A Matter of Days (27 page)

Someone had turned the ancient cabin into a fishing retreat during better days.

An old cooler was stocked with three different kinds of beer, none of them cold. We were thirsty enough to consider drinking it regardless of the temperature or the alcohol content.

Zack walked around to the back of the cabin. “Uh, guys?”

“Yeah?”

We came out holding cans of warm beer.

“Do they have gas in them?” Rabbit asked, as Zack removed the tarp on two four-wheelers.

Zack nodded. “And keys.”

“But where’s the bumper to drag along?” Rabbit grinned. “I’m bummed.”

Zack’s face turned red. Not all ideas could be good ones.

“I know you really wanted to ride bikes for another day,” I said to Zack, who rubbed his ass.

“Uh, no. How is that fun? My butt will never be the same.”
He shook his head while Rabbit giggled. Twawki chased a few geese and jumped into the pond to swim in the muck and algae.

We ate stale granola bars, shared a bag of chips, and drank a couple cans of beer each, even though none of us liked the taste. We’d all consumed worse in the last months. It was liquid and calories—both of which we needed.

Rabbit burped, then asked with a smile, “Does this make me drunk?”

“Just don’t drive,” Zack replied with a straight face.

That night I couldn’t sleep, even though the alcohol made me drowsy.
We’re so close. So close. We might make it. We might actually make it
.

Fog greeted me as I tried to stretch the kinks out in the early morning light. The chill of morning belied the heat I knew would rise up by noon.

Zack joined me. “What’s today, Nadia?”

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t even sure if it was a new day, or just a superlong moment pieced together.

“Come on, hop on.” He pointed to the back of the four-wheeler and handed me a helmet.

“We can’t leave Rabbit—”

“Hey, Spider, you good for a few? I need to show your sister something.”

“No problem, Zacky-poo. Thanks for not kissing her in front of me.” Rabbit made exaggerated choking sounds and wiggled his tongue like it was a worm.

“Nice.” I rolled my eyes, and climbed on behind Zack. “You feel hot—are you okay?”

“Why, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Blood flooded my cheeks. “I meant a fever. What’s your arm look like?” I touched the edge of the bandage.

He tried to cover his flinch, but I saw it. “Zack?”

He revved the engine and refused to answer. Talking over the engine noise was impossible. When we crested a hill overlooking canyons and brush he turned off the engine. “Get off.”

“Here?” I didn’t move. I’d never find my way back to camp.

“Here. Get off.” Zack held out a hand.

I peeled off the helmet. “What are we doing here?”

He leaned back against a boulder and stared at me.

Do I have a booger hanging out? A weird stain on my face? Smell bad? Why is he staring at me?
“What?” I almost shouted.

“We’re almost there,” Zack answered me quietly.

I surveyed the view, trying to see an imaginary flashing light marking Pappi’s cave. “We are, aren’t we?”

“So says your brother, and he’s rarely wrong.”

Dread filled my stomach with rocks and snakes.
What if Bean’s not there? What if they’re dead? What if there’s nothing at this mine but more questions? What do we do then?
I felt limbs begin to shake as goose bumps broke out along my arms.

Zack continued, “Tomorrow’s July Fourth.”

“It is?”
How can it be?

He nodded. “How are you?”

“I’m still standing. I’m the cockroach. We’re the roaches.” I tried to smile. “That would be a good band name—you play anything?” I tried to change the subject. I didn’t want to talk about what happens next.
There is no next—it’s Pappi and Bean and everything will be okay
.

“Spoons. Okay, you’re still standing, but you’re falling apart on the inside. I can see it. And if I can see it, your brother …” Zack let his words hang.

I closed my eyes as the shaking grew worse.

“Scream,” Zack said into my face.

“Huh?” My eyes snapped open to meet his. He’d moved silently until we almost touched and I was sure that with the fever Zack had lost his mind.

“Come on, scream,” Zack demanded.

“What? Why?”

“Scream. Primal. From your gut. Dammit, Nadia, don’t look at me like that. Just do it,” he snarled, shaking my shoulders.

I tried a roar and it sounded more like a vacuum cleaner dying a painful death than a primal scream.

He shook his head and sneered, “You can do better than that. It’s not like anyone’s going to film it and put it on YouTube.”

All the things that were so important once upon a time were gone. No Internet. No school. No popular kids. No college. No parents pushing me to be the best I could at everything. I tugged the MP3 player out of my pocket and held it.

“Come on, climb up.” Zack helped me climb up onto the top of the rocks. I saw an empty world in every direction.

Zack prodded my side and pointed at the player. “You’re stuck here. They’re not. That sucks.”

“I’m still here,” I whispered. Anger at being the head of the family, the person tasked with making sure we lived, seared my heart. I growled.

“Now, scream it!” Zack yelled next to me, and his voice echoed around us.

“I’m still standing!” I belted the words out as if shouting to be heard over a jumbo jet engine. I grabbed a rock and hefted it into the chasm below. “I’m still here!”

“More! More!” Zack danced around me, egging me on. “Your parents—what’d they do?”

“They died,” I answered.

“What? I can’t hear you?”

“They DIED!” I yelled.

“How does that make you feel?”

Shouting, “Alone!”
Repressed. Responsible. Careful. Deliberate. Ready to explode
.

“Scared?”

I nodded.

“Terrified?”

“And if Rabbit dies?”

“I’ll die, too.” My shoulders dropped and breathing became impossible.

“No, you won’t!” Zack shouted.

“It would be easier.”

“I know. What about BluStar? How do you feel about it?” He kept coming at me, not letting me think before words tumbled out. All I could do was feel and weep.

“I HATE it. It took everything. Killed my mother. My life.”

“What are you scared of right now?”

“What if Uncle Bean isn’t there? What if Pappi is dead, too?” The words tore from my throat as if by releasing them into the world the ideas took tangible form.

Zach reached out and grabbed my hand. His grip on my fingers was twin to my stranglehold on his.
I won’t know what to do
.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until he answered. “You’ll figure it out.”

I sank to my knees, crying out my fear. He smoothed my
hair and didn’t let go of my hand. When I sighed, Zack sat down next to me and wrapped his good arm around me in comfort.

“Feel better?” Zack studied my expression.

I opened my mouth to tell him no, but stopped, shocked. “I do. I actually do.”

“Good.” He nodded. His expression spoke of extreme self-satisfaction.

“How’d you guess that’s what I needed?” I asked.

He hung his head. “I didn’t. Gail suggested it. She thought maybe you were bottling it all up. And that was before you started obsessing about my arm.”

I laughed. Of course Zack hadn’t talked to the shrink about himself—he’d talked about me.

“What?” He snapped his question, and his eyebrows together, in defense.

I did my best to draw back toward serious, but giggles kept popping out like Coke bubbles. “I think it’s funny you talked to Gail about me.” I knew it came out wrong as soon as the words left my mouth.

He frowned and dropped his arm.

“It’s nice. Sweet.” Everything I said made it worse. “That you care. It’s, um …” I touched his leg. “Thank you. That’s what I meant. Thank you for caring.”

He nudged my shoulder with his. “Just watch the sunrise.”

Along the horizon, a glorious burst of pinks and oranges and reds and purples painted the clouds as cotton-candy ribbons. “It shouldn’t be colorful. Not anymore. Nothing should be beautiful,” I whispered.

“The world should be gray?”

“Or black. Anything good seems rude and disrespectful.”

He nodded. “I don’t think that’s the way it works. But I hear you.”

I felt my parents, my dad, prodding me to open up to Zack, to trust him with more of my story. “Did I tell you who I’m named after?”

I felt him shake his head.

“Dad promised me someday he could tell me the whole story.” I paused. Now I’d never really know.

“What
did
he tell you?” Zack asked.

“He was on a night mission and his parachute failed to open all the way. He fell completely off course. He broke both legs and his right hand falling into trees, broke them so bad all he could do was drag himself along. He wasn’t exactly in friendly territory.

“There was a cave nearby, so he tried to crawl to it. When he saw a shadow coming toward him, he stopped to hold his gun in his left hand. He never said it, but I think he was going to shoot himself rather than be captured. But he heard a whisper—‘Peace’—that made him hesitate.

“It was a young girl; Dad said she was probably older than she looked. She pointed at the cave and repeated, ‘Peace,’ several times. She balled up his parachute and carried it while he dragged himself up the rocks into the tiny cave. The sun was rising, but she stoked the little fire and cut pieces of the parachute until it was all burned up. He knew if he could stay alive his guys, his team, would find him. But he didn’t know if they had time before Tangos found him first. The girl tried talking to him, but she wasn’t speaking a language he understood. He thought it was maybe one of the nomadic dialects—he tried all
the languages he knew, but all he got was that her name was Nadia. He gave her the food in his pockets and drank the milky tea she gave him in exchange.

“When he heard a helicopter in the distance, she checked and came back to him saying, ‘Peace good.’ She helped him get to the cave entrance and signal with his mirror, but then she disappeared among the rocks. They weren’t the only ones who heard and saw the chopper. The armed gangs in the countryside raced toward them firing and there was a firefight as he was loaded into the chopper. He looked for her, but he knew that the gangs were as deadly to a girl on her own as to an American marine.

“She disappeared as if she was never there. He found out later her dad was an interpreter at a nearby base for several years and had been killed in action. After he recovered, Dad tried to find her every mission that brought them close to the same place, but she had vanished into the land.

“His team didn’t understand how he’d survived that day. The local guerillas had announced the capture and killing of an American special forces soldier—he was the only unaccounted for at the time. He was less than a mile from their hiding spot. They should have gotten him. He says she saved his life and he hoped I would be as brave and caring as she was. I wonder if she lived through BluStar?” I gave up fighting the next wave of tears.

“That’s a lot to expect a little girl to live up to. My mom named me after a hot guy on her favorite cop show.” Zack brushed my tears away and smiled.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I don’t even think she was sober when she had me.
I don’t know who my father is. I’ve never had a family or foster parents or lived in group homes—kids on the streets were my family and most would have shot me over a cookie if it suited them.”

Tears dripped off my chin as I pictured Zack as a little boy on the streets. I licked snot straggling down my lip as I rooted around in my pocket for a tissue. Nothing.

Zack handed me a plastic-wrapped period pad.

I held it in my hand, frozen.
Does he think I’m PMSing?

“At least it’s clean and sterile. Super absorbent.” He smiled.

“I don’t have— It’s not my—” I didn’t know why my period stopped. Maybe it was BluStar, but at least I didn’t have to deal with that out here.
Yippee
.

“They make good bandages. Maybe they make good tissues, too, when you don’t have anything else. Right?” Zack laughed at my stammering and embarrassment.

I blew my nose and folded the wings over without making eye contact.

Zack continued, “It’s a new world, Nadia. There are no rules. You can use tissues or leaves or nothing at all and tell generations to come that’s the way it should be.”

Rays of gold caressed the world, slapping at shadows, and pushing the last pinkish gray away.

“We’re close. We should get there by the end of the day.” He kissed my head, right above my ear.

My heart stuttered. By this time tomorrow, we’d know if this was worth it. If Bean lived. If Pappi was the crazy man Mom always claimed, or if he knew more than the rest of us combined. If there was home to build onto the next to come.

I stood. “Let’s go.”

J
uly Fourth.

Once we passed Minnehaha Springs with its curved hotel stairway to nowhere, I didn’t need Rabbit to tell me we were closing in on the last few miles.

We turned off the main road and onto a gravel track that was overgrown and looked completely unused.

“We can’t take the bikes farther,” Rabbit declared.

“We sure this is the right place?” Zack asked.

“Bean gave us explicit directions in his letter.”

“That we don’t have to check and make sure you’re remembering correctly.”

“True,” I answered.

“I can see the end of the road up there. Then, it’s just woods.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? It’s hard to get to.”

“This hard?”

“You haven’t heard enough stories about Pappi. We’re lucky we don’t have to ride magical mountain goats to find the mine.”

I shot Rabbit a glance and he shrugged. “What? You think you’re the only one who eavesdropped when Mom railed about him and Bean?”

“Okay.” I held my hands up.

“Besides, there’s a camera over there in that tree.” Rabbit pointed.