Something Like Normal(43)

My room is beside hers, with a big iron bed covered with soft-looking bedding and a wrought iron balcony overlooking downtown and Matanzas Bay. I tip the bellman for the bags, hang my uniform in the wardrobe, and then go out onto the balcony. On the street below, a horse-drawn carriage filled with tourists rolls past, the horses’ hooves clip-clopping on the pavement. Harper comes outside and awkwardness fills the small space between her balcony and mine. There’s no reason we can’t both be out here, but it feels weird. I want to ask her to go driving around St. Augustine with me. Or to the beach. Or even to go to that stupid wax museum down the street to look at fake Michael Jackson and fake Michael Jordan. Before I can do any of that, she goes back inside.





Chapter 13

It’s nearly five o’clock when I knock on the door to Harper’s room. I’ve never worn my blue dress uniform before, so it’s starch-stiff and new-smelling, and I’m not sure my medals and qualification badges are positioned according to regulation. Also, the heavy jacket is hot—even in the air-conditioning—and I’m sweating between my fingers in these gloves. This uniform might impress girls, but it’s uncomfortable. Especially compared to my cammies, which were sandblasted to a salty faded softness.

I’m tugging down on the hem of my jacket when Harper steps out into the hall, wearing a black dress that somehow manages to be memorial service respectable and sexy at the same time. She’s straightened her hair again and her black sandals make her nearly as tall as me.

“Wow, Harper, you look beautiful.” I offer her my arm as an older couple walks past and I hope she doesn’t blow me off. They glance at each other and smile as she slips her hand under my arm. Her fingers are shaking.

“Thank you.” Her voice is quiet, as if she doesn’t want to talk to me but also doesn’t want to be rude. Which is okay with me. I’ll take that. “You, too. I mean, you don’t look beautiful. You look really… good…”

I’m sure I look like an idiot—and this might be the only remotely nice thing she says to me for the rest of the night—but I can’t keep the smile off my face. “Thanks.”

The banquet room is only a couple blocks from the hotel, so we leave the Jeep in the parking lot and walk down King Avenue. We get a lot of looks. Kevlar is right about the effect the dress blues have on girls.

We’ve barely entered the banquet room when Charlie’s mom appears. Ellen Sweeney looks exactly like her son. If, you know, Charlie were a middle-aged woman with thick black dreadlocks wearing a too-tight, red Chinese-style dress with gold dragons all over it.

“Oh, Travis, you are much more handsome in person than in pictures.” She jingles as she reaches up to touch my face—her arm so full of bracelets it seems like she shouldn’t even be able to lift it—then pulls me into a hug. “I’m so glad to see you. It’s good to have you here.”

I reach my arms around her, feeling awkward as I hug her back. She smells like a hippie. Like incense or something. It tickles my nose and it’s not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever smelled, but I let her hold on to me as long as she needs. I’m getting used to the hugging. When she pulls away, her eyes are shiny with tears. “Thank you for coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” I say.

Charlie’s mom turns to Harper and squeezes both her hands. “Aren’t you adorable?” she says. “I’m Ellen.”

“I’m Harper.”

“Thank you, Harper, for keeping Travis company on his journey.”

Charlie told me once that his mom’s personal philosophy is kind of like a salad bar. She picks her favorite parts—a little dogma here, a little karma there—until she’s assembled a heaping plate of strange. I probably should have warned Harper, but with her being mad at me, it slipped my mind. But Harper doesn’t miss a beat as she smiles at Ellen. “I wish I could have met you under better circumstances,” she says. “I’m sorry about Charlie.”

Ellen pats her hand and touches her cheek. “If you’ll excuse me.” As Charlie’s mom steps away to greet someone new, she looks back at Harper. “Someone famous—I have forgotten right now just who—once said the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. Food for thought, that.”

Harper swings her head in my direction, giving me a narrow-eyed glare. As if I had something do with it.

“Don’t look at me.” I throw my hands up in surrender. “I just met the woman.”

I’m not sure she believes me, though.

Across the room I see Kevlar, Moss, Ski, and Starvin’ Marvin. We call him Starvin’ Marvin—or usually just Marv—because he’s tall and skinny, and with his head shaved he looks like the African kid the boys adopted on South Park. I wasn’t as tight with Ski and Marv as Charlie, Kevlar, and Moss, but we hung out together night after night in Afghanistan, circled around the fire pit, smoking, telling dirty jokes, and arguing over the hotness of female celebrities. Peralta is with them, too. “Charlie told me she thinks she has, as she puts it, a touch of the ESP,” I tell Harper.

“She’s… unusual,” she says. “But I like her.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Harper follows my sight line and spots nearly all of Kilo Company—a forest of dress blues. “I, um—need to use the ladies’ room,” she says, and leaves me to join my friends alone.