The Death Date

chapter eighteen

Vi was waiting in the visitor's parking area when I pulled beside her. Dressed in her beach gear, tank top, shorts, and swimsuit concealed beneath, she exited her car, grabbed her backpack, and settled into the passenger seat next to me.

"Sorry, my shift went on longer than normal. We got a sudden rush."

"Here's my ID," she said, thrusting the plastic card into my arm.

I took it apprehensively. Vi had been unusually subdued in the days following the party. My attempts at apologizing for the two guys' behavior, and the reason she had suffered it in the first place – yours, truly – had almost entirely gone disregarded. She listened, she sat still, and she didn't acknowledge any of it.

This wasn't out of the ordinary. Vi had endured years of jokes and torment, some of which visibly shook her system, while others bounced right off, although, it was the ones that shut her down and diminished her character that scared me. The cases that numbed her senses, I knew, were the ones that broke through her exterior.

We drove to the gate, and, after the shock of meeting a new guard and receiving his death date, June eleventh, two thousand sixty-one, Vi and I skidded into base and followed the roads towards Breaker Beach, a private beach for base ID card holders and their guests. It was practically empty when we arrived, the parking lot sandy and sparse.

Vi was out of the car first, leaving me to quickly assemble my belongings and catch up. She was a few paces onto the sand before I fell in step with her.

"Vi, listen – those guys at the party..." I started. "You know what I'm going to say, because I've said it a thousand times, but that doesn't make it any less true." Her gait was even. "They don't know anything, and they were raised to be ignorant and taught that in order to feel good about their measly, pathetic lives, they have to take down others. You're weird, alright? But you know what? So am I, and that doesn't make us any worse or any better. It just makes us, us. It just makes you, you."

Vi paused at the shoreline, the waves grasping for her feet. I stopped beside her. It wasn't quite midday, and the morning fog had evaporated, exposing the sky and sea, nearly the same shade of blue, with scattered whitecaps and cotton clouds, each a reflection of the other. When the night crept in, the scene would also be a reflection.

"Do you think Meghan likes me?" she asked.

"Meghan?" I questioned.

"Do you think she likes me?"

I knew Meghan liked Vi. She was a popular topic while we slung coffees, and I pretended not to notice the faint blush that painted her neck with every mention of Vi's name.

"Of course, she likes you," I stated.

"In the way that I like her?"

A wave crashed. "How do you like her?" I asked.

Vi's answer was fully loaded. "The way my parents like each other. The way you and Nick like each other." Her porcelain skin radiated.

"Um, I don't know, Vi," I said honestly. "But I think there's a possibility that she does."

"What is the probability that she does?"

"The probability?" I asked.

"You said there was a possibility. What are the chances that she likes me?"

"I don't know, Vi. I don't have that." I edged around an incoming wave. "There's only one way you're going to find out."

Her eyes darted to mine. "How?"