Chapter 1
My name is Blaine. I’m almost eighteen years old and the Army has been calling me every week, wanting me to just stop down at the recruiting office for a chat. Yeah, right. No thank you. This has been going on about once a week since Christmas. I’m a senior, and I’ll be eighteen this summer; so they want to get me brainwashed good by then. It ain’t gonna work.
They’ve stopped just short of saying how good I’d look in a uniform with my blond hair and brown eyes. If it were the German Army, I’d fit right in. I have ancestors who fought on both sides of WWII. It’s academic anyhow; no way am I going to go sign up.
Since last October I’ve been going to one of the local churches to listen to the music. They have the best and biggest organ in town, and two pianos, a full sized harp and a music ministry. One day this guy noticed me and when he finished playing the organ, he came out to where I was and asked me if I played. When I said I could play the piano he asked me if I wanted to play theirs. I sure did, it was a Steinway Grand! He said his name was Frederick Maximillian and that he was now the junior music director, sort of a glorified internship. And he was really cute.
Going over there as often as I could was the only bright spot in my whole high school career, except for a couple of months in my freshman year when I thought this girl named Sonia and I were going to be a thing. Then one day she told me she was sorry but she really liked girls. I tried to pretend I was horrified, but I couldn’t do it; so I hugged her and said that I understood. A couple times after that we’d hug in the hallway at school if someone had been picking on us and calling us names. It even worked for a while. Maybe it still would be working if she hadn’t been caught in the band room making out with a clarinet player named Lisa.
School has sucked the entire last four years, and I’m pretty damn sure the Army would be just the same. School has gym and sports and tough guys posturing and beating their chests, and coaches and teachers all explaining how I’m wrong about this and wrong about that. The book says…and we do it this way here…and give me five/ten/twenty-five. Then there’s home, and it’s about the same way. My dad is always right. But then, so is my mom. That leaves me as always wrong, times two, so I just keep quiet. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are nice people basically, but they’re parents! They have no clue. I had to teach them how to use their new cell phones. They still can’t text, but they think they can; so that’s at least a source of amusement, and I try not to let them see that sometimes, yes indeed, sometimes they are complete idiots. I don’t want to be like them that way.
There’s my sister Maggie, who is cool, and we see my grandpa sometimes, my dad’s dad that is, and both Maggie and I think he loves us best; so that’s kind of fun.
Anyhow, I have no reason to think the Army would be any different from home or school, and probably even worse, as in probably just a continuation of the same old thing. My dad was in the Marines. His dad didn’t want to be in the service at all but got drafted anyhow, and his father, um, my dad’s grandfather, was shot down in WWII. And then on my mom’s side…well you get the idea.
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The guys at school who are the biggest bullies are all talking about the Army or the Navy. No way do I want to spend any more of my life with them or anyone else like them. If the draft were still there, well I’d go if I had to I guess, but it isn’t, and I’m not going to volunteer. I have other hopes and dreams. They involve music and any college with a great music department.
Plus there’s this: I get sick easily. I catch every little thing that’s going around. Since I’m a good student and really don’t mind missing school, whenever I get sick my mom lets me stay home. If it’s for more than a few days, like the time I got chicken pox and when I had the flu and when I got mono (see what I mean?) she’d have someone bring my books over and I’d keep up with the work at home. I loved it. I really don’t have much stamina either, not like the rest of the boys at school. And I can’t track a ball. I can’t see me doing a hundred pushups or running six miles through the woods and trying to shoot a gun (I’m being sarcastic here). I really can’t see me sleeping in a bunk in a huge room with seventy or eighty thugs and jocks and tough guys, either, all sweaty and stinky. Ugh! Please, no. So, yeah I take advantage of being sick when I can; wouldn’t you? Because it’s a pure pain in the ass and humiliating scenario the rest of the time. There isn’t anyone who wants to be the whiny, not feeling well one who just can’t keep up. I laugh it off—in public. I have a bedroom closet I can cry in. It’s just one more thing about me that’s really not important, I mean, other than going into making me who I am. Do I love music because I can’t love sports and active things? Or is it the other way around? I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.