While He Was Away
Authors: Karen Schreck
Copyright © 2012 by Karen Schreck
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Lisa Novak
Cover photos © Edward Weiland Photography; philly077/iStockPhoto; Dave Long/Getty
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
For Teo and Magdalena
I won’t let the Oklahoma wind whip our words away. They can get lost when David and I fly along like this—him driving his red motorcycle, me holding on tight to him. But tonight, especially tonight, I won’t let it happen. Tomorrow is soon enough. Tomorrow is another enforced separation, maybe silence. Only this time it’s different. Tomorrow David is really, truly gone.
I lean into the ratcheting wind, into him, and shout, “Say something!”
David’s muscled back moves against me. He laughs. I love the sound of his laugh. It’s been rare since last March, when he shipped off to OSUT. One Station Unit Training. That’s what OSUT stands for. For David and other infantry guys like him, OSUT means basic and advanced individual training slapped into eighteen weeks.
For me, OSUT means Our Separation is Unbelievably Terrible. I never told David this, not in any of our phone conversations during that time. Not at Family Day. Definitely not on the day of his graduation. Positive attitude. That’s what I’ve got to maintain, now that I’m an army girlfriend. At least that’s what all the bloggers say. The girls and women in chat rooms. The answers to FAQs on various military-related sites.
Question:
What’s the best way to help your soldier?
Answer:
Keep
a
positive
attitude. Write lots of encouraging letters. Soldiers look forward to daily mail call.
I wrote lots of encouraging letters while David was at OSUT. David, who wrote letters to me all the time before he left—even when we’d already spent an entire day together, did not write at all. No time, he explained. Phone calls would have to be enough. When I saw his schedule, I understood. Still, there were days when I felt bummed about the lack of encouraging mail for me. On those days I’d pull out his old letters. I’d remember finding them slipped into my locker or book bag or mailbox. I’d read them again.
I’d wait forever to get another letter from David.
“‘Say something?’” His voice, echoing mine, is strong against the wind: “Something!”
“You know what I mean!”
But something is better than nothing, so I kiss David’s ticklish neck—his brown skin tanned even darker now—until a shudder runs through him and he cries out, “Mercy!”
Now I’m laughing too, laughing like there’s no tomorrow. We bank around a sharp curve and bump from two-lane pavement and the outskirts of Killdeer to single-lane, red dirt road and the country. David revs the bike, sending up a cloud of dust. I bury my face in his shoulder to keep from getting an eyeful. My helmet bumps against his shoulder bone. I’m not laughing anymore. Why laugh when I can still breathe him in? Clean, spicy soap. Faint salty tang. And fresh-cut grass, because this afternoon he mowed the yard for his mom and dad. One last time.
David.
When I look up, we’ve left Killdeer’s streetlights far behind. Stars prick the dusky sky. Shapes dart and skitter in the bright headlight—bugs, birds, and bats, trying to clear out of the way. I kiss David’s neck again, and we swerve for one wild moment before he swiftly steers us straight.
“Penna! You’re distracting me.” David casts this over his shoulder like a token. “Stop, or there could be trouble.” He flashes his charming, crooked grin and starts singing Elvis Costello’s “Accidents Will Happen” at the top of his lungs, all off-key.
“
Don’t!
” With such heat in my voice, I hardly sound like myself. “Accidents—not funny. Or victims. Not now. Not ever.”
Immediately I’m filled with regret. That was just the old David,
my
David, ready to play the fool for love, for me. Now he’s fallen silent. He trains his gaze on the road ahead, our tunnel of light in the gathering dark.
“Hey.” I sound like myself again, not the kind of girl who wigs out on her boyfriend, not the kind of girl who panics over stupid things. “Sorry. This is crazy-making. You know. Right?”
He doesn’t answer.
I lick my lips, gone dry from the wind. Okay. I’ll talk about things we used to talk about before OSUT. All our incredible conversations about important things. All our incredible conversations about unimportant things. I should be able to remember
something
we used to talk about before. I should be able to give us another conversation to remember when we’re apart. Never mind if it’s just me doing the talking. Right?
Wrong.
Wrong, because tomorrow threatens like an ugly giant just beyond the sunset-orange horizon line. And I can’t remember any of our incredible conversations from before. Zero. Zip. Important, unimportant. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that in this moment I don’t know what to say to David. And David doesn’t know what to say to me.
Blackjack oaks flash past, gnarled shapes that anchor the vast fields and the hulking clots there that I know are longhorn cattle. David guns it and we go faster yet. I wrap my arms tighter around his waist. There, where my right elbow presses, is the sickle-shaped scar he showed me the first time we kissed. (
Golden
September
day. Oklahoma City Art Museum. Ditched our class field trip to hang out in the sculpture garden. Tucked into the shadows of a gigantic bronze statue of Geronimo—our first kiss
.) David got that scar long before I knew him, when he was just five years old. He was sword-playing with some other kid. Their weapons were sticks. The other kid’s stick struck home too hard. David’s scar is just the length of my little finger when my little finger bends to a slight curve.
My little finger bends to just the right slight curve now. And there, where my left wrist rests, are the ribs David cracked in eighth grade, playing soccer. I didn’t know David then either; I didn’t know him when he played soccer like the Tasmanian Devil. That’s what he told me once when it was raining, because those ribs still sometimes ache in wet weather.
“When I was a kid, I played soccer like the Tasmanian Devil, totally out of control, always hurting other kids by accident and getting hurt too.” That’s what he said. (
Stormy
February
day. Baking cookies in his parents’ messy kitchen. The sleety rain drummed against the roof and fell in sheets outside the windows. Checking the oven’s temperature, he clutched the sudden ache in his ribs
.) When I first saw David play soccer last fall, he was totally in control, skimming and darting across the field, scoring goal after goal, finishing out his senior season strong. In his royal-blue varsity uniform, he never hurt anyone and he never got hurt. Never.
Never
.
And he never will.
Everywhere beneath the length of my arms, David’s familiar warmth reassures me.
Always
, David reassures me. Never mind what we can or can’t say, I decide. Never mind deployment. We can hold tight. I tell myself this, holding him tighter. We can hold tight across continents and the oceans in between. We’ve got the strong arms of love.
“Beauty is truth,” I hear myself shout. This kind of stuff—this is what we talked about. Beauty. Truth. Scars. And so much more. Incredible. Never mind the wind, which is getting cooler, almost cold on my skin. David is warm in my arms.
David throws back his head and wolf-whistles twice through his teeth at the bright white fingernail moon. “Beauty is you, Penna.”
Us
.
Something long, low, and lean flashes across the road in front us, and David gasps. We swerve. He gasps again. He lightens up on the throttle, and we slow down, way down. The thing has vanished into the shadows, but David has gone tense. I can practically feel his nerves jumping against my skin. He leans forward, away from me. The cold air passes between us. The wind whips the back of his T-shirt, grips my throat. David leans farther forward. He wants me to loosen my hold.
