She hated him. He hated her. And that was alright in their world until one night. Everything changed then, conversations exchanged between drags of a shared cigarette having developed a mutual respect between enemies.
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Slowburn enemies to frie...
Davis once told me something in the cold dead of a winter night. I listened to him carefully, holding weight to every breath he made. Shoved into the bay window of the Home, illuminated by the blizzarding snow catching in street lights, he spoke softly;
"The past has a way of haunting us."
His father was one of five million immigrants who entered the United States in the 70s. A previous member of a rising criminal enterprise in Greece, his father wanted out before he wound up dead.
"The past has a way of haunting us." He used to tell Davis as a warning that even in a different country, your past sticks to you.
Shadows in every corner that could be someone he knew, avoiding police like they knew something about him. He never planned to have kids. He thought it was selfish. What if he was caught? He didn't want to bring a fatherless child into this world.
But things don't always work out the way you plan.
Davis came to be from a happy accident. It made his father rethink his stance on family and made him feel safe. He became less careful.
"Wasn't long 'til they found him," Davis had told me. "I was four years old. The gang had a rule against killing kids. Mom and Dad weren't so lucky."
Davis had been at the orphanage for years by the time I got there. He was two years older than me, but I had a crush on him from the second I laid eyes on him. He'd carried my single trashbag of clothes up the flight of stairs for me, dropping it at the door of the girls' dormitory he wasn't allowed to enter.
He practically ran the Home. All the kids went to him for help, even the mean older girls. If you needed contraband, Davis could get it in. If you were short on food, he'd give you his lunch.
I always found him working out in the back garden between the rosebushes Miss Pearl grew. I visited him there every day. Workouts turned into conversations, then turned into sitting between his legs and leaning on his chest as I read to him.
He told me he wanted to be like his father, but better. So when the United States Armed Forces were looking for volunteers for the Iran-Iraq War in 81, he signed his life away at the ripe age of sixteen.
"Retribution for my father's mistakes is required." That was his excuse for leaving me. It was stupid, and I told him such. How dare he leave me now? After everything we'd been through.
His only excuse was a weak one, "the past has a way of haunting us."
He left for basic training the next day.
From there, they shipped him off straight to Bagdad.
I sat in our window every Monday, waiting for the mailman to deliver the weekly letter Davis had sent. They consisted of lists of his fallen comrades, ingredients he thought the mush they served in the mess hall might consist of--including goat and horse--and complaints of how much he missed me. He promised the second they'd let him out, he'd come home with his heavy compensation and buy us a house somewhere out in the countryside.
For three weeks, I received no letters.
I hoped he was on his way home, and that's why the letters stopped.
I scanned the newspaper everyday for updates on the war. It was still going strong.
On the fourth Monday, there was a knock on the door. Miss Pearl pulled the door open. She spoke with a gentleman for a few seconds, before a shattering cry left her mouth. All the kids ran to see what the commotion was about.
An older man in uniform held a flag folded into a perfect triangle, dog tags laying on top of it. I picked up the tags, scanning the name engraved on them.
Davis Connor Pettersburgh.
The soldier at the door couldn't do much to quell the chaos that followed. Kids screamed and cried, throwing things around the Home. It wasn't fair. We'd been the closest thing he had to family. They were supposed to deliver him home, not a box.
Davis was gone, and all we had left of him was a chain of two dog tags and a coffin we didn't dare to open.
I still see him everywhere. In the streets, on stranger's faces. When I get ready in the morning and gaze into the mirror, my older reflection and his ghostly, never-aging one beside it. He'll be sixteen forever, never getting to grow old like we planned.
It's one of the biggest losses the world ever faced. Davis was smart, even more so than he was kind. He could've changed the world, given the chance.
But now I see him in everything that could've been, in the endless possibilities if he were still here.
He was right. The past certainly has a way of haunting us.
