Page 23 of Scorpion

I’m used to the silence. It’s all I’ve known since my parents died six years ago. The only time I’ve had company over dinner was with business acquaintances or while being surrounded by strangers at a restaurant. This? It feels like we’re strangers.

We used to know each other like the back of our hands, and sitting here, watching her eat like the mere act of it seems foreign to her, it feels like I’m back to knowing nothing but arm’s-length relationships and hollow conversations.

I want to know everything there is about her. Is green her favorite color? Does she still like to play sad music while she showers? Is she still taking her coffee with milk, or has life made her take it black? Does she still want to get into journalism? Is she still a fire hazard who butters her bread before putting it in a toaster?

I take a sip of water to dislodge the discomfort in my throat. “Why did you choose to enlist?”

Zalak pauses, naan halfway to her mouth. My gaze drops to the scorpion tattoo on her hand, and I’m struck with the sudden urge to inspect it more closely. Slowly, she sets it down on the table and leans back in her chair, brows furrowed as if it’s been so long she forgot what the answer is.

“After that… night—” She clears her throat and sits straighter in her chair, finally looking up at me. “There was nothing appealing about going to school to study journalism or politics or anything really.” Her shoulders raise in a half-hearted shrug. “I had enough cash to get me by for a couple months, but then I had nothing left. I was struggling to get a full-time job, so I worked retail casually for a little while. Working in an office sounded like a nightmare. Then I saw an ad about enlisting. Food, shelter, pay, and a place that’s completely unlike the life I grew up in—it was everything I needed at the time.”

I try not to wince at that. She was constantly trying to prove herself to her mother, and it took me a while to realize that she ran away to prove her own worth to herself.

“And you chose to be a sniper? Why do I have a feeling shooting pegs at the vineyard inspired the career choice.”

“Don’t let it get to your head. You and I were only using farming rifles.”

“Too late. I take full credit for introducing you to the world of guns.” I smirk, then whistle as I lean back in my chair and appraise her. “From shooting bottles and washing pegs, to setting the record for getting a confirmed kill at thirteen hundred meters. The sky’s the limit for you.”

The red creeping into her cheeks only bolsters my confidence that I’ll get my girl back. “The conditions were just right.”

“Don’t downplay your achievements.”

She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off if there were more of a breeze or a change in humidity.”

“You set the record, Zal,” I say softly.

“For women,” she corrects. “There are men with double those stats. Allegedly.”

Her answer makes me smile. Mainly because it means I can start sprouting statistics and swoon her with random facts. “Women make up eighteen percent of the army, and only two percent of snipers are female.”

Just as I thought, her eyes widen a fraction. I did my research and she knows it. The brownie points are in my bag tonight.

“The record holder for the greatest distance is a fifty-eight-year-old Ukrainian man. If you pull up a list of the top twenty longest recorded kills, not a single woman is on that list, and every man on there is either gray or their hairline has receded past the point of no return. In fact, you’d be on that list if that information became public. And you’d probably be the youngest.”

Something heavy settles on my chest when she takes a staggering breath.

“Fifteen hundred meters.”

I blink. “What?”

“That was my goal the second I specialized,” she explains, pushing around the food on her plate. “A man in the 1800s has a confirmed kill from fourteen hundred meters. No scope, no spotter, nothing. Just an ordinary rifle. If he could do it, then so could I… at least that’s what I told myself.”

“You got close.”

“Two hundred meters off isn’t close.” I grin at how defensive she gets, but I have to force it away when her voice makes a somber turn. “My mother died wanting another son. She finally got her wish.”

“No, she got something better than that. A survivor.”

My words hang in the air between us and I wish I could take them back so she would keep talking. So I can hear her voice and be reminded that all of this is real. I’m not dreaming of her return.

I can still remember the look she gave me before I thought I lost her for good. The sheer vehemence in her voice when she told me to leave. Why did I listen? Why didn’t I insist on sticking around in case she needed me? I could have waited for her at the end of the driveway, or tried to sneak in through her window at midnight.

Maybe if I never left, both of our families would still be alive. Maybe she’d be a journalist, and Dad wouldn’t have gotten sick, and Mom wouldn’t have followed down the same path shortly after him.

I’ve been clinging to the hope that everything would go back to the way it was as soon as she returned. But that was a deluded wish that only naïve kids have. Still, I want to hold on to it because back then things weren’t so empty.

I down my glass of water, then nod to the shirt she got on a school camp trip to the beach. “Remember when you got locked in the bathroom for two hours and you came back to the group bawling your eyes out?”

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