Bring Down the Stars

Connor laughed and then pulled me in for a sudden hug. “I love you,” he said. “No bullshit, no fucking around. I do.”

I stiffened automatically. A reflex when someone tried to touch me. But Connor was already sunk into my marrow, blood, and bones.

I need him just as much.

I hugged him back hard.

I’d die for him.

I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t speak the words out loud.

But give me a pen and paper… Or an Army sign-up sheet… And I’ll write it down.

The following Monday, I went to the recruiter’s office and signed my name on the dotted line.

Wednesday, the United States Consulate in Adana, Turkey, near the Syrian border, was gassed and the Syrian leader boldly took the credit. Eighty-four dead.

A week later, an orphanage in Ankara was bombed.

Three nights after that, I was working at the dining room table on my Object of Devotion poem. It was due in a week, but it wasn’t done. I doubted it would ever be done. Connor was watching a football game, which was pre-empted by the president speaking to the nation. He had, with the full cooperation of Congress, officially declared war on the regime in Syria.

Connor craned around to look at me. I half expected the phone to ring that very minute to tell us to pack up for Boot Camp. We’d intended to wait until summer break to finish the school year, but U.S. forces were stretched to the breaking point. Deployment was inevitable.

We signed our names on the line. If they call us, we have to go.

Connor must’ve had the same thought as we both jumped when his phone rang.

“Hello? Hey, baby. Yeah, we’re watching now. No. Autumn, don’t cry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

My pen doodled across the page. Everything’s going to be okay, I wrote, and then scratched it out.

Weston

Rain water streamed off the brim of Drill Sergeant Denroy’s round-brimmed hat. If he were cold under his rain slicker, he didn’t show it.

“Who’s smirking now, Turner?” he bellowed at me. “You? You still smirking?”

“Sir, no, sir,” I breathed between push-ups. The mud squelched between my fingers. The cold water soaked me through, making my jaw shake.

“Are you going to cry now, maggot?”

“Sir, no, sir.”

“I heard you were a fast one, is that right?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

My shoulders were screaming, my biceps were on fire. Halfway through the fourth set of fifty push-ups I’d been forced to do today.

Three weeks into Boot Camp, and I still couldn’t keep my disdain for the entire operation off my face. Call it Sock Boy Psychology, but the only grown man who had authority over me had given up the job. In the real world, it built me a rep for being an asshole. Here, it got me push-ups. Hundreds of push-ups.

“A braggart, are you, Turner?”

“Sir, no, sir.”

“Sounds to me like you are. Three weeks of you walking around here like your shit don’t stink.”

Thirty-seven, thirty-eight.