My mom and dad have been tiptoeing around me. Their not-so-subtle check-in’s, since I won’t come out of my room; the pretend pass by with a bit of food on a tray, the questions about taking my car out of storage, the book on PTSD they just happened to pick up for me. They’re probably elated to have their son back, after he was buried in the local cemetery, but I just can’t muster up any kind of emotion for them.
Sure, they’re my parents. I recognize that they’re a safe place, though what that means to me anymore is completely fucked. But I can’t muster the spirit to sit at a dinner table with them. To even crack a small smile when my mother tells me how much she’s missed me. And don’t even think about asking me to detail the events of the last year of my life. If I did that, they’d be stabbing themselves in the ears to stop my words from entering them, that’s how brutal the stories I could tell are.
No, there is only one random, annoying as hell, uncontrollable thought that keeps running through my mind.
When I shipped out, Kennedy Dover was a sophomore who’d just gotten her braces removed. Of course, neither of those two things kept me from wanting her. Fuck, I’d wanted her even when she had the braces. Kennedy has always been gorgeous, even as the girl who used to knock my sand castle over in the park sandbox. One doesn’t need to guess why she was my first crush, and my pen pal as I sat in a fucking desert trying not to be shot at.
Kennedy encompasses all ends of the spectrum when it comes to beauty. She has the obvious, pretty vibe with the long lashes that kiss her cheeks when she blinks. All the swirling brown hair that you can’t help but want to touch. The button nose and pure white teeth, sans braces. Not only that, but she’s sexy as hell and has no idea, which only makes her sexier. Even back then, before I left, she was starting to fill into her curves. A petite frame with a handful of tit on each side, an ass made perkier by all the cheerleading jumps and stunts, and legs longer than the afternoon in summer. It was all I could do to stop staring at her lips before I graduated high school, so full they are, and the color of crushed cherries. Kennedy has always been beautiful, a natural kind of attractiveness that goes further than just skin deep. She’s considerate and polite, sincerely cares and gives her attention when she’s having a conversation with you. She has that spark, the one that draws people to her.
That was before. Before I turned into a ghost of my former self. But now? Jesus fucking Christ. It took all I had in me not to tackle her like a wild animal when I stepped into my driveway and saw her standing there. She’s a goddamn knockout, all supple curves in that tight cheer uniform. She’s every guy’s wet dream come to life.
From the moment I saw her standing across the lawn that separates our two houses, she’s been the only thing that can penetrate the fortress that is now my mind. Being by myself, in a dusty pit with not a speck of light, it trained me to focus my mind into a full meditative state. I can go weeks without having a single thought.
But since the second I saw Kennedy Dover, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the last thing I said to her in person.
“I’m going to give you the kiss we’ve both dreamed about. Wait for me.”
That fucking promise I made her, the one about the kiss? It was what got me through the first few months of fighting overseas. Before I got captured, all I did was eat, sleep, shoot, and read Kennedy’s letters. We would send them back and forth so frequently, sometimes I’d get random handwritten pages that didn’t even correspond to the letter I’d just sent because she’d already sent another one.
They were always about everything, and nothing at all. The scrawl of her penmanship kept me grounded, kept me sane even as I stared at the same orange desert landscape for hours on end. Fuck, I can still feel the grit of that sand in my eyes even now, and I was rescued over a month ago from the pit those fucking bastards left me in.
Took the guys who are supposed to be on my side long enough to realize I was telling the truth when I said I hadn’t been turned. That I wasn’t a spy for the other team, that no one had radicalized me. When they were satisfied—after using their own methods of psychological torture because apparently I haven’t had enough—I was given a Prisoner of War medal and a Purple Heart, allowed to go into surgery for my fucked up arm and leg, and shipped home. A simple nod of their heads to thank me for my service, as if I wasn’t just tortured and dragged through hell. No talk of the benefits I’d receive, or if I’d have some kind of exit discussion. No HR rep calling my line in the past few days.
When I turned eighteen, I did the noble thing and decided to serve my country. And now, that country was abandoning me.
But at least I kept the one secret that no one was able to pull out of me. Maybe because they didn’t know it was there, locked tightly in my brain, where no one could unveil it. Because they would never believe an eighteen-year-old kid could pull it off.
Shipping me back to Brentwick, a white-picket town where high school football heroes are held up as nobility, and the Christmas Eve parade is the most anticipated event on the calendar. My hometown was untouchable in my mind as a teenager. The two-story brick home my parents own, the late-night parties on the acres of farm property my best friend lives on, victory laps when the football team won … it all adds to the nostalgic charm that my northern New Jersey hometown is known for. I grew up as an only child, riding my bike down to Brentwick’s main street, Dellan Drive, and playing T-ball at the municipal fields.
To most, my upbringing probably seems idyllic. I was lauded as a golden boy, and what did I do? Decided to follow my hero worship with an inflated ego and cocky heart right onto the battlefield. What a fucking moron I was.
And now, I’m a twenty-year-old veteran with pins holding my ankle together after some Iraqi army general smashed it with a ball peen hammer, no job since I can’t seem to leave my room without hearing fucking helicopter blades coming for me, and no real will to live.
Staring up at the white, wood-paneled ceiling of my childhood bedroom, I’m still truly shocked whenever I observe the space. Mom and Dad touched nothing, as if they were leaving it an intact shrine. Maybe they really did know I’d come home at some point, because nothing has changed. My little league baseball and football trophies still sit on a shelf above my desk. On that dark wood desk, where I used to hide a Playboy Magazine in the bottom drawer under old action figures, sit my senior year textbooks. The orange and white football jersey from my junior year state championship win, the one Mom had framed, hangs on the wall above my queen-sized bed. A wall of built-in bookcases covering the entire length of the wall opposite the door contains my favorite science-fiction novels, old CDs from my childhood days, wood shop projects, framed pictures of my friends, and a couple of priceless sports memorabilia I’d received as Christmas presents. I used to think the football signed by Brett Favre was the most valuable thing I own. Now, I could care less about the fucking pigskin.
Aside from the last thing I said to Kennedy, I can think of nothing else I truly want to do. But this morning, my mom left a note on my desk before she left for work. Please go outside. Walk, or sit in the backyard, but you need some fresh air.
If she only knew about the brutal heat I’d sat in for a little under a year, in that fucking hole in the desert, then she wouldn’t be saying it.