Now I just needed to find him. I idled near the ditch, trying to think of places he might be. My head was pounding: from the hangover, from the fear that I was too late to tell Josh … something. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I just knew I needed to find him. Now.
On a whim, I drove toward the field used for fireworks on the Fourth. My hunch paid off—Josh’s truck was parked close to the little path that led to the train tracks. The train tracks. I could see the look on his face as he watched that train go by, and suddenly I had to get to him, as fast as possible.
Give me a little credit, Sky. I’m not gonna try to do it in the dark.
As if on cue, I heard a train whistle, not too far off. I jumped out of the car and flew through the brush, tripping over roots and slapping away the dry branches that smacked my face. I could hear the train now, chugging along, coming closer. Faster than me.
A train horn blasted the air, and I hurtled forward, screaming Josh’s name at the top of my lungs. If he tried to jump, there was no way he would make it. If his prosthesis got caught under him …
No.
“Josh!”
I could see the black mass of the train to my right now. I stumbled and fell onto my knees, scraping the skin off.
“Josh!”
He couldn’t hear me over the sound of the train. It was going faster than the one we’d seen together, the boxcars flying by in a blur, the wheels sharpening themselves on the tracks, round knives.
I bolted between the final two bushes. Josh was standing close to the tracks, his body in a tense crouch. I could only see the right side of his face—he was completely focused on the train, his eyes following the sides of the boxcars. An open one was just a few cars away. He reached out an arm.
“Josh!”
The open boxcar was coming up. I sprinted across the dirt and launched myself onto his back.
“Whoa!” he yelled.
He tried to swing me around, but lost his balance so that we both tumbled to the ground, hard. He shouted in pain and then clutched at his leg, and I was saying “Sorry! Shit! Sorry!” but in an instant, Josh had me pinned to the ground and was on top of me, his fist drawn back and his other hand pushing painfully against my chest.
I gasped and reached up my hands to protect my face, but then he saw it was me and immediately relaxed.
“Sky?”
I let out a shaky laugh.
“Hey.”
We stayed like that for a second or two, the methodic pounding of the train’s wheels on the steel tracks keeping time: him leaning over me, me looking up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was covered in dust, his T-shirt ripped around the collar where I’d tried to hold on to him. He looked at me like he hadn’t seen me in forever, and I felt his breath on me, hot and familiar. It would be so easy to throw my arms around him and pull him to me. I heard Marge say the word burden, saw her dead son in the bathtub. I lay still, my eyes locked on his.
Josh studied my face, then he rolled off me.
We lay in the dust on our backs, staring at each other as the train swept by. Soon the only sound was our breath and the insects that were buzzing around the fields. I sat up and crouched over him. The path from my lips to his wasn’t that much distance to cover, but I’d already promised myself that wouldn’t happen again. I’d come here to be his friend, that was all.
“Is your leg okay?” I asked.
“Why the hell’d you do that?” he said, ignoring my question.
“I didn’t want you to jump the train,” I said. “I mean, obviously.”
He sat up and rubbed his thigh, but didn’t say anything. The train was just a speck on the horizon now with black clouds of smoke trailing behind it. I saw the longing in his eyes as he watched it get farther and farther away.
“Why’s it so important to you?” I asked, my voice soft.
He leaned back in the dirt, his hands behind him. His eyes glazed over, and I knew he’d gone somewhere I couldn’t follow.
“Josh?”
“I just needed to … blow off some steam. I had a lot on my mind.”
“Throwing bottles at the gas station wasn’t enough for you?”
He half laughed, a bitter exhalation. “Not after Afghanistan.”
That pissed me off. Downplaying it like it was a totally acceptable way for him to deal.
“Josh. News flash: you don’t have two legs. It sucks, it sucks so bad, and I’m sorry, but you don’t. You can’t jump trains anymore.”
“Thanks, Skylar, I had no idea. I mean, I thought I was walking funny, but—”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me, you son of a bitch. How do you think it feels, to go driving all over town worried that someone you lo—just fucking worrying that you’re, I don’t know, dead or something.”
“Well, I’m not. Sorry to disappoint you. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.”
“You’re such a—”
“Just stop, Skylar. Stop. You have no idea. No idea what happened, what I did. You have no…”
Josh put his head in his hands for a minute. I stayed quiet, just kept my eyes on him, even though I wanted to put my arms around him so badly.
“I killed my best friend, okay?”
His words pushed all the air out of me, all the light from the sky. He looked up, his eyes wet and so lost.
“Your friend with the books,” I whispered.
“Nick.” He nodded and drew in a ragged breath. “If I hadn’t told him … Why’d he have to have my back like that? Always covering us—”
His hands gripped his elbows so hard, like he was physically holding himself together, and then he leaned forward and just kept saying godgodgod over and over.
I grabbed his arms. “Josh.” He didn’t seem to know I was there. “Josh,” I said again, my voice louder.
He looked up. “He was standing right next to me when I stepped on the IED. I saw him fly up, like … like he weighed nothing. So light.”
He told me everything.
What he saw, how it felt, who was there. He shuddered a little, and I gripped his arms tighter, wanting so badly to stay strong for him but feeling like the world was breaking apart and rearranging itself in new and horrifying ways. I didn’t want to go there, to those places he was describing, but I didn’t want to be where he wasn’t.
“It should have been me,” he whispered. “He was so much better. So much more.”
“No.”
“It’s my fault. If I’d just—”
“It’s not your fault. It’s not.”
“We’re fighting ghosts out there. Gotta be fucking vigilant. Trust me—I screwed up. You don’t know.”
“I do. You’re good. Even though you treated me like shit, I know you’re good. So whatever happened out there, it wasn’t your fault. It’s war, and war is fucked up. But you made it, and now you’ve got this life.”
“What the hell is it good for?” He shrugged me off and ran his hands back over his head. “I’m fucking pointless.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself or trying to jump a train isn’t gonna bring him back.”
His head snapped up, like he had something to say about that, but when I put my hand over his, he relaxed a little. “I know,” he whispered, after a minute. He looked at the train tracks. “I just wanted to see if I was still me.”
I thought about Marge’s son, how he’d slowly fallen apart. The blood in the bathtub. The three Joshes.
“You are still you—losing a leg doesn’t mean you’re an entirely different person.” But even as I said the words, I knew that wasn’t true. He had changed; I just didn’t know how to tell him I liked post-Afghanistan Josh better.
He grunted and I took a breath, forcing the words past my mouth. “Have you talked to the Marine Corps about this? I’m sure they could—”
“Sky, just drop it.” His voice held a tinge of command in it. It was what I’d come to think of as his Marine voice. “This is my thing and—”
“I can’
t. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to get a phone call in San Francisco telling me you got run over by a train, okay?”
“I’m not gonna get run over by a train.” He smiled, but it looked painted on—a red slash on his face. “Seems like these days you’d want that, anyway.”
“That’s not even funny.”
I stood and he moved to get up too, so I held out my hand, but he waved it off. “I’ve got it.”
I let my hand drop and looked up at the sky, anything to avoid being an audience. But I could tell from his labored breathing that he was struggling, so I grabbed his arm. He tried to shake me off, but I held tighter.
“Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn all the time?” I snapped.
“Me? Are you serious right now?”
I knew he was thinking about last night and how I wouldn’t tell him where I was or what had happened.
“Just let me help you up.”
Josh looked at my hand, like he wanted to push it away … again … just like that night, but he finally gave a slight nod, and I pulled him up while he pushed against the ground with his other hand.
I knew the fall had cost him when he didn’t straighten up right away but rested his hands on his knees and took a few breaths instead. He wanted to be the perfect stoic soldier, all oorah and stuff. I had to tuck my hand behind my back because I wanted so badly to run my fingers through his hair. It was the longest it had been all summer.
Friends, I kept chanting to myself. Friends.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“Sure.”
I looked at the tracks. I’d be going in that same direction in just a few weeks.
I took a deep breath: dust, smoke, manure. No matter where I went, this place would be with me. It had seeped into my bones. I knew it’d never let me go, and I suddenly found myself not wanting it to. I was part of Creek View just as much as it was part of me. But I could see the next few weeks, months, years spread out before us. I’d find my arty boy, and Josh would find a Creek View girl or, if he stayed in the Marines, some tanned, blond girl from San Diego. Maybe we’d see each other when I came home to visit Dylan and Marge. I’d think of him whenever I saw a man in uniform. I’d wonder, forever, what would have happened if he hadn’t freaked out that night. If there had been more than those few kisses.
Josh straightened up, the pain only showing in the grimace he made and how tightly he clutched his hips.
“Anyway,” I said, “I just came to tell you … thanks for last night—for, uh, taking care of me and the car, and I’ll pay you guys, whatever it costs. You have no idea how mortified I am. Well, maybe you do, I don’t know. Anyway, I hope we can somehow be … friends.”
“Friends,” he said, his voice dull.
I wanted him to hold my hand, just like he’d done in this spot a little over a month ago. I wished I had the guts to tell him I didn’t want to be anywhere else but with him, right here, right now. I’d been so brave that night.
I cleared my throat and looked out over the fields. The sun was transforming them into warm tangerine rivers that rippled and splashed in the breeze. I could imagine Monet painting them, getting the quality of light just perfect, like his bales of hay.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d really like that. I’m leaving in a couple weeks, and I don’t want to go with everything being … weird.”
He turned around and started to walk toward the truck, but I noticed the slight limp, the way he favored his left side.
“Josh?”
“Yeah,” he said, not looking back. “Friends. Cool.”
His voice was this frozen, robotic thing, and I was so tired of wanting things I couldn’t have. I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt a tear drop off my chin and then a sob broke out of me, and I slapped my hands over my mouth to keep everything in, but this avalanche of emotion was straining against my fingers, trying to get out.
Josh stopped, his shoulders tense. Then he turned around, his face stony, but his eyes … his eyes.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything!” I was shouting, but I didn’t care. “Cool?” I said, mimicking him. “I mean … what … why can’t you…”
I trailed off and just stood there, watching him watch me. Wondering what he thought of me, now that he’d seen me at my very worst. Wondering what I thought of me.
Josh walked up to me, every step pushing me farther away from the girl I’d been at the beginning of the summer and closer to this present, unknown Skylar. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I leaned into that sudden, unexpected touch.
“I fucked up,” he said. “So bad. And I don’t know how else to say I’m sorry.” He let his hands drop. “But I don’t want to be your friend, Sky.”
I blinked. How many times was I going to read this guy totally wrong? Marge had led me to believe that he felt everything I did. That he …
It didn’t matter. I’d be leaving soon. I was trying to be forgiving, nice, or … but I had Dylan and Chris, and who cared, so whatever. We didn’t need to be friends.
“Fine,” I said. “Great. Have a nice life.”
I started to walk past him, but he grabbed my arm and turned me around. “You can be really stupid sometimes, you know that?”
I shook him off. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m fucking crazy about you!”
I stood there, not breathing, not even thinking, really. I just let those words wash over all those cut-up, bruised places inside me.
“But—”
“That night in your room. I left because … because I didn’t know how to do … to do any of that stuff. I mean, the way I am now. And I didn’t want you to think—it’s like how could you possibly want—”
“Josh, you lost your leg, not your—”
I stopped, blushing all the way to the tips of my ears. Josh looked at me for a second, then threw back his head and laughed. Then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” he murmured.
I shook my head, scared to say anything. It was too easy to tip the balance between us. I didn’t know why I hadn’t realized it before: he’d left because he thought I wouldn’t want him. That I would change my mind. Of course that was why he’d freaked out. And even though I had so much to be angry with him about, all I could concentrate on was the fact that I was in his arms.
I breathed him in. God, he smelled good. Whatever combination of things made a man smell like a man.
“I’m such an idiot,” I said. “I should have known that’s why you—”
“You’re not an idiot. How could you know? I didn’t say anything and…” I felt his heart start beating faster. “What happened … after. That wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but I just felt so … I wasn’t there, Sky.”
He pulled away and looked down at me. “I can’t even explain why I let her get in the truck. It was like … like I was watching myself. But I couldn’t do anything. And I was drunk, and—it had nothing to do with you.”
“But that’s the problem, Josh.” I stepped away from him and scratched at the tears on my cheeks. “I mean, not to be graphic or whatever, but that should have been us. I know I don’t have, like, any experience, but I wanted to … to do everything with you and then you went off with her and it felt like … it made me feel worthless. It made me stop trusting myself.”
He looked down for a minute, and it was as if there was this huge mountain between us, and I hated that after everything we’d been through this summer, we’d have to admit that it was impossible. We were impossible.
“One chance. That’s all I want,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m just freaked that if I say, okay, yes, I forgive you, that the war and everything will be like this Get Out of Jail Free card, like you can just wave it around and say you were having a bad day or—”
“I won’t.”
He stepped closer to me, his eyes full of a hopeful kind of terro
r. I could feel the weight of that terror, pressing against me. I gazed out at the empty field behind the tracks. Despite the heat, the constant drought, and the unforgiving earth, things were growing. From seeds to stalks of corn taller than me, they pushed through the earth and survived. I decided that if I came from a place where miracles like that occurred on a daily basis, then why couldn’t they happen to me?
“If you ever do this to me again, Josh, I’m gone. Like really, really gone.”
He nodded and held out a callused hand. “I know. But I won’t. I swear to God, I won’t.”
I was like a painter standing in front of a canvas, paint dripping off the brush, knowing that whatever I put on it, I wouldn’t be able to take back. I had to be ready.
I pushed his hand away.
Then I leaned across the space between us and pressed my lips against his. He gasped a little, surprised, but then his hands were in my hair and his lips were all over me—my cheeks, my nose, my neck, my ears, back to my lips, my eyes, and—very gently—my bruised forehead. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he half lifted me off the ground, and we were laughing, and crying, and kissing.
He tasted like hope and healing. He tasted like the future.
chapter thirty-one
The first stars were coming out when we left the train tracks. Josh leaned me up against his truck, and these kisses were soft and gentle. Like we had all the time in the world. Then he pulled away a little and took a closer look at my forehead.
“How’s the head?”
I shrugged. “It’ll be okay.”
“You scared the shit out of me last night,” he said.
“I know.” I still hadn’t had time to process the whole thing yet. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten into a car drunk off my ass. I couldn’t believe I’d been drunk off my ass. “God, Josh. It’s like I was possessed or something.”
I understood now what Josh had said about the night he left me, how he’d felt like he’d been watching himself but couldn’t do anything.