“I don’t like good-byes,” she had said. “And anyway, he’ll be back to visit as soon as he can.”
Val frowned. “But what if he feels bad that you’re not there?”
“Don’t guilt her.” Julie looked up. “I’ll stay with her. You take Davey.”
“You don’t want to go to the airport?”
“Of course I do, but Sophie doesn’t, and we can’t leave her home.”
“You can leave me alone. I don’t mind. I can get ready for school on my own.”
“No way, buster.”
“Maybe she can go to a friend’s house? Lisa West?”
Julie shook her head, and Val remembered that Lisa’s parents had taken the girls ice-skating the previous winter, and Sophie had gone down on the ice. They didn’t get the full details of what type of seizure it had been, but she’d fallen without protecting her hands or her head from the other skaters who didn’t have time to avoid her, and returned with a bruised chin and cuts that went clear through her gloves. The Wests had assured them they understood what to do if Sophie had a seizure, but knowing in theory wasn’t the same as seeing one for the first time.
“Lisa doesn’t invite me over anymore.” Sophie echoed Val’s memory.
So Julie and Sophie had gotten up in the dark to say their good-byes at the house, and Val had driven David, and now there was too much silence in the car, threatening to leave her alone with her thoughts. She jabbed at the radio until she found a talk radio host so reprehensible she could focus on hating him instead of the people who had taken her son away. Except nobody had taken him; he’d gone willingly. He had chosen, but who lets an eighteen-year-old make a choice like that? They aren’t ready. They don’t have the sense.
She pressed buttons again until she found a song she’d heard her students play. She turned it up and sang along at the top of her lungs, inventing the words she didn’t know, which was all of them.
Singing made her feel a little better, not anywhere near right, but better. When she got to school, she remembered it was a charity fundraiser day, and those were always entertaining, too, as the different homerooms derived new and interesting ways to earn donations off their fellow students.
Her homeroom girls’ fundraiser involved a narwhal costume they’d found in the theater closet. “It’ll only work if you do it, Ms. B,” someone had said. She had promised that if they raised enough money, she would spend one lunch hour—just one—standing in the lobby in the costume. She hadn’t considered it was a Friday, and she would be sharing the lobby not only with the other fundraiser tables—the bake sales and the various o-grams— but also with the recruiters.
If that wasn’t enough, the recruiters had set up their table directly beside hers, forcing her to stand next to the handsome young man in his Air Force dress uniform. He was stunning, really; no wonder they sent him to the girls’ school. By the time four juniors had stammered their way through conversations with him in which he gallantly held up the other end, seemingly oblivious to their awkward flirtation, she’d had enough.
“So,” she said in a lull between students, “Do you get a cash bonus for bringing in a certain number? A car?”
“I’m sorry?” He looked confused.
Maybe it was her costume; she lacked gravitas. “Bonuses? Quotas? You must have target numbers.”
“My priority is to give our best and brightest an opportunity to serve their country.” He threw a look at the Army recruiter to his right, a prim young woman who couldn’t have been much older than the students.
Val felt as if somebody else were speaking through her. They were all words she wanted to say, but she couldn’t believe she was saying them out loud. She raised her voice, as her parents had done, as she’d promised herself never to do. “What are you here to do? Lie to my students? Tell them they’ll be safe and then send them halfway around the world to get shot at?”
Students watched, whispering to one another. She saw someone raise a phone: they were being recorded. She knew she should stop.
The Air Force guy clearly realized they were being recorded, too. Had probably realized it long before she had, thanks to his Pilot. She was shouting and he was calm, though his perfect smile had faded. “Ma’am, we aren’t lying to anybody. We offer opportunities. Financial opportunities, career opportunities. I’m not sure what you’re upset about, but I’ve never done anything to you.”
A single tear rolled down Val’s face as she struggled to keep her temper under control. She hated confrontation; hated even more that she cried when she was angry. Better to run it off than turn and face someone, yet here she was. “You people rolled into my son’s school and told him you were his best chance to succeed. He believed you. You said he’d be safe and far from the action and now he’s being deployed.”
“Ma’am, we don’t lie to the students.” Air Force had a new look on his face. Sympathy, maybe, or else pity. “I promise. You can ask anyone I’ve spoken with. We make sure they understand the risks. They decide if it’s worth it.”
Army joined him. “Are you sure he was lied to? What if your son was just trying to make you feel better about his decision?”
“Now you’re calling David a liar?”
“No, ma’am,” the girl said with sincerity. She lifted her hands in a placating gesture. “I’m only saying, um, you think he’s smart, right?”
“Of course. He wasn’t great in school, but he’s a good kid.”
“I’m sure he is. You raised him to be a good person.”
Val nodded.
“So maybe you need to trust that he enlisted because he’s smart and a good person and this was what he wanted for himself.”
“He’s a kid!”
Air Force crossed his arms. “He’s
