Chapter 2
Talking In The Dark
"I don't talk about it pretty much ever," I tell Killian. "For obvious reasons."
"You don't have to talk about it, Story," he says, his voice gentle.
"I was five. We were at a mall in St. Paul.
We'd spent the afternoon shopping. We went to Build-A-Bear and I got a stuffed tiger and a whole outfit for her. I remember being so excited. We were standing around waiting for our table at CPK to be ready. My mom and dad were arguing about something; I don’t remember what.
It was one of those quiet but intense fights, you know?
Like they didn't want me to know they were fighting? And then I heard this popping sound. I thought it was firecrackers or fireworks at first—it was around the Fourth of July, so you’d hear people shooting off fireworks and stuff for weeks before and after.
But it was different, the way it sounded.
Sharper, I guess? And then people started screaming and running. "
I can still see it happening; with the darkness, I don't even have to close my eyes to see it all play out again. Killian's hand finds my knee, and I take his hand, squeeze hard.
"Dad pushed me to the floor and lay down on top of me, and Mom was beside him. I heard…" my throat closes, hot and tight. "I heard the shooting. It was…it was so loud. Pop-pop-pop. Pop-pop-pop. Always three shots at a time. I remember that very specifically, for some reason."
"Story—"
I shove my tray away and lean into him—he's dense and warm and real.
"I heard my father plead, ‘No, no, please. Please don’t!’ My mother was just crying, and she was holding me so tight it hurt.
There was so much screaming. Pop-pop-pop.
I felt my father jerk. The shots were right over my head.
So loud. And my father jerked again. And then pop-pop-pop, and my mother jerked again.
I felt their blood on me all hot and wet.
I don't know if the shooter didn't know I was under them or didn't care, but he went on.
Shot more people. And then I heard a different gun go off, and then it was over, the shooting, I mean.
Someone pulled my parents off me eventually, after what felt like a very long time, and I saw this woman trying to help my mother.
Her hands were coated in blood up to her elbows.
She was so calm. She just looked at me and told me to close my eyes.
So I did. I closed my eyes and kept them closed.
I…I heard my dad. Choking. Gurgling." I squeeze my eyes shut against the memory.
"I heard him die. While she was trying to save my mom, my dad died. Mom too. I…opened my eyes and the woman, Selah, my mom, now—she was helping someone else. I sat and watched as she helped person after person, even after the paramedics showed up. She kept helping. Saving people. And that’s when I knew—I wanted to do that.
I wanted to make sure no one would ever lose their loved ones as I had.
I wanted to save people like she did. Everyone she touched, everyone she worked on, just her being there comforted them.
I saw it. I watched them feel comforted, just by her presence. And I wanted to be exactly like her."
"And now you are," Killian murmurs, his voice soft and quiet. "Just like her."
My eyes burn. "I know I shouldn't compare myself to her.
I know, intellectually, that I'm my own person with my own life experiences and skills.
I know that what Mom went through made her who she is.
It's just hard not to compare myself to her. Every time I start a shift in the ER, I think of Mom in that mall, and somehow, in my own estimation of myself at least, I’ll never measure up.
" I laugh, and it's wet, tearful. "That’s something else I've never told anyone. "
"I'm honored that you're sharing it with me," Killian says, and there's not a hint of sarcasm or disingenuity in his voice.
I sniffle a laugh. "You're really getting the inside scoop on Story Binyamin, huh?"
"I can empathize with feeling like you'll never measure up," Killian says after a few minutes of silence.
"You?" I laugh. "Okay, sure." He doesn't answer immediately, and I have a feeling my sarcastic response landed wrong. "Killy?"
"When I was thirteen, and Brynnie was fifteen…wait, no, she’d just turned sixteen…
anyway, Dad let us do one of your dad's wilderness survival camps up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
We'd both had the same lessons up till then.
This was supposed to be a big test, right?
Like, to see if we'd really internalized what they'd been teaching us.
It wasn't just wilderness survival, as I'm sure you’re aware.
We had to reach a specific set of coordinates within a specific timeframe—we had forty-eight hours, I think, to cross something like fifty miles?
We were supposed to go together, but Brynnie and I couldn't tolerate each other long enough to make it more than two miles together before we were about to kill each other, so we split up. She even gave me a head start because of course my sister would turn it into a fucking competition. Never mind I’m two and a half years younger than her.
She cleared the course a full three hours faster than me.
She hit every single target and spotted and disarmed every trap. "
"Oh god, Dad and his traps and targets," I mutter. "I'm all too familiar."
Dad likes obstacle courses, but not what you probably think when you hear the phrase.
We're not talking boot camp courses where you climb over walls and crawl under barbed wire and boring, stupid nonsense like that.
Dad's "obstacle courses" are a proprietary blend of wilderness survival challenges, close-quarters combat tests, marksmanship tests, and room-clearing tests.
It's a Point A to Point B journey through rugged terrain—Michigan's UP, the mountains of Colorado, the jungles of Hawaii, the bush of Alaska in the dead of winter.
But, just to spice things up, Dad or Sasha or Duke or one of the other high-level A1S guys will show up somewhere along the course and you have to defend yourself against them in hand-to-hand combat.
Another section requires you to put rounds through targets—stationary and pop-up—in a challenging sequence.
Meaning, it's not just kneel there and shoot.
It's a target at twenty yards with your pistol and another at a hundred fifty with your rifle—both at the same time—and then several in quick succession popping up here and there.
There's inevitably going to be a cabin, hut, or other structure to take shelter in for the night—assuming you correctly clear it, tagging the cardboard bad guys and saving the cardboard hostages.
Fail any of the sections and you go back to the start.
When I was ten, the course was a three-mile stretch in the woods of northern Minnesota where Dad owns a few hundred acres of wilderness, and the challenges were appropriate to my age and skill level.
By the time I graduated high school, I was clearing courses of a hundred miles that would challenge a professional operator.
Failure on a course like that is a brutal lesson, but then, I was always determined to succeed because the idea of disappointing Dad in anything is just… no. I'd rather die than let him down.
And oh yeah, scattered throughout the course are any number of traps.
Non-lethal, non-injuring versions of the real thing that would maim or kill, using paint where the real thing would use spikes or whatever.
And you can't just dodge them—you have to locate and disarm them. Miss one? Fail— start over.
Yeah, my upbringing was not…normal.
Nor was Killian's, though. He did all that, but he also had the added burden of the complicated business aspect of being an heir-apparent of Alpha One Security—which happens to be one of the most famous and successful private security companies in history.
"What set you back?" I ask.
He splutters. "Oh, fucking everything. She's just faster than me. Better reflexes. Better accuracy. She doesn't hesitate where I take a second or two to find my target. And in a course like that, a few seconds here and a few seconds there add up."
I laugh. "Killy." He's prevaricating.
"The fucking traps, okay?" He sighs, disgusted. “It's always the traps. I always miss one or two."
"Me too," I admit. "Although for me it's usually the room clearing.
I can knock the wings off a mosquito from almost any distance as long as I'm stationary and can take my time setting up my shots.
But the quick-reaction, close-quarters stuff?
I'm not…bad…exactly. I'm just never as good at it as I'd like. "
He laughs. "I've seen you clear rooms, Story. You're full of shit."
"I have high standards for myself. But then, look at who my dad is, I guess, right?"
"High standards?" he says, laughing again in disbelief. "If you think you're deficient in anything, you're delusional. You're better than all of us."
His praise lights a strange, uncomfortable, and sort of squirmy fire in my gut. "Thank you, Killy."
The rocking lulls us both into a drowse.
"Story?"
"Mmm."
"Is it fucked up, do you think, that we were brought up the way we were? Trained to do things we were? Like, we did a lot of stuff that is definitely not normal for kids to do."