He pats my elbow and lets me go. “God bless you, kid.”
Mom chatters endlessly on the drive, mostly about school. She’s the secretary at my former high school, so she thinks she knows all the gossip. I don’t care who’s dating who, or which teachers won’t be hired back next year, or that the soccer team had a losing season, but letting her talk means I don’t have to.
The house looks exactly the same as it did when I left, including Mom’s ceramic frog next to the front steps. She keeps a spare key hidden underneath in case we get locked out. All my friends know the key is there, but Paige is the only one who’s ever used it. She would drive over in the middle of the night and sneak up to my room. I wonder if she does that with Ryan now.
My mom leads me through the house to my bedroom, as if I don’t remember the way. She opens the door and—like the rest of the house—it looks like it was frozen in time. Gray paint? Check. Color-coordinated comforter? Check. Concert flyers taped randomly to the walls to disguise the decorator paint job? Check. Curled-up photo of Paige and me at my senior prom stuck in the corner of the mirror? Check. Even the book on the bedside table is the same one I was reading before I left. The whole thing is… creepy.
“I left everything the way it was,” she says as I drop my bag on the floor. “So it would feel familiar. Like home.”
I don’t tell her it doesn’t feel like home at all. I pull the photo from the mirror, crush it in my fist, and lob it at the trash can.
“Why don’t you rest?” Mom suggests. “Take a nap. I’ll come get you when Dad and Rye are home.”
When she’s gone, I dive onto the bed. It’s the one thing I’m very happy about. The mattress is soft and the comforter is clean, luxuries I’ve lived without since I left for boot camp. I stretch out on my back, my boots hanging off the bottom edge of the bed, and close my eyes. I can’t get comfortable. I roll over onto my side and try again. Then my stomach. Pry off my boots with my toes. Finally, I grab my pillow and hit the floor, dragging the comforter with me. I’ve slept on the top bunk of a squeaky metal rack in the squad bay at Parris Island, on a cot at Camp Bastion while we waited to start our mission, and in February the temperature dropped so low one night I had to share a sleeping bag with Charlie. All things considered, the thick carpet is comfortable, and I fall asleep fast.
I’m walking down a road in Marjah. It’s a road we’ve walked often on patrol. I’m on point with Charlie and Moss behind me. It’s cold, clear, and quiet, except for the crunch of our boots and the sound of prayer we hear every morning. The street will come alive soon with people going to the mosque, washing in the canal, or going to work in their fields. Right now, though, the street is empty. The hair on the back of my neck prickles and I know something is going to go down. I stop and try to warn Moss and Charlie, but no sound comes out of my mouth. I try to signal with my hands, but I can’t lift them. I want to run back to stop them, but my legs won’t move no matter how hard I try. I watch, helpless, as Charlie steps on the pressure plate. Boom! He’s enveloped in a cloud of dust. The bomb, hidden in the base of a tree, sprays him with shrapnel. Charlie falls to the dirt road, motionless. My limbs unfreeze and I walk slowly toward his body until I’m standing over him. The world shifts and I’m on my back, pain radiating through my body, as if I’d stepped on the mine, not Charlie. I open my eyes and there’s a face above me. An Afghan boy I’ve seen before who smiles as he fades away.
I shoot upright on the floor, my eyes open and my body on alert, but my brain is still in the hazy space between nightmare and awake. My mother is shaking me. My hands curl around her wrists, squeezing until she cries out in pain. “Travis, stop!”
I let go immediately and just sit there, blinking, my heart rate going crazy. I’m shaking a little. Mom smoothes her hand across my forehead the way she did when I was small and had a fever. “It’s only a dream. Let it go. It’s not real.”
I’m fully awake now and I know she’s right. It’s not real. This nightmare is a patchwork of my worst fears. But my imagination wraps itself in this quilt of horror whenever I sleep. I haven’t averaged more than a couple hours a night for weeks.
As my heart rate drops back to normal, I watch her rub her wrists. I could have broken them. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s okay.” She looks at me sadly. “I wish I could erase whatever troubles your dreams.”
Except the past can’t be rewound and this is the life I chose.
I didn’t have a noble purpose in joining the Marines. I didn’t do it to protect American freedom and I wasn’t inspired to action by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I was in grade school then, and the biggest priority in my life was any bell that signaled it was time to leave school. I enlisted mostly because I wanted to escape my dad, who’d made my life hell since I quit the football team at the end of sophomore season.
I hated football. Not because I wasn’t good at it or because it wasn’t fun, but because I hated the way it took over my life. Dad signed me up for Pop Warner Tiny Mites when I was five. So while other kids were learning to ride two-wheelers, I was practicing my receiving. It was fun when I was little—the game was still a game—but as I got older, I hated the pressure. I hated that run-through-a-woodchipper feeling I got after he’d critique my game films. But what I hated most was that in practically every reference to me—in newspapers, game commentary, post-game TV recaps on the local news—was a reference to him. I was never just Travis Stephenson. I was son of former Green Bay Packer Dean Stephenson. Sophomore year he started talking about scouts and college ball, and all I could think about was how I was going to be stuck living my dad’s dream. So when the season ended, I quit. He went ballistic, and I became a nonentity.
The day I turned eighteen—three days after I graduated high school—I went to the Marine recruiter’s office and signed up. More or less. The process is more involved than simply signing your life over to the US Marine Corps, but the result is the same: four years of active duty, the next four years in ready reserve. It might not make sense to want to go from a lifetime of coaches yelling in my face to a drill instructor yelling in my face, but I figured it couldn’t be that much different. Except that at boot camp I wouldn’t be son of former Green Bay Packer Dean Stephenson. I’d just be me.
Mom cried when I told her because, in her mind, enlistment meant certain death in a foreign country. She begged me to enroll at Edison State instead. “I know you didn’t get the best grades,” she said. “But you can take the basics until you decide on a major. Please, Travis, don’t do this.”
My dad just looked at me for a long time, his mouth a tight slash across his face. It was a familiar expression. One reserved for me. In his world, where winning is everything, he had no use for the kid who refused to play the game. If I had picked up another sport, he might have forgiven me. But I didn’t and neither did he.
His laugh was whip-crack sharp. “Remember the motorcycle you were going to rebuild? Or the band you and your friends were going to start? Or, wait—how about the promising football career you threw away like it was garbage instead of your God-given gift? How long, Travis, do you think you’ll last at boot camp before you want to quit that, too? You don’t have the discipline it takes to be a Marine.”
As if he knew any more about being in the military than I did.