ThunderGeek out.
Rob comes into my room late on Saturday night while I’m reading before bed. As usual, Peggy follows at his heels like his not-so-little lamb.
“Wanna take a road trip tomorrow?”
“Where to?”
“DC.”
“What for?”
“I want to go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Since we don’t have a memorial for our war yet, I want to leave something for Reyes and Jason.”
“Yeah. Sure,” I say. “But … why are you asking me to come and not Caitlin? Or Jack?”
Rob sits on the bed and picks up my stuffed unicorn, which is worn and faded from so much love, and has stitches from the time our old dog, Cosmo, kidnapped him and used him as a chew toy.
“I just thought it might be good to spend some time together,” he says. “You know, when we’re not driving to school or sitting around the house.”
I almost fall off my chair from shock.
“Wait—are you saying you actually want to spend time with me?” I say, not sure if I actually buy it. While I’ve always looked up to Rob, to him I’ve always been the tagalong baby sister, the one he resented having to babysit. And since he got home, it’s obvious that hasn’t changed.
“Don’t act so surprised. I mean, yeah, you were a total pain in the butt when you were younger, but you’ve actually turned out to be pretty interesting.”
“Is that another one of your heavily disguised compliments?”
Rob laughs. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He pats the bed next to him and Peggy jumps up to sit by his side.
“So what do you say? Road trip with Robbie?”
“As long as you promise not to punch anyone,” I tell him. “I want to see the sights, not the inside of a police station.”
“Punch? Me, Mr. Zen Yoga Dude?” Rob says. “Puh-leeze!”
So that’s how Rob and I end up in the car heading up to DC bright and early the next morning, singing at the top our lungs. One thing is for sure: We’re not going to be joining a band or a choir anytime soon. But what we lack in tunefulness, we make up in enthusiasm.
“Has Caitlin heard you sing yet?” I ask.
“Yeah, why?”
“And she’s still willing to date you?”
“She thinks it’s cute,” Rob says.
“Love is inexplicable,” I say, shaking my head.
“It is,” he agrees.
“For the record, I just want to say that I like her.”
“Noted,” he says. “And appreciated.”
“What made you want to visit the memorial now?” I ask. “Is there a special reason or …”
“I don’t know. I just need to do something to honor them and I can’t afford to go out to California to visit Reyes’s grave or Wisconsin to visit Jason’s. So I figure The Wall is the next best thing.”
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel.
“I’ve got the appointment with the VA next week. I’m not going to jail. I’ve met someone who gets me. It feels like my life is opening up again. And I should be happy. I am happy. But I also feel guilty. Why me? Why am I the one who’s here and not Reyes. I don’t have a wife and a kid.”
“But you have me. You have Mom and Dad.”
“I know. But that’s different.”
“It wouldn’t have felt different to us,” I say, unable to catch the bitterness before it seeps out.
“Hey, I’m here, okay. And I know, but it was just … different.”
“I get it,” I say, even though I know I don’t fully understand his demons around dying. “Why can’t you get it through your thick skull how important you are to us and how much our life would suck without you?”
He takes one hand off the wheel and strokes the back of my head like he does to Peggy when she’s upset.
“Because of said thick skull. But I need you to keep telling me the truth enough times that it finally gets through,” he says. “You’re one of the people I trust to tell it to me, Stella.”
Trust is something I’ve been struggling with, too, because of what happened. Trust in the government that sent Rob and his fellow vets to fight and didn’t provide enough for their care when they came home; trust in what to believe when it comes to the news; trust in politicians like Mayor Abbott, who were willing to take a situation and exploit it in ways that hurt innocent people like Farida’s family, just for political gain; trust in my country, which has failed to live up to its ideals; trust in my town, which has been so easily divided; trust in friends who were so quick to think the worst of my family and Farida’s without knowing all the facts. I understand a little why Rob felt like withdrawing from the world for a while. I’m even beginning to understand why Adam’s dad’s gone the doomsday prepper route, even if I don’t agree with it. It’s hard to stay present in the world when you look all around and don’t know who or what you can believe in.
“You know Adam’s dad is one of those survivalist prepper dudes, right?” I say.
“Yeah—to be honest, Adam surprised me,” Rob says. “He’s different from how I would have expected, having been raised that way.”
“He loves his dad, but he doesn’t agree with everything he thinks,” I say.
“It happens to the best of us,” Rob says. “That’s part of growing up. Figuring out how and what to think for ourselves.”
“In some ways I understand why Mr. Swann doesn’t trust anything,” I say. “I’ve had to question so much recently, it would be easy to just think everything is hopeless and there’s no way to fix it and it’s all going to end in a terrible apocalypse so we better prepare for it. Or else just give up and say YOLO or whatever and be selfish.”
“But you don’t. And that’s what makes you and your friends so cool. It’s also what surprised me about your Adam. That he’s charting his own course. That takes guts when you’re a junior in high school. I wouldn’t have been that brave.”
“He’s not my Adam. He’s … Adam.”
“Okay, fine. Adam.”
“You say you wouldn’t have been that brave, but you enlisted while we were at war and you served two tours,” I say. “That’s brave.”
“When haven’t we been at war since the day you were born, Stella?” he says. “You read Orwell’s 1984. It’s just a matter if the current enemy is Eurasia or Eastasia. They send guys like me over to fight and die and then what?”
“But you signed up. You fought. You had to face things that messed up your head,” I say. “And now you’re having to re-face all those awful things to help you recover. That’s brave. Can’t you just give yourself a break?”
He turns up the music. “That’s what this is supposed to be—a break. Come on, sing it, kid.”
Subject closed, it appears.
We park a mile and a half away from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but I don’t care, because I’m excited to be on the streets of the capital. You’d think we’d come here more given that we live in Virginia, but I haven’t been since my eighth-grade class trip. I don’t mind the brisk air or even the wind when it blows off the Potomac River. I feel like all the questions I’ve been asking myself come to life right here in this city, and now I’m here, too.
We approach the monument, a long wall of black granite, like a sunken scar cut into the landscape of the park. Even though it’s a cold December day, there are clusters of people searching for names, touching the smooth stone with trembling fingers, leaving flowers, flags, and notes.
Rob’s brought two patches from his regiment and two small American flags to leave by The Wall. He’s written a note for Reyes and one for Jason.
We walk slowly along the memorial, looking at all the tributes people have left. Every day they’re collected and cataloged by the National Park Service. The hope is to someday display them in an education center, once enough money is raised to pay for that.
We continue to walk along The Wall, me trailing behind Rob. I run my fingers over the smooth granite and the r
ough cuts where names have been engraved. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by all the names sprawling before us, each of them someone who was loved, someone who is missed. There are more than fifty-eight thousand names here. And this is just one war. Before I go any deeper, Rob interrupts my internal spiral.
“I’ll know when I’ve found the right place to leave these,” Rob says. “I’ll just get a feeling.”
I know he can’t see me, but I nod anyway, because my throat feels too tight to get out any words.
“No way. Walker? Is that you?”
I glance back from The Wall and see a well-built guy with dark hair in a buzz cut wearing a camo jacket, looking at my brother, arms outstretched.
“Widerski? How are you here? And standing?” My brother embraces the guy and I think they’re never going to let go of each other. “I thought you were still at Walter Reed.”
“I’m sprung. Head back to Indiana tomorrow. Oh, and I’m standing on my bionic legs,” he says.
I realize that this Widerski must be Rob’s friend Travis, the one who lost both his legs when he stepped on an IED.
Sure enough, my brother introduces us.
“Travis, this is my sister, Stella.”
I put out my hand, but Travis embraces me in a bear hug.
“Little sister Stella. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Only the good things are true,” I tell him.
“I’ve only heard good things,” he says. “Hey, let’s pull up a park bench and I’ll show off my prosthetics.”
“Hey, not in front of the minor,” Rob says.
“I’ll keep it G-rated,” Travis promises him.
We head to the nearest bench. I watch Travis as he walks and I’m amazed, because if I didn’t know he’d been a double amputee, I’d never guess he was walking on prosthetic legs.
After he sits, Travis rolls up the legs of his cargo pants. “Check out these sweet pieces of technology, my friends.”
Underneath his pants he’s got two high-tech prosthetic legs.
“These things are amazing,” he says. “Sure, I’d rather have the real thing, but since that’s not an option, I’m lucky to have these.”
“A few more limbs and you’re in Terminator territory,” Rob says.
“Rob!” I smack his arm in horror that he’d even joke.
“It’s cool, Stella. Dark humor is what kept us going,” Travis says. “But I plan to keep the rest of the limbs I’ve got, thanks. Rehab has been brutal. I mean, everyone was amazing there, but I’m glad to be sprung.”
Rob’s right. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the way Mr. Meyers, or Travis, or Jack or another vet will. Maybe my job is to listen and be there, to be the sister he can always trust to tell him the truth as I see it.
“Maybe I should have lost a limb instead of just coming back with a messed-up head,” Rob says. “Seems like they’d treat that faster and better.”
Travis punches him in the arm, hard.
“Dude, I’m just as mad as you about Jason, and your situation sucks, but as sweet as these things are, I’d still rather have my legs.”
“Sorry, man. That was a really stupid thing to say.”
“Look, I get it. What’s stupid is that I can get help and you’re left to rot. It’s not like it’s a big secret that soldiers come back from combat mentally messed up. It’s always happened. Every single war. They just called it by different names—nostalgia, soldier’s heart, shell shock, battle fatigue, combat stress reaction … So why aren’t they prepared?”
“That’s what I keep asking,” I say. “And no one has answers.”
“At least you’re asking,” Travis says as he rolls down his pant legs. “Keep on asking. Squeaky wheels and all that.”
“Do you think they’ll ever build a monument for our dead?” Rob says. “For all of the Never-Ending War operations?”
“Would they include Jason?” I ask. “They should. Because he was a casualty of the war, too, even if he wasn’t killed in combat.”
“Good question. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial doesn’t. It just lists people who died in combat or went missing in action and are presumed dead.”
“Maybe we should create a monument for all our brothers- and sisters-in-arms who died by suicide,” Rob says. “Might clarify the thinking of the folks down there.”
He gestures with his thumb toward the opposite end of the Mall. We can’t see them from here, because the Washington Monument is in the way, but if we keep walking all the way down, the White House is off to the left and the dome of the Capitol building rises from the horizon at the other end.
“They’ll probably need more of us to be casualties before they’ll fork out for a memorial for our wars,” Travis says. “Or maybe we’ll have to wait as long as the Korean War vets, in which case our memorial will go up in, like, fifty years.”
“What about the tributes for Reyes and Jason?” I ask. “Where are we going to put them in the meantime?”
“Tributes for Reyes and Traitt?” Travis asks.
“Yeah. I’ve brought these.” Rob shows him the flags and patches and folded notes. He wouldn’t let me see what he’d written, and it looks like he’s not going to show Travis either.
“I’ve got a spot,” Travis says. We get up and he leads us to the January 1968 panel where he points out a name: John Doneski.
“The great-uncle I never met because he died before I was born,” he says. “On my mom’s side. He’s the reason I came today. My middle name is John, after him.”
Travis takes a small flag out of his pocket and places it carefully at the bottom of The Wall under his great-uncle’s name. Rob puts the patches, flags, and notes for Guillermo Reyes and Jason Traitt next to the flag for John Doneski, who was killed in another long, seemingly endless war a half century earlier.
“We will never stop honoring you,” Travis says.
“We will never forget you,” Rob says.
“And we’ll always remember that you fought for us, even if you didn’t always know what we were fighting for,” I say.
“And we’ll miss you,” Rob says, his voice breaking. “Always.”
“Always,” Travis echoes.
He and I both put our arms around Rob and the three of us stand, huddled in quiet community and contemplation and grief, me for people I didn’t know, but feel like I did, through my brother.
Rob stands up straight finally, and says, “Ten-hut!”
He and Travis salute The Wall and the mementos left for their fallen friends.
And then my brother puts his hand on my shoulder. “Stella, how about we take Travis to lunch and then head home? We’ve got some living to do.”
I smile, overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness, because here at this memorial to the war dead, I know he’s making a promise to me that he’ll remain among the living. That even though the road ahead might be challenging, we will walk it together.
War changed my brother in ways I can’t ever really understand, but finally, he is really beginning to come home.
I’m making a promise to him, too. I’m going to keep working with my friends, even though it’s hard and messy, to move the country he’s come home to closer to that ideal he fought for, the one I believe in, of liberty and justice for all. Because it can’t happen without us.
Turn the page for a peek at Backlash …
THE WORDS on the screen don’t make sense. They can’t.
He says: You’re an awful person.
He says: You’re a terrible friend.
He says: I know you’ve been checking out dresses for the homecoming dance.
He says: What makes you think I’d ever ask you out?
He says: I’d never be caught dead at the school dance with a loser like you.
He doesn’t say it in a private message. He posts it publicly, on my Facebook wall, where everyone can see. Twenty-five people have already liked what he wrote. Even people I thought were my friends. Why would anyone like something that mean?
A few people have posted defending me, saying that I’m not a loser, that he’s a jerk for posting that.
But my eyes keep going back to Christian’s words. I don’t understand. I thought we were friends. I thought we were more than friends.
Wasn’t he flirting with me? Did I get that wrong, too?
My fingers tremble on the keyboard as I IM him.
What did I do wrong? I don’t understand.
I wait for him to answer, so numb with hurt and panic that I can’t even cry.
When the answer comes, I wish it hadn’t.
He says: You’re a loser. The world would be a better place without you in it. GOOD-BYE, LOSER!!!
My lungs feel paralyzed. I can’t breathe. Why is he saying this? What changed from yesterday to today?
Tears roll down my cheeks as I type back.
Why? WHY?!!!!?????????
But when I press Return, it won’t let me send it. He’s blocked me.
I hit the keyboard in frustration, shaking my head. No, no, no.
I can’t ask him why. I can’t ask anyone why.
The only person left to ask is me.
LARA’S HOGGING the bathroom — again. I swear it’s like this every single night. She gets in there first, takes forever, and uses up all the hot water. She better leave me some tonight because I have to wash my hair. I’ve got auditions tomorrow for Beauty and the Beast, the eighth-grade musical. Maddie, Cara, and I have spent, like, forever practicing our audition pieces, and the last thing I want is for Ms. Brandt to be distracted from my acting and singing talent by gross hair.
I knock on the door for the second time. Okay, this time I’m banging more than knocking. “Lara, come on! Hurry up! You’ve been in there for forty minutes!”
Tonight she’s even more annoying than usual. She doesn’t even respond with Go away. I’ll be out in a minute! or something typically charming and Lara-like. There’s just dead silence, which makes me even more angry and frustrated. I give one last loud bang with my fist and stomp down the stairs to complain to Mom.
My mother is in that post-dinner “I’m finally sitting down and reading my boring political papers so don’t bother me with your arguments” kind of mood.
Anything But Okay Page 24