Then they wanted to know where she’d been during the Palm Sunday attacks. They hadn’t been born yet. All they had were their parents’ stories.
Mia looked back at a photograph of her younger self smiling in Martyrs’ Square in Old Beirut Town. She was wearing a desert camo uniform with a pistol holstered on her thigh. A week after that three helos in her squadron were hit by rockets in the Morning Islands, breaking like glass figurines along the sea top.
This is their normal, Mia thought. Their entire lives, they’ve been seeing images like this, from people like me.
“There’s time for two more questions for Ms. Tucker,” the teacher said.
A boy in the front raised his hand. Mia ignored him and called on a girl in the near corner.
“What about China,” she asked. “My family… they came from Taiwan.”
“We’ll cover that next month, Yijun,” the teacher said. “What happened with America and China with Vietnam and Taiwan is… complicated.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Mia said. The past hadn’t been the girl’s question. “The media sometimes makes things a bigger deal than they are.”
The girl nodded, not entirely convinced.
“Last question,” the teacher said.
The boy in the front still had his hand up. Mia pointed to him.
“Do you have a leg of metal?”
“Chad!” the teacher shouted, while Quentin’s face dropped into his hands. Most of the other children’s eyes widened to saucers. There must’ve been a discussion beforehand about this, and young Chad had violated the accord.
“I do,” Mia said. She reached down and raised up her chinos and black leggings to the calf. “Titanium.”
The bell sounded and the class left in small herds, some stopping to knock the metal with their fists. Mia didn’t mind. They were eleven. The dean thanked her and left; Quentin apologized and thanked her and apologized again. He’s a good kid, she thought. She wanted so much for him to keep that sweetness in the coming years. The teacher approached last.
“This was great. And, of course: America Honors the Warfighter.”
“The honor is ours.”
“You know,” the teacher said, “I thought a lot about joining up myself. Then college, and jobs… it never worked out. But I’ve wondered. What I’d have done in those situations. What I’d be like now.”
“Did you.” Mia didn’t mean anything by that. She just couldn’t count how many times she’d had this very conversation with men her age. Her chat with the dean had been much more interesting.
The teacher called Mia back as she reached the doorway. “Almost forgot—one more question for you. From a student home sick. Fair warning: he’s a strange one.”
“Shoot,” she said.
“ ‘Dear Ms. Tucker,’ ” the teacher read from his laptop, monotone. “ ‘Why doesn’t America win at wars anymore?’ ”
* * *
The season of camo chic had arrived. It came with the first hints of fall, part of the long weekend built around Unity Day and family trips to the beach and elephantine sales on mattresses. The Council of Victors had summoned the holiday as both tribute and testament. A tribute to American past. A testament to American future.
For much of Mia’s life, the season of camo chic meant something else, too. It meant a return to society, to fund-raisers and auctions, black-tie galas where the city’s elite could vie and flaunt. Merlot, tender veal, the catacombs of small talk, all in the name of country. The ritual of giving back to the warfighter mattered, and it mattered a lot. The donations raised, the causes championed, also mattered, and also mattered a lot. Real soldiers’ lives were impacted. Real soldiers’ families, too. If you were of a certain class in Empire City, you weren’t just expected back from summer travels for it. You were required.
Years earlier, at one of Mia’s first galas, her grandfather had asked her to wear her dress greens from ROTC. Because I’m proud, he’d said. None of these other bigwig capitalists have grandchildren serving. She’d refused, though. She hadn’t earned the right to wear the uniform yet, at least not in the presence of the wounded veterans being honored. Her grandfather had been furious, but she’d stood her ground. It might’ve been the first time she’d told him no. It might’ve been the first time anyone had told him no.
As Mia smoothed out her red sheath dress in front of the mirror—was it too tight? Too red? Did it clash with the leggings too much?—she thought about those wounded vets from years before. The one with the prosthetic hook who’d been so nice and funny before drinks. The one with the reconstructed face who tried to follow her to the bathroom. The one who told her to stay in college as long as she could, until the wars ended, back when that still seemed possible.
They must’ve felt so alone, Mia thought. Surrounded by strangers celebrating the worst day of their lives. All for a good cause, though. Even the one with the hook had admitted that.
Tonight’s event diverged from the season’s usual offerings. Speeches would be made and money raised and canapés trayed and paraded, but not for any foundation. Tonight’s event announced something different, something new yet old as the republic itself. Something for the season of camo chic but also beyond it. American Service. An idea. A pledge. And now a political party.
Mia and Jesse were invited guests of General Collins, one of American Service’s candidates for the Senate. But only Mia would be attending. Since the war memorial bombings, her fiancé had only been home intermittently. The hunt for Jonah Gray had become his everything.
“You must have some good leads.” Mia had tried not to sound naggy, or needy. Just interested. “That mug shot is everywhere.”
“We do. But—it’s complicated, I guess.” Mia didn’t press. She just told him to make her proud.
She still hadn’t told him about the pregnancy. To do so now seemed self-absorbed. Mia knew he’d make a great father; he gravitated toward kids and they reciprocated in kind. But her? The maternal warmth some women possessed had always struck her as foreign. The fact that she associated it with whatever the opposite of ambition was didn’t help.
What would that look like at three in the morning when the baby was demanding milk from her breast and all she wanted was for it to stop making noise? What would that mean?
She didn’t know. Semper Gumby, she reminded herself. Be flexible.
Mia’s cell phone shook like static, breaking her from the mirror and the red dress. It was a state news alert. There’d been another mass shooting in Athens, this time in the Plaka quarter. The Greek government had imposed martial law and a curfew, and it’d held, for the night at least. No one wanted a repeat of the Acropolis riots.
She began texting a childhood friend who’d moved to Greece after college, stopping a few words in. She scrolled up. For the past two years, she and her friend had mostly texted one another after an attack. “Just checking in—you okay?” “Hey—just saw the news. All good?” “You safe, girlfriend?” And so on, terror texts across the Atlantic, back-and-forths of fear and relief and promises to catch up properly soon.