Page 21 of The Burning
He rolled his eyes and looked straight through my lie, but I continued, “Everything isn’t black and white. You both lied to me, and now you’re going away when you just got here. I’m going to be alone with Dad and Estelle, and sometimes Elodie until her husband comes home, and you’re not just going off to college or a job somewhere—you’re going to the fucking Army. And once you’re in, you can’t just quit or run away. The chances of you getting out once you’re in are abysmal, you know that.”
“That’s not true. People serve one term and get out all the time. Besides, have you ever thought, even for one second, that this might be good for me?” Austin’s lips pursed and he raised his voice louder. “You can feel however you want about the Army, and I know Mom leaving messed you up—and me, too—but some people are happy in the military; it even saves some people’s lives,” he said with a shrug. “Mom and Dad made zero sense together as a couple. Army or not, deployments or not. I don’t think they would have stayed married either way. Everything isn’t the Army’s fault. They should have never been together in the first place if we’re being really honest.”
I blinked, and blinked again, thankful we had stopped at a red light. “But maybe it wouldn’t have been the same,” I said, though I was acutely aware that my argument was losing steam. “He wouldn’t have been gone so much, and she wouldn’t have been so lonely. That’s what it was that did her in—the loneliness.”
“Yeah, we can pretend that she and Dad didn’t hate each other. That she was just lonely,” Austin scoffed, tugging at the hem of his T-shirt.
“Loneliness is hard, Austin. It can eat you alive. Feeling like you’re always alone. No friends, no family . . . and no one to depend on.” I took a deep breath. That had been the way I’d felt my entire life. Austin would never understand the toll it’s taken on me. He had no idea how it felt . . . to feel loneliness to the bone.
Next to us, a woman pulled up in an SUV full of children. She smiled at the preteen in the passenger seat, who was gleefully handing out donuts from a green-and-white box. Judging from the ages of the kids in the car, and the fact that we were right outside Fort Benning, this was definitely an Army family. But the mom looked happy, car full of kids and all.
“Yeah, well, see, sometimes Army life works for some families,” Austin countered, pointing to the SUV.
Maybe Austin had a point. I was nearly sure of it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it right then.How could twins be so different?
The light changed and I turned down the alleyway next to my house. We were both getting a little heated, but man, it felt good to be talking about things honestly and not ignoring them for once. We both must have been thinking about that as we drove down the street in silence.
“I’m lonely now,” Austin said, as if admitting it haunted him. “I’m literally homeless, I don’t have a car. And I’m walking away from everything and everyone that’s familiar and the little bit of stability I have here. It’s all about to change.”
He laughed, changing the tone to make light of it, but it was the truth. I regretted thinking he didn’t know what loneliness was. Without me saying anything, he continued.
“No offense, Kare, but I’m not like you. I don’t want to be alone. I’ll have friends in the Army. Hell, maybe I’ll get stationed here and you’ll see me all the time, anyway.”
I thought about that. Since he was joining the infantry, that likely meant either going to Fort Hood or staying here. At least, I’d heard that was where most infantry soldiers were being sent. I didn’t know enough about the details of his MOS, so I was confused about all of it, but Austin’s charm was working on me; I listened to the excitement in his voice and thought about him being close and having some structure and stability in his life.
“Hell, maybe I’ll go to Hawaii, and you can come visit me on the beach and drink rum from coconuts?”
He smiled. The boyish smile from our childhood was all I could see. He’d changed so much since those memories, but no matter how much he looked like a man now, he would always be a mischievous teenage boy to me.
“I wish. But what if they ship you straight to deployment?”
“And what if you get hit by that truck backing out of that spot?”
I slammed on my brakes as Bradley, the mattress-shop owner, reversed in his huge silver truck less than ten feet away.
“What-ifs aren’t real, Kare. You’re going to what-if yourself to death.”
I’d always been that way. I didn’t know how to turn it off.
But I did know how to pretend that everything was fine when I wanted it to be, and Hawaii did sound pretty damn good.
“Fine. I’ll stop being pissed at you if you get stationed in Hawaii or here. If you’re sent to Texas, all bets are off.”
“Texas would be good, too. It’s not that far and the food is good as hell.”
“No way. I’m not going back to Texas.”
Slamming doors, screaming voices, my mom crying from the front porch and the creaking of the metal springs holding the swing up rang through my mind when I thought about the state with the biggest sky I’d ever seen.
“You loved Texas. Remember how muchfunwe had there?” he asked with a falsely innocent face.
Yeah, some fun. I remember tagging along to all the miserable parties. All the gross boys who were too old to be hitting on me. All the girls who stopped being nice to me after you ghosted them. Our mother nearly burning the house down and our father punching holes in the walls and patching them up every other month.
I filtered my thoughts instead of saying them. We were now parked in my driveway and I had to get to work.
I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Correction,youhad fun there. I’m never going back.”
He smiled. “Even Austin? It’s my city, remember?”
