Cold Summer (sample chapters)

2. Kale

Everything about this place is cold.

It's in the air around me. In the earth underneath my boots. Through every breath I take.

I hate it.

My numb fingers fumble with the cigarette as I try to get it out of the package. When I finally manage, I bring it to my lips and cup my hands around the match, waiting for it to catch. My hands shake too much.

I just want a smoke, and even this seems too hard.

"Here, let me try." Adams crouches in front of me, leaning his rifle against his shoulder so he can use both hands. I can only see parts of him where the moonlight catches breaks between the clouds.

I give him the matches, just wanting the damn thing lit. And when it does, my hands don't shake as much. I take a long drag and offer it to Adams, who does the same, half smiling when he hands it back.

"Where did you say you got these again? They're terrible." He settles down next to me, his leg pressing against mine.

I tell him. "I'm not saying it's true, but I might have found it lying next to a Kraut officer last week."

"Just lying there, huh? No wonder they're so bad. The Germans don't know the meaning of a good cigarette." He laughs—right not to believe me. I wanted to smoke so bad, I went as low as searching for them. Most guys do it—to find watches or other souvenirs—but it was my first time.

I never realized how cold a dead body could become.

We sit in our foxhole and pass the cigarette between us until it's gone. There's something about sharing a smoke—something I could never explain. And because I'm not alone here, next to someone who's going through the same thing, it's the warmest I've been all night. I hear the guys five yards from us, in their own hole, smoking their own cigarettes, talking about the girls they left behind back home and about better times.

When I think of home, I don't think the same way these guys do. In this world—in this time—I have no home.

And the place I call home in my own time isn't much of one anyway.

"What did you say your sister's name was again?" Adams asks.

"Libby." I stuff my hands into my armpits. A sad attempt to warm them.

"And how much younger is she than you?"

I glance over, my eyes shooting a glare. "Lay off. We might share a hole, but that won't last long if you keep asking about my sister."

He laughs and it vibrates through his chest. With his shoulder pressed against mine, I feel every chuckle. It makes the night a bit warmer.

"It's all right," he says. "When I save your ass one of these days, you'll have to introduce me. It's in the code of conduct."

"Really," I say.

"I kid you not," Adams says. But he can't keep his face from breaking into a grin. 

After a while, I feel him drift off to sleep, his chest rising and falling slower and slower like it suddenly might stop. But it doesn't. He keeps breathing and the night wears on. The snow rains down on us, cold and silent, making the forest around us a forbidden land.

I don't know how the rest of the guys do it, but it's almost impossible for me to sleep at all in these holes. In this place.

My heart pounds too hard when I think of them out there. When they could bear down at us at any moment with their guns raised. Shooting through us like we're paper mache. In these woods, in this hole, there is nothing else I can think of.