by John Dixon
If Seamus’s family didn’t show, maybe Scarlett could talk with him so that he wouldn’t have to be alone. The Point wouldn’t let the cadets go home for the holidays, but they would have an unusual amount of free time for the next week and a half. She could ask him to play chess or walk around campus, show him some of the cool stuff she’d discovered while roaming at night.
Yeah, right…after what you did? He hates you, girl.
“I wish Dan could have made it,” Mom said. “Wouldn’t that have been nice? The whole family together for Christmas dinner?”
“No soldier can count on Christmas dinner, let alone with his family,” her father said.
“How is Dan?” Scarlett asked, trying and failing to sound natural. He still hadn’t replied to her letters.
Mom smiled wistfully. “He’s his father’s son. Always coming and going, taking on this and that. I hope he isn’t taking on too much.”
“Working his way up the ranks,” her father said. “He has no say in the matter.”
“My,” Mom said, leaning forward, “that girl sure laughs loudly.”
Scarlett half turned. Dalia flapped her arms up and down like a bird and let out another squawk of loud laughter. What was going on with her?
Dalia’s parents smiled awkwardly, looking like they might bolt for the door.
“Of course, Dan will be even busier now with the wedding.”
Scarlett tilted her head. “What wedding?”
Mom looked confused. “You didn’t know? Your brother is engaged.”
“Engaged? Dan? Are you serious?”
She nodded, her smile fading a little. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” Scarlett said. “He didn’t.” What should have been happy news hit her like a punch in the gut. All those letters she’d written, and Dan couldn’t even bother to tell her that he was getting married? “I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend.”
“Well, he does. A fiancée,” Mom said. “Daisy. She’s very nice. I mean, we were surprised that they decided to get married so quickly, but she’s really very nice. Isn’t she, Charles?”
“Men aren’t like women,” her father said, mopping up the last of his gravy with half a roll. “We don’t need to tell each other everything. Dan will get around to it when he gets around to it. You going to eat that cranberry sauce or what?”
A beaming Rhoads appeared and launched into a long spiel about how hard Scarlett was working and how she’d impressed everyone here at The Point. He didn’t mention the trouble that she’d been in or the poor grades she’d earned in math and physics. To hear Rhoads, you’d think Scarlett was the finest cadet at West Point, a modern-day Douglas MacArthur.
As Fuller assembled the families for a group tour of the grounds, Rhoads offered the Winters a personal tour. Scarlett squirmed, hoping her classmates wouldn’t notice, and squirmed again when she saw Seamus watching with icy eyes as Rhoads led them away.
Light snow fell from slate skies, padding the mantle of white covering the campus. As they walked, Rhoads identified dark granite buildings and spouted West Point trivia. Through it all, he continued to praise Scarlett, whose mother’s eyes were shining an hour later, when Rhoads led them to their car and bade them good-bye, embracing Scarlett’s parents and thanking them again for the daughter they’d sent him.
Mom opened the car door and pulled a box from the backseat and handed it to Scarlett. “It’s a care package,” she said. “Stuff you like. Cookies, things like that.”
Scarlett hefted the box. Good smells wafted out. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You’d better eat them before someone confiscates them,” she said.
“Eat them before your battle buddies scarf them down is more like it,” her father said with a rare smile. He’d grown quiet during the walk but didn’t seem angry. “I don’t think I ate more than three cookies during basic, and my mother sent a fresh batch weekly.” He laughed, shaking his head, his eyes a thousand miles away.
Scarlett didn’t have the heart to tell him that she didn’t train with a platoon and barely knew her fellow plebes. It was just her. And Dalia, sort of.
“Well,” her father said, reaching into the car and coming out with a small box wrapped in red paper. “They can’t eat this, anyway.” He handed it to Scarlett. “Merry Christmas.”
She turned the gift in her hands, taking in the terrible wrap job. Too much paper, too much tape. Mom would never wrap something so sloppily. She blinked. Her father had wrapped it. For the first time in her life, her father was giving her a present.
She looked up, and there was something wrong with her father’s face. His mouth was slightly ajar, and his eyes looked almost nervous. He reached awkwardly toward her, but his hand paused in the gap between them, as if he couldn’t decide whether to pat Scarlett’s arm or maybe snatch the present out of her hands.
She glanced at her mother for a clue. Mom was crying and smiling, looking back and forth between them, her gaze lingering on her father with something like pride.
“Well,” Mom said, wiping at her eyes, “open it, Scarlett.”
What’s going on here? Suddenly her face felt hot.
Her father ended the moment. “She can open it back in the barracks,” he said. “It’s nothing big. Just a little something I thought you might like. If not, you can toss it.” He looked at Scarlett strangely again, offered a wriggling smile, and started to walk around the car.
Mom started to protest, clearly disappointed, and Scarlett said it was fine, she’d open it now, but her father shook his head and said they had to get on the road before the storm got any worse. “Merry Christmas, Scarlett,” he said. “Keep your powder dry.”
“Merry Christmas, Dad,” Scarlett said, but her voice came out funny, having a hard time working its way around the lump in her throat. Keep your powder dry. Dad always said that to Dan, never to Scarlett.
Her father slipped in behind the wheel and slammed the door. Mom took the care package from Scarlett and set it on the car so she could give her a hug. Mom kissed her cheek and wished her a Merry Christmas and told her that she loved her, and Scarlett said the same things to her and stood at the curb with the cookies and the mysterious, poorly wrapped gift and watched her parents pull away, heading toward the gate and home. And then they were gone.
She stood there for a moment, alone, the world suddenly silent beneath its muffling layer of snow, quiet enough that she could hear the tiny flakes tap-tap-tap-ing against the wrapping paper of the little red present. She turned it in her hand. Part of her wanted to open it now, hoping to shed light on her father’s strange behavior, but she felt a little odd, reverent or afraid or maybe a little of both, so she tucked the mysterious present into her coat pocket and shifted the care package under one arm and started for the barracks, hoping Mom had packed brownies and banana bread, too. Maybe she could catch Lucy before formation. Lucy would love the cookies. Maybe they’d even throw a little meat on her skinny frame.
These were her happy thoughts as she looped back past Trophy Point, but she and her thoughts lurched to an abrupt halt when she spotted a familiar figure striding away through the strengthening snow, heading toward the edge of campus and Flirtation Walk.
Though he was a fair distance away and dressed like any cadet, she recognized the solitary figure instantly by his trim, muscular build and fast-paced gait.
Seamus.
HIS WERE THE ONLY TRACKS in the newly fallen snow. They were spread far apart, Seamus walking at his characteristic clip, fast with long strides.
She hurried after him.
He had disappeared onto Flirtie, the rocky footpath overlooking the Hudson, where cadets came to escape from prying eyes and honor code violations.
She followed the tracks around one corner, then another, heart pounding. What would she even say if she caught up with him?
Hey, I know I caused you hours of pain and terror, but…
She wound around another corner, and an invisible truck slammed into her. She stumbled backward, more from surprise than from the invisible force, some of which entered her and spun at her center. The wall pushed slowly forward, inching her off the trail, and pinned her back against raw stone.
Seamus stepped from the bushes, his face twisted with anger. “Why are you following me, Winter?”
“I—” she stammered, her brain freezing. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Why would a big shot like you want to talk to someone like me?”
“I’m not a big shot.”
He made a face. “Yeah, right. I see you, strolling with Rhoads. You guys are all buddy-buddy, like him and the Queen Bitch.”
He meant Dalia, she knew. That was what the cadets called her behind her back. Dalia knew it, liked the name, and perpetuated it.
“Well?” Seamus asked. “What did you want to talk about?”
She’d planned to apologize, but suddenly she didn’t want to mention the Chamber at all. Her mind scrambled. “I saw you in the dining hall.”
“So?”
“You were all alone.”
“And?”
“It’s Christmas.”
He rolled his eyes. “Spare me.”
“But your family.”
“They’re dead,” he said. “No one told you? Seamus the orphan, Seamus the unloved.”
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Being a rock star isn’t enough? You have to be the rock star with a heart? Well, save it. I don’t want your pity.”
“It wasn’t like that. I’ve been trying to talk to you since forever.”
He looked at her for a second without saying anything. “I’m not interested. Okay? Just because you’re a rock star doesn’t mean everybody wants to be your groupie.”
“Drop the rock star crap, okay?” she said. “You don’t even know me. If people back home could see me now…”
“Let me guess,” he said. “You were the prom queen bound for Harvard, right?”
She laughed. “I was in juvie during prom. I barely graduated.”
Back on campus, the clock chimed. Thirty minutes until formation at The Point.
“Too cool for school, huh?” The invisible wall evaporated. He started to walk away.
“I just never got my act together,” she said, falling in beside him. “That’s why I laughed. I mean, nobody thought of me as a rock star. Well, my mom, maybe.”
“And your dad?”
She laughed again, not bothering to hide the bitterness. “I was an embarrassment to him. He’s all Army, all the time. Said I had to enlist. I said no way…then Rhoads showed up.”
He slowed his pace. “What’s in the box?”
She looked down. One corner was dented from the wall of force. “Cookies.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said, and stopped walking. “Let’s find out.”
He watched her open the box. The sweet smell of baked goods wafted out. Her face went hot, seeing the sheet of paper sitting on top:
Merry Christmas, Scarlett! Here are some sweets for the sweetest young lady I know! I love you! XXXOOOXXXOOO, Mom.
Laughing awkwardly, she snatched away the paper and stuffed it into a pocket.
Seamus laughed. “Mama’s girl, huh?”
She shrugged, perusing the treasure. “Chocolate chip. Snickerdoodles. Molasses.”
“Yuck.”
She grinned up at him. “Don’t knock ’em till you try ’em. And—oh, yes…brownies.” She opened the bag, breathed in the good smell, and offered them to Seamus. “Want one?”
He looked thoughtful. “I’d rather have a chocolate chip.”
She shook the bag. “Try these first.”
He bit into a chocolaty square and closed his eyes. “Mmm…”
She bit into one, too, and they stood there, groaning with appreciation, until a cold wind blew off the Hudson, forcing them both to pin their hats to their heads with their hands.
“Why don’t you use telekinesis to hold your hat?”
Seamus had a great smile. “Sometimes it’s easier to do it the old-fashioned way. Besides, my brain’s busy right now, grooving on these cookies.”
They strolled along, sampling the chocolate chip cookies next.
He liked them even better than the brownies. “My mom used to make cookies.”
“You miss her?” she asked. “Sorry—dumb question.”
“Let me have another chocolate chip and I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.”
She opened the flap. His hand slipped inside. “I do,” he said. “I miss her a lot.”
“And your dad?”
He shrugged. “Not so much.” He looked out at the river.
They rounded the corner, and there was the end of the path and campus beyond. “I hate it here,” he said. “Deeply.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It sucks.”
He snorted in disdain. “You have it made, Miss Level III. I’m trapped. I never would have come, but it was this or prison.”
She nodded. “Me, too. By the time I got out, I would’ve been ancient. Like thirty or thirty-five.”
“They never would have let me out,” he said, looking across the campus, toward Constitution Island, which was nearly obscured now by falling snow. “Not ever.”
The clock tower chimed again, and the color drained from his face. “Oh, no…we’re late.”
THEY BUZZED THROUGH THE BLAST doors, out of breath from their mad sprint back to The Point. They cleared the first checkpoint, stepped into the lobby, and for a second Scarlett thought that they’d made it.
Then the guards blocked their way, smirking.
There were three of them, including the guard with the chipped tooth and unibrow. The man had been almost timid since Dalia had tortured him with dream spiders, but punishment never cures bullies. Sooner or later, the mean boils up in them again. And Unibrow led the charge, grabbing Seamus by the arm and snarling, “Late again, Kyeong, and this time, you’re all out of warnings.”
“Get off me,” Seamus said, trying to shake his arm free, but another guard grabbed him from behind and twisted his arm behind his back.
Seamus shouted in pain and went to his tiptoes. “All right, all right.”
The third guard stepped toward Scarlett, seemed to recognize her, and hesitated.
Unibrow leered, grinning much as Dalia had the day she’d tortured him. “Chamber time, Kyeong.”
Being tortured hadn’t taught this guy empathy or even sympathy, she realized. It had only made him want to torture somebody else. You couldn’t reason or plead with a savage like this. He understood only one language: brutality.
She stepped past the hesitant guard.
Unibrow narrowed his eyes, and in that moment she saw him recognize her. He tensed, licking his lips, but didn’t release Seamus. “This doesn’t concern you,” he told her.
“Let him go,” she said.
“Scarlett, don’t,” Seamus said. “You’ll just get into trouble, too.”
She ignored him and drilled Unibrow with death eyes. She was shaking with anger now. “Let him go now or I’ll make you suffer so bad, you’ll wish you were covered in spiders.”
Unibrow cleared his throat and let go of Seamus and stepped away. He mumbled to the other guard, who did the same.
She glared at the three guards, one after the other, until each had dropped his eyes. Then she stomped her boots on the tile floor, knocking loose snow and ice. “Clean that up,” she said. Then she took Seamus by the arm and led him away, shaking with adrenaline and feeling half sick at how easily she’d gone Queen Bitch on the guy.
Then she looked ahead, an
d—speak of the Devil—saw none other than Dalia watching from the entrance to the main corridor.
Before Scarlett could so much as wave, Dalia turned and disappeared.
“Geez,” Seamus said, “remind me not to piss you off, okay? What happened back there?”
“Nothing,” she said, suddenly filled with dread. Not at the guards—they were nothing more than stinging insects—but at the look she’d seen on Dalia’s face.
The flashing eyes and snarl meant that Scarlett had somehow just fucked with the Queen Bitch.
* * *
—
LATER, ALONE IN her room, Scarlett pulled her father’s mysterious gift from her pocket. She’d forgotten all about it, swept along by her day, bumping into Seamus, clashing with the guards, worrying over Dalia’s strange anger, and then joining formation late. She’d explained to Colonel Rhoads that they’d been held up by the guards, and he’d miraculously let them off without punishment, though he did look back and forth from Scarlett to Seamus and raised a brow, looking thoughtful…and displeased.
It sucked, having to spend Christmas break at The Point, but at least she and the other cadets of Operation Signal Boost would have a ton of free time. For the next week and a half, things would loosen up. They’d be allowed to goof around, play games, walk around campus, and sleep in a little. Accompanied by a firstie, they could even go off base as long as they signed out, stuck together, and adhered to all the rules and regulations.
She sat on her bunk, leaned back against the wall, and turned the awkwardly wrapped little present in her hands. Black marker read To Scarlett…Dad. There was another word before “Dad,” but melting snow and time in her pocket had smeared the ink. She couldn’t tell whether the missing word said “love” or “from.”
The box was heavy for its size. She gave it a shake. Something knocked around in there.
Hmm. She had no idea.
Hearing voices in the hall, she tore away the paper, revealing a tan box with a picture of a portable cell phone charger on the front. Go figure. The first gift he ever gives her is a charger to a phone she won’t be allowed to use for the next six months.