Beneath Wandering Stars Page 22

  “Hey, guys. How’s it going?”

  That voice. I don’t recognize it. It isn’t just groggy. Its defeated tone is foreign. If not for the moving picture in the center of the screen, I wouldn’t believe what I’m looking at.

  “Lucas!”

  Tears pour down my cheeks with no restraint as I lift my eyes to my father, who is smiling a smile I’ve never seen before. A smile fashioned just for this moment. I look at Seth. He’s stunned speechless, like he’s about to pass out.

  “Hey, Gabs. Mom tells me you were PMSing so bad, you needed to take a really long walk.” My brother’s voice is low and gravelly, but his soft smirk assures me it’s really him.

  Lucas is awake. He’s alive! That he’s already giving me crap is an extra-good sign.

  “How are you feeling, man?” Seth’s voice cracks.

  “Oh, you know. Kind of like I’ve been in a coma for a month.”

  We both laugh—tense chuckles of relief and confusion and joy all at once. Lucas’s face looks puffy on the screen and I can see a new sadness in his eyes that wasn’t there before, but otherwise, he’s the same guy. The same easy-to-love Lucas.

  I hear my mother’s voice in the background. “All right, sweetie. Time to say goodbye. You need your nap.” Honestly, I’d think she was talking to Matteo if Lucas didn’t roll his eyes.

  “I’ve been sleeping for several weeks, Ma. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

  Now all of us are grinning, but as self-effacing as Lucas can be, the exhaustion on his face confirms that even our short conversation has been a strain.

  “Better listen to Mom,” I say, trying to keep things light. “Otherwise they’ll send you on a six-week walk of penance for failing to honor your father and mother.”

  The remaining color drains from Lucas’s lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dad shaking his head, as if to say, Don’t go there, Gabi. I have no idea what I just said, but it makes Lucas go mute for half a minute. He looks away.

  “I won’t be going anywhere, Gabs, but thanks. Both of you. I’m glad you guys got to see the camino, though I’m shocked you walked it without killing each other in the process. You must have fallen head over boots in love or something.”

  Seth and I laugh nervously, as if the sheer thought is sooo ridiculous.

  Lucas yawns. “Mom’s right. This morphine is a trip. I better go.”

  “Bye, man,” Seth says. “Rest up and we’ll see you soon.”

  “Love you, Lucas.”

  The image flickers and he’s gone. Seth and I keep staring at the little black screen, a miracle in its own right. We’re elated, but apprehensive. I look up at Dad. His face confirms that even though it’s beyond amazing that Lucas is awake, all is not well in the world.

  Something is still wrong.

  “He’s alive. I can’t believe it. He’s awake,” Seth keeps repeating, like he’s in shock and doesn’t know what else to say.

  The waiter sets a carafe on the table and Dad pours out three small servings. He raises his glass. “A toast to Lucas, and to you both.”

  We clink our glasses. Dad drains his, then pours himself another. Okay, something is really wrong. My father has a drink maybe a few times a year. There’s something else he hasn’t told us yet.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Dad sips his wine slowly, working up the right words. “I have no doubt that your brother’s recovery is a miracle, but even miracles aren’t always everything we want them to be.”

  Seth and I wait as dread builds a wall around us, brick by brick until we can no longer move, until we can hardly breathe. It feels like the only way I’ll be able to wake up from this nightmare is if I scream. So I do. “Why all the unnecessary suspense? What the hell is wrong with him? Tell us, already!”

  “Control yourself, Gabriela.” Dad swirls his glass, then looks at me with renewed grief. “The doctors say your brother will never walk again.”

  Never walk again. Never. Again.

  “How do they know for sure?” Seth croaks before he drains his drink.

  “There was a severe injury to his spine,” Dad explains. “The surgeon couldn’t be certain of the lasting effects until Lucas came out of the coma, but he’s been awake for several days now and hasn’t regained any movement below the belt.”

  “Maybe it’ll just take time.” I’m crying all over again, but for very different reasons. Lucas unable to walk? The most active person I’ve ever known, incapable of moving one foot forward by himself? Everything hurts. It’s an ache of utter helplessness. My brother is alive, but for a split second I almost wonder if his diagnosis is a fate worse than death.

  It’s only when Seth wraps his arm around my shoulder that I realize I’m trembling. His embrace—extra bold in front of my father—reminds me to breathe. It also reminds me of a truth as constant as cathedral stones and incense smoke. A truth that does not change no matter the circumstances.

  Where there is love, life is worth it.

  Lucas is still here and we all still love him, and that’s what matters. We’ll figure everything else out as we go, just like we figured out this pilgrimage.

  Day by day, step by step.

  “He’ll be okay, Gabriela.” Dad reaches across the table for my hand. I grab his like my life depends on it. “Your brother is still with us and I truly believe you helped bring him back.”

  I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I’m glad my pilgrimage has given my father a reason to trust me again. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”

  There’s no need to explain what I’m apologizing for. My father’s brutally honest expression tells me he knows. “You are forgiven, mija. You already were. I just didn’t know how to show it. Venga, I think I do now.”

  • • •

  After dinner, Dad treats us to a fancy dessert at the Parador, a five-star historic hotel that was once a medieval pilgrim hospital. The hostess seats us at a small table with red velvet chairs, positioned below rounded arches made of pearly white stone. Little iron lanterns hang from the vaulted ceiling, like we’re in an old wine cellar. Dad orders three flans and a glass of champagne for himself.

  “What the heck—?”

  My mouth is full of flan, but the tuxedo-wearing waiter hovering over me elicits this response. He’s holding out a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, complete with a fancy ice bucket. “Uh, I suppose that was a good year.”

  My dad is beaming. Forget his career accomplishments or the fact that he came to the U.S. without a dime to his name. This parlor trick might be the greatest thing he’s ever done. “I had it bubble-wrapped at the Kaiserslautern Shopette so I could bring it here for your birthday toast. I know how you like the expensive stuff.”

  Huh. Apparently I’m eighteen. The day came and went and I honestly had no idea, which goes to show how time passes differently on the camino, where calendars are not necessary.

  Seth laughs. “Did you seriously forget your own birthday?”

  “I don’t even know what month it is!”

  We laugh so hard that Dad can hardly make his second toast of the evening. I take my first sip of the fine rosé vintage and nearly gag. “Wow, this stuff is like cough syrup.”

  Seth grins. “I’m guessing your taste has matured recently.”

  Boone’s Farm was Brent’s illicit drink of choice, so I suspect it has. Six months ago, I would have said a car was what I wanted most when I turned eighteen, but this entire day has been the best gift I could ever ask for. Lucas is alive, and my dad still has a sense of humor.

  The chasm between us is officially breached.

  • • •

  I can’t sleep. It’s way too quiet.

  Dad got each of us single rooms so we could finally have a night in our own space, but the silence makes my thoughts deafening. Every time I close my eyes, I picture Lucas at a dozen different ages. There is one common theme: movement. Lucas riding his bike at age five. Lucas jumping off the pool’s high dive at age eight. Lucas competing
in a karate tournament when he was twelve. Lucas racing down the soccer field at sixteen. Lucas running 10K races in preparation for basic training just a few months back.

  It’s as if someone broke into the hard drive of my brother’s soul and deleted all the images, erased his former life completely. Nothing will be the same. He’s starting a brand new journey and there are places he’ll be going that none of us can go with him.

  Bam, bam, bam!

  At the sudden sound, I jump out of bed and run over to the window. Our hotel isn’t far from a modern section of the city that has a lot of pintxo bars, but this isn’t drunken revelry. This sounds like someone getting beaten with a tire iron. The shadows in the street below refuse to give up any faces, but the attacker’s white T-shirt glows in the moonlight.

  Metal. Dog tags. Seth.

  Seth beating someone’s brains in.

  Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles.

  I try singing a scream of my own, but no sound comes out. My room is at the back of the hotel. By the time I race to the end of the hallway, down the stairs, and out through the lobby, it’ll be too late. The guy lying on the ground out there could be dead. I’m not certain the assailant is Seth, but my heart tells me it is.

  It also tells me I can’t sit by and let him commit murder.

  I open the window and rattle the fire escape. It doesn’t seem super stable, but my room is only on the second floor, so the fall wouldn’t be life-threatening. Seth’s enraged grunts grow louder. The metal hits against something hard, something like bone.

  I’ll risk it. After throwing on shorts, I climb out the window and shimmy down the fire escape, forgetting to breathe until my flip-flops touch the damp sidewalk.

  The prey of Seth’s dormant war trauma—or whatever you want to call this darkness unleashed inside him—is bent over in the dark alleyway. Seth lifts a metal pipe over his head and slams it down. Again. And again. And again.

  My birthday flan makes its way back up my throat. I open my mouth to hurl it all over the sidewalk, but instead, I scream.

  “Seth! Stop!”

  He whirls around to face me, sweat pouring down his face. The arm clutching the pipe falls limp at his side. His weapon clatters to the ground. “Gabi. I, I . . . .”

  I inch closer, bracing myself for the hideous spectacle of some poor sap who said the wrong thing and is now a bloody pulp. At the sight of Seth’s victim, I nearly collapse.

  The wheelchair.

  Seth has taken the wheelchair out back and given it such an alley ass-whooping, it’s hard to tell what the twisted pile of scrap metal is anymore. The storm cloud lifts from Seth’s face. He breaks my gaze. “I . . . I had to let it out somehow.”

  “Well,” I sigh. “We all know that wheelchair had it coming.”

  Seth doesn’t respond. The reason he chose this scapegoat is obvious. I walk over and grab his arm, leading him away from the crime scene. We sit down on the curb below the fire escape, our knees touching. I don’t say anything. I don’t have to remind him or even ask.

  Remember what you promised to tell me once we reached Santiago?

  The words pour out all on their own.

  “In Afghanistan, our unit was assigned to a region known to have a large number of Taliban sympathizers. Lucas and I were on patrol in the village one afternoon. Nothing unusual about it, I just had this sense that something was different. Off.” Seth licks his lips, like he’s back in that harsh landscape. “There was this kid in the village who hung around the soldiers a lot, asking for gum or candy. Young kid, not much older than Matteo. Your brother, the big softie, took to him. He’d given the kid a soccer ball the day before. I told him it was a stupid thing to do, that he shouldn’t be getting attached.” Seth shakes his head. “But you know Lucas.”

  Yes, I do know Lucas. So well that I can almost see what’s coming.

  “Later when we’re on patrol, we see that same kid squatting in the dirt, crying his eyes out, holding his flat soccer ball. Lucas goes over to see if he’s okay and notices that the ball has been punctured. On purpose. He lets his guard down for one second, but that was all it took. The kid’s older brother, a kid himself—fifteen, maybe sixteen—steps out from an abandoned building across the street holding an AK-47. He points it right at Lucas.”

  Seth gulps in a few breaths, giving me just enough time to wrap my mind around this impossible situation. “I raise my weapon and order the older kid to drop his, but he keeps screaming words I don’t understand. Screaming like he’s scared, like he doesn’t want to be doing what he’s doing, but someone’s making him do it. Lucas doesn’t even reach for his gun. He just stands there with his arms stretched out, talking to the kid, telling him not to shoot, trying to mediate like he thinks he’s goddamn Gandhi. It’s a stalemate. The kid pointing his gun at Lucas. Me pointing my gun at the kid. And Lucas standing there in the middle of it all, trying to keep the peace in a place that doesn’t know what the word means. I inch closer to him, keeping the enemy in my scopes until my heart is racing so fast, I’m afraid it will give out before I can reach Lucas. The kid starts to lower his weapon. At least I think that’s what he’s doing. I exhale and loosen my grip on the trigger.”

  Seth clenches his jaw so tight, it sounds like he’s grinding his teeth to gritty powder. “Once I realize the insurgent isn’t dropping his weapon, just altering his aim, I hesitate. Why? Because he’s a kid and I don’t want to kill him. Lucas sees what’s happening before I do. When the boy shoots the Coke can on the ground between us, the can filled with explosives, Lucas is already turning to throw his body against mine. He knocks both of us to the ground, taking the brunt of the shrapnel in his back.”

  Silent tears of rage and regret run down Seth’s face, but he can’t stop. He can’t look me in the eye, but he can’t stop. “Just before the IED in the can exploded, I’d panicked and shot off a round. The Afghani kid was dead. His blood was everywhere, Gabi. And Lucas was so messed up, I thought he must be dead, too.” Seth trembles and meets my gaze. It isn’t this cruel world he hates. It’s himself. “I sprained an arm. That stupid kid is gone forever and your brother will never walk again. I had to wear a sling for a week, but that’s it. I get off scot-free.”

  I pull Seth towards me, and he falls limp into my lap. “It’s okay,” I whisper, knowing things may never be okay again. But his grief is okay, and he needs to know that. “Odysseus wept. Even Achilles mourned.”

  Then I do the only thing I can think of: I stroke Seth’s hair and kiss his cheeks until he has nothing left.

  Chapter 23

  “Where do we go from here?” I ask Seth once he’s sobered up. Neither of us will be able to sleep now, but at least this time Seth is drunk on tears instead of Tanqueray.

  “We walk.”

  “You don’t think we’ve walked enough already?”

  Seth shrugs. “Sometimes it’s the only thing left to do.”

  I get up from the curb. “Okay, let me grab a sweatshirt.”

  “Plan on going back the way you came, Catwoman?” Seth smiles weakly and glances up at the fire escape.

  I give him a feeble grin back, knowing super-sensitive Seth could only stick around for a limited time. “Let’s not tempt fate. I’ll go through the lobby.”

  Seth has regained his composure by the time I return, almost like his late-night confession never happened. “Where should we walk to? Portugal might make for a nice evening stroll.”

  “I have a better idea,” I reply. “Follow me, por favor.”

  It’s after 2 A.M., but the night is still young. We soak in the pulsing sounds of life, grateful to be a part of the dance. Horns honk and people pour out of bars like a steady stream of bubbling champagne, filling this city with their celebratory songs. I can tell by the way his sweaty fingers clasp mine that Seth wants to go somewhere with less people, but there’s still one Spanish tradition we haven’t taken part in yet.

  “What’s this?” Seth asks when I stop in front of a modest buildin
g with a green and white awning. It doesn’t look like anything special, but when we walked by earlier today, the chalkboard sign out front spoke to me in multiple languages.

  “They claim to have the best churros and chocolate in town,” I explain as the smell of fried bread and cocoa drifts out onto the sidewalk. “It would be a sin to leave Spain without trying this specialty midnight snack. Or three in the morning snack, rather.”

  Maybe it’s a girl thing to crave chocolate after a good cry, but Seth humors me and steps inside. At least I’m not the only one with a sugar hankering. The tables are packed with groups of friends, couples, even families, all busy dipping the savory into the sweet. This confirms it. Spain is a culture for the nocturnal.

  “Hola guapa,” says an older man behind the counter, grinning as though this is the start of his midday shift. He wipes the powdered sugar dusting his hands onto his apron before pointing to the menu board. “Que quieres, guapa?”

  “Guapa. I know that one,” Seth whispers in my ear. “Looks like I have competition. This guy thinks you’re hot.”

  “This guy could be my grandfather,” I murmur back. “It’s meant to be endearing. Every girl who walks through those doors is guapa, trust me.”

  “Maybe, but this time he means it,” Seth replies. “Trust me.”

  My face feels flushed, so I turn back to the man behind the counter. “Dos chocolates con churros, por favor.”

  “Dos chocolates con churros!” the man shouts to his partner at the other end of the blue-tiled bar. He, in turn, passes the message on to the cook inside the kitchen. None of the men working here look like they’re under sixty. Their cocoa powder must have some amazing medicinal powers to keep them going so late into the night.

  While we wait for our snack, I study the old photographs of bull-fighters on the walls, next to stuffed heads of all the toros who lost. It’s like a Spanish version of the creepy taxidermy trophies you’d find in a Midwestern bar. Hanging on the wall beside us are additional photos of the three compañeros who own the joint, smiling with an assortment of celebrities.