Constance

Dr. Salerno is sweating hard up there onstage. He never dressed wrong for the occasion, but in his defense, sometimes I did feel like some of us would never graduate. The hot summer sun is as stern as his stare is solemn, and it eyes his blazer gleefully as it stiffly soaks in sweat.

I lean forward, and I can feel my fingers almost fluttering in anticipation when the delicate gold embroidery catches the light. Each diploma is gracefully unfolded, clean, and matte, with each edge lined ever-so-gorgeously with a mystifying shimmer. I just couldn’t care less about dying in this heat, because I feel like I’ve been dying for this degree for long enough.

“Ella Alvarez.” 

Ella was the second friend that I ever made here. Chemistry was – still is! – a pain in the ass, but I could always count on her for a nonsensical laugh when I needed it. She’d say the most ridiculous things, and I’d laugh even if I didn’t find them funny, because my other option was actually paying attention to Dr. Zhang’s lecture.

I applaud with my whole heart when she graces the stage.

“Alexander Anderson.” 

That one throws me off a little bit. I always just knew him as Alex, or the guy who asked me out on a dare in middle school. Mostly the latter, to be honest. I think he polished up nicely today, which is embarrassing. As fond as my memories with him weren’t, I’m not exactly devastated to be parting ways with him. Twelve years in school with a guy that did nothing but groan when I raised my hand in class are more than enough for me.

Inexplicably, he marches onstage with threadbare shoes.

“Jacob Banks.” 

I was tired of seeing this guy’s face. It just wasn’t enough to be homecoming and prom king. My favorite time we ever spoke – out of all three times ever, probably – was when he offered me a hundred-dollar bill to write his final paper on the French Revolution. I didn’t take it, of course, but I was almost flattered – not because I thought he thought I was smart, but because I appreciated that he thought I was cool enough to break some school rules for cash. I didn’t take it though. 

I don’t know why he’s running across the stage, and I don’t know why I hear shouting. 

“Kate Brown-Zhang.” 

She’s my next-door neighbor. She’s quiet and I don’t think she likes me very much, but her parents bring over mooncakes sometimes, so it doesn’t really matter that much to me. 

“Ella Anderson.” 

I don’t think I’m hearing that right. I take off my cap to fan myself a little bit and I pretend to adjust the bobby pins underneath. I don’t think it’s gotten any hotter, but maybe it’s just nerves. We’re all nervous today; it hasn’t been an easy thirty years for us. 

No, it hasn’t been thirty years. What am I even thinking? I’m graduating from high school, and I’m waiting for my high school diploma, and Dr. Zhang is sweating onstage, and we’re all sweating because it’s so hot. 

“Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks.”

I don’t know where he went, but he probably just didn’t hear his name being called. He is just absentminded like that – it’s why he wanted to pay me for homework and why he always wanted me to check off his attendance sheet for him when he didn’t come to training. 

Training was tough, because Sergeant Salerno was – still is! – a pain in the ass. It was a little easier when I had Kate by my side, though. She was the cool, calm, combatant, and I was… 

“Theresa Callahan.” 

I always thought Theresa was the prettiest girl in our grade. Today, she looks no different – perfect for the weather, and perfect just in general – with her lashes curled and her cheekbones brushed. Everyone else’s gown is a boxy, fashion-backward nightmare, and somehow hers drapes over her shoulders in a way that almost makes me as jealous as I was in middle school. I remember wanting to wear a black dress, because that’s what I told Alexander I would wear – he told me he thought I was too cool for him, and I told him he was being silly – but really because I thought it could make me a little bit prettier than Theresa. 

That reminds me of how excited I am to see Alexander tonight! I’m surprised that we’ve made it this far, but I don’t mind. Mom always makes fun of me for picking the medic part of combat medic, but I like replying by telling her that there’s no amount of blood I can’t handle. 

“Victor Jacobs-. Jacobs. Jacob. Jacob Banks. Jacob Banks. Jac-”

I really wish they’d stop yelling. It’s hard enough to focus inside this horrible tent, and I just want to get through these last few stitches. I fix my fingers inside the glove, take a deep breath, and lean forward. 

A tassel hits my eye. I don’t remember putting the graduation cap back on. I don’t remember how to sew stitches. I don’t remember sweating this hard in scrubs. I don’t remember what I’m looking forward to tonight, or why I’m in a gown, or when Sergeant put on a blazer. I just want them to stop yelling, because I just need to focus on which handshake I reach for first when I step onstage, so that everything looks good in pictures, becau-

The tent door collapses with a horrifying thud and the force of a sturdy, solid man.

Jacob Banks. 

He barely gets to his feet and he hardly catches his breath when he begins to shout: “Go. NOW!”

Our camp is under attack. I desperately sweep my supplies into my bag. Scissors, thread, gauze. Ointment, thermometer, a handgun. I turn to the bed, and Kate is trying to stand. I throw her arm around my shoulder and hoist my bag on my waist. We leave the tent, each step almost as staggered as poor Kate’s breathing. 

We’d been looking for Banks for months now. I love Kate so dearly, but there are days that I am certain that if combat doesn’t kill her, heartbreak will. And now Banks is back. And he’s telling us to run. 

“Vivian Ke.” 

Where am I? Where is Kate? My skin is itching, and heat rash might be my luckiest hypothesis. I’m sweating bullets, but I’m hearing bullets.

“James Kristiansen.” 

I need to run.

“Sophia Liu.”

Banks is gesturing wildly at me, but my name may as well be a stranger to him right now – I know that if anyone wants to make sure Kate is okay as badly as I do, it’s him. Her breathing is ragged, and I’m terrified. Her chest rises and falls with the sort of rhythm that grows impossible to keep up with, and I’m sobbing so loudly that I just barely make out Banks’ words.

“Michelle Long.” 

This isn’t why I picked medic, Mom. That’s all I can think of when I see my best friend bleeding out in front of me. We’d bled out in front of each other in every other way before; there was no secret untold between the two of us. We’d bled out in front of each other before, but not like this. 

“Constance?”

I always thought it was silly that Mom married a medic, too. I wasn’t averse to turning out just like my father, but I wasn’t really aspiring to be him, either. I thought his pacifism was a bit much, but truth be told, sometimes I just got scared of the fire in Mom’s eyes. I’d only ever spilled blood on my scrubs, and I was not looking for more of it.

“Constance?”

I never knew how to feel about Dr. Zhang taking me under his wing the way he did. In some way, I was proud to have suffered through my studies and turmoiled through my training, because I was proud of the fruits of my own labor, but I wasn’t particularly proud of my best friend’s father – the man who would bring us mooncakes every once in a while – being the guy who handpicked me for his team. 

“Constance!”

“Banks!” I blink.

“Stay with us, please!”

I’ve never seen Banks like this. His hair is stringy with sweat, and he’s breathing almost as hard as Kate, but instead of fighting themselves, his lungs are fighting the thought that to win the war, his lover may have to lose the battle. 

“Please, Constance. Stay with us,” he pleads. “I can not have your mind drifting off to who-knows-where right now. Please.” 

“I’ve got her, Banks,” I roll my shoulder a little bit. Kate is not tall, but she may be even sturdier than Banks, and I never really had the upper body strength that seemed to come so easily to her. “I’ve got her.”

“Andrew Martins.”

I’m dizzy. It’s improper to sit down onstage – not that it would be particularly comfortable in this crunchy gown – but my feet hurt like hell, and it’s just so unbearably hot out here. 

It’s hot out here in the sun. It’s hot out here in the summer sun, because I’m graduating from high school today.

No, it’s hot out here by the fire we’ve set up. It’s hot out here but I’ll bear with it because Kate is shivering, because I’m saving my best friend today. It’s hot out here, and I really wanted to see Alexander tonight. 

No, no, no. No. I’m in a graduation gown, but I’m suffocating in these scrubs. I’m cradling Kate’s body, one that I could’ve never fathomed being this fragile, but when I look at her face, I hardly recognize her. I remember that she’s quiet, but I can’t remember if she’s just too cool to be talking all the time, or if she thinks I’m just the weird neighbor. I can’t remember where I am. I can’t remember where I am. I can’t remember where I am.

“Constance.”

I am sure Banks has tired himself out with my name by now. I don’t know how many times his voice has gone in one ear and out the other. 

“Constance.” It’s her voice now. “Constance, it’s okay.”

It’s not okay. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Nothing makes me feel okay quite like Kate’s voice, but this time is different. It’s not okay.

“You know it has to happen.”

I don’t want it to. I still don’t know what she’s talking about, but whatever it is, I don’t want it, and I don’t want it to happen to her. 

“You know it has to happen, because we’re still happening up there.”

What is she talking about?

“You know, because you can feel it happening up there, can’t you?”

I fall to the ground. It all hits me at once – my training, our graduation, our camp, our stage.

“Constance?”

Banks again.

“Is she… right?”

I’ve never heard Banks like this. He’s asking me a question, but he’s really begging for an answer that he knows isn’t true.

It all hits me at once – my training, a lifetime of learning my role in protecting the future; our graduation, the future my loved ones have dedicated their lives to; our camp, a tattered home for the tools and tenants of our war; our stage, a walkway for what is to come, for what is to happen up there. 

“Irene McDonald.”

I don’t know what Banks has seen. I am so certain that it’s too much. There were secrets untold between Kate and I. I lied to her. A lot. She’d ask me if I believed Jacob was out there, winning our fight for the future, and I’d lie when I told her I had faith. She’d ask me if I believed Alexander when he promised peace for the family we’d have one day, and I’d lie when I told her that I had no reason to not believe him. 

“Nathaniel Nuo.”

It all hits me at once – that I may have to lose this battle, too.

“You can’t let them know.”

The world up there can’t cross paths with the war-torn. That was one of the first lessons we were taught in training – Salerno or Zhang, I can’t remember. 

“You have to walk.” 

I can’t. I am no immovable object. I am no unstoppable force. I can’t walk – not away from Kate, and definitely not across the graduation stage. I can handle blood, but not hers. 

“You have to let it happen.” 

“Kate…” the single syllable spills out of my throat – I sob it a million times more than I say it aloud. “Why?”

I ask her, as if I don’t already know the answer. I know that there is a world up there where we are strangers and where nothing is forlorn. Because really, I want to ask her “Why you? Why me?” and I can’t finish the sentence because we know the answer far too well, but we still can’t put words to it.

She doesn’t answer. I don’t know if it’s less painful this way, but it all seems marginal, the way she may as well rip my heart out of my chest along with Banks’ lungs. 

“Walk, so that the rest of us can too.”

I know she’s right – I know that staying behind by the fire with her will mean burning my decades of training, decades that taught me that there is always a future worth fighting for, free of the ferment that we’ve used to make a home for ourselves here. 

And yet, it makes no sense at all to me. Why didn’t she deserve to walk, too, right here in this world? Why did staying behind to fix the present become mutually exclusive with moving forward for the future? Why were we bound to sacrifice? Why? Why? Why? 

I love her too much to ask her aloud. In that moment, I wouldn’t hesitate to burn the future for her. 

I hear Banks sigh. I am too devastated to wonder if he can hear me sigh, too. 

“Constance.”

This is the last time that I will hear her voice. 

“Tell me you’ll walk.”

Does she know that I’ve been lying? Does she know that I’m falling apart even more than she sees?

It hits me that maybe she’s lying to me too. I wonder for a moment if she’s ever really felt cool or calm before – if she’s ever really won in the race against uncertainty. It hits me that she is scared.

This moment is long, and yet it passes through me with a swiftness that seems to tear my soul apart. 

“I will.”

I don’t know if my last words to her were a lie. 

I don’t know what awaits me on the other end of that diploma. I can hardly remember the people that I share the stage with – I’ve shared a lifetime with them, really, but it feels as if I still can’t place names to faces to stories to secrets.

“Angela Owens.”

I’m scared. I’m carrying the blood and guts and choices and griefs from a house that I made into a home, and I’m unsure if I can do the same for another. I’m terrified. I’m equipped with only the certainty of uncertainty and I feel horrifically under-studied and under-trained. My shoulders are stiff with stress and sadness. I don’t know how long I’ve been breaking into my cold sweat, and I can’t be sure of anything right now.

“Michael Price.”

When I walk – if I walk – will I be walking into a mass of people who have no idea what I’ve given up – what my people have given up – for them? Or, will I introduce myself to a room filled with envoys of silent suffering like mine? Will every unfamiliar face lie to me, too? I can’t know. Up there, we are strangers to each other, and it’s no surprise that sometimes I am a stranger to myself. I’m not privy to how much we have convinced ourselves and each other that sacrifice is a blessing – I don’t know how much convincing it takes. I don’t know how much we don’t know – maybe I can only be sure that we have all decided that it is worth it. 

I ask myself if maybe trivial is the best I can hope for. I used to be scared to lie to myself. I was scared to fantasize about a world – a story – that starts, and doesn’t end, with deserving better. I am still wondering now if the future is worth leaving behind the past for. It’s a wonder that finds itself fascinated with schoolyard crushes and enraptured by boredom and comforted by confusion. I find myself in this wonder – no, I find my family in this wonder, and I am still scared. To abandon the big things for the little things, to turn away from the familiar face of fighting in favor of the future… my heart races with a rhythm that perfectly matches my mind, and I reach up to wipe the sweat from my brow, and– 

“Constance Qiu.”