He just didn’t deserve her tears.
“Really, I’m doing okay,” he assured her, though he couldn’t help but think that his whole dilemma was her own husband’s doing. If only he could say something on behalf of Javier, perhaps even trust her with the truth.
After his mother abandoned him, Jack had looked to his aunt, his father’s little sister, to fill the empty space. And, sometimes, she managed to do so. But she never wanted to be Jack’s mother. She wanted to be Mrs. Rollins.
She wanted the picture-perfect marriage, the coveted social status, reigning over dinner parties and fundraisers and yacht clubs and maybe, someday, the whole country. And Hunters always got what they wanted.
“You’re very brave,” Katherine finally said. “The whole family would be proud.”
And that might have been worse than the tears.
A weak, “Thanks,” was all Jack could muster. “But I should probably be heading back,” he said. “Try to beat the traffic.”
“Well, I’m here if you need me,” Katherine added. “Your uncle is, too.”
Somehow, Jack doubted that last part.
Katherine smiled at him as she opened the door, and Jack slid out of the house and into his car, relieved to be alone.
Back at his apartment, Jack flopped onto the bed, exhausted and queasy with guilt.
The lying was hard enough; did his aunt have to praise his stoic courage? His classic Hunter bravery? Making the family proud?
He hadn’t earned her admiration, and he certainly didn’t deserve her pity. It made Jack sick to think that she was crying for him, for the short string she thought he had, while there was nobody crying for Javier. He was the one who was truly brave, not Jack.
When Jack sat up, he stared straight into his closet, the door ajar and exposing the sloppy piles of clothes on the floor, the jackets slouching on hangers. The army never would have tolerated this mess. And they certainly wouldn’t have tolerated the lies he told his aunt, falsehoods formed out of fear.
When Jack spotted his uniform hanging in the back, freshly pressed and still protected by the plastic dry-cleaning bag, something set off inside of him. He ran over to the closet and started clawing at the pieces—sweatshirts on hangers, Tshirts on shelves, a folded pair of sweatpants—anything from the academy or the army, any proof that he once tried to fit in. Then he gathered all the offending items into a rumpled heap in his arms, turned back toward his room, and shoved the whole lot of them under his bed.
Anthony
It was just as Anthony expected, his numbers skyrocketed after the rally. His message was resonating. The people were scared. And they were looking to him for help.
Just when Anthony thought it couldn’t get any better, the police found a box with a short string while searching the apartment of his would-be assassin, revealing she had only a few years left. She must have been driven mad, the public concluded. Yet another reason why short-stringers couldn’t be trusted, why Anthony was right all along.
The news set Twitter ablaze.
Another pyscho short-stringer!! No surprise there!
The hospital, the mall, the bombing, now this. We can’t let these people keep terrorizing our country!
My child’s fourth-grade teacher has a short string. Should I be worried for her safety at school?
To everyone who keeps defending the shooter and blaming Congressman Rollins: Shame on you! A short string shouldn’t excuse murder.
What dumbass let that feminazi short-stringer get her hands on a gun anyway??
Anthony didn’t much care what the peons of the Internet were arguing about, but his campaign manager was particularly pleased. The national discussion seemed to be shifting further in their favor.
The strings were still a relatively new phenomenon, so any violence spawned by their arrival was a new kind of violence. The fact that the rally shooter turned out to be a woman only helped Anthony’s cause. Before the strings, it was rare for the country to see female assailants, but now anyone with a short string could be viewed as a potential threat. The old methods of law-and-order simply wouldn’t cut it anymore. And Anthony was the only candidate positioning himself as a fighter equipped for the battle.
Though Wes Johnson was still attempting his appeal to the better angels, most of the other candidates had been hampered by some stereotype: The Ivy League professor was too out-of-touch, the brash governor too uncouth, the conservative congresswoman too maternal. Anthony had been smart to latch on to the strings, to associate himself with the most salient issue before anyone could label him, or, worse, deem him irrelevant.