Electric

chapter twenty-two

"We must speak about this, love." Parker is suddenly leaning against my door frame. I tilt my head to the side and look at him.

    "What do we have to talk about?" I furrow my eyebrows and push my hair over my shoulder. I was simply sitting on my bed and brushing my long hair when he entered. There aren't a lot of entertainment options in an army compound.

    "I still would very much like for you to lead a battle squad and so would the other soldiers. We have reason to believe that you're a leader and because of your power, you make one hell of a soldier." Whoa. I've never heard Parker say hell before. This is getting serious. I sigh and set the brush down on the bed.

I knew he would bring it up again. I hadn't decided what I was going to say to him but I still knew that we would revisit this topic of conversation. He watches me thinking about it and I can feel the heat of his gaze.

    "Parker-"

    "Look, love, I know you do not want to but it is only logical. I cannot imagine you following orders from your squad leader when we go out there. And I do not trust any of their judgment enough to let them lead you. You know how to use your power quite well by now, and frankly we need you out there. If we want to win this battle then we need our best soldiers in the front here." He interrupts me. I raise my eyebrow and hide my amused expression.

    "I was going to say okay I'll do it, but go ahead and keep talking." I can't hide my smile as I notice he blinks at me a little in shock. He had a whole essay written out in his head ready to be used to persuade me. I'm sure my surrender threw all of that off.

    "Wait, so you will lead one of the squads tomorrow?" He checks and I nod.

    "On one condition: I want Ty on my squad." I add and he smirks.

    "I didn't know we were negotiating, love." I shrug. "Fine, you can have Private Hensley." He concedes.

    "So are we getting our squads tomorrow and then going over strategy?"

    "I'm sorry, I cannot tell you. That information is top secret, Private Evans." I blink at him, confused by his words, and then I get it. He's teasing me. General Parker of Division 64 is teasing me. I snort and get off of the bed.

    "General Parker, is there anything I can do to persuade you?" I say as I approach him and he raises his eyebrow at me. "Because I can be pretty persuasive when I want to be." I'm finally in touching distance and I'm surprised when he stands there watching me with his hands in his pockets.

    "We have to make it to diner, love." He says hoarsely. I offer him a small smile. Right. I have to go out and be social with soldiers that aren't Parker. I have to be a participant in this army. Ugh. All I want to do is cuddle up against him and sleep. But I follow him to the cafeteria anyway and sit down next to him with my tray full of food. I even sit there and listen to him talk to some soldier about the soldier's plans for after the war. And that's when it hits me.

    If I survive, what am I going to do?

    Will they put me back in the asylum? It's the Prominence so I can't imagine them just letting me go. The Prominence showing mercy on a Freak like me is such a joke. That'll happen when I get my family back. Oh. If they do let me go, I don't have family to go back to. All of these men will get to go back to their wives and children, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and I'll be going back to an empty house full of memories and a blood splattered floor.

They've taken everything from me. All my life, I've wanted to get out of that wretched asylum but never once did I think about the fact that I would be going back to more silence and more hunger and more sadness. I'll never get back what the Prominence has taken from me. Yet here I am a soldier in their army, a pawn in their game of chess.

    I mean, there's Parker but what makes me think that he doesn't have a mother or a father to get back to? I always thought of Parker's home as in the asylum but Parker had a life before this Hell and he may have been young, but he had one. And would Parker even want me to stay with him. We would have to be in, like, a really serious relationship for me to go and live with him after this whole mess is finally sorted out.

    Why would Parker want to keep me?

    "Freak!" Josh calls and I look up, plastering a smile on to my face. Parker eyes me, catching my facade, but Josh just smiles and beckons me over to him. I go to get up and Parker grabs my wrist. The room goes silent. The funny thing is that he doesn't even care that everyone is watching. He frowns at me and I offer a smile. He knows it's fake. When I move again and he won't let go, I sigh.

"I'm fine, General." I assure and he frowns even deeper. He stares at me and I stare back, unrelenting until he loosens his grip and I gentle my wrist from his fingers. The room picks up its volume once I'm making my way towards Josh's table. I sit down next to Ty with my eyebrow raised at Josh.

    "We're going outside tonight for a few hours after diner. Rumor has it that the army is moving out in the middle of the night tomorrow which leaves this as our possibly very night." Josh fills me in and I feel a sense of dread at his words. This could be my last night with this odd group of friends that I've acquired.

    "Is this an invitation?"

    "Yeah we figured you'd want to look at the stars." Ty teases and nudges me in the side with his elbow. I laugh, but he's actually right. I want to see the stars. I remember them being so beautiful yet I never really appreciated them. Stars were just the nightlights up in the sky when the sun went to bed. Maybe the moon is afraid of the dark. 

"Are you in?" Josh snaps me out my haze.

         "I'm in."

"Oh my god." I whisper the minute the cool night breeze brushes against me and the sounds of nightfall surround me. "It's beautiful."

    The stars twinkle down at me like all of them are sharing some joke and winking at each other at different times. Some of them obviously aren't apart of the joke because those stars stay constantly shining. Ty laughs at me and we keep moving forward towards the courtyard. I follow them with my eyes trained above me the whole time. The night isn't simply stunning; it's breathtaking.

"You act as though you haven't seen stars for years." Levi laughs and I smile.

"I haven't."

We finally stop and I waste no time to lie down on my back and stare up at the sky. I listen halfheartedly as Ty points to the different constellations. I've heard people say that there's a star for each person that has died. To me, it wasn't true. There just aren't enough stars in the sky to cover the amount of death I've seen, let alone the amount that everyone else has seen.

But when I look up there now, I want to believe it's true. One of those stars is Mitch looking down at me. Would he be proud of me? Would he look down and smile at how far his little sister has come? And what would my father think? Would he see me laying here looking up at him and be pleased with the woman I've become? Maybe he's been watching me struggle all of these years, unable to come down and help me when I almost reached the breaking point. Would he look down right now and think of me as someone strong or someone to be ashamed of?

And I've never met my mother but I would like to think that if she could see me now, she would think I was as beautiful as I thought she was when I saw pictures of her. She was like a beacon of light in the pictures of her with my dad and Mitch. She was always beaming at them like nothing could make her happier. Is she beaming down at me now if she is really a star up in this sky of dead souls?

I hope that the answer to all of those questions is yes.