Beyond the Point(15)
“‘Divested . . . ,’” Dani would hint.
“‘. . . divested of all hair, fat, and other . . . uh . . . extraneous matter . . . be immersed . . .’” Tim would groan, rolling over onto his stomach and pummeling the ground with his fist.
But if Tim was horrible at memorizing useless trivia, he more than made up for it with the kind of outdoorsy knowledge that was completely foreign to Dani. When orienteering, Tim naturally knew which direction was north. A week earlier, when their platoon had prepared to walk through a concrete bunker called the House of Tears, Tim had shown Dani how to tighten her gas mask.
“Don’t worry,” he’d whispered, ensuring that their platoon leader didn’t hear him talking. “It’s just tear gas.”
Just tear gas? Dani had looked at him like he had three heads. That was like saying the flu was just a virus.
Every person in the platoon had lined up with their hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them, like elephants linking trunks to tails. When Tim placed his hand on Dani’s shoulder, he’d squeezed it twice, as if to say, You’ve got this.
As soon as they were inside and told to remove their masks, a stinging sensation exploded into Dani’s nose and mouth and eyes, clawing at her insides. Water, mucus, and sweat poured out of every orifice imaginable, like the tear gas was somehow melting her face. Not a second too soon, a door at the front of the room had opened, and the platoon had filed out quickly into the fresh air, all hacking and coughing and spitting into the grass.
“Wave your—cough—arms!” Tim had shouted at Dani, windmilling his arms through the air. She’d followed his instruction, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do, and soon, it seemed the motion had circulated fresh oxygen over her body. Snot covered her upper lip and tears ran down her cheeks, but surprisingly, she was laughing. They all were. This, she was learning, was what West Pointers called “type two” fun. It wasn’t fun while you were having it; it was fun later, when you could look back on it.
After they’d recovered, Dani asked Tim how he knew to circle his arms through the air. He’d just shrugged.
“Seemed like the right thing to do,” he’d said.
That was the way it was with Tim. Everything came naturally to him. He never seemed flustered with the training, and not once had Dani seen him lose his cool or bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from showing emotion. The insides of her cheeks, however, were a disintegrating mess of flesh. She’d chewed them so hard in the last three weeks, trying to hold her tongue, that she was afraid she’d have a hole in her cheek by the time Beast Barracks was over.
They switched positions, Dani holding the clipboard while Tim took the prone on the ground. He shot three times in quick succession and hit the target in a perfect isosceles triangle, right in the center.
“Show-off.” Dani took the weapon from him and went back to the ground, ignoring the growing pain in her lower back. It felt like her hip might snap out of its socket. But she knew better than to complain. Last week, the only other girl in Alpha Company had fallen out of a two-mile run with what she’d said was a sprained ankle. Soft in the face and around her middle, the girl looked genuinely in pain to Dani, but she’d watched as the men in her platoon rolled their eyes and groaned, as if she were faking the injury to slow them all down. The girl had quit three days later, packing up her gear and heading back to Arizona. Dani didn’t blame the girl for quitting any more than she’d blamed the guys for rolling their eyes. If you wanted to be comfortable, you shouldn’t have come to West Point. But now, the lone female in their platoon of twenty, Dani was highly aware that she was being watched. Any misstep, any wince, would confirm her status as the weak link.
The morning she’d reported to West Point, Dani’s body felt perfectly ready for any challenge, bolstered by a rush of adrenaline. Through the night, Dominic had punched her in the side, annoyed by her relentless tossing and turning. But Dani didn’t care. Dominic would be able to go back to sleep this afternoon. She, on the other hand, wouldn’t get much sleep for the next six weeks.
The McNalleys had left the hotel an hour later, Dani carrying a black duffel bag over her shoulder, stuffed with everything that had been on the short packing list. Sarah Goodrich had told her to pack extra bandages, blister pads, moleskin, anti-friction gel, and foot powder, saying they might come in handy. Dani had shivered imagining how her feet might look at the end of Cadet Basic Training, torn up, blistered, and bloodied. But thankfully, the moment she shivered with fear, a fresh rush of energy soared through her veins. She could feel the thrill in her neck, her fingers, her toes. Her abs tightened. It was amazing how the body could sense impending danger and release a chemical to help carry you through the fear. At times, the body was smarter than the mind.
Her hair slicked back into a dark bun, black Nike sneakers looking sharp against her mocha legs, Dani walked through the gates to the stadium.
As they found their way to an area overlooking the fifty-yard line, the McNalleys joined other white families, black families, an Asian family, and even a few families that weren’t speaking English. Most boys had preemptively shaved their heads, but several had grown their hair out long and bushy, knowing that at some point in the next few hours a barber would shear it off. Once they found their seats along the aluminum bleachers, Dani leaned forward and pressed her elbows into her knees. Everything in her body was on extreme alert—like she was about to run a marathon. Instead, she had to sit still and wait. On . . . what? An announcement? Someone to start yelling at her to do push-ups?