It was Monday morning and I was sitting in Mrs. Donaldson’s Social Studies class. Mrs. Donaldson was a cool teacher. She was young. I bet she was twenty-five or forty or something. A lot of the guys I knew thought she was hot. I didn’t really see it. She had this long brown hair that was in a different style almost every day and she wore skirts a lot. I think those guys saw the skirts and forgot about everything else. But most of my other teachers were like eighty, so Mrs. Donaldson definitely provided a nice change of pace. She never got mad at us. She was calm, which, considering what she put up with every day was amazing. I didn’t know why anyone would ever want to be a middle-school teacher. She had a little chair in the front of the room that she sat in when she wanted us to talk about stuff. We were supposed to come every Monday with a description of a current event, and we would go around the room and share them with the class. So Mrs. Donaldson sat down in her chair, and put on that teacher smile that was supposed to get us to “open up.”
That day my current event was about a story I saw on the news the previous night. I didn’t have time to do much research because I spent most of the night waiting for my mom to call us like she did every Sunday. That Sunday night call was the one thing that made our lives “normal,” the one time I didn’t feel empty at home.
My dad answered the phone when it finally rang. He talked to Mom for about ten minutes, and then Jenna grabbed the receiver from him (Sunday nights were about the only times we knew Jenna would be around). I stood next to her and waited anxiously for my turn. Finally, Jenna said goodbye and handed me the phone. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. How are you doing?”
“Good. When are you coming home?” My mom chuckled on the other end of the line. Every conversation I had with mom was a chance to make up for the “me too” reply I gave her when she left.
Still giggling, she said, “Well, hopefully very soon. How’s school?”
“Fine. Are people shooting each other where you are?” I found myself asking the same questions every time we spoke, but she never gave me a straight answer.
“No, not really, honey. But I’m a nurse, so we do see some pretty bad things.” She paused for a second. “Remember what I told you before I left? No Army nurse has been killed in combat since the Vietnam War. I’m going to be just fine.”
I remembered seeing something on the news about the war being a lot like Vietnam, so her comment didn’t make me feel much better. Plus, she was stationed in Baghdad, so I knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth when she said nobody was fighting. I didn’t get to talk to her long, but I didn’t hear any bombs or guns in the background, which made me feel better.
My current-event article was about a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo in California somewhere and they didn’t get it back until the next day. Apparently the gorilla had jumped a fence the zookeepers didn’t think was jumpable. I knew it was a ridiculous story as soon as I opened my mouth.
Mrs. Donaldson was great though. Her smile got even bigger and she said, “Wow, Tim. That’s pretty cool.”
No, it wasn’t. We continued going around the room. Mike Aldrich, Kip Decker, and Jamie Rolston each talked about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another Minnesota soldier had died, a roadside bomb went off, killing twelve people, and President Obama made a speech promising the American public “our troops will be coming home soon.” If they were coming home soon, why did people like my mom have to keep going there? I even heard that “combat operations in Iraq were officially over.” Really? Then why did they still need American nurses to leave their families for months at a time? I tried to tune out as best I could when I heard things like that.
While my attention was focused on other things—the civil rights poster on the wall, the cheesy “you can do anything you put your mind to” mottos above the white board, John Foster picking his nose in the corner of the room—I noticed that Nicole Thomas glanced at me each time the war was mentioned. Her curly, dark-brown hair was just long enough to flip around when she looked at me with those big, round, blue eyes. That’s how I noticed her-her hair kept flipping and I could see it out of the corner of my eye. I always thought she had pretty cool-looking hair. I asked her once if she ever had a perm, and she kind of giggled and said, “Nope. It’s all n-a-t-u-r-a-l.”
Nicole’s parents knew my parents because our fathers are in the same law firm. They were really good friends. My dad even flew out to Oregon last year when Nicole’s grandma died. It was pretty hard on Mr. Thompson, and I guess Dad thought he should be with him at the funeral.
Nicole had been to our house a few times for my dad’s “get togethers,” so we knew each other a little bit. It seemed kind of weird though. We never talked a whole lot to each other at school, but the times she came over with her parents we seemed to get along pretty well. She was usually the only one my age at those parties, so most of the time we didn’t have much choice but to play pool together or make fun of the stupid adult-type conversations.
One time all four of our parents were talking to each other about stocks or mortgages or politics or something and I remember Nicole, Jenna, and I were downstairs watching TV when Nicole said, “Gee, Timothy, I believe stocks are up today. No, wait I think they are down. Anyway, I am buying. No, wait. I am selling!” All three of us laughed about that for a while.
I don’t know why things were different at school. I guess we just ran in different circles. But those three looks she gave me in class were the most anyone had acknowledged my mom being at war, including my closest friends. It wasn’t that I didn’t think anyone else cared. I just thought people forgot or something.
Like this kid Sam. I considered Sam a friend of mine. He was cool and the girls tended to like him, so he was definitely a good kid to know. We met in sixth grade because we both had Mrs. Dunbar for homeroom. We hung out at lunch and we seemed to be in the same “I’m going to be late to class even though I’m standing right outside the classroom door” circles. He’d been to my house a couple of times (usually with a group of people) and I’d been to his once. I would consider him a friend. But my mom was in Iraq for six months, and Sam never mentioned it.
When the bell rang I literally jumped out of my seat. I had been daydreaming, which had become a habit of mine in class. The week before I was so gone in Mr. Forseth’s math class that he had to say my name three times before I knew he was calling on me. When I finally realized he was asking me for the answer to the problem on the board, I looked around, and the entire class was staring at me and grinning. A few of them, including Seth, were laughing hysterically. “Six,” I answered. It was a logical answer. We were in math class and “six” was a number. Why not?
“Tim, the question is how do you reduce 12/16?” replied Mr. Forseth with his trademark sarcastic, “you’re an idiot” tone of voice. Before I had a chance to answer the real question, he had called on someone else. Seth was still grinning at me with that, “See, I’m not the only dumbass” smile of his.
Mrs. Donaldson regained my attention by announcing that class was over. My daydreams were of Nicole’s hair flipping and the concern in her eyes as she looked at me. I’d seen it happen over and over like it was on rewind. Although I only caught a glimpse of her, the sadness in her face was clearly aimed at me, at my mom. She had never said anything to me about Mom being gone before. As I walked out of class Nicole was standing at her locker. I breezed by her and we gave each other our normal superficial greetings. “Hey, Nicole.”
“Hey, Tim.” Her eyes were wide and the corner of her mouth curled up as she spoke. She had a great smile. I never noticed it before.
That conversation with Nicole was the most interesting thing that happened to me all week. Other than that, I went to school, walked home with Seth, and did my homework, but that was about it. At least until Sunday evening.