Girl Takes The Oath (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 5) (10 page)

“It was all kind of a blur,” he said to one of them.

“The mind blocks out great traumas,” Trowbridge said, coming to his aid after an uncomfortable silence, but with a ruthless grin just for his benefit. “It may take months, or even years, before remembers what happened.”

“The doc said to give it a week, for the shoulder, I mean.”

“I guess you’re not gonna be able to go to the tournament, then,” Trowbridge added.

The reminder grated on him, since he’d been training extra hard for the trip down to Quantico and the Leatherneck Brawl. And the fact that, despite his best efforts, Tenno had thrown him around like a ragdoll only added to his misery.
Was she really that much better than him?
The howling this thought occasioned inside him drowned out that more anxious and circumspect voice, the one that knew she could charge him with attempted sexual assault whenever she chose. A few years earlier, a “she said/he said” inquiry would likely have ended in his favor. But the climate in the Academy had shifted of late, with the result that assault complaints seemed to be stickier now. And, of course, he had no confidence Trowbridge would have his back in such a circumstance—he’d already said as much, and maybe he really meant it.

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Chapter Nine

Party in the Boathouse

Emily could hear the voices through the door, one raspy, tomboyish, the other sweeter, bird-like, giddy.

“Did you talk her out of the uniform?” the raspy voice asked.

“She put up quite a fight, but it’s gonna be civvies tonight.”

“And your jeans, they fit her?”

“Don’t remind me,” the sweet voice chirped. “And she’ll need your shoes.”

“It’s like the girl’s got no clothes, other than uniforms, a pair of khaki pants, and those tunic-and-pants outfits she brought back from Nepal, or wherever.”

“And where on earth did she get this Moto-jacket? Has she ever worn it?”

“Not that I’ve seen. And don’t forget those running suits of hers that leave like nothing to the imagination.”

“Hey, I’m right here, guys,” Emily shouted through the door. “It’s not like I can’t hear everything.”

“What are you doing in there, anyway,” Stacie called through the bathroom door, “a black glove inspection?”

“Hold your horses. Here I am.”

Emily peered around the half-open door at her friends. With a squawk and a squeal, she let Stacie pull her into the room.

“Whoa, CJ, I see what you mean about the jeans.”

“I may have to burn them tomorrow to expunge the sight from my memory.”

“What are you guys going on about? They fit okay.”

“Okay?” Stacie roared. “You look
good
, girl.”

“Whatever. Let’s just go, and make the most of this liberty,” Emily said.

“Did you talk to Dave?” Stacie asked. “I mean, does he have to sign us in or something?”

“Yeah,” CJ said. “Whatever it is, he’s taken care of it. Security’s kind of lax over there.”

“Practically non-existent, you mean,” Emily snorted.

A few short minutes later they sashayed out through Gate Two, and turned down King George Street. Emily glanced behind for the reassuring presence of her DSS “minders” in their dark sedan, and suppressed an urge to tease them, not wanting to draw her friends’ attention to them. The hedge along College Avenue looked a bit threadbare this time of year, and the lawns seemed more than a little put upon by the lingering Indian Summer.

“Is that where the tree used to be?” Stacie asked.

“Yeah,” CJ said. “It finally died a few years back.”

“What tree is this?” Emily asked.

“The last Liberty Tree,” CJ said, but Emily stared at her blankly. “There used to be a bunch of ’em throughout the colonies, you know, to commemorate the original tree in Boston where the first protests against the British happened.”

“I thought history was your thing, Em,” Stacie said.

“Maybe I’ve been paying too much attention to the rest of the world.”

Emily tried to laugh it off. What did this little bit of trivia really matter? But it highlighted an anxiety she’d felt ever since the incident with Bauer, a question she kept asking in quiet moments. She knew how to lead, and for whatever reason people seemed to follow. Whether she fit the mold of an officer… that she didn’t know the answer to.

After all, where did her loyalties really lie? Each time she asked herself this, she would work her way out from the concrete to the abstract: they lay with her family, and they were all nearby, relatively speaking. And they lay with her friends, her high school friends—Wendy and Melanie, and Wayne and Danny… oh yeah, and Billy, too—but also with her roommates, Stacie and CJ, as well as Zaki and McDonough. She felt a powerful attachment to her company, and to the Brigade, and she would put her life on the line for any of these loyalties. And her country finished off the list—as diffuse an object as it always proved to be whenever she explicitly turned her mind to it, she knew she would fight for it, too.

As she thought over this calendar of associations, it occurred to her that she’d skipped over the Fleet. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her… an impersonal institution, her experience with such entities taught her to be distrustful. And what of the Crown Princess? The moment Kano hinted to her of a danger, her heart had immediately committed itself to little Toshi and her mother. Could she be an officer in the US Navy
and
respond to Princess Masako’s call?

“Hey, Em,” CJ clucked. “It’s over here. The window on the right.”

“Wake up, dreamy,” Stacie called out, while CJ tapped on the screen frame.

“Why aren’t we going in by the front door?” Emily finally asked, once she noticed her friends standing in the shrubbery fringing the bottom floor of a red brick building.

“It’s hinged, see?” CJ said to Stacie. “Just like Dave said.”

“I guess this is his back door,” Stacie chuckled.

A moment later the window slid up, and Dave peered out at them.

“You guys came,” he said, as he unhooked the screen and let it swing out.

“Don’t look so surprised,” CJ said.

He reached a hand down and helped the girls over the windowsill. The room itself was long and narrow, a closet at one end, a desk, a bed, and a bookcase. And, of course, books and papers on every surface and all over the floor. The high ceiling and the tall window gave the room a twilight effect—even though it faced east, the room felt as bright as the dusk outside, with no light on.

“Now, this is how I picture a student’s room,” Emily said.

“Messy,” Stacie said, with a laugh.

“Sorry about that,” Dave said.

“Yeah, but everything in here is about studying,” CJ offered.

“I guess you guys have to keep your rooms real neat and tidy.”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that,” Emily said, dreamily. “I mean, our room is neat enough, but it’s about other things, you know, uniforms, guns, all the accoutrements of discipline and loyalty.” She winced a tiny bit with that last word, and hoped no one noticed.

Walking across campus, Dave tried to engage her in conversation, but she made a show of contemplating the architecture of the buildings around the quad. Finally, CJ pulled him aside and whispered just loud enough for her to hear and for him to think she hadn’t.

“She’s taken.”

“Another midshipman? I just figured since she came with you guys, there wasn’t anyone.”

“He’s not a mid.”

“He’s a SEAL officer,” Stacie added for effect, and Dave stumbled, feet confused for a moment.

“So you’re saying he’s too tough for me to compete with,” he mumbled.

“That’s not what I mean. She’s the tough one.”

Dave shook his head, and ran a hand through his hair.

“Is that the gym?” Emily asked, as they walked across the first of the broad lawns leading out to the back campus.

“Yeah,” he replied. “It was renovated a couple years ago.”

“Can we look inside?” Stacie asked

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t look like it’s open, and it is a Friday night,” CJ said.

“Even if it isn’t, we can probably climb in. The brickwork has lots of handholds, and some of the second floor windows are usually open.”

“Why don’t we save it for another time,” Emily said. “I hear music. Is that the party?” She nodded to an old wood-shingle structure at the far end of another lawn.

The darkness had already settled by the time they were close enough to feel the booming of the bass, and the moon wouldn’t rise much before dawn. On the floor below the party, the main room housed all the boats, mainly rowing skulls and canoes, a few sailboards, and a couple of single-masted boats easily managed by one person. Upstairs, a cover band thumped out a dance tune with a question from the motor city—“Do you love me?” a sweet soprano sang out—and the festivities shifted into high gear.

Since it was built into the hillside, the second floor of the boathouse was at ground level and could accommodate at least a hundred revelers, and a balcony overlooking a small quay projecting out into the creek could hold a dozen or more. Young people, students, danced or lounged about inside and out, light from the windows clearing a space in the dark lawn on one side. The backdoor led directly from the upper lawn onto the dance floor.

“Perfect,” CJ said with a little shriek, as she tossed her jacket under a nearby bench and pulled her friends in. “This is exactly what we’ve been needing.”

And she was right. A solid hour or two of dancing produced the requisite catharsis… dancing with Dave, with his friends, whose names none of them would remember, and when they got tired, with Stacie and Emily. Flushed and overheated, the balcony beckoned to Emily.

“You’re Dave’s friend, from the Academy, right?” a young man asked.

“Were we dancing earlier?”

“That’s my recollection. I’m Chelly, by the way,” he said. “I mean, in case you forgot. It’s short for Michel.”

“Emily.”

“So you’re like an officer, or something?”

“Or something,” she replied, on the verge of abandoning a conversation that promised little in the way of satisfaction. Until, that is, she noticed the two Asian girls from the lecture lingering inside the balcony door, observing the dance floor, one whispering in the other’s ear. “Do you know those two?”

“Oh, yeah. Ruochen and I were in all the same classes last year. She’s great.”

“And the other one?”

“I don’t really know her. She’s a freshman.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Well… yeah.”

“They look like they’re pretty close.”

“Yeah. It’s a little odd, like Ruochen has no time for any of her old friends. If she’s not holed up in her room, Diao Chan is practically glued to her.”

“Sounds like she’s found a new friend,” Emily said, with less conviction than she expected to feel.

“I guess, but she doesn’t have the old gleam in her eye anymore… you know, she used to be such a cheerful, mischievous person.”

Chelly’s tale brought back memories of Melanie and Amanda from high school, childhood best friends, who didn’t have room for anyone else... until Emily came along. Amanda never forgave her for intruding in their little world, and things got quite ugly in the end. “It’s a relief to be on the outside of this little drama,” she thought. “Maybe I ought to call Melanie tomorrow.”

Red-faced revelers burst out onto the balcony, making quiet conversation impossible, and a glance through the window revealed CJ and Stacie fanning themselves on a bench against the far wall of the room. Instead of fighting her way across the crowd, she threw one leg over the railing, scooted along to where the building met the upper lawn at the top of the slope and hopped over to the grass, and then walked around to the other side of the building.

“There you are, sweetie,” Stacie said, when Emily poked her head inside the backdoor.

“Where’ve you been?” CJ asked.

“Just chatting with some guy on the balcony.”

“Let me guess,” Dave said. “Chelly?”

“Yeah, I suppose… whatever. You guys getting tired?”

“It’d kill him to hear what you just said,” Dave said, and CJ laughed along with him.

“It’s getting late,” Emily said.

“One more dance,” CJ said, with a hand held out. “C’mon, Em.”

“I love this song,” Dave said, as the band cranked out the opening chords of “Get Me to the Church on Time,” an old Broadway show-tune they’d converted into a dance number.

“What is it?” Stacie asked “It sounds so familiar.”

“It’s from
My Fair Lady
, I think. These guys are genius with this stuff. They do another number based on a Milton poem, but with heavy metal chords.”

CJ laughed at this and said, “That ought to be right up your alley, Em, you know, poetry and all.” After such teasing, of course, resistance quickly became futile, and Emily let herself be drawn onto the dance floor.

Dancing with her friends gave a sweet release from the usual concerns, and having Dave in their little circle may have added some piquancy to the moment. Eyes all around the room seemed to find them. She could hardly avoid feeling it—and how could they not, with a trio like this, three amazons dancing with one of their own. Some of the boys, like Chelly, must have wished they could join in, and the girls, too. Soon enough, the floor filled up, and it no longer mattered so much who danced with whom.

Another kind of eye watched the dancers, with a darker sentiment behind it—Emily felt that, too, not so much curiosity as vigilance palpable in it, though she hardly had the leisure to pursue it. Pressed on all sides, jostled here and there, she barely managed to breathe out the noise and breathe in the energy, the restless life all around her. Still together with Stacie, dancing with arms stretched toward the rafters, while CJ and Dave drifted off into another eddy, Emily’s heart beat slowly, at peace, unthreatened. The blood pulsed in her veins, and something in her heart expanded with her breath to fill the entire room, at first squeezing up against the walls, then slipping out the windows. She felt the urge to soar up into the night sky, to find the stars, and the softening darkness that haloed them.

The song changed to something more urgent, but also still merry, a celebration of youthful springtime, of riding the breeze across a sunlit meadow. The sweet soprano voice of the singer reached into Emily’s ear and reminded her of a different destination for her reverie: