The Brightest Stars

He was Elodie’s friend, so it was only right that I made sure he got into his truck okay. I didn’t want him to have to trek three miles back to my house if he couldn’t get it to start. I knew all about cars not starting. I watched as he stuck his hand under the metal sheet just above his front tire and felt along the surface. He repeated this with all four tires before he pulled his phone from his pocket.

His expression changed from concerned to upset. He wiped one hand over his face; the other still held his phone. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I avoided the temptation to roll down my window to hear. There was just something about him that I needed to figure out.

The more I watched him, standing there in the dark, pacing around with his iPhone going back and forth from his pocket to his cheek, the more I needed to know who he was.

I was just about to Google Clayton County, Georgia when he opened the car door and leaned down.

“You can go,” he told me.

Almost rude. If he wasn’t locked out of his car, I would have been snarky back, but I couldn’t find it in me.

I looked at his truck and back to him. “Are you sure? Can you not get in?”

He sighed heavily and shook his head. “My keys are supposed to be here. I’ll find my way back, it’s cool.”

“I’m so late to this thing I have to do.”

“The dinner,” he told me.

So he was paying attention.

“Yeah, the dinner. I can’t take you back before … but maybe I can call my dad and just cancel. It’s not like—”

Kael interrupted me. “It’s cool, for real.”

I couldn’t just leave him there. I told him so.

“Why?”

I opened my door and got out of the car. “I don’t know?” I replied honestly. “It’s a long walk back. Do you have another set of keys somewhere? Or a friend who can come help you?”

“All my friends are in Afghanistan,” he said.

My chest burned.

“Sorry,” I said, leaning my back against my car.

“For what?”

We kept eye contact until he blinked. I quickly looked away.

“I don’t know? The war?” It sounded so stupid coming from my mouth. An army brat apologizing to a soldier for a war that started before either of them were born. “Most people wouldn’t have asked me why just now.”

Kael’s tongue grazed his bottom lip; he tucked it between his teeth. The parking lot lights above us clacked on, buzzing, breaking our silence.

“I’m not most people.”

“I can tell.”

The lights shone through the windows of the barracks across the street, but it didn’t seem like he lived there. That meant he was either married, or higher ranking than his age would suggest. Soldiers below a certain rank could only live off post if they were married, but I couldn’t imagine that a married man would be sleeping on my chair right after a deployment. Besides, he wasn’t wearing a ring.

I was checking out his ACU jacket for his rank patch when I saw his eyes on me.

“Are you coming with me, Sergeant, or are you going to make me stand in this parking lot until you call a locksmith for your car?” I looked at the patch on his chest, his last name stitched in capital letters: Martin. He was so young to be a sergeant.

“Come on.” I put my hands up, begging. “You don’t know me, but this is what will happen if I leave you here knowing you will walk back to my house. Two seconds after I drive away, I’ll feel guilty and I’ll obsess over it the entire way to my dad’s, the entire dinner,” I explained. “I’m talking apology texts to Elodie, who’ll be stressed because she worries about everyone, and then I’ll feel even more guilty about stressing out a pregnant woman, so I’ll have to drive around trying to find you if you haven’t made it back yet. It’s messy, Kael, and honestly easier if you just—”

“Okay, okay.” He held up his hands in mock defeat. I nodded, smiling in my victory, and you know what? He almost smiled back.

NO MATTER WHERE WE were stationed, my dad always chose to live in post housing, from Texas, to South Carolina, down to Georgia. I didn’t mind it so much when I was young, because all of my friends lived by me, but as we moved, then moved again, and again, it got old fast. I started to hate the groomed cul-de-sacs and the lines of cars at each gate. My dad loved being so close to the PX, the grocery store without tax, and to the company where he worked every day. He felt safe, but as Austin and I grew up, we started to feel trapped.

I remember my mom pacing around the houses, each one of them, during the summer days. There were these hours of madness for her where the curtains were always closed and the couch turned into her bed. At first, the shift was subtle, only lasting while dad was at work. She had two personas and could switch gears within seconds. But sometime over the summer before eighth grade, the mania took over. She woke up later, took fewer showers, stopped dancing, and even stopped pacing.

Dinner was late, then hardly at all, and our parents’ voices at night got louder and louder.

“Uh, Karina?” Kael’s voice drew me out of my memories.

He was eyeing the green light above us. I pressed the gas.

“Sorry,” I faltered, clearing my throat.

My chest was aching as I drove my thoughts into reality.

“Okay, so we’re going to my dad’s house and he’s kind of…” I exhaled, trying to pinpoint such a complicated man with one word. “He’s sort of—”

“Racist?” Kael asked.

“What? No!” I felt a little defensive over his question until I turned toward him and saw the look on his face. It said that he genuinely figured that’s what I was going to say.

I didn’t know what to think about that.

“He’s not racist,” I told Kael as we drove. I couldn’t think of anything he’d ever said or done to make me believe he was. “He’s just kind of an asshole.”

Kael nodded and leaned back in his seat.

“It’s usually like a two-hour thing. Too much food for three people. Too much talking.”

I turned onto the main road, really the only one I could navigate on the entirety of Ft. Benning. We were less than five minutes from my dad’s house. We were twenty-six minutes late. It would be fine. I was an adult and something came up. They would get over it. I repeated that to myself again and began to concoct my excuse that didn’t necessarily involve a stranger staying at my house.

My phone started vibrating in the cup holder between us, and I reached for it the moment I saw that it was Austin calling. I grabbed the phone. I couldn’t even remember the last time he actually returned my calls.

“I’m going to get this, it’s—” I didn’t finish explaining to Kael.

“Hello?” I spoke into the phone, but only got silence.

I lifted it from my cheek. “Damn it.” I’d missed the call. I tried to call him back but he didn’t pick up.

“If you see that light up, tell me? The sound only works sometimes.” I looked down at my phone and Kael agreed with a nod.

I turned onto my dad’s street and tried to spend the last two minutes of the drive conjuring up an achievement, or something I could stretch to sound like one. I would need something to talk about after the scolding for my extreme tardiness. My dad always asked the same questions. To me, to his darling wife. The difference was, it only took her planting a flower bed or going to someone else’s kid’s birthday party to get praise, when I could save a small village and he would be like, “That’s great Kare, but it was a small village. Austin once saved a slightly larger village and Estelle created two villages.”

It wasn’t healthy to compare myself to his wife, or to my brother. I was self-aware enough to know that, but the way I felt she was positioned against me still bugged the hell out of me. And then there was the fact that Austin was always my dad’s, and I was my mom’s. This worked out better for my brother than it did for me.

“We’re almost there. My dad’s been in the

army a long time,” I told him. Kael was a soldier, he wouldn’t need more of an explanation.

He nodded beside me and looked out the passenger window.

“How long have you been in?” I asked.

I heard him swallow before he spoke. “Little over two years.”

I almost asked him if he liked it, but we were pulling up in front of my dad’s house.

“We’re here,” I warned him. “It’s like a whole fiasco, three courses. Lots of small talk and coffee after. Two hours, minimum.”

“Two hours?” He blinked.

“I know. I know. You can wait in the car if you want?”