(Clayton's PoV)

"Some Christmas this is turning out to be," I mumbled.

Logan shivered. "Yeah, I wish this building had a heater."

Normally, the winter weather here was at least somewhat bearable, but ever since this morning it had been bitterly cold.

Justin looked at the thermometer on the wall. "It's about 18 degrees," he observed. "Although a proper thermometer would read about negative 7.8 degrees since China uses Celsius to measure temperature."

"I hate you so much for doing that in your head," I muttered.

"It's actually a simple conversion," he interjected.

"I don't care how cold it is, I just care that it's cold," I snapped. "Like I don't get it! Why can't we just take the global warming in Antarctica and bring it here! It's not like they want it!"

Justin sighed. "That's not..." but he didn't even have enough motivation to finish his thought.

"We need a fire," Trevor said between chattering teeth.

Tristan gave a laugh, which was cut short by a shallow breath of cold air. "Like any of us could start one."

"I could," Gavin said simply.

Our entire group turned to him in shock.

"What? I used to be a boy scout," he explained.

"So then you can make us one, right?" Trevor asked.

Gavin's face fell slightly. "Well, I could get one started, but we would need kindling to keep it going."

We all sighed. Just when we had a glimmer of hope, it was snatched away. Before I could open my mouth to complain, a thought occurred to me.

"I know exactly what to use!" I exclaimed, already racing toward my bed. Underneath it was an abandoned package. I dusted a few cobwebs off of the sides as I pulled it out. I opened up the cardboard box to reveal the perfect kindling: math homework.

"Clayton, you're supposed to turn that in," Justin reminded me. "You can't burn--"

"Justin." I cut him off. "Look at my face."

He gave me a deadpan expression.

"I need you to physically see how much I don't care."

Gavin came over to me and examined my pile of homework. "This is perfect," he muttered through a mixture of awe and stifled laughter. "There's gotta be at least a hundred pages of this stuff." He grabbed a stack of Chapter 11: Constructing inscribed circles. "Come on, let's take this outside."

"Why can't we start it in here?" I asked.

Gavin sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. "Clayton," he said in all seriousness, "we would burn the place down." Under his breath he added. "You had a really good idea, but maybe quit while you're ahead."

I clicked my tongue. "Right."

Tristan laughed as he crumpled up some of the papers. "Thank god for math--for the sole reason of getting to burn it."

Landon shrugged. "I doubt it's that much colder outside than in here anyway. Why not?"

Justin folded his arms. "I still don't approve of this. After all," but his chattering teeth hindered him from finishing his original sentence. "But I'll go grab some water to put it out in case things get out of hand."

"Just meet us outside," Daniel called out to him.

Most of us went outside. A few of the guys stayed back like Alan, Isaac, and Connor. The first two because they're stuffy assholes, and the latter because he hated himself.

Gavin knelt down and started to make a fire pit of stones. After the edges were made, he began rubbing stones together.

"Is it done yet?" I prompted.

"You know, Clayton, it takes more than 5 seconds to start a fire."

In fact it took a couple minutes, but the result was a small flame.

"Now, throw some paper on it," Gavin instructed, to which I happily complied. The flame spread to the surrounding paper, growing with each equation burnt away until the fire itself was steady. Watching the numbers disappear was satisfying.

"Thanks Clayton," Marcus said as he and several others joined the huddle of relative warmth. "This was a great idea."

But not as satisfying as that.

(Logan's POV)

Despite the lack of snow or presents or overall happiness, huddling around the fire made things almost seem like Christmas. Closer than anything else this December had brought.

"It's weird," I told Daniel. "This is the first Christmas that I've ever been away from home." I debated adding unless we somehow manage to get to go home within the next three days, but the thought made me too sad to say aloud.

Daniel nodded. "I know. And it probably sounds dumb, but I'm sad about missing the holiday concert too." He sighed. " I mean sure, rehearsal was brutal and our director would always yell at us, but that never happened during the actual concert. The night itself, for a moment, everything was tranquil and happy."

My school did something similar every year too. We would learn several Christmas carols and the only people who would actually show up were our parents, but they always like it. "I miss it too."

"Oh the weather outside is frightful," Trevor sang. By the second line, Clayton joined him. "But the fire is so delightful.

Daniel and I looked at each other and promptly jumped in on the high tenor and baseline parts, respectively.

Our four voices blended perfectly, although by the time we hit the next verse, several of the other guys joined in. I couldn't even complain that some (okay most) of them were off-key the entire time. It felt nice to sing in a group again.

After finishing the first song, Trevor asked. "Do any of you know Handel's Hallelujah Chorus?"

"Yeah!" Clayton, Daniel, and I responded in unison. The rest of our platoon, however, looked totally lost.

Trevor tried again. "How about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?"

We got through about five more songs before we were interrupted by Holly.

"What are you doing?" She demanded.

"Singing," I replied simply.

She put her fingertips to her forehead in frustration. "I meant the fire."

"Oh, that," Clayton said, beaming with pride. "We're using math homework as kindling. Pretty smart, huh?"

"No," she corrected. "Put that out now. I'm serious."

"But why?" Clayton whined.

"The smoke could give away our location to the guerrillas," Holly explained. "That is if your noise hasn't already."

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"You're just lucky it was me who caught you and not Sgt. Blake--or worse," she pointed out.

"Can't we make an exception for Christmas?" Clayton pleaded.

"There's a war," Holly said flatly.

"I did hear about that on the news one time," Michael responded sarcastically.

"No, the war you're all currently fighting in," she reiterated. "That didn't take a break or anything."

Justin put the fire out, although rather half-heartedly. I guess she did make a point about attracting attention, but now it was sad and cold again.

"Just go back inside, all of you, except for whoever has guard duty," she advised.

"Merry Christmas boys," she mocked, at least that's what I guessed. I couldn't imagine any other non-angry tone coming from her. "My gift to you all is potentially saving your asses."

(Daniel's PoV)

I crossed off the final day of the year-long pocket calendar. My optimism fooled me into believing I wouldn't have needed to bring ones for the following years. I closed the calendar and set it aside for good. "I can't believe the year is almost over."

"Some year it's been," Trevor muttered. It was strange to think that this time last year we would have been enjoying winter break, unaware of our impending misfortune.

"My family would always have us make new year's resolutions before midnight," Tristan mused.

"I'd try to sneak some of my parents' champagne," Gavin added.

"Well my family's Mormon so my parents didn't have any of that," Tristan retorted, then gave a bittersweet chuckle. "Oh to go back to when my resolutions would be 'get all A's, instead of 'don't get shot'."

We all laughed in response, but I'm pretty sure we all had the same uneasy feeling.

"It's just weird," I continued. "To think we've been away for like seven months."

"So much has changed," Landon added, "except for the state of the war."

While we all had our stories of tragedy and entertainment from the past year, Landon's statement held some truth. Overall, every day in Guilin seemed to blend together.

"Is this what our life has come to?" I wondered.

"I hope not," Logan responded, though his voice was weak. "But I'm scared it is."

"No, no, no," Matteo blurted out. "It has to end! It has to." His voice faltered off as if his vocal cords were the rope in the tug o' war between our heads and our hearts.

"Let's just hope this new year isn't as shitty as the last one," Landon said. "We can keep doing that until we have a more concrete plan of action than merely hope."

Trevor lifted up a fake glass. "To the new year."

"To the new year," we echoed.

(Will's PoV)

I played around with my MRE more than I ate it. The package said toast, but whatever it was, it didn't remotely resemble bread. I picked a piece of it up with my plastic fork and watched it fall. "This is gross," I groaned.

Matteo dared to take a bite, but made a face as he attempted to swallow it. "Definitely not toast," he mustered out.

Sgt. Blake yelled at us to get ready. Since we weren't really eating much of the food anyway, none of us bothered to finish before grabbing our guns and heading outside.

Matteo and I went straight to our usual spot near the end of the barricade. On the first few days we had began closer to the center, but Matteo had wanted to move since that spot was too close to Connor and....

Just Connor.

We spent most of the day just looking over the barricade, luckily not needing to shoot much. By sundown, we began to hear rustling in the bushes a little bit to our left.

"What was that?" Matteo asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

He glanced to the side. "Do you think we should check it out?"

"Possibly," I stammered, wondering if it could have been the guerrillas that Sgt. Blake talked about so much. Or even just enemy soldiers.

"At least we have protection," Matteo said, clutching his gun.

The two of us had gone out further than we ever had before. We could barely see the barricade through the trees at this point. I tried to stay as close to Matteo as possible.

"Do you think we're getting-"

But before I could finish my question, a man jumped out from behind the bushes. It suddenly didn't matter that we both had guns, this man was prepared to use his.

Matteo and I had the same idea of running away, but unfortunately the man had the idea to chase us.

I don't think I made it more than 10 feet before tripping. I tried to call out for Matteo, but something seemed to be covering my mouth. I tried to make sense of it all, but everything went black.

(Matteo's PoV)

I ran as fast as I could, back to the barricade. My legs ached, but a mix of anaerobic respiration and fear didn't let me stop until I reached familiar territory. I glanced behind me to see the man was no longer behind us.

But my glance also revealed there was no longer an "us."

"Will! Will!" I screamed. "Can you hear me? Will!"

Several of the other guys heard my commotion and crowded around me.

"Matteo, what's wrong?" Daniel asked.

"It's Will," I said, breathlessly. "He's not here. I thought he was with me, but he's not." I was starting to choke on my words, but for once I didn't care. "We heard something in the bushes a ways out and when we went to search for the cause, this guy jumped out at us. We just ran. I thought he was with me the whole time."

"Do you think he got captured or killed?" Clayton asked, prompting Daniel to elbow him.

I couldn't even muster out words at this point. If anything did happen to him, it would be all my fault. I didn't look back. Why didn't I look back. My eyes began to sting as I thought of all the horrible things that could be happening to him.

Logan opened his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted by Sgt. Blake emerging on the scene. "What the hell is going on?"

I must have been really loud if I had caused him to leave his spot.

"Will and I went to go investigate a sound and a man chased us. And...I...I can't find him now." Every word seemed lodged in my throat.

I expected him to yell at me. Punish me. Lecture me about irresponsibility. But for some reason he didn't. "Grab a group and go find him," he ordered.

The choir boys offered to go with me. I took them to the spot where the man jumped out.

"It's weird," Trevor mused, looking at the ground. "You'd think there'd be footprints."

"Looks like whoever it was made sure to cover up their tracks," Daniel observed.

The knot in my stomach grew tighter. Logan put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, look on the bright side. We haven't found a body."

"Yeah, maybe Will just had to run farther away to lose the guy or something," Clayton added.

The five of us searched several hours past sundown to no avail.

"It's already 10:00," Daniel said. " We need to head back."

No one said anything on the way back to base. My mind filled the silence by replaying the sentence "he is dead" on a repeated loop. Sgt. Blake didn't do anything more than call for Holly when we arrived without Will.

"William Atteleigh is MIA," he explained. "You know your correspondence requirements."

Holly looked at Landon, who for some reason followed her into the infirmary. Sgt, Blake left as well. Everything was quiet except for the occasional guy who would offer condolences throughout the night. Even Connor passed by my bunk on his way to guard duty.

"You know you don't know for sure if he's actually dead," he told me. "Don't know if you consider that lucky, but I would." He left without another word.

I didn't feel very hopeful about the chances of Will's survival. If he had been alive, why didn't he come back here? He couldn't have gotten that far.

I wiped my eyes and grabbed a pencil and paper. Other than Will, Emmy was the only person who would listen and understand me. I missed her now more than ever.

Dear Emmy,

I am the worst battle buddy--if not the worst person--ever to exist. Will is currently "Missing in Action" but I'm pretty sure that's just military code for "dead, but we can't find the body." We were running away from this enemy soldier, and I never stopped to look back and check if he was still with me. I hate myself. I miss him. I miss you. I'm too sad to think straight. I wish I knew what to do.

Love,

Matteo

I folded the note and held it close to my chest before putting it in an envelope. I then began a sleepless night, knowing the bunk above mine would be empty from here on out.