Wow,” I said. The moon hung low in the sky like an overripe fruit, rusty orange with
swirls of yellow.
Starry Night
come to life.

“Kinda creepy, huh?” Josh said as he pulled down the tailgate.

“No. I like it. I feel like I’m watching a movie right now, you know?”

I gazed at the vineyard in front of me, the vines dark tendrils in the moonlight.
I longed to slip off my shoes and run through them. I wanted cool earth under my feet.
I wanted to pull grapes off the vines and taste their sweetness and let the juice
drip down my chin and onto my shirt. Didn’t matter if they were ripe or not. I wanted
to feed one to Josh and feel his lips against my fingertips. The echo of the bottle
throwing pulsed in my skin. If I had the guts, I would howl at the moon.

“Can you grab the blankets in the back seat?” he asked.

I handed him the bags of food, grateful to step away from his side for a second. When
I came back, we spread the blankets on the tailgate, then hopped up. He grunted a
little, rubbing his stump while he leaned over to adjust his shorts over his prosthesis.

“You okay?”

“Just a little sore today. It’s nothing.”

I doubted it was nothing, but in Creek View, it seemed like there were two schools
of thought on expressing how shitty life could be. Some people bitched and moaned
all the time—that was almost everyone. But a few tried to be stoic, to play off their
personal tragedies as though they were minor inconveniences. I liked that he was the
latter. I supposed you’d have to be that kind of person to be a Marine.

We both put our hands in the bag, searching for fries, and this time we laughed when
our fingers touched. There was lightning in our skin. God, what was happening to me?

“Ladies first,” he said.

I pulled out my fries and let him take the bag. I ate with my head bent over the carton,
my hair hiding my face. Boiled, overpriced pasta felt so much safer than this.

“Thanks for dinner.”

Josh took a bite of his burger and nodded. “Thanks for giving me something to do.”

“Like you couldn’t make a few phone calls and have twenty people begging you to hang
out with them.”

“Maybe.” Then his lips curled up in a smile, and he looked at me out of the corner
of his eye. “I like this better, though.”

“Don’t even think about hitting on me,” I said. I dunked a chicken nugget in barbecue
sauce and shoved it into my mouth, glad it was nighttime and he couldn’t see how pink
my cheeks had gotten.

He gave me a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

We ate in silence for a couple of minutes. I hadn’t realized the depth of my hunger
until the ache in my stomach disappeared. Josh stared at the rows and rows of grapes.
He chewed his burger slowly, then brought his soda to his lips and took a long sip.

“One night, I was out with my squad, and there was a moon just like this,” he said,
his voice quiet. “Our commander had gotten a tip from some village elder that there
were dudes building IEDs in a factory out in the middle of nowhere. Which is saying
a lot, because everywhere you go in Afghanistan feels like the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, we get to this factory, and there’s nothing around. Just some broken shit
and trash. Like this place. But we had orders to secure the location, so we had to
spend the night there, see if any Taliban came poking around. We couldn’t really check
the place out until daylight, so we just shot the shit all night, playing cards, talking.
Smoking. One of the guys—Sharpe—he died a few days later. Firefight on a patrol. Sniper
wasted him. Good guy.”

I had a sudden urge to throw my arms around him and say,
You made it. You made it back.
But I kept my hands in my lap.

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Damn.”

Josh crushed his empty carton of fries, twisting the cardboard until it fell apart.
“Shit happens.”

“Yeah, but it still sucks. It’s okay to think it sucks. I mean, I think about my dad
every day. I always will. And sure, he was gonna die somehow, some way, but it’s still
shitty that he’s gone and that he died the way he did.”

“Your dad was good people.”

I hadn’t realized Josh would even remember him. “Yeah. He was.”

We stared at the crazy moon for a while.

“Do you ever …
talk
to your dad?” he asked. “You know, like, in your head?”

“You mean like a prayer?”

“Kind of. Just—we don’t know what happens when we die, right? I mean, maybe we go
up to some perfect place in the sky, or maybe we turn to dust, or we’re spirits and
can still think and hear and go places. So talking to the person that’s dead isn’t
crazy. They could be listening to you. Right?”

I nodded. “Sometimes I think I’m talking to myself—in my head, I mean—and then I realize
I’m actually talking to my dad. About my problems or my day or whatever.”

I ate the last of my fries and took a sip of my soda. It felt so good to be full,
but there were parts of me that still felt empty and hungry, and I could tell it was
the same with Josh. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever find something to fill those
places inside me that never stopped wanting.

“You lost a lot of friends in the war?”

He balled up his hamburger wrapper and threw it in the bag. Then he lay down on the
blankets, staring up at the sky. “Yeah.”

I lay down next to him. “I’m glad you’re home,” I whispered.

His hand found mine and held it. Not in a romantic way. He was just telling me he
understood.

We stayed like that, hand in hand, our faces pointed to the stars. It wasn’t until
the sun came up and the sky had turned the color of a peach that we folded up the
blankets and went home.

JOSH

I’m out here watching the pickup football game I used to play in every week and it
straight-up sucks. Instead of being out there, I’m sitting on the back of my truck,
a fuckin’ spectator, while all these dudes I’ve never been jealous of before in my
life screw around on the field. Watching them and feeling fuckin’ helpless. This black
thing inside me wants to kick some ass so bad. These are guys whose girlfriends used
to climb in my window in the middle of the night and no one would ever know. Guys
who’ve never had to kill, haven’t seen their best friend— Haven’t seen any of it.
These dudes are running, just … running. Like it’s nothing. Not even thinking about
it, like in those dreams where I’m running or walking and it feels so good, so real,
to be moving like that again and I wake up and for the tiniest second think maybe
all this—being Stateside, the bomb, the fake leg—was the dream. Then I look down and
there’s nothing there.
Nothing.
And now I’m sitting here, watching a shitty-ass football game and feeling a leg that
doesn’t exist anymore, a leg that burns like someone just put a hot poker against
it. “Phantom pain,
”
Darren calls it. My physical therapist has a name for fuckin’ everything. And I’m
feeling so goddamn tired because I couldn’t sleep again, couldn’t stop seeing that
day or thinking about Marge’s son. Sitting here like some fuckin’ mascot or something,
wondering how the hell did I get back here? After everything I saw, the places I went …
how did I end up right back here, drinking cheap beer in a field that smells like
cow shit?

*   *   *

And why don’t I leave?

chapter fourteen

I carried the memory of that night with me all through the next day and clutched it
in my pocket like a child with a coin or some small treasure they’d discovered on
the ground. I turned it over and over until it shone, and when I’d catch myself thinking
of him, I’d shake my head, blushing, my body straining to wherever I imagined Josh
to be at that precise moment.

“It’s four,” Chris said. “Just in case you haven’t looked at the clock in the last
three minutes.” He gave me a weird look, as if he knew who I’d been thinking about.

My eyes slid away. “I know. I was just sort of hoping the clock would stop at three
fifty-nine.”

“That’d be very
Twilight Zone.
I’m not sure which is worse—possible creepiness from a stopped clock or your aunt
Celia.”

“My aunt Celia.”

We were sitting on my couch, flipping through one of Mom’s old
People
magazines until I could bring myself to pick up the phone. I’d promised myself I
would do it at four if she didn’t make the call herself. I’d waited all morning and
most of the afternoon, but Mom only left her bedroom to go to the bathroom or stare
into the empty fridge.

I tried to summon up the feeling of throwing that beer bottle at the gas station the
night before.
Oorah.

“I’m just worried she won’t pick up. She won’t recognize my number,” I murmured. Mom’s
bedroom door was shut and the TV on, but I didn’t want her to hear us plotting.

“Then leave a voice mail and tell her you’ll keep calling until she picks up.”

“That simple, huh?” I asked.

He tugged on my ponytail. “That simple.”

I took a breath and grabbed my cell phone. “Okay.”

“Dude, it’s gonna be crazy tonight. Check it out.” Chris pointed to the TV, which
had footage of a reporter by the coast with huge waves behind her. It was on mute,
but you didn’t need sound to see we were in for a serious storm. “It might even hail!”

The afternoon had gone gray, and wind was battering the trailer, the gusts sending
thick, dark clouds that promised rain. Usually I loved the few rainy days we had in
Creek View, but it felt like a bad omen.

“Great. I’ll probably be getting soaked all night helping stranded travelers into
their rooms,” I muttered.

“And I’ll have a bunch of
gringos
with car problems,” he said. “Just wait until you, too, wear the honorable orange
tunic.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said.

Chris was wearing the offensively bright orange Pump and Go shirt that I’d be putting
on for the first time in just a few days. I’d gone into the gas station that morning,
telling myself that getting a second job meant I was taking control of the situation
at home. I filled out the application, chatted with the manager, and became a weekend
clerk ten minutes later.

“So I’m guessing I shouldn’t mention that I thought the whole reason you went into
P&G was to get your
madre
a job.”

I sighed. “That was the plan, but we need cash
now
, you know? And she’s … I just thought it would be better to get more work for me,
then I’ll find something for her.”