Page 25 of Unmade

Was that a dig? I couldn’t be sure.

“Am I in desperate need of military deprogramming?” I joked.

He chuckled and leaned casually against the doorway, and he folded his arms over his chest. “To be fair, you all are.”

Huh. Was it really that obvious? In my out-of-body experiences, I’d often seen other soldiers be super obvious to the point where I got irritated. But considering I’d caught myself acting the same way more than once, it was highly possible I was no different.

I shrugged. “I guess I’ll work on slouching more.”

“Hm. That covers one out of two hundred things.”

Oof, I was glad he wasn’t one of those people who exaggerated.

It made me curious, though. And I wasn’t the arrogant type. He looked to be around forty years old, so he’d been around for a very long time. He probably knew what he was doing.

“Can you guess just by looking at me what branch I was in?” I wondered.

The corners of his mouth twisted into a smirk. “I already called you soldier, son.”

Hmpf.

“It’s never just one thing,” he went on. “Adjusting your posture is probably the easiest. It’s the little things you don’t even notice that need work.” He nodded at my stomach. “You maintain a nice gig line with your belt there. I bet the pen you’re carrying has black ink. Your brain gets lulled into a nice, satisfied state when I say left-right-left. You’d never walk across grass. You probably only carry things in your left hand, and you stand still when you talk on the phone. You get pissed off when people arrive five minutes early, because you know anything later than fifteen minutes early is late. You have more practice mopping the floors than using a sidearm, but you’re likely very good with an M4. You always assess your surroundings, and you automatically walk in step with the person next to you. Of course, you always eat fast, and despite your tender age of twelve, you already have stomach issues from time to time. Not that it stops you from putting hot sauce on everything to make it taste like something. Shall I go on?”

What in the donkey dickingfuck…

I stared at him and had absolutely no response.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get rid of all that,” he said. “If I can do it, anyone can.”

“You—” I had to clear my throat. “You were in the Army too?”

“Yeah. Only, I was very good with a sidearm in my field.” He smiled.

Actually, he’d been wrong about that one. The one and only miss in a sea of hits. I was very good with a sidearm too, though not thanks to the Army. A guy had to dosomethingwhen everybody else went out drinking and fucking around.

“There’s something interesting about you, though,” he told me. “You don’t strike me as one of the warrior alcoholics who can outdrink an Irish jarhead, nor are your pockets filled with cans of Zyn. When one of the other recruits sized you up earlier, you didn’t even notice.”

I scrunched my nose. “I noticed.”

He smiled again. “You just didn’t care. I think I like you, kid. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

Welp. High praise and a threat all rolled up like a pair of socks.

My face felt a little warm, and I didn’t know how or if to answer. What did one say to that?

Luckily, he seemed ready to change the topic. He checked his watch. “I have the next babysitter joining in a few, but before I go…” He shifted his gaze back to me. “Outta curiosity, how would you have described yourself in three words before joining the Army?”

Three words before joining…

Hmm. I chewed on the inside of my cheek and thought back on my childhood, my teenage years—or the early ones, at least—and losing Mom and…

“Um, I’ll say lost, unprepared, and scared,” I said.

I was just gonna throw myself to the wolves and provide all the answers they asked for.

“And now, post-service, three words,” he finished.

That one was tougher, except the first word. “I’m still lost.” I said it like a joke, even though it couldn’t be truer. “I’m indifferent. And, um… I don’t know. I don’t know the third one.”

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