I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to answer. “You shouldn’t care. If you pretend like you don’t care, you win anyway. Isn’t that how it works?”
Meg smiled at me. “Oh, Jo. You’re so right. Who would have thought?”
I simply nodded, and she led me farther toward the back of the building. We passed Meredith as we walked, and she didn’t notice us. She was too busy talking to Denise about something. It could have been anything from the struggles of deployments to the shade of Denise’s new hardwood floors. It depended on that woman’s random moods. She was always like that.
Her daughter Shelly was like that, too. One minute she was nice, praising me for my two-page spread about the dirty drinking water in Flint, Michigan, and the next she was talking about me behind my back and calling me Joseph as an insult. A lot of people at my school couldn’t seem to wrap their head around me and why I didn’t see the point in waking up early and putting lipstick on before the sun was even up.
Since I had known Shelly’s biological dad when I was younger, and I knew her stepdad, General Hunchberg, too, I thought she got her personality from her dad, Mr. Grisham, a teacher at our middle school in Texas. Rumor had it that Denise, an Army brat herself, married Mr. Grisham right after high school, and when he got medically retired from the Army ten years ago, Denise couldn’t stand the civilian life. It drove her insane that she never got her American dream of being an FRG leader and getting to move into one of the big houses that was specifically built for generals and their families.
Denise had big plans, and being married to a health teacher wasn’t a part of them. She wanted the attention; she wanted the respect and the recognition for the patriotic sacrifices she made being a general’s wife. Denise Hunchberg needed the luncheons and bake sales. Here she was with Meredith, being the patriot that Denise is, stuffing peppermint bark down her throat and washing it down with a nice glass of boxed wine. I thought it was funny in an awful way that Denise and her family followed us to this post too.
“Where are we going?” I asked Meg when she pushed against the black bar on the heavy back door of the ballroom. The cold air rushed in with the loud squeak of the metal, and I looked behind us to see if anyone saw us. No one seemed to notice the two girls leaving through the back of the party. It felt liberating in a way.
“Outside. Don’t talk about Shia,” Meg warned me, and before I got to ask her why, my eyes fell on three boys standing in the grass.
I only recognized one of them, the young guy from Old Mr. Laurence’s driveway this morning. His hair seemed even messier now, down past his ears. Was it that long earlier? I couldn’t remember for sure, but I didn’t think so. His hair was so thick, like a puddle of yellow paint, spreading down his neckline and onto the collar of his black jacket.
“What’s up?” the tallest, biggest of the guys asked. He had the body of a comic-book superhero. His arms were massive and his chest expansive, making his uniform tight at the middle. I wondered if they even made uniform tops big enough to fit him. The name sewn over the chest was Reeder. I didn’t know him. I would have remembered if I did.
“Nothing in there,” Meg said, looking back to the building.
She was still holding on to my arm as we walked down the small set of stairs to get to the grass. I didn’t notice that the corner of the concrete porch was chipped until the toe of my boot caught and my foot slipped. I quickly caught myself, using Meg as a crutch, and she held me up. My heart pounded in my chest. Really, again? That was the second time that day I had tripped in front of him. I was quickly turning into that wannabe quirky girl who always trips and makes a flat joke about her awkwardness.
When I looked up, the long-haired boy was the only one staring at me. The smirk on his face made me want to run back inside the building or call him out—I wasn’t sure which was the better option. He looked like a boy who never got called out for anything. When I weighed the consequences for each, embarrassing Meg and having her not see me as mature seemed worse. I had already felt so much closer to her that day, I didn’t want to ruin it.
I looked away from him and watched my sister start her engine of social cool. She said, “Hi,” to all three, and the blond-haired boy we had met that morning stuck his hand out for her to shake. She took it, letting go of my familiar hand, and told him it was nice to meet him. Did she not recognize his face from earlier today? I wondered.
The guy standing between the long-haired boy and my sister was wearing a uniform, too. His said that his name was Breyer. I never wondered what soldiers’ first names were anymore; they usually didn’t want to be called by them anyway.
Breyer had stubble around his mouth that was so dark it looked almost like paint. The closer to his thin lips, the darker his beard was. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pants pocket of his uniform, and the big guy, Reeder, handed him a lighter. He pushed the stick through the line of his lips, and smoke clouded around his face. It was menacing, and my imagination was running wild. It only took the smallest of things to make me imagine so much more. When I was younger, I used to spend my time writing stories about vampires, and wizards, and magical lands inside closets like Narnia, but as I grew up, I found myself attracted to nonfiction and the journalism side of writing.
“How’s the party?” Reeder asked.
“Lame for me, but cool for the kids.” Meg held her hand out and took his cigarette from him. I never knew she smoked. What I did know then was that she trusted me, at least enough not to tell Meredith, or the other girls.
It had warmed up already since we left the house this morning. So much for snow on Christmas in southern Louisiana.
“Aren’t you two supposed to be working?” she asked the two in uniform.
I watched their eyes and how they looked at her. They were admiring her with a zoned-out expression on their faces, like they would follow her to the other side of the Dothraki Sea if she wanted them to. Dragons or not. Comparing Meg to a khaleesi felt like comparing Joan of Arc to a politician’s trophy wife.
Reeder laughed, and the sound was like an echo. “We are. We’re on patrol.”
Meg laughed, and the smoke rolled out of her mouth in perfect swirls of gray. “Looks like it.”
Both guys laughed at her comment, and I figured they would laugh at just about anything she said if she wanted them to. The blond-haired one didn’t seem to be paying attention; he was staring off into the empty field behind us.
“Laurie, how long you staying here?” the big one asked, looking directly at the boy from this morning.
Laurie? His name is Laurie Laurence?
What an awful choice his parents made.
“At the party, or this town?” Laurie asked. Drama seeped from his response, and I pictured him sitting over a cup of coffee and a half-finished manuscript. My imagination again.
“The party.” Reeder blew smoke from his mouth and looked a little annoyed. He immediately took another drag, then glanced at his phone.
“Two more minutes,” Laurie said.
I stepped closer to him, and my mouth opened before I gave it permission to. “And the town?” I asked.
Meg stared at me like I had just asked him if he wanted to have sex with me in front of his friends.
Laurie—his name was so strange—smiled at me. “Not long. My dad sent me here to bond with my grandpa while he’s overseas. He will be home in a year, so I’ll go back to Texas when he’s back.”
A year could be a very a long time, depending on what one did with it . . .
“Iraq or Afghanistan?” I asked.
“Neither. Korea.”
“Oh.” I had heard awful things about being stationed in South Korea. My dad told me that the local people didn’t want them there, so most of the soldiers stayed on the base, hardly ever going outside the gate.
Laurie didn’t say another word before dismissing himself. I watched his back as he strode through the grass field and disappeared between the thick clusters of trees at the beginning of the
woods.
“So, are you two going to work at all, or can we go somewhere?” Meg asked the two who remained.
I didn’t go with Meg that day. I didn’t even wait to hear their reply. I went back into the party and helped hand out food to families who missed their soldiers on Christmas.