When I finally found my voice, sort of, I asked what probably seemed like the most inane question ever. “What siege?”

Whatever game he was playing, I didn’t feel like playing along anymore. For someone who'd served in the military, joking about things like sieges wasn't funny.

But still...there were those gunshots I heard.

Something was going on, and I needed to find out what it was. I was proud to serve my country, but my family was still my first priority. If they were in danger, I needed to understand the enemy.

At this point, though, I wasn't sure if the enemy was out there somewhere, or here, sitting across from me.

“The English,” Gracen said. “They arrived in early April. The city’s been under siege since then.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “The British are our allies. Why would they attack us?”

He stood up and stretched, obviously impatient with my questions. “While the siege of Boston may perhaps be news, I can't imagine that there's a corner of the colonies that isn't aware of the rebellion.” He gave me a hard look. “Things will only get worse if you ask me. They named George Washington Commander in Chief. After Lexington and Concord, things will probably just get bloodier.”

The words threw me back in time...or was it forward?

I was suddenly at home again, a high school teenager too bored to do anything useful with her time. Bruce had gone to Virginia Beach on spring break with a couple of his cousins. He'd blown off my concerns, but that didn't stop me from worrying about what he'd do when I wasn't around to remind him that he had a girlfriend. I hadn't made too big of a deal about it though. I didn't want him to think that I didn't trust him.

Still, I needed to get my mind off of things, and the only way to do that was fill my time with something useful.

The only problem was, I had no idea what.

I walked into my brother’s room. Ennis was resting his head on the palms of his hands, textbooks open around him as he studied for his upcoming finals. I strode in like I owned the place and plopped down on the bed, sighing loud enough to get his attention.

“Not now, Honor,” Ennis said, flipping a page as he compared one text to the other.

“I’m bored,” I whined, grabbing one of the many texts that were strewn all over his bed. “Give me something to do.”

“Honor, seriously, I have work to do.” His irritation was clear in his voice, but I didn't pay any attention to it.

It was an older brother's job to be annoyed by his little sister.

“What is this stuff, anyway?”

“It's called history, Honor. Maybe you should think about checking it out sometime. You know what they say about people who don't learn from it.”

I scowled at him as I stood up and walked over to his desk. I peered over his shoulder. He had notes scribbled everywhere, the textbooks in front of him taking up half his working space. I squinted as I tried to read the small print, then quickly gave up. He wasn't wrong about my dislike of history. What the hell kind of major was that anyway? What did someone do with a history degree besides teach?

I knew for a fact that Dad felt the same way. The only reason he'd agreed to pay for a year of college before Ennis enlisted was because he hoped my brother would figure out the futility of what he was doing.

So far, it hadn't worked.

“If you want to make yourself useful, you can summarize this,” Ennis said, pushing one of the textbooks aside and pointing at a passage he'd highlighted. “You do know how to do that, right?”

I glared at him. I wanted to be a pediatrician, and I had the grades to support my ambition. Math and science may have been my strong point, but I wasn't a complete idiot when it came to English.

Except, as I tried to wade through the dense prose I was supposed to be summarizing, I wondered if maybe I was an idiot. I barely got to the end of one sentence before I forgot the beginning of it.

“Too much?”

“Who the hell writes these things, anyway?” I snapped as I set the book back down in front of him.

He chuckled and sat back, rubbing his eyes. “So, all you’ll ever know about American history is what you see on TV, huh?”

I shrugged. “Why bother? It’s over and done with. The past is the past.”

Ennis shook his head, wearing that condescending smile that drove me nuts. “That’s not why we learn history, Honor.”

“Enlighten me then, oh wise one.”

“If we know what we did wrong before, we can prevent it from happening again.”

I raised an eyebrow, a little skeptical. “And how have we been doing so far?”

“Terribly,” he admitted and gave me a sideways glance. “Probably because not many of us care to read about the past.”

I punched his shoulder before looking back down at the textbooks and frowning. “So, you think we’ll stop making mistakes if we study all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He didn’t sound too convinced. “Maybe we’ll just understand the present and know how to better handle the future.”

“Sorry, but I’m not buying it.”

“Take this, for example,” Ennis said, turning a few pages back to find what he was looking for. “The Battle of Bunker Hill. The English charged up Breed’s Hill on June 17^th, 1775 and defeated the colonial army there. In the process, they suffered so much loss that their initial plan of breaking out of Boston was lost. The battle resulted in a stalemate, but the fact that the colonial army had stood up to the British was enough to motivate Washington and keep the Revolution going.”

I frowned and shook my head. “We lost,” I said. “How was that a motivator?”

Ennis sighed and shook his head. “One day you’ll realize that numbers don’t matter, and sometimes even a win or loss of a battle doesn't matter. A small loss can be seen as a major victory if you look at the grand scheme of things. I guess maybe that's what I mean by learning from history. It's the ability to see the big picture.”

I looked at Ennis, still skeptical, but I didn't want to ask for clarification. I didn't think he'd talk down to me, but I was pretty sure he'd bore me to death. He saw the look on my face and pushed at me, laughing as he did it. Closing the text book he'd read from, he tossed it at me.

“Read, Honor,” he said. “It might just save your life one day.”

“You don’t need this?” I asked, wondering just how much time it would kill.

“Not now,” he said. “Give it to me after you've had a chance to learn something that isn't about numbers and theorems.”

I read several chapters, I remembered, and had been pleasantly surprised by how interesting it had been when I looked at it the way Ennis had. If he did end up going into education, his students would be lucky to have him.

I sat silently, staring at Gracen as he walked around in small circles. This had to be some sort of mistake. A Revolutionary War re-enactment actor who hit his head during the accident.

Except it didn't explain the lack of city lights. The absence of my car and the highway. Before I could second guess myself, I forced the question I didn't want to consider.

“What’s today’s date?”

He thought a moment before he answered. “June sixteenth.”

That, at least, was right, but the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach made me ask for clarification. “What year?”

He crouched down in front of me, his gaze fixing on me in a way that made me want to squirm. “That is an odd question to ask.”

“What year is it?” I asked again, unwilling to get into any unneeded arguments.

“I had heard that education in some parts of the colonies was lacking, but I hadn't realized how much so.”

I glared at him and ignored the insult. “The year,” I demanded.

He hesitated, eyeing me closely, as if he wasn't sure if he should be worried about me. “Seventeen seventy-five,” he finally said.

All the air left my lungs, and I leaned back.

Fuck me.

What the hell happened?