Elodie’s eyes snapped to the curtain behind me, and she lit up like a Christmas tree, pushing past me to the client. She said a name that I couldn’t hear completely, but it didn’t sound anything like Kael. She wrapped her small body around him and hugged him so tight that even a soldier would wince.
“You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here! How did you know where to find me?” She squealed and hugged him again. His expression remained blank even though she was clearly happy to see him. Something about his face bothered me to the core. Maybe it was the way it probably made his life easier to have a face that people couldn’t look away from, that people would gawk at. It made me uneasy to see Elodie clinging to him. Nothing good can come from a man with a face like that.
Mali nodded to my next client, who was walking through the front door. “Back to work for you,” she said, and I caught one more glimpse of Elodie’s friend before Mali shushed me away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tina was one of my favorite clients. She worked from home as a family therapist and, more often than not, let me use her massage session as my therapy. I wasn’t open with too many people, but Tina had no one to tell my secrets to. It made me sad for her, though, thinking about how lonely she must be, eating dinner by herself in front of the TV most nights. Then again, aside from Elodie, that was pretty much my life, too. I guess I shouldn’t feel too much pity. At least Tina had a big house.
Today’s session with her felt like it was never going to end. I checked the clock again: ten minutes left.
“So, how are things with your brother?” she asked. I moved her hair to the side so I could focus on the tight muscles in her neck. Tina had recently cut her hair—“the Demi,” she called it—but hated it and immediately started wearing hats to cover her dark strands. It still wasn’t long enough to put into a ponytail. I thought she looked beautiful and wished my hair was as thick and soft as hers was.
I didn’t really want to talk about my brother. Actually, I didn’t want to feel the way I would feel if we talked about my brother. My day already sucked enough.
“The same. I’ve barely heard from him since he’s been staying with my uncle. Who knows when he’s coming back.” I sighed, gliding my fingers down the lower part of Tina’s neck.
“Is he in school there yet?” she asked.
“No. They keep saying they’re going to sign him up but haven’t.” I tried not to think much about it, but my brain didn’t work that way. Once I cracked the door open, the wood snapped off the hinges and everything rushed in.
“It sounds like they don’t plan on it,” Tina said.
“Yeah. I figured as much. He won’t talk to me about it, and his scholarship to the community college expired last month.”
Little pokes of stress rapped at my shoulders and down my spine. I understood that Austin couldn’t bear to live with our dad any longer, but I was conflicted; he was my twin, twenty and headed nowhere but the clouds. He shouldn’t be living in the next state over with our thirty-year-old uncle who smelled like Cheetos and watched online porn all day, but I also didn’t want him to live in my house with me. I knew that wasn’t a good idea, even if Elodie hadn’t been sleeping on my couch. It was complicated. I still couldn’t believe my dad had let him leave in the first place. But I really couldn’t blame my brother. Again, complicated.
“Honestly, Karina, you can’t take on full responsibility for this. It’s not good for you, and at the end of the day, your brother is an adult . . . the same age as you. Or five minutes younger, if I remember?”
“Six.” I smiled and moved my hands down to her shoulder blades.
I knew she was right. Austin wasn’t my problem to solve, but that didn’t make it any easier.
I moved my hands along her skin, using a compression stroke. “You have to decide what’s best for you,” she said. “You’re starting a new chapter and you should have the most decluttered life possible.”
Easier said than done.
“I’ll ask my dad if he’s heard anything from him and leave it at that.” I hated asking my dad about my brother because, even if he was a mess right now, he was still his son, the golden child. I could never compete with Austin for Dad’s affection, no matter how hard I may have tried.
Tina didn’t say anything after that. She must have known that talking through the drama of “dinner with my family” would be too much for me this early in the day, so she enjoyed the rest of her treatment while my thoughts boiled inside my brain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I attended to three more clients after Tina, and each of them occupied my mind in different ways. Stewart—I called her by the last name stitched into her ACUs—was an Army medic who had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. She kept me busy talking about her next post, about how, with her job, she could be stationed almost anywhere in the world, so being posted to Hawaii was like hitting the jackpot. It was nice to see her so happy. Part of me wanted to hide in her suitcase and run off to Hawaii and start all over. Maybe my anxiety wouldn’t follow me that far.
Some people loved to move around in the military, and Stewart was one of them. She was only a year older than me, but she’d already been deployed to Iraq—twice. And, man, did she have stories. At twenty-one, she’d had experiences most people couldn’t even imagine. But when those experiences turned into memories . . . well, they started playing through her mind on a constant loop. Never waning, never quiet, those memories became background noise, tolerable, but always there. I knew all about it. My dad’s brain was full of that clamor. With six tours between Iraq and Afghanistan, his background noise wasn’t just a personal soundtrack, it blared throughout our house. His house.
I thought about all of this while Stewart lay on my table. I was glad she could open up to me, that she could unburden herself by talking and releasing a bit of her background noise. I knew better than most that it wasn’t only the physical aspect of massage therapy that reduced stress, that helped a body come alive and quieted the mind.
It was almost poetry the way Stewart talked about her life. I felt every word when she spoke. She connected me to each experience, and when she told me about the things she had been through and what she had learned, she opened me up to a different perspective. She talked a lot about how, in the United States, fewer than 8 percent of Americans had ever served in the military. That included all the branches—every veteran who enlisted, even for one term. Out of more than three hundred twenty million people, fewer than 8 percent! It was hard for me to realize that fact, given the way I grew up, moving from post to post, trying to make new friends, trying to adapt to strangers every few years.
It seemed impossible to me, that small a number. From my great-grandfather to my dad, and my uncles and cousins who were scattered across the country （except that loser uncle my brother was living with）， everyone around me wore a uniform or lived with someone who did. The world had never felt so big until Stewart and her statistics. I knew that, as of now, only 1 percent of Americans were actively in the military. I hoped I could someday live among the other 99 percent.