The Not-So-Boring Letters of Private Nobody

by Matthew Landis

  “Great. Perfect couple. Next,” called the photographer. He was looking at them. He was an older guy with thinning hair dressed in a black V-neck and black pants. Oliver smelled sour cologne. “All right, so you’re going to stand here,” he directed Oliver, “and put your arms around her.” He basically put Oliver’s hands around Ella’s tiny waist, which was horribly awkward because the bare facts were that Oliver’s first ever physical contact with a girl was under the direction of this random, weird-cologne-wearing dude. “Good. Stay just like that.”

  Oliver felt Ella shaking. “Are you okay?”

  “. . . Hmm huh.”

  “And hold it . . .” the photographer said. He clicked, but there was no flash. “Oh—hold on. Battery on the flash must be dead. Gotta change it out.”

  Was Oliver supposed to let go? Oh jeez. Who knew these things. Kids were starting to smirk in line.

  “You were saying that you thought dressing up would . . . would what?” he asked.

  Ella shuddered again. Goose bumps covered her shoulders. “. . . I thought maybe if I was more like her . . . maybe my parents would acknowledge that I exist.”

  The photographer dropped a battery as he ripped open a fresh pack.

  This could be a while.

  And also: Ella’s hair smelled so good, Oliver wanted everything to smell like that, forever.

  “I get it,” he said.

  “Do you think that’s . . . stupid?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I kinda do.” She sighed, like she was mad at herself. “And as soon as I stepped out of the car and people started staring, I don’t know . . . I felt weird. This isn’t me—I’m not pretty like her. And I don’t really want to be like her, I just want her and them to act like I’m not an extra in their epic movie.”

  “Uh, I’ve never seen her, but I can tell you that you’re very pretty. Insanely pretty. Unbelievably—”

  “I get it.” Ella looked down at her dress and huffed. “I wish I’d never come.”

  “Do you wanna just go to the lab now?”

  “Let’s get some food first.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now give me a big smile,” the photographer said. “On three: one, two . . .” The flash went off and blinded Oliver. “Great. Perfect couple. Next.”

  They wandered over to the buffet and loaded up. Mostly Ella loaded up. By the time they reached an empty table, stuff was falling off her mountain of food.

  “I didn’t know hot dogs were Hawaiian,” Oliver said, eyeing his dinner.

  Ella had half of hers in her mouth and mumbled something that sounded liked hmmmumphphm. It was actually kind of comical seeing her so dressed up but still eating like a gorilla.

  “The power couple.” Mr. Carrow rapped the table with his knuckles and sat in an open chair across from them. “So . . . how was it? The big trip to G-burg? Give me the deets.”

  “Really, really good,” Ella said. “We got into the archive and found exactly what we were looking for.”

  “And?”

  Ella smiled with her entire face. “You’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  “Mrs. Mason and I are super pumped to see the final product.” Mr. Carrow eyed Oliver. “Finding the Civil War . . . different from what you thought, Ollie?”

  Oliver felt the regiments lining up in his gut: the Actual Civil War vs. the Ella version. Rifles were loaded and everybody was just waiting for a commanding officer to shout fire.

  “It’s been interesting,” he said. He squashed the follow-up: It could have been amazingly interesting if we had actually used my ideas.

  “Such as . . . ?”

  Oliver shifted. His mobster suit swished. “It’s different.”

  “Different how?”

  Mr. Carrow was really not going to let him out of this.

  “Not as much fighting as I thought.”

  “And what do you think about that?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “No.” Yes.

  “What do you think of Private Stone? Has he helped you see the war from a different perspective?”

  An extremely boring and stupid one that nobody should care about, Oliver thought, and as he thought it, he felt gunfire erupt in his gut. All the tension he’d been holding in exploded in a thunderous volley of shots. Mr. Carrow and Ella were both glaring at him for some reason, but Oliver didn’t care.

  But what’s weird is that he also could have sworn he heard himself say it—like the words had come out of his brain, bounced off the metal gym rafters, and echoed around the table for everyone to hear.

  And that’s when he realized that he did say it.

  Out loud.

  “It’s about time you got that off your chest,” Ella said.

  And then she threw—actually threw—her napkin at him and stormed out, her black heels clicking on the gym floor.

  —CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE—

  THE APOLOGY (ROUND TWO)

  “You said it, or you thought it?” Kevin asked.

  Oliver leaned against the gym’s folded-up bleachers. It felt like bullets were ricocheting around his gut. “I thought that I thought it.”

  “But you said it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Out loud.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That explains why I saw her storm out.” Kevin shook his head. “Dude—I told you to keep a lid on it until the project was over.”

  “It slipped out. I didn’t mean to actually say it.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That is very unfortunate.”

  Music started pumping from the speakers and the lights dimmed. The disco ball glittered. Some students—mostly sixth graders—had formed into two packs: boys on one side, girls on the other.

  “You need to go talk to her,” Kevin said. “For the sake of the project.”

  “I know.”

  “And you need to apologize. I don’t care if you don’t mean it. Just do it.”

  Oliver grabbed his backpack and walked out of the gym. The computer lab was on the other side of the building, so he had to squeeze past a retractable iron blockade meant to keep students from running around unsupervised.

  Oliver didn’t want to apologize. He wasn’t sorry. It actually felt amazing to have it all out in the open. He didn’t want to go back to pretending that Private Stone was anything other than a boring soldier who’d pooped himself to death.

  Okay, so he would fake-apologize. He’d lie to Ella and then they could get working. They’d still get their hundred. Everything was going to be okay.

  The computer lab was dark. Oliver pushed the handle and the door creaked open.

  “Ella?”

  Empty.

  He took out his phone and texted her.

  No response.

  Oliver wandered back through the iron gate into teacher-chaperoned territory. He passed the bathrooms. He really hoped she wasn’t crying in there. Putting his ear to the door, all he heard were toilets flushing.

  At the main office he ran into Ian and Samantha. They were holding hands and laughing about something.

  “Hey,” Oliver said. “Have you seen—?”

  Ian made a yikes face and pointed outside. In the fading light Oliver saw Ella in her dress standing by the flagpole. She was talking on her phone.

  “Good luck, man,” Ian said.

  Oliver stepped out into the humid night and took off his mobster suit jacket. He probably had major pit stains. He definitely had butt sweat. He loosened his tie and walked over to Ella.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Just pick me up.” A pause. “Charlie—I tried, okay? Just come get me.”

  Oliver felt something sitting on his chest—a reverse hero feeling. I
t was like he’d made her faint this time and then laughed as she crashed to the floor.

  “Please,” Ella begged. “Charlie, I will walk home—watch me. I don’t care that I’m in black and it’s almost dark. I—” Pause. She relaxed. “Okay. Okay.”

  She hung up and wheeled around.

  “I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “I’m really sorry I said that.”

  Ella ignored him and walked to the edge of the sidewalk and sat on a bench.

  He followed.

  “I shouldn’t have said that, okay? I’m sorry. Don’t leave. We can still get a lot of stuff done.”

  “You’re sorry.” Ella looked the other way. “Like when you tried to kick me out of our group?”

  Oliver’s old friend, the fist of guilt, punched his lower intestine. “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not used to working with other people.”

  “That’s an excuse,” she said. “And a bad one.”

  “But it’s true.”

  “Which should make it all okay, right? Wrong, Ollie. You don’t get to use that as a reason to be a jerk.”

  “You said you forgave me,” he said.

  “Maybe I did what you do: Say something without actually meaning it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ella slowly turned her head and looked at him. Her Caribbean-blue eyes gleamed. “Stone, Ollie. This whole project. We’re telling a story about an actual person—but you don’t believe he mattered. You’ve been nodding along with me but you don’t actually believe it. Instead you’ve been faking, all while going off on some weird tangent about the regiment he enlisted in so you can get lost in more of what you really love: details that don’t actually matter.”

  Oliver could hear Kevin screaming in his head.

  DO. NOT. SAY. IT.

  JUST.

  APOLOGIZE.

  YOU.

  MORON.

  But it was too late.

  The soldiers had re-formed and reloaded. They were ready—they wanted—to fire again, and Ollie wanted them to.

  And so he gave the command.

  Fire.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  Ella stood and took a step toward him. Her pale skin was blotched with rage. “Why—because he wasn’t some hero from your Time-Life books?”

  “He wasn’t a hero. All he did was march around, get diarrhea, keep score in the stupid camp baseball games, and die.”

  “He volunteered to give his life for this country.”

  “Yeah, in exchange for a ton of money,” Oliver said. “Real honorable.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you been listening to me? Stone enlisted in place of this H. Weller guy and money was exchanged.”

  Ella pressed her fingers into her temple. “This is exactly what I’m talking about: You’re obsessed with every detail but the ones that actually matter.”

  “I’m obsessed? I’m not the one who has a gigantic crush on Stone.”

  “I don’t have a crush on him!” Ella shouted. “We were supposed to examine his wartime experience. I’m pretty sure everything in his letters—including falling in love right before he died—qualifies. You’re just mad because he didn’t match up with your perfect little world of battles and generals. But guess what—that stuff has absolutely zero impact on our project.”

  “It’s not my perfect little world,” Oliver yelled back. “It’s called history—the real history of the war that I know way more about than you.”

  “Oh right—your big mountain with all the hidden details and information and gold mines that nobody knows but you.” Ella glared at him. “You know, Ollie, I seriously wonder if you really like the Civil War because there’s nobody up on your stupid mountain of facts but you. I wonder if maybe you’re up there because it’s easier than being down here with the rest of us.”

  It was like getting punched in the heart. Oliver let his backpack fall to the ground with a thud.

  Ella must have seen the damage she’d done, because she reached toward him. “Ollie . . .”

  But he’d recovered now and was hungry for payback. The ammo wasn’t hard to find.

  “Says the girl living up in the twin peaks of Mount Bad Grades and Worse Hair. And why are you up there? To send your parents some stupid message about not getting enough attention? ’Cause your sister doesn’t wanna hang out with you? Here’s an idea: Ever think about actually talking to them? If you want to accuse someone of hiding, maybe you should look in a freaking mirror.”

  Ella opened her mouth; nothing came out. He’d hit a nerve. No—he’d charged into an inner chamber of her heart, bayonet fixed, and stabbed with intent.

  A pair of headlights lit up Ella’s stony face. A lime-green Volkswagen Beetle pulled into the parking lot and Ella got in.

  —CHAPTER FORTY—

  THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, AWFUL, EMBARRASSING TRUTH

  “Hey buddy.” Mr. Carrow sat down on the curb next to Oliver. “Everything okay?”

  Oliver watched the taillights of Charlie’s VW Beetle disappear down the road. “Uh-huh.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  Oliver picked at the gravel. “I guess.”

  “I should probably admit that I was getting something from my car just now.” He pointed to a red beat-up Honda Civic that looked like it was one fender bender away from the junkyard.

  “So you . . . heard all that?”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “I wanna show you something.” Mr. Carrow pulled out his phone and did an image search. He clicked on a picture and showed it to Oliver. “Check it out.”

  Oliver examined a giant bronze statue of a bearded soldier on horseback. The statue sat on a cement pedestal, putting it probably twenty feet in the air. “Looks like a memorial.”

  “Yup. Now, if you walked by this, what would you think about that guy?”

  “I’d think he did something really awesome during the war.”

  “Something heroic.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Mr. Carrow zoomed in on the statue. “Here’s the inscription: Those hoof beats die not upon fame’s crimson sod, but will ring through her song and her story; He fought like a Titan and struck like a god, and his dust is our ashes of glory.”

  “Sounds like he did something really cool.”

  “It does.” Mr. Carrow pocketed his phone. “The guy on that horse is Lieutenant General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, a really famous Confederate commander who did a lot for the South during the war. A very brave soldier. Ever heard of him?”

  “His name sounds familiar.”

  “But from the statue and inscription, he sounds like a hero, right?”

  “Yeah.” Oliver sensed this was a setup, but his answer was honest.

  “In 1864, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest and his cavalry killed over two hundred surrendering Union soldiers—most of them African Americans—at the Battle of Fort Pillow. Historians call it one of the worst massacres of the Civil War.”

  Oliver stared up at his teacher. “That’s horrible.”

  “Gets worse. After the war, Forrest joined the Ku Klux Klan—the guys who went around in white robes terrorizing and, in many cases, actually killing African Americans who were trying to vote.”

  Oliver couldn’t help but think of Mrs. Mason. “Why does a guy like that get a memorial? He’s a murderer.”

  “Think about this: After the war, white Southerners had to face the fact that they lost—badly. Their countryside was torn up. Almost a third of their male population was gone or maimed. And they didn’t want to adjust to the new world order—a society without slavery, and a rush of free African Americans competing for the same jobs
as poor whites. How do you think they felt?”

  “Sad. And probably angry.”

  “Exactly. And so they channeled all that sadness and anger into hero making. Historians call this the Lost Cause era—a time when the defeated Confederates focused on celebrating their soldiers’ bravery and heroics instead of dealing with the realities of the war—its causes and consequences, including atrocities committed against real people, like the Fort Pillow massacre.” He looked at Oliver very seriously. “What I’m saying, Ollie, is that people sometimes make history what they want it to be instead of what it actually was. They focus on the parts that fit with how they feel instead of looking at the big picture.”

  The statement plunged into Oliver’s chest like a bayonet.

  But then something strange happened: The blade turned cold, almost soothing. It felt right. It felt like the truth.

  The terrible, horrible, awful, embarrassing truth.

  “I do that,” he said.

  Mr. Carrow let that sit for a little. “Part of the reason I didn’t want you to work alone is because I wanted you to see the war as it was—not as you made it. Don’t get me wrong: I love that you reenact. I love that you know more about the Battle of Gettysburg than probably most of the social studies teachers in Pennsylvania. But there’s a big difference between knowing stuff about the Civil War and understanding the human conflict. It’s not all battles and generals and heroes. Sometimes it’s a local farm boy who enlists, spends a couple months marching around writing letters to his mom, and then dies without ever firing a shot.”

  Oliver took in a giant lungful of humid air and let it out slowly. “Yeah. I’m getting that now.”

  “I put you with Ella for another reason too.”

  “Because I have trouble working with other people,” Oliver said. “I’m pretty sure we didn’t accomplish that mission.”

  Mr. Carrow hid a smile. “I was trying to help Ella.”

  Oliver felt the truth of it dawning on him like a sun—slow at first and then blinding. He’d been too focused on himself to even think about it. Too selfish.