“You doing okay?” Wendy would always ask Hannah at some point during each varsity game.
“Yes, ma’am,” Hannah would assure her, even if it was a lie. “I’m doing good.”
The piece of paper with Wendy’s phone number on it was stuffed in the back of her desk somewhere. Hannah had never used it. More than once, Hannah had promised to try to attend the Bible study Wendy hosted at her house, but every Wednesday night, she’d find herself buried under a pile of homework, simply trying to keep up.
“You coming?” Sarah Goodrich had asked the previous Wednesday, popping her head into Hannah’s barracks.
“I can’t,” Hannah had said, gripping the silver cross necklace in her hand and surveying the pile of textbooks and assignments in front of her. “Sorry . . . I just . . .”
“Books don’t love you back, you know.”
Guilt had washed over Hannah in that moment, and she’d groaned, putting her head on her desk. Against her better judgment, she let Sarah drag her out of the barracks and up a steep, snow-covered staircase to Lusk Area, where she’d defrosted in front of the Bennetts’ fireplace, eating homemade chili followed by brownies and ice cream. It had been a moment of calm in a world of constant discomfort.
Now, waiting on Cadet Arant to finish taking attendance, Hannah flipped through the first few pages of the book, frantically trying to remember anything she’d read the night before. Passages were underlined and highlighted, but the words meant nothing to her. She wondered if overexercising could cause temporary amnesia.
After losing three games in a row, Coach Jankovich had transformed her practices from predictably horrible to outright sadistic. At the previous night’s practice, it had been easier to name the girls who didn’t throw up than those who did, and sadly, Hannah was among the latter.
“Do you want to lose?” Coach Jankovich had shouted after the varsity team lost on the road at Rutgers. She’d lined them all up on the baseline of the opponent’s gymnasium, long after the stands had cleared of fans. Hannah saw the Rutgers janitor standing at the door, waiting to wax the floor. But Coach Jankovich didn’t seem to notice him, or if she did, she didn’t mind making him wait. She blew her whistle ferociously, sending them sprinting across the court, watching the Rutgers logo pass beneath their feet. Hannah and Avery hadn’t even been a part of the varsity squad that had lost the game, and yet, they sprinted. Jankovich’s shrill whistle pierced Hannah’s ears. It echoed through her dreams.
“This can’t be normal,” Avery had whispered under her breath to Hannah on the flight back from Colorado last week, after they’d watched the varsity team lose to the Air Force Academy. In the last seconds of the game, Coach Jankovich had lost her cool, screaming maniacally at a referee. As punishment for the loss, the players were told to spend the flight back in silence.
“What if we all just quit?” Avery continued. “If we all quit at the same time, they’d have to fire her.”
Hannah just shook her head and went back to doing her calculus practice problems, hunched over her tiny airplane tray table.
The truth was, there was nothing normal about Coach Jankovich. Hannah had spent the season trying to understand the woman’s tactics, and the best she could come up with was that Coach Jankovich was simply scared of losing her job. As the first woman to ever hold the position of head women’s basketball coach at West Point, she had a lot on the line, Hannah knew. Coach Jankovich hadn’t shown her players a single moment of vulnerability—hadn’t once provided an inspirational quote or a pat on the back. Instead, it seemed that the only way Coach Jankovich maintained her confidence was by belittling her players and reminding them of her authority. She was paranoid, Hannah thought, the kind of coach who believed she could shame her players into greatness, as if having all of their flaws exposed would suddenly make the players feel motivated to improve.
Hannah wondered if Coach Jankovich had always been this way, or if she’d adopted some twisted militant coaching philosophy when she’d arrived at West Point, imagining that her boss, a three-star Army general, would expect her to be tough. But the hazing Hannah endured in the barracks felt more productive than what Coach Jankovich put them through. At least the upperclassmen acknowledged Hannah’s effort. At least they all laughed from time to time. Yes, the cadre in her company had broken her down, but were just as intent on building her up.
The only player who didn’t put her head in a trash can at last night’s practice was Avery, the second-string point guard from Pittsburgh. Early in the season, Avery had mentioned that she felt Coach Jankovich wouldn’t care if she quit. Hannah didn’t see that. Sure, Coach J was hard on them, and yes, splitting them into two teams was unexpected. But what else could they do? At least they got to play—even if it was just JV games.
But by the second semester of their plebe year, halfway through the basketball season, Hannah had started to notice that the harder Avery worked on the court, the harder Coach J worked to ignore her. Once, Hannah had literally watched the coach turn her back when Avery sank a three-point shot. Another time, when Avery recovered an impossible rebound in midair and threw it back into play before touching her feet out of bounds, Coach said nothing. It was strange. Neurotic, even.
Coach’s willful disdain for Avery and some of the other players had started to bother Hannah, if she was honest. She found herself worrying about Avery off the court too, the way a mother might worry over her rebellious daughter. Cadets savored stories like sweet and satisfying grapes plucked off of the vine of campus gossip. And with Avery, it seemed the harvest was plentiful.
“I heard she’s slept with ten guys. All upperclassmen.”
“I heard it was twelve.”
“No, it’s just one guy, but twelve times.”
“I heard they did it on the roof of the library.”
Hannah wasn’t one to indulge in gossip, but there were too many stories being passed around for all of them to be false. Clearly something had happened with someone, because when Lisa Johnson had confronted Avery about it in the locker room, she’d just grinned and put a single finger over her lips, and said, “Don’t ask, because I won’t tell.”
The whole exchange had made Hannah supremely uncomfortable. Did Avery really think that sleeping with some guy in the first few months of college was a good idea? Plus, if Avery was sneaking into an upperclassman’s dorm room at night, as the rumors alleged, she was putting her entire future at West Point in jeopardy, let alone her reputation. Last semester, a couple in Hannah’s company had been found making out behind closed doors, and they’d both been given a hundred hours of walking tours. For the next ten Saturdays, Hannah had watched them both walking back and forth along the concrete of cadet area, wearing full dress gray uniform, carrying their rifles against their shoulders—rain or shine. It was medieval punishment, all that walking. But it was better than the alternative, which was to be kicked out of the academy. It wasn’t that Hannah was a prude, but she worried that Avery wasn’t thinking clearly. Sooner or later, all those bad decisions would catch up to her. To Hannah, nothing was worth the risk of losing her Saturdays. After all, without her Saturdays, when would she get all of her homework done?
Cadet Arant had just read out the name Nesmith, bringing Hannah out of her thoughts—but as usual, there was no response. The professor paused. “Anyone seen Tim?”
The classroom door opened, and a tall, olive-skinned cadet hustled through, checking the clock to ensure he’d beat the buzzer, which he had, by mere seconds. Hannah sat up a little taller in her seat. Tim smiled, flashing a perfect row of white teeth to the class. He had one dimple in his right cheek.
“Sorry,” the cadet said. “No excuse, sir.”
“Isn’t that what you said yesterday, Nesmith?” a classmate called out.
“Take your seat,” Colonel Bennett said. “You’re playing with fire.”
Hannah watched Tim unpack his backpack and ask his neighbor for a pencil. Then, nonchalantly, he pointed at the book on Colon
el Bennett’s podium and turned his lips into a frown, like he was surprised to find that they’d moved on to another book. Hannah looked at the notebook in front of her, full of quotations that she’d jotted down while completing the assigned reading, and shook her head. She couldn’t fathom being nearly late and so unprepared for class so many days in a row. But this kid? This Tim character? Nothing seemed to faze him.
She’d watched him out of the corner of her eye for weeks now, studying him as closely as she’d studied Plato. He was muscular but not bulky, tall but not gangly, with a stately jaw and that one dimple that indented his cheek every time he smiled. When he walked into the room, the energy shifted toward him, like he was the sun and they were all those jungle plants that grow at odd angles simply to catch a ray. Tim’s humble charisma had even charmed their professor into letting his near-tardiness slide.
Hannah knew she shouldn’t be attracted to him—he was a mess. Yesterday, he’d come in with toothpaste caked in the corner of his mouth, and she’d noticed the small black outline of a tattoo peeking out from under his short uniform sleeve more than once. She’d never been attracted to a guy with a tattoo. How could someone mark something so permanent on their body? Didn’t he worry he’d regret it someday? And yet, there was something about Tim’s smile that made her constantly look at him. He was interesting. Like a puzzle she wanted to solve.
Colonel Bennett wrote a question across the whiteboard with a red dry-erase marker.
“The rest of the semester, we will tackle this book, and its central question.” The teacher pointed at the board.
WHAT IS JUSTICE?
The room was silent while Colonel Bennett walked through a comprehensive timeline of Greek philosophy. Hannah looked down at her notes and stared at the question, which she’d written at the top of a fresh page in her spiral notebook. Justice. She thought of Law and Order on television, bad guys getting what they deserve. She thought of a gavel slamming against wood and a widow receiving help from her neighbors. She thought of D-day and American soldiers liberating France from German occupation during World War II. These were examples of justice, weren’t they? But she was pretty certain that wasn’t what Colonel Bennett wanted to hear. He wanted a definition. And all Hannah could think was that justice came from God. She wouldn’t dare say that aloud.
The officer began pacing the room, shiny black shoes carrying him back and forth. He pointed at the board.
“So. What is it?”
A cadet to Hannah’s left lifted his pencil. “Justice is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking, sir.”
“Okay. Good. That’s a fine place to start.” The professor added Righteousness to the board. “Anyone else?” he asked.
Tim Nesmith cleared his throat and raised his hand. The professor pointed at him, giving him the floor.
“With respect to my classmate,” Tim began, “all people have different definitions of what they see as right. For example, for some people, doing the right thing means following the law. But if there’s an unjust law on the books—think Jim Crow South—wouldn’t the right thing be to ignore that law? So, in my opinion, justice can’t be defined as doing what’s right. Because who defines rightness?”
The class grew quiet again. Hannah fought the urge for her jaw to drop, amazed at his confidence. Who was this kid?
“And if I may be so bold,” he continued, “Army soldiers and officers are given permission to do something that in all other circumstances is considered morally wrong. Was it right in World War II to kill Nazis? Yes. But I’m certain the Nazis told their soldiers the same thing about killing the Allied forces.”
“Mr. Nesmith makes an excellent point,” the professor said. “Socrates points out that laws, even laws that we create for ourselves, can be unjust, with or without our knowledge.” Colonel Bennett took a meaningful pause and then continued. “What are you going to do if the government you’ve taken an oath to serve asks you to do something that isn’t just?”
“Civil disobedience,” someone said.
“Conscientious objection,” added another.
“Resistance,” said Tim.
A slick of sweat took up residence on Hannah’s palms as she considered whether or not to raise her hand. She hated speaking in class and rarely took the risk. It was an easy equation: if she never spoke, she’d never say something stupid.
But Tim had touched a nerve. Of course it was right to kill Nazis. Just because someone claimed that they were right didn’t make them right. In Hannah’s heart, she knew that justice existed far above any human opinion. But rather than bring her faith into the conversation, Hannah looked through her notes from the night before, searching for something to say. At West Point, she’d learned, you couldn’t get by with simply nodding along. A good portion of her grade was participation, and with only twelve students in the classroom, there was nowhere to hide. Timidly, she put her hand in the air. Colonel Bennett looked her way.
“Miss Speer.”
“On page one ninety-seven, Socrates says that stealing a weapon from a madman is actually the right thing to do. So—stealing might be wrong in most contexts, but stealing a weapon from someone threatening to harm himself or others is the right thing to do. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I . . . I think we’re all born with a sense of right and wrong. We know what’s right, deep down. And just because two people—or two countries—claim to be right, doesn’t mean they’re both right. There is such a thing as right, objectively.”
Tim Nesmith shook his head. “But who gets to determine who’s actually right?” he said. “You can’t define a feeling.”
Hannah felt her face flush red. Shut down, defeated, she sank back into her seat, desperately trying to disappear into the linoleum floor. Did this guy really believe that there was no truth at all?
“Fair enough, Mr. Nesmith,” Colonel Bennett said, “but Miss Speer brought up a good point. And at least we know she completed the reading.”
The class laughed in unison, and this time, it was Tim’s cheeks that turned pink. But then he shrugged, laughing at himself. Moving back to his podium, Colonel Bennett picked up The Republic and held it in his hand.
“For students at other colleges, philosophy may seem theoretical and arbitrary. But the way that you answer this question will impact your life in real and tangible ways.” He paused, put the book down, and then continued. “In just a few short years, you’re going to be officers in the U.S. Army. Unlike those kids at other schools, you’re going to be leading soldiers and making decisions that could have life-or-death consequences. As leaders of the U.S. Army, we must believe that justice is a concrete, definable concept, and we must always be striving to live our lives in line with that ideal. At the end of the day, we must be able to say with certainty that the Nazis were wrong. And although they might have made the same truth claims, in the end, it was the right thing to do to defeat them. Yes, Miss Speer?”
Hannah had lifted her hand again, which seemed to shock everyone in the room, especially herself.
“Sorry, I had one more thought.”
“Never apologize for thinking.”
“You asked us what we would do if our sense of justice conflicted with our sense of duty. What I was trying to say earlier was that if you believe in justice, you have to risk being wrong for the sake of what’s right. You have to choose.”
Nodding, the professor turned the back of his green Army uniform to the class. On the board, he wrote CHOICE. On another part of the board, he wrote RISK.
“Very good, Miss Speer,” he said respectfully. Moving back to his podium, he picked up The Republic and continued lecturing, as his pupils scribbled frantically in their notebooks, trying to keep up. Asking more questions, prodding them further, the professor walked them through the rest of the reading, until the clock ran out on class.
“The next reading assignment is listed in the syllabus,” he said. “And your first reflection paper is due next week, too. Don’t forget. Class dis
missed.”
Chairs squealed against the floor and all the cadets stood up and adjusted their uniforms. Hannah packed her backpack quickly, hoping to reach Tim before he jetted out the door. Taking a risk had worked during class, and she was hoping it would work with him, too. Across the room, he slid his backpack over his shoulders, revealing the lean muscles in his arms and releasing a fleet of butterflies into Hannah’s stomach. She was two steps behind him, about to reach out and touch his shoulder—to say what, she hadn’t decided—when she heard her name.
“Hannah,” the professor said, calling her back toward his desk.
All the courage she’d mustered fell apart as her arm lowered. Another opportunity, missed. She turned back and smiled at Colonel Bennett, trying to hide her disappointment.
“I just wanted to check on you,” he said. “My wife and I were at that last game. I was sorry to see that you didn’t get a chance to play.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Hannah said. “The older girls really are good. For some reason it’s just not clicking yet. Actually, I have to get going.” She pointed at the door. “Coach J makes us run if we’re late to practice.”
“Well, I don’t want to hold you up, but I did want to say that we’re here for you. Keep it up. I know it’s hard to believe, but plebe year is almost over.”
“Thanks, Colonel Bennett,” said Hannah sincerely.
“And great job today,” he said as she headed out the door. “Someone’s got to keep that Nesmith on his toes.”
RUNNING BACK TO the barracks, Hannah dropped off her schoolwork and picked up her basketball bag, certain she would be late to practice. As she sprinted uphill toward the Holleder Center, where the men’s and women’s basketball teams practiced, the first hints of spring called for her attention. Small packs of daffodils popped through the grass like little trumpets, heralding the end of winter. Buds on the trees outlined every limb with a hint of green. The brutal winter temperatures were finally breaking, and even though she was late, she loved the sensation of the first hints of warmth on her skin. The season always reminded her that no matter what, change would eventually come. Things could look absolutely dead—completely hopeless—and yet, the future always held the promise of new life.
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