Blue
I head for the barn, and that’s where Keegan finds me a few minutes later, slumped in an empty stall, sullenly picking at fragrant pieces of fresh hay.
I don’t need to look up to know it’s Keegan standing a few feet away. I recognized the sound of her steps as soon as she walked into the barn. Nobody else moves quite the way she does.
I can feel her anger before she even says a word.
“What in the hell was that?”
I don’t look up; I don’t answer her question.
“Blue?”
I flip a piece of hay toward the sound of her voice.
“Dammit, look at me!”
My eyelids twitch as if they’re trying to stage a mutiny and raise my chicken-shit pupils on their own. But I don’t let them.
Keegan stomps on the floor in frustration.
“I just cannot believe you’re acting like this,” she says through gritted teeth. “I just cannot believe it. Ever since you got here, you’ve been acting so weird, so hostile.”
Her words cut into me, like barbed wire scraping across my skin.
“Everyone in there is just trying to help you, Blue, trying to save you. But just look at the way you’re—”
And then I’m on my feet and in her face, snarling, fighting to control myself, struggling to keep from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.
“That’s just the point!” I hear myself shouting. “That’s just the fucking point! I didn’t ask for any of this, Keegan. I didn’t ask to be hauled off the base by that prick of a lawyer. I didn’t ask for goddamn Hellfire Holmlund to be hired. I didn’t ask to be propped by your grandma’s fire like some imbecile!”
I’m sputtering now and trembling, still burning inside with the rage that's been building all day. One part of me wants to stop and gently wipe away the hurt, fear and fury that are crisscrossing Keegan’s face.
I see fury solidify in her eyes. And seeing Keegan furious just fuels my own anger. It shouldn’t. But it does.
“Why didn’t you do what I told you to do, Keegan?” I yell. “I told you to forget me. Go on with college, go on to your journalism career. But instead, you got your grandmother involved, and I don’t even know who the hell else is going to show up. I’m not in control of my own damn life and. . . I told you. . .I told you what to do!”
She shoves me, and I stumble backward, stepping in a pile of horse manure in the corner of the stall.
Keegan follows and gets right in my face.
“News flash, Blue!” she spits out. “I don’t have to do what you tell me to. What century do you think this is? Huh? If I want to try to save you, I’ll damn well do it!”
We glare at each other, both of us shaking, both of us with clenched fists and lacerated hearts.
“And what are you even talking about, not being in control of your life?” She’s still shouting. “You just turned yourself in to the U.S. Army. You just handed control of your life over so they could lock you up for maybe the rest of your goddamn life, and you’re mad at me for making you lose control?”
She pounds my chest in frustration. “You’re not even making any sense!”
I become aware of the rumble of thunder and the restless movements of the horses in other stalls. Holmlund had mentioned on the drive up that a winter thunderstorm was in the forecast.
I stare at the cords standing out on Keegan’s neck, trying to control my breathing.
“Keegan,” I finally say, softening my voice.
She waves her hand and shakes her head to shut me up.
“You think I don’t know whose fault this is?” she says, her voice quivering. “You think I don’t realize how unbelievably stupid I was to write everything down and then just leave my journal laying there for Megz to read? I totally screwed things up. You think I don’t know that?”
“Keegan.”
Oh, God. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might be feeling responsible. That she could really believe any of this was her fault.
“But now you have to let me try to fix it, Blue. You have to let me try.”
I put my hands on her face and let the tears welling in my eyes slide down my cheeks.
“This is not your fault," I whisper. "Not in any way. All of this is on me and me alone. We both know that.”
She snorts and shakes her head. “Not true. Not true at all.” She curls her fingers around my wrists. “You don’t have to do this all by yourself, Blue.”
Her eyes—delicate cinnamon with a deep brown rim around the iris—slant to the corner of the stall for a few seconds, then shift back to my face as she speaks more quietly. “But you do have to decide what it is you want.”
She tightens her hands around my wrists for a moment, then releases them and runs her fingers through her hair. I catch a whiff of that scent that’s haunted my dreams as the strands fall back around her shoulders.
It’s enough to make me suddenly weak at the knees.
Keegan twists her plaid scarf around her neck, looking suddenly nervous. “What is it you want, Blue? I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I really don’t. Did you mean to just turn yourself in and not fight for your freedom? Do you really want to go to prison for the rest of your life? You know that could happen, right? That’s what the lawyer told us, you know. He told you the same thing, right? If they decide to throw the book at you, you could go to a military prison for life.”
Her voice squeaks out the last few words, and I have to grab the wooden stall to steady myself.
“What good would that do anybody?” she continues. “Huh? I don't think it makes any sense. But you have to tell me. What do you want?”
I close my eyes. “I don’t know exactly.”
I open my eyes and let my gaze rest on her lips, then take a deep breath and keep talking. “I want to do the right thing. I want this…this monster that’s in my head to go away.”
Keegan’s face crumples. “Oh, Blue.”
I run my finger down her cheek. Such a simple thing, but it sends shivers down my spine to be able to do it again.
“And I don’t want you to pay a price for what I did,” I say more firmly. “I. . .I don’t want to be separated from you, not for a single day.”
I grit my teeth to get the rest of it out. “But I’m not going to let you take this on yourself and give everything up for me. I don’t want to be rescued if it’s at your expense. And I want…I want justice to be done.”
“Oh, fuck justice!” She pounds on my chest again, and I stand there, shocked at her swift return to fury.
“Do you hear me, Blue? Just fuck your stupid idea of justice! There is no justice in this.”
She draws a circle in the air in front of my face.
“There will be no justice in you rotting in some military jail. It’s so damn selfish of you, so. . .so sexist to think you have to do it all by yourself, take it all on yourself, to think I can’t work out my own life.”
“Sexist?” I sputter, flabbergasted. “Sexist?! Jesus, I’m trying to help you!”
I spin away from her and slam my back against the wall, sliding to the floor.
“It’s not that I don’t think you can take care of yourself, Keegan,” I say, trying to speak calmly. “But this was all my fault, and if I hadn’t turned myself in, you’re the one who would pay the price. I had to try to fix it. I had to. How the hell can you not understand that?”
The horses are stamping in the other stalls and neighing softly to each other.
I stare at my hands, trying to set my face in stone. I can feel my heart knocking against my ribs.
A few silent, excruciating moments go by while Keegan’s words puddle bitterly in my head. Finally, I look up. I have something else to say.
“Fuck justice, Keegan?” I burst out, looking up at her. “Fuck justice? Do you hear yourself?”
She’s staring wide-eyed at me.
“That goes against everything you’ve ever told me about yourself,” I go on, “about what you believe in. About what you want to do with your life. You’re giving it all up, throwing it all away. Because of me.”
“I’m not throwing away anything,” she shoots back. “And even if I was, it’s my decision to make.”
“The hell it is!”
She makes this high-pitched, growling “Awgh” sound, and then I hear her boot smack the floor just before something soft and pungent hits my forehead and drops into my lap.
I look down at the horse shit on my leg.
A few seconds tick by while neither of us speaks.
“Um,” I finally say, dryly, with a trace of a grin, “I think it might work better if you kick the shit out of me, not kick shit at me.”
She looks for a moment like she’s going to take me up on the suggestion to apply her boots to my body. And then she cracks the slightest smile.
It almost makes me cry to see her mouth curve and the tension in her shoulders ease just a little.
“Sorry,” she says tersely. “I didn’t mean to kick that at you.”
“I guess I had it coming.”
“Yeah, you did.”
She crouches in front of me and uses her scarf to wipe bits of manure out of my hair and off my face.
“You’ll ruin your scarf,” I protest. “It’s fine. I need a shower anyway.”
“The scarf can be washed,” she says, tossing it over the side of the stall. “And you can’t shower until after we go back in there and come up with a plan with the lawyer and Virginia. And your mother.”
I start to say something, but the expression on her face makes me snap my mouth shut.
“If you say ‘no’ to that, Blue Daniels,” she adds, “so help me, I will kick the shit out of you. And I’ll get my badass brother in here to help me.”
I grab her hand and hold it tight. “Keegan, I—”
She holds up her other hand. “No. No, don’t say anything else, Blue. We’re going to go back in there and work this out.”
I rise to my feet and knock the horse shit remnants off my fatigues. Then I let her lead me out of the barn.
~~~
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