“They’re forcing us to look at our strings, even if we didn’t want to,” Jack ranted. “And for what? They think they can change fate? As if not sending a short-stringer into combat would somehow save their life? I bet they’re just trying to save themselves.”
“I don’t know,” said Javi, more ambivalent than his friend. “Maybe they feel guilty marching a band of short-stringers into a battle zone without even trying to do something about it.”
But neither had time to do much complaining, or to properly sort out their feelings, as they were promptly assigned times to report to the nearest army recruiting office, their respective boxes in tow. It was recommended that those who hadn’t yet looked at their strings do so in advance of their appointment, to avoid any shock in the room.
They had two weeks until they were called.
Jack and Javier sat on the couch with the two small boxes on the cushion between them and the string calculator queued up on Jack’s iPad.
Their bodies and minds had overcome plenty of challenges in recent years: arduous obstacle courses, new cadet hazing, boxing matches, navigating hilly, swampy, wooded terrain with only a compass in hand. But the task before them now was by far the hardest yet.
“Do you think you’d try to quit?” Jack asked. “If it’s short?”
“Well, I worked really hard to get this far,” said Javi. “And I made a commitment—to the army and to myself. So I think I’ve got to keep going. No matter what’s inside.”
Javier’s parents were both devout Catholics, so he sent up a silent prayer in their honor, and then gave Jack a nod. He was ready.
Because he had to be.
When Jack measured his string, he sighed a full exhale of relief that broke into a smile.
But Javier fell quiet.
Javi chose not to tell his parents. They were too thrilled to see him in uniform, a graduate of one of the finest colleges in the country and someone who commanded respect from every person he met. It was everything they wanted for their son.
Jack spent the next week caring for his grieving roommate, bringing food to his bedroom, constantly asking if there was anything he needed.
A few days later, the only thing that Javier needed was to get out of the apartment and run.
The two boys followed their usual route along a handful of blocks where many of the shops and restaurants had been boarded up since April, giving the streets an eerie bareness, though the emptier roads did make for easier running, without as many cars or shoppers to dodge. And the boys could use a particularly angry burst of graffiti on one of the barren storefronts—“Fuck the strings!!”—as their three-mile marker.
For a lot of the run Jack was quiet, only the heavy patter of their sneakers on the pavement making noise. It wasn’t until they reached the midway point that Jack spoke up.
“Javi?”
Javi kept his eyes focused ahead. “Yeah?”
“What if . . . what if we switched?”
Javi still didn’t crack his concentration. “Switched what?” he asked.
“Switched our strings,” Jack said.
That’s when Javi stopped abruptly. “What did you say?”
A biker behind them started frantically ringing his bell, but Javi stood frozen in the road.
“Watch out!” the cyclist yelled, and Jack quickly pulled Javi out of the way, just before the rider whirred past, flipping them off.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked. “You almost got hit!”
But Javi couldn’t focus on anything else. “Did you actually say switch our strings?”
Jack nodded. “Am I fucking nuts to even be saying that?”
Yes, you are, Javier thought. “But . . . it wouldn’t really change anything,” he said.
“It might not change the ending,” said Jack, “but it sure as hell would change everything else.”
Javier still didn’t get it. “Why would you want to pretend to have a short string?”
Jack paused for a moment, clearly uncomfortable. “Look, I feel like an asshole saying this, because obviously I’m happy about my string, but . . . I’m also kinda freaking out. I mean, I know that I owe them a couple of years in some capacity, but what if the army wants to send me into combat for life?”
Every terror that the academy had tried to expel from Jack had apparently come rushing back. He had no illusions about his physical prowess, he could barely hold his own in a stupid scuffle with a classmate. How could he possibly fight in a real war?
“And maybe if the army thought I had a short string,” Jack said, “they would just stick me behind some desk here in D.C. for a bit. I could basically disappear.”