Mrs. Fletcher(80)

He stopped himself, like he realized that probably wasn’t the best way to put it.

“We had to write apology letters to the parents, which was brutal. And then there were hearings, and the whole frat got suspended. Didn’t matter if you were involved or not. And now if I want to go back I have to reapply. For my senior year. Can you believe that shit?”

“Wow,” I said. “I just thought you failed a class or something.”

“That would at least make sense.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

Chris took another napkin from the dispenser. Instead of wiping his face, he unfolded it very carefully and laid it over his plate, like he was covering his bones with a blanket.

“I might join the Marines,” he said. “Just get the fuck out of here, you know?”

*

Facebook wouldn’t let her forget what day it was for a second, flooding her news feed with images of hearts and flowers, a seemingly endless torrent of saccharine memes, happy couple photos, and loving tributes to loyal partners.

Thank you, Gus, for twenty-two years of red roses!

A romantic dinner for two at the Hearthstone Inn. So blessed . . .

This wonderful man didn’t just make my DAY! He made my LIFE! I love you, Mark J. DiLusio!!!

Snuggling by the fire with my handsome hubby on V-Day Somebody’s gonna get a little surprise tonight . . . #feelingnaughty She tried her best to be a good sport, issuing a handful of halfhearted likes and offering a supportive comment when she could, but she gave up after a few minutes of resentful scrolling. It wasn’t that she begrudged her friends their happiness—she wasn’t that kind of person—she just wished they’d be a little quieter about it, a little more private.

You won, she thought. There’s no need to gloat.

She knew that the winners didn’t think they were gloating—in their own innocent minds, they were just celebrating the holiday, sharing a sweet sentiment with people who cared—but it was hard for Eve not to take it personally, not to feel like a weepy high school girl stuck at home while everyone else was slow-dancing at the prom. It had been a lot easier to be a loser back in the days before social media, when the world wasn’t quite so adept at rubbing it in your face, showing you all the fun you were missing out on in real time.

*

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of partying with a bunch of high school kids—it’s kinda awkward once you graduate—but Chris really wanted to go. He was friends with the girl who was hosting and said she was totally chill and down-to-earth, despite the fact that she went to the Hilltop Academy, a local prep school that cost almost as much as an Ivy League college.

“How do you even know her?” I asked. Kids from Haddington High and kids from Hilltop didn’t usually mix.

“Summer camp. She was my junior counselor. We flirted a lot, but we never hooked up. I’m hoping to take it to the next level.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “You mind if I just drop you off? I’m not really in a party mood.”

“Dude,” he said, like I’d failed to live up to his expectations. “Just come in and have a beer. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But don’t be a pussy about it.”

*

His friend’s name was Devlin and she lived up in Haddington Hills, in what looked like a fairly normal house, except that it was like four times bigger than any house I’d ever been in. She was half-Asian and very cute, dressed in a short black skirt and white knee socks. A construction paper heart on her shirt said, Are You My Valentine?

“Oh my God.” She gave Chris a fierce hug, like he’d just returned from the dead. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You too,” he said. “This is my buddy Brendan.”

She gave me a stern look, her heart all crooked from the hug. “You’re going to have to help me talk him out of it.”

“Out of what?”

“Joining the Marines. It’s crazy.”

“Good luck with that,” Chris told her. “Brendan’s joining up with me.”

She squinted in dismay. “Really?”

“Why not?” I said. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

I was just goofing around, following Chris’s lead, but Devlin didn’t know that. She told some of her friends, and pretty soon it spread through the whole party. That was all anybody wanted to talk about, which was fine with me, because it spared me the embarrassment of having to explain that I’d flunked out of BSU and was currently living at home with my mom and taking classes at community college.

Most of the girls I talked to were firmly opposed to my enlistment—a couple said they were pacifists, and others just thought it was too dangerous, or that it made more sense to join the Peace Corps, to help people instead of trying to kill them. Some of the guys were more gung ho, and wondered if I’d given any consideration to the Special Forces, because those dudes were the true badasses, the Rangers and the Seals and Delta Force.

The best conversation I had was with this light-skinned black kid named Jason, a middle-distance runner who was heading to Dartmouth in the fall. He’d taken a summer school class on Contemporary War Literature and told me about a bunch of books he liked—the only one I’d heard of was The Things They Carried, which I’d read in English class junior year—and then we switched to movies. Our tastes were pretty similar—we both liked Lone Survivor and The Hurt Locker and also Tropic Thunder, which wasn’t really a war movie but was still hilarious.