Shall Not Sleep [bxb]

Chapter Three

I read the letter through three times. There were so many layers, I couldn't even begin to understand on just one read-through. His description of the smells... I could instantly smell what he's describing, but was that because of the vivid writing, or because the smell of the pit he was stuck clung to the paper? I shuddered. I never really realized that the dirt sealed in his envelopes came from battlefields.

On the third reread, one word flicked at my mind: trench.

That was an odd word to use. I wasn't a good student, not at all, but I had watched a lot of Netflix documentaries. I knew—or at least, I was pretty sure—that trench warfare wasn't modern.

All this occurred to me as I sat on the gym bleachers at lunch period. I had sat there watching floor hockey tournaments every day for the past year, doing homework or reading comic books or just sulking. It was the best place I knew to get some thinking done.

And God, did I need to think.

I sat there, reading the letter over and over. My palms tingled. Words started to jump out. Things like "What, pray tell, is 'TV'?" and "How I wish letters could be sent instantly!"

He didn't know what TV was? And no concept of email? He was British, not a caveman.

I had to do some detective work.

My shoes squeaked on the linoleum hallway floor. Kids clustered everywhere, eating lunch and talking in groups, every once in a while shooting murderous looks at me as I walked by. For once I didn't give a shit.

I knocked on the staff room door. Someone laughed uproariously from inside, someone else cackled like a witch on Halloween. Lunch as a teacher sounded a hell of a lot more fun than lunch as a student. I knocked again, louder. Finally, the door opened. The librarian, Mr. Sherman, poked his red nose out.

"Yes?" he said, his voice still carrying laughter.

"Is Ms. Banner there?"

He sighed, like a balloon deflating. "One moment. Katie!"

A few seconds later my history teacher, Ms. Banner, joined me in the hall. She was super young, young enough to wear the same style of clothes as the girls my age and not look ridiculous. She also wore the same dying laughter as Mr. Sherman.

"Hi, Max!" she giggled. "Can I help you with something?"

I contemplated showing her the letter and telling her my stupid, unlikely theory. But then I pictured her walking back into the staff room and going straight for the school psychologist. There was really only one question I needed to ask her, anyway. Anything else I could look up on my mom's old laptop at home.

"Is this about the test on Friday?" she asked.

"No, um... Ms. Banner, trench warfare was only really done in the first world war, right?"

She nodded, combining it with a shrug. "The theory wasn't new, but yes—when you're talking about trench warfare, World War I is, like, overwhelmingly the biggest thing you're talking about."

"It hasn't been done since then, has it? Like, it's not going on right now."

She shook her head. "Noooo. No, it's way in the past."

"Right. Thanks."

"Any time!"

I felt her eyes on me as I turned and walked back down the hall. Unfortunately, the bell rang before I could head back to the gym. I'd have to do my thinking in art class.

When class starts, my teacher starts talking about Jackson Pollack and dims the lights to show us a slideshow of his work, but I got out my project—a really crappy clay bowl that came out of the kiln a few days ago but that I had no idea what to do—and hide behind it. The dimmed lights makes it hard to see Alastair's letter but I squint through the dark at that word. Trench.

I got out my notebook to write a letter I never imagined having to write.

Dear Alastair,

Your last letter freaked me out.

You never told me where you're fighting, but I'm going to guess that it's not where or when I assumed it was. Please, if you don't want me to go crazy, just tell me where you are and what year it is. If it's what I think, at least then I can face it and try to figure it out. If I'm wrong... well, I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me and set me straight and I can stop feeling crazy.

If I'm right about you, you're living somewhere between 1914 and 1918, and you're fighting in Western Europe against Germany.

This is why I think that: you asked what TV is, your letters are so formal and your handwriting is so beautiful, and the biggest clue of all was the word "trench." Modern wars are not fought in trenches. Oh yeah, to me, modern = the year 2020.

I don't know what to do now. I can't wrap my head around it, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Well, maybe "sense" is the wrong word. There's absolutely no sense in this. But it works, in my head. Your letters arrive so banged-up and dirty, they look like they've travelled through time. The reason they look like they belong in a museum is because they do.

Please, please, please tell me I'm wrong. Or right. I don't know what to think, and I don't even know what I want to think. Please just answer these questions: where, and when, are you?

Going crazy,

Max Callan

PS—TV is short for television, which is a screen that plays images and sounds and stuff. I guess you have radios, so imagine seeing what's on the radio displayed on a screen, so you can see the people talking and stuff. That's what it's like. Man, I'm bad at this.

PPS—Yes, Max is short for Maximilian. I think you're the first person to ever like my name.

I folded the letter with shaking hands and started painting a deep blue glaze onto my bowl. I kept the letter on the table in front of me, and then I got out his letters—I was keeping all of them in my backpack. I stared at them all class, wondering. I wanted to hope, too, but I didn't know what to hope for.

Do I want Alastair to have lived more than a hundred years ago? Time travelling letters is pretty freaking cool. But I couldn't stop thinking about how he liked my name. I started to get a nervous stomach ache. By the end of class, I knew I didn't want it to be true.

If he lived that long ago, I couldn't meet him.