Summer I Found You (2 page)

One of them.
Was
. It was like yesterday, but also a lifetime ago.

Three months.

Four surgeries.

Two hospitals.

One rehab clinic.

The apartment over my uncle’s garage.

“Yeah. So, where are you now?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill ya.” He laughs. Loud. He almost sounds drunk, but I know better.

“You guys still near Bagram Airfield?” I wonder if they’re still close to where I was a few months ago.

“In the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“No one,” I correct.

“What?”

“You can’t fuck nowhere.”

“See? I knew you were smart. Fucking no one.” He laughs more. “You heading to school? Everyone wants to know what you’re up to, man.”

“I’m…”
up to nothing
. I don’t know what to be up to right now. I know what I
should
be up to. I should be getting ready for college, looking for a job. But I don’t know how to do shit with one arm.

“Being a lazy ass?” he teases.

“You got it.” Might as well play back, there’s nothing else to do at this point.

He laughs again. I can picture him now, shaved head, pinched little weasel face always in a smile. And when he wasn’t smiling, it meant he was about to pull something big. Like stealing all the steaks from the freezer before going on a weeklong “walk”. Our first dinner and breakfast out of camp were awesome. Roberts is the best kind of guy to be friends with, and we’ve been friends since basic training. Since we learned we’d be in the same post. Same infantry unit.

“How much time you guys got left in country?”

“Four more weeks, Con! Can you believe it?” He sounds excited. After a whole year, four weeks feels like nothing.

Wow. “Sweet.”

“Maybe I’ll come to the great state of Oregon and find ya.”

No, no, no. If I can’t have the Army anymore, I don’t want to be faced with it. “Where you stationed next?” I ask.

“I’ll be back at Ft. Lewis, Washington. So I’m only a few hours north.”

“Great,” I lie.

Silence fills the line for a few moments.

“Have you seen Melinda?” All the tease is gone from his voice now. “You know…”

“I know who Melinda is,” I snap. Melinda’s the wife of the guy who died next to me. Two feet to my right. My body jumps at the black of the memory—the blast hits my ears making my stomach turn. “No.”

“What about the, uh, funeral?”

“I didn’t go. I was still in the hospital.” It’s mostly the truth. I was in the rehabilitation clinic.

“So, how’s life with one arm?”

“Peachy.” I need off the phone. I can’t believe he just asked me that dumbass question. Rolling over all the crap I spend every second of every minute of every day trying to
not
think about is not what I want to do this time of night.

Though, I also don’t want to be fighting away nightmares. No guy wants to admit to that. Well, no guy wants to admit a lot of the shit that’s in my head right now.

“Look, tell the guys I said hi. I need my beauty sleep.”

He laughs, again. “I knew it, I knew it! You’re already going soft. Got a girl in bed with you?” “Three. Night Rob.” I hang up the phone, reach around with my left hand, and feel

the thick stub where my arm used to be. It still hurts like hell when I move wrong. My hand aches sometimes too, but it’s not there anymore, and shouldn’t be aching. Barely nineteen, no idea what I want to do with my life outside of the military, and now, because of the military, I
have
to live my life outside of it. Why the hell did he have to wake me up?

Aunt Beth and Uncle Foster are at the breakfast table looking at me like they always do—like they want to say something, but have no idea how to start. Aunt Beth is the slightly older version of my mom, and it still throws me. We all have the family blue eyes and blond hair, but Beth’s hair is even cut in the same shoulder length hair as Mom’s, making them look almost like twins. I step into the massive kitchen and pull a bowl from the cupboard. Everything for me now requires multiple steps. Open cupboard door wide enough that it stays open. Let go of door. Pull out bowl. Set bowl down. Reach back up to cupboard door to close it. Pull open silverware drawer. Let go of drawer. Pick out spoon. Set spoon down. Close silverware drawer.

One damn thing at a time. Three months without my arm, and there isn’t a second of the day I don’t think about it. The thing is, no one in this house has yet to comment on it. Not my cousin Jen. Not my cousin Will. Not my aunt. Not my uncle. There’s no way they’re not curious. No way they’re not at least a little curious.

Not that I really want to talk about it, but I definitely don’t forget. It’s not like someone asking me what it’s like will make me suddenly remember I’m missing my arm.

“What are your plans today, Aidan?” Foster asks as he adjusts his tie.

“I’m not sure yet.” I shrug, but it feels weird to only shrug one arm, and my shoulder’s still really stiff. “I’ll head to the pool for a while.”

The swimming pool is what’s keeping me out of physical therapy. Well, not out of it, but lessens it.

“You need my car?” he asks.

“Yeah. You can, uh, take mine today if you want.” I love my car. Saved up since I was thirteen, bought it when I turned sixteen, and spent time on the thing almost every day until I left for Afghanistan.

It’s a 1972 Chevelle Super Sport convertible. Grey with black racing stripes. The car is perfect. After years of scrounging through scrap yards and buffing out every fender,
everything
on my car is perfect.

He shifts in his seat. The words right at the edge of his mouth. I know it.
Why don’t you sell your car, Aidan? You can’t drive a stick with one arm. Definitely when the arm missing is your right one.

Why couldn’t I have lost the arm I don’t know how to use?

I lie on my back and float in the pool. I know this isn’t going to help me get out of physical therapy any faster, but it might keep me out of the shrink’s office.

The pool is my safe place. No one here knows me as anything but the guy with one arm. They don’t know it just happened. They don’t know I haven’t been this way for years. It seems crazy that I don’t mind being somewhere that my lack of arm is completely on display, but there’s no point in hiding something this obvious.

I have my stupid shrink visit tomorrow.
Recommended counseling
. Whatever. Like any one of those guys I go talk to have any idea what it’s like to be walking out in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night, knowing they’re not alone. Like any of them watched their sergeant get blown up next to them, and felt around in the dark, only to find body parts instead of the real guy.

That thought sinks me. I blow out my air, and let myself drop to the bottom of the pool. My assignment this week is to think about what I want, and what I don’t want.

It’s all the same thing right now.

Sort of.

I rotate my shoulder a few times forward, and then a few times back before standing up and breaking the surface. My feet push off the bottom and I start a sidestroke. Left side down. The only way I can do it.

What I want:

I
want
to not wake up in the middle of the night in a puddle of my own sweat. It makes me feel like a fucking kid.

I want to talk about how much it sucks to use one arm, but not to someone who feels bad for me.

I want to sort all this mess out in my head about Pilot, his death, his family, and what the right thing to do is.

What I don’t want:

I
don’t want
the nightmares anymore.

I don’t want to remember this forever.

I don’t want to be without my arm.

I don’t want to do nothing for the rest of my life.

I don’t want to be pitied.

A loud bang and a shriek tense me into a rock, and I spin to face the noise. A kid, crying over a broken balloon on the sidelines as part of a birthday party, and me, ready to fight. I have something else to add to my list:

I don’t want to panic over things that don’t matter.

I want to be normal again.

It all feels impossible.

“Hey.” My cousin Jen sits next to me on the couch, flipping her long blond hair over her shoulder. She’s a senior this year, and is almost never home. Jen also got all the cool genes in the family. Her twin brother spends a lot of time in the basement with his friends and their games. I don’t even try. You need two thumbs for most of them, and I’m a right-handed guy with a left hand.

“What’s up?” We’ve hardly spoken since I got here a couple weeks ago.

“Our big senior picnic—carnival night—is this Friday. I kind of hoped you’d come?”

No part of this makes sense. I’ve gone out with her and Will two times. Both to the grocery store for my aunt.

“A
high school
thing?” High school was a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes ago. But really just over a year.

“Yeah.” The word is drawn out enough that I know she wants to ask me more. And also that there’s a catch.

All signs point to me not going along with this.

“No thanks.” It’s probably just a reason to get me out of the house anyway. I don’t really need to be the guy with one arm back from war. I don’t want to be dragged out of the house because she feels bad for me. I’m just not into it.

“Okay, look.” She sits sideways and faces me. “I have this best friend—”

“Kate.” She was probably the sulky girl who sat in her car the other day.

“Yeah.” She smiles just a tad too wide. “You remember her?”

“Have I
met
her? The only person who calls this house is her and your boyfriend Toby. You know with the whole cell-phone loss and all.”

“Oh. Right.” She looks around.

There’s something else. I wait for it.

“Okay, look. She’s a big mopey pile of crap after her boyfriend dumped her.”

“How does this concern me?” Not to be a total ass, but we’re talking about some ridiculous high school drama that I do not need or want to be in the middle of.

“Oh, come on. You’re not heartless.”

“Again, what do you need?” I smile a little because I know I might be coming off a little harsh, and I don’t mean to be. I’ve sort of lost patience with everything this trivial.

“Just another body. Please? I want to make sure we’re even with girls and guys.”

“You want me to go on a date with your best friend who’s in high school, whose boyfriend just dumped her, because she’s completely mental over their breakup. Is that right?”

“Um…” She chews on her lower lip. “Yeah? Only I swear it’s not a date. She totally won’t be interested in you, and…”

“Wow, thank you.”

Jen’s already flustered, and now it’s kind of a game to see how much more awkward I can make our conversation.

“Oh, no.” Her face turns red, and her hands start gesturing at nothing in front of her. “I didn’t mean anything against you. It’s that her and Shelton have been together—”

“I don’t know.” I shake my head. It all sounds so damn ridiculous.

“Think about it. Please?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Somehow between now and Friday I need to come up with a reason why I can’t go.

“I
T’LL BE A NORMAL GROUP
thing. I promise.” Jen’s just driving all relaxed like we’re going to go out for a burger or something. Not to a picnic where I know I’ll have to face Shelton and possibly his new girlfriend.

I check my reflection in the visor mirror again. Ridiculously huge brown bug eyes, tiny chin, limp hair that we spent way too long on to make look curly, and a dress that I normally wouldn’t be caught dead in—a pink T-shirt dress that should probably be worn with leggings underneath it. But losing Shelton has made me reckless. I push up the sleeves of my favorite cropped jacket. “Promise it’s no big deal.”

“Yay! And then if we see Shelton there, it’ll be fine because there will be a bunch of us. We’re not even riding with them. Will wanted to learn to drive a stick, so Will and Aidan already took off.”

“Fine.” I let out a breath hoping some of my nerves leave with the air.

“I still can’t believe Shelton dumped you for a cheerleader.”

“They’re apparently not dating.” I roll my eyes remembering his look of innocence about the whole thing. But then irritation begins to set in again. “Well, and his whole thing was
we’re going to different schools
. She’s going to be in
high school
again next year. How’s
that
for different schools?” I spit out.

“Relax, Kate. Breathe.”

I pull in a breath through my nose. So much for breathing helping because I’ve done one out, and one in, and I’m still a mess.

“Oh,” she says as we pull up. “Aidan-is-a-bit-moody-and-lost-anarm-in-Afghanistan.” And then she jumps out of the car.

What? How can she have a cousin living with her for weeks and I know nothing of this part of it?

I leap out my side, and then have to smooth the T-shirt fabric of the dress down again to make sure my panties are covered. How did I get talked into this? Wait. “
What
did you say about arms?”

“Shh.” Her eyes widen as I come around the front of her car.

Her gangly brother walks up with the guy who must be Aidan. He has the family blond hair and gorgeous light blue eyes. But he also has broad shoulders shown off by the snugness of his T-shirt. One of his shoulders leads to an arm. The other one does not.

I know I’m staring, because it’s definitely something I should NOT be staring at. But my brain’s having a hard time wrapping around it. It feels like someone’s erased what should be there.

“Kate,” she hisses. “You’re staring.”

“So, what does the other guy look like?” I grin at Aidan, and then realize I don’t know this guy, and it was possibly one of the dumbest things to ever leave my mouth.

“The guy next to me, or the one who left the bomb?” His face is flat, but his eyes don’t move from mine.

Silence like a thick blanket threatens to suffocate me.

Oops
.

A corner of his mouth pulls up. “Teasing.”

I chuckle this odd nervous little laugh, but both Jennifer and Will are silent, eyes wide.