Page 97 of The Gods Will Sing Our Song

I carefully put the drawing in my pocket and take out my deer.

“And you take this.”

He pales. “Violet, no. What if something happens over there and I lose it? It’s from your father. You need to keep it.”

“I’ve already decided,” I say. “I’ve whispered in its ear every night that it must keep you safe.”

“Are you sure?”

“More than sure.” Slowly, carefully, he slides it into his pocket. His reaches for me, holds me. “You better come back to me,” I say. He’s been so strong, but suddenly I see the enormity of his future in his eyes. He’s going to war. Who knows what he’ll see or what he’ll have to do. “I swear, I’ll kill you if you die over there, Ren Hamada.”

In one motion, Ren envelops me in his arms. I hear his heart hammering beneath his shirt, and I close my eyes.

“I will, Violet,” he says. “I promise I’ll come back. We’ll get married and we will never be apart, ever again.”

My heart is breaking again. When I learned Otōsan died, it shattered. I wanted desperately, violently, to go home—while knowing I never would. Now my heart breaks in a different way. It has the same desperation, but it feels like searching—like I’ll be looking for Ren everywhere and my eyes won’t find rest until he’s safe and back.

“Everything is going to be okay,” he says, clutching me.

“How can everything be okay when we’re apart?” Agony fills my voice.

“Because this—me going away—is how we’ll get there, Violet. It’s how we get to a world where no one can ever tear us apart. We’ll get there, and then we’ll leave them all behind. We’ll forget them and what we had to do because we’ll have each other, and damn it, it’s all we’ll ever need.”

War is a horrible thing. I know this. But I’ve learned something.

Some people go to war out of hate. But some people go to war out of love. As I stand in his arms, I think that the government tried to take everything from us. They took our homes and our shops. Our futures and hope. They took Otōsan and Emi. They called us the enemy and put us behind barbed wire. But there’s something they can’t take away: how I feel when Ren takes my hand in his and whispers “I love you.”

Shakily, I pull free and wipe my eyes.

“I—I need to go,” I say. “Mama has to register the answers to her questionnaire tomorrow at the mess hall. I told her I’d help her get ready.” I pause. Life and the rest of its worries scramble to claim my mind. “She signed yes to the allegiance question. She’ll be stateless.”

“But she’ll be with you, and that’s what she cares about most,” Ren says, and it’s true. I think about Mr. Nomura fighting for our rights. After the war, I’ll fight for Mama to get hers. For her to have what she’s always been denied, even as she’s poured her blood, sweat, and tears into America. Citizenship.

Ren pauses and shifts.

“Violet, I don’t think you should come when we leave. It’ll be too hard. So hard that I might not get on the bus. Will you do that, for me? Let this be our goodbye?”

I think he’s doing it for me, really. I might not be able to let him go. I reach for him again, and when we kiss, it’s our goodbye.

And then it happens.

Time freezes.

Rationally, I know it doesn’t. But, in a way, it does. It’s as though our kiss is one single, untouched moment. It’s like my drawings, where every detail captures movement—dripping salt water, unfurling hair, splashing waves—but the image is frozen, just as it is. Just as it was. Just as it will be.

And that’s us. Here and now.

It makes it easier when we do pull away. I think the kiss is something I can return to, even when Ren is a continent away.

As I leave, I round the corner of Ren’s barrack and stumble by the fish pond. Ethan is there, floating a paper boat. He peers shyly up at me through his overgrown bangs.

“What will you fill the pond with?” he asks. “You didn’t say.”

I stare deep into the water, as though it’s a wishing well. And maybe it is. Maybe the pond cradles everything for us at the camp, letting us pour our hurts into it and keeping them for us so we can just be for a bit. I smile at Ethan.

“I’d fill it with hope.”

Chapter Thirty-Six