by Ginger Booth
“Queen bitch,” Lotus said. She jutted her chin at the loft bed single, desk underneath. Lotus claimed the top bunk bed for herself, and left Hijab with the bottom bunk.
“OK with you?” Ava asked Hijab. The other girl nodded nervously and ducked into her lowest-status bed. “I’m not queen bee. We’re equals here.”
“Always queen bee,” Lotus opined. “Until you lose.”
Ava scowled at her. “You can’t fight me for queen bee if I don’t claim it. You want queen bee, go right ahead. Let’s see who follows you.”
“Bitch.”
Ava sat on the desk chair under her bunk and opened her duffel. “You two have as many weapons as I do? This isn’t smart, to keep all these weapons in a dorm.” They could call it ‘barracks’ all they wanted. But Pershing Barracks would make a creditable dorm in an Ivy League college, right down to the archaic stone architecture. Ava attended a summer math program for a couple weeks at Harvard the last summer Before. Her West Point dorm room was nicer.
She didn’t mention things like Harvard to other gang rats. Outliving her rep as a queen bee was bad enough. If they knew she excelled at school, too, they’d hate her. Though she’d lied about that even Before. Deda insisted a girl shouldn’t let on that she was too smart. She never told Frosty she went to Brooklyn Tech. She was afraid he wouldn’t like her, knowing that, Before. After, it didn’t matter.
“Next,” Sergeant Clarke droned on. The yawning recruits fought to keep their eyes open – some failed – in the common room. The sergeant had just finished outlining the holiday weekend and the minimal rules in force until the last recruits arrived on Monday morning and things got more formal.
“As you’ve noticed, Hudson has a mixed-gender army. Starting Monday, you will share rooms, showers, exercise, everything. There will be no fraternization. Members of your platoon are your brothers in arms, male and female. No incest with your brothers. Remember, we shoot rapists and looters. Keep your hands to yourself and avoid ambiguity. Does everyone understand ‘ambiguity’?”
Actually, no. A number of recruits looked at neighbors in question.
“Panic,” Clarke pointed at her. “Explain ambiguity.”
“Means something could be taken either way,” Ava supplied, hands miming scales trying to balance. “He said, she said. Maybe rape, maybe a setup. Maybe consent, maybe force.”
Clarke nodded. “And if it’s rape, we shoot you. So avoid ambiguity. Understood?”
“Yes, sergeant,” they chorused through yawns.
Fang raised his hand. “Sergeant? What about pre-existing relationship? My girlfriend is in platoon.”
“Either break up, or one of you transfers to another platoon. Any other burning questions?”
Ava raised her hand. “Sergeant? Is there anywhere we could store our weapons securely? I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep weapons in barracks.” The question earned her dirty looks from her fellow recruits.
“What weapons?” Clarke asked, aghast.
“I brought my stuff,” Ava explained. “I think we all did.”
“Didn’t you think to leave your weapons at home?” Clarke demanded.
“What home?”
“For Christ’s… Raise hands. How many of you brought weapons?”
Hijab and Yoda didn’t raise their hands, but nearly everyone else did.
“Hell. Alright, it’s too late tonight to deal with this. Keep your rooms locked and your weapons inside them. We’ll collect weapons and hold inspection in the morning. Lights out in ten minutes. Nobody leaves their rooms after lights out, except to use the bathrooms. Dismissed.”
Wrong move, sergeant, Ava thought. She instantly decided which weapons to keep in the room, and where she’d stash them.
Ava woke to find herself straddling Fakhir on the floor, sharp knees to his biceps and a slim knife to his throat. Lotus had his legs pinned. That far she’d gotten on reflex. Hijab huddled in her blankets against the wall, tears on her cheeks. She wore the head-scarf to bed, and long-sleeved pajamas. The only light in the room leaked around the door from the hall lights.
“He hurt you, Hijab?” Ava asked, through a mighty yawn.
“No,” the other girl murmured. “Dima.”
“What?”
“My name, it’s Dima.”
“Kill him? Or cut him,” Lotus asked.
“I wasn’t trying to rape her. Just get to know her better,” Fakhir insisted. “Dima, tell them!”
“Ambiguous,” Ava observed.
“Cut him anyway,” Lotus insisted. “Or I will.”
Ava considered, and agreed. She sliced a shallow one-inch line on his jaw. Not much worse than a shaving nick. “Stay out of our room, Fakhir. Get to know her in daylight. No fraternizing.”
“We your sisters,” Lotus concurred. “Lucky you.”
“You bitches from –!”
“Sh-sh-sh,” Ava crooned to him, knife back at his throat. “Leave quietly, and this never happened. Get noisy, and you attacked a woman in her bed. A smart Fakhir, is a quiet Fakhir.”
“I’m OK with loud Fakhir,” Lotus differed. “Also dead.”
“Don’t kill him,” Hijab pleaded. “I think he likes me.”
“We need to work on Hijab’s taste in men, Lotus,” Ava quipped.
“You talk. Frosty famous asshole,” Lotus returned.
“Point,” Ava conceded.
Fakhir left quietly. Ava jammed the desk chair under the doorknob before hopping back onto her loft.
“Thank you for protecting me,” Hijab whispered in the dark.
“Learn to fight,” Lotus spat from the bunk above her. “Here for soldier.”
“I like backup,” Ava said peaceably. “You’re good, Lotus.”
“Not you friend, White Trash.”
“Yeah, I got that. Good night.”
Ava couldn’t fall back to sleep, though. She could hear her pulse pounding from the adrenaline rush as she reviewed her day. This morning she stripped wires under Das. By evening she dined at Hogwarts and got a college dorm room, a dream she’d thought impossible. Two fights today, and both ended well for her. Surrounded by gang again, maybe even with incipient friendships. Hijab and Yoda looked like excellent doormat friend material. This training camp had potential to combine the best of gang life, minus the worst. She reviewed everything she’d learned about each recruit, plus the sergeant, their strengths, quirks, and weaknesses.
Then she remembered Frosty’s face as the bus pulled away, and all the faces at West Point vanished. I don’t miss him.
He’d love it here, though.
She curled up hugging her pillow as an avalanche of memories fell out of their carefully stacked closet. When she left him, the bad memories always brought themselves to mind, no effort required. The good memories were harder to handle, though. The tomboy sophomore, so flattered that the gorgeous senior, top competitor in the dojo, deigned to walk her home from evening classes.
Well, it would have been rude not to, she realized in retrospect. We were going from the same place, to the same place. We were both assistant instructors at the dojo. Simple as that. Nothing to be flattered about, really.
Be here now, she ordered herself sternly.
But she fell asleep remembering them as a couple Before. Wondering what it would have been like, to accompany him to his senior prom, if they lasted the school year. After that, he’d have gone away to Yale, his dad’s alma mater, and left her behind. The unnatural thing was that they stayed together for two years, through bad times and worse, not that they broke up.
Deda and Tata would have knocked themselves out to make sure she was the most beautiful girl at the prom. Mama would have pretended it was all foolishness and a waste of money. Then Cade at the door, more handsome than she’d ever seen him before. They danced, drank champagne on the sly. She gave up her virginity that night in an expensive hotel room, with jacuzzi.
It was a pretty fantasy.
11
Interesting
fact: After completing Basic, the U.S. sent new soldiers to AIT, Advanced Individual Training, in their specialty. Over twenty of these schools were scattered across states south of the Mason-Dixon line. Hudson didn’t contain any of those, either.
Puño discovered the martial arts gym the next afternoon. Having slept off some of the vast Thanksgiving spread, most of the Lower Manhattan squad were willing to tag along for something to do. Judging by the facilities they’d found so far, West Point was clearly more dedicated to sports than academia. There were specialized gyms everywhere.
“Panic’s ex was one of the best in Chelsea,” Puño mentioned, as they nosed around the dojo. “Frosty tested me for two dan, my second degree black belt.”
“Is Frosty still three dan?” Ava asked. Frosty never could find anyone higher to test him, during the Starve. Frosty had been much on her mind today. She was tired of fighting it.
Puño shrugged. “Four dan now. You?”
“Two dan. He tested me, too.”
“Alright! Let’s spar!”
Marquis intervened. “Hey, no fighting unless an instructor says so.”
“He meant no fighting, not practice,” Puño argued. “Hey, everybody witness! Panic and I are having a friendly match, not an argument. Got it? Let’s warm up!”
A well-stocked tack room provided proper gi and black belts, though even the smallest uniform swamped little Ava. They ran through a collection of kata forms and stretches, kicks and punches on the standing bags. Lotus and Fang picked out gi, too, and warmed for their own match. Not many of the others had formal training in karate or kung fu, but they had fun aping the pairs who did, or tumbling on the mats. Judging by his bag work, Marquis was a boxer.
“All warm, Panic? Quit stalling!” Puño called. “This mat for our ring.”
“Touch for a point,” Ava agreed. “No rough stuff. Two minutes.”
“I’ll time it.” Marquis claimed leadership as easily as breathing, at least for the Downtown side. The Chelsea trio followed no one’s lead but their own.
Ava and Puño bowed to each other, Ava grinning. He led with a high kick. She spun under it, but he dodged her followup punch from behind. They danced a bit, trading a few punches and blocks to take each other’s measure. His traction seemed weak on the left foot. Ava suspected that meant he favored his left knee. She tried to swipe it out from under him with her right foot, but he stepped out, and tapped her for the first point.
They bowed again and started dancing. “Hey Panic. Heard you cut on Fakhir last night.”
Adding a mental game, Ava thought. “Hard to tell during the orgy, you know? Who cut him.” While Puño grinned, puzzling that out, she tapped him for a point.
“Tie, and twenty seconds,” Marquis announced.
They both brought out their fanciest moves, kick and punch combos, for a draw. “Five seconds.” Ava fell back as though giving up. Puño came at her to throw one last punch. She dropped sideways to sweep his left leg again with a low horizontal kick. This time she succeeded in felling him, and planted a gentle foot on his chest.
“Point,” Puño conceded.
Ava offered him a hand up, and they bowed. “That was fun. Thank you.”
Fang and Lotus took the ring mat next, and squared off. Ava stood rapt, watching their kung fu moves, similar but not quite the same as in karate. They were good, maybe as good as Puño and herself.
Puño whispered in Ava’s ear, “Promised Frosty I’d keep an eye on you.”
“Why would Libre do that for White Supreme?”
“Favors owed. You lost Frosty a recruit slot. So you got to succeed.”
Ava scowled. She wasn’t White Supreme anymore. “I plan to.”
“You’re kinda tiny, chiquita. Feisty, but. Just saying.”
In the ring, the lovers were getting too intense. Fang caught Lotus on the outside of the thigh in a full-power roundhouse kick that sent her flying. That had to hurt bad.
“Stop! Too far!” Ava leapt onto the mat. She grabbed Lotus, who in no way appreciated her help. Lotus strained to lunge back at Fang for revenge, if she had to carry Ava on her back to do it. Doc and Sauce waded in to help Ava control Lotus, while Marquis and Puño dragged Fang to heel.
“What’s going on here?” Sergeant Clarke barked at them from the door.
“Friendly bout, sergeant,” Ava volunteered. “Got a little excited.”
“I ordered you to rest in your rooms, sleep off Thanksgiving dinner.”
Marquis couldn’t let her speak for all of them. “We did that. Then we needed some exercise, sergeant.”
“Just exploring the facilities,” Puño claimed. “Great toys around here!”
“Alright, back to barracks. Supper in fifteen.”
“Eat again?” Fang blurted.
“You are here to gain weight,” Clarke said. “And regain your strength.” He looked dubious on that point.
“That’s why we need exercise, sergeant,” Yoda quipped. “Though food is good, too. I’m down for dinner.”
Ava couldn’t imagine eating again. The loose gi was a relief. Her skinny jeans were starting to cut into her bloated belly uncomfortably. She carried her street clothes as they headed out.
As they reached Pershing Barracks, another bus-load of recruits disgorged onto the drive. Ava’s group paused to size them up.
“Long Island recruits,” Clarke supplied. “Resco Cameron delayed them to eat Thanksgiving dinner with their Cocos before they reported in. This is the first wave. The LI buses will need three trips. Same in North Jersey, but MacLaren is sending them tomorrow p.m. They staged big sendoffs, local hero treatment.”
Ava tried not to resent that. Resco Margolis and the LES Coco did come to their sendoff, made a little speech. She got her teary-eyed hug from Guzman. But the truth was, most adults in Soho Ville would sooner spit on gang rats than congratulate them on their good fortune. The generations hated each other. The various factions among the kids were none too friendly, either. Any public sendoff in the ville would have been grudging, maybe ugly.
“Are they older than us?” Ava wondered aloud. The LI contingent seemed bigger, heavier. She’d assumed the other Apple recruits would be just as bony and underfed as the city kids.
“Everyone in LI went through quarantine,” Yoda said enviously. “Wish we’d done that. In Tribeca, we still get dysentery. Some senile in the cafeteria forgets to wash hands.”
“The seniles want to off us all,” someone from Midtown grumbled.
“Curvy,” Marquis admired.
Ava was just thinking that. Some of the LI girls had busts, and hips. Ava suspected she had more curves at age 12 than she did now at almost-18. In her baggy black gi and high-top red sneakers, she feared she looked like a 12-year-old. Some of these new female recruits wore pants tight over rounded butts, jackets zipped down to spill some cleavage. About half a dozen guys were taller than Marquis, and few as runty as Yoda and Sauce and Fang.
The LI bus-load had a lot more whites, too. She sighed.
Some Midtown rats started in with the traditional New York City catcalls at the sexy girls. This impressed the girls not at all – also traditional. Clarke shut them down and herded them away, so they wouldn’t distract the new arrivals from following their micro-instructions.
“Sergeant,” Ava asked thoughtfully on the stairs up to the fifth floor, “how many recruits from the Apple?”
“The cities? About three-fifty. Already here, mostly. Fat camp will be nineteen hundred, mostly Apple Zone. About five hundred from the North Jersey war zone, nine hundred from LI, the rest from here and there. We’ll add another five hundred or so from Upstate and South Jersey for boot camp. More if attrition is high at fat camp. Long waiting list.”
So the scrawny city rats were only twenty percent of ‘fat camp.’ “Will you be doing that top eighty percent thing from ‘fat camp?’ Only the best advance to boot camp?”
“That I don’t know,” the sergeant admitted. “We’re kind of winging it
.” He glanced around his charges, puffing up the stairs, with a concerned frown. “Didn’t know what to expect.” His eyes returned to Ava and noted her dismay. “Don’t worry about it, Panic. You’re here to eat well, and get stronger. Just do your best. Obey orders. Worst that can happen is you leave here healthier. Right?”
For dinner Thanksgiving night, they enjoyed leftovers, and the first wing plus the center of the dining hall were packed. The buses kept rolling in from Long Island til after midnight, with another wave on Friday from LI plus all the Jersey rats. By Friday evening, three of the six dining hall wings were in business.
Anyone misbehaving got sent to stand in an unlit fourth wing. In Ava’s platoon, no one suffered that punishment twice. Gang rats didn’t risk their feed.
After a few meals, when they weren’t quite so ravenous, the drill instructors taught the recruits proper table manners. Each table ate family-style, passing the bowls as they arrived from the wait staff. Over 2,000 recruits and drill instructors ate in one wave, 30 minutes to sit, be served, eat, and out. To keep this running smoothly, table assignments were stable except to solve problems. Ava’s table began to feel like family, or at least home room.
The LI recruits claimed another building, Bradley Barracks, that formed two sides of the quadrangle behind Pershing Barracks, called ‘Central Area.’ The late-arriving North Jersey contingent completed filling up Pershing, with overflow into Bradley. They were all instructed to keep packed, that their room assignments were temporary for the holiday weekend.
“Where’s my chopstick?” Ava accused Lotus before supper, after a fun Sunday afternoon of field games scattered across the campus. One of the weapons Ava kept in the room was a decorative golden chopstick, worn in her hair, but honed to a sharp stabbing point.
“Get out my face,” Lotus returned, placing her face inches from Ava’s.