“Are you kidding me?” My finger punctured the ten dollar pantyhose, and so with a huff, I rolled it into a ball and tossed it across the bedroom, missing the bin by the vanity completely.

 “Nice,” Kim commented from her spot on the other side of Kylie’s bed as she pocketed her phone and then smoothed the front of her seafoam green silk dress. Seafoam green was Kylie’s favorite color, so no wonder she had picked out these dresses for her three bridesmaids. She had told me this shade reminded her of the times our families had spent weekends at Bethany Beach where she, her brother and I spent hours hunting for shells until we finally gave up and bought them at the boardwalk gift shop. A dozen shells sat on her bedside table.

“Oh no! I left my backup pair at home. What am I going to wear now?” I moaned.

“Here, Alex,” Taylor turned from looking at the vanity mirror and handed me a pair of her own.

“Thanks. They’ll be a bit small, but better than nothing.” Taylor’s slim frame and doll-like features had helped her with her dream of becoming a fashion model, and she had some success in catalogues and posters. After moving to Chicago last year, she had been signed on by one of the most prestigious agencies and her career blossomed. I hoped to visit her next fall, but after opening my shop I didn’t know if I could find the time, since my handmade soaps and candles had been more popular than I’d planned.

“Seriously, Alex. Why are you always so unprepared?” Kim poked me playfully.

“I wish I had it together like you, Kim, but things always seem to catch me by surprise.”

“You’re a mess,” Kim came over and hugged me. “But I love you for it.”

“Hi, girls,” Kylie breezed in, wearing a gown with a sweetheart neckline edged with seed pearls and a full skirt covered in silver beading which made her look like a princess. A diamond tiara completed the look.

“You look gorgeous,” Taylor gushed.

The three of us buzzed around her like bees around a rose, helping her do up the pearl buttons along her back and fixing her hair with extra-strong-hold spray, so her blonde curls wouldn’t budge even after the tenth shimmy on the dance floor.

She looked perfect. A perfect bride for a perfect day. And yet, a shadow passed over her face as she glanced out the window. I guessed she thought about her husband-to-be, Mark, a marine from Maine. They had met on a cruise to Great Stirrup Cay. Kylie could never resist a man in uniform. They had carried on a long-distance relationship for two years until he finally proposed last fall. Kylie had prepared for life as a military wife, but that was before the war started. Who knows how long they’d be together before he’d be shipped off to the frontline?

“Hey, here,” Taylor handed her a coffee without another word. She always knew what to do or say, as if she had some kind of freaky radar picking up on whatever was going on in someone’s mind.

“Thanks,” Kylie said, taking a sip, careful not to mess her lipstick.

“Don’t worry,” Taylor put her arm around her shoulders. “Just focus on today. At your wedding, nothing else matters.”

“You’re right,” Kylie said. “No matter what the future brings, today is today.”

“Your wedding day,” Kim said as she helped Kylie do up the clasp to Kylie’s grandmother’s string of pearls.

“Yeah. My wedding day,” she smiled, making her face glow like the window as the sun streamed in. “It’s just like I always dreamed it would be.”

“You look gorgeous,” I said.

“So do all of you. Thanks for being there for me. I don’t mean just today. Since we were kids, we’ve always been together.” Her lip twitched and tears shone in her eyes. After the honeymoon, she and Mark would be stationed in Honolulu.

“We’ll still be together in spirit, even if we’re thousands of miles away,” Kim said with a tight-lipped smile, as if she had given herself the same line, yet still didn’t believe it. Her work as a travel vlogger took her all over the world, and as sponsors had signed her on, her schedule filled up to next summer. She had to squeeze Kylie’s wedding into her itinerary, preparing to leave on the first plane to Bali tomorrow.

“I have something for you,” Kylie said, opening a vanity drawer and taking out three black velvet boxes. Inside each sat a gold pendant with a starfish inside a circle which said, “Wish upon a Star.”

I loved it instantly. “Oh Kylie, it’s beautiful,” the three of us cooed. I did up the clasp, the metal cool against my skin, vowing I’d never take it off.

The three of us encircled her in a group hug, trying our best not to crumple her dress or break down into tears.

“Girls!” Kylie’s mother called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s twelve. We have to go.”

***

I lagged behind, looking into the vanity mirror, straightening my hair, which looked like brown cotton candy in the late June humidity, until I finally gave up and went downstairs.

“Damn shame,” Kylie’s grandfather grumbled from the living room as I passed. “They had no right to do that,” he said.

“What happened?” I popped my head in, unable to restrain my curiosity.

“They dropped a bomb on Nicosia,” Kylie’s grandfather said as his keen blue eyes, just like Kylie’s, narrowed in contempt.

“They said it was a military target,” Kylie’s dad spoke from his lounge chair.

“Military target? They dropped it in the middle of the city! I’ve been around long enough to know when they say ‘military target’ they mean ‘we don’t give a damn where it fell or how many it killed.’ They call it ‘collateral damage’. Tell me one thing—how can you justify destroying two square miles and killing five thousand people in order to take out one building?”

Kylie’s father had no answer. Neither did I.

“People live in those buildings. I know. I stayed in Nicosia for years. Still have friends there. Good people who don’t deserve to die like this.”

“Well, they were the ones who started the war,” Kylie’s dad argued.

“No, they didn’t start the war. Their government started the war. And the people are the ones who die. The fighting goes back and forth, and more people die. For what? For honor? For their country? All just damn rhetoric, a smoke screen hiding the politicians who sit back and count all the money with their friends.”

The television screen, mounted the far wall, showed a pile of rubble and people crawling through the wreckage like ants searching for survivors. The camera caught one little girl, around six or seven, with tangled brown hair and smears on her dress, stumbling through what was left of her house, tears streaking down her face.

“Come on, Verne,” Kylie’s grandmother marched inside. “This isn’t the day for this,” she clicked off the television. “It’s time to go.”

***

The sun shone down, smiling from the sky as if it knew Kylie would be married today. On the country club grounds, in the middle of the gardens, rows of one hundred chairs lined up on the grass, each decorated with pink ribbons and roses matching the pink carpet leading up to the white gazebo where we, the groom, and his best men waited. Red roses decorated the altar, their sweet scent carrying through the air. At the front, guests started taking their seats, Kylie’s mother and grandparents in the front right row, and in the left sat an older gentleman, who by his full head of grey hair and square chin looked like an older version of the groom.

Michael stood rigid, shoulders back, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, his forehead glistening with sweat. He had fought in the battle of Istanbul, but he seemed more terrified of this new challenge, matrimony.

The music began. Everyone silenced. Kylie came in on her father’s arm, all in white, glowing like an angel. I had never known a person could be so beautiful. Her light shone from within. My friend lived out her fantasy, her perfect day, the one we had been talking about since we were children lying on the sand looking up at the stars.

The minister spoke only a few short sentences, thankfully, since the heat started to cook me from the inside.

“Michael, I promise to love you forever,” Kylie vowed.

“Kylie, no matter how far apart we are, we’ll always be together.”

“What’s that?” the ring bearer, Kylie’s three-year-old cousin asked, pointing to the east.

A mushroom cloud blossomed on the horizon. A flash blinded me.

***

Experts supposed they had been targeting the Pentagon, but the bomb had fallen a few miles away, on George Washington University Hospital. I awoke in a bed in Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. All hospitals in Washington D.C. were full. Ten thousand people had died directly in the blast. Michael was one of them. Kim was another. Kylie apparently had been saved by wearing white. And me? I had no idea. I had no clue if it had been because I had ducked, or if the radiation had hit Kim first as she had shielded Taylor and me. All I know, all I remember of the days which followed, was Kylie crying. Maybe she cried because the love of her life was dead, maybe she cried because she had lost all her family, or maybe she cried for the stupidity of it all, of becoming a military target on her wedding day. Collateral damage.

Politicians start wars. We’re the ones who die. After the blast they had crawled out of their bomb shelters to tell us everything would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

My hair fell out in clumps. Open sores covered my arms and legs. The pendant Kylie had given me had vaporized, replaced as a tattoo on my neck and chest.

Everything would be fine.

Kylie had died last night. Doctors said I wouldn’t be long after.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones.