I heard the door open and close upstairs. Toby. It was time for practice. I got nervous.
“Okay, Nor, this is an absolute, military-grade secret.”
“Ha!” She squatted near the case for her bass, flipping the levers on the lid. “Duh.”
“Swear.”
She did a budget John F. Kennedy impression. “？‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ I solemnly swear not to reveal this classified information.”
Toby came down the stairs, wearing a fantastically crisp white shirt over his broad shoulders, a red bandanna, and his dusty brown hair pulled into a ponytail. “Very festive Mick Fleetwood, Toby,” I called.
He grinned. “Long time, no talk, Cass,” he said.
“Sorry.”
As we set up, Toby came near where I was bent, and plunked a few notes on the electric piano. “Oh, by the way.”
I looked up. In his hands was a shiny, brand-new vegan cookbook. “I saw this and I was thinking about you today, so . . .”
Nora released a large cough. I looked over at where she was innocently plugging in her bass. I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn I heard her say something underneath it. “Bad timing.”
Luke
My small, donated German laptop sat on the green tin table that also served as the place for cards, for clipping fingernails, for unwrapping milky British chocolate, for putting lotion on blistered palms after maneuvering a heavy gun all day, for setting up a mirror to shave. Our room at Camp Leatherneck was about half the size of our dorm rooms at Fort Hood. Fake wood paneling and exposed pipes that didn’t keep the cold out at night.
We were in temperate country, in Helmand Province. The heat was bad, but the frigid nights were worse.
It was me and Frankie and a kid from the division we didn’t know too well, Sam Adels, the only other redhead aside from Davies. Everyone called him Rooster.
Both Frankie and Rooster were over at the community room, the bass from someone’s R&B shaking the thin walls, so it was kind of pointless to Skype with Cassie. We didn’t have anyone to fool.
But we had said two weeks, so I was here, online.
In a lot of ways, this place was good for me. Sobriety was a gift I received every morning. Clarity. Blinding sun. Everything I had to fear was outside of me, and the ways I would fight it were established, unquestionable.
I woke up, I ate, I bent next to Clark over a huge engine, repeating his words, writing down parts and drawing diagrams, following his lead.
Then we’d load up and take the rickety roads up and down the Kajaki Dam into the villages, negotiating with the Afghan National Army （ANA） at checkpoints. The elders of the villages would speak to the translators, the translators to the captains. We’d hand out blankets to the women, licorice to the kids, passing through herds of goats and volleyball games. Still, we were on full alert at all times.
I watched for Cassie’s name to go green in the Skype window. I looked closer at the icon she’d chosen as her contact photo. A man in red and gold robes, smiling and pointing. I realized it was the Dalai Lama. Spokesperson for world peace. Funny, Cass.
“Hi!” she said when the call came through. “Hello?”
Slight delay. We waited for the video to load.
“Hey. I’m alone, by the way,” I said.
“Got it,” she responded.
I took in her face. She looked different. Her hair just reached her jaw, framing her face with thick, black waves. “Did you cut your hair?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice a bit tinny through the speakers. “I look exactly like my mom now.”
I laughed.
“Oh, by the way,” she said, sighing. “I told Nora about us.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Everything?”
“Yeah.”
I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out. “Okay. Um. Why?”
She avoided looking at the screen. “It’s just . . . I wouldn’t not tell my mom and best friend I got married.” She looked up, hard.
“All right. Just, maybe better to . . . you know. Keep it as simple as possible. Uh, so.” She was wearing her wedding dress, the one that revealed her tattoo. “Are you dressed up?”
“What can I say? This is a special occasion,” she said, giving me an exaggerated wink.
I coughed, trying to cover up a heat I felt on my neck. “For real?”
“Nah, I’m going out.”
With a dude? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. “So you got the money okay?”
“Yep, thank you,” she said, biting her thumbnail.