Page 29 of The Burning
Fischer yelled, “Are you fucking alive? Bro—you’ve been in there for, like, twenty minutes. What are you doing?”
I came back to the world, to my apartment, where I was as far from fire and death as I could be. Physically, at least. My mind would stay burning, like always. I rolled my neck in a circle and felt the familiar ache. Karina’s skilled hands working my sore muscles would feel incredible right about now. Karina, Karina, Karina, she always found a way to slip back into my mind.
“Hey, I’ll pay you back for all this when I’m done with basic.” Fischer’s voice was slower now, and I opened my eyes to him grabbing a bag of chips from my kitchen counter. We bantered like battle buddies and I knew that he would have no problem with the constant fuckery soldiers were always slinging at each other. It was part of the lifestyle. The guys who couldn’t take a joke had it the hardest; most of the jokes were so fucked up, beyond the standard of offensive, and would be considered highly, highly inappropriate in any other workplace, but when you’re constantly on the edge of death, you find humor in things that most people don’t.
“Speaking of pay. Your checks will go fast if you blow them before you even earn them. Watch everyone around you partying and buying the newest sneakers and random shit from Best Buy every time the check hits. Be smarter than them. If anything, put a down payment on a car if you feel like youneedto spend the money right away. Only buy essentials and never, ever get a loan unless it’s one hundred percent necessary.”
“Look at you, Mr. Fucking Responsible. I’m just trying to eat Doritos,” Fischer mocked, shaking the bag. “Saving money isn’t that hard. I’ll be getting paid every two weeks. I’ll just put some back each time.”
I laughed. Of course he thought that. I had heard many boys, men too, say the same thing before real life came into the mix. We would see how much money he managed to save in a year, and how much he owed the rent-to-own furniture stores. If I was wrong, I’d happily eat my words.
“Everyone thinks that. It can be pretty damn hard when your tire pops, or your electric bill is too high.” I laughed. “Oh, you’ve never hadeitherof those!”
“Funny guy.” He opened the freezer and grabbed a Hungry-Man meal.
After removing the pizza, which had been done for several minutes, he popped his meal into the microwave, opened my fridge, and grabbed a beer. He wasn’t old enough to drink, but I barely was myself and yet had already been to war twice. Plus, his twenty-first birthday was coming up, and truthfully, I didn’t give a shit.
He lifted the bottle in the air toward me. “Want one?”
It took seconds to decide. “What the hell. Might as well.”
Maybe it would help take the edge off my body and numb it a little. I needed something stronger to do the job, but even just a little mercy would be nice. I hated the unpredictability of the pain, how it came and went as it pleased. The unstable flare-ups were half the battle for me. The other half was sitting still long enough to heal, which wasn’t possible for me.
“You good?” Fischer interrupted the brief silence. “I heard the microwave go off and you didn’t open it.” His eyes darted to where my pizza now sat, cheese already beginning to harden.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice raspy. I cleared my throat and sat the empty beer on the counter. I wasn’t going to tell him that I was going through the phases of longing for and loathing his sister. I thought quickly and lied, “Just thinking about Mendoza and Gloria. I really don’t want to tell our platoon leader anything that’s going on, but I’m running out of options if he keeps going to the hospital.”
I had never purposely sought the attention of our platoon leader, but Mendoza wasn’t getting any better, and today really made me realize just how much worse it could get. His PTSD was so out of his control that it was even out of mine now, too. I tried to help him every day, but today proved that no matter how much time I spent with him, no matter how often I kept my eye on him, it didn’t change the fact that his trauma was not being dealt with. He was lashing out more and more.
“At least no one got hurt,” Fischer said, concern in his eyes. Eyes that looked a lot like his sister’s. His fucking sister. Mendoza was my priority.
Mendoza got hurt. He is hurting.
“Yeah,” I said in a whisper.
I wished I could talk about it with Fischer, the way I wanted to with his sister. Instead, I just nodded. He wasn’t ready to know the darkest parts of promising your life for the greater good of your country, and I hoped he would get through his enlistment without having to find out the meaning of the contract he’d signed. What was coming was too heavy for him and definitely wouldn’t be good for his morale as a new soldier. He would have to try to survive, and I didn’t want him to see Mendoza as a model for how that went.
His sister would get it. She would feel empathy and sorrow for my lost brother and his family. I never gave her much when she tried to ask about him, making me a huge hypocrite, but if I ever saw her again, I would tell her everything she wanted to know. I could use her wisdom right now. Standing there, I contradicted myself every fucking time I thought about her.
I shifted my weight between my arms so they wouldn’t go numb as I leaned on the counter for support. I was hoping to make it to my room without Fischer noticing anything was wrong with me. I’d become a master at hiding my pain by now. His eyes followed my arms down to my legs. I knew Fischer wouldn’t make a big deal of the injuries, but I didn’t want anyone’s sympathy or opinions, and I sure as hell didn’t want him to tell his sister or mention it in front of his dad before I could get my ass out of the Army. I needed to get these last few appointments out of the way, none of them medical, so I could skate out and go to the VA hospital when my discharge went through.
“You good?” he asked.
I looked down at my legs and came up with a laugh. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“Doesn’t seem like it. You seem out of it,” he replied.
I stretched out my aching leg. The Army doctors’ job was to fix my broken body just enough that the Army could throw me back into a war that was supposed to have ended years ago. Their job wasn’t to make sure I was healing right, just that I was healing fast. They were meant to speed up the process to save money, time, and paperwork. The VA was better and would treat me like a human. I’d done my research and I wanted to get out this way, to keep my benefits and leave with a good taste in my mouth after all the shit I’d gone through for the sake of “freedom.”
“What will happen to Mendoza if they find out that he went to the hospital?” Fischer asked, taking after me and chugging his beer.
“Oh, they’ll find out. I’m not sure what they’ll do. It depends what kind of mood they’re in.”
“It’s that fickle?” he asked, like he hadn’t grown up as an Army brat.
I nodded. “You have no idea.”
“Yikes.” He ran his hand over his chin. “So, did you decide where you’re going when you’re out? You’re leaving for real, to Atlanta?” Fischer asked, looking around the kitchen. It was full of supplies for the work I had to do on the duplex. Boxes of floor panels, buckets of paint. It was a fucking mess.
