2050: A Time of Courage

Chapter 14: Jason

Emilio decides that we'll be spending another day with the O'Sheas, and I can't blame him for making that choice.

Mrs. O'Shea seems to be a caring person, her daughter isn't too bad either, and we're safe as long as we decide to stay here.

After it's sorted out, I feel like some invisible weight was taken off my shoulders, the relief at having one more day full of routines and certainty putting me in a pretty okay mood for the rest of the afternoon. I spend most of it downstairs with Rose, talking about anything that comes to mind while she listens to me quietly. I doubt she cares about baseball or the toy train I used to have at home, but it's nice to be able to talk about those things again and just have somebody willing to listen.

It's nice to be able to find a distraction from what happened to Brynn.

Eventually Rose goes upstairs, and she doesn't come back down. The rest of the afternoon seems to drag along as I walk around downstairs, not having anything to do but wanting to keep moving.

Dinner's at six-thirty, and we're missing both Rose and Shemik at the table this time. Lili decides to sit next to me, asking several times if I'm okay. I feel like I should be asking her that, considering I wasn't the one who had some of my blood drained yesterday, so I tell her I'm good and ask how she's doing.

"Fine." Lili says, gazing into space.

I've never understood it, though I've been doing it a lot lately myself.

Mrs. O'Shea spends most of her time at the table tonight talking to Theo, asking him about his glasses. She's saying that her husband had a pair like them, and that if he wants to take those he can.

Emilio is staring down at his food, not glancing at anyone. Dimitri is doing something similar, looking pretty uncomfortable.

"Where's your husband now?" Lili asks, clearly trying to find herself a conversation to engage in.

Mrs. O'Shea looks away for a second before answering.

"Killed in action."

That does it. No one else speaks for the rest of dinner, an uncomfortable meal brought on accidentally by my sister's question.

Killed in action.

That happened to a few people back home. They'd go off to fight in the war, and six months later they're face would be in the paper with a headline saying that so-and-so was killed in action a few days before. My parents always seemed to know those people, but a lot of them were just names to me.

I spend the rest of dinner thinking about the war, and how much I hate it.

It's caused too many problems, is still causing them, and nobody knows what to do to fix them.

After dinner, Mrs. O'Shea goes in search of the glasses, bringing them to Theo in a matter of minutes. He stays downstairs, inspecting them closely as the rest of us make our way quietly back up the stairs. Dimitri, Emilio, and I have nothing to talk about, so all of us decide we might as well just go to sleep.

It's the first time that I've ever gone to bed at seven-thirty without any sort of complaint.

~*~

Breakfast the next morning is uneventful, really. I spend most of it talking to Rose and Theo, while Lili carries on a conversation with Carlie O'Shea, and Emilio studies his orange juice as though it might tell him something about life. Dimitri eventually gets up the nerve to ask when someone is going to make Shemik come down here, and I wonder for a moment if anyone bothered to tell him what happened while he was busy getting the car. Emilio gives Dimitri a response that I'm too far away to hear, and the Russian boy sighs.