PING.
Justin ignored the sound for the hundredth time.
Ping. Ping.
A stream of instant messages popped up on the left side of his computer screen. He didn’t have to look at them to know they were all from Chuy. But Justin had other things to take care of—namely, a couple of dudes to take down so he could finish this level of his game.
He punched away at the controls, jamming at the knobs and pounding at the buttons as he made his way through the mayhem on his screen.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Dude where r u? U got me worried. Write me back or else.
“Dude, leave me alone,” Justin said out loud to the empty room. He slapped the controller down on his desk and hit the power button on his computer. The angry ninjas froze midkick and disappeared.
Justin stood up and paced around his room. All morning he’d been cooped up indoors. He hadn’t even gone downstairs, except to grab some cereal for breakfast. On his way back to his room, he’d tried hard not to look at the closed door to his brother’s bedroom. He hadn’t set foot in there since Kyle died. And now, as he was trying to fill his summer vacation with video games, all he could think about was the empty room right down the hall. Would that space feel different now? Would he feel as if Kyle were still alive if he went into his room?
He also wondered what was inside the giant plastic footlocker that had arrived on their doorstep a couple of days ago. Every Marine got one of the lockers to hold their personal belongings, and Kyle’s had been shipped back to them from Afghanistan. WINCOTT, KYLE, CORP. USMC was stenciled on it in bold paint. When it had arrived at their house, Justin’s dad had dragged it upstairs and into Kyle’s room without opening it. As far as Justin knew, it had just been sitting there ever since.
Justin sat down on the edge of his bed and stared at the BMX racing posters on his wall. He looked at the jar of pennies on top of his dresser, the band T-shirts that were piled up in his closet. His room was the same as it always was: dark blue-and-red walls. Same old furniture. Stupid posters and pictures he’d ripped out of magazines.
Justin walked downstairs and into the kitchen. The house was empty and silent. The only sound was the air-conditioning trying to combat the brutal Texas heat. His mom was at the grocery store, and his dad was back at work. She’d begged him to take some time off after the funeral, but he’d just muttered something about “keeping the business running,” and headed out to his truck. It didn’t surprise Justin that his dad wanted to stay busy—he wasn’t the type to sit around and think about things.
Justin opened the refrigerator and poked around inside. He wasn’t hungry—he hadn’t been for days. He was just bored. He turned on the giant television in the living room and flipped around a few stations. There was nothing good on. He shut it off again and tossed the remote onto the couch. Even if he had a cell phone and could text anyone, there was no one that he wanted to talk to . . . besides Kyle.
THE BEDROOM DOOR SQUEAKED A LITTLE AS JUSTIN eased it open. He stepped into his brother’s room and shut the door behind him. The room was cold after being closed up with the air-conditioning running for days on end. Justin felt weird standing there by himself, as though he was intruding. It wasn’t like someone was going to catch him there. Kyle was gone. His mother hadn’t been inside the room for weeks, preferring to leave it exactly as it was before Kyle had left. His father just pretended the room didn’t exist. No surprise there, either.
Kyle’s room had always been neat. Neater than Justin’s room anyway. It was almost like Kyle had been an organized Marine from the time he was a kid. The covers were pulled up snugly on his bed. The corners of the sheet and blanket were tucked firmly under the mattress. His books were lined up like little soldiers on the shelves. The football and basketball posters on his walls were perfectly straight. The top of his dresser was bare, except for a pair of cuff links he wore to his senior prom and four framed photos: all four Wincotts at Kyle’s Marine Corps boot camp graduation; Kyle and his best friend, Tyler, at a party in high school, their arms across each other’s shoulders; a shot of Kyle and Max posing side by side; and Justin and Kyle as kids, sitting in a giant cardboard box together.
Justin walked over to the footlocker. The large, rectangular plastic chest rested at the foot of Kyle’s bed. It suddenly occurred to Justin that the harder he tried not to think about Kyle or Max, the more they fought their way into his brain. He had never really stopped thinking about them—Max especially, since the funeral.
Justin knelt down in front of the footlocker, lifted the latch, and eased open the lid. It was as neatly organized as Kyle’s room. A pile of worn cotton workout clothes—soft T-shirts and sweatpants—rested next to a stack of camouflage fatigues and a massive pile of socks. Marines must use a ton of socks, Justin figured, as he thought about how sweaty his feet got just doing normal stuff like riding his BMX bike for a few hours.
There were other things in the box—a creased notebook filled with Kyle’s handwriting, a couple of novels, a few photographs—but Justin didn’t feel like looking at those right now. He pushed them to the side and found a dog toy. It was a bright red rubber thing, round and smooth, like three circles stacked on top of one another. It was covered with Max’s teeth marks and scratches.
It was solid and heavy in his hand, and he hefted it up and down a couple of times. Justin couldn’t picture the deranged dog he’d met at the church chewing happily on a dog toy. Gnawing off a grown man’s arm, maybe, but nothing as normal as playing with a plain old piece of rubber. He dropped it back in the bottom of the footlocker with a thunk, and something shiny caught his eye. He pushed aside a couple of canvas belts and an empty backpack, and found a long metal chain underneath. He lifted it up slowly.
Somewhere in his gut he knew what it was before he saw the lightweight metal rectangles with rounded corners dangling from the end—Kyle’s dog tags. Justin held them in his hand and read the stamped letters that spelled out his brother’s full name, his date of birth, his religion—all the information the Marines would need to confirm his identity if the worst-case scenario happened . . . no, when the worst-case scenario happened, Justin thought angrily.
The tags jingled in Justin’s hand. He didn’t hear the door open behind him.
“Lot to learn from in there.”
Justin jumped at the sound of his dad’s voice. He didn’t sound mad that Justin was in Kyle’s room, but Justin felt weird about being found in there all the same.
“About what?” Justin asked, his voice completely neutral. He kept his eyes on the trunk in front of him.
“Being a man,” his dad said. The back of Justin’s neck turned red and the blood rushed to his ears as his temper flared, but he fought to contain his anger.
Justin calmly placed the dog tags back into the bottom of the locker, next to the rubber toy, and snapped the locker shut. He stood up and faced his dad. Suddenly, he couldn’t keep his fury in anymore—his dad had no idea what “being a man” meant.
“Being a man and enlisting and getting killed, like Kyle? Or being a man and getting my leg shot up, like you? Tell me what I’m supposed to learn from either of those things.” Justin’s heart pounded in his chest. His dad’s eyes narrowed.
“When you talk about your brother,” his father said quietly, his voice like steel, “you show some respect.”
Justin stared his father straight in the face. He knew he was provoking his dad, but he didn’t care. It was like scratching an itch—it wasn’t going to fix anything, but it felt too good to stop.
“Show some respect? Is that how I prove myself to you?” Justin pushed even harder.
“Kyle never had to prove anything to anyone.” The veins in his dad’s temples throbbed as he spoke. “Especially not to me.” His dad shook his hands at Justin, disgusted, then left Kyle’s room.
Justin followed him toward the stairs, not ready to give up the fight just yet. No—he wanted to take this argument all the way, until his dad understood how much Justin blamed him for Kyle joining the Marines, for Kyle leaving—for Kyle getting killed.
“You actually think Kyle wasn’t trying to prove himself to you?” Justin shouted at his dad’s back. “Are you kidding me?”
His dad stopped in his tracks at the top of the stairs. He spun around so he was face-to-face with Justin.
Justin cut his dad off before he could speak. “All he ever did was try to prove himself to you!”
“Guys—” His mom’s voice shot up from the bottom of the stairs.
“If he hadn’t,” Justin went on, ignoring his mom, “I bet he’d still be alive today.”
His dad leaned in close to Justin’s face. “What do you know about it?” His eyes locked on Justin’s. “You’ve never put your life on the line for anything. Unless it was in some stupid video game.”
“Guys!” his mom called again.
“You’d like me to get myself killed,” Justin said, holding his dad’s gaze. “Wouldn’t you?”
His dad flinched, and Justin knew he’d hit a nerve. He thought it’d feel good, but instead he just felt sick to his stomach.
His mom ran up the stairs, clutching the cordless phone in her hand. “Guys—listen to me!” Both Justin and his dad turned to glare at her, identical looks of fury on their faces.
She held the phone out in front of her, a pleading look on her face. “Sergeant Reyes called. They’re going to kill Max.”