One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

Eva will bring a cold cut platter…

      “You know,” Mitch says as he turns toward base housing, “considering John’s popularity and his reputation as a football star, a burial at Arlington Cemetery might be appropriate.”

      “Yes.” She nods, visualizing the hills of white gravestones and a dark limousine with U.S. flags flapping in the wind. “I’d like to honor John that way.”

      Her heart solidifies, a cold, hard stone in her chest as she proceeds with the details she’s spent her entire adult life learning, married to the military.

      Chapter 6

      Washington

       Madison

      As Ziggy waves a match over the ends of two cigarettes—one for him, one for Sienna—Madison lets out a sigh over the injustice of it all.

      Why do her parents think she’s a criminal?

      They always suspect her, the straightest, most cautious kid in the pack. They’re sure she’s dabbling in drugs and booze and sex, when the truth of the matter is she’s just a sixteen-year-old innocent.

      Ziggy’s lower lip pokes out, releasing a stream of smoke that lifts the stringy hair over his forehead. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t sell me a pack of smokes.” He sulks.

      It is a little surprising, since Ziggy looks about ten years older than he is, with dark circles under his eyes and a barrel chest that you’d figure more for a prize boxer than the leader of the high school marching band.

      “Do you think your friend’ll score some for us?” Ziggy asks.

      “Don’t even ask her,” Madison says, shooting a look over at Suz, who’s talking with some old man gassing up at the station. “She doesn’t want to contribute to your sick addiction. And you know the word will get back to my parents that I’m smoking. Which I’m not.” She waves a hand through the air, trying to fend off the smoke. “You’re disgusting.”

      Sienna and Ziggy exchange a look and giggle.

      “Pollyanna.” Sienna accuses with thinly veiled disdain. “It’s a good thing we like you.”

      “Since when did this become about scoring cigarettes?” Madison holds up the sign in her hands, which reads: NO MORE BUSHIT—GET OUT OF IRAQ! “I thought we came here to launch a war protest, get the message out.”

      “Whatever,” Sienna says in that sing-song tone she thinks is so clever but in truth is quite irritating.

      Sometimes Madison has to ask herself why it is she hangs out with this crew. She is the only squeaky-clean freak here, despite her parents’ suspicions.

      She has never been arrested.

      She doesn’t do drugs, and the few times she tried alcohol it was in small doses in safe venues, at the houses of friends, none of whom would be so boneheaded as to get behind the wheel of a car after downing a beer or a few drinks of vodka and orange juice.

      Madison is an A student, honor roll, National Honor Society, just one apple short of being teacher’s pet.

      She’s a vegetarian, a runner, and she showers on a regular basis.

      So what’s so incredibly wrong with me?

      For her parents, it’s all wrapped up in her political activism, which could be summed up with the sign she’s holding up to block the blinding sun.

      Get out of Iraq.

      She really believes this. She wants her brothers home—J-Dawg and Noah-Balboa. She wants all those young guys and women home. All those poor kids, not much older than she is, from places like Alabama or Ohio, who enlisted because they had no other job choices.

      Her mother says it’s wrong to hate anyone, but she hates the president. He claims that a soldier is obliged to serve his country without questioning decisions from a higher authority, but how can anyone not question? How can anyone not see how useless it is for our people to be dying, unappreciated and without gain, thousands of miles from home?

      And how could one man—the president—get away with it? Signing off on a few documents, giving a few orders and—POOF!—we were at war. And suddenly thousands of kids and fathers and brothers are sent off to a strange place where the air is dryer than Mars and the roadsides explode in your face.

      That’s what happened to Suz’s husband, Scott—a roadside bomb. One of Scott’s commanding officers wrote Suz a letter saying that the IED came out of nowhere, that Scott never knew what hit him, that he didn’t suffer. Which has to be a load of crap—the suffering part. And somehow, for a guy like Scott with a wife and baby at home, maybe he’d want a few minutes’ warning, a chance to say good-bye, to send last messages to Suz and Sofia.

      Of course, Madison is not supposed to know any of this stuff because it is strictly AW—Adult World—but she’s always listening, and when her mother gets engrossed in her military wives’ network stuff, she forgets anyone else is around.

      But Madison hears everything.

      She heard her mother’s cry of outrage when the base commander announced there would be no more individual memorial services for soldiers killed in Iraq—because they couldn’t friggin’ keep up with it, that’s why. And she’s heard the endless stories, the families whose sons or husbands signed up for a stint in the National Guard, thinking they’d be called in during an earthquake or flood or something, but finding themselves shipped off to Iraq and returning in a body bag. Those stories hit all the papers in Washington and Oregon, though no one on base wants to talk about it because they have to believe they’re doing the right thing serving their country. Otherwise, they’d go crazy.

      Un-fucking-believable, as Ziggy says when his head is screwed on straight. That would be when he’s not floating on a cloud of weed or trying to scrounge some money to cop some. Ziggy is one of those untapped geniuses. He’ll probably become an engineer, or a scientist who comes up with a cure for cancer, if he ever kicks the weed and survives high school.

      Madison holds her sign up to passing motorists, motioning for them to honk if they support peace. Behind her, half the people she came with are already flaked out on the mall, and the other half seem to be dropping like flies, abandoning their march to sit in the grass, search for four-leaf clovers, and contemplate their navels. Ziggy and Sienna are working the edge of the gas station, bumming money from people who come in to fill up their cars. Cameron, Matthew, and Lily are stretched out, sunning themselves beside the WELCOME TO GREENDALE sign, but no surprise there. She knows they just came along to get in Sienna’s good graces and prove they can fly their freak flag whenever.

      Suz comes up from behind her, her sign held high. She gets a passing motorist to honk in support, and both girls wave back.

      “Thanks for doing this,” Madison says, feeling awkward. Every time she’s been with Suz, it’s been orchestrated by her mother, who’s in that group of ladies who intervene when a soldier dies, trying to cure grief with casseroles and coffee cake and conversation.

      “No problem,” Suz says. “It’s a hell of a good cause, and I can think of a lot worse things to do with my morning off.”

      Madison was happy to help Suz when her husband got killed, and Sofia’s a cute kid, no trouble at all. But this is weird. Madison is here to prevent other guys from getting killed the way Scott was. But still, when she turns to look at Suz, a sickening feeling soaks through her. It’s too late for Scott, right? He’s dead. And Sofia, their little kid with brown eyes as wide as buttons, who loves to sing the alphabet song and lace her fingers through yours, Sofia is never going to have a daddy. And that’s so wrong.

      Madison’s cell phone chimes. When she sees that it’s her mother, she definitely does not want to answer, at least not until she considers the alternatives. What if Mom persists and then calls the school to leave a message in the office? What if they tell her Madison is absent for the day?

      Suz is watching