Yeah… so… there will be at least one more part. Hopefully one. This one was getting really long, and a weird amount of time passed which, for this story at least, didn’t fit with the other parts, so there will be 1 more part. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, most likely tonight.
enjoy and leave happy comments.
DeCoolz
VI
It was a Tuesday, three years later. Quinn was the vice president of the Business Club, and was at last surrounded by people who appreciated how smart she was. She never had to sit alone at lunch, even if she ate that lunch in the library, she’d even found a boyfriend, something she never thought she ever would.
Christi was in her first year at the University of New Hampshire, studying psychology, and loving every minute of it. She tried to talk to Quinn as often as she could but it was nearly impossible to do, except on AIM once or twice a week between homework and club meetings. She believed deeply that something really truly good had come out of Jesse’s Whitman’s death.
Kevin was on his second tour of duty, he wrote to his sister once a week, and even to Quinn a couple of times. Just to let them know that he was okay, and that he knew he had done the right thing. To the girls, it sounded more like he was convincing himself he was in the right place, than making sure they knew it. Kevin still blamed himself everyday for what happened in that attic. He had to, it was the only way he could stand in the desert everyday and fight a war he didn’t believe in anymore.
Quinn sat on her bed, half watching CNN, half procrastinating by watching random you tube videos, so she didn’t have to work on her big semester project in foreign trades, it was an easy enough project, she just really didn’t want to do it. Her roommate, Charlotte, was coloring in the periodic table on the floor for some big chemistry project. Quinn wasn’t really paying attention to anything until Charlotte threw and eraser at her.
“Quinn,” she said as the pink rectangle bounced off her arm. “You’re from Kurtwood right?”
Quinn nodded; she had an actual poster of Kurtwood New Hampshire on her side of the room, and had all three years she roomed with Charlotte.
“Do you know that guy then?” she pointed at the television screen. The picture of a Marine that looked far too much like Kevin O’Connor stared back at her.
“Turn in it up,” Quinn demanded, slamming her lap top shut.
“…Was found last week in the remains of a car bombing.” The woman on the screen said.
Quinn searched her covers for her cell phone, then her desk. “Where the fuck is it.” She yelled. Charlotte just watched.
“I guess you do know him?”
“That is Christi’s twin brother, and if anything happened to him, she’ll need me,” Quinn answered, finding her phone in the bottom drawer of her desk. She wondered why on Earth she would have ever put her phone in that drawer as she scrolled through the names. She never realized she knew so many people with “B” names before. The three rings before Christi answered seemed to go for years. “Christi!” Quinn whispered, out of breath for some reason, the moment Christi has started speaking.
“I saw on the news, and Kevin’s face, and I haven’t gotten a letter in like six months, what’s going on?
“What?” Christi laughed, “Use sentences Quinn. What was on the news?”
“Kevin, with remains of a car bomb related to him.” Quinn couldn’t understand why Christi wasn’t even a little bit freaking out. Was it possible that she had lost the ability to be upset after Jesse? It seemed unlikely, Kevin was her twin brother. Twins had some kind of magical powers; they knew when something bad happened to the other one. At least, that’s what Quinn always saw in the movies.
“Quinn, I talked to him last week on a satellite phone, he’s fine.”
“The CNN lady said the bomb was last week, I missed the beginning, but she said ‘found in the wreckage of a car bomb.’”
“Let me call my mom,” Christi said, her voice a little shaky, they can’t say things like that on TV unless they contact the family, I think.”
“Call me when you find out anything,” Quinn demanded, the girls hung up simultaneously. Charlotte just stared at the pale version of her roommate; Quinn stared at the commercial on the screen, hoping that they would replay the story, hoping that it was someone that looked just like Kevin. But Charlotte had called her attention to the news because the anchorwoman had said “Kurtwood New Hampshire.”
After the longest hour of both her and Charlotte’s lives, Quinn’s phone rang. Half way through the first ring it was against her ear. Charlotte watched her roommates face looking for a sign of any kind as to what was going on over the wires between Durham and Hanover. Quinn, over her years of practice had gotten amazingly good at now showing how she was feeling on her face. She just stared blankly at the Harry Potter behind the television.
“Alright,” Quinn said, eyes glazed. “I’ll be home tonight. I’d come now but I have a huge Finance tomorrow morning.” Her eyes met Charlotte’s. “I’ll see you around five-ish. You’re house or at your dorm? Alright Christi, tomorrow.” Quinn closed her phone.
It was a Friday, the next day, when Quinn saw Christi outside her dorm room. Christi didn’t have a car, so she needed Quinn to drive her to Boston.
The grey speckled walls and steel window sills surrounded them as they waited in the lobby at the bottom of the escalators.
Christi grabbed Quinn’s arm and pointed. There on the second floor was a man, a tall man with deep emerald green eyes in a marine uniform, sitting uncomfortably in a wheelchair, waiting. Christi screeched something that sort of sounded like him name, but with the noise around them it was clear he didn’t hear her. A woman in a matching outfit to wheelchair bound man came up behind him, and backed into the elevator.
Christi dragged Quinn to the golden doors, they opened sooner that Quinn expected. The blonde man looked up at his sister like he’d never seen her before.
“Kevin,” she whispered.
“You’re his sister?” the woman asked, Christi nodded. “Then they told you.”
“Yea, but I was hoping.” Christi took his hand; the same glazed look crossed his face.
“Maybe in a few weeks, but right now he still can’t even hear, the blast was right next to him, he’s lucky to have escaped with the injuries he did.” The woman said. She looked to Quinn, who stood frozen; there was else nothing she could do.
Kevin, Christi had explained to her the day before on the phone, and on the ride down to the airport, was in the car behind the one that exploded. He had damaged his ears so badly he would never hear again. His own vehicle was flipped by the blast, a piece of it had lodged into his head, the part right in the middle of the back, the target area, luckily he was wearing a helmet, so it didn’t kill him, but he hadn’t spoken or looked like he knew anyone around him for two weeks now.
The O’Connors made arrangements for Kevin to come home through the Marines. In all likelihood Kevin would end up dying from his brain injury, and his parents wanted to be close to him if they could.
Christi had been hoping out loud for two days that he would see her and everything would be okay.
