Broken Beautiful Hearts

22. Things We Can't Forget

"All right, everyone," Miss Ives says as she stands in front of the class the next day. "We're going to take a look at the next novel we'll be reading."

She walks around passing out books.

Owen is sitting across from me, and she hands him two copies of the book.

Please let it be a book I've already read.

Owen gives me a paperback, and the moment I see the cover my mood instantly changes.

The cover depicts a row of silhouettes, each carrying a large pack. My gut wrenches as I read the title, hoping I'm wrong about the subject matter - and, at the same time, knowing I'm not.

The things they carried.

They. The soldiers on the cover.

With a trembling hand, I turn it over and skim the description on the back.

Ground braking.
War.
Memory.
Choppers.
Vietnam.

Bile rises in the back of my throat, and a firestorm of images from my nightmares rains down on me.

Dad's sinking in the water - his heavy pack dragging him down. Water swallowing him as he thrashes. His hand raised, reaching for someone to pull him out, until he loses the battle and the water closes over him, as if he were never there at all.

Dad, hanging from a wire below a helicopter, focused and calm. The sound of automatic weapons firing, round after round. The helicopter jerking to the side as if it is engulfed by billows of black smoke. The wire swinging, with Dad clinging to it. He's reaching again, but there's nobody left to help him.

I've had nightmares about those scenarios and all the other ways Dad could've died during a Recon mission. The nightmares started the day I found out my father was dead and I've been having them ever since.

But one nightmare haunts me more than the others, because it's the closest to what really happened that day, at least according to Mom. She knows the whole story - all the details I'm too terrified to hear. The part she told me is awful enough.

Dad and two of his Recon "brothers," on his fire team, moving silently through a crude stone tunnel, underneath a hotel and Fallujah. Darkness and the sound of their breathing, each time they inhale and exhale. In and out. In and out. The sound of the explosion inside the tunnel. He looks up when he hears an avalanche of rock sliding and cracking, just in time to catch a glimpse of the tunnel coiling before it collapses on them.

"Peyton?" Owen's voice shatters the images.

I focus on his face - worried brown eyes searching mine - his forehead furrowed and lips parted. I drop the book like it's radioactive.

Owen watches me for a moment without saying a word. In the background, Miss Ives drones on about the Pulitzer prize and the canon of American literature.

"Peyton?" he tries again.

Say something.

But I can't find the right words. Or any words.

"Do you feel sick?" Owen puts his hand on my wrist, and the weight of it combined with the roughness of his finger tips calms me.

"Im fine," I mumble. "I got light headed."

His hand is still on my wrist, and I let the soft pressure of his fingers moving back and forth over my pulse point drag me out of what's left of the tunnel.

"You should go to the health room. I'll take you." Owen's hand slips from my wrist and moves to the back of his chair as he turns toward the front of the room. He's trying to get Miss Ives's attention.