Kristen Simmons - Breaking Point

“Stay here,” he whispered as we slipped inside.

I remained low, leaning against the wall just inside his living room, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. He carried a flashlight and a gun, holding them stacked atop each other but aimed low so that the glare wouldn’t reflect off the front windows. I breathed in, thinking the place might smell of comforting memories, but it didn’t. It smelled stale, cold, nothing like the home where I’d spent half of my childhood.

Chase returned after a thorough check of each room. The flashlight was off, tucked into his pocket, and he’d holstered his gun as well, though I noticed he hadn’t snapped the latch closed. There was still the chance a passing patrol could come to check things out.

“It’s empty,” he said with a mixture of relief and regret.

I stood slowly. It was so dark I could only see degrees of shadow, but it was enough to tell that the room had been cleared of furniture. After his parents had died, his uncle had hired someone to sell most of their things at a garage sale. Some pieces remained—those that couldn’t even be given away. A wicker plant stand that leaned to one side. A couple lawn chairs against the dining room wall. I tiptoed around the corner into the kitchen and saw the wire dish rack on the counter; the last remaining evidence of a woman who used to make us cookies after school.

“It’s still weird in here without all your things.” I hugged my elbows to my body. “It’s sad.”

“It’s just a house,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the living room window. I recognized that flattened tone. It only came up when he was swallowing down his feelings.

“We can watch your place from my room, but we’re not going over there until we’re sure they haven’t posted anyone inside,” he added.

I didn’t like this; I wanted to see if she was there, and if not, search my house for clues. I wanted to sit on my bed, cuddle in my comforter, touch my books. I wanted to get my clothes, get a bra that actually fit and jeans that were my own. But Chase had a point. None of those things would happen if we walked into an ambush.

I followed him down the empty hallway, and even in the dark I could see the faint glowing outlines on the wall where pictures had once hung. His room was the first on the left, and the second we entered it, my stomach clenched. There were no curtains or blinds to hide my bedroom, ten feet beyond his window.

My house was dark.

Disappointment scored through me. It could have been made a checkpoint and then abandoned when the MM had accused me of supporting the sniper. If that had happened, who knew where the inhabitants were. In another neighborhood. Another city. Arrested. My hands fisted tightly in my skirt.

Chase took a low position beside the sill, angling toward the street where he could see any potential movement.

“Let’s go look,” I whispered.

He considered this, but shook his head. “We’ll wait. If someone’s there, they’ll rotate through.”

There was no use arguing with him.

The minutes passed. While I stared out the window, he knocked down cobwebs. I remembered with a regretful pang what his room had looked like when we were kids. Clothing strewn across the floor. Empty Coke cans under his twin bed. A jar on his dresser for whatever bugs he managed to sneak past his mom. He was such a boy.

Crack! Automatically I fell to my knees, but it was just Chase in the corner of his closet, peeling back a floorboard beneath a loose scrap of carpet.

“What are you doing ?”

He shined the flashlight on a small wooden container, half the size of a shoebox. When he blew on it, dust sprayed across the room.

“I left some things here before I was drafted,” he said.

With one eye on the darkened window, I watched him pull open the squeaky lid and rummage through the contents inside with one finger. He removed a school picture of a pretty mixed girl with jet-black hair bobbed to her chin. Rachel, his sister, when she’d been in high school. Intrigued now, I sat beside him on the floor, ears still perked toward the window. The sudden sensation slid over me that we’d done this before—hunched over a flashlight and buried treasure while trying not to get caught.

He shuffled through forty dollars cash, a dinged-up matchbox car, a couple baseball cards from teams before the War, and a wedding picture of his parents, folded in the middle. The white crease across the center of the page was so thick it nearly split in half.

Something fluttered in my stomach. I thought of the letters I’d written that he’d carried in our backpack for so long. He didn’t have much, but his small collection of memories kept him grounded. It was touching, and somehow profound that so little could represent so much to him.

What did I have to remind me of home? Of my mother? Of Beth, just blocks away sleeping in her bed? All I had was this stupid necklace that was supposed to have been for my protection. And it wasn’t even really mine. Suddenly Chase, with all his loss, seemed rich beyond belief.

The box shifted, and something metallic slid across the bottom. He placed it in his hand. A tiny circle in the broad expanse of his calloused palm. Braided silver, colliding into a single black stone, as dark as Chase’s eyes.

His mother’s wedding ring.

“Maybe you should switch yours out for this one,” he suggested. There was a thin quality to his voice. He was trying too hard to sound casual.

I gulped, but a solid lump had formed in my throat that I could not push down. Nervously, I twisted the ring he’d stolen for me from the Loftons’ ranch. I kept it as a disguise—there were Statutes about unmarried girls staying out alone with men. Indecent, the MM said. Scandalous . Like nail polish and hair dye and all the other contraband items deemed immoral in Article 2. But if I wore Chase’s mother’s wedding band, it wouldn’t just be for my safety. It would be for other reasons, too.

Two memories collided simultaneously. One, just a flash of Chase’s mom and dad kissing. I’d been young enough to run away shrieking, and old enough to wonder what it was like.

The other of me standing in line at the pawn shop, cashing in my mom’s engagement ring.

We’d both lost our families. We could die, just like them, at any moment. We were living on borrowed time already. What if he was captured? Executed? What if he just disappeared?

I stood, looking anywhere but at him. The heel of my hand rubbed forcefully at the tightness in my chest.

“It’s not like it would mean anything. Not really.” He scratched his head, and chuckled dryly, but his eyes were dark and brooding.

My hand fell to my side.

“It wouldn’t?”

He shrugged, too carelessly.

“We’re not even valid citizens. It’s not how it was for my parents. I’m just saying it wouldn’t be real, that’s all.” He laughed again. “Forget I said anything.”

But I didn’t want to forget. A deep ache had filled me, a longing for something more. For a future, one with him, one that shimmered in the distance like a mirage.

I stopped him before he could shove the ring into his pocket. I didn’t care if the MM thought I was a valid citizen, or recognized our relationship. We had each other, now, and if we knew it that was all that really mattered.

I reached for his fist, curled around his mother’s ring, and brought it to my lips. Gently, I kissed the inside of his wrist. I heard his breath change tempo, quicken.

“Does that feel real?”

He nodded.

“Then who cares what they say?”

A warm, relieved smile spread across his face.

“Someday,” I promised.

But instead of saying something more, his expression flattened, and he shoved the ring in his pocket. For a moment I was humiliated, until I realized his gaze had narrowed on a point behind me.