I too felt like I was choking on the blood as his knees hit the earth, sand clumping into dark red clots beneath him. Kelsey’s jaw dropped beside me in a scream, but I couldn’t hear her. Silence rang in my ears like the first few seconds after a blast, but it stretched on. And despite being unable to hear, I knew the gasping, gurgling sound that Rodriguez’s trembling mouth made like it was a physical thing I could see and touch.
It was Kelsey that began dragging me away, past the lifeless body of my friend. When I ripped my eyes off of him, I saw everything clearer. Including my friends behind the barricade, behind the bar.
My mind tripped for a moment, trying to reconcile the past and the present. The film of the dream weakened and I thought—I’m about to wake up. Relief pumped through my veins seconds before the mortar shell dropped and the bar exploded, flames propelled upward into the sky.
The blast blew me backward, and I was skidding through the sand. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Rodriguez’s empty eyes and blood-stained lips.
I woke, covered in sweat as if I’d just spent the night in the desert heat. My ears rang as I stumbled out of bed and pushed open the window. Head swimming, I thought I might be sick. I concentrated on the purple pre-dawn sky.
The window shutters banged against the building in an eerily familiar tap-tap-tap, and I slid down to my knees. Turning, I sat with my back below the windowsill and tried to catch my breath.
I couldn’t decide what was worse. Dreams like the one I’d just had, amalgamations of truth and fiction, or the ones that were actual memories. Rodriguez’s death in my dream wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. It bore a resemblance to the death of a soldier from the first week of my deployment. I couldn’t remember that soldier’s name now. —There had been too many others that I’d met and lost since then—but the look on his face . . . . that was still burned into my memory.
I reached for my backpack, fumbling with the zipper. Cursing my shaky fingers, I practically ripped the thing open. Just touching my sketchbook calmed me. I skimmed my finger up the metal spiral on the side and took a deep breath.
I flipped it open and came face-to-face with a blank page, a fresh start.
I closed my eyes, searching for something that could distract me. I decided on the ultimate distraction.
Kelsey.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. My thoughts were a mess of frustration and want and annoyance. If I wasn’t following her into bars, I wouldn’t be so wound up. The dreams only happened when I was stressed. But I couldn’t seem to pluck up much anger at her, not after last night when I’d allowed myself to think of her in an entirely different manner.
She was spoiled and reckless and shallow, and yet . . . there was something else to her. Something that I saw but couldn’t put a name to. I thought back to the moments that I’d watched her that had felt the most honest. I thought of her dancing on that bar, carefree and unaware of her surroundings. She’d been almost childlike. Then there was that day in the park, her solitary hour in that tree, thinking about God knows what. I wanted to know where she went during those moments, because she wasn’t in the present. She was like an old movie, where the film would catch or skip, ruining the illusion. I wanted to grab hold of that inconsistency, unravel it, and see the real story underneath.
More than that, I wanted to capture it. My fingers were itching to draw her.
So, I did.
I started with her neck, the way it had been tilted backward when she sat on the bar. I did a rough outline of her body—the bend of her knees, the point of her toes, the flare of her hips. I scratched out the swoop of her shirt as it hung off her shoulder.
It was a fairly accurate depiction, I thought, considering I was drawing from memory. But an hour in, I’d worn out my eraser trying to get her face right.
I knew what it looked like. Full lips, oval face, thin nose, expressive eyes. I had the pieces right. I was sure of it. But somehow they never quite added up to the right whole.
Frustrated, I smudged the latest attempt with my thumb, and left it that way, like her face was cast in shadow.
I sighed. I didn’t feel much better, but at least I wasn’t a shaky mess anymore. I threw my sketchbook back into my bag and dragged myself to my feet. I powered up the GPS app on my phone to check that Kelsey had made it home okay, determined to focus back on the task at hand.
When I saw her location, I groaned.
I wasn’t sure if she’d ever made it back to her hostel, but she definitely wasn’t there now.
5
DRESSED IN SWEATS and tennis shoes, I jogged the paths of the botanical gardens until I found her. Up on a hill overlooking the rest of the gardens, with purple flowers blooming on my left and the monastery spires rising up in the sky on my right, I almost missed her. She was sprawled out in the grass, facing the monastery. I ran past her, down the hill, and then stopped when I got near the bottom. I turned and walked back up, my hands on my head, pretending to cool down.
Kelsey was laid out on her side, and I might have thought she was sleeping if I didn’t see her fingers picking at the grass. The rising sun glinted off the domes of the monastery, and when I reached the top of the hill, I walked another hundred feet or so past her before settling down on the trail. I leaned my back against a stone ledge just below the purple flowers, the blossoms nearly brushing the top of my head. I laid my elbows on my knees and sucked in a breath of crisp morning air.
Kelsey wore the same outfit as the night before. Her creamy lace skirt was short, showing off those familiar long legs. It was probably now covered in grass stains, but Kelsey didn’t seem concerned. Probably the alcohol. She’d be pissed later. That peek of shoulder was catching the early morning sunlight, and I found myself dying to know what had happened between now and when I left her.
I grabbed my sketchbook again, and started with the monastery. With just a pencil, I had no way to capture the vivid colors, but I did my best to show the way the sunlight glinted off the gold spires and accents on the building. I worked on the sky and the flowers in the foreground before moving on to Kelsey.
At least this time, I didn’t have to attempt to draw her face, only her silhouette. I couldn’t have orchestrated a better pose for her if I’d tried. Lying on her side, she lined up with the horizon. Past the monastery, I could see the river, bridges, and the center of Kiev. It was almost as if those things bled out of the curves of her body.
I couldn’t make up my mind who Kelsey Summers was. With how much she’d had to drink last night, I would have thought she’d be crashed out for half the day. But instead, we were here watching the sunrise.