THE TOMBS IS A RESTAURANT one mile south of campus. By the time Jack and I get there, I’m so cold I can barely feel my fingers, and tonight feels so strange I can hardly think straight. Not to mention my heartbeat hasn’t normalized since we stepped off campus.
I let go of a breath as Jack leads me down the stone stairs toward a wooden door. I’m just going to take this one moment at a time. Nothing’s happening with Jack and me, we’re just hanging out. And I’m pretty sure that’s not a betrayal of Joni—yet. The problem is I don’t know because I’ve only had that one boyfriend, semiterrible Carl Jensen, who had a pollen allergy and couldn’t go outside for months at a time. (And I don’t even want to think about what happened with Josh.) And even though I’ve read a lot of Ask E. Jean columns in Elle, and she gives great romantic advice, I can’t recall anything relevant to my current situation.
The Tombs looks like it was built half underground, like some of the restaurants in downtown New York City that my parents have taken Ella and me to after seeing Broadway shows. There was this one time after Cabaret when Ella ordered coq au vin and convinced herself she felt drunk after realizing it was made with wine sauce. The head chef had to come to our table and assure her that the alcohol burned off during cooking, but that didn’t stop her from needing to take slow, deep breaths while my mom patiently rubbed her back. The memory makes me ache with missing her. I wonder what she’s doing right now. And if she’s wondering the same thing about me, there’s no way she’d ever guess I’d be doing this.
Light glows from the small, cloudy windows lining the side of the restaurant. Music pulses through the door, and when Jack swings it open, warm air rushes out to greet us. He unzips his jacket as soon as we’re inside and I do the same. The night-vision goggles are tucked safely inside one of my jacket’s pockets, and I feel weirdly reassured having them there. Maybe I should always carry night-vision goggles, even when I get back to Mount Pleasant. They’re so much better than my phone’s flashlight.
The restaurant has wooden beams on the ceiling and exposed brick on the walls. There are a dozen or so rectangular tables arranged in front of a stage. Framed photos of jazz musicians line the walls with signatures scrawled in black marker. There’s a bar against the wall, too. Jack catches me looking at it and says, “They don’t card here.”
Yikes. Is this a bar or a restaurant? Are we allowed to be in here? Military school is starting to make my rustic-chic mega party look tame. My parents would lose it if they knew I was in a bar.
I try to seem calm, casual. The smell of burgers and fries probably means this is mostly a restaurant. But what kind of restaurant is open at one in the morning?
“Should we sit?” I ask, my legs a little shaky.
Jack doesn’t hear me over the music. He turns and calls out to a burly twentysomething guy. “Arturo!”
The guy—Arturo—lifts a meaty hand and breaks into a grin. He strides toward us and claps Jack’s back. Jack’s grinning when he introduces me as his new friend.
“Friend, eh?” Arturo says. The way he says it makes me wonder if he suspects we’re more, and maybe that’s because Jack always brings girls here. And not that there’s anything wrong with that . . . I just mean I need to be careful, and not assume this is some real, actual thing. I don’t need to embarrass myself like I did with Josh.
“Frankie Brooks,” I say, extending my hand.
“Private Frankie Brooks,” Jack says.
I kind of want him to shut up in case anyone else is here from the Academy. Should we really be so brazen?
We exchange nice to meet yous, and it’s clear Arturo knows we’re from the Academy and doesn’t care, but I still keep my eyes out for people who could be military spies as Arturo leads us to a quiet table in the back. He sets down two menus. Jack pulls out my chair, which I don’t think anyone has ever done for me besides my dad.
I don’t bother opening my menu. “I didn’t bring any money,” I say. Everything happened so fast at the dorm it wasn’t like I had a chance to grab my wallet.
“No worries,” Jack says, “my treat.” He doesn’t open his menu, either. “I’m still living large off my summer job shining rich guys’ golf shoes.”
I laugh.
“It sucked,” he says, his eyes crinkling. At first he seems hurt that I laughed, but then he breaks into a grin. “Especially when the rich guys stepped in squirrel crap.”
“Well, now I’m definitely ready to order some dinner,” I say.
“I’m not that hungry,” Jack says, so I say, “Me neither,” because I’m worried he doesn’t have enough money to pay for two dinners. One weird thing about Mount Pleasant is that most kids have enough money to do anything they want. One weirder thing is that some of them think that’s the norm. “But I’m thirstier than I’ve ever been in my life because you made me take that ten-mile hike,” I say, smiling as I sip the water Arturo sat in front of me.
We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the music. When Arturo comes back, Jack orders us two sodas and French fries to share. I’m beyond relieved that he doesn’t order alcohol, and maybe that means there’s a speck left of the girl my parents would be proud to call their daughter.
Arturo heads to the bar and Jack moves his chair so that he’s sitting right next to me. His nearness makes me so nervous I can hardly breathe. There’s something between us that feels like a pull—I want to be even closer to him, but the thought of it has me so fluttery I can hardly take it.
I turn to him, gathering my courage. “So you and Joni . . . ,” I say, leaving it hanging in the air like smoke. Because they’re obviously extremely close, and I don’t want to make any mistakes again by hanging out with someone who someone else likes.
“Me and Joni,” Jack says, his words slow and careful. “What about us?”
“Friends?” I ask.
“Good friends,” he says.
“Just friends?” I ask.
He meets my eyes. “Just friends.”
I nod. “No history?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level. It wasn’t easy to ask that.
Jack stares at me like he’s trying to figure out what it means that I have these questions. “Lots of history,” he says evenly, “but not the kind you mean.” His gaze holds mine like he’s challenging me, like he’s trying to figure me out. Every second his eyes are on me feels like an eternity. I swear his cheeks flush a shade brighter, but then Arturo comes to set down our drinks and I have to pull myself from Jack’s stare.
We say thanks for our drinks and Jack pushes the ice cubes down with his straw. “Our dads were in the military together,” he says, watching the squares of ice bob back to the top of his soda. “Best friends since West Point.” I recall the photo of Joni with the uniformed man on her desk—probably her dad. “We didn’t always live close to Joni, except for a few stints in Florida, because our families both moved around a lot, typical military family stuff.”
He shifts his weight. He must be a senior. His shoulders are so broad, and he doesn’t have that same skin-and-bones look that most tall guys have when they’re sophomores. “We saw Joni and her family at least three or four times every year,” he says, “and you can get pretty close to someone that way. You basically see them grow up.”
Right. And in Joni’s case, he saw her go from the gangly girl in that photo on her desk to the very pretty fifteen-year-old she is now.
“Moving around so much was shitty because we never lived long enough anywhere to make close friends, which is probably why my friendship with Joni felt so important,” Jack says, looking down at his hands, studying his short, bitten nails. “And, um, I guess sometimes I’m not good at making close friends because I just always think they’ll be taken away from me, or me from them, like it was when I was younger.”
I clear my throat. I want to say the right thing. “That makes sense,” I say carefully.
Jack looks away like he’s a little embarrassed. A breath later, when he turns to me again, his dark eyes are big and clear, but there’s sadness there, too. It’s like watching him remember something important.
“Joni’s parents died two years ago in a car crash,” he says.
My chest squeezes like a fist. “Oh no,” I whisper.
“It was horrible,” Jack says. “I was already in military school in Missouri, and my sister was at high school in our town, but my dad couldn’t take knowing Joni would be here by herself at the Academy, mourning her parents alone, so he sent me here so we’d be together. Joni has an aunt she lives with now in the summers, but here at school, I’m kind of all she has.”
“And your sister, too?”
Jack looks away, staring out a tiny window into the darkness, and then clears his throat. “Rachel was at the Academy last semester,” he says. “She was kicked out.”
“Kicked out?” I say. “Wait, Rachel? Was she Joni’s . . .”
“Roommate,” Jack says.
“Rachel is your sister,” I say softly. Was it the academics that got her kicked out—not making the 3.5? Or the physical training, maybe? There are so many reasons I can imagine getting kicked out for here, so many things I could mess up.
“Joni told you about her?” Jack asks.
I shake my head. “I found a book in my room with her name in it,” I say. I want to be nosy and ask exactly why Rachel got kicked out, but Jack changes the subject before I can.
“The Academy is one of the best military schools in the country,” he says, and it makes me feel guilty; other kids would love to get into the Academy—but I’m here instead. Maybe I should try to be grateful no matter how scared I am. “But at my old school in Missouri I had this amazing English teacher who would go over my writing on the side,” Jack says, “and he was teaching me so much stuff I couldn’t get anywhere else. I tried to tell my parents I wanted to stay, but my dad gave me a long lecture about sacrifice: sacrifice for country; sacrifice for family; sacrifice for God. It’s in him, I guess, because he’s always been able to sacrifice; same with my mom. He’d leave us for months at a time when he was on tour, and we had to be okay with that. And I do want to sacrifice, too; I just didn’t want to leave my friends and my TACs in Missouri to come watch over Joni.”
Jack taps a finger absentmindedly along with the music. I want to say: It’s not fair that your parents sent you away to school to babysit Joni, but I don’t. It seems too harsh given what Joni has had to go through. So instead, I say, “I don’t think it makes you selfish to want to stay somewhere that’s good for you.”
Jack smiles a little like he appreciates that. “I hope you’re right,” he says.
“I’m always right,” I joke, and he laughs a little, but then his face gets serious.
“Problem is, now I know how much Joni relies on me, so when I graduate in May that leaves her with no one, again.”
He says it simply, and it makes sense. “I can help, too,” I say. “I really like helping people, and Joni’s my roommate, so that pretty much legally binds me and her as friends.”
I try to smile. I feel dumb for saying that, like I was doing a commercial for myself. But I mean it—being kind is one of my good qualities, rather than all the other things I’ve been doing lately that are not.
“Joni likes you, roommates or not,” he says, and it makes me want to live up to what I promised.
We’re quiet for a minute, and then I ask, “So you want to be in the military, too?”
“I do,” Jack says. “But the rule right now is I can’t serve with these,” he says, gesturing toward his implants. “They might change the rule at some point. If they don’t change it, though, I’m going to be a war journalist and write about what’s really happening in the world.”
I let this sink in—how driven he is to achieve what he wants. Obviously the fact is that for a lot of people, the military is their dream. I need to remember that. “You saying that makes me realize I need to appreciate being here more,” I say. “It’s been hard. I mean, I don’t want to be here, if I’m being honest.”
Jack’s face dims, and suddenly I feel like a huge idiot for saying that. “I don’t mean that as anything having to do with you!” I say quickly, suddenly really nervous. “I just mean I don’t think I’m cut out for this, I mean, you know, fashion’s my thing, not this.”
“No, yeah, I get it,” he says. He clears his throat, and it suddenly feels really awkward between us. “Anyway, at my old school,” he says, a little distractedly, like he just wants the awkwardness to pass, “my writing teacher said to become a good journalist you need to read thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. You work out your own style later—but first you need to get the rhythm of that kind of writing from reading other people’s work.”
“Is that what you’re always carrying in that big folder? Newspaper articles?” I ask, and I can feel him looking at me as he nods, and then I realize I’ve let on that I’ve noticed him on the quad. “I saw you the first day my parents dropped me off,” I say. “You were walking across the quad, reading.”
He smiles, and then I ask the thing I’m trying to figure out about this place: “So are most kids at the Academy like you and Joni? They want to be military?”
“Half and half,” Jack says, running a hand through his spiky dark hair. “There are troublemakers and lifers. The troublemakers—like yourself, no offense—got sent here because their parents thought they needed military school. But you still have to be really smart to get in here. And it’s not the kind of place that takes you if you did anything illegal, so even the troublemakers aren’t that bad. The lifers plan to go into the military in some capacity. There are other kids here, too, like the ones who are trying to figure themselves out or escape stuff that happened at home. But those are in the minority.”
I nod slowly. Serving in the military is Joni’s dream, that’s for sure, maybe passed down in her blood somehow from her dad. And it’s Jack’s dream, too, and he might not even get to do it!
I start thinking about all the things people want and don’t get, and somehow that gets me worried again that there’s maybe even a chance that Joni likes Jack, even if he says they don’t have history like that. I liked Josh even though Lia was his girlfriend, and that felt so awful. The pain of what happened back home with Josh, and then with my family, swells like a knot in my chest, and I swear I’m going to break down and cry with homesickness any second, so I say, “We should go.”
“Are you not having a good time?” Jack asks, his dark eyes heavy.
I get the sense that Jack’s a good guy, but can I trust that feeling? I’ve been wrong so many times about guys, and about stuff I think I understand until I realize I don’t.
“It’s not that—it’s just . . .” I’m really nervous being here at military school. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. I miss my family. I’m worried I’m doing yet another bad thing right now. Also, I don’t know what you and I are doing. I don’t know if we’re even doing anything. I don’t know if you do stuff like this all the time because you’re a senior. I don’t know why you picked me to come with you tonight, and I don’t know if it means anything at all.
Jack’s long eyelashes flutter as he takes me in. He looks unsure for the first time tonight, like he made a mistake.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I don’t know what to tell him.
“I just need to get back,” I say, my words so soft they’re nearly swallowed by the music. I’m suddenly so sorry for all the terrible things I’ve done this year to my family—and to Lia, whom I passionately dislike but still regret hurting—and I feel like I can hardly breathe. I need to stop doing stuff like that. I need to leave this place right now and figure out exactly how I’m going to be good here.
Jack arches forward and takes my hand. I feel little sparks of electricity on my skin. “I get it,” he says softly.
You don’t—not at all. You don’t know how bad I’ve been, you don’t know how hard it is for me to be better, and you definitely don’t know how scared I am that maybe I can’t change.