Read Above the East China Sea: A Novel for Free Online Page A

I want to club his head in with a rock. I scrub the black mascara slurry off my face with the back of my hand.
    I edge away from the fire. No one notices when I leave. I didn’t expect them to. There’s a myth that, because we move so much, military kids are geniuses at making friends. That we’re social chameleons who can blend in anywhere. And for a few freaks, it’s true. There are a minute number of brats who can strut into any school, anywhere in the world, get the social scene wired by second period, assemble an entourage by third, work their way up to the cheerleaders’ table by the end of lunch, be elected president of student council by the last bell, and reign over homecoming court that night. There are mutants like that in any group. Maybe we have a few more than average because all the movinggives us more practice and turns some of us into ingratiation whores. In the end, though, what all military kids are truly gifted at, the social skill we’ve mastered better than any other, is
un
making friends. We’re geniuses at leaving people behind.
    And I was better at it than most. Why shouldn’t I be? Codie was the one who mattered. A few days after she received her diploma from Pueblo Heights High, then Frisbeed her mortarboard across Tingley Coliseum, Codie left for Basic at Lackland. For the first few weeks the air force held her and all the other new recruits incommunicado. Then we got a preprinted card telling us where we could send mail, and even a time when Codie would be allowed to call us and talk for exactly three minutes. The card warned us not to worry. “Your recruit is adjusting to a new way of life and will sound scared, unhappy, and uncertain about whether he or she has made the correct decision.” But when we finally spoke, Codie was confident, happy, and utterly certain that she
had
made the correct decision.
    “I was born to do this,” she’d crowed. “There’s always someone to tell you what to do, and it’s always a succession of random, unrelated tasks that you’re not expected to understand. And best of all, there are never any papers to write and you almost never have to read. Dyslexia with a touch of ADHD is like having a superpower in the military. I’m such a rock star here.”
    “You were always a rock star, Kimchi.”
    “You can’t call me that anymore. The big deal now is that we’re pivoting our forces into Asia.”
    “ ‘Pivoting’ our forces?”
    “Yeah, don’t you love that? Like we’re just gonna do a sweet little pirouette and vanish from Afghanistan, then pop back up in Yongsan, South Korea. No, listen, the Middle East? Yeah, it’ll always be hot, but not cool like the Far East is gonna be. China, Korea, Japan. It’s gonna be all about the Pacific Rim now, baby. How perfect is that? I even look the part. Hey, I’ve got a whole career ladder and everything.”
    “A career?” I thought that I could just about hang on by my fingernails for two years until she got out; then I had it all planned: We’d go to college together. With her SF experience, Codie would be a shoo-in for law enforcement. “You mean you’re not coming back when your hitch is up? You’re staying in?”
    “Don’t say it like that. Luz, I think I can get commissioned.”
    “An officer?”
    “Yeah, why not? Because we were raised noncom?”
    “No. Of course not. Absolutely you could be an officer. I just never in a million years thought that—”
    “What? I’d be a lifer? I can hardly believe it myself. But, Luz, listen, for real, for once in my whole existence, I am seriously good at something. I am seriously good at being a soldier. I guess I just needed the structure or something.”
    “Like we didn’t get enough structure growing up? Like our lives weren’t run by Mom’s Duty Rosters?”
    “At home, sure. Sporadically. When she wasn’t falling in or out of love.”
    “In and out of bed, more like. Mom had to have the military for structure or she’d be so far off