Silence stretched out heavy and hung in the air above us a long time before Rusty spoke. “I never hated you, H.” The words were there, but there wasn’t a whole lot of reassurance behind them.
I traced the crack in the table, afraid if I looked at him, I’d cry. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been here since my mom showed up at practice a couple weeks ago and told me Finn was dead. We’ve been talkin’ about a lot of things, and you were one of them.”
I felt his eyes on me and met them for a second before looking away again.
“My dad called her with the news about Finn, and she drove over and found me at practice,” he said. “As soon as I saw her there I knew it was something. And when she said the words, I just left, just walked off the field and came down here with her to stay awhile.” I watched out the corner of my eye as he chewed on his lip for a second and said more to the table than me, “I didn’t wanna go back home at first. Didn’t wanna go to his funeral, you know? ’Cuz that would mean it was true—that he was really gone, and I . . .”
He didn’t finish, and I wanted to take his hand in mine or put my arm around him or just tell him I understood. Because I’d felt the same way. I’d gotten used to Finn being away, and in the time between the day we heard the news and the day of his funeral, I let myself pretend that’s what it was, that he was still just . . . away. Even with the sympathy food slowly filling our fridge and the candles and flowers and flags on our front lawn, I still felt like it could be a colossal mistake. That Finn had just gotten lost in the chaos after the blast, one so strong it blew his dog tags right off, made them think the dead soldier they landed near was him. And maybe he’d been surviving out there in the desert, alone but alive, doing everything he could to make it back to his base and let us know he was okay. Denial’s a stubborn thing. And necessary at first, so the world doesn’t come crashing down on you all at once.
But the day Gina and I stood in the hundred-degree airplane hangar to meet the plane carrying his remains, my world had cracked right down the center. When the plane landed and the door slid open enough to show the shiny, metal casket inside, reality knocked me down so hard, I couldn’t breathe. So I understood what Rusty meant.
“Why’d you come, then?” I asked.
Rusty rubbed his forehead. “Because. It was the right thing to do.” He took a deep breath and looked right at me. “And because I promised Finn if anything ever happened to him, I’d look out for you.”
I stared at him. “When?”
“What do you mean, when?”
“I mean when did you promise him that?”
“I don’t know, once he got over there and realized there was a chance. He had a lot of close calls—what does that have to do with anything?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn’t know where to begin or which feeling was the right one just then—surprise and hurt and jealousy were all having it out in my chest at the moment. Finn hadn’t mentioned to me, in any of his e-mails, that he’d had any close calls or that he and Rusty were talking again. Definitely not that they were talking about me and how I needed to be looked out for in case anything happened to him. And by Rusty? Of all people? Anger flared in me, and I felt like I was seven years old all over again, left just outside their tight little circle of friendship.
The screen door slid open and Celia stepped out, rifling through a pile of magazines in her arms. “Okay, I know this looks like a lot, but . . .” Right away she seemed to sense the tension sitting like a wall between us. She looked from me to Rusty and back again, then set the magazines down gingerly. “You know, it’s late. Why don’t I just leave ’em here, and we can go through them all tomorrow, okay?”
I pulled my eyes away from Rusty’s long enough to answer, “Okay . . . thank you.” But then I looked right back at him. Hard. “I’ve just about had enough of this day anyway.” I pushed my chair out behind me and tried to temper my voice when I stood and spoke to Celia again. “I think I need to get some sleep.”
She looked me over carefully with eyes that wanted to understand, then glanced briefly at Rusty before she put her arm around my shoulder. “All right sweetie. I’ll show you to the guest room.”
I may have needed sleep, but it didn’t come. Not after I heard Celia and Rusty pull out the sofa bed and their whispers before she told him good night. Not after her door clicked shut and the house went quiet. Not even after I heard someone snoring rhythmic and low somewhere in the house. Instead, I lay there on my back in the guest room, with the light turned off so Rusty’d think I was asleep, and the window wide open, spilling in cool night air. I tried to pick out constellations in the sky, patterns that would help me make sense of why I felt so . . . so . . . I didn’t even know what it was, but it was enough to keep me balanced on the edge of angry tears all night.
It wasn’t that Finn had patched things up with Rusty. That I was actually glad to hear. They were best friends. It was just that I hadn’t even known, and by the time Finn left and started writing to me, I’d liked the feeling that I was the one he kept in touch with and told things to. The one he was closest to. Instead I was the one who still needed protecting, because he didn’t believe in me like he said.
My breath hitched as a new thought occurred to me. It wasn’t Rusty who had left me out. He was gone to school by then, with no reason to keep in touch with me. It was Finn—my brother—who I should be mad at, who all of a sudden I was mad at. Not just for not telling me every little detail of his life but for all of it—enlisting and leaving when he didn’t have to, for some stupid reason I didn’t understand and he never explained. For dying because of it and not being here now, when I was lost and needed him most.