Recoil

by Joanne Macgregor

“Not all Irish have milk skin, freckles and red hair, and look like they danced out of Brigadoon.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”

  “Don’t worry yourself. I’m what they call Dark Irish, or Black Irish.”

  At my puzzled look, he explained, “We have darker hair and skin. Depending on who you believe, our ancestors were Viking invaders or Spanish sailors. Or fairies.”

  “Fairies?”

  “The little people, you know. Apparently our ancestral mothers weren’t too picky and were very … loving.”

  He had me laughing again.

  “You look more like a pirate than a fairy.”

  “That’s probably a good thing.”

  “And you sound a little Irish, the way you speak.”

  “I was born right here, but at my school we were taught by Irish nuns and both my parents are from the old country, County Cork, so I guess I’ve picked up a bit of the brogue, what with being stuck in the house with them for the last four years and all,” he said. “So, can I escort you to your quarters?”

  “Jinx! Hiya!” Leya ran up to me and gave me a friendly elbow bump. “We’re in the same unit, isn’t that awesome? C’mon, we’re in the west wing. Blue is in the northeast,” she said with a nod to Quinn.

  “See you later?” I called back to him as Leya grabbed my elbow and tugged me away.

  “It’s a date,” he said.

  “Wooeee,” said Leya, when we were out of earshot. “Brucey-baby has got himself some competition!”

  Chapter 11

  Surely, Goodness and Mercy

  The first ten days of boot camp were a blurred hell of hard exercise, mind-numbingly long lectures, and hurried solitary meals carried on trays to our individual quarters, where we could remove our masks to eat. Ten days of sore muscles, blistered fingers, ringing ears, a bruised shoulder, brain fatigue, and bad food.

  And Quinn.

  Maybe my radar was stuck on pirate mode, but he seemed to be everywhere I looked — running ahead of me on the track in the gymnasium, playing pool or pinball in the rec room, and walking through the hallways between lectures.

  At dinner the first night, I spotted him immediately — leaning up against the glass swing-doors to the cafeteria.

  “Well, and if it isn’t Jinx E. James,” he said, as I drew alongside.

  “Hi.” I wished I could think of a cool way to greet him.

  He held the door open for me to pass through.

  “So, you’ll be all settled in then?”

  “I’m all unpacked.”

  I wouldn’t call it settled. I felt nervous, out of place among so many new people, uncertain how to interact. I hadn’t even been inside a cafeteria since the sixth grade.

  “I figured we’d be getting sealed meals,” I said, taking the tray Quinn passed to me and getting into the self-service line for food.

  “They must be certain of their security. Besides, where’s the fun in sealed meals? How could I tempt you with Irish delicacies that way?”

  “There are Irish delicacies in the buffet?”

  I scanned the display of food. I had no idea what many of the dishes were.

  “Sure, yeah. Why, this now” — Quinn drew my attention to what looked like pieces of overcooked white fish — “is Cullen skink, an old family favorite. Here, let me help you to a morsel.”

  “Um, okay.” I looked longingly at the roast pork tenderloin under red heat lamps across the way, but Quinn ushered me forward.

  “Ah, now these are delicious.” He was putting on a thick Irish accent for this guided tour through the home country cuisine.

  “Really?” I peered dubiously into the dish of vegetables. “They look like miniature green cabbages.”

  “Phfa! Those are Colcannon crubeens. You’ll be liking them.”

  He spooned a heap of them onto my plate. His own was conspicuously empty.

  “You aren’t having any?”

  “I’ll get my food after I’ve helped you. Ladies first, and all that. Ah! The cook must surely be an Irishman, for look, if it isn’t Limerick Coddle.”

  Another ladleful onto my plate.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s okra.”

  I had a dim memory of my father once cooking the green, finger-shaped vegetables. It had ended with my mother pulling a revolted face and Robin and I hurling spoons full of the slimy mess at each other.

  “You’ll love it.”

  “Perhaps some salad?” I suggested.

  “Not when there are tatties to be had!” He sounded scandalized and heaped a large dollop of lumpy mashed potatoes onto my already full plate. “There, now, you’re set to go.”

  “Right.”

  Bruce, who was also getting his meal, stared down at my plate and said, “Blue, that looks beyond disgusting.”

  “They’re Irish delicacies.”

  “Makes me glad I’m an American, born and bred,” said Bruce. He said it to Quinn.

  “As am I,” said Quinn.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Bruce, brushing past us. “Don’t forget, Blue, oh-six-hundred on the track.”

  “Isn’t he a charmer? Well, Jinxy, I’ll see you around,” said Quinn, heading to the back of the line to get his own food. “Enjoy your meal.”

  “Okay, yeah, so long.”

  I made my way to one of the two checkout stations, noting that everyone else had more appetizing food on their trays than I had on mine. The checkout worker scanned my ID bracelet, placed my plate into a scanner, hit a few keys on a touch-screen, and then an analysis of its nutritional content was entered against my name in her system. She nodded, and I was free to head back to my quarters. I glanced back at the buffet as I passed and got a friendly wave from Quinn. I could swear there was a large portion of pork tenderloin on his plate.

  The food was awful. The fish was overcooked and mushy, the okra was as slimy as I remembered, and the miniature cabbages were watery, bitter enough to make me shudder, and smelt of stinky feet. I resorted to eating most of my candy from home and feeling distinctly ick.

  The next morning, Quinn was waiting for me again.

  “Good morning to you, Jinx. And did you enjoy your uniquely Irish meal last night?”

  “Uhm, it was definitely … unique.”

  “Excellent! Ready to try more, then?”

  “Well …”

  “Here, try some Boxty pudding” — lumpy oatmeal — “Irish oysters” — hard-boiled eggs — “and barm brack” — stale wholegrain bread. “Faith, we’ll make a convert of you yet!”

  By that night, I was on to him. He urged me to try some of what he called Blarney Stew, but to me it looked like chili swimming under a layer of oil.

  “Then hurrah for an Irish Stew, that will stick to your belly like glue,” he sang in his deep voice.

  When he brought a heaping portion to my plate, I rapped his knuckles with the back of my spoon.

  “Attacked — by a wench!”

  “A wench?”

  “The beautiful woman who is the object of a pirate’s affections.”

  I looked down at the spoon, smiling behind my mask.

  “You’ll have put me out of business for the day,” Quinn said, pulling a pained face and rubbing his knuckles. So he used his hands for his work? Maybe there was another sniper unit. Damn, but I wished I knew what his specialty skill was.

  “Blarney stew, my eye!”

  “Ay?” His exaggerated look of innocence only confirmed my suspicions.

  “Quinn, I think you’ve been messing with me.”

  He burst into loud laughter. It was a deep, rolling, breathless belly-laugh, and it was contagious as hell.

  “I was flabbergasted that you fell for it a’tall. You shouldn’t believe everything you’re told, you know.”

  “You, you —”

  “I wondered how long it would take before you overcame your good manners and sent me to the devil!”

  “Consider it done,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, dabbing
at his eyes with the sleeve of his blue jumpsuit. “Well, it was fun while it lasted. Say you forgive me?”

  “No. Those little cabbagey things? You’re due some payback on those.”

  “Well, Jinxy, you tell me what you would like to eat, and I’ll serve it to you.”

  I pointed to spicy tacos, green salad and lemon cake.

  “And tomorrow, at breakfast, I’ll want a chocolate muffin,” I warned.

  “I’ll be sure and save you one.” His gray eyes smiled down at me. “They do taste fantastic.”

  “While I was eating oatmeal and hard-boiled ‘Irish oysters’, you were eating chocolate muffins? Argh! I am going to get you good, Quinn O’Riley.”

  “I look forward to it,” he said, and his eyes shone with something warmer than mere humor.

  Suddenly unsure, I focused hard on the nutritional analysis at the checkout. When I snuck a sideways glance at him, he was still looking at me.

  “Well, so long,” I said, lifting my tray a little in explanation.

  “Let me walk you to your wing.”

  “It’s not on your way.”

  “Ah, you’re wrong there, lass. It’ll always be on my way.”

  For once, I was grateful for the respirator — it hid the blush warming my cheeks.

  The next morning, Quinn walked me back to my wing again, each of us with a chocolate muffin on our breakfast tray. He had put two on my plate, but the checkout lady had frowned at me and told me my meal was too high in sugar and refined carbohydrates, and I’d sadly returned one of them to the baked goods rack.

  Quinn cleared his throat and then said, “That fella the other night, the charmer, with the …” He sketched the shape of bulging neck and bicep muscles.

  “Bruce?”

  “The same. Is he —? Are you —?”

  What was he asking?

  “He’s just another cadet in my division.”

  Quinn paused to open a fire door for me. At first I’d felt a little awkward when he did this for me, but it made such a nice change from being yelled at to go faster, run harder, hang longer by the males in my unit, that I soon grew to like it.

  “He called you Blue.”

  “Yeah, because of my hair, I think.”

  He reached out a hand to twirl one of the colored strands.

  “And, you know, my eyes.”

  “No, it can’t be because of your eyes, else he would have called you Periwinkle, or perhaps Sapphire.”

  Was he flirting with me? Just the idea had my heart picking up speed. I wanted the pirate to flirt with me. Heck, I wanted to flirt with him, but I had no experience with boys, and no idea what to say.

  “Do you like being called Blue?”

  “Not really, but I got nicknamed in the —” I stopped myself. I’d been about to say in the Sniper Simulation Mission. You had to be so careful what you said here, no wonder most cadets hung out only with their divisional buddies. “I got the nickname early on, and it seems to have stuck.”

  “Do you mind if I call you Jinxy rather?”

  “No. I mean, I like it. It’s what my brother Robin calls me.”

  “Jinx and Robin. Those are very different kinds of names. Robin is pretty standard, but Jinx …”

  “It doesn’t mean what you think.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s from the Latin Iynx, and it means magic charm or spell.”

  “Enchanting … yeah, that fits.”

  I was smiling again, unsure how to respond. “My father named me for his grandmother, and my mother named Robin for her grandfather. We’re twins — Robin and I, I mean.”

  “Twins! You know, the Irish have some superstitions about twins.”

  “No doubt they involve something called Blarney Blinkety,” I said, and because I was more interested in him than Ireland, I quickly got in a question of my own.

  “Was that your family I saw on your porch?”

  “Yup. I have an older brother, Connor; a little sister, Kerry; my mother and father of course, and two dogs — magnificent mongrels both — called Surely and Goodness. Oh, and a cat called Mercy.”

  “Surely, Goodness and Mercy — you’re kidding?” He had me smiling again.

  “I am not.”

  “And do they follow you about for all the days of your life?”

  “They do try! Well the dogs do, but Mercy holds herself a little aloof — you know how cats are.”

  I shook my head. I’d had a hamster when I was in fourth grade. Mom shuddered now whenever she remembered that we’d actually kept a rodent as a pet inside the house. But it had stuffed its cheeks with food and run on its wheel for only a couple of years before going to the great seed bar in the sky. In the summer vacation before I started seventh grade, the plague had broken out, and any chance of ever getting another pet was over.

  “We never had a cat,” I said. “Or a dog.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope. My mother never liked the mess, and after the plague began, no way would she allow pets. My mom worries,” I added by way of explanation.

  “Not even a goldfish? Or, say, an ant-farm?”

  “She worries a lot.”

  Actually, I think the worrying saved Mom. The fear of the virus and the worry of contagion woke her from her flatlined state. Her obsession converted her numb depression into anxiety and transformed her grief over the loss of her husband into a fierce determination not to lose her children.

  “I couldn’t imagine not having pets. I love my animals!” Quinn’s expression was a mixture of incredulity and pity. “Is it only the one brother you’ve got then?”

  “Yeah, just Robin. And my mom, of course. My father died when I was twelve.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Quinn.

  It occurred to me that he was the first person here that I’d told about my dad.

  “So you’re sixteen now?”

  “Yeah. And you?” I’d been dying to know how old he was.

  “Just turned eighteen.” He paused, then grinned and said, “D’you think that makes me too old?”

  “Too old for what?”

  “For you.”

  I blushed furiously. I wanted to say, “No, it makes you just right for me,” but I forced myself to say only, “I’ll be seventeen in November.”

  “Ah, perfect then.”

  We walked a bit in silence, then Quinn asked, “Do you miss him? Your father?”

  “Yeah, I do. We were very close. My mother … well, she’s always connected better with Robin, I guess. I was closer to my father.” Another swing door. “I really miss the good times we had when he was alive. It’s kind of like life before the plague is all tied up with my memories of him. He loved to be out and about, doing things and meeting people.”

  I tried to call his face to my mind. Failed. Sometimes, when I wasn’t trying, a memory would roll in — of Dad carrying a sleep-floppy me from the car to my bed after a long road trip; of Dad’s laugh when I told him how my stuffed bear had eaten the last doughnut; of Dad running with Robin and me on the edge of the beach where the firm, wet sand met the foam-edged waves.

  I sighed.

  “He wouldn’t have liked what the world has become.”

  “He sounds like a wise man.” Quinn spoke so intensely that I glanced at him. “We’ve all lost a lot, haven’t we? Our lives are so small, so limited now. And we’re so tightly — Ah, listen to me spouting off on philosophy when you’re still fresh with losing your father.”

  “It’s not really fresh any more. But I miss knowing him at this age. Like I wonder what he would think of my work here? I wonder if he’d rather I stayed at home with Mom.”

  We were at the entrance to the west wing, now, where the black unit’s living quarters were. Leya came out, followed by Bruce, and deposited their trays on the stainless steel trolley parked outside the door.

  “Better hurry, Blue, we’re due in Lecture Room Four in twenty minutes,” said Leya as she headed back in the direction we’d just
come from.

  “Yeah, Sarge won’t like it if you’re late,” added Bruce, with an unfriendly look at Quinn.

  “I’d better go,” I said to Quinn.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said.

  Then he leaned forward and pressed his respirator against mine. If we hadn’t been wearing the masks, it would have been a kiss.

  I blinked in surprise and he was gone, walking to his wing. I touched my gloved hand to the mask.

  “Jinxy!”

  I looked up just in time to see and catch what Quinn had tossed to me. A chocolate muffin.

  Soft and sweet as a hug.

  Chapter 12

  Hot and Bothered

  Three weeks into boot camp, the streaks in my hair had faded to a paler sky blue. I didn’t intend to color them again, even though they seemed to fascinate Quinn, who would occasionally twist one of the blue strands around his fingers and play with it. I loved it when he did that, but in one of our sessions on camouflage and concealment, Sarge had stressed the need to blend in.

  “Anything that makes you stand out, anything that makes you memorable, increases the risk of your being made by the enemy and becoming a bullet magnet. Like your tattoo, Leya, or your hair, Blue.”

  “Rats can see blue streaks in my hair and know that makes me a sniper?” I said.

  “You’ll be amazed what those vermin can do,” said Sarge with that flash of a smile.

  I had learned enough about our unit commander not to mistake that grimace for an expression of joy. Sarge was the hardest, toughest, meanest SOB I’d ever met. Scratch that — I hadn’t met enough people in my life for it to be a meaningful comparison. He was the strictest, most merciless, stony-hearted, take-no-prisoners SOB I could ever imagine. From day one, when he put us through our first “smoke session”, that manic grin had flashed on and off every time he pulled down his mask to yell at me.

  “Blue, you’ve got another thirty laps of the track. Pick up the pace, sweetheart — my grandmother can run faster’n you.” Grin.

  “Princess, they’re called push-ups, not fall-downs. Tell you what” — grin — “add another twenty to the total. You need the practice.”

  “45, 46, 47 … Work those abdominals, Goldilocks!” Grin.

  Failure is not an option, I will not quit, I told myself. I wasn’t grinning.