Eddie giggles. “You think they leave them on during sex?”
Everyone laughs, easing the tension. I’m smiling as I lean against the shooting table. The AK at my shoulder, I line up the target in my sight. I close my eyes to center myself, then open them.
There’s a black-robed Taliban fighter at the other end of the range, standing next to the target. His head is wrapped in a turban with a black scarf hiding the lower portion of his face so only his eyes show. The Muslim version of a Wild West outlaw.
The world seems to slow around me. I can hear my friends laughing and talking, but I don’t know what they’re saying, and the only thing in focus is that man. The side of his turban is ripped open, the side of his exposed head caked with blood. I know this man.
I killed him.
I try to blink him away, but he won’t go. My mouth fills with the salty saliva that comes before you puke, and I have to swallow hard to keep it down.
I squeeze the trigger and the world speeds back up again.
Fifteen rounds later, the dead man is gone and Michalski exhales. “Jesus, Trav.” My hands are shaking as I pass the gun to my brother, but I don’t think anyone notices. “That was—whoa.”
Eddie lowers the binoculars and grins at me. “You are dangerous, dude.”
I laugh it off, but I feel very far from dangerous. My heart is pinballing around my chest. Is Kevlar going through this type of shit right now? Or Moss? And if I called them up to ask, would they admit it?
“So this is where the homoerotic male bonding happens,” a female voice says.
It’s Paige and she’s working the Tomb Raider look with a tight olive-green tank top and aviator sunglasses, her hair skimmed back in a ponytail. She looks incredible.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, shoving my hands into my pockets, trying to hide that I’m still shaken. Shaking.
She shrugs. “It’s not like this place is a secret.”
Michalski’s gaze swings to Ryan. “Dude, this is not cool.” I don’t normally agree with Michalski, but this time he’s right. It’s always been an unspoken rule that Tucker’s Grade is a guy thing. I never would have invited Paige here. “We don’t bring girls to the gun range.”
“Whatever.” Ryan waves him off. “Get over it.”
“No, man. Just no,” Michalski says. “This is a thing. It’s our thing and you violated it. The way you snaked your brother’s girlfriend while he was in Afghanistan.”
It goes quiet in that oh-shit-did-he-really-say-that? sort of way.
“She broke up with him before anything even happened,” Ryan protests. “I didn’t steal your girlfriend.”
He wants to believe that, but I know Paige. And I know my brother. He thinks he’s lived his life in my shadow, but you know what? He has no idea how easy he’s had it. He’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted—including Paige—and never had Dad breathing down his neck to be stronger. Faster. Better.
“He’s got a point, Rye,” I say. “You are a thing violator.”
I’m talking about inviting Paige to the gun range, but her glossy lips twist into a smug smile. I don’t need to see her eyes—shaded behind mirrored lenses—to know she’s looking at me. Or what she’s thinking.
“Boys.” She steps into the fray, pushing between Michalski and Ryan like a referee. “You can take turns peeing on me later.” Eddie, who has been fighting not to laugh, chokes on his soda and blows Coca-Cola out his nose. “But I’m here now, so deal with it.”
The brown liquid trickling down Eddie’s chin cracks all of us up. Except Ryan, who is still mad. I can see it in his shoulders and in the way he shoots. He never once hits the target.
The nightmare wrenches me awake. The same road. The same bomb. The same helpless despair as I watch Charlie blow up, find myself lying in his place, and then see the Afghan boy leaning over me as I die. Every time it starts I hope this time it will end differently, but it never does.
I know I won’t go back to sleep again tonight, so I sit down at my desk, turn on my laptop, and start looking for—and easily finding—photos and videos of my company from the Internet. Some were taken by the embedded reporters who went everywhere with us, others by guys in the unit. There are hundreds of pictures, but I’ve never seen any of them.
We’re all there. Charlie. Clifton “Ski” Kralewski. Moss. Jared “Starvin’ Marvin” Perumal. Peralta. Me. There’s a picture of Kevlar chasing a goat around the compound that makes me laugh out loud. I remember the day, because Charlie yelled, “Aw, look guys, Kenneth finally found a girlfriend!” and we were so punch-drunk exhausted we laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. The caption on the picture only mentions the boredom that sets in between patrols, not the long debate over whether we should eat the goat.
There’s one of my platoon at Camp Bastion before the assault on Marjah. We were all just waiting. Kevlar kept checking and rechecking his rifle, making sure it was lubricated. Charlie listened to Bob Marley on his iPod. I pulled my watch cap down over my eyes to block out the light and tried to sleep, even though the anticipation of the unknown was almost unbearable and the guy next to me was snoring.
There’s a picture of Ski shaving, his mirror propped on a dirt wall, using bottled water to rinse. He liked to sing when he shaved, but always used the wrong words. The one that always made us laugh the most was when he sang “I’m not big on sausage gravy” in that Garth Brooks low places song.
I’m watching a video of my squad firing on a Taliban sniper position—I remember a bullet skimming just inches over the top of my helmet—when my bedroom door opens.
“Why are you here?” I ask, watching Moss as he darts around the end of a dirt wall and opens fire. It’s so weird to see us doing the things we’ve already done. It’s weird that these moments in time have been captured and people looking at them don’t even know that Charlie is dead.
“How’d you know it was me?” Paige’s hands slide down my chest from behind, her Lara Croft ponytail falling over my shoulder. I hate that she still has this much effect on me.
“You didn’t knock.” My eyes are on the video until the last second as she turns my face toward her, and then she’s all lips and tongue and… I know I have got to stop doing this. But I don’t.
Charlie was with me the day her letter arrived in a care package. I let him read it after the other guys had distributed the porn and cigarettes like Christmas Day. “That’s pretty cold, Solo.” Charlie passed me his cigarette and I took a long drag.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s Paige.”
“You gonna be okay?” he asked. “Do you need a hug or something?”
I chuckled a little. “Nah, I’m good.”
In-country, I was good. On the other side of the world, none of the drama could touch me. Now that I’m back and she’s here, I’m not sure how I feel about her. But that’s probably because I just got laid and my brain is butter.
“Paige?”
“Hmmm?” She doesn’t open her eyes.
“You don’t want to get back together, do you?”
“Oh, God, no.” She laughs softly, making the bed vibrate. “Is that what you thought?”
“No.”
“It’s only sex, Travis.”
“You think Ryan would think that?” I stand up and pull on my shorts. The need to flee overwhelms me. I don’t like who I am with her. This shit has to stop.
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“Not the point.” Rummaging through my desk drawers, I search until I find a blank CD and slide it into my computer. “Why are you in my room right now instead of his?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Probably because you never say no.”
“Time for you to leave.” The laptop drive whirs, burning the downloaded photos onto the disk as I put my T-shirt back on. Paige makes no move to leave. “Now.”
“What did the Marines do to you, Trav?” she asks. “You used to be a lot more fun.”