The Brightest Stars

But out of slightly bitchy curiosity, and because I had another few minutes to waste on my walk home, I went to Sarah Chessman’s page to scroll through her boring life. Maybe it was the fact that I was walking through the noisy alley and my feet hurt like hell, or that I’d be knocking on my dad’s door in an hour, but Sarah’s life actually looked okay today. She had a husband—a newly minted soldier stationed in Texas—and she was pregnant. I watched a ten-second video of her opening a box full of pink balloons, revealing the gender of her upcoming baby. She didn’t look terrified the way I would if I were her.

I started to feel like a hypocrite for judging her, so I clicked back to my main feed. My dad had posted a picture of himself holding a fish in one hand and a beer in the other. He loved to hunt and fish; my brother and I couldn’t stomach it. Austin more than me. He would go on hunting trips with Dad until we got to high school and started dating. My brother, who I had talked to every day up until a few months ago but now could barely get on the phone, had already liked my dad’s post. So did someone with a golden retriever as their profile picture. The golden retriever friend had commented that my dad was “looking happier than ever.”

It stung. It really stung. I had been hearing that phrase since he got remarried three years ago. From the neighbors to the cashiers at the PX, everyone thought it was okay to congratulate my dad on how happy he was. No one seemed to consider that I might be in earshot, that telling him how happy he was now implied that he had been really unhappy before. No one seemed to consider me. That’s when I started clinging to people, boys mostly. Some at my high school, some older. I was searching for something I wasn’t getting at home, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.

Mostly, I clung to Austin. Maybe it was the twin thing, maybe it was the fact that our parents were never around when we needed them most, when their guidance would have mattered. Staying close to my six-minutes younger brother seemed to help for a while, but once we were out of high school, I started to consider that maybe Austin wasn’t the person I had built him up to be. One of the weirdest parts about growing up was the way memories changed.

Like when Austin took me to that party in Chesapeake Manor, where all the officers’ kids were partying. He told me that everyone our age was drinking, that I should just relax. Then he passed out in one of the bedrooms with some girl from a high school across town and I was forced to sleep there, surrounded by loud, belligerent boys. That’s when one of them, the one who called me “Austin’s sister” and had too deep a voice for a high school kid, swore I had a crush on him and shoved his tongue down my throat—repeatedly. Until I started crying and he got “weirded out.”

Funny how my telling him to stop, my constant no no no, please no didn’t do it.

Nope, it was the salty, hot tears streaming down my face that finally got him to go away. Eventually I fell asleep on a couch listening to some war video game being played in the other room. Austin never apologized the next morning. He never asked how I had slept or where. He just kissed that random girl on the cheek and made a joke that she and I both laughed at, and then we Ubered home like nothing ever happened. Our dad yelled at me, not him, and we both got grounded for a week.

I clicked on Austin’s profile and thought about calling him again, but then Elodie opened the front door and surprised me. I hadn’t even realized I was on my front porch.

MY HOUSE IS SMALL, so when you go through the front door, you’re already in the living room. That’s one of the things I liked about it, the way it was all cozy and warm, everything there waiting. The lights and TV were on when I got home that night, the room filled with the voice of Olivia Pope. And there was Elodie, standing at the door, greeting me with a nervous smile. Something was up.

I hadn’t known Elodie that long, but I felt I knew her well. I’m not sure how much we had in common, other than being the same age. And even that, well, I felt older somehow. I looked older, too. Elodie had this way about her that made her appear younger than she was, especially when she smiled. And when she was nervous or sad, she looked about sixteen. Younger even. That brought out the protector in me.

Elodie tried her best to be the perfect young army wife, but she was already at the center of so many petty rumors. The wives in Phillip’s platoon made little jokes about her accent and called her a “mail-order bride.” She was hardly the only one. Tons of soldiers met their wives online, but that didn’t seem to matter to these women. Maybe they should talk to Stewart. I bet she had some statistics about how many members of the military met their spouses on sites like MilitaryCupid.

Anyway, that’s how a lot of military posts were—everyone bickering and jostling for position. Elodie’s neighbors were bitches who spent their days selling pyramid schemes on Facebook and bullying her over her grass being an inch too long. That’s not an exaggeration. I was with her once when the “mayor” of her housing department pulled up, tires screeching, and scolded Elodie for letting her grass grow half an inch too long.

Yes, the “mayor” measured.

No, she didn’t have anything better to do.

That’s why Elodie preferred to spend her nights on my couch, or in my bed, depending on where she fell asleep. I got the feeling she liked the couch the most. She didn’t wake up asking for Phillip when she was on the couch.

I planned on asking Elodie about the guy from earlier. Obviously she knew him—but how? She didn’t have many friends, as far as I was aware, and she didn’t spend much time socializing. Maybe Phillip had buddies outside of his platoon. It wasn’t too common, but it wasn’t impossible either.

Elodie sat down on the couch and tucked her feet under her. Her petite body was changing, her belly starting to swell. I wondered where the baby would sleep in my little house.

Elodie’s favorite American show at the moment was Scandal. She was binge-watching it for the first time.

“What season are you on now?” I asked her.

“Two,” she said softly.

She was being so quiet. I pulled my shoes off and it wasn’t until I dropped one on the floor and something moved in my peripheral vision that I realized another person was in my house.

A noise, a little like a shriek, flew from my mouth when I saw him. He was staring at me, the one-syllable client from earlier. He was sitting in my chair—the dark pink, used-to-be-red one that my nana gave me before we moved to Georgia.

“Um, hey?” I said when my heart stopped doing little flips from the aftershock of surprise. How did I not see a whole human in my living room? I had been feeling spacey a lot the last few weeks, but that day was another level.

“How was work?” Elodie asked, looking at the TV while her fingers picked at the fabric on her pants, and then back to me.

“Good …”

I sta

red at this Kael guy and he stared back at me. When I would recall this later, the first time he was inside my little white house, the memory would change from a burning pain to pure bliss and back—again and again and again. But when it happened in real life, it happened fast. Before he was anything to me—before he was everything—he was just a quiet stranger with a blank face and distant eyes. There was something indomitable about him, something so closed, that I couldn’t even begin to make up a life for him. He hated peppermint oil and hadn’t wanted me to touch his leg—those were the only clues I had to who he was.

I smelled the popcorn right before the popping actually started. “I’m making popcorn,” Elodie announced. She was nervous. What was going on here?

“Okay …” I started. “I’m going to take a shower. I have to be at my dad’s at seven.”

I walked down the hallway. Elodie followed, chewing on her bottom lip.

“Well?” I asked.

“He just got home last night. He was with Phillip.” Her voice was low and I could tell she was gearing herself up to ask me something. My mom was like this too, when she wanted something. “Can he stay here for a day until he can get ahold of his …” She trailed off, stopping for a second. “Until he can get into his place. Sorry to ask like this, I—”

I held up my hand. “How do you know this guy?” I wanted to make sure this was on the up and up.

“Oh—I met him right before they left. He’s a good guy, Karina. Honest. He’s Phillip’s closest friend over there.”

“What’s he doing back?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I didn’t ask. Should I ask?” She peered into the living room.

“I wouldn’t,” I told her. “He can stay here, but if he ends up being a creep, he’s out. So are you,” I teased her.

She smiled at that and touched my arm. She was always so affectionate. Me, not so much.