A Million Miles Away(15)

“Great, I think! The, uh, Art History essay questions were fascinating.”

“I’m sure you nailed it.” Peter lit up. “Did you listen to that song I told you about? The Cicadas?”

Kelsey would say, Uh, no. Kelsey only listened to songs you could choreograph dances to. Including musicals, which Michelle made fun of mercilessly. The Cicadas sounded like an indie band. Michelle would probably say, “Yeah! I loved the… guitar.”

“And? It’s better than Weast, right? But it still has that sixties sound.”

She kept going. “No way. I’ll never give up on the sixties.”

Peter laughed. “It’s so nice not to talk about supply trucks that I’m not going to argue with you this time.”

It was that easy. All of this had come out of Michelle’s mouth so many times, it was impossible to forget. Kelsey had a strange, brief feeling of relief. As if Michelle were next to her, telling her what to say.

“Can I say something else?” Peter asked.

“Sure,” Kelsey said. Slowly, the guilt crept back. She shouldn’t have said that. She should have stopped him.

“You look so beautiful. I know you hate it when I say that, but you do.”

Kelsey closed her eyes to him. She couldn’t look at his face. She didn’t want to picture it on the screen, how it would fall when he knew the truth.

“Look at you,” she heard him say softly. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Maybe Kelsey could just keep her eyes closed when she told him. Peter, she would say to the darkness, I lied to you. But he seemed sensitive already, showing his fears and doubts to her. She didn’t know what to do.

When Kelsey opened her eyes, a figure darted into the tent behind Peter, yelling at him to move. Crackling sounds, like fireworks, rang out from somewhere in the distance.

“Okay,” he said, turning back to her. “I have to go.”

“What’s going on?” Kelsey asked. But she knew. He was under fire.

“I have to go. Write me back.”

“Peter, I have to—”

“Tell me you’ll write me back.”

He was looking at her straight through the screen, his scared eyes digging into her, begging her. She would have to write as Michelle, but then again, she didn’t know if he would ever get it. She didn’t know if he would even make it through the next half hour.

“I’ll write you back,” she said.

He swallowed, taking her in for one last second, and smiled. More shouts echoed behind him, and the rumble of an engine. The call ended.

For a moment, Kelsey didn’t quite know where she was.

Panic seized her. She rubbed her face with her palms. Her identical face. Michelle’s cheeks. Michelle’s eyes. Michelle’s nose. What would she do? Michelle would protect him, at least until she could find a way to let him down gently. This wasn’t a text message breakup situation. Michelle had loved him. Peter had one of those smiles that could transform everything else about his face, his eyes, even the air around him. Kelsey didn’t know how, but she wasn’t going to take that away from him. Not now.

She was left alone in her sister’s room with the sound of absolutely nothing, which was different than silence. It was the sound of being covered with a blanket, of falling with no end, of being very deep inside something, so deep you can’t see a way out.





CHAPTER NINE


Kelsey woke up to a naked ceiling, her covers gone, feeling like she had been kicked by a horse. She struggled to hold what she knew to be true and so very, very false. Peter saw Michelle when he looked at Kelsey. In Peter’s mind, he had talked to Michelle. But Michelle was nowhere.

A noise at her door made her jump.

Her father’s face poked in, beard first. “City Market day,” he said, a little hoarse.

“What?” They hadn’t made their monthly road trip to the Kansas City farmers’ market since the summertime. They used to buy oddly shaped produce their mother sliced and put in salads, useless trinkets the girls collected and eventually gave away at garage sales, cuts of meat her father used on burger specials.

“City Market day,” her father repeated the phrase louder, as he did lately, instead of giving an explanation. He closed the door.

When they were very little, his grizzly-bear body was their playground. He’d stand in the middle of the living room, feet apart, knees bent, hands on hips, and she and Michelle would put their feet on his knees and become mountaineers from either side, racing to get to his shoulders.

They used to pretend to go to bed, but wait until he got off work from the restaurant late at night, and surprise him when he got home by sneaking into the kitchen and leaping up from behind the counter.

“Who are these girls?” he used to say, pretending to be shocked.

“Michelle! Kelsey!” they would scream.

“Who?” His eyes would go wide, trying not to smile.

It was fun to tell him the story of who they were, what they meant to him. “I’m Kelsey and that’s Michelle! I’m your daughter, silly! You love me and all that! Remember?”

Then the moment when he remembered, even though they knew it was coming, ended in glorious hugs and kisses, as if he were remembering them after such a long time. As if eight hours away from someone you loved was such a long time.