Beneath Wandering Stars Read online

  Beneath Wandering Stars

  Ashlee Cowles

  Merit Press

  F+W

  Copyright © 2016 by Ashlee Cowles.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Merit Press

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

  www.meritpressbooks.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-9582-8

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9582-0

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9583-6

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9583-7

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and F+W Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.

  Cover design by Colleen Cunningham.

  Cover and interior images © iStockphoto.com/kentarcajuan; Clipart.com.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Dedication

  Dedication

  For my parents, LTC Steven H. Chowen, USA, Ret., and Lea Anne Chowen, who gave me the childhood that enabled me to write this story.

  And for Danielle. None of this would have happened without you.

  Acknowledgments

  Although this story and its characters are fictional, they were stirred awake by a lifetime of impressions and memories. I want to thank my parents and sisters for being the core of the adventure that is the life of a military brat. I am also grateful to my in-laws and the rest of my extended family for their love and support. Thanks especially to Tia Julie, for proofreading my Spanish and teaching me about Spain’s cuisine.

  Thanks to Marlys Sowell and Lucia Hrin, for walking the Camino de Santiago with me back in 2011—the journey that inspired many parts of this story. I’m glad we survived the snoring, the aching feet . . . and the vino. Finding time and energy to write is a challenge for any writer with a day job, but perhaps even more so for a writer who is also a teacher. I am indebted to several organizations for providing tangible resources that made this work possible. To start, many thanks to the people behind the Glen Workshop, a program put on by Image journal, and the place where I typed the first words of Beneath Wandering Stars. A generous scholarship made attending the workshop possible, and this book is proof that a week can truly change a life. Many, many thanks to the Russell Kirk Center, especially to Annette Y. Kirk and Andrea Kirk Assaf. Not many writers are fortunate enough to receive the kind of support and resources the RKC has provided me, and I am truly blessed to have spent an entire year writing among this life-changing community, where the “circles of destiny” are particularly pronounced. In Colorado, I am very grateful to the Anselm Society, which provides spaces where artists of all stripes can connect and realize, “Hey, I’m not the only one.”

  Writing may be done in solitude, but writing is never solitary. A sincere thank you to Katherine Khorey and Anna Vander Wall for reading an early draft of this story and for providing such heartening feedback. I am grateful for my wonderful critique partners, Anita Romero and Adrianne Hanson, who have given extensive comments on this and other works. Last but not least, I am forever indebted to Danielle Stinson, my very best friend, fellow Army brat, Ideal Reader, and the most talented writer I know. I’m so glad we share half a brain because without your brilliance and unwavering encouragement, this book would not exist. Whenever I had doubts, you always believed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  All my love goes to my husband, Jordan, who is always open to whatever crazy notions I come up with, whether that’s moving to the other side of the world or becoming an author. Your steadfast support and willingness to endure the hours I spend glued to my laptop have made this dream possible. Thank you.

  Many thanks to my editor, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and the rest of the team at Merit Press, for “getting” this story and for strongly believing it was one young people ought to read. I am so encouraged by Merit Press’s vision for young adult literature, and I feel fortunate to be a part of it.

  Finally, I would like to thank the millions of men and women who currently serve, or have served, in the United States Armed Forces, along with their spouses and children, who also sacrifice so much. I wanted to write a book for and about military “brats” because I wanted to tell our story. Please forgive any errors in my interpretation. I sincerely hope I did the wild ride that is our upbringing justice.

  Chapter 1

  Mail service in the midst of a war. It’s crazy when you stop and think about it. Some guy’s job requires him to dodge bullets just so messages like the one that arrived in my mailbox today can make it from soldiers to their families.

  The book in my hands is almost as tattered as the manila envelope it came in, postmarked in Kabul. There’s no letter, no note of explanation, only this dog-eared paperback that’s seen better days. An image of a golden galley—one of those ancient Greek ships that wandered the waves of the wine-dark sea—sits in the center of the cobalt cover, right below the boldfaced title.

  THE ODYSSEY

  “That from your soldier?”

  My soldier? For the record, I will never have a soldier.

  I look up from the book and meet the smiling eyes of a stocky lieutenant. I can tell he’s a first lieutenant because of the silver bar on his camouflage uniform. His name badge reads Martinez. Idle chitchat doesn’t fly in the Army, so it’s best to have vital info up front and out in the open.

  Soldiers are getting off duty, so the post office is crowded. I slam my mailbox shut. “It’s from my brother.”

  The smile in the lieutenant’s eyes travels to his lips. “Always fun to get a gift from the Sandbox.”

  “Lucas isn’t in Iraq,” I reply. “He’s in Afghanistan.”

  “Even better,” says the lieutenant, shuffling through his junk mail.

  I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm in his voice or not, so I return to the equally cryptic communication from my brother, to the book that makes no sense. Lucas left one clue, scrawled on its title page:

  Do you remember that day, Gabi? How much we wanted to see the lights in the sky?

  I do. Only instead of lights, we saw the sky crash down 110 flights of stairs.

  I was young, but I can conjure up every detail of that September morning. How excited Lucas was to glimpse the green swirls of Alaska’s northern lights. The sweet smell in the car from the banana bread Mom packed for our breakfast. That Odysseus was about to outwit t
he Cyclops when Dad switched from my audiobook to the radio, and we heard the news about the towers, the Pentagon, the planes. How my father—who wasn’t in uniform, but still wore the insignia of the military in the pinched corners of his mouth—looked more anxious than I’d ever seen him, which made me more afraid than I’d ever been.

  Most of all, I remember the way Lucas held my hand. He kept holding it through all the moves, goodbyes, and deployments that followed. Lucas is only eleven months older, so we’ve always been close. But after that day, he never let go. Not until he followed in Dad’s footsteps and joined a war that started when he was still playing with G.I. Joes.

  “You okay, kid?” asks Martinez, who’s watching me stare at this book like I’m famished and it’s food. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “I’m okay,” I lie.

  Lucas and I never talk about 9⁄11. That means this book isn’t a gift.

  It’s a message.

  Sweat beads along the back of my neck as I flip through the paperback and notice specific verses highlighted in neon green. One reads, Ares in his many fits knows no favorites.

  Weird. Ares is the Greek god of war, but what exactly is Lucas trying to tell me?

  My brother deployed six months ago. He’s pretty good at keeping in touch, thanks to e-mail and Facebook, but Lucas and I aren’t exactly old-school pen pals. I’d expect him to send a souvenir from an Afghan market, or maybe a stash of flavored shisha tobacco for the hookah he had me hide in my closet. But a book?

  Now, I love books. They’re the most portable friends a military brat can have, but this isn’t any book. Lucas and I used to listen to the audio version of the children’s Odyssey during long drives and cross-country moves. I’d imagine our family’s station wagon was our galley ship, the open road our Mediterranean Sea. The only thing missing was our Ithaca—the home we were trying to return to despite the detours.

  I haven’t read or listened to the Odyssey since that dark day over a decade ago, but I’m certain we have a copy buried in a moving box somewhere. Why would Lucas send another one?

  Maybe it’s a warning.

  Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

  Soldiers file into the post office like it’s a Great Depression bread line, which means it’s time to get out of here. I bury my nose in pages that smell of Lucas’s aftershave and head towards the exit.

  “Uh, miss, I think you forgot something.”

  I turn and see my mailbox door hanging wide open–even though I just shut it. “Oh. Thanks.”

  There’s one more padded envelope shoved inside, the one with the San Antonio return address I’ve been waiting for. It’s the reason I stopped by the post office after soccer practice in the first place. Thankfully, this package contains a note.

  Hey Gabi girl,

  Thanks for offering to pass out these free samples for the band. It would be awesome to build a fan base over there in Germany. Maybe we’ll be able to do a European tour and I’ll get to come visit you! Miss you, babe.

  Brent

  My heart takes a nosedive towards the floor.

  That’s it???

  The last time we talked, Brent said he mailed me something “special.” Sample CDs are cool and all, but I was hoping for something more personal and, oh I don’t know, romantic. Saying you miss someone is not the same thing as showing it.

  I study one of the CDs, which has me smiling in spite of the lump that has taken my throat hostage. Brent’s rockabilly band is the Psychopathic Penguins. Kind of a ridiculous name, but the guys only wear black and white, so it’s also kind of appropriate. As the lead singer, Brent takes center stage on the shiny new CD cover. He’s wearing his signature pinstripe trilby hat, pulled down so low that his dark eyes are barely visible.

  Okay, I’m getting dizzy again. This photo is one hundred percent swoon-worthy.

  Man, do I ever miss this boy, especially right now when I’m confused about Lucas and need someone to talk me down off the crazy ledge. Thanks to his lip ring and Day of the Dead skull tattoos, Brent is not the kind of boyfriend my clean-cut soldier dad approves of, which is exactly why I like him. The military is all straight lines and sharp angles. “Order: the first step to fixing a broken world,” Dad likes to say whenever it’s time to clean my room. I’ve never dated anyone like Brent, a drifting spirit who prefers a realm of chaos where the road is always swerving, where every day is new. We’re opposites in a lot of ways, but we work. So why did I move a million miles away from him in the middle of my senior year?

  Because the Army is awesome like that.

  Two more months, I remind myself as I step outside. The second I graduate, I’m headed back to Texas. Brent and I will go to the same college with our other friends, and everything will be just like it was before I left.

  A giant cargo plane soars overhead, pulling my eyes to the overcast sky. The wall of gray clouds battles with the green backdrop of the German Rhineland, colliding like the camouflage pattern of the U.S. Army’s uniforms. As the roar of the plane fades, an unfamiliar sound on this post of strangers puts a stop to my forward-march.

  “Gabi! Wait up!”

  Oh no. I recognize that overly enthusiastic voice. A quick glance back confirms my suspicions. It’s Chloe Ross, my soccer team’s goalie and a girl so nice she doesn’t mind that I scored on her during our scrimmage in front of the boys’ entire starting lineup.

  I’m tempted to avoid small talk by hiding out in the mailroom, but a relentless bugle starts blaring on loudspeakers across the post, sabotaging that strategy. Fantastic. It’s 1700 hours. How do I know? It’s called the retreat ceremony, and when the music plays and the flag is lowered, you stop. It wouldn’t matter if you were giving an unconscious person CPR; for forty-five seconds no one moves a muscle.

  A woman leaving the post office slows her stroller, the toddler inside already trained to stay silent. Cars pull off to the side of the road and any soldiers inside get out, raising hands to temples in a statuesque salute. I stand still, too, since this ritual is all about respect, though it also means I’ll never escape chatty Chloe now. Normally I wouldn’t blow her off like this, but I want to get home to see if Lucas called.

  The bugle music stops, the frozen toy soldiers return to life, and Chloe rushes towards me, gasping for breath. “Gabi, I just had to tell you, that was an amazing goal today! I’m so glad Coach made you captain and moved you to center-mid before tomorrow’s game.”

  “Thanks. Me too.”

  Another lie. Sure, my soccer-fanatic father will be thrilled at the news, but team captain isn’t a responsibility I wanted, especially when I hardly know anyone at this school.

  Still smiling like she has a pantheon of gods on her side, Chloe pulls a pack of Lucky Strikes out of her pocket and lights one up. The cigarette she waves around brazenly tells me that even though this warrant officer’s daughter looks like she should be on a box of Swiss Miss, there’s another story beneath her squeaky clean exterior.

  “Geez, Chloe. Wait until we’re off post, will you?” I glance around for personnel garbed in the ciphers of governmental authority, which on a military installation is pretty much everyone.

  “Aye, aye, captain.” Chloe drops her cigarette and stamps it out with her cleat. Grass and clumps of dirt cake her knees from diving for shots, most of them mine. “I know, I know, it’s stupid. Not to mention the reason my asthmatic grandmother can outrun me, hence why you’re team captain and I, the least coordinated person on the planet, got stuck in the goal. Hey, my apartment building is across from yours. Want to walk the rest of the way together?”

  “Sure,” I lie again, seeing how this girl’s cherub face won’t take no for an answer. Unlike me, Chloe has blond hair and blue eyes that enable her to blend in with the German population beyond our post’s walls. Not to mention weasel her way into people’s affections. For some reason, my corkscrew curls and tan skin do not have the same effect.

  “You sure? You don’t sound too enthusiastic a
bout having company.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I say with a little more gusto. To be fair, Chloe is a nice person. It’s not her fault I despise everything about this place. She isn’t really someone I can picture myself being friends with, but at least she’ll distract me from the questions crouched down in the back of my mind, waiting to launch their assault. No matter how hard I try, I can’t shake the disturbing hunch that Lucas’s book is a message.

  But a message about what?

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. I forgot to turn the ringer back on after school, so I’ve missed a lot of calls. Common sense assures me they’re from Brent, though he rarely calls my cell phone since talking online is so much cheaper.

  There it is again. That feeling. The gnawing sensation that things are about to get flipped upside down and turned inside out. My fingers chart the familiar territory of the touch screen as the pounding behind my temples smothers all sounds, including Chloe’s inquiries into why I’m acting like an antisocial psycho. The calls are from my parents. There are texts, too. My father never sends texts. He’s a total Luddite and doesn’t believe in them.

  “Gabi?” Chloe’s shrill voice, like an echo racing down a subway tunnel, pulls me back to the solid earth. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  That’s because the worst tragedies are the ones you anticipate in advance. When Fate is out for blood, she’ll cut you to the bone and you’ll know she’s coming—the same way you know you’ve nicked your finger while chopping vegetables, because you can feel the sharp sting long before red starts welling up in the clean white slice.

  I open Dad’s text.

  CALL US ASAP. LUCAS IS WIA. ON OUR WAY TO LANDSTUHL.

  Chloe rests her hand on my trembling arm and looks down over my shoulder. “What does WIA mean again? I can’t keep all the Army acronyms straight.”

  “Wounded in Action.” I stare at the screen until it becomes a bright blue blur.

  My legs buckle and I meet the pavement. There’s no surge of adrenaline, no merciful detachment, just stabbing pain and a crimson smear as my knees kiss the white cement.