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In the end, they were both just children, children to a world full of monsters under the bed, monsters they could never understand, were afraid to understand.
They were good at pretending, of course. Sam felt like an adult when she sat tight-lipped at the travel agency and offered up her diamond ring for a chance at survival, pulling it off her finger and cradling it to her chest like a baby before holding it out to the agent. This is what adults do, she thought. They make sacrifices.
She played at adult problems with Kaulder; they pretended to have problems that didn’t really exist in their world anymore. Kaulder could run down the hot Mexico streets in his boxer shorts yelling for Sam to come back to him, but they didn’t live in the bright city of a romantic comedy—she could go back, curl into his shoulder, they could kiss and hold hands and become something else, but in the end, they were still huddling together, holding their breath so the monsters couldn’t hear them whisper.
The first time Kaulder sounded like an adult to her was when he was crouched over her in the upturned car, arms shaking at either side of her body, protecting her from something he could never dream of fighting. “Stay down, Sam,” he said, voice full of urgency. “I’ve got you, stay down. Be quiet.” She hadn’t made a peep the entire time, and she realized that Kaulder was reassuring himself, not her. He trusted her to know what to do; she had already lived through it once and had a puffy bandage on her wrist as a reminder.
She wrapped her hand around Kaulder’s bicep and squeezed, reassuring him she was still there and breathing. “I’ve got you, too.”
They shook in each other’s arms the rest of the night as they waited out the sounds and the screams, wrapped around each other like kittens in a basket, whimpering into each other’s shoulders.
When they woke, and they saw what happened to everyone, when they saw the little girl in the red dress dead and bleeding on the ground, they were kids again. Kaulder picked up his camera, inspected the lens.
“I won’t judge you,” Sam said, looking out into the foggy, sweaty morning. “If you take a picture. I won’t judge you.”
Kaulder inhaled sharply, but his eyes were wide like he’d seen something he could never unsee, and he scrubbed his hand down his face a few times. “Why can’t I take it? Why…” he trailed off, voice shaking, and Sam came to stand next to him with her hand on his shoulder, kneading the tight muscles.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, like a mother. “Let’s cover her up. Come on, let’s make her comfy.” They pressed yellow flowers into her body, but they were just weeds, and they weren’t fooling anyone.
*
Sam felt the youngest she’d felt in a long time when they got to the top of the pyramid. They looked out at the huge border wall like some fucked-up Hansel and Gretel looking into the witch’s oven, their feet dangling and kicking over the stone edge of the pyramid. Sam looked over at Kaulder and couldn’t help but giggle.
He gave her a crooked smile, the kind that said he was trying not to smile. “What’s so funny?”
“Look at us,” she said. “Like kids who climbed a tree for the first time.” It was all funny to her all of a sudden—Kaulder with his hair wild and his sleeves pushed up on his arms, her with her tiny cross earrings and slouchy boots a size too big.
He laughed, and his teeth were so white, his face so charming.
“Let’s talk about something funny,” she said, and for a few minutes, that was their world—just the two of them, talking about useless shit on top of an ancient pyramid, and it was perfect.
*
Kaulder took a picture of the American flag across the border because it was safe; it was something people would want to see. But Sam knew his heart wasn’t in it.
*
For a few minutes in the gas station, Sam pretended. She pretended they were five or six years younger and the world hadn’t gone to shit, that there were lines of cars waiting to get gas and a little kid was throwing a tantrum in the candy aisle.
She pretended that she was a high school sophomore wearing blue jeans and a softball team tee-shirt, her hair down to her shoulders, and Kaulder was a handsome senior who worked part-time behind the counter to pay for his college tuition. She would come up and flirt with him, all shy smiles and nervous hands pressed against the glass-topped counter, and he would humor her because she was nice and because maybe he thought she was sort of cute. Those were the sort of problems Sam dreamed about, the kind she cried over at night. She wished she had a chance to be young in all the ways that didn’t matter.
Instead, she had a cold and loveless conversation with her fiancé on the gas station phone and tried not to watch Kaulder break down outside. But he was crying, and all she wanted to do was pull him into her arms like they were in the truck and tell him to let her take care of him.
*
When they were pulled apart by the military, it was like losing a limb—Sam wanted to cry and scream and shake her fists, she wanted to run back to him like he ran after her only days before. She told him she didn’t want to go home and she meant it, but she had no clue what the alternative was—going with Kaulder, meeting his son, travelling with him while he took pictures? Leave her fiancé, leave her father? Then what?
So she pretended again—she pretended she’d see Kaulder soon, that they’d see each other the next day. That they’d learn to communicate like monsters with only light and touch, that they’d always be there for each other, no matter what, because they’d survived together. That they’d see the world and kiss in front of ancient pyramids and grow together, learn to fight the monsters under the bed.
She pretended, and she cried, and felt like a little girl once more.