I scratch the back of my neck and sit heavily on my bed. It’s been an insane night already, and it’s not even midnight. Cline left the apartment, so it’s just me and Audrey in my tiny-ass room filled with my stuff that only my roommate and my ex-girlfriend have seen up close. It feels weird. Like I’m naked, and not in the good way.
“I’m going to take that as a compliment, all things considered.”
She smiles and continues to look around before reclining in the chair and folding her arms over her chest. “A military game, huh? Based off your dad’s journals?”
“I didn’t think you caught that with all the back and forth between you two,” I admit.
“I caught it. Why are you doing it off his journals instead of asking him directly?”
My skin prickles, and I straighten my shoulders, because sometimes you have things in common with people in the strangest ways. “Because he died in combat and the journals and letters to my mom are all I have to go off of. He once wrote that he was right in the middle of Hell, and I just got this idea that I’d make a war game where the base camp was directly over the entrance to it.”
“You believe in that stuff? Hell and heaven and whatever?”
I nod and look down at my hands before I speak. “Yeah, I do.”
“That’s just terrifying, don’t you think? I mean … if there actually is a heaven and a hell, and the Bible says that after we die, we’re supposed to keep existing forever, then … that’s frightening. We are never going to stop existing. At the end of the day, at least I know I get to go to sleep. But the thought that I’m gonna have to be awake and keep doing this kind of stuff forever? I just …”
I look up in time to see her blink and wipe her cheek as she swivels away in the chair. The light from my computer makes the side of her face glow in the dim lighting of my room.
“Anyway. I’m sorry for your loss. That’s what we’re supposed to say, right? How old were you?”
“Eight.”
“So you have some memories of him, then?”
“Yeah. Of course. They’re few and brief, but they’re enough to keep a picture of him in my mind. I guess that must be tough for you, right? You don’t have any of your mom or … the guy.”
She shrugs. “I have what I have.”
“Have you ever talked to your dad about it? I mean, Patrick. Have you confronted him about the entire thing?”
Audrey shakes her head and focuses on the Fallout poster above my bed before she answers. “I’ve done enough damage. To be honest, I can’t even talk to him about her. You can’t say the name Wendy without him physically flinching. If I brought up the other-guy thing, who knows what would happen? We have nothing of my mom in our house. It’s all at my grandmother’s, and I’m not even allowed over there.”
I lean back and cross my arms behind my head, looking up at the ceiling as I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “You should go anyway. I don’t have anything to do over break. I can go with you.”
I have no idea how my twin size bed withstands the weight as she jumps on me from across the room and makes me say five times in a row that I mean it.
How exactly does one go about packing for a trip that could change the course of her life? I’m standing in my room, staring blankly at the empty bag on my bed, distracted by the blue constellation print of my comforter beneath it. I can close my eyes and know where every single thing in this place is. Yellow desk under the window; sheer curtains open and blinds pulled shut. Laptop, last semester’s text books waiting to be sold, old papers and pencils all on the left-hand side. The right side remains clear. Silver desk chair pushed in until the metal touches the wood.
Nightstand to the right of the bed with one charger, a small lamp, and a place to take my jewelry off at night. One dresser behind me with a television. Small closet that holds just enough clothes to get me through the semester, because the other half of it is where I have shoved a bookcase full of fiction.
I open my eyes and idly wonder if I should bring something to read. It’s a six hour drive to Elliot’s house where we’ll be getting his camping gear for the remainder of the trip. Another eight hours to Grandma Ruth’s. The plan is wide open from there, and it makes my skin itch to not have some semblance of order to follow. I need order.
The thoughts of what could potentially go wrong start to gather in my head, and I can feel my jaw start to tense, so I close my eyes again and breathe in and out as deeply as I can in counts of seven.
It takes a few minutes, but I get a handle on it, and my heart rate slows enough for me to focus and silently begin to fill my bag with things I need to take with me. Not the least of which is a flower-printed bag full of orange bottles.