In Honor (7 page)

I kept it vague and casual. “Just a road trip.” When I said it, its unspoken meaning tugged at the edges of my composure. Really, it was hard to believe what I was doing—that the day after my brother’s funeral, I was on my way to California for a concert, sitting around a campfire drinking with strangers. And Rusty. From the moment I’d found out about Finn, nothing felt real. This didn’t either, which made me wonder if that’s how it would be from here on out—if I’d always feel so lost. But Finn’s letter had given me something to hold on to in the midst of it all, and I wasn’t about to let go now.

Since Rusty had told Wyatt I was his friend’s little sister, the next logical question would be to ask where my brother was, so I steered us away from that one quick. “How ’bout y’all? What are you here for?” Nobody else seemed to notice the change in my tone of voice, but Rusty’s eyes flicked over to me, and I wondered what he thought of my not mentioning Finn. It felt wrong to me, but I didn’t want to hear it. Especially from him.

Wyatt laughed like I’d said something funny, and Sam chuckled before he answered. “We’re here for the scuba diving, of course.”

I didn’t know if he was kidding, and my expression must’ve said so, because Wyatt turned to me, once again mock serious. “You think he’s joking. He’s not. Corrie here dragged us all the way down here to scuba dive in the middle of the desert. We live in
California
, for cryin’ out loud. At the beach.”

Corrie nodded like she’d been hearing it all the way from California, then smiled good naturedly. “Yes, but we don’t have a blue hole in California that you can see the stars from the bottom of, through eighty feet of water.” She shrugged. “Besides. It’s an adventure, and you guys are always talking about how you need to have more of those.” She turned to me. “I read about it in a magazine. It’s called a cenote, which is like an underground cave but filled with water. There’s a spring at the bottom of it that keeps it filled with the clearest water you’ve ever seen. And it’s warm all year round.”

Sam leaned over and patted her leg. “So her plan is for us to get up while it’s still dark, dive down so we can see the stars, then watch the sun come up. From the bottom of the Blue Hole.”

Rusty raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Nice.”

I didn’t say anything, but I flashed on a line from Finn’s letter:
Watch the stars disappear
, and I looked up at the sky, almost waiting for a reaction.

Corrie gave a nod, finished off her beer, and stood. “Anyone want another?” I’d barely gotten halfway through mine, but the boys raised their hands, so she went to the cooler and returned with another dripping round.

Wyatt laid his hand on the arm of my chair. “So,” he said, bringing me back to the moment. “You should dive with us.”

“Did you miss the part where I’m from Texas? We don’t scuba dive there.”

“Know how to swim?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt furrowed his brow, like he was thinking. Then the idea came to him. “I could breathe for you.”

I briefly pictured us locked together beneath the water. “Like mouth to
mouth
?” He had to be joking.

He laughed and raised an eyebrow. “I could do that, too, if you want, but no. What I meant was, we could put an extra hose on my tank that you could breathe from, give you a weight belt, and have you dive with me so you can watch the sun rise.”

It sounded amazing and beautiful and scary all at the same time and was exactly the type of thing Finn would have done without hesitation. Would have convinced me to do too. I glanced across the fire at Rusty, who was watching me with a smirk that made me wonder how many beers he’d had. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look away either.

Corrie bumped my shoulder. “You should, Honor. It’ll be gorgeous. When else are you gonna get a chance like this? And it’s not complicated. I can walk you through it, but basically you just have to relax and breathe.” She smiled with the warmth of a good friend, and out of nowhere I missed Lilah. If I’d opened the letter earlier, she’d be the one next to me in the passenger seat. We’d listen to Kyra Kelley the whole way and snap pictures of each other with the wind in our hair. But she was on her way to school, thinking I was too, with no idea about any of this.

Sam interrupted my thoughts. “Corrie’s a good teacher. You’ll be in great hands.”

Wyatt tipped his head to touch mine and held out his hands in the firelight. “These ones are pretty good too.”

I took one of his hands in my own and examined it. “I guess they are. As long as you wash them after you pee.”

He pulled it back and smiled into his lap. “I’m not gonna live that one down, am I?”

“Not a chance. But I’m in. I’ll try it.” It came out more confident than I felt, but they were right about having a chance like this. Finn would’ve said so too.

Corrie clapped her hands, Wyatt nodded, satisfied, and Sam stood to wedge another log into the orange-hot coals. “Rusty, you in too? We’ve got enough gear.”

“Yeah, maybe so.” He shrugged. “If we stay the night.” His eyes met mine for a brief second, and I saw in them . . . what? Disapproval? Jealousy?
What?

Two more logs on the fire and a case of empty beer bottles later, we were most definitely staying. The camp sounds of kids playing and adults talking and clanking pots and pans had died down and given way to the kind of calm that makes you want to speak softly. An occasional pair of flashlights floated by on the road as campers made their way to the restroom, and we sat within the orangey glow of the campfire.

Corrie and Sam had pulled their chairs close, and she slung her long legs over his lap. They tipped their heads way back, laughing at themselves and trying to pick out constellations from the stars spread thick in the sky. Sam pointed. “I know that’s something right . . . there. You see that thing that looks kind of like a cross?” Corrie sat up and moved her head closer to his squinting to see what he was talking about.

Wyatt and I had our heads leaned back on the now-cool metal chair frames, eyes to the sky. You could make any number of crosses with the myriad of stars dotting the sky above us. All around us, really. Aside from the shrubs dividing the campsites, nothing else obstructed the view, which gave the feeling we were under a dome made of tiny glittering lights.

Rusty’s voice surprised me. “It’s Cygnus.” I’d thought he’d fallen asleep in his chair a while ago. While the rest of us switched to water so we could wake up at ‘dark thirty’ for our scuba dive, he’d kept on, getting quieter with each beer, while we compared everything we could about Texas and California.

“It’s
what
?” I wasn’t even sure he’d said a real word, and I was so tired, I didn’t want to put in the energy to figure it out. I didn’t move, but kept looking for a cross.

“Sig. Nus. It’s a swan, not a cross.”

Sam jabbed a finger at the sky. “That’s it! That’s the one! Cygnus. I’ve heard it called the Northern Cross, too, though.”

I sat up in time to see Rusty tip his bottle back, swallow hard, then nod. “Yeah, that too. Cygnus is the name of the swan.” I didn’t know what was more surprising: that he figured out where Sam was pointing or that he knew the proper name of the constellation.

Corrie kept her head back, still looking. “Is there a story about it? I always used to love the stories about how people or the gods or whatever became stars.”

It was quiet a moment as we all pondered a possible story for the cross/swan. It was Rusty, again, who spoke. “Yeah, there’s a story.” I waited for the smart-ass line that had to be coming. His way of giving Sam and Corrie a hard time. Instead, he sat forward in his chair, elbows resting on his thighs.

“There were a couple of buddies, guys who woulda done anything for each other. And they always liked to one-up the other doing wild shit. So one of ’em came up with the idea to race their chariot things across the sky, around the sun, and back again.” He paused, and I caught a shift in his tone. The others were still looking up at the stars, listening to his story like kids getting tucked in. I watched Rusty. He twirled his empty beer bottle in the dirt in front of him, then continued without looking up. “So one of the guys crashed his cart and ended up stuck at the bottom of this river. And his buddy, Cygnus, saw it and dove down to get him, but the guy was all tangled up in the weeds at the bottom. Well Cygnus dove down again and again, trying to get his friend loose, but he couldn’t do it no matter how hard he tried. So he finally gave up and sat down on the bank of the river and begged Zeus to do something ’cuz he knew his best friend was gone.”

He paused, and I knew the others were silently waiting to hear the end of the story. I couldn’t have said anything if I wanted to. In that moment, his words sat on my chest, heavy with something I could feel but didn’t wholly understand. Something that hurt in a more real way than anything else had in the last few days. Something the two of us, sitting there, shared.

He looked up and held my eyes as he started again slowly. “So Zeus took pity on this guy, Cygnus, because he was so broken up about his friend. And he made him a deal: He told him that if he turned him into a swan, he’d be able to dive down and get his friend. So he could have a proper burial and be sent off to wherever in peace. The catch was, he’d have to give up his immortality to do it. And stay a swan until he died.” He paused and I looked up at the sky, hoping no one could see how hard I was working to hold back what felt like a warm flood rising behind my eyes.

Rusty went on. “Cygnus didn’t give it a second thought. Traded his life to honor his friend. And then when he died, Zeus stuck him up in the sky as a swan for being such a stand-up guy.” He gave the beer bottle another spin, and when it got away from him, he didn’t bother to grab for it. “Anyway, that’s the story of that one.”

I stared up at the four stars that were Cygnus, and couldn’t help but picture Rusty and Finn, wild and inseparable. When they hit the field together, they may as well have been racing chariots across the sky. They were all fire and glory when they played. People called them the dream team and did stories and news features about the best friends who were also the best pair of cornerbacks in Texas high school football. There was no such thing as one without the other.

For the first time since Finn’s death, I was sad for someone besides myself.

More than a few beats passed before Corrie sat up. “Aww, I like that one. Sad, though. How do you know it? No offense, but you don’t seem like the astronomy type.” She smiled and we all turned, waiting for his answer. I knew, though. My brother was the astronomy type.

Rusty turned his head to the side and spit. “Heard it from a friend.” He stood. “I gotta take a piss.” To anyone else, he probably just sounded drunk, but I recognized the edge in his voice. I watched him disappear into the dark and wondered for a second if I should follow or try to talk to him about Finn, but I didn’t have it in me. Instead, I wiped my damp cheeks as discreetly as I could and sat up in my chair.

Corrie stood and stretched, looking at Sam. “I’m going to bed. You coming?”

“Yep.” He checked the coals in the fire pit. “You guys can just let that burn down if you’re gonna be up a little while.”

We nodded, and Sam put his hands on Corrie’s shoulders, steering her to their tent. “Wyatt, you’re in the truck tonight. See you before sunrise.”

When they were zipped into their tent, Wyatt stretched his arms over his head and sighed. “I gotta learn a few of those stories about the stars. You seemed pretty impressed over there.”

I kept my eyes on the fire. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me with a puzzled kind of sympathy. “You got all teary eyed. It was cute.” He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me gently into him. “See, it’s perfect, because then you need someone to cheer you up.” His arm around me felt good, and I smiled but didn’t say anything. Just let myself lean into him the slightest bit. He was warm and smelled like campfire smoke, and I rested my head on his shoulder the way you do with someone close to you.

“Easy there, bro. She’s got a marine for a brother.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I sat up lightning quick, despite the immediate sinking feeling in my chest. Wyatt laughed and raised his hands in surrender as Rusty walked over slowly from the dark to the now-dim circle of firelight. He was smiling a smile that put me on edge instantly.
Don’t,
I begged silently.
Don’t say anything else.

Casually, he kicked a pebble in front of him. “Yeah, if her brother saw some guy she’d just met with his arms around her, he’d put a boot in his ass.” He turned his eyes on me. “Ain’t that right, H?”

I didn’t know what to say. The sympathy I’d felt for him a few minutes earlier went icy. I stared at him and hoped he could see it.
Stop it.

Wyatt spoke up. “No worries, man. We were just talking.”

Rusty considered this, then sat down in the chair on the other side of Wyatt. Put a hand on his shoulder. “Good. Because her brother ain’t around anymore.”

Hot, angry tears pooled at the corners of my eyes, and I sat, paralyzed. Wyatt looked over at me, confused. Rusty let go of him and sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “Nope. He ain’t around anymore, because he thought it’d be a good idea to sign up for the marines instead of playing football, and then he went and got himself blown up, probably for no reason at all.”