Battle Dress (8 page)

“Yes, sir!” yelled Ping.

But he had cooperated. He’d helped his roommate out!
I thought of how he had helped me with my name tag earlier.
Doesn’t cooperate mean help?
But I wasn’t sure what anything meant anymore.

Cadet Daily turned from Ping, stepped over the crumpled mound of bedding, and walked over to the dismantled bed. “Get over here, Ping,” he snarled. “I’m going to show you miserable maggots how to
properly
make a bed.” He eyed Ping with disgust. “And Mr. Combat here”—he flicked the multicolored rectangular pins lined up on Ping’s chest—“is going to be my demonstrator.” Where Ping had medals, our uniforms were bare—including Cadet Daily’s.

When Cadet Daily had finished his step-by-step bed-making class, he smiled. With its tight hospital corners, the bed looked like an olive-drab business envelope. “Now, this is the standard, Third Squad! This bed is so tight, you can bounce a quarter off it.” He pulled a quarter out of his pocket and slammed it on the bed. Like a rubber ball, it sprang back into his hand.

Before he could repeat his trick, the door opened and an upperclass cadet stepped inside the room.

“Hey, Daily. Here’s the new addition to your squad.” The cadet moved aside, and behind him stood a tiny girl with sweaty red hair shaped into a bun. Her eyes, enormous in her face, darted nervously around the room. “New Cadet Bryen. First name, Gabrielle,” the cadet announced. “Her roommate decided Woo Poo U wasn’t the place for her, so after the parade, when we marched off the Plain, she just kept on going, right into her parents’ waiting car.” He smiled. “The CO told me to hand her over to you since your female’s roommate never showed.” He thumped Cadet Daily on the back. “So, Dude, you have the only females in the platoon. Here’s your opportunity to excel, my man!”

I bit the inside of my lip.
That’s it? Just two girls in the entire platoon? Just me and her?
After Cadet Daily released us back to our rooms, the first thing Gabrielle did was make her bed. Flawlessly. Then she helped me with mine. “My brother graduated from the Naval Academy two years ago,” she said as we crammed my black-and-white-striped mattress into a white mattress cover. “He taught me how to do all this stuff.” We heaved the mattress back onto the springs and sat down on the bed to rest. “He just made first lieutenant in the Marines.”

I ran my hand along the metal footboard of my bed. I could sense her looking at me, waiting for a response, but I didn’t have one. I had no idea what a “first lieutenant” was.

“That’s a pretty high rank, you know.” She grabbed my pillow and shoved it into a pillowcase. “He told me, ‘Gab, keep a sense of humor. It’s all a game. Play it the best you can.’” She tossed the pillow on my chair. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen nothing, absolutely nothing funny about this place.” She untied, then retied her shoe. “All day, all I could think of was my mom and dad.” She turned to look at me. “You know what they said to me, right before I left? ‘You can always come home, you know!’”

I smiled. “That’s exactly what my brother said to me, but he didn’t really mean it.”
Oh, that sounds really pathetic.
“I mean, he knows I could never do that. You know, go back home.”
Okay, you can stop now. You’ve said enough.
Because I knew myself. If I said one thing more, I’d blurt out my whole life’s story, tainting myself forever in her eyes like I’d been tainted in everyone’s eyes at school.
This is a new place with new people.
I wanted her to like me. I didn’t want her—or anyone—to know what I had left back home.

So I shut my mouth and let her do the talking.

Luckily, Gabrielle was very good at talking, and since she was so engrossed in her own story, I didn’t think she’d heard a word I’d said anyway. “They really didn’t want me to come here. Oh, they never actually came out and
said
it or anything. But I could just tell.” She shrugged. “I guess they were a little disappointed I didn’t decide on Penn. They’ve had this huge college fund set up for me for years.” She walked over to her desk and stood on tiptoes to pull the
B.A.G.
—
Barracks Arrangement Guide
—off her bookshelf. She leafed through it and said more to herself than to me, “Yeah. And today I almost took them up on it.”

I was glad she hadn’t. That would’ve left me the only female in the platoon.

We both stuffed a barracks bag with three sets of Gym Alpha—West Point’s P.T. uniform of gray T-shirts and long black shorts—socks, a swimming suit, towel, and running shoes. We were just about to ping down the hall to the bathroom to arrange our athletic lockers when someone’s fist hammered on our door three loud times.

“Enter, sir!” we yelled, and stood in the position of attention, dropping our bags at our feet.

The door flew open and Cadet Daily stomped inside.

“WHAT HAVE YOU LADIES BEEN DOING FOR THE PAST HOUR?” he roared, taking the room in with one ferocious glance. Army equipment still littered the floor. Underwear, socks, undershirts, and toiletries were piled all over the place. “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, A SIX-WEEK SLUMBER PARTY?” He disappeared and returned seconds later, dragging New Cadet Ping with him. “It is now 2145,” Cadet Daily said, looking at his watch. “That gives you exactly fifteen minutes till Lights Out. This room better be squared away by then, Boneheads.” After he was gone, his voice drifted in from the hallway: “And leave the door open ninety degrees when a male is in the room, Davis. I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Gabrielle turned to me and raised an eyebrow. I blushed.

“Sorry about this, Ping,” I said, happy to change the subject. “You’re probably sick of bailing me out again.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry, this is my fourth room tonight. I’ve just finished helping Boguslavsky and McGill next door.” He looked around our room. “Theirs was worse than this, believe me. At least you guys know how to fold underwear.” Then he grinned. “Plus, you know what they say around here: ‘Cooperate and graduate!’”

CHAPTER 5

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE 0530

Up in the morning ’fore the break of day,
I don’t like it, no way!
Eat my breakfast too soon,
Hungry again before noon.

—U.S. ARMY RUNNING CADENCE

T
HE DOOR OPENED with a bang. I shot up in my bed, shaky from adrenaline and lack of sleep. Light from the hallway flooded into the room; it was still dark outside.

“FEET ON THE FLOOR, BONEHEADS!”

I squinted at the silhouette in the doorway.
Cadet Daily.
The overhead lights snapped on and, simultaneously, our metal trash can sailed across the room, crashing against the foot of my bed.

“LET’S GO! ON YOUR FEET! I want you standing tall and looking good, wearing Gym Alpha, outside my room, at 0545. Got that?”

My feet hit the floor, and I scrambled into the position of attention.

“YES, SIR!” Gabrielle and I yelled, trying our best to sound wide-awake and eager. Cadet Daily left, slamming the door.

I checked my watch:
5:32
. I subtracted in my head.
That gives us ... thirteen minutes.

We had no alarm clocks—I had turned mine over to Cadet Daily last night. “Don’t worry about getting up on time,” Cadet Daily had said. “I’ll make sure you’re awake.” He certainly had.

I stumbled to the sink. My exhausted brain buzzed like radio static. Gabrielle and I had spent most of the night scurrying around in the dark with Army flashlights to finish fixing up our room. And now it was immaculate. Too immaculate. Every drawer, shelf, and closet in the room had conformed to the diagrams in the
B.A.G.
Every pair of underwear, socks, and gloves, every undershirt, handkerchief, and bra was folded and positioned accordingly. The uniforms hanging in the wardrobe closets faced left, their hangers canted right. Our combat boots and shoes were lined up along the lengths of our beds, laced with toes pointing to the center of the room. I wasn’t used to such orderliness. It made me feel unsettled, somehow. I turned on the water and reached into my medicine cabinet for my toothbrush.

“I am not a morning person,” Gabrielle mumbled, joining me at the sink. “I am not a night person. I am a ten A.M. to two P.M. person. The rest of the day, I am worthless. Totally worthless.”

I wanted to tell her that I was definitely a night person, that once I made it past midnight, I was good until morning. But I was afraid she’d think I was weird, so I said nothing. The two of us took turns washing our faces, brushing our teeth, and putting in contacts in silence.

Loud music started blasting in the hallway. The theme music from the classic movie
Rocky
. Back home, construction workers used to serenade me with that tune as I ran past them. It had always made me run a little faster and a little better. Now it only made me want to hide.

Gabrielle and I looked at each other. “It sounds like it’s coming over the PA system,” she said. She stood on her toes and leaned over the sink to remove a tube of lotion from her medicine cabinet. “They probably want to make sure that we’re really awake.” I watched her put a blob of lotion under each eye and rub it in. “Well, it works. I’m definitely awake.”

I pulled on my white socks and running shoes. Last night before he’d left, Ping had told us to wear Gym Alpha to bed, and I was glad we had. Outside our door echoed the tormented cries of the uninformed souls who hadn’t and were now catching all kinds of heat as they braved the hallway to retrieve their Gym Alpha from their lockers in the latrines.

The music changed. The eerie theme from another classic movie, that Clint Eastwood Western
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
—one of my dad’s late-night cable favorites—was playing now. I paced back and forth across the room. I checked my watch. I wasn’t about to go out into that hallway of horrors a second before I had to.

Gabrielle was walking in circles near the door, checking her watch and adjusting her bun. Finally she said, “It’s 5:42. Think we should go?”

My stomach jumped, but I nodded.

Gabrielle opened the door a crack and peeked outside. “Those guys next door, what’re their names again?” she whispered.

“Boguslavsky and McGill.”

“Yeah, them. They just left.” She turned away from the door and faced me. “Do I look okay?”

Look okay?
I hadn’t given much thought to my looks. At home I would’ve never left to go anywhere without a good half hour of “primping,” as my mother loved to call it. We had fought many gruesome battles over it. Battles in which my hair straightener was the booty, confiscated and locked away inside my mother’s room, and my makeup was the carnage, strewn in broken pieces across the yard. But today, primping just didn’t seem that important anymore.

“Well?” Gabrielle asked impatiently. “I don’t look fat in these stupid shorts, do I?”

“Fat?” I asked.
At a time like this, who gives a rip if you look fat?
I shook my head. “You’re not fat, Gabrielle.” I checked my watch again.

“Oh, I always look fat in shorts because I’m so short.” She stared up at me. For the first time, I noticed how short she really was. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder. “I had to get a waiver to get in here, you know. I’m only five feet tall.” She looked down at her feet and studied her running shoes. “Well, actually, I’m four feet eleven and a half.”

“Well, I really didn’t notice,” I said. She frowned.
What a dumb thing to say.
“I mean, I noticed that you’re short, but not
that
short.”
Great—that was even worse!
“You look fine, Gab.” I checked my watch once more. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here! We have one minute.”

“Okay.” She pulled up her socks. “I’ll go first.” She charged out into the hallway. I followed, pulling the door closed behind me. She made a sharp right turn, only inches from the wall, and pinged toward Cadet Daily’s room. The rest of our squad was already there, lined up with their backs to the wall. Cadet Daily paced before them, yelling something about a “dress off.”

Dress off? Who’s wearing a dress?

“I was just having a little chat with your illustrious squadmates about dress offs,” he snarled at us. He stopped pacing and studied all of us, from head to running-shoed toe. “You maggots are so unmilitary, you make me want to puke!”

Dress offs ... dress offs. I should know this.
Words, uniforms, and names whirled around my brain like snow flurries. Then I remembered. The thing we did yesterday when we got ready for the parade—wrapping our shirts tightly around ourselves and tucking them into our trousers the way people wrap Christmas presents.
But why in the world do we need dress offs to go outside and sweat?

“You ragbags look like you just crawled out of bed.” He looked at his watch and snorted. “We’ve got to go to formation now. But first let me get one thing through your brainless boneheads.” He took a huge breath and roared, “I AM NOT PLEASED WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS MORNING, THIRD SQUAD! YOU BETTER KNOCK YOURSELVES TOGETHER, OR I WILL SEE TO IT THAT YOU’RE GONE COME LUNCH FORMATION!
DO I MAKE MYSELF ABSOLUTELY CLEAR?
”

“YES, SIR!”

“Good. Now, Third Squad—right,
face
!” We turned. “Davis, you’re leading. Go down the hall till you get to the stairwell. Don’t miss it! Then down the stairs till you reach the sally port, and I’ll take it from there. Think you can handle that?”

“Yes, sir!”
To the stairwell. Down the stairs. Into the sally port.
I had done it a million times yesterday, but never with people following me. I sucked in a shaky breath.
Just don’t miss the stairs!
The simplest tasks were suddenly impossibly difficult here.