In Honor (11 page)

Rusty chewed the toothpick he’d had in his teeth since we left the restaurant. “I dunno. Maybe just needs some more water.” He shrugged. “Or it could be somethin’ else.”

I looked across the expanse of shrub-dotted desert. The dark outline of mountains stood barely visible in the distance. In between us and them was absolute nothingness, except for cracked dirt and a lone airplane streak across the cobalt sky. “So . . . what are we supposed to do, then?” I watched Rusty for some sort of clue and tried to keep from sounding panicky.

He flicked the toothpick up and down between his front teeth, thinking. “How bad you wanna go to that concert?”

He said it like it was a perfectly acceptable idea now, which I appreciated. Because it still sounded ridiculous out loud. But then it didn’t. I knew it would’ve been near impossible and obscenely expensive to get those tickets here in the States. Yet Finn somehow did it from his dusty base camp in the middle of a war. It felt like I owed it to him.

I tapped my toes on the floor. “Bad enough to wanna keep going.” It came out sounding unsure, more like a question than an answer. Rusty didn’t say anything, so I turned to him directly. “You think it’ll be all right to make it there?” I thought of Finn’s letter in my purse and his one simple request. “It has to be.”

Rusty breathed in deep, like he was about to say something important. Then he shrugged like he couldn’t care less. “Maybe. If not, we can stop off at my mom’s. Work on it there.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but habit kept me quiet. Since Rusty was fourteen and she took off, his mom was a topic I’d always figured it was best not to mention, but now he brought her up like it was nothing at all. He must’ve seen my reaction, because his eyes flicked over to me a second, then back to the road. He shifted the toothpick in his mouth.

“She lives in Sedona. Came to my games once I was at school. I went down to her house a time or two.” I nodded, knowing better than to ask any more than he was willing to tell, but curious all the same. He never talked about her after she left. I hadn’t known where she was or if they spoke or anything. I wondered if, when he’d gotten to school up there, he’d been the one to get in touch with her or if it was the other way around. Maybe he’d gotten homesick for someone who knew him, or maybe she felt guilty and wanted to know her son again. He didn’t leave any room for questions, though. His eyes slid over to me again, and he laughed a little. “She won’t even
recognize
you.”

I didn’t know if it was his tone or his face, but something caught me in the way he said it, and a little nervous tingle went through me. I straightened up and looked out the window, conscious all of a sudden of his eyes on me. Then I caught a flyaway strand of hair and twisted it around my fingers. “Why?” I asked, a little too loudly.

Rusty smirked and put his eyes back on the road. “Nothin’, H.”

Irritated, I reached down for a package of licorice I’d stashed in my bag. “You shouldn’t do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“
That.
Where you say something like it’s some sort of joke or like it means something and then just say, ‘Nothing, H.’” I imitated his nonchalant answer in the worst possible way, mocking myself, really.

Rusty raised his eyebrows and smirked again, not bothering to hide that this was all very entertaining for him. He reached over and grabbed the piece of licorice I’d just pulled from the package, right out of my hand, and took a bite. Then he talked and chewed at the same time. “You just . . . grew up is all.”

I pulled another twist out of the package, bit into it, and rolled my eyes even though I was flattered just a tiny bit. “Well. Nice of you to notice.”

“I didn’t. Not until Willy or Walter or whatever his name was got all stupid over you and your smelly-ass boots.” He laughed.

Oh.
I pressed my lips together and nodded, my little bubble of pride burst by the realization of what he was getting at. What else did I expect?

“
Wyatt.
His name was Wyatt.” I tried to think of something to say in his defense, but I knew whatever I came up with wouldn’t make a difference. Rusty would just make a joke out of him, so I let it go and squinted at the rolling backs of the hills on the horizon. Wyatt was sweet and sincere and had given me a few moments of understanding and kindness. Rusty didn’t need to go on and ruin it.

Out the corner of my eye, I watched him nod slowly, and I knew he wasn’t finished. “Wyatt. That’s right.” I didn’t say anything, and Rusty spit the toothpick out his open window before turning back to me. “Y’all go swimmin’ this morning?” His tone had shifted the tiniest bit—less sarcasm, more curiosity.

I was still wary of the conversation, but it gave me some small satisfaction to tell him. “Scuba diving. We watched the sun come up from under the water.” I paused, surprised that along with the image in my mind came the same sadness that was there before. “It was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” My voice wavered a little. Rusty didn’t say anything, but I saw him look at me in the mirror. I bit the inside of my cheek and turned toward the window, letting the hot wind rush over my face.

After a long moment, he did something that surprised me. A small thing that just about did me in, coming from him. He wrapped a warm hand around the back of my neck and squeezed gently. And for the first time since we’d left, he said something right.

“Finn woulda loved that, you know. That you did that.” He paused a beat, looked right at me quick, then away again. “He’d be proud of you, H.”

The yellow line I’d been watching out my window blurred, and I swallowed red licorice over the lump in my throat. Rusty squeezed my neck again, and when he pulled his hand away I wished for a sliver of a moment he would have left it, warm and sure on my bare shoulder.

I looked at him then and said the only thing I could. “I miss him.” Rusty’s jaw tightened, and he shifted in the seat. “I miss him so much.”

He glanced at the side mirror, then back to the road. “Me too, H. I miss him too.”

We didn’t say anything else for a long time. Just kinda let it hang there that we were actually together on something. After a while, my eyes got heavy and I leaned my head on the seat. Sleep was closing in fast, the kind you know is going to take you under deep, and I was running out of fight.

In between long blinks, I watched Rusty sit back in the seat, one easy hand on the wheel, and more than once thought I felt his eyes on me. But I could’ve been dreaming by then. Either way, at that moment, in the rumbling cab of the Pala, he felt like the only other person in the world who might be feeling the very same thing as me. And that in itself was a comfort.

10

I had to pee in the worst, gut-clenching, leg-crossing kind of way, and no amount of distraction was gonna help. I glanced over at Rusty, trying to gauge if he’d drunk his whole soda and might need to stop soon. I didn’t want to be the one to make us stop twice in a row. I’d already made him pull into a dusty little gas station when I woke up over an hour ago, and the stop that was supposed to be a quick run-in-and-out ended up taking over fifteen minutes while the crackly old guy behind the counter schooled me on the dangers of driving the highway in the middle of monsoon season. I assured him I wasn’t alone and even bought an extra jug of water along with my other road snacks because he insisted it was important to have. Which made me laugh, since it seemed to me the last thing you’d need more of in a monsoon was water.

When I got back, Rusty took one look at the gallon of water and giant sodas and shook his head. “You drink all that, we’ll be stopping every damn hour for you to pee.”

“I’m not gonna drink it all. One’s for you. Here.” I handed him a Coke and set the water jug in the backseat. “The water’s in case we get caught in a monsoon.”

He just looked at me like I’d said something stupid as I ducked in out of the swirling wind and yanked the door shut.

“Long story. Never mind.” I clicked the seat belt across my lap and reached for the wrinkled map on the floor. “How far do you think we can make it today if we go without stopping?”

Rusty put the car in gear and shrugged. “If I keep driving and you don’t need to stop eight more times?” He took a long gulp of his soda and pulled back out onto the empty highway. “We could go forever.”

“Could we?” I looked up from the map momentarily, then felt a little ridiculous. I hadn’t meant it to sound so . . . like every other girl who talked to him.

Rusty didn’t answer. Just put his eyes on the road and let the hint of a smirk cross his face, which brought me right back to irritated. I turned up the radio, grabbed my Kyra Kelley magazine from the gas station the day before, and did my best to look occupied while resolving not to make a fool of myself in front of him for the rest of the trip. And to make sure that the next time we stopped, it wasn’t because of me.

That was almost two hours ago, and now I was gonna burst. I’d spent the time eating and drinking and fiddling with whatever I could to pass the time and make it not so awkward while Rusty drove along silently. We’d given up on music after a while, since there was nothing but static on the radio and I wasn’t about to plug in my iPod again. Every so often, Rusty would run a careless hand through his hair or stretch his legs out a bit, but that was it. He seemed like he was off in his own thoughts, so I let him be.

I glanced out the window, hoping for a sign saying it was only a few miles to another little podunk town, or a rest stop—even a bush would have sufficed at this point. But there was only flat, brown desert and a horizon rimmed with clouds. And wind. I could see it sweeping over the ground, kicking up miniature dust devils off in the distance. It made me think of clips on the news or bits in the newspaper that told all about how harsh the weather was over in the deserts where our troops were deployed. How sandstorms would tear through, blasting everything in their paths, making it difficult to see or even breathe. I’d asked Finn about it once in an e-mail, and he downplayed it, saying it wasn’t that bad, and whenever it happened they just had to hunker down and wait it out. I looked over at Rusty, who seemed tired, and the thought occurred to me that maybe that’s what we were doing together in the cab of the Pala, on the dusty highway. Riding out the storm Finn’s absence left behind. Maybe that’s why Rusty was so quiet. I glanced at him again out the corner of my eye, and he must’ve felt it, because his eyes flicked over in my direction.

“Hand me that cup down there.”

“It’s empty.”

“I know that. I gotta take a piss.” He motioned with his head at the Coke cup by my feet.

“Are you
kidding
me?”

“I look like I’m kidding you?” He unbuckled his belt. “Just gimme the cup and look the other way. I gotta go.”

“No.” Not only did the thought of him peeing into my empty soda cup right next to me repulse me, but bending in half to reach it when I had to go as bad as I did would surely put me over the edge. And I was desperate enough now to crouch behind the car myself. “Why don’t you just pull over? Like a normal person?”

Rusty cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth and spit the shell out the window. “Fine.” He looked in the rearview mirror briefly before pulling onto the dirt shoulder. “Then you’re driving awhile. I’m beat.”

We each took a turn with our business out in the hot wind, which wasn’t an easy task. For me at least. When I got back in, Rusty was stretched out across the backseat, hands behind his head, grinning up at the ceiling.

“Get any on your boots?”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

He propped his heels up on the back armrest. “What? I did. It’s windy out there.”

I turned the key and revved the engine, adjusting the mirrors back down to my eye level. “Charming. And I thought girls liked you for your jock status, not your conversational skills.”

“There’s a lot they like about me, H, but it doesn’t have much to do with football. Or conversation.” I couldn’t see his face in the mirror, but I could hear the smug smile in his voice.

“Okay, you can stop now. I don’t need to know anymore.”

“Just sayin’ . . .”

A gust of wind blasted the windshield with sand as I pulled us back onto the highway and gave it some gas.

“Might wanna close those vents. Wind’s picking up out there. And slow down if that sand kicks up. Can’t see ten feet in front of you when it really gets going. And—”

“You wanna drive?”

“Sure don’t.”

“Then leave me alone about it. I’ve been driving this thing ever since Finn left.”

A steady wind sprayed the windshield with dust, like rain, and Rusty’s boots tapped against the window, but there was no answer from the backseat. I brought my eyes back to the road and the sky, which had gotten three shades darker in the space of a minute.

I snapped the vents shut. “You know what I will never understand?”

“What’s that?”

“Why he went in the first place.” When Finn first told me about his decision to enlist, I thought it was a joke. When his face went serious and his tone resolute, I realized it wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to let it go. I’d pleaded with him over and over to explain it to me. To justify it. And some small part of me was convinced that all my questioning and doubt would somehow be enough to change his mind. But every time, his simple answer, which simultaneously frustrated and terrified me, was that it was the right thing to do. And I’d wanted to argue a million different reasons why it wasn’t and why he shouldn’t, but the only one I could come up with was me. I never said it, though, because if I did and he still went, what did that mean? That I wasn’t enough reason to stay? That he didn’t need me as much as I needed him? That he was tired of me needing him?