A Missing Peace (2 page)

I stared at the floor for a minute or two. I wasn't embarrassed of where I came from, and people were going to find out sooner or later. But once they knew, life would be harder. It was an army town.
Ommy
must have been trying to get us killed when she moved us here.

I looked up at him. “Mesopotamia.”

“Where is that?”

Might as well get it out.
“Iraq.”

Caleb

Mirriam walked through the door of my Government class with her head in that same piece of paper. It must have been a schedule. She surveyed the room and went for the seat at the very front table.

Figures. She would be a suck up.

“There's your friend,” Josh said.

“Shut up,” I said.

“Until
she
showed up,” Matt nodded toward Mirriam, “I thought I'd never see you get turned down.”

“How did I get turned down? I didn't say anything but ‘Hi'.”

Josh shook his head. “Nah, man. You said, ‘Hi, beautiful.'”

“Whatever.”

I smiled as Kailee walked past, and she smiled back. “About Kevin's party Friday night—”

She laughed. “Caleb Michael Miller, are you serious?” “You're in trouble for something,” Josh whispered.

“What?” She was all about it this morning.

“You got turned down by a raghead chick, and now you're gonna come crawlin' back to me?”

Mirriam looked back at us. Had she heard what Kailee said? I wanted to tell Kailee not to call the girl a raghead, but I had my own pride to worry about at the moment.

“I didn't get turned down.” I shrugged. “But if you don't wanna go, it's cool.”

She scowled at me but said, “I'll think about it.”

Josh and Matt both laughed. “You're on a roll man,” Matt said. “And that's sad cause Kailee...”

He didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't have to. I knew what he was thinking. Kailee's easy.

I was glad I didn't defend Mirriam when Kailee called her a raghead. This girl had only been here for five minutes, and she'd already knocked me down. “I can still get any girl I want.” I leaned in, so Kailee couldn't hear me. “Kailee and I will be at Kevin's party Friday night.”

“That doesn't prove anything. Kailee will sleep with anyone,” Josh said.

“And you don't want her,” Matt added.

I didn't answer.

“No way can you get any girl you want anymore,” Josh said.

Matt nods. “He's just another football player now.”

“What girl can't I get?” I snapped. I wasn't used to being humbled like this, and it grated on my nerves.

“Mirriam.” They laughed.

“Fine. I'm not into Muslims, but before the year ends, Mirriam and I will go on a date.”

Josh shook his head. “Take her to prom.”

“Or?”

“You owe me a thousand bucks, and you have to drive around with one of those stupid pink flowers on your gear shift and a fuzzy pink cover on your steering wheel for the rest of the year.”

That was my entire savings from last summer, but it wouldn't matter. I'd win. “And when Mirriam and I see you at prom, you owe me twelve hundred bucks and you're driving around the same.”

Josh laughed hysterically, and Matt echoed him. “It's a deal, but just curious, how do I end up paying more?”

“You don't have to put with Mirriam all night.”

The bell rang, and Mrs. Culpepper came in.

“We have a new student today.” She walked to Mirriam's table and asked for her schedule to sign.

“I'm announcing projects at the end of class. I need someone from one of the three-person groups to move up with Mirriam, so she has a partner.”

Josh nudged me. “You might as well go. Start working on your prom date.”

“Hope she doesn't grind you,” Matt said.

They were making fun of me, but they were right. If I got anything from Miss How-Dare-You-Call-Me-Beautiful, she was a guy grinder. I would need every opportunity I could get. It wouldn't be like getting Kailee, where all you needed were flowers and candy.

Since I was stupid enough to put a thousand dollars on it, I had to get Mirriam.

“I'll do it,” I said.

Mirriam flung her head back and glared at me.

The class discussed current events in the Mid East, and the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the difficulties of establishing a new government. Mirriam sat beside me, silently writing in a notebook. I didn't think she was taking notes though.

Someone in the back of the room asked how we ended up at war in Iraq and why the democratic government wasn't working.

Dumbass, don't you watch the news?

“We ended up at war because Saddam Hussein was a brutally cruel dictator,” Mrs. Culpepper answered. “The democratic government isn't working, because these are people who have never had any rights before. Women had no rights. Minorities had no rights. Hussein's family was brutal and committed crimes against civilians all the time. Democracy requires participation, and you can see how it would be hard to get an oppressed group of people to participate.”

 

Mirriam

I'd had it. That girl had called me a raghead before class started, and I didn't care. But this teacher was stupid. No wonder Americans were so ignorant. They were taught ignorance.

“It wasn't that bad,” I started to say, but then realized I'd spoken out of turn. My hand shot up, but Mrs. Culpepper kept going like she didn't see it. I kept my hand up until she acknowledged me.

“Yes, Mirriam?”

“It wasn't that bad.”

“What?”

“Iraq. I lived there until two years ago. Honestly, we were all much safer before the bombing started. And I thought we were at war because the U.S. believed we had stockpiled nuclear weapons, which they never found?”

“If it wasn't so bad, why are you here?” the All-American jerk beside me asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Because the bombing destroyed everything.”

“What about all the women on the news who said Hussein's sons raped them?” Caleb asked.

“What about the woman who said the same about your President Clinton?” I asked.

“You can't tell me it was safe there. People were starving. Everyone turned against that man,” he said.

“He wasn't popular, but we didn't really turn against him, either. He was better than the bombings, and a lot of things you call ‘maltreatment' we call culture.”

“So you liked needing a male escort to walk outside?”

“
I
had to have a male escort, because my father insisted. Women didn't need male escorts. Even here, my brother usually goes with me when I'm out.”
It keeps strangers from calling me beautiful.

“This is a good debate,” Mrs. Culpepper said.

But All-American Boy shook his head. “We saved you people.”

That was too much. “Saved us from what?” My pitch and volume both went up. Instantly, I regretted it, but it was too late. “We didn't need saving, until you came with guns.”

“My dad died helping you people, so I don't appreciate that,” he snapped.

“Let's calm down—” Mrs. Culpepper started.

“Appreciate it or not, it's the truth. My dad was gunned down for trying to save a man. Who exactly did that save?”

I never talked about that. If I didn't say it out loud, maybe I wouldn't think about it. If I didn't think about it, maybe, for one second, I could forget about it. And then maybe, I could forget how much I hated the world.

But I would never forget it. Yet at the same time, I couldn't really remember it. I knew that it had happened like I knew my name or that the earth was round. But the details, they'd disappeared.

A terse silence filled the room. Caleb looked at me—looked
into
me—with deep brown eyes, and I wondered why. Was he trying to come up with his next insult? Did he feel guilty for the things he'd said?

“I didn't mean for the conversation to get so lively,” Mrs. Culpepper said.

When Caleb finally spoke, his voice had gone soft, almost sympathetic. “We're there to keep terrorists from doing things like that.”

A single tear rolled down my cheek, scorching my face. In spite of this, I let out a laugh. “Except, he was shot by an American soldier.”

Caleb's mouth gaped. He rocked back in his chair and didn't say anything else.

No one spoke to me the rest of the day, but eyes followed me wherever I went.

After school, I waited close to the building. It was safer to stay near teachers. Although, half the teachers in this building would let the students lynch me.
Ommy's
car pulled up, and as I walked toward it, the crowd moved to either side.

They cleared a path for me. I was untouchable.

I opened the passenger door and slid in.

Watching the grassed knolls and sidewalks in front of the building where the kids stood, Abrahem didn't miss how everyone stared at us. “Already?” he asked.

I nodded.

“What did you do?”

“I think I may have gone off on a football player. But most of it is because I said life wasn't that bad in Iraq before
they
showed up.”

Abrahem laughed. “It wasn't that bad, but you can't remember much. Why would you say that? You know it's a military town.”

I shrugged. “I have to take government. The teacher said that the U.S. went to war to protect innocent Iraqi civilians. That's not what happened. They don't protect us. They kill.”

He gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. “They do, but you can't go around saying that. Mirriam,
you
especially can't say that here. You'll get
yourself
killed.”

“It's true.”

“I know.” He did know, but he wasn't there. He didn't have to watch it.

Caleb

Why would an American soldier shoot a man for helping someone? It didn't make sense. I couldn't get what she'd said out of my head through any of my afternoon classes or the drive home. But I couldn't find logic in it, either. I came up with two possible scenarios: A terrorist wearing a soldier's uniform killed her dad and she hated the world for it, or she lied.

I didn't want to take a liar to prom, and it was either take Mirriam to prom or lose a chunk of my savings and drive around with a pink flower sticking up in my Jeep. Her conviction seemed real, and why would she lie about that?

A terrorist could have killed a soldier, stolen his uniform, and shot up someplace, but I hadn't heard about it. We usually heard stories like that around here, whether they made the news or not.

I knew guys like my dad and my friends were risking their lives in Iraq every day for people like Mirriam. There was no way they'd gun someone down for no reason. They were too worried about staying alive, and to hear Mirriam scoff at what they were doing the way she did...

I'd lost my dad there. He'd died for a reason. He was protecting us. He was protecting her even if she was too stupid to know it. The worst part was she didn't seem like a stupid girl.

I took my dad's uniform out of my closet and hung it on the door. I sat on my bed, staring at his medals. Desperately, I wanted to know what happened that day. We never got the whole story. The version repeated by anyone in a uniform, no matter when I asked, was, “He was killed by enemy fire.” Enemy fire. Whatever that meant. He was the only one in his company who didn't make it home, and he was a non-commissioned officer.

From the day the soldier saluted me at the door two years ago, something struck me about the story. There was something they didn't want us to know. For two years, I'd tried not to think about it, but with all the talk about Iraq today, I couldn't get it out of my head. My dad was dead and somewhere there was a missing piece to the story, his story.

I called Gade. He was the youngest guy in my dad's company, only a few years older than me. We'd been friends since his family moved in down the street, when I was ten years old. Dad had helped him enlist. Gade had gotten into some trouble when he was in high school, so he shouldn't have been able to get in. My dad had talked to the recruiter and said he'd be willing to keep Gade out of trouble. They army erased his past, and he was always thankful to my dad.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Miller. What's going on?”

“Can you tell me about the day my dad died? The
whole
story?”

Gade sighed. We'd had this conversation a dozen times two years ago when I couldn't get anyone else to tell me what happened.

Exasperation filled his voice. I knew he thought the last time we had this conversation was the
real
last time. “Caleb, when someone dies, the grief doesn't go away. It becomes easier to live with. You have to quit obsessing over this. If I
could
remember everything, and I can't, it's not like it would bring him back.”

“I know, but can you just try to remember, please? I need to know what happened. I think when I know what happened, I'll be able to get past it.” “You can't get over violently losing a parent, and there isn't much I can tell you. They were shooting at us. We were shooting at them, and somehow Michael got shot.”

Same story as last time, but I knew he remembered more than he let on.

“I want beer.” It was like an unspoken agreement. I knew he was lying to me, but didn't call him on it so he bought me beer.

“My fridge is full of it, but, Miller, drinking yourself into a stupor won't help.”

I headed out to the jeep to hit Gade's fridge before my mom got home. A U-Haul truck was parked across the street. A big Middle Eastern guy about my age came out of the house.
Wow, this town is being overtaken by Arabs.
Then a shorter girl with tight black curls followed him out. Mirriam. In snug jeans that clung to her body, she looked different now.