After finding a secure spot in a small clearing, the boys set up tents given to us by Darrell, while I gather sticks for the fire.
It is getting dark quickly, and we are stopping for the night.
By the flatter landscape of the ground, I assume that we are headed further East, away from both the plains of Woodson and Addison Town. Despite the warmer weather here, I miss home, and I wonder about how my father is doing there.
I hope he is okay.
I do not wish him any worry or guilt that his children went off to fight in this war while he sits up waiting at home. If it came down to it, I would die for him or my brother any day.
But besides that, I also don't want my father to retreat into a dark place because of what has been done. I remember the time he mourned my mother, who was incapable of leaving her bed, in her late days of being sick. He locked himself in his room for days, not eating. Andres also tried to isolate himself, and wouldn't talk to me.
I was the only one who would visit her sick beside, her face wan and yellow. I didn't care if I could catch the disease, although, in hindsight, it seems as if I were immune. It was my mother who told me that Andres and my dad needed me to love them in replace of her, because she didn't think she was going to make it.
Your love will be enough, darling. It has to be.
My breath is taken away from me simply remembering the look in her eyes as she said those words. I have to sit down on a rock to steady myself. Like my brother and I, my mother's eyes were baby blue - her most distinct feature. My father used to tell me I was identical to her as a child. And my mother told me to look after my brother on her deathbed, so that is what I intend to do.
She would have done the same for anybody else. If Andres were older, he would have done the same for me.
Sitting down for a moment of solitude, I drop the dry fire sticks I've been collecting and run my hands gently across the jagged stones I'm resting on, tracing the long cracks and ridges beneath my fingers.
How long have they been here? How long did it take for them to become broken?
One, two, three fissures I count.
Everything has it's time, Adeline. Don't be sad.
"You alright?"
Lifting my head up from my view of stone amongst grass patches, Camillo emerges from behind the trees.
"Yes" I say, getting up. I try to hide the emotions written on my face with difficulty. "Why are you here?"
If he sees any trace of my sadness across my face, he doesn't comment on it. Instead, he says something else, hands in his pockets.
"I'm sorry if I interrupted you in the middle of something. I was sent to come get you. I don't think you're brother's feeling very well..."
A million thoughts run through my head. What does he mean Andres is not feeling well? I thought he was helping them set up the tents?
Seeing my expression, Camillo puts his hands up. "Don't get too worked up - it's nothing major."
But my mind whirls anyways, cannot helping to think of the worst possible scenarios possible. Andres couldn't be fatally harmed from his injuries from before... could he? Unless there was more to it than I original thought.
I should have checked myself - I shouldn't have taken Andres' word for it when he said Kade took care of his injuries.
"Take me to him."
Camillo nods, leading me quickly back to our temporary camp. Inside my brother's tent, I disregard the fact that I hadn't brought any of the firewood I collected with me, the only thing mattering being the condition of Andres.
"What is wrong, brother?"
Kade looks up as I enter, frowning. "He fainted a few minutes ago, probably from fatigue. I don't know what happened."
I glance at my brother, who is laying on the ground with a half-full canteen of water next to him. He looks pale - why didn't he say anything? Why didn't he ask to take a break sooner while we were walking? I give him an exasperated look, but he stays quiet.
Considering the other boys' presence, Andres doesn't say anything to me just yet. He has always been shy, and probably doesn't want to say what is wrong in front of Camillo and Kade.
Understanding what his look is getting at, I kindly ask Camilo and Kade to leave as I sit next to Andres.
"They're gone. Now please tell me what is wrong."
I help Andres sit up, and he takes off his camouflage uniform jacket. "It-Its bothering me again, and I don't know why. I wasn't going to say anything before because I thought it would be fine, but..."
He doesn't need to say anything else to complete the sentence for me to understand. Sucking in a sharp breath, I see that the cuts that littered my brother's arms before while being cornered by Other soldiers has taken on a new life, yellow pus and irritated scratches enhancing how bad they looked before. Surely, Andres' wounds are infected.
I should have checked them sooner, should have changed the original bandages.
"My God, Andres. Why didn't you tell me!" I rush, reaching for my restocked medical kit that Kade probably brought into the tent moments earlier.
"I didn't think it was that big of a deal - I didn't know this would happen."
"Well now it's infected, and it's going to hurt. Bite on this," I order.
I'd give him a painkiller, but there are none. The Maulie army base we came from was waiting on a fresh supply of medicine in a few days, which means they weren't able to give me some. So as Andres bites down hard on the piece of cloth I hand him, I ready myself to hear him scream.
"Arghhh!" He muffles, digging the piece of material into his face.
Cringing, I wipe the angry cuts on his arms with an alcohol cotton pad, wrapping a particularly nasty one on his forearm with a bandage as soon as possible. Thankfully, the infection is rather small, and has only affected the cuts on his upper biceps. Now the only thing to worry about is making sure the fever goes down.
"Go to sleep," I coo into his ear once I am finished disinfecting his wounds, hoping that my voice helps to put him at ease. I let Andres lay back down on the ground since he is clearly tired.
Head in my lap, his ocean eyes slide closed, his mind drifting off to a dreamer's place. I kiss the top of his head, thoughtful.
It is definitely ironic that for someone who has a terrible history with sickness, I have become a nurse voluntarily. Somehow, someway, I feel like I was meant to heal and protect those who can't themselves.
It's fitting, almost, and I feel good doing it sometimes. Preventing others from the fate that took my mother.
I am so in tune to Andres' soft breathing that I don't even notice Camilo making his way into the tent, or when he sits down cross-legged beside me.
"Why do you do that?" Camilo asks as he watches me brush my long fingers into Andres hair. He is sitting so close to me that I can feel the warmth of his skin barely touching mine.
Raising my eyes to him, I think about why I've picked up the endearing habit. "It's a comfort I learned from my mother. It used to - still does, calm him down."
I recall nostalgically of the times when my mom would do the same thing for me at bedtime to convince me to sleep. I used to lay up awake all night staring up at the house ceiling until she came to me, brushing my long black hair until it was as smooth as silk. She would sing lullabies to me and Andres when we still shared a room.
But now I still have insomnia, and no one to brush my hair. Growing up without her after she passed was hard.
I miss her so, so much.
"Where is you mother, if I may ask?"
My head turns slowly towards the man beside me. It amazes me how much he knows about what is running through my mind.
"Why on earth would you bring that up?"
Those memories are private. But I haven't shared them with anyone for so long...
As if knowing he was going to cross a very thin line, Camillo's voice becomes lower."I saw your face when you mentioned her. Whatever happened to her... I'm sorry."
Sorry.
That's what everybody says.
"Don't be sorry." I recite quietly. "She died a while ago. A sickness, she-she couldn't..."
Camilo gives me a sad smile as he puts his warm hand over mine. "It's okay," he says. "I get it. Mine's not around, either."
Surprised, I look into his eyes. It was not what I was expecting him to say at all. It's the first time I've really seen him with such strong emotion - longing.
As if he, too, was wishing for a better life to play his delicate hand in.
The air buzzes between us with that same connection I've felt earlier, the evening chill not taking effect on my body anymore. It is almost like talking about my mother has brought the evening to life, and I've touched upon the surface of the thing that makes me so affixed to him.
"Why, if I may ask?" I gently question.
Healing a body is one thing, but healing a mind is another altogether.
"I don't really know. I was very little at the time. One day she was there... and the next she was gone."
Camillo exhales, but for some reason, I think there is more to his story that he is telling me. I let it go for now, not wanting to intrude. But I do offer a piece of advice.
"You know, sometimes, I look up to the stars and talk to her." I tilt my head up towards the tent ceiling as if I can see past the material, and into the night sky. Further out East by the water and the sea, I bet their bluish hues are brilliantly clear.
"I also even hear her voice in my head. It helps," I add.
Nodding, Camillo closes his eyes and squeezes my hand that is not buried in my brother's thick curls. Without needing words to confirm it, I can tell that Camillo and I understand each other in a way that only motherless children do. I can only imagine the trials he has faced in his life while missing a parent during childhood.
I know I have, but I also know that in a strange way, I am stronger for it.
I have lost the person who kisses my boo-boos, lost the person I could talk about girlish things with. Maybe that is why I have become such an outcast in my own town - constantly toeing the line between feminine and ambitious, as if the two words could not coexist.
I am living proof that they most certainly can - I don't need another person to survive. I can rely on myself.
Yet, for some reason, I still really want to ask Camillo next to me if he thinks that people like us will hurt forever. People like us are always on our own, stuck in the past whether we like it or not. We have no fighting chance to have a future other than the one that destiny chose for us.
I don't know exactly how it happens, but one minute I am talking to Camillo about my mother, and the next I am laying my head down on his padded shoulder, searching for someone to hide me from the truth.
I may make it out of here, I might make it back to Woodson. But even so, I will still be stuck in the labyrinth woods of my soul all alone.
We stay there in comfortable silence for a while, finding a bit of comfort in each other's stories. Then at some point, Camillo's fingers interlock with mine, sending me on the verge of falling asleep.
I have long since stopped brushing Andres' hair, my drowsy eyes getting heavier and heavier. I inhale a scent that smells like pine and berries when -
"Hey! What's-"
Kade's words stop short as he bursts through the tent flap, waking me and Camillo up.
My eyes fly open in surprise, and I separate myself from Camillo as quickly as possible. He looks just as startled as I was, but by the way Kade's eyes zero in on our positions, especially as we unjoin our hands, I know that he caught Camillo and I in an intimate moment.
Kade slowly backs out of the tent. "Sorry for interrupting, guys. I-"
I cut the ginger off with a wave of my hand and sigh. Camilo doesn't look at me. I brush my hands over my uniform and stand up.
"Might as well check that head injury of yours, while I'm at it. The last thing I need is another person to get an infection." I motion for Kade to come closer, and he obeys.
Through all the commotion I almost forgot that Kade had a serious head injury before we got here, and I never checked up on it the same way I never checked up on my brother's cuts.
So obediently, Kade walks over to me and doesn't complain about the tension lingering in the air between Camillo and I. Without even realizing it, Camillo and I have formed a rare bond in the midst of a warring crisis.
We are two people lost in each of our own worlds, where life was somewhat better than now, to pay much attention to the present.
We are haunted dreamers, forever looking up to stars we know we can not see.