I shut the door on my way out and breathed the clean, fresh air of the real world. My long, dirty-blonde hair blew all around my face in the wind, and I brushed it back. I got my bike from the garage where boxes full of empty beer cans sat, stacking up high against the wall. I could practically taste the alcohol in the air, and it filled my lungs with the bitter poisonous stench. It was disgusting, not to mention the cigarette-smoke lingering everywhere. He’s at his worst right now, I kept telling myself as I pedaled up the driveway. He’s not really that bad. I knew it was true, this was his lowest point, but it seemed as though it happened all the time. My mother had just left two days ago, leaving him, once again, in my hands. He was such a heavy drinker, he couldn’t be left alone anymore. I didn’t blame her for leaving all the time, and I didn’t know where she went, but that didn’t really matter. And I guess I was the only reason she ever came back. Well, no, that isn’t true. She did care about him, because underneath the fact that he was a washed-up alcoholic using drinking to hide his troubles, she still saw the man she used to know. That hard-working, driven family man who was so dedicated to his work and to her, the man she had fallen in love with. I wish I had gotten to know that amazing person before they quit.
I continued riding for a while, getting lost in my own thoughts. I wasn’t thinking about my father, nor was I thinking about my mom. I was thinking about me, and why I was still doing this. Why I was still letting him run my life, him and his alcohol-ruined mind. Why I was still waking up in the morning to see that my mom had gotten up and left yet again, leaving me alone to take care of this excuse of a man. Why he was still sitting in his chair, after all these years, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, barking orders at me whenever he needed something, falling asleep on the sofa and never doing anything for himself except popping open another cold one, all because his parents died. What he doesn’t understand is that when his dad died, a part of mine did too.

The letter came. It was very official looking, and I immediately knew what it was. I wasn’t really shocked or scared any more than I had been the past couple of weeks. I was set to leave in two weeks. I said my goodbyes to Millard, Elle and their mother. Naturally, there were lots of tears. I spent time doing the little things, looking through old photographs with dad, sitting down and having lunch with my mom. I was scared. I tried to enjoy my time at home before I left, but I couldn’t stop thinking this may be the last time I ever saw it. My mom had been so worried. Worried about me of course, but also worried about herself. I was her only son, and if I went to war and didn’t come back, she wouldn’t be a mom anymore. She wouldn’t have a child to take care of. As much as they tried to hide it when I was around, they were both scared to death about me going to war. We all knew how badly they needed men out there - and why. Sure, people were still enlisting themselves, signing a paper that simultaneously signed their life away. But those people didn’t all last forever. People died in war. A lot of people. Millard knew it. My parents knew it. Everyone did, and pretty soon, I would know it first hand, much more real than all of them did.
* * *
I woke up early, not because I had to, but because I couldn’t go back to sleep. The whole morning was a blur. There was a lot of talking: talking over breakfast, talking in the car, talking, talking, talking. When we arrived at the airport, I felt the knot in my stomach tighten. This is it, I thought. Everything I had ever known, goodbye. I was taking a plane to a base in Colorado. I didn’t know where they would put me, what I would have to do. My parents waited with me, and I could tell how nervous they both were. Nervous about not having a son. Nervous to say goodbye. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything. About Elle, about Millard, about their mother, and my mother, and my father, and my house and my yard and my school and my street and my car and everything piled up in my brain and I just wanted to scream and--
“Delta flight number 232. Boulder, Colorado.” The woman’s voice through the speaker made my heart jump right out of my chest and I bit my lip to keep from yelling out, how unfair everything is that I didn’t get to finish high school and that I had to leave my entire life behind me to go line up in front of a bunch of guys who want me dead, just to get murdered all because my birthday got chosen out of a bowl and because too many guys like me had already been killed.
I reached the desk and the lady smiled at me.
“Ticket, please,” she asked politely. I handed it to her with trembling hands.
“Thank you. Have a nice trip.”
“Can I have a moment with my parents?” I asked a bit shakily.
“Of course.”
My mom came up and hugged me.
“Write us everyday. Tell us what you do, where you’re stationed, everything. Oh, and call us as soon as you land.”
“I will. I promise.” I fought back tears.
“I love you. So much.”
My dad embraced me and patted me on the back.
“You can do this, son. It’s only a year.”
“I know. I love you dad.”
“I love you too.”
“Bye.”
I reluctantly walked past the lady at the desk and down the long, narrow hallway to the plane. I glanced back one last time at my parents, my mom crying and holding on to my dad, both of them watching me go. I couldn’t bear to go, but I had to. I walked until I reached the door to the plane. I stepped into the aisle and found my seat. What a coincidence, I thought. My ticket said seat number 7. The same number that had been drawn after my birthday in the draft, broadcasted on national television that dreadful night. The same number that had been just low enough as to guarantee my chances of being called to serve in the war. The same number that killed my chances of finishing high school within the next year.
* * *
I was awoken by the flight attendant’s voice over the loudspeaker.
“We are ahead of schedule and will be reaching your destination in about 20 minutes. Please put on your seatbelts for our landing.”
Down, down, down. I couldn’t tell if the sickness in my stomach and the pounding in my head were from the rapid altitude change or the permanent knot in my stomach, that nervous, edgy, stomach-churning feeling that I couldn’t quite get rid of. Lower, lower, lower. Closer to the next, and possibly the last, chapter of my now horrifying life. Downward. Quickly. Head pounding, stomach churning, heart racing, I felt like I was going to be sick. I grabbed the paper bag in the pouch in front of me, and the man and woman sitting beside me oh-so-casually scooted away. This was the third time on this trip alone I had done so, but I hadn’t thrown up once. The feeling just kept getting worse, a monster growing stronger inside of me, filling every fiber of my being with this feeling of a desperate little boy who just wanted to be back at home with his family and the life he used to know.

I was hungry. Starving. The kind of hungry that takes over your body and fills you to the brim with emptiness until you feel as if you aren’t even a real person anymore and you can’t think. But I swear I couldn’t go back into that house. So I just stayed on the curb and watching the cars go by. The bitter, poisonous smell of alcohol lingered in the air surrounding it, and just coming near the door would give any normal person a headache. Not only that, but the cigarette smoke hung thick in the air as well, and that smell was absolutely disgusting to be breathing all the time. But I had grown rather accustomed to this type of stickiness entering and exiting my lungs for eleven years, and it wasn’t that awful most of the time. Most of the time. Likewise, I sat on the curb by the side of the road, had been for hours. It’s strange how most people simply must be doing something, anything, all the time. But not me. I could sit for hours, just looking into the trees, watching a squirrel climb up a tree or a bird poke it’s head out of a little hole. I would sit and think and sometimes I would talk to the birds, and think isn’t it lovely that you could pretend they were listening to you and that they never responded by cursing or yelling at you, They simply continued to live their lives, not a care in the world. And if you really think about it, you are doing so many things, sitting and thinking and listening and wondering and dreaming, that I couldn’t imagine how someone would think this isn’t enough doing.
I was getting lost in my thoughts and it was the most beautiful thing and then I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and remembered that I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours and I knew I needed to go back home. I picked up my things from the grass by the curb where I had been sitting and hopped onto my bike. I wasn’t that far from my house, and I rode quickly, thinking about eating and not about my father, the man who I needed to take care of. When I entered the driveway, I saw a deer duck into the woods. As it ran away, I heard a gunshot, and it fell to the ground. I looked towards the direction from which I heard the gunfire, but there was no one to be seen. I shuddered. They just killed it, I thought. As if the life of an animal means nothing. Those men who hunted for sport, they were everywhere now. I hated them so, and I wanted them all dead. After all, they were responsible for so many deaths themselves. I quickly wheeled my bike into the garage and went inside, my appetite gone.
“John!” I yelled down the hallway to the living room.
“Bring me some of that soup!” I heard a scratchy voice yell back.
No ‘oh my god where have you been for the last twelve hours’ or ‘I’ve at least thought about the fact that you disappeared without telling me.’ Nope. Nothing. Just ordering me to get him something to eat because he’s too lazy to do it himself. I was so close to leaving for good, if only there was somewhere to go. But my mom needed me to take care of him, and although I had always sided with her, she was also a terrible parent, leaving me here with him, trapping me in this smoke-filled house with this ironically empty man.

“Welcome to Boulder, Colorado.” A large, flashy sign hung over my head as I entered customs with a small roller suitcase behind me and a backpack on my back. I called my mom, and told her we had landed safely and I was doing okay, yes I was sure, no, I wasn’t nervous or upset or anything like that, I love you too, goodbye. I searched through the crowds of people with excited faces staring at the escalators, some holding signs, anxiously waiting for their loved ones to return. I thought back to a mission trip I took with our church youth group a few years ago, and coming home to Detroit, finding my parents in the crowd, my mom holding up a little ‘Welcome home!’ sign. I felt that now-familiar pang of longing in my chest, already missing my parents. It hurt, and I knew it wouldn’t go away, so I pushed the thought to the back of my mind.
I looked down at the wrinkled piece of paper in my hand. My mom had given it to me before I left. It was attached in the letter, and it was instructions on what to do, where to go, etc. I had practically memorized it on the plane. The repetition was soothing, as long as I didn’t process what it was telling me. It said there were several other people coming with us to the base, and that there would be a stand near baggage claim for us to meet. It was hard to miss: A tent with a large banner across the front, reading “United States Armed Forces Military Base A-42-3.” There was a rather intimidating-looking man in army uniform with chestnut hair and a hardened, dark look on his face. You can always tell when a man has been to war, when he has seen innocent men die for their country. You can see the loss in his eyes, that way he carries himself, so distinct that you instantly knew they had some very deep scars. He was talking to two crisp, sculptured looking boys about my age, though they seemed more like men that boys. They were tall, muscular, and very well kempt looking. I walked up nervously to the man in uniform.
“Hello sir,” I said, trying to muster my best confident voice.
“Are you here for base A-42-3?” his voice was deep and booming.
“Yes sir, I do believe so.”
“Well alright then. We’re waiting for one more person, then we’ll be good to go. My name is Sergeant Elliot, and I’ll be your instructor at the base.” He stuck out his hand to me, and I shook it firmly.
“Nice to meet you. My name is Foster McMillan.”
I checked myself off the list and quickly glanced over the names. There were only four of us in the group, and I realized I needed to make some friends, which had never been my strong suit. Regardless, I stood with the two boys and my new Sergeant Elliot and tried to act casual.
“So, as I was telling these boys here, Foster, you’ll spend about a month in training, then you’ll be assigned a job at the base,” Sergeant said.
“Okay. And, um, will we have to go to war at all?” I asked, praying this wasn’t some obvious question that would make me look like an idiot.
“Probably not. We try to keep young men like you all out of actual combat, but you never really know for sure. Oh look, this must be our fourth person. You boys start getting your stuff together.”
A boy, thankfully one about my size, came walking up to our tent, looking rather exasperated and relieved to have found us. He briefly met with Sergeant Elliot and we got going, heading out to the parking lot.
“Hey. I’m Foster.” I caught up to the boy who had just joined us.
“Drake. Nice to meet you,” He said quietly.
“Are you drafted or enlisted?”
“Drafted. You?”
“Same.”
“It sucks man. It really, really sucks.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, and that pain came back again, as it always would.
* * *
We took a small van from the airport to the base. It was very orderly, everything there was this way. Looking through the tall iron gates, down a long road, you could see little tiny people, all in grey uniforms, marching, marching, step by step by step. It all seemed so orderly, so peaceful, even a little fun. But it was not. We all knew it would not be fun. They took us to a bunker-like building where we were assigned beds, though I wouldn’t really call them beds. They were more like metal frames with small foam mats on top, and they certainly didn’t scream ‘Welcome home!’ We were given schedules and escorted by Sergeant Elliot to the dining hall, which was a squat building in the center of the base. It was crowded with lots of different people, ranging from boys who looked younger than myself to men I would guess were in their late sixties. All of the children around my age wore grey uniforms like we had seen earlier, and the older men had some similar to them, but more professional looking. There were few women there, and it seemed as though all of them stuck together. Then there was the food. Cooked in massive amounts at a time, it was all virtually the same color, texture, and taste. It kind of tasted like oatmeal, with that mushy texture, but no taste of course. And all a kind of brownish-greyish color. I sat with Drake and the two other boys, whose names I had learned were Kellen and Ross.
“So, where are you guys from?” Ross asked.
“Detroit,” I responded, poking at my mushy grey-something with my fork.
“Yeah, it’s disgusting. You get over it.” Kellen said, noticing my skeptical face.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“My dad was stationed on this base, and I spent countless summers here growing up. His father also served in the war, and his father before him. Naturally, I signed up the day I turned 18,” Kellen said.
“Oh,” I said uncomfortably, “Did you enlist yourself too, Ross?”
“As soon as I could,” Ross said confidently. “My parents didn’t want me to go, but I felt like I needed to. So what about you guys? Did you enlist yourselves?”
“Oh, um, no. I was drafted.”
“Same here,” said Drake. There was an uncomfortable silence, and I could practically feel their judgement in the air, that coldness of them thinking how terrible that we wouldn’t want to give up our lives at 18 to go serve our country.
“So are we actually going to war?” I asked, trying desperately to change the subject.
“Most likely. They like to tell us we won’t, but it’s all a big scam. We don’t know when they’ll need us, but spending an entire year on a base without having to serve at all is ridiculous,” Kellen said, a bit glumly, as though he didn’t want to be here despite his family’s history.
“Well,” I said, once more trying to lighten the mood, “I see Sergeant over there, so we better get going. Don’t want to be late to training.”

“Hello?” I heard that familiar voice come down the hallway from the front door, and I practically sprinted towards it.
“Mom!” I screamed, feeling like a little kid again.
“Oh, sweetheart, I missed you so. Where’s your father? He hasn’t writhered away yet, has he?” she asked.
“No, mother, not quite yet.” I just wanted to look her in the face and tell her that man she was still in love with was gone. He had died alongside his parents and nothing she could do would be able to revive him. But I couldn’t do it. Not with her eyes, the way she sometimes stared at him when she thought no one was watching. She had the most beautiful, compassionate heart, one that could see past all the drinking and the smoking to the man she had loved all those years ago. It was too compassionate, too much so that she saw him when he wasn’t really there. I had lived with him all these years, even when she left, I had known him at his worst. And I knew he was a lost cause, just dead weight taking up space in this so-called family.
“I want you to come with me,” my mom said. “We can leave, and never come back.”
“What about John?” I asked suspiciously.
“Who cares about him? I’m tired of having to take care of him all the time, and I can’t imagine how sick of it you must me, you never get to leave!”
“So we just run away, leave him here to die all alone? Doesn’t that feel a bit wrong to you?” And then it hit me: I still cared. It was me all along who wouldn’t just leave him here to die, because I had her compassion too. Sure, I knew he would never be clean, he was a lost cause and would die that way. But I still didn’t want to leave him all alone like that. As much as I told myself I didn’t care, I did. I always would, and I wouldn’t leave him, as much as I wanted to, which made me feel disgusting inside. I was torn: mom or dad? Freedom or trapped, running away or living this life of taking care of someone who should be taking care of me? I didn’t know what to do, and this whole thing made me feel awful, the most terrible kind of sickness and loneliness and horrible self-pity that I threw up right there on the floor and I couldn’t stand it so I just went to my room and locked the door and went to sleep and hoped that I would never wake up.
* * *
Unfortunately, I did wake up, though it was about 12 hours later. I opened the door to find my mom standing there, fiddling with the lock and a bobby pin, and I simply pushed right past her, my hunger driving me to the kitchen. I saw my mom’s suitcase by the back door and I instantly regretted waking up, for it threw me back into this nightmare of a family and longing to be somewhere, anywhere, but here. My heart wouldn’t allow me to go, but my mind wouldn’t let me stay. What was I supposed to do? Then everything hit me, like a train going a thousand miles per hour just rammed right into me: I could leave, but without my mom. Make her take care of him, trap her in this nightmare, and see how she likes it. I went to my room and pulled a suitcase out from under my bed. I hadn’t used it since I was six years old and we took a family trip to Disney World. I found a Mickey Mouse autograph book in the outside pocket, and I looked through it, at all the curly signatures filling the pages. Before I knew it, I was crying and I knew I couldn’t leave. Yes, I can, and I have to. I knew I had to be stronger than this or I wouldn’t make it out of the driveway. I threw the book in the trash can and began to pull out some clothes. I grabbed a few books, some old stuffed animals I couldn’t leave without, a pillow, and my wallet. $12. That’s all. Then I thought: I was named after my mom. I never thought that would be so helpful, but it just about saved my life. On my way out I grabbed her wallet out of her purse, checked inside, and sure enough: Her debit card was inside, along with $300 in cash. So I could really run away. I got the keys and a bag of Chex Mix, and walked out the front door. I was leaving for good. Forever.
“Hello, world,” I said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” And with that, I took the car and left.

Training was fairly easy at first. Of course I was sore at the end of the day, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't as physically demanding as I had imagined. But it got worse. While it was still easy, we trained as a foursome, Ross naturally breezing through everything, Kellen following close behind, myself and Drake pulling up the rear. After a week or so, we were mixed in with a group of kids about our age, probably about 20 or so boys, most of whom were far more physically capable than myself, and at times I struggled to keep up. I saw Drake fall behind me, and I worried about him. I clearly didn’t fit in with Ross and Kellen, so Drake was my only true friend. I had never been the super-athlete football captain boy in my class, and it was exhausting! Crawling, climbing, jumping, all day long. We stayed in a room with our group, and all of them seemed to treat us like we were some foreign aliens in their perfect little world. After almost two months of brutal training, we were all given jobs based on our specific abilities. Some got things like kitchen duty, others were given the bottom ranks in leadership roles. I was given a job in the office as the assistant to a woman named Nina, who took calls and ran errands around the base, doing lots of things for lots of people all at once. She was very sweet, but it was clear she had never been to war, again, you could see it in her eyes. She usually gave me a pretty simple task, like filing things or taking documents to some high-ranked officer. But one day, she was sick, and I was asked to fill in for her. I took a lot of calls, mostly people applying for jobs or asking questions. I referred the majority of them to other workers in the office, but there was one type of call that Nina always took. It was calls from parents, asking how their children were doing, particularly if they hadn’t received a letter lately. They were upset, anxious, scared about their children. Most of the time they were fine, they just hadn’t had time to write, I told them, but I had to listen to quite a few upset mothers and fathers go on about how concerned they had been. Then I got a call from Drake’s mother. She said he hadn’t written her once, and I told her he was fine and that I was actually good friends with him. We talked for a while, so long that the others in the office made me get off the phone. I told her I would make him write her a letter soon, and we said goodbye, and by that time some of the people working in the office had left and I had to leave. When I got back to the bunker, Drake was there, and I loaned him some stationary to write his mom. He said he didn’t know what to say, so I read him one of my letters I had been meaning to send. He basically used it as a template, filling in his name, job, etc. He also added a few things, asking about a girl named Jessica and a pet lizard. He finished it, I addressed it for him, since apparently he had never sent a letter before, and put it with mine to be sent out. I thought about my parents a lot that night. I thought about my mom, and how worried she must be, and about my dad, sitting in his office, trying to fight back all the thoughts of me not coming home. I thought about Elle, counting down the days until I came back. And then, as I lay on the hard, uncomfortable foam mat, my thoughts drifted to what Kellen had said a few weeks ago at lunch that first day: “but spending an entire year on a base without having to serve at all is ridiculous.” So I was going to fight. And I was going to be ready.

Driving. It was so fun, and I hadn’t done it since I was sixteen and drove home after getting my license. I had never even thought I could just pack up and leave, how strange that felt now! I was free, cruising down the interstate, windows down, music up, yes, I was free. It felt so good, every second sending me farther and farther away from my awful past. But I had already moved past that. I felt like I was a bird, and even though my wings were weak from being in a cage all these years, they were growing stronger by the second, and I was finally flying away.
I drove for about an hour, and as it grew darker, I began to think about what I had just done. No, my parents wouldn’t worry too much. My mother would understand exactly what I had done, and though she wouldn’t be too pleased about it, she probably wouldn’t come chasing after me either. And as much as she would love to get mad at me, she had done the exact same thing for years, and she couldn’t deny that. She probably wouldn’t freeze her debit card, considering that it was keeping me alive. In fact, what possibly could she do? That was the question. She would know what I had done and why I had done it, of course. But would she really try to stop me? After all she had done, could she really reason herself into thinking she could hold me back from doing exactly what she had been doing for nine years. She still cared, and she always would. So that was the answer. Yes, indeed, I was free.
I stopped at a gas station to sleep, which I suddenly found extremely hard. I thought about calling my mom, saying I was sorry, but in reality, I wasn’t. I wasn’t sorry at all, and it felt good. After all, she had never been sorry for leaving me. It was a selfish thing, just packing up and leaving your family. And it’s something for which you should be sorry. But, as I lay in the passenger seat of my dad’s car which, until today, hadn’t been driven since 2009, I decided I was officially Not Sorry.
* * *
I woke up starving. I stopped at the nearest restaurant, which just happened to be a McDonalds. I checked my phone. One missed call from mom at midnight. Another at twelve-thirty. Two more at one-thirty. She was panicked. But why? Didn’t she understand what I had done, and why? I couldn’t picture why she would truly worry, knowing her history. Like father, like son. Well, more so like mother, like daughter. Running away from her troubles when she could no longer handle them. And I hated her for it. I still did. Mainly because this was different. I didn’t have a child to take care of, or much less, a drunken husband who needed constant attention. I hadn’t left my only daughter to take care of her father because he couldn’t even keep himself alive. No, this was definitely different.
I inhaled a Big Mac and then immediately regretted it. I felt the nagging question come back up again, the one I had been pushing back time and time again. Where am I to go? I decided I would get off at the next exit I saw, which was about two, three hundred feet ahead. I looked at the signs telling you what food, gas, and lodging there was. It seemed as though there was practically nothing there: Hardee’s, a Motel 8, and an Exxon gas station. I got gas, which was pretty difficult considering that I had never done this before, and saw that she indeed had not frozen her debit account. But I was sure she had, by now, gotten a pretty good idea of everything I had done, and taken. I felt a little bit guilty, having left without notice, but I tried to tell myself, once more, that she couldn’t possibly get mad at me for leaving for the very first time when she had spent nine years coming and going like the weather. When I went inside the gas station to pay, I saw a sign advertising a nurse’s assistant program. I wrote down the number, considering that I would need something to do from now on. When I got back in the car, I dialed it. One ring. Two. Three times. And then an answer.
“Hello, this is Shelby from the Red Cross Nurse’s Assistant Training Facility, how may I help you?” she seemed unnaturally peppy, as if this were the first call she had received all day.
“Um, yes, I would like to apply for a job as a nurse’s assistant near, um...” I looked at the sign on the door: Welcome to Ferndale! “...near Ferndale.”
“Alright, let’s see, we just have one, in downtown Detroit. It’s a psychiatrist's office, and you would be helping nurses do their rounds.”
“Sounds great.”
She gave me some information about forms to fill out, papers to sign, etc. I went on the website immediately and printed out the forms at the copy center inside the gas station. I couldn’t believe it. I was starting my own life, all by myself, without my parents. And it felt good.

“Wake up!” I awoke to Sergeant’s voice booming through the pitch black night.
“What?” Whispers and beds creaking echoed through the cold room. I got up out of bed easily, considering the discomfort of the cot.
“We’re meeting at the dining hall steps in four minutes, no later. No questions.” I could hear the tenseness in his voice, and I knew what it was: we were going to war. So apparently I wasn’t going to be ready. That hadn’t lasted long. I quickly got dressed and checked the time: 3:20. My hands shook as I tied my shoes, and I jogged to the dining hall with Drake and Kellen. Ross had already gone back with Sergeant, this was practically his life’s dream. When we reached the dining hall steps, there were lots of people there. Groups of all ages, boys who seemed they had been there for only a few weeks to men who could have been there their whole life. A few people were talking softly, some hugging. It was scary, and soon we received further instructions from Sergeant.
“Our best-trained men will go first. We have helicopters equipped for eight men each, your weapons are on board already. It is crucial now that you stay quiet and listen for your name.”
Nina began read off eight names and people came out from the crowd. A man walked with them towards a part of the base I had never been to before: the tarmac. I suddenly noticed a helicopter sitting there, and the side door opened. A man reached his hand out and pulled the group up, one at a time, very quickly. And just like that, they flew off, away into the sky, and Nina was already calling more groups. She seemed jumpy and anxious, as though she feared being called herself. Her nervousness only made me feel more uneasy, but I pushed this aside. I was called about five minute into this swift process, and five more minutes after that, I was boarding a helicopter, which looked much larger up close than it had from the dining hall. And we were off, heading straight for Botswana, the center of this entire war. I felt a certain hatred towards it, for it had gotten me into this whole mess, along with a bunch of other tiny African countries, but could I really blame this entire thing on one place? I couldn’t, and I couldn’t really blame it on anyone, as much as I wanted to.
I stared out the window for who knows how long, watching forests and little houses and eventually blue ocean sweep below us at an alarmingly fast rate.
“Grab your weapons, boys,” the pilot said. “We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Wow. Ten minutes. It had only taken and hour to travel halfway around the world. And it had been a whole hour! It felt like it had been just two seconds ago that we had been awoken suddenly by Sergeant Elliot and all at once, I became very scared. More scared than I had been through this entire journey. It felt like a dream, water passing below us, getting closer and closer and closer and closer to the end of our lives. I thought this was probably a side effect of dying, time passing quickly and everything blurring together and I got this crazy idea that I could just wish this whole thing away, that I could simply close my eyes and make everyone and everything disappear and I would be back at home where I knew what was going to happen next. But that was a stupid idea. This was real, this was now, and this wasn’t going to be easy. But I wasn’t going to be easy back at it.
“You boys are going to have to jump!” the pilot yelled over the roaring helicopter rotor beating fast and pounding the life out of me.
“What?” I yelled back, wishing I could just have died now instead of later.
“I’ll slow down and get closer, but I can’t land!”
The horrified faces on the other men in the helicopter made it more difficult for me to focus. I decided to block everything out except for the ground below us. The pilot, whose name I wished I had learned, brought the plane a little closer to the ground and slowed it a bit, making it easier for us to not break our legs when we jumped.
“That’s as far down as I can go boys!” he said, which made the knot in my stomach become tighter. “And you’re going to have to go quick - I’m not in the mood to get shot at today!”
I focused my vision on one spot on the ground - or at least I tried to. The plane, despite him having slowed it down, was moving so fast! It made me feel dizzy and seasick, like the time my parents and I had gone sailing together. I tried to block this thought out from my mind, but I couldn’t make it go away. I felt the memories come flooding back to me. I started crying, and I just jumped straight down, not thinking. I landed on my feet briefly, then fell down and vomited. As I lay on my back in the hot sun, I saw three other men come down, another, two more, the last one. I looked around and saw all of them lying on the ground, clutching various limbs, shaking. I then realized that it was me who was shaking, and then I remembered that we were here to fight.
“Is everyone okay?” someone called out as he stood up, receiving a few pitiful moans as a reply.
“Does anyone know what we’re supposed to do?” I asked, and the man standing up looked at me funny.
“He told us pretty specific instructions.”
“Oh, yeah, I sort of blacked out right before I jumped.”
He looked at me questionably. “Let’s go.” By that time, all of the men were sitting or standing up in some way. We got going quickly.
“What he said while you weren’t listening,” the man, whose name was Chris, caught up to me while the others struggled behind, “was that we were to walk east for about a mile and there would be a general there to station us.”
“Okay...well, this way’s east,” I said, finding the sun in the sky, though, because of the time difference, it was a lot later here. We started walking, and pretty soon, the heat started getting to us. It was a scorching, sweltering hot, one none of us had ever experienced before. I had gotten used to the cold weather in Colorado, and this only made it harder to take that I was most likely about to go get killed, and for what? So I can break a bunch of people’s hearts? What about my family, my parents, Elle and Millard, what about them? Would they just carry on with their lives until they got the news? That’s no way to lose your only son. What if the whole time I had been gone they were shaking because they didn’t even know if I was even alive anymore. This thought stung inside of my brain, and I just wanted to tell them all that I’m okay, even though I was not okay. I just wanted everyone to be okay, and to know that they were okay and for them to think that I was okay and that everything was okay. And then I thought of how much I didn’t want to die today, and not just for me, but for everyone else. People are supposed to die in hospitals, where other people care. And, people aren’t supposed to die at all when they’re 18. It wasn’t fair, no, it wasn’t fair at all. And the more I thought about it the more I felt as though I was walking towards the literal end of the world and perhaps it was, at least, the end of my world.
Walking, walking, walking. With every step I thought of one thing I was grateful for, one thing I would miss, one thing I did miss, one thing that missed me. One step. My parents. Another. Millard. A third. Elle. My hands felt clammy around the rifle. I had never felt comfortable around guns, and Sergeant had tried for weeks to get me to be able to shoot one, which of course I could do, but I hated it so much. It just felt wrong. It felt wrong that we were shooting these things, these things that were made to kill other things. And I hated it. But now it was too late for any of that.
My legs felt sore. With the blistering heat bearing down on my back, it was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other, step after heavy step. I kept doing this, just telling myself to take one more step. One more step. One more step. Every part of me ached as the sun sucked every inch of energy I had out of me. We had been walking for a while, and finally someone in our group pointed out some men up above. There was a general and some men I recognized from the base. The general asked for our names and checked us off a list. We then all got together as one big group and kept walking. I spotted Kellen and Drake standing together and rushed over to them. I tried to think of something to say, but came up with nothing, so we walked in uncomfortable silence. We all knew what was happening, and no one wanted to try and minimize that. Every now and then, the general would shout for us to get down in some bushes or trees nearby.
“Everyone be quiet,” he would say to us, crouching down low. After a minute or so, he would relax and we would keep walking. This happened many times, but nobody questioned his random superstitions. No one dared comment on something that, though strange it may seem, could save their life. So we continued to walk in utter silence, no noise apart from that ever-so-quiet sound of despair.
“Everybody get down in these bushes. Silently,” he whispered at us, the kind of urgent whisper that let us all know this was no joke. We heard a faint rustle in some trees about a hundred feet away, and then the gunshots started. It was as if they were all synchronized in that moment, like both sides knew exactly when the other would fire and did so simultaneously. Our general barked some orders at us, but I didn’t hear them. About two-thirds of our group got up and ran, firing all over the place. I saw men fall down on the ground, the life leaking out of them like a balloon. I instinctively ducked down, feeling cowardly and ashamed. I saw Drake get down next to me. A plane soared overhead, and I saw something drop from it. Dropping, dropping, down, down, like a feather, and then it hit the ground. It didn’t explode on contact, but I knew immediately it was about to.
“Run!” I shouted at Drake, sprinting away as the explosion boomed inside of me. I saw his face one last time, nervous and longing, as if he had somehow already been blown to pieces, and he knew it. I felt a violent force push me from behind, sending me soaring forward. And just like that, about a hundred innocent men lost their life. I checked myself; I still had all four limbs, but some serious wounds. I tried to move, and it hurt like hot coals pressed against my skin, but I had to get away from there. I crawled away from the scene, that guilty feeling setting in that I knew would live with me for the rest of my life. I felt hot tears run down my cheeks, more and more and more and eventually I was sobbing my eyes out, screaming out their names, over and over again, Drake, Kellen, please, anything. I knew they were dead. I should’ve been too, having been that close to a bomb like that. But for some reason, God had decided he wouldn’t let me die quite yet, but instead he wanted me to live with this terrible, horrible memory that would haunt me worse than death could ever do to someone. And as I looked around, there were few people who still were alive. I pulled myself into some bushes and laid down, waiting for someone, anyone, to come kill me, or, worse, save me so I could live the rest of my life with this heavy nightmare in my mind. And as I sat there, praying I would bleed out soon, I thought of Drake’s mother on the phone that day, and how I had promised her I would make him write. I had never sent out that letter. And soon, she would get the news and be so devastated and, for some strange reason, I felt as though his death had been all my fault. I realized I was shaking tremendously, and everything was sort of spinning and then it all went black.

As I drove through downtown Detroit, I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the road. There were so many things to do, to see, to experience. And the people! Everyone bustling around, going to all these different places to do all these different things. It was fascinating to think that every single one of these people had a story, something they were dedicating their life to, so many thoughts and feelings and emotions and people and beautiful, wonderful things. It was all so tremendously exciting for me, having seen almost exclusively my parents and the mailman for the past nine years. I found the psychiatrist’s office and parked, which was surprisingly challenging. I walked in and talked to the lady at the front desk. I was paired with a nurse, and we began the day. It wasn’t very hard, I mostly jun ran errands for her or took papers to someone. In fact, we spent surprisingly little time with actual patients. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and ready for it to be over.
When I got back in my car, I gave what I was doing some serious thought. When I compared it to the life I used to live, this was great. But in reality, I had run away from my parents, and as awful as they were, they loved me in the only way they could. And now I was living out of a car with no one to take care of me, spending my mom’s money, and sitting around, just waiting for my breaking point. I knew it would happen eventually, I would just reach my limit and who knows what would happen. I needed my parents, and as much as I hated it, there wasn’t anything I could do to really change that. So I called my mom. She picked up immediately.
“Hello?”
“Hey, mom,” I said, hoping she didn’t want to kill me for what I had done.
“Oh, God, where are you, Heather?”
“I got a job at a psychiatrist's office and I’ve been driving, mom, and it’s great. I-”
“Darling, that’s all just wonderful, but you need to come home now. You can’t stay away forever.”
“But I can’t stand John always ordering me around and his smoking and you leaving all the time and nothing is ever for sure except for him having a beer in his hand and I can’t live with it anymore, mom!” I was crying into the phone, and I knew I had practically already given up.
“I’m not going anywhere, darling, don’t worry about that. If I ever leave again, I’ll make sure to take you with me, alright?”
“Okay.”
“And you took my wallet, which had made things very difficult,” she laughed a little.
“Sorry about that.”
“So why don’t you come home. I’m here to stay, and we’ll worry about your father later.”
“Okay.”
“Alright. I’ll see you when you get home. Goodbye Heather.”
“Bye.”
And with that, my little taste of freedom was over.

I woke up in a small makeshift hospital type building. It was hot and crowded and smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol. There were nurses running around, tending to patients behind curtains in little cots. There was the sound of moaning and heart monitors beeping and small chattering. A nurse walked into my little curtain room, and her face flushed with relief when she saw I was awake.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re up,” she said, checking things off a clipboard in her hand.
“How long was I out?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t that bad.
“About 48 hours, we were all so worried.”
48 hours! I didn’t really know how long men usually stayed out from something like that, but two full days was definitely a very long time for a person to be unconscious. Then a question popped up, completely out of the blue.
“Who saved me?” I asked, no longer angry about this.
“A boy named Ross. Not much older than you, actually.” she replied, tapping away at a computer. My heart skipped a beat. He was alive, and he was here.
“Where is he?” I asked, eager to see him.
“He was worse than you, only he didn’t go under for about an hour. He’ll live, no doubt, but he’s not doing so good right now. It really hurt him to carry you all the way to the helicopter. He crawled for three miles to save your life.”
“H-he, he, um, he went that far for me?” I struggled to get the words out.
“Yup. And it’s a good thing, too, because if he hadn’t, we would’ve never found you.”
“When can I go home?” I asked, suddenly anxious to see my parents and be away from all of this.
“We’ll keep you for a few more days, and if everything looks okay, you’ll be good to go.” She turned to leave. “It’s crazy you survived that, you know. I have absolutely no explanation for it.” She smiled and headed down the hallway.
I got up and wandered around the place for a while. It was truly impressive, what they were able to set up temporarily like that. I walked down the hallway, reading the names on the clipboards attached to the curtains. None of them sounded familiar, all just anonymous, innocent men waiting for death or, sometimes worse, recovery. Being thrown into a life of regret, of pain, and of grief. I then saw Ross’s name on one of them and immediately jerked open the curtain. It was terrible, one of those images you see and it stays glued into your brain, something you wish you had never laid eyes on. But I already had, I was committed now, and I couldn’t possibly run away from the very person who saved my life. After all, if he had run away, I wouldn’t be alive. There was a nurse spooning some dark liquid into his mouth, and he was moaning tremendously. His eyes were open, but he seemed lost, in a distant world, somewhere far, far away from the moment. He had lots of bandages all over himself, wounds wrapped up but never forgotten. The nurse looked up and saw me. She gave me a look that told me to leave, and I did so quickly. I couldn’t quite shake this whole thing from my head, Ross saving me, the bomb, people dying, me not dying. It was all too much for me to handle, so I simply found my room again and went to sleep.
* * *
Sweating. Soaked, actually. I jolted awake, shaking, screaming, crying out their names, over and over and over again. I had seen them, during the battle, only I wasn’t really there. It was as if I had been looking onto it, and I could see myself, the way I had cowered and run away at the last second. I screamed at Drake, over and over again, but it was like I was behind glass, and they couldn’t hear a thing. And as soon as the bomb went off, I woke up screaming. A nurse rushed in from the hallway, checking on me. I told her I was fine, but I was not. I realized I was rocking, back and forth, trying to make the image disappear from my brain, but it would not. Silent tears ran down my cheeks, and I let them fall down, down. I thought of myself as one of these tears, falling, down, down, killed by this terrible, horrible war.
“Are you okay?” my nurse rushed into the room, seeming thoroughly exasperated.
“Yeah, I’m fine, really,” I said, trying to hide my shaking.
“If you’re sure, we’re ready to send you home.”
“R-really?”
“Mmm hm. You’re condition has been excellent, and we really need the space here.”
I practically jumped out of bed and ran into the common room of sorts. It was as if I was floating through it all, signing out, going to the helicopter, even the ride itself felt short and distant, like a dream. They took me straight to a small private airport in Detroit, and my parents met me there.
“Foster!” my mom cried out, embracing me.
I started to say something, but I just ended up crying. I saw that Millard and Elle were there. Elle ran up and embraced me, sobbing into my shoulder.
“Oh my god Foster, I swear I thought you had died!” she cried, choking on her sobs. I was so happy to see them, but this reminded me of Drake, and it killed me to think about it. I felt the heavy pain on my shoulders, weighing me down with this invisible burden no one else could possibly understand. There was a lot more hugging and crying and I tried to shake this feeling but I couldn’t. It kept coming back, creeping into my brain, haunting me during every waking hour and then still in my dreams. There was no escaping it, and although I knew it wasn’t my fault, the guilt was so strong. And so it stayed with me. And he stayed with me. And that was that.

I dropped out of school. I had been officially diagnosed with PTSD, due to my infrequent eating, immaculate amount of time spent in bed, and the nightmares. They were few at first, then more often, then they became so frequent that I had them four, maybe five nights a week. It was always the same dream: I was looking on to the battle, not fighting in it. I knew the bomb was about to explode, and I could see myself scream for him to run. But he never did. I saw myself run and get out of the way. And then I woke up. Most people probably thought I was crazy, and sometimes I even thought I was. But they would never understand, I was fighting the whole battle now in my head. My parents suggested I go see someone. That’s exactly what they said: “We think you should maybe go see someone.” It made me want to be sick. I didn’t want to “see someone”, and putting it like that made me seem like some crazy person who tried to jump off bridges and kill people. I wasn’t like that. And I didn’t want to be. I was just a normal teenager who was drafted and sent to war and now suffered from serious Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and frequent night terrors. So I figured I would see a psychiatrist to make them happy. I made an appointment and my mom insisted on driving me herself, so I got more time to sit and think, the exact thing I had been trying to avoid ever since I came back.
The ride felt unusually long. My mom tried to start conversation, but I indirectly shot her down with one-word answers. Ever since I had returned home, she had tried to pretend like I had came back the exact same person I was before, that nothing had changed in three months, one war, and many, many deaths. But that wasn’t true. The truth was, I never really came back. The person who flew home on that helicopter was a different me that the one who left by himself on a plane to Colorado, scared to death of death itself.
When we got to the office, we had to wait a while. I wanted to go right back out the second I walked in - but that would have to wait an hour. The waiting room was full of adults reading National Geographic magazines and waiting, waiting, waiting. It made me feel uncomfortable, all these people here, watching me come in, and I felt like they were judging me for needing a shrink, even if they did, too. After a few minutes, the doctor came out. He was apparently some expert on trauma related stress disorders. He asked a lot of questions, and I gave a lot of answers. He told me I needed to start keeping a dream journal even though it was the exact same dream every single night. For some reason it was important that I take a few minutes out of my morning to recite something I had seen dozens of times. I felt like the whole thing was a big, unnecessary ordeal. but I was here to make my parents happy, not me. So I did what he asked, said what I thought he wanted to hear, and promised I would do whatever things he wanted me to at home. Afterwards, when my mom asked how things went, I told her great, and it was all good, and everyone was happy. Except for me.

I went home. I gave my mom back her wallet, returned to sleeping in a real bed, and it seemed as though all was well in the world, except for my dad, but I knew that wasn’t going to change any time soon. I continued going to work at the office. Pretty soon, I started to get to know all of the people there, and it wasn’t that bad. One day, I was delivering files for someone when I bumped into a boy who looked about my age, but strangely, something about him seemed so much older.
“Oops! Sorry,” I said awkwardly, bending down to pick up the files.
“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry,” the boy said, handing me some papers.
“Oh, no, you’re fine. Do you need any help finding something?”
“Do you work here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Here, I’ll take these for you.”
“Thanks. My name’s Heather, by the way.”
“Foster.”
He put the stack of files on the table in the workroom and left. Something about him seemed like it needed help. I didn’t know why he was there, but I just felt like he needed someone to talk to, maybe someone who’s not in their fifties and wears a long white lab coat. Maybe, just maybe, he needed to talk to me.
It seemed as though fate surely wanted it that way, because we consistently ran into each other a lot the next week. Soon we started to get to know each other better, and then we started hanging out together, and we sort of became each other’s best friends. I learned that he had been drafted and gone to a base in Colorado a few months ago. He was then summoned to a battle in Botswana and a bunch of his closest friends died. So now he was here, suffering with PTSD, having the same nightmare over and over again, and things didn’t look too great for him. I just wanted, with every last bit of my heart, to help him. To be there, by his side, and just take some of the pain away. So I tried to talk to him about it. I wanted to help him because I knew he was hurting, and it hurt me to see him like that. One day, we were sitting together in the park, just talking. I loved that he liked talking a lot, that he didn’t need anything but a person to communicate with, and that person was me.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“What exactly happened to your dad? Like, I know he’s an alcoholic and all, but what made him that way?”
“He was a great, picture perfect family man, and he was the most amazing dad until I was about eight years old. But when his father and mother died within the same month, leaving him the entirety of their massive fortune, that amazing man had checked out. But when he was fired from his job, probably because the money caused him to not care anymore, he turned to alcohol to keep all the dark thoughts out of his mind. He had loved his father so much, they were so close. When he suddenly died, he grew even closer to his mother, who was the only family he had left. She was sick then, though, and could barely make it to his funeral. It was devastating to them both, and her already frail body couldn’t quite take it. She basically gave up trying to fight it, and let herself go only weeks after his death.”
“Can I tell you something else?”
“Yeah?”
“You are such an amazing person. I just feel like you’re here because I was sinking, and you rescued me. I’m having the dream less now, and I know it’s because of you. You are so much different than anyone I’ve ever met, and I just feel like you understand. You just get it, and that’s great. No one else wants to listen to me talk about people who were great who died. I lost some of my best friends there, and it used to feel like nobody cared. But now I know that you care.”
“Me too.” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. “You saved me too, Foster.”
And he had. Foster was like my escape, when I needed to get away from John or just not be locked up in that house anymore, I always went to him. It was like I had been alone all these years, like nobody even cared that I was wasting away with nobody to save me, and now I found someone who could really be there for me, and me for them. And that felt great. And everything seemed to be getting better, with my mom back home and trying, trying to help my dad, if he was in any way rescuable, and Foster there for me and me there for Foster and in a few short days it was as if the world had begun spinning in the opposite direction and this time, maybe, just maybe, it was on my side.

Heather. That was her name. And she was pretty. The most gorgeous person I’ve ever met. She had long, curly, dirty-blonde hair and the bluest-blue eyes that made you feel like she could see things no one else could. I met her at the psychiatrist’s office, she was working there. As I spent more time with her, I learned that her father was a heavy alcoholic going back nine years to when both of her grandparents died, and because of this, her mom would come and go all the time, disappearing without notice and then coming back without notice. I think we both helped bring out something in each other, something neither of us had seen before. For me, it was how lucky I was to have such great parents, especially compared to hers. And for her, I guess I just gave her a best friend, and an only friend, to turn to when she needed to escape from everything.
Pretty soon, we were best friends. We spent a lot of time together that summer, talking, talking, all this talking that just felt so good, so real. I wouldn’t say she was my girlfriend, we weren’t like that. We were more like brother and sister, two best friends who have known each other since they were born. Of course I was still friends with Millard, we were practically brothers as well, but something had changed between us. Ever since the war, we had just grown a bit distant.
It just felt like her and I were placed in each other’s lives for a reason, and that we both had just needed someone else to lean on so badly that it had happened and everything was so extraordinarily different now that I just couldn’t quite help but think that I was a totally new person in a totally new world of the most incredible and amazing things. I was so happy again, even happier than I had been before this whole big mess. I had the nightmares less. A lot less. So much less, in fact, that I had them once, maybe twice a week. And I was getting my life back together again. I had fallen down so hard, and everything had broken around me, leaving me sitting on the floor in the middle of a storm, or what was left of it. And she helped me get back up and pick up the pieces. Helped me put my life back together. And she also helped me discover who I was, who I wanted to be. In all of this, I realized that I was a whole new person. But they were even better than before. This new person was stronger, faster, and more capable than ever before. And it was looking to be a great new beginning for both of us.