Children's Draft

Chapter 11 (Part One)

(Aaron's PoV)

    Connor climbed down from his top bunk, flicking my head as he reached the floor. "Well Aaron, you know what day it is."

    I pushed myself up and smirked. "Hell yeah, July 9th. Happy Birthday, man."

    "You too," he replied.

    "Seventeen," I realized. "We can legally go watch R rated movies now. You know, as soon as we get done with the war."

    We both shared the same expression of disappointment.

    Sean nearly jumped out of bed. Luckily he slept on a bottom bunk. "Whoa! You guys have the same birthday. That's so cool!"

    "Well actually Sean-" I tried to explain, but man, that kid could talk.

    "That means you could have a combined birthday party. That would be awesome! Have you ever done that? One time I had a birthday party at-"

    "Sean," I stopped him.

    "Yeah." He looked up. Surprisingly, he still had oxygen left in his lungs.

    "We weren't born on the same day," I told him. "Connor's birthday's the 6th, and mine's the 11th, but we just picked a day in between so we could celebrate them together. We've done that since we were little."

    "Oh," he said. "Well that's still cool."

    "But if you look at them separately, it means that Aaron's still technically a little kid," Connor joked.

    "Despite how much more mature I am," I added, playfully punching him.

    "Have you gotten anything?" Sean asked.

    Connor furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"

    "Yeah," I continued. "It's not like we could get presents. We're thousands of miles from home."

    "I know that," he responded while fidgeting with his hands. "I meant, like something small...or even just a letter."

    Connor shot me an awkward glance. Our birthday had never really been a big deal outside of the two of us. There wasn't anything wrong with that, but it was just the way it had always been.

    "Don't worry," he assured us. "It's probably just cuz mail's really slow here."

    I gave him a half-hearted smile. "Sure."

    Spending our birthday here was definitely one of our worst ones. It was right up there with the time we had to be separated for our 12th one cuz Connor had to go to Lincoln for his brother's state baseball tournament. When I asked if he could spend the weekend at my house, my parents got mad at me for "trying to ruin the Nothams' family time." Even though we were at least together now, the whole "imminent danger" thing was kind of putting a damper on the mood.

    Connor fired off another bullet. "It seems like there's more people trying to cross the barricade every day."

    I grimaced. How long was it gonna be until one of them actually made it? But then again, it wasn't long ago that we lost track of one of them.

    I looked down to see Sean practically huddled over the ground.

    "Are you all right?" I asked.

    "Yeah," he said quickly.

    Everyone seemed more on edge ever since Andrew almost got shot. I couldn't blame them. The incident kept my own guard up, but I still felt guilty whenever I had to fire my gun. I kept a close watch on the other side all day.