If You're Reading This

by Trent Reedy

  “You don’t even know if you’ve won yet,” I said. “Besides, even if you do, I have more important things to spend my money on than —”

  “I’ll pay you back,” she said. I looked at her. “I promise.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Mike, come on. You’re totally my favorite brother, best in the world.”

  “I’m trying to save to buy a car someday, and we probably need the money to fix the roof. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re so pathetic.” She started down the stairs. I shook my head.

  Then the music started, the same terrible song Mom played every year.

  Mary leaned back against the stairs with a groan. “Oh no, is it today?”

  The song was “From a Distance,” sung (badly) by Bette Midler. Mom only played it once a year, on the anniversary of the day Dad was killed in Afghanistan. I’d been hoping this time would be different, that maybe she wouldn’t be so sad.

  “Great,” Mary said. “Now she’ll be in her zombie mood all day. No chance she’ll give me a little money for Friday.”

  “Have some respect,” I said. “This is the day that —”

  “That a man I barely knew and hardly remember died. Gosh. Sorry if I can’t make myself cry all day, sitting in the dark with candles, old photos, and crappy music.” She rolled her eyes and went down the stairs.

  I wanted to yell at my stuck-up, spoiled sister, in part because she needed to think about someone besides herself, and in part to drown out the music. Instead I let out a long sigh.

  By the time I gathered my books and went downstairs, Mary had already caught a ride to school. I entered the dark living room to find the blankets we used as curtains drawn over the windows. Mom sat on the couch with tears in her eyes, picking at a bit of stuffing that had wriggled out of the armrest, staring past the flames from three candles on the coffee table. She had made this CD mix years ago when Dad was in Afghanistan. She must have skipped it back, because that stupid “From a Distance” screeched from the battered speakers again.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said quietly. I rested my hand on her shoulder.

  She started a little at my touch, then pressed her wet cheek against my forearm. “Seven years. Seven years since …” She leaned forward and cried so hard that her body shook.

  I patted her back with my other hand. What else could I do? Tell her it was all right? That everything would be okay? Everything was okay, kind of, every day of the year except this one. On D-Day it was as if someone flipped a switch, and all her memories and sadness came flooding back.

  And that was the problem. She talked about Dad’s death on D-Day, but that didn’t mean she allowed anyone else to do it.

  “Mom?” I could at least try. “Did you ever meet a guy named Marcelo Ortiz? Served with Dad?”

  She waved away my question. “I don’t know. It was so long ago. I can’t remember.”

  At least she hadn’t shut me down altogether. “About Dad. Nobody’s ever told me much. You know, about what happened?”

  She looked at me as if I were crazy. “What do you mean ‘what happened’? They killed him. He died a hero.”

  But what did that actually mean? Why had he died months after he was supposed to be home? Maybe telling her about the letter would focus her on my questions. “I know, but you see, last night —”

  “And it’s just not fair.” Mom took a sip of her coffee. “Everything should have been better.”

  “You’re right, Mom, but I’m just wondering if Dad ever told you about any plans he had to —”

  “Mikey, today’s hard enough without you asking me all these questions. Can we just … Can we not do this right now?”

  I checked my watch. Ten to eight. If I didn’t get going soon, I’d be late.

  “Will you be home after school?”

  “I’ll probably go straight to work.”

  She bit her lip. “I worry about you out on that farm, Michael. Please, please be careful. If anything happened to you …”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to stay calm. “I know, Mom. You’ve told me. I won’t get hurt.”

  Bette Midler’s song ended. Mom aimed the remote at the stereo, but even with fresh batteries, the cheap little thing hardly ever worked. She tossed it aside and went across the room to play the track again.

  This had to be my cue. I couldn’t take another helping of “From a Distance.”

  “I know it’s a rough day,” I said. “Um … try to hang in there.”

  The words sounded stupid as soon as they left my lips, but Mom nodded. She threw her arms around me, hugging me so close that I almost struggled to breathe.

  “Mom …” I said, gently pulling away. “Mom, you’re kind of smothering me. I gotta go.”

  With none of my questions answered, I left her there, crying in the dark.

  I rode Scrappy to school, past the houses on Railroad Street that were actually more run-down than our place. The view of so many overgrown bushes, ancient hulks of cars on blocks, and rotting wood fences with bright orange NO TRESPASSING signs normally dared me to live better, to study hard so that I could get out of this town and move on to become a college professor, a doctor, a lawyer — anything but trapped here. But today, passing this scene of poverty, failure, and decay reminded me of my dad’s wishes, and all his other dreams that never came true.

  My memory of his funeral had faded with the years, like one of those old scratchy movies. It had happened in early September. A flag was draped over a coffin. I stared at it until the colors blurred together in my tears. Guns cracked in the air and I jumped.

  Later, soldiers in dark green dress uniforms lifted the flag from the coffin. Folded it. Brought it to my crying mother.

  After that … I don’t know. We walked somewhere, to a car maybe. I kept thinking about how impossible it seemed that my brave, strong father had died. I’d never fetch his tools to help him with Saturday-afternoon projects around the house anymore. We’d never again watch Hawkeye football on TV or play catch in the backyard. The war had taken all of that away.

  A crow had cawed from somewhere. That was a stupid thing to remember….

  One of the soldiers approached. He gripped my shoulder. I looked up at him, fixating for some reason on the depth of the blue sky above him. “Your father died a hero, so you’re the man of the house now,” he said. “Take care of your mother and sister. Be tough.”

  Who was that soldier who spoke to me at the funeral? Had he served with my father? Could it have been Sergeant Ortiz? That didn’t seem likely. The guys my father had served with in Afghanistan were still over there at the time. He’d said my father had been a hero. But when everyone who wore the uniform earned hero status, the line “Your father died a hero” told me nothing.

  Now this letter had come. Dad was reaching out to me across the years, and maybe he would tell me what I needed to know.

  I hurried to the library during fifth-hour study hall to look up Sergeant Marcelo Ortiz online. He’d been in Dad’s National Guard squad, so he was probably still here in Iowa. But a search for Marcelo Ortiz in Iowa City turned up nothing. Searching the whole state of Iowa didn’t work either. Weird. He wouldn’t have come from out of state to mail the letter from Iowa City.

  Maybe the National Guard had information on him. I Googled Sergeant Marcelo Ortiz Iowa Army National Guard and found my answer. I should have recognized his name, but I hadn’t looked this stuff up in a long time.

  Sergeant Ortiz was dead, killed in action on August 28, 2005, in Farah Province, Afghanistan. He died the same day as my dad.

  What was going on here? Frustrated, I took refuge in the back corner of the library, where wooden partitions divided a table into four study carrels. I had spent many fine hours in this corner reading Treasure Island, The Catcher in the Rye, The Hunger Games, and Romeo and Juliet. I’d also read the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, along with dozens of other books.

&nbs
p; Today, though, I knew I couldn’t concentrate on reading if I tried. Instead, I distracted myself from the infuriating mystery by looking at the football forms. After American History II with Coach Carter seventh hour, I would turn them in, hope he wouldn’t spot the faked signature, and join Ethan and the rest of the guys on the football team.

  “Hiding back here?” Isma Rafee dragged a chair around to the back of the cubicle table.

  Isma was the only girl I talked to at this school beyond the basic casual necessities, the only one who ever sought me out. Her parents had come from Iran to America shortly before she was born. Her father taught mathematics at the University of Iowa, twelve miles to the north in Iowa City, and her family had moved to Riverside last year. We’d been partners on a couple of school projects since then. Her long, almost black hair framed the tan, smooth skin of her warm face, and her faded jeans and her pink shirt looked nice without being super tight, like something Hailey Green might wear. It was a different style than what she’d been wearing the year before, and I saw her notice me noticing.

  She pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows like, What do you think? “Last year I won the battle to come to school without wearing a head scarf, and now I finally talked Dad into convincing Mom that I should be able to wear normal clothes instead of the superconservative stuff, the long-sleeve kameezes and all that.” She sat down.

  “I like them,” I said, adding quickly, “the clothes, I mean. Really cool.” I poked my finger through one of the little holes in my faded Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. “I could use some new clothes myself.” This shirt had been old when I bought it at the secondhand store.

  “So you don’t have the newest stuff,” she said. “That shirt is cool. It shows off your muscles.”

  “Whatever.” I felt the heat building in my cheeks.

  “You look tougher than a lot of the guys who are always in the weight room. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed.”

  I had noticed, but I wasn’t going to talk about it, like I was bragging. “Yeah,” I said. “Well, you look” — she looked really pretty — “cool too. Now can we stop talking about clothes and stuff? I’m boring myself into a coma.” I leaned my head down toward the table with my eyes half closed like I was fighting against passing out. “So … bored … clothes … boring …”

  She laughed. “Knock it off.”

  “Can’t … stay awake … much … longer.” My head hit the cover of The Complete Poems of Robert Frost with a thud.

  Isma laughed again. “I’ll save you.” She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me upright. When her hands slid off me, a little shiver-tingle went up my neck. “What’s this?” She snatched the papers from the table.

  “Nothing.” I made a grab for them, but she held them behind her head so I’d have to reach around her to get them. When I stood up, she brought them to her lap. “Football permission form?” She flipped to the next sheet, saw what it was, and returned it. “Oh, sorry. This medical stuff is none of my business.”

  “Neither is the rest of it. Now will you give that back?”

  She handed the papers to me. “Are you trying to go out for football? It’s a little late, isn’t it? They’ve already started practicing.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Your mom finally came around, huh? Is this really something you’re interested in?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not ready to tell her the whole truth. “I used to be pretty good. It was fun, anyway. Coach keeps asking me to join. I figure —”

  “Yeah, but you’re always talking about college. Is football really going to help you with that?”

  “My grades will be just fine. And football is fun, Isma. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do. Normal guys go out for football.” Riverside High was a small school with just over forty people in each graduating class. Most of the guys played football. Why was it so hard to believe that I would too?

  She leaned forward a little. “You are not a normal guy.”

  “Wow …” I slumped in my seat. “Thanks a lot.”

  “That’s a good thing. Why would you want to be just another sports-worshipping moron?”

  “Hey,” I said. “They’re not morons.”

  Someone made a fart noise somewhere up near the front of the library. Some people laughed. Isma and I peeked up over the top of the table’s walls. At the other end of the library, Clint Stewart, one of the football team’s wide receivers, sat in an armchair by the magazine shelves. One of the linemen, Robby Dozer (seriously, that was his real name), sat in the other chair. Nick Rhodes, a tight end, stood in front of them, swinging one of the newspaper sticks like a sword and jabbing it at Denny Dinsler, who was a smaller kid in my class. I didn’t know exactly what Rhodes was saying, but he looked like he was making fun of Dinsler’s stuttering problem. The guys laughed again. I shook my head. Why couldn’t they leave people alone?

  “Yeah,” said Isma. “They’re real geniuses.”

  “They’re not all like that. Look at Ethan. A bunch of the football guys usually make the honor roll. It’s not like playing football will melt my brain.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She did not sound convinced.

  “I just want to have some fun. What’s wrong with that?”

  “If it were just about having fun, it would be okay, but think about the ridiculous amount of money spent on sports and all the hoopla leading up to events like homecoming. They take us out of our classes to bring us into the gym, where cheerleaders lead the worship of the sports teams. All of this time, money, and effort for what? For games that don’t really mean anything! We lost the game?” She snapped her fingers, pretending to be sad. “Who cares? We’ll just play again next year.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ve heard this all before. Will you hate me if I join the team?”

  “Of course I won’t hate you,” she said. “I’ll just think you look really silly running around yelling and grunting with the rest of the football guys.”

  “It’s not like that. Coach Carter —”

  “Speaking of Mister Carter, I was wondering if we could talk about our Civil War project.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe he nailed us with such a huge review assignment yesterday. I thought the first day of school was supposed to be about reading the rules and procedures.”

  “I can believe it.” Isma opened her binder. “He’s busy coaching football, so he assigns group papers and presentations. And it’s all stuff we went over at the end of last year, so he won’t have to work to teach us anything new for a long time.” She stared at me as if daring me to argue with her. I wouldn’t take the bait. “I drew this map,” she said.

  She pulled out a big piece of paper on which she’d drawn the Civil War map for our presentation. The Confederate states had been shaded a light gray, and she’d used a sort of tan for the Union, with colored lines for borders. Symbols for different battles had all been labeled with her super-neat writing. This map belonged in a museum.

  “You know this isn’t due for another two weeks or something,” I said.

  “You don’t like it.”

  “No! I mean, yeah, I love it. It’s just … Wow.”

  She looked at me with this cool half-amused expression, excitement in her eyes. “How’s your report coming?”

  D-Day and Dad’s letter had distracted me, so I hadn’t started right away like I usually would. “Well, I’ve done some reading for it. You know, some prep work.”

  “I don’t think you’ve really started.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s the second day of school! We have plenty of time.”

  “Yeah, and in that time we have to figure out what we’re going to do for our presentation. You know Mr. Carter. If we don’t —”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Take it easy. I’ll get going on the report, and as far as the rest —”

  “I was thinking we could work on the presentation at my house sometime.
You know, after school or whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “Plus, my brother has a ton of video games. If you wanted …”

  What was this all about? We were friends, I guess, but just at school. We met here in study hall and talked a little between classes sometimes, but I’d never spent time with Isma elsewhere. “I’d have to —”

  “Unless you’re busy or whatever.” She reached down and picked up her books. “I know you have a lot going on.”

  “No, but —”

  “You don’t have to answer now.” She tucked her hair back behind her ear.

  My cheeks felt warm. I must have looked so red. “ ’Cause I’d have to figure out my work schedule.”

  “Yeah.” Isma pressed her lips together.

  “And I —”

  Her words burst out of her as if she’d been holding her breath. “Just let me know.” She hurried away, her hair swishing in the wake of her movement.

  * * *

  In other classrooms students bunched up by the door during the last few minutes of class. I rarely stood with them, preferring to spend the extra time reading. But today I joined the crowd, thinking again about the situation with Dad’s letter. If Ortiz hadn’t sent it, who did? How would I contact this person with questions about Dad? If this new guy had sent one letter, would he send more? How many more could I expect?

  Nick Rhodes sat on the edge of Mrs. Potter’s desk next to Dozer and Hailey Green. “Hey, Wilson, what were you and Isma doing in the corner?”

  I glared at him. “Just leave me alone.” Isma was flipping through a copy of Time over at the magazine rack, but I could tell she’d heard what Nick said.

  “You back there feeling up Ass-ma?” Rhodes said.

  Ass-ma was about as clever as guys like Nick ever got. He acted clever a lot.

  “And what is she wearing today?” Hailey said. “Shouldn’t she be wearing, like, her tribal clothes?”