6
Mackenzie
Even now, several months after they had moved in, Mackenzie Gray hated the carpet in the upstairs hallway. This was due largely to its color, which was ironic, she thought, given her name. But she didn’t hate all gray things, or even all gray carpets. It was just this particular carpet, this precise shade of gray, that she found so intolerable.
It was just so… undefined.
She might have liked it, had it been a solid, dependable, gunmetal sort of gray, or if it had evoked within her the thrill of angry thunderclouds on the horizon. A hint of blue could have rendered it more hopeful, like the first gleam of sun in the sky after a long, cold night. Or if it had exhibited any variegation whatsoever, she might have found its contrasts intriguing, like water-polished stones at the bottom of a river—a river you could point to on a map and say, “Here. I’m right here.”
In the end, it was just a light, industrial gray, designed to hide the telltale signs of use, cheap to replace, and thoroughly inoffensive, which was perhaps the worst thing about it. Of course, that was what passed for interior design in military housing, a fact with which Mackenzie Gray was intimately familiar, having lived on one Army base or another for all seventeen years of her life to date.
But the dark gray carpet in her last home had at least conveyed a certain sense of place. At least she had felt, standing upon it, as though she were… somewhere. The light gray carpet in the upstairs hallway here, coupled with the slightly lighter gray of the walls, left Mackenzie feeling as though she were somehow standing nowhere at all, a feeling so unsettling that she tried to avoid it whenever she could.
Not that she would ever complain about it.
Mackenzie’s father, Brian Gray, was a bona fide member of the Special Forces of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. He was—as was every other member of his elite unit—the very antithesis of petulance, and he was not about to let any of his four beloved daughters grow up to be a sniveling little whiner. So Mackenzie Gray did not complain when her family moved from base to base. She did not complain about changing schools or leaving her friends. She did not complain about having to find yet another new Muay Thai coach. She certainly was not about to complain about the carpet.
Nonetheless, she was happy to avoid a bad situation if it was within her power to do so. She had just become very good, very early in life, at knowing the difference between those situations that she could affect and those that she could not. So when it came to the carpet, she said absolutely nothing, but she quietly positioned herself as far away from it as possible.
As the oldest of the girls, Mackenzie got first pick of bedrooms in every new home. This was a long-standing rule in the Gray family, and although one or another of her three sisters had occasionally launched a campaign to challenge its fairness, the familial hierarchy had proven itself highly resistant to insurgence. So when the Grays had moved into this most recent home on this most recent base, Mackenzie had selected the only downstairs bedroom for herself—a room that had been converted from a den-slash-office, with windows overlooking the small but immaculate front lawn.
In any other family, this might have been an odd choice. The room opened directly off the living room, with the noise of the television on the other side of the wall. But Mackenzie slept like the dead, and in any event, the family had survived one paternal tour after another by relying on strict discipline and routine. Bedtimes were adhered to religiously, and the television set was turned off every night by 9:00 p.m. on the dot, without exception.
And because the only rooms upstairs were the bedrooms that belonged to Mackenzie’s mother and sisters, Mackenzie never had to brave the gray carpet except under two circumstances: when she put away her sisters’ laundry every Saturday, and when she waited in line to video chat with her father every Sunday.
It was this latter event that had her sitting now in the hallway next to Megan, who was fifteen; who sat next to Madison, who was twelve; who sat next to Mia, who was nine. This was the only situation in which Mackenzie’s age worked against her, as she was the last one to speak to her father and therefore had to sit in the dreaded hallway the longest.
She sat with her back to the wall, playing with her phone, texting her most recent set of new friends, watching Muay Thai videos, generally embracing the suck, and trying not to think about the disturbing gray carpet. In no way was she going to let her sisters—or the carpet itself, for that matter—know that the stupid thing could unsettle her.
After just a few minutes, Stephanie Gray emerged from the master bedroom and signaled to Mia that it was her turn, an event that was repeated a few minutes later from Mia to Madison, and after that from Madison to Megan, and after that, finally, from Megan to Mackenzie. Mackenzie leaped to her feet as soon as the doorknob started to turn, brushing past Megan before her sister could finish getting out the door. Megan, however, was also a daughter of Brian Gray, and if she happened to feel that this was in any way rude, she held her peace on the subject, nodding to her older sister and shutting the door behind her as she left.
Mackenzie hurried to the computer at her mother’s desk, her nerves soothed by the warm colors of the bedspread and the abundant family photos that covered the walls, lending the room an aura of home that the hallway, with its industrial blankness, sorely lacked. Her father looked more tired and significantly more tanned than the last time he had been stateside, but his smile was comfortingly familiar. She took in his overall appearance of health and allowed her genuine happiness to shine through for his benefit.
“Hey, Dad. So what’s the weather going to be like this afternoon?” It was a running joke between them whenever her father was stationed in a timezone significantly ahead of her own, as he was now.
Her father grinned back. “Hot. Wear sunscreen.”
“Roger that,” she acknowledged. “You managing to stay off K.P.? Or did they send you over there to peel potatoes?”
“Mounds of potatoes,” he replied, winking. “Truckloads. How about you? You managing not to get your ass kicked in Muay Thai? Or are they mopping the floor with you?”
“Oh, ha ha. Let me guess. Mom already told you I won?”
“She’s proud of you, Mac,” her father confirmed. He was the only person who called her Mac. Everyone else, including her mother and sisters, called her by her full name. “But I want to hear about it.”
As it happened, Mackenzie had other news for her father, and she had already been sitting in the hallway for almost fifteen minutes waiting for her turn, refusing to let her impatience show. But she regarded it as an exercise in discipline, so she forced herself to tell him about the competition first.
“It wasn’t a big meet. Just eight girls. My first match was the toughest, so if we hadn’t pulled each other early, that girl might have made it to the final match. But I’m not sure it would have been as hard to fight her farther into it.”
“Really? Why?”
Mackenzie loved the fact that her father always asked questions about her matches. He didn’t just care who won or lost. He understood that she loved Muay Thai, and he wanted to know as much about it as he could—to share in what mattered to her. He was the only person who showed that much interest in the sport beyond her own coaches.
“Well, partly because she moved so much. She would have been tired after more rounds.”
“Five rounds per match?”
“Yeah, standard rules. So, by the fifteenth, she would have been crazy tired if she had made it that far. But the bad thing was how she moved. She kept dancing away from me. Stop laughing.”
“I’m not laughing. I’m grinning.” But just saying it transformed his handsome grin into a chuckle.
“You’re laughing now!”
“You’re right… you’re right… I am laughing now,” he admitted. “I can just imagine you chasing her around the ring. I know how much you hate that.”
“Well, I like to think it wasn’t quite as undignified as that makes it sound.”
At this, her father laughed even harder before finally managing to bring himself back under control. “OK, OK,” he said finally. “So what happened?”
But Mackenzie was grinning by this time, too. She could never listen to her father’s charismatic laughter without smiling, no matter what mood she had been in even moments before.
“Well, you’re kind of right. I wasn’t exactly chasing her, but it probably looked that way. Every time I tried a kick she would back away fast. And then I would do it again, and she would back up again. So I couldn’t land anything. But then sometimes she would close for a second, throw a kick or a punch, and then dance away so I couldn’t return it. A couple of those caught me off-guard because I was still trying to catch up to her. So she was getting ahead on points even though she was fighting dirty.”
“How was it dirty? Was it against the rules?”
“No. No, it’s legal. It’s just, you know, she wouldn’t stand and fight me. Who goes to a competition to run away?”
“But she almost won that way, eh?”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie replied sheepishly.
“Sometimes, Mac,” and his voice was suddenly serious, a tone she recognized as meaning he was about to impart a gentle life lesson, “running away is the best long-term strategy. Sometimes your opponent is stronger than you. When that happens, you can’t stand and fight. You have to be smart about it. Toughness isn’t always what wins a battle. Understand?”
“Coach says you’re gonna get hit no matter what, though,” she protested. “If the other girl is stronger, you’re just going to have to take some tough hits. The trick is to take each hit on your own terms.”
“I don’t think I’m saying anything that different, Mac. But sometimes your best terms are not to take the hit at all.”
“Well, that was what she thought, that’s for sure,” she admitted, but her disdain for the tactic was still obvious.
“OK,” her father said, relenting, “tell me how you beat her.”
“Well, the first two rounds were tied, but she took round three by a point because of all the running. In round four I managed to hold my own again. So in round five I was still down by one, and the match was almost over. I knew I had to score big, right? So I started chasing her for real, throwing lots of kicks, not even trying to connect, just making her run, and then I slowed down, pretending I was getting tired, baiting her to turn back toward me. When she did, she threw a kick at my side, but I caught it the second it landed—I mean I knew exactly where it was going to hit, you know? From the second she started the kick, I just read it. And I caught her leg and swept her. Bam! Down on the mat.”
“You knocked her out?” her father asked, his eyes wide.
“No,” she said, laughing, “but it was a solid take-down. It was enough to win.”
“Good,” he said proudly. “How were the other matches?”
“Easy, compared to her. I dominated the second girl. She was a total pushover. The last one was a little faster, but not as fast as me. Like Coach always says, ‘Take the hit where you want it. Understand why you’re taking it so you can hit back harder.’ She got a few hits in, but I took ’em where I wanted ’em. And I hit back harder.”
“That’s my girl,” her father said, nodding.
“But, Dad, listen, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“OK, shoot, Mac, but make it quick. The guys in line are starting to grumble.” He smiled when he said it, but she knew he was serious. There were other soldiers waiting, and other families. They couldn’t selfishly monopolize the video feed.
“OK. So, remember that weird test I told you about a few weeks ago?”
“The standardized thing that didn’t count for anything?” he asked. “The one with all the funny questions?”
“That’s the one,” she confirmed. Mackenzie and her father had spent their entire chat that week laughing as she regaled him with examples of the test questions. “Well, even though it didn’t count toward anything in school, it turns out that it did matter for something after all.”
“Oh, yeah?” He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her news.
“Yeah. I got a letter in the mail on Thursday. I didn’t even tell Mom yet ’cause I wanted to tell you first.” She paused to gauge his reaction to that, but he was smiling at her fondly.
“That’s OK, Mac. You can keep things to tell me first. What did the letter say?”
“It’s an invitation to this special school for the summer. Here, wait—I’ll read it.
Dear Miss Gray,
It is our pleasure to inform you that your recent performance on the nationally administered Intuition Assessment Battery places you at the 99.9th percentile of all students tested throughout the country. In recognition of this outstanding achievement, you have been selected to attend the inaugural summer program of the Institute for the Cultivation of Intuitive Cognition, under the supervision of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
“Homeland Security, Dad! Isn’t that amazing? I mean, it’s just studying education theory or something, but it’s still pretty awesome, right? It says I’d be serving my country, and it says it won’t cost us anything either. There’s a full scholarship, including food and housing and tuition and even travel. It’s totally free because I did so well on the test. That’s crazy, right? But it’s in Wyoming, and it starts in just two weeks. I know it’s short notice…” Her voice trailed off as she waited for her father’s reaction.
“Mac, that’s tremendous! The 99.9th percentile, and out of the whole country! I’m so proud of you!” He took a moment to beam at her from the other side of the world before voicing his concerns. He was proud of her, she could tell. But Mackenzie also knew he had seen more than his share of bad situations, and his first instinct as her father was to keep her safe.
“But, Mac,” he finally said, “what do you really know about this program? Are we sure it’s legit? I’m not trying to cast doubt on a good thing here, but—”
“It’s for real, Dad,” she said quickly, interrupting him. They both knew their time would be up soon. “I asked Cappy to run it through channels before I told you. He said it checks out, but I made him promise not to tell Mom until tomorrow. He said if I got this letter, it’s a super big deal, and they really need me. So I can go, right?” Cappy was their nickname for Captain Paul Gillespie, their current next door neighbor. He had made a point of checking in with the family while Mackenzie’s dad was away on tour.
“Well… listen, I want to check it out here, too, OK? I don’t want you heading off to another state until I’ve seen for myself that it’s the real thing, especially with the invitation coming out of the blue, and it being a government program I’ve never heard of. But if it is what it says it is, of course you have my blessing.
“But I really have to go now, Mac. Be sure to tell your mother about it tonight so she knows, and tell her I’m looking into it. You said we have a couple weeks, right?”
“Yeah. It says they’ll make the travel arrangements, but I’m supposed to let them know by a week from tomorrow at the latest.”
“OK. Give me until next week then. I’ll let you know on Sunday if everything looks good.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I love you, Mac. Tell your mom and your sisters again for me, too. I miss all my girls.”
“We miss you too, Dad. Love you. Be smart.” She would have felt stupid telling him to be safe when he was downrange. He couldn’t always be completely safe. That was the nature of the job. But he could always be smart.
“I promise, Mac. You, too, OK? Always.”
“Always,” she agreed, and with that, the feed ended. Mackenzie touched her fingers to her lips and then pressed them to the monitor, sending her father the kiss she hadn’t had time for before the screen went dark. She continued to sit at the desk, staring at the blank monitor for another prolonged moment before finally getting up and turning toward the door, bracing herself to brave the long gray hallway one more time.