The Impossible Knife of Memory(14)

“Did you hear what I just said?” he asked.

“I think we have some chicken.” Were you up all night again?

“Let me sleep.”

“It’s two thirty in the afternoon.” Who are you afraid of? “Can I throw out the newspaper? On the dining room table?”

There was a pause so long that I began to think he’d fallen back asleep, but finally he said, “Yeah. Sorry about the mess.”

I fed Spock and put away the tools. The tang of gunpowder lingered in the house, so strong that I wondered if he’d opened a couple of shells for the hell of it. Freakish visions crowded in—Dad smearing gunpowder on his face for camouflage, Dad pouring a thick circle of gunpowder on the floor, sitting in the middle of it and lighting a match, Dad . . . The only way to get rid of them was to open all the windows and clean the table.

How many of the girls in my gym class had to clean up gunpowder and barrel oil after school?

Ha.

Maybe that was why I want to slap so many of the zombies; they had no idea how freaking lucky they were. Lucky and ignorant, happy little rich kids who believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and thought that life was supposed to be fair.

I scrubbed until my hands ached and I was out of breath, then I found an ancient bottle of lemon oil and rubbed it into the tabletop. The scent of the lemon warred with the gunpowder smell and made my eyes water.

Spock and I went for a walk until the fumes cleared.

I hitch a ride back to the outpost in a truck filled with ammunition, pork chops, and two guys from Bravo Company. Private first class Mariah Stolzfuss drives, telling me about Jaden, her dancing toddler in Arkansas. We follow a Humvee that is filled with boys barely enough old to shave.

A star goes supernova in the middle of the road. We fly. Wingless birds.

Shock waves ripple through metal, glass, and flesh. Bone crumbles. Skin explodes. Nerves snap. Brains slosh and spill in dented tin skulls. Arteries spray like high-pressure hoses, painting the world a bright, sad red.

I swim through the smoke. Private Stolzfuss still sits behind the wheel. I wipe the blood off her face to find her mouth, make her breathe. She doesn’t have a mouth. She doesn’t have a face anymore.

Boys pull me away, strong boys with faces and mouths. They help me sit in the dust and try to get Private Stolzfuss out of the truck. Her arm comes off in their hands. Her blood trickles, drips. Her heart exploded in the middle of her story.

In Arkansas, her son dances, waiting.

Either I never turned my alarm on or I turned it off without realizing it, because what woke me up was not a buzzing phone, but the sound of the bus rumbling down the street.

I swore and threw off the covers.

I could:

a. walk to school.

b. wake up my father and tell him he has to drive me and use that warm, fuzzy time together in the truck to ask why he cleaned all the guns.

c. stay home because he’d probably sleep all day again and he’d never know the difference if I snuck out a little before two and made a lot of noise “coming home” half an hour later.

Option C had some long-term consequences, but the good part was that they were long-term, so I wouldn’t have to deal with them for a while, or at least for a couple of days. C was the winning option, right up until the doorbell rang.

I shouldn’t have answered it. I should have gone back to bed. In my defense, I was half asleep and not thinking clearly. I knew it was too early for the mail. Gracie drove in with Topher these days, so it wouldn’t have been her. I didn’t even think about Trish until I was already pulling the door open.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” shouted Finn.

Thankfully, I’d left the chain on. As I went to close it in his face, he wedged his foot between the door and the frame.

“Ouch,” he said.

“Move your foot.”

“No.”

“Go away.”

“Glad to see you, too.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“You missed the bus,” he said.

“I’m sick.”

“Need chicken soup?”

“Actually, it’s my period,” I lied. “Killer cramps.”

“Chocolate and heating pad?”

“How do you know that?”

“I have an older sister and my mom is a kick-ass feminist,” he said. “I’m probably the only guy in school who can buy tampons without having a seizure. Look at that, I can even say the word. ‘Tampon, tampon, tampon.’ If you say it enough, it stops sounding like a word, know what I mean?”

“Keep it down,” I warned. “My dad is still sleeping.”

“Then who just left in the pickup truck?”

“What?”

Finn removed his foot so I could close the door, free the chain, and open the door wide enough to see the empty driveway.

“Big white guy, huge arms, right? Yankees cap, scary sunglasses? I was parked up the block. Watched him pull out of the driveway and head for the city. That’s why I figured you needed a ride.”

Dad always told me when he picked up a job because it meant the new beginning, the fresh start that was going to change everything right up until the moment a day or two later when it came crashing down around him. Could he have gone to the VA to make up one of the missed appointments? Was he looking for a liquor store that opened early? When would he be back? More important, what kind of mood would he be in?