A Million Miles Away (8 page)

“This will be the first time our family has a real tree,” Kelsey called back to the boy, searching for the Maxfields’ car.

“Cool,” he said, his breath heaving.

“What’s your name?”

“Kevin.”

“Kevin, this tree is special. It’s kind of a tribute. To my sister.”

Kevin said nothing. He was too busy lifting his end over the hood of a car. She could barely get a word out to her parents, her friends, but people like Kevin didn’t feel the remotest bit of sadness for Michelle to begin with. Unlike her, they could only see Michelle in what she told them: from far away, an outline.

“We used to come here every month. She used to pick up onions and tomatoes from the booth and ask for the price in French, just to practice. No one could understand her. It was embarrassing.”

Kevin still didn’t care. She kept going.

“When we were eight we snuck into a concert they held in that pavilion,” she told Kevin. “It wasn’t even fun. It was just a cello. But we were proud.”

As they crossed the street, Kelsey called back to him, “Once I caught her reading aloud the steamy parts of my mom’s romance novels to her Barbies.”

That one got a laugh. Or at least it sounded like a laugh.

After ten minutes of wandering through the neighborhood, Kevin put his end of the tree down and made a noise that was supposed to be exasperation, but sounded more like a malfunctioning blender. No sign of the Subaru.

Kelsey pulled out her phone.

Her mother picked up.

“Mom?” Kelsey put on a smile.

“Where are you?”

“Fifth and Walnut. So, Mom—”

“We’re coming to get you.”

Silence. Her mother hung up. Kevin blew a bubble with his gum, popping it. As the Subaru rolled up next to them, she took the tree from him, leaning it on her shoulder. Her mother’s window rolled down, revealing a stone face, glancing at the tree.

“No, Kelsey.”

Something between a laugh and a cough escaped Kelsey. “But—”

Her mother jerked her head toward the backseat. “We’re going home.”

Kelsey threw up her hands. “We just got here!”

Her mother sighed. Kelsey noticed she had tried to put on lipstick for the first time in several weeks. She wanted to go back to normal, too. “We didn’t even make it into the market. Your father isn’t feeling well.”

Kelsey looked at her dad through the windshield, and rubbed her cold hands together. “I’m sorry,” she called to him. “Maybe this will cheer you up.”

Her father leaned across the seat toward the window, his voice cracking. “You’re a very sweet girl. But it’s not that easy. Your old dad isn’t quite there, sweetheart.”

Kelsey was sputtering, which she hated to do. “This is a nice thing, a nice thing I’m trying to do for everyone. I would really, really like to put up a Christmas tree. It’s what people do.”

“I’m sorry, Kelsey,” her mother said. But she didn’t look sorry. She wasn’t even looking at her. Kelsey stayed still.

“Please get in the car. We’ll come back and get it later.”

Disappointment cut, sharpened by the rare hope she had just felt a second ago. And the guilt of it all, of lying to Peter and lying to herself, was weighing on her, pushing her. She caught her mother’s eyes.

“Michelle would have wanted a Christmas tree.”

She shouldn’t have said that. Her mother tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Kevin stood quiet, looking back and forth between them, not knowing what to do.

Kelsey’s mom’s voice came out shaky. “Put the damn tree down, Kelsey. I love you, but I don’t have rope to tie a tree to our car, I don’t have a stand to put it in, I don’t have a working vacuum to clean up after it, and I’m tired. I don’t—Please put the damn tree down.”

“Just leave it?”

Kevin’s gum popped in the silence. A family with a stroller rolled by, staring.

Her dad’s voice floated out. “We need to go home.”

“I’ll take it back,” Kevin said quietly.

Instead, Kelsey lowered the tree to the brick street and gave it a shove with her foot toward the curb. Kevin picked it up and, with a glance at her, carried it away.

She got into the backseat. No one said anything more, and her father put on the radio. “Part of you pours out of me, In these lines from time to time…” Kelsey heard a woman’s voice sing, but as they got on the highway, her mother turned down the volume so it was barely audible, a whine that got lost in the drone of the wheels on the road.

CHAPTER TEN

Twenty minutes later they were in the driveway, and Kelsey walked inside fast, ahead of her parents, closing the door behind her.

She turned to go upstairs, but a streak of primary colors on the front table stopped her. Yesterday’s mail sat on top of a pile of bills, and on top of that, an envelope with official-looking postage. Then, in careful handwriting, all capitals:

MICHELLE MAXFIELD

1316 VERMONT STREET

LAWRENCE, KS 66044

Peter’s letter. Kelsey grabbed it and took the stairs two at a time. In her room, she paused. This was wrong. But it wasn’t the same kind of wrong she had felt before. It was the wrong she felt seeing the tree grow smaller in Kevin’s arms as he walked away, the wrong that cut Michelle’s happy ghost from her. As soon as she had picked up the letter, the guilt had faded.

Michelle would want to open this, but she can’t
, Kelsey thought as she slid her finger under the seal.
So I’ll do it for her
.

12/14

Dear Michelle,

I’m writing this sitting against a fir tree. We made it from the desert to the Kunar Province a few days ago, all rugged mountains and green valleys and meadows with cattle. We ride in huge trucks on narrow paths up through the peaks and the rock formations. It’s like a slow roller coaster. It’s so pretty I have to try not to get distracted. I’ve never been this high off the ground before. Most of the people in my company have been in these valleys once or twice already. Sam and I go on errands to the village for chewing tobacco and in exchange they show us how to find the best watch spots in the cracks between boulders. They use chewing tobacco to stay awake, and pass the time. Almost every soldier chews while they’re here, whether they chewed before the tour or not. Except for me, of course. I am the youngest. They call me Petey.

Sam is from Iowa. They call him Rooster because of his red hair. He’s short and raises beagles and loves death metal. We joke about how dumb the cows are and how the interpreter Alex (Alex isn’t his actual name, but that’s what he calls himself when he speaks English) has seen more American TV than I have.

Sam says I need to shut up about you already. He’s looking over my shoulder right now and says if I don’t cross out the part about him being short he’ll roundhouse me. Tough luck, Sam.

I have to admit that I didn’t expect to miss you as much as I do. I miss you next to me, but we didn’t have all that much time in the same room, anyway, so I miss talking to you most of all. In that little time, I told you things I’ve told no one else. Not secrets, just parts of the way I see the world that I didn’t know could be said aloud. So what I’m saying is, you hold all these parts of me, these parts I dug up, and you hold them inside your beautiful hands and brain and skin, so far away. And I have your hidden parts, too. I promise I’m keeping them safe. They’re still here, under all this body armor. I remember everything.

One guy lost it this week. His name is Joel and he has all these moles on the back of his head and he didn’t go to high school and he loves Disney movies. Someone got ahold of a bottle of vodka and we passed it around and it seemed to affect him most. He was laughing a little too hard at nothing and then he wandered off somewhere and no one knew where he went until we heard screaming from the med tent. He was crying and kicking over gurneys and shelves, yelling about wanting to go home. The sergeant didn’t let him, of course. Now he doesn’t say a word to anybody.

Soldiers sometimes ask each other what their reasons for fighting are, so we don’t end up like Joel, you know? Then, once we’ve got them, we’re supposed to let these reasons lie, never draw them out while we clean our guns or go on missions. But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night—and the nights are so dark here, darker than even country nights in Kansas—and I have to hang on to the bed because I feel like I’m falling. Even if I’m supposed to have reasons for being here, I have no idea where I am or who I am or what the hell I’m doing.

I’m starting to do this in the daytime, too, which is even worse. I wake up while I’m polishing my boots or something and everything feels and looks wrong and sort of spins and aches like I’m sick.

But then I feel the parts of you that you gave me, and I see you on my last night before I left, the lamplight on you while you sat on the bed, and I can feel you keeping me. You may not know it but everywhere you go parts of me go with you. I snap to and know you’re happy somewhere, or at least you’re something somewhere, not here, and I know there are parts of me that are safe inside you, that will always be safe inside you, and I can breathe and go on without losing it. Michelle, I didn’t realize until I got here that you are my best friend.

Write me back. It doesn’t have to be as crazy as what I just said, but I tried to tell you about normal things like the goat meat and the little kids who ask for chocolate and it didn’t come. I’m reading
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
. What are you reading? Send me a book if you want. Tell me about the art you’re making. Write me back. Even if we move bases, they will forward your letter to me.

Thinking of you,

Peter

By the end of the letter, tears were running down Kelsey’s cheeks, catching in her mouth, dampening the collar of her sweater. Michelle’s room was still full, but so desperately abandoned. No reading would happen here, no art would be made. There was nothing.

She wondered what happened to the parts of Peter that Michelle was supposed to keep safe. Where did those parts go now that her body was gone? Who would hold him together?

Kelsey realized she had stopped breathing. If there was no letter back, Peter would know something was wrong. He would become like her, and break apart. But Peter wasn’t just going to slip his grades or ignore his friends or toss perfectly good trees on the pavement. Peter was in the mountains of Afghanistan. If he felt as weak as she did, he’d wake up one day in the middle of gunfire.

Before she could question herself, she slipped from her door to inside Michelle’s room. She prayed her mother hadn’t thrown away the stationery the two of them had received for their birthday a few years back—one set with Kelsey’s initials, one with Michelle’s. If she had already written letters to Peter while they were apart, she would have written them on the crisp cream-colored paper.

In the top drawer, Kelsey found the stack. She sat at her sister’s desk, wiped a makeup-smeared face with the back of her hand, and began to compose a response. She spent the rest of the afternoon there. She dug for the parts of Michelle that Kelsey herself had kept. She searched her memories and Michelle’s books and stared at her paintings. She imitated the wide loops and unfinished rises and falls of her sister’s handwriting.

She sat, and she searched for the words that would bring her back to life.

MITCH>>PETER (FIRST ATTEMPT)

12/20

Dear Peter,

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to write to you for such a long time. I just received your first letter. As for the email, well, I was grounded from using my computer. I’m still grounded. Don’t ask why. My parents are seriously off their rockers. I can’t wait to get out of Lawrence and go to college.

Otherwise, life here is quiet. I am trying hard not to eat meat. I take walks to the river to draw it, and then I use highlighters to fill in the colors. Finals were easy for me. My sister is probably angry with me, because I told her again that she is better than her boyfriend, even though they have been dating for three years.

I would also like to say—

I just want to tell you that—

Everything you said about us being best friends is exactly how I feel. I miss you every day. Don’t worry, I am not dating anyone else. I am so full of admiration for your courage. It must be difficult to be away from everything and everyone you know. You are a good person for your service and so are your friends. Trust me, I know how it feels to doubt where you are and why you are even there. Not as much as you but I know a little bit and I promise things will—

I don’t know what I’m saying—

—use bigger words

—find a book that she would read

—this is crazy

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The narrow streets up Mount Oread filled with carefully coiffed couples who met outside their brick mansions and traveled in packs to the party at the top of the hill. Mount Oread was the area of KU’s campus where the fraternities and sororities had settled. Kelsey stood at the picture window of the Delta Sigma house, watching her future counterparts in heels and crimson and blue beads step on the sweeping lawn toward the white columns, holding drinks.