Come Back To Me (33 page)

Flames lick at the sky and an orange haze mushrooms

over the compound. Suddenly the alarm cuts through the

ringing in my ears, a siren blare that sounds as if it’s

coming from some place deep inside me. And then I hear

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Mila Gray

the sound of boots stampeding, people yelling over me. I

hear my name, but it sounds as if someone is calling to

me from down a long, dark tunnel.

I’m dragged to my feet and someone tries to pull me

away from the gate post, but I wrench myself free and

start running – a limping half-jog, the pain in my side

slowing me down.

‘Riley,’ I yell again, spinning in a circle. Swallowed by

the dust and dirt that have blanketed out the floodlights

and the stars, it feels as though I’m standing in a choking

hot cave. ‘Riley!’ I shout until my throat is hoarse.

But he doesn’t answer.

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Jessa

Riley. No. No.

A sharp hook snags behind my rib cage, ripping

upwards, tearing a path through my heart, puncturing

my lungs, rasping up my throat. The room spins even

more violently. Faces lunge past me − my mother, Kit’s

father.

Kit! What about Kit?

With both hands on the floor, I steady myself and take

a deep breath in. My lungs are on fire. ‘Kit. What about

Kit?’ I manage to gasp.

‘He’s OK. A slight injury, but OK.’

He’s OK. An intense burst of relief douses the pain

momentarily, like water being thrown on a fire. I can

breathe again. But it lasts for only a moment before the

blackness rushes back in, threatening to suffocate me, and

the pain returns – a razor-sharp blade slicing again and

again between my ribs. Riley. How can he be dead?

Somehow I’m in the living room, sitting on the sofa,

with no knowledge of how I got there. My mother is sit-

ting beside me. She’s not speaking. She’s staring straight

ahead at the wall, at the photograph of Riley in his uni-

form on graduation day. I shake my head, looking at Kit’s

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father Ben standing in the middle of the room. This can’t

be happening. This isn’t real. Riley can’t be dead. They

must have made a mistake.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say, hearing the note of defiance

in my voice. I pull out my phone. ‘I’m going to call him.’

Kit’s father kneels down in front of me. His hands –

calloused and warm – close over mine. ‘Jessa,’ he says

softly, ‘it’s not a mistake. We’ve had confirmation.’

I jump to my feet. I have no idea where I’m going. I

only know one thing; that I need to get away. I need air.

I need to find someone who’ll tell me this is all a joke. I

need to outrun this.

I make it to the door and slam straight into my dad. He

catches me by the shoulders. I try to push past him. I

shove with all my might, but he doesn’t budge. I look up

at him angrily and suddenly stop shoving as it dawns on

me that he doesn’t know – he doesn’t yet know that his

son is dead, that Riley is gone. And I feel a sharp stab of

envy. I envy him the fact that he still exists in the before,

in the place where Riley is still alive. And I hate him for it,

while also pitying him for the blow that’s about to fall

which he has no clue is coming.

He’s looking at me confused and blurry eyed, still wear-

ing his pyjamas. I note the grey hair peeking out the top of

his shirt and the fact that he hasn’t shaved yet. I see for the

first time the thick, raised veins snaking over his hands. I

take in all of these details with furious concentration, as if

my brain has decided that if it focuses on the minutiae it

won’t have to contemplate the bigger picture. My dad

looks over my shoulder and his face drains of blood as he

sees Kit’s dad and my mom in the living room.

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‘What is it?’ he asks, his fingers digging into my arms

hard.

‘Riley’s dead,’ I tell him in a voice so calm that it rattles

me. Why am I so calm? How can I sound so matter-of-fact

when inside it feels as if a storm is raging? How can I

announce something so momentous as though I’m talk-

ing about the weather?

My father’s face turns ashen. He releases me and walks

unsteadily towards my mother. I watch him pull her into

his arms. I see her knuckles bleach white as she grips him

around the waist, her mouth pulled down into a silent

scream of agony. My dad turns towards Kit’s dad and a

half-formed thought careers through my mind:
He needs

to leave. Kit’s dad can’t be here. They hate each other.
But then

I see that they’re talking. My father is asking questions;

Kit’s father is answering calmly, quietly.

It sounds as if they’re underwater, but I make out the

words
suicide bomber
then
car bomb
then
body home for

burial
before I cover my ears and collapse once more to

the floor, the screams inside my head growing so loud

that eventually they drown out everything.

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Kit

If I concentrate with all my might on the little things − on

straightening my cuffs, on polishing my boots until I can

see my face in them, on picking every piece of lint off the

sleeves of my uniform − I’ve found it helps keep the dark

thoughts and the images at bay. I can still sense them

there, lurking in the darkness like a pack of hyenas scrap-

ping for my attention, but at least they’re not right there

in my face.

I had thought it might be better once I was back on US

soil, that putting a distance between myself and what

happened would make it somehow easier to deal with,

but it hasn’t. Sleep is the worst – one non-stop nightmare

in which I’m paralysed, watching the man in the coat

approach Riley who’s standing sentry at the gate, trying

to scream at Riley to run but not able to make a sound.

But even during the day, if I let my concentration slip for

even a millisecond then the memories rush in like a tidal

wave dragging me under. And each time it’s getting

harder and harder to fight my way back to the surface.

They’re sharp-edged, 3D – images that burst with gory,

technicolour detail. Sounds too – the blast still echoes in

my head five days on, the back of my throat is still raw

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from yelling Riley’s name, and the acrid smell of smoke

still lingers on my skin despite the number of times I’ve

tried to scrub it off. My muscles won’t quit trembling

either, and my hands shake even now as I try to do up the

buttons on my shirt.

I glance at the bottle of painkillers on the side and

think about taking one, or maybe even two or three to kill

the pain. But I’m not sure even a whole bottle would be

enough to numb this, and besides, I’m not even sure I

want to numb it. The constant burning ache in my side

just beneath my ribs where some shrapnel from the bomb

blast struck me gives me something to focus on other

than the voice in my head that’s striving to be heard over

the ringing in my ears – the voice that hasn’t let up for a

single second since it happened; the voice telling me
it

should have been you.

I pull open the dresser drawer to look for my cufflinks

and the room tips sideways with a lurch. Jessa’s clothes

fill the drawer, neatly folded as if just put there. My chest

constricts at the sight. I stare at the pile of underwear –

delicate lace, pastel colours – fighting the urge to sink my

hands into it, lift it to my face and inhale deeply. I draw a

sharp breath and manage to get a hit of her perfume, the

first thing other than smoke I’ve managed to smell in five

days. It sends my head spinning. Shit. I ram the drawer

shut making the whole dresser shake, then, resting my

palms on the top to stop my arms from trembling, I

squeeze my eyes shut.

Instantly I’m overcome by a fast-flowing stream of

images: Riley turning towards me, the flash of compre-

hension on his face in the split second before the blast, the

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white sheet lightning that swallowed him whole, the

whooshing roar of the flame that knocked me backwards.

The smoking darkness, the void-like sense of something

being fundamentally wrong with the world that rippled

through me straight afterwards as though someone had

switched off gravity.

It should have been me.

My phone buzzes and my heart explodes like a bomb

in my chest. I spin around, disorientated.
Breathe, breathe,
I

order myself as the room starts to spin. The slightest noise

keeps setting me off, throwing me right back to the

moment the bomb went off. The phone is still buzzing.

Dizzily, I cross to the bedside table, where it sits vibrating,

and grab for it.

It’s Jessa. I stare at her name, my heart now trying to

hammer its way clean out of my chest. Fuck. I jab at the

cancel button. And then for good measure I turn the

damn thing off. In a fit of desperation I try to find some-

where I can hide it.

I don’t hear my dad knock, and when he comes into

the room I’m still pacing anxiously back and forth, look-

ing for somewhere to hide my phone. I’m aware I

probably look like someone trying to hide a bloody

murder weapon.

‘Have you spoken to her yet?’ my dad asks, nodding at

the phone in my hand.

I turn my back and pulling out the top drawer of the

bedside table drop my phone into it before slamming it

shut.

‘You need to speak to her. She needs you.’

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He drops his hand on my shoulder and I stiffen auto-

matically.

‘Kit. You need to talk to someone. You need to take

them up on that offer of counselling.’

I brush off his hand and walk to the bed, getting down

on my knees to roll up the camping mat I’ve been sleep-

ing on for the last three nights. I’ve seen the counsellor

once already – it was mandatory. They told me I might

start to display signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and

that I was to notify them if I did. Jesus, I thought at the

time, I’m never going to turn into Jessa’s dad. But now

here I am, going crazy just like him, the slightest noise

setting me off, acting like a jerk. The realization would

make me laugh if the truth of it wasn’t so fucked up.

‘Kit.’

I start and look up. The sadness in my dad’s eyes

makes me wish I hadn’t. I look away, focusing on the

camping mat that’s half rolled in my hands. I can’t deal

with this.

‘It’s not your fault,’ my dad says.

I stop what I’m doing and get to my feet. ‘Yes. Yes, it

is,’ I say. It’s the first time I’ve spoken to him, to anyone,

since I got back yesterday. He’s the first person who’s

guessed what’s going on in my head. My dad walks to

me and puts his hand out as though to rest it on my

shoulder, but I back away. ‘It’s my fucking fault. It was

meant to be me! I was on duty. I asked him to swap with

me. You don’t get it. It should have been me. I’m the one

that should be dead!’

I stare at him, breathing heavily. My dad holds my

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gaze, his expression calm. He nods. I want him to under-

stand. I need him to understand and to start yelling at

me. I need him to tell me he blames me too.

‘Kit, there’s nothing you could have done,’ he says

quietly. ‘God works in mysterious ways.’

I stare at him, my eyes bugging, my breathing uneven,

my head starting to spin. ‘God? You’re talking to me

about God?’ I yell. ‘Fuck God! There is no fucking God.’

Pain passes across my dad’s face. I can’t bear to see it.

I can’t fucking handle it a moment longer. I cross to the

dresser and grab the bottle of painkillers, pouring out

three and downing them with one dry swallow. I’m too

much of a fucking coward to face this sober.

‘I need to go,’ I mutter to my dad, picking up my jacket

from the back of the chair.

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Jessa

Why does everyone wear black at these things? Riley

would have hated it. He would have wanted a cele-

bration and lots of colour. He would have wanted pizza