“It was like one of those old movies, you know, where the madwoman starts the fire and gets mesmerized by it, like she goes into a trance—” I laughed a little, not wanting to be awkward. “Sorry, all of my stories are over the top.”

“Karina . . .” God, I loved the way he said my name.

“Oh, it’s—” I was going to say, It’s okay. That’s what I always said when I told this story. Not that I told it often. But the thing was, sitting in the dark with Kael beside me, urging me on, listening, not judging . . . Well, I knew that it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all. I could have been killed. Austin could have been killed. It was so not okay. But what was not okay was usually my reality.

“You’re a good storyteller.”

That was a kind thing to say. Not, God, your mom sounds like a wackjob. I was a good storyteller. I liked the sound of that. I liked the certainty with which he said it.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know what even got me started talking about this . . .” I did that a lot, told long tales with lots of sidetracking and other mini-stories in between.

“You not wanting to join the military,” Kael reminded me.

“Right.” I pulled myself together. “I mean, my dad was gone so much of the time and coming home from deployment but still being constantly absent while training. He was always so unhappy. My mom, too. The lifestyle basically broke her. You know . . .”

He nodded.

“So my brother and I promised after that fire that we wouldn’t live our lives that way.”

“Makes sense,” Kael said, looking around the yard, then back to me. “Wanna hear my side?”

I shook my head, teasing. He smiled.

“I get that. For real, I do. But to me, a Black kid from Riverdale, joining the Army changed the trajectory of my life. It was the thing that changed my whole family. My great-grandpa’s dad was a slave, my grandpa couldn’t find a regular fair-paying job, and my mother struggled her whole life, always encouraging me to find a way to leave, and here I am, you know? Until now, the only job I’d ever had was bagging groceries at Kroger, and now I drive a decent car, can help my mom—” He stopped abruptly.

“Don’t stop—” I urged him.

That earned me a small smile. “All the shit like that. It’s hard, yeah. Really fucking hard sometimes, but the Army was the only way I was able to afford living on my own, getting a college education, having health insurance.”

I sat, digesting. He had extremely valid points, given that his opinion of the Army was the opposite of mine.

“I get it,” I told him.

“There are two sides to everything, you know?”