Something Like Normal (8 page)

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. Shak
ing
.

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.”

I hit the eject and the CD slides out. Slapping my back pocket to make sure my wallet is there, I step barefoot into the new Sambas my mom bought and head for the door.

“Let yourself out,” I say. “And don’t forget to put the key back where you found it.”

I drive to the twenty-four-hour Walgreens up on San Carlos, where they have one of those do-it-yourself photo kiosks. The store is empty except for the cashier, who is sitting on the checkout counter, her tanned legs dangling over the edge. On her feet are a pair of familiar cowboy boots. Lacey Ellison.

We rode the same bus in middle school and I remember her stop was beside a crummy trailer park next to the bridge to Fort Myers Beach. No one wanted to sit beside her because she smelled like pee and Michalski called her FBK—short for Free Breakfast Kid—because she was poor enough to be on the breakfast plan. Back then she used to charge five dollars to make out with her behind the portables. Now she’s already starting to look rough and she’s barely legal.

“Hey, Lace.”

“Travis Stephenson.” She hops off the counter and puts her hand in the middle of my chest, all five foot nothing of her blocking my path to the photo machine. “A word.”

“Sure.”

“Harper told me you went to the beach with her the other night.”

“I did,” I say. “That a problem?”

“Not yet.”

“What are you getting at?”

“She’s my friend, Travis,” she says. “Amber and me… well, Harper isn’t the same as us at all, but she doesn’t judge. She’s the best person I know, and if you break her heart, I will kill you.”

I grin at her. “Duly noted, ma’am.”

“I’m serious!” She tries to shove me, but she’s not strong enough. Her fierce sincerity is cool, though, and I respect it. “Just don’t.”

I nod. “I won’t.”

“That’s what you say.” Lacey lifts herself back onto the counter. “But don’t forget what happened the last time she let you kiss her.”

A very good point.

She doesn’t disturb me while I’m making prints from the downloaded images, but she gives me a free bottle of Coke after about an hour.

“This is broken.” She points to a minor indentation on the bottom of the bottle. No sign of leakage. “If you don’t drink it, I’m going to have to throw it away.”

A little while later, the biker from the Shamrock comes in on his way home from the bar. Lacey hops off the counter with a happy little squeak and launches herself at him. They make out nonstop for about ten minutes, coming up for air only when a customer comes in to buy a pack of Camels and a bag of Doritos.

When I’m finished, she lets me use her employee discount on the stack of finished prints.

“Thank you for shopping at Walgreens,” she deadpans, then points her finger at me. “Remember what I said.”

She flicks her eyes toward her biker boyfriend and that means I’m supposed to be scared. I could take him in a fight, but I guess that’s really not the point. “I will.”

I’m not ready to go home yet, so I drive out to the Waffle House to see if Harper is working. The waitress behind the counter tells me it’s her day off and I’m a little disappointed. I order a cup of coffee to go.

“Are you stalking me again?” Harper shoulder-bumps me as she comes up beside me at the counter. She’s wearing a black Social Distortion T-shirt with a pair of faded red shorts. I used to have a shirt just like it, but hers looks better.

“I was here first. So who’s doing the stalking now?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Stephenson,” she says. “I came to get paid.”

I wait as she disappears behind the door to the office. She’s back in less than a minute with her paycheck in hand. After I pay for my coffee, I walk her out to the Land Rover.

“So what are you doing today?” she asks, leaning against the car door as if she’s in no hurry to leave. I’m getting all kinds of crazy good signals from her.

“Coffee, nap, and then my day is wide open,” I say. “Why? Are you asking me out?”

“In your dreams.”

I laugh. “If my dreams were about you, Harper, it would make sleeping a whole lot more appealing.”

Her cheeks go pink. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” I step into the space between us and take her face in my hands. I kiss her for days. Or maybe just a couple of minutes. It’s hard to tell. The phone in her hip pocket vibrates against my leg and she laughs against my mouth and says she has to go.

“Do you want to do something tonight?” I ask.

She gets into the Land Rover and shuts the door. For a moment I think she’s blowing me off, but then she rolls down the window. “Yes.”

Paige is gone when I get home, and my mom and Ryan are still asleep. In my room, I shuffle through the stack of photos until I find my favorite. It’s of Charlie and me playing rock-paper-scissors to decide which of us would be first to read the latest-to-us issue of
Playboy
. In the picture, he’s throwing rock while I’m throwing scissors and losing my shot at Miss March. Rock-paper-scissors was the way we decided everything, and it’s only now I realize Charlie almost always threw rock. Using a stray thumbtack from the back of my night-stand drawer, I pin the photo to the wall beside the bed.

It looks random and strange. It doesn’t belong on this wall of concert flyers and band posters. As quietly as possible, I drag my bed away from the wall and tear down everything, until the picture is the only thing left. Then I go downstairs to the kitchen.

Dad is standing at the sink in sweatpants, drinking bottled water and looking out the window at the Caloosahatchee.

“What are you doing?” There is accusation in his tone. As if searching the kitchen junk drawer for thumbtacks is on his list of unacceptable behavior.

“What are
you
doing?” I fling the accusation back. “I thought Mom kicked you out.”

“It’s really none of your concern, Travis,” he says. “And, frankly, this prodigal son act is wearing thin.”

“It’s not an act.”

“By the way.” Dad caps the bottle and puts it back in the refrigerator. “I’m not sure your brother would appreciate hearing about these late-night visits from Paige. So how about you stay out of my business and I stay out of yours.”

Fuck.

As I climb the stairs back to my room, it takes everything in me not to turn around and punch that smug smile off his face. Instead, I pin up all the photos—243 of them—until the wall is covered with little windows back to a place and time when I didn’t feel so untethered.

When I’m finished, it doesn’t look nice. The rows are crooked and Dad will lose his shit when he sees 243 pinholes in his precious walls. I thought it was going to make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

I crash out on my bed.

Just before I close my eyes, I see Charlie sitting on my chair.

“Go away, Charlie,” I say. “I’m not in the mood for this shit right now.”