“Travis, did I tell you?” Mom interrupts him. “There’s an organization in Tampa that’s been collecting school supplies for the kids—”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about your little pet project, Linda,” Dad cuts in. I’m surprised to hear him talk this way to my mom. No matter how bad things got between him and me, he’s always been good to her.
“No, Dad,” I say. “I don’t think I’m too good to tell you about Afghanistan. I just don’t want to talk about killing people at the fucking dinner table.” Not waiting for his response, I turn to Mom. “And I do want to hear about your project.”
Her eyes flicker nervously toward my dad. He makes a wide-armed shrug and rolls his eyes. His Super Bowl ring flashes on his hand, a huge reminder that he is a Winner.
“I was just—” Mom stumbles over the words, the light gone from her eyes. “I was just going to say that I’ve talked to them about starting a branch here in Fort Myers.”
“That’s really cool.” I smile at her. The begging kids were okay at first because they were scared of us, but after a while they were grabby and demanding. I don’t tell her that, though. She seems pretty excited. “The kids go crazy for that stuff. Pens, paper, soccer balls, and those beanbag animal dolls—they lose their minds over those things.”
“May I be excused?” Ryan balls up his napkin and drops it on his plate. “I’ve got a, um…” His gaze meets mine for a split second before sliding nervously away. A date. He has a date with Paige. “I’m meeting up with some people.”
“Maybe Travis would like to go along,” Mom suggests.
“I’ll pass.” The image of me riding shotgun with my brother and my ex-girlfriend almost makes me laugh. “I’m wiped out.”
Ryan shoves away from the table and the three of us spend the rest of the meal in a silence thick with things unsaid. The only sound is the clinking of silverware against the plates. I hate that a year wasn’t enough separation to keep my dad from getting under my skin, and I hate that I let him make me feel fifteen all over again. When it’s finally over, I go to my room and lock the door.
We got back to Camp Lejeune a couple of weeks ago and had to have a post-deployment health assessment to take care of any physical problems we developed in-country—primarily skin problems from washing in muddy canals, acne from having a constantly dirty face, bug bites, and a few guys had lingering coughs from chest infections. The evaluation is also supposed to gauge our mental wellness, but that’s a joke. We say everything is okay because the fastest way to wreck your career is to admit it’s not. So I didn’t tell anyone about my recurring nightmare. I only told the doctor I was having trouble sleeping and he prescribed me some pills.
They rattle as I pull the amber bottle out of my bag and dump three tablets into my hand. I swallow them dry, then ease myself to the floor and let the world fade away.
Chapter 2
A loud bang jolts me awake and I reach for my rifle. For a couple of seconds I panic because it’s gone, then I remember I’m in Florida and my rifle is in the armory in North Carolina.
“Travis! Travis!” My mom is pounding on the door and she sounds frantic. I unlock it and she launches herself at me, nearly strangling me in the process. “Oh, thank God. You’re awake.”
Something wet trickles down my bare chest. She’s crying. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
“You’ve been asleep for sixteen hours.” She catches a shuddering breath. “And your door was locked. I thought—I was afraid you overdosed.”
There are moments—thousands of them during the course of every single day—when I’m swamped with guilt that I came home alive and Charlie didn’t, but I don’t have a death wish. I scrub my eye with the heel of my hand, dislodging sixteen hours’ worth of crust. “I was just exhausted.” I pat her awkwardly on the back. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Wiping her tears on the back of her hand, she surveys the nest of blankets on the floor. “Is something wrong with your bed?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping on the ground.” There were nights we slept in holes in the ground. Other nights, we slept in abandoned compounds. Our patrol base was an abandoned schoolhouse with holes in the roof and birds in residence in the ceiling. “I’m not quite used to a bed yet.”
She sits down on my bed. “Do you want a firmer mattress or—What happened to your legs?”
“They’re, um…” I look down at the fading red welts that circle my ankles and creep up my calves. “They’re flea bites.”
“Flea bites?” She looks horrified.
“Yeah, well, after a while everything gets really dirty,” I explain. “And the people over there have mud-walled courtyards around their houses where they keep their livestock. Sometimes we’d sleep in there.”
Charlie’s mom sent him a flea collar once that he strapped around his ankle, but it didn’t work. We called him Fido for a while after that, but he’d just bark and go, “Devil dog! Oorah!” which would crack us up every time.
“You slept with—” Her hand comes up to her mouth. “I can’t—I don’t even know what to say.” Her eyes fill again.
Afghanistan sucked. In the summer we sweated our balls off in the hot sun. In the winter we had to battle hypothermia. It was the coldest I’ve ever been in my life, even colder than when we lived in Green Bay. Poisonous snakes. Scorpions. Flies. Fleas. Sandstorms. Knowing that every time we left our patrol base, someone was going to shoot at us. I don’t miss it exactly, but it feels as if I’ll never be fully at home here again. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“There’s a party tonight at the Manor.” Ryan pokes his head into my room after another uncomfortable family dinner of awkward small talk and things left unsaid. I’m unpacking my bag. The dresser drawers, I discover, are empty—apparently Mom didn’t keep everything the same. Before, she was always nagging me to dress nicer and was embarrassed that I bought clothes at the Salvation Army. She probably had a field day throwing away all my ratty T-shirts and jeans with holes. Doesn’t matter. None of them would have fit.
“You interested?” Ryan asks.
The Manor is a dilapidated rental house on the beach that’s part commune, part concert venue. My friend Eddie Ramos has been living there since graduation, but we’ve been partying there since we were freshmen. I’m not sure I’m ready to see my old friends yet, but I don’t want to spend the evening watching military crime shows with my parents. Not only because it’s always a Marine who ends up dead on those shows, but because I can’t take another uncomfortable minute in their silence. I don’t know what’s going on with them. I always thought they were solid. “Yeah, sure.”
Ryan dangles the car keys from his fingers. “Wanna drive?”
I snatch them. “Meet you at the car.”
Outside, I lower myself into the driver’s seat of the red VW Corrado that used to be mine and run my hands along the steering wheel. The faint scent of pot mixed with McDonald’s brings back memories of all the hours I spent with this car—working on it, driving aimlessly around Fort Myers with friends, messing around with Paige in the backseat. I found the car on the Internet when I was fifteen and bought it with my own money. Did all of the work on it, too. It bothers me a little that Ryan felt entitled to appropriate the car after I left, but I’ve never said anything. I wasn’t using it. Now… it doesn’t really feel like mine anymore.
Ryan drops into the passenger seat and the scent of cologne overwhelms the car. I cough and roll down my window. “Damn, Rye, did you bathe in that shit?”
“Paige likes it,” he says. “She bought it for my birthday.”
My eyebrows hitch up. “She did?”