Something Like Normal(6)

“Flea bites?” She looks horrified.

“Yeah, well, after a while everything gets really dirty,” I explain. “And the people over there have mud-walled courtyards around their houses where they keep their livestock. Sometimes we’d sleep in there.”

Charlie’s mom sent him a flea collar once that he strapped around his ankle, but it didn’t work. We called him Fido for a while after that, but he’d just bark and go, “Devil dog! Oorah!” which would crack us up every time.

“You slept with—” Her hand comes up to her mouth. “I can’t—I don’t even know what to say.” Her eyes fill again.

Afghanistan sucked. In the summer we sweated our balls off in the hot sun. In the winter we had to battle hypothermia. It was the coldest I’ve ever been in my life, even colder than when we lived in Green Bay. Poisonous snakes. Scorpions. Flies. Fleas. Sandstorms. Knowing that every time we left our patrol base, someone was going to shoot at us. I don’t miss it exactly, but it feels as if I’ll never be fully at home here again. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“There’s a party tonight at the Manor.” Ryan pokes his head into my room after another uncomfortable family dinner of awkward small talk and things left unsaid. I’m unpacking my bag. The dresser drawers, I discover, are empty—apparently Mom didn’t keep everything the same. Before, she was always nagging me to dress nicer and was embarrassed that I bought clothes at the Salvation Army. She probably had a field day throwing away all my ratty T-shirts and jeans with holes. Doesn’t matter. None of them would have fit.

“You interested?” Ryan asks.

The Manor is a dilapidated rental house on the beach that’s part commune, part concert venue. My friend Eddie Ramos has been living there since graduation, but we’ve been partying there since we were freshmen. I’m not sure I’m ready to see my old friends yet, but I don’t want to spend the evening watching military crime shows with my parents. Not only because it’s always a Marine who ends up dead on those shows, but because I can’t take another uncomfortable minute in their silence. I don’t know what’s going on with them. I always thought they were solid. “Yeah, sure.”

Ryan dangles the car keys from his fingers. “Wanna drive?”

I snatch them. “Meet you at the car.”

Outside, I lower myself into the driver’s seat of the red VW Corrado that used to be mine and run my hands along the steering wheel. The faint scent of pot mixed with McDonald’s brings back memories of all the hours I spent with this car—working on it, driving aimlessly around Fort Myers with friends, messing around with Paige in the backseat. I found the car on the Internet when I was fifteen and bought it with my own money. Did all of the work on it, too. It bothers me a little that Ryan felt entitled to appropriate the car after I left, but I’ve never said anything. I wasn’t using it. Now… it doesn’t really feel like mine anymore.

Ryan drops into the passenger seat and the scent of cologne overwhelms the car. I cough and roll down my window. “Damn, Rye, did you bathe in that shit?”

“Paige likes it,” he says. “She bought it for my birthday.”

My eyebrows hitch up. “She did?”

He nods and when he gives me a cocky grin, I see the chip in his front tooth from the time he wiped out at the skate-park. There’s so much wrong with this conversation, I don’t know where to begin. Paige hated when I smelled like anything but me.

If Kenny “Kevlar” Chestnut were here right now, he’d theorize in his Tennessee drawl that chicks are naturally attracted to the scent of badass. He’s a wiry little guy with bright red hair and a lower lip constantly bulging with Skoal. We call him Kevlar because he’s the only one in our squad who could stomach the pork rib MRE, so we figure his stomach must be lined with Kevlar. He talks real fast, as if he doesn’t get all the words out at once, they’ll disappear. He talks shit about girls, even though he has zero experience and even less game. Charlie never let him get away with it.

“I call bullshit, Kenneth,” he said once, after Kevlar claimed he had sex with a University of Tennessee cheerleader. “You’re just a red-haired little bast—”

“Shut the fuck up.” Kevlar gets all huffy when we make fun of his hair or call attention to the fact that he is the smallest guy in our platoon. “Solo’s got red hair, too.” Mine is closer to brown than red, but he thinks including me in his affliction will lend him credibility.

I laughed and dropped my arm around his shoulder. “The color of your hair is irrelevant when you’re as handsome as me.”

The memory brings both happiness and pain. I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale a deep breath.

“You okay, bro?” Ryan brings me back to the moment. “This whole thing with Paige isn’t—”

“Messed up?” I look over at him, with his shaggy hair and the shell necklace he wears because he thinks it makes him look like a surfer, and his face is as earnest as I’ve ever seen it. He really likes her. “Completely, but—” I cut a cross in the air the way the priest does at church, and start the engine. “You have my blessing.”

We haven’t even gotten out of our development when I notice a lot of play in the clutch as I shift from gear to gear.

“How long has the clutch been like this?” I ask.