Something Like Normal(20)

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“Reconnaissance Marines are kind of like special forces,” I say. “Sort of like how the Navy has SEALs or the Army has Rangers.”

“So basically you want to do something even more dangerous than you’re already doing?”

I laugh. “I guess.”

“You like the Marines, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Except for the part where people shoot at you, it’s not all that different from any other job. There are things I like and things that suck,” I say. “So where are you going to school?”

“The College of the Atlantic. It’s up in Maine.” She parks the Rover in a spot in the deserted beach lot and cuts the engine.

“That’s pretty far from home.” I open my door. Pretty far from anywhere I’ll be, too, which kind of sucks.

“Not as far as Afghanistan,” she says.

“Good point.”

Harper gets out of the car as I start taking the supplies from the backseat. She opens the door opposite me. “COA has a really good marine science program. One of the best, really.”

“I had no idea you were so smart,” I say, stepping out onto the sand. “Or that you still played with Barbies when you were thirteen.”

She laughs and punches me on the arm. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I guess,” I say. “But I, um—I’d like to.”

She goes quiet as she kicks off her flip-flops, and she reminds me of a turtle, sticking her head out to investigate, then pulling back at the first sign of danger. I want to tell her I won’t hurt her, but what proof does she have of that? Thing is, I don’t want to hurt her. Harper brings out something different in me than Paige. Something better. At least, I want to believe that.

“So…” I change the subject. “The eggs?”

“It could take all night for them to hatch.” Harper moves past me and I fight the urge to grab her arm and stop her, momentarily forgetting there are no bombs buried here. In Afghanistan, they could be anywhere. One time we were sweeping a road because we knew there was a bomb on it, but even with a metal detector we couldn’t find it. We gave up, got in the truck, drove a little farther down the road, and hit the bomb we’d been looking for. None of us were hurt—just a little tossed around—but it messed up the truck. Even after my brain gets the memo that we are not going to blow up on Bonita Beach, I can’t stop my eyes from scanning the sand for explosives.

“Is this a problem?” she asks.

For a moment I have to remember what we were talking about, but then I look up at her, the sea breeze lifting the stray hairs around her face. “Nope, not a problem at all.”

The nest is on a dark portion of the beach, not far from a three-level house with a caged pool. The house is still shuttered for the off season. It’s quiet. Only the soft whoosh of the waves and the round white moon, scattering its reflection across the water. If I’ve missed anything about home, it’s this.

Harper leads me to a miniature crime scene. The nest looks like the remnants of a washed-out sandcastle, marked by a crisscrossing of yellow caution tape and a warning sign to stay away.

“The tarp goes here.” She points the red flashlight beam at a spot above the nest, then sweeps it to the water side of the nest. “And the trench starts here. All the way down to the water.”

“How deep?”

“About ankle.” Harper starts unrolling the tarp. “It has to be deep enough to keep them from climbing out and heading for an artificial light source.”

I start digging. The sand here is more dense than in Afghanistan, where it’s the consistency of powder. It came out with my snot when I blew my nose, from my ears when I swabbed them, and the first spit when brushing my teeth was always brown. At one of our outposts there was a well, and sometimes we washed in the irrigation canals, but we never were truly clean.

I’m halfway to the water when I hear a splintering crack.

I’m crossing a shallow canal between fields with Charlie and an Afghan soldier behind me, when a round from an AK-47 zings past me like an angry bee.

I slide into the canal at once, the muddy water filling my boots and creeping up the legs of my trousers. Charlie is standing still on the edge of the canal, an unmoving target.

“Charlie, get down!” I try to scramble up the bank to grab him, but slip as the mud crumbles beneath my boot, my hand clutching at his ankle. “Get your ass down!”

He slides down the canal bank as a shot cracks over his head. The Afghan soldier on my other side fires his automatic weapon, spraying blindly at where he thinks the Taliban are hiding. I peer over the edge of the bank, trying to figure out where the fire is coming from.

Crack!

“Travis!” Harper’s voice cuts through the memory and, just like that, it’s over. Except I’m lying on the sand and she’s standing over me with a broken stake—the source of the splintering sound—in her hand. My heart is racing so fast I’m afraid it’s going to explode, and I can’t catch my breath. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“No.” I didn’t mean to say that. “I mean…” I’m so embarrassed, I can’t even look at her. Also, the wetness of the sand has penetrated the front of my shorts, and my nuts are cold. “I’m fine.”