When The Whistle Blows

#1

"The theory behind universal conscription makes some sense. I'll give you that. But the implementation sure doesn't."

History, the last class of the day, was winding down, and Mina Mashall was a little disappointed about that. Seventh grade was boring for the most part, but not history. Mr. Vantassel was an older man, with a grey ring of hair around an expanding patch of baldness, a thick mustache, and a paunch that Mina felt oddly drawn to pinch, though she never had and never would. He was also lazy to the point of negligence, or perhaps a particularly cowardly brand of subversive, because he carved out a chunk of almost every class to hold "debates."

He was careful in the framing, of course. The topics were always spun positively. Today's was "What is the biggest contribution of mandatory conscription to the nation's advancement?" Mina's classmates were falling over each other to spit back the same lukewarm thoroughly-chewed answers they all knew by heart: it improved discipline, it encouraged unity, it ensured that all citizens were trained in case of invasion, it gave the country the strongest fighting force on the planet. That stuff was all true, but just as much it was boring. The other groups were busily arguing whether the savings on prisons was more of an amazing awesome innovation than the wide proliferation of training and career-enhancing networking, and Mina thought it likely none of them would be able to cogently summarize the opposing viewpoint with a gun to their heads. These were also officers' children, by and large, but they would be following their parents' footsteps only due to nepotism. Mina was better than that.

At her table sat Eve Huber, Danni Ford, and Heather Talbert, all loose friends, all watching her with the usual manner somewhere between awestruck and appalled.

"Look at it this way," Mina said. "You're called, usually, sometime between eighteen and forty. You're in for ten years. That twenty-year span is the prime part of your life, and you're putting that into the army."

"Isn't that the point?" Eve was probably the dumbest of the three, and fat besides, but Mina liked her anyways, in part because she would reliably ask the obvious questions.

"Sure," Mina said. "To a point. We owe the country a lot, so we should give back. But the problem with universal conscription is it's so inefficient."

Eve was pursing her lips a little, like she was trying to figure out if Mina was actually giving her some credit or not. Danni, by contrast, was glancing around nervously. Heather, thin and smart and almost pretty, was impassive. Vantassel was roaming their way, but he tended to spend a lot of time around Mina's table. Let him hear. She had her suspicions that he got a kick out of her performances, that he might even have taken them more seriously than she did.

Because, of course, she was mostly playing devil's advocate. Mina had talked about a lot of this stuff with her dad, so she knew the answers to most of the questions she posed. She also knew that her classmates didn't. They didn't get that an answer not understood was worthless, that patriot and parrot were different concepts.

"There are non-combat roles," Mina continued, "but it's all tied to the military, and that sets people's lives behind. Couples wait to have children until their service is done. Careers are put on hold. We see people die—that's expected, but sometimes the people dying are brilliant people but terrible soldiers. Imagine what our technology could be like if the government instead tested everyone and put, say, two thirds of the people to work on stuff besides just the military, but still for the good of the country. Only put the people who are good at fighting and want to fight in the army, and let the others do more to improve our normal lives. We're fighting wars to protect ourselves and to have the best world possible, right? So we should focus on that too, not just the war."

"But isn't it better to win the war first?" Heather asked, again showing a greater capacity for intellect than the others. "Then we won't need conscription at all, and we won't jeopardize ourselves in the process."

That was something vaguely close to the right answer, but Mina wasn't about to admit it. Eve was wide-eyed, Danni turning slightly red and still looking around but too scared to actually get up and leave the table.

"Maybe it wouldn't be as hard to get people to see the right way if we had more to point to," Mina said. "If we had medicine way better than anyone else, they'd join us just to get it. And—"

"That's time." The voice came from nearby, one cluster away. Vantassel had been watching four boys, but from close enough that he could eavesdrop on Mina's group. He always seemed to be near Mina's table, near enough to listen but to claim he hadn't been, near enough to indulge without being obligated to shut down. She loved it. He gave her good marks on her papers. Every teacher did, really, but Vantassel would write little notes suggesting improvements, though always couched carefully in euphemism or insinuation. "Get your desks back in their rows. We'll talk more on Monday."

"You don't believe all that stuff, do you?" Danni whispered as Mina tugged her desk back towards its spot at the front corner of the room. Danni was small and scrawny and still looked like an elementary schooler; Mina's mom had told her that puberty hit at different times for different people and Danni was on the young side for their grade but she had to be the latest bloomer ever. Mina thought maybe that was why she was scared all the time, or maybe it was because her dad worked for what Mina's dad called "intel." This also made her fun to wind up sometimes, so Mina smiled at her.

"What do you think?" she said. And Danni, of course, wasn't brave enough to guess.

"...Trading my time for the pay I get, living on money that I ain't made yet..."

The familiar music from downstairs, too loud on the radio for comfort and too loud certainly for this time of night, was suddenly stifled as the door closed behind Mina. She could still hear it just a little, the same as she could hear her mom's footsteps receding, but it was equally incoherent and void of meaning. She was nervous, and she didn't know why.

Something was wrong. She'd known it since she got home. Her mom had been uncharacteristically quiet, not even asking the normal boring questions Mina tried not to answer every day. Her dad had picked at his food but hadn't eaten a bite. Dinner had been lasagna, and the usually-meticulous man had disassembled his, spread it around the plate and then scraped it into the trash.

Mina's siblings hadn't realized. They weren't dumb, but they also weren't quite as smart as she was, and not just because she was older. Nobody talked about it but it was clear, because things Mina had been allowed to do when she was eight her brother was not allowed to do even at nine. Her dad didn't talk to the others like he talked to her, and that, she thought, was not because she was his favorite, but rather because they did not talk to him like she did. They were more like her classmates: good, well-intentioned, but static. Ever so slightly dull.

Mina assumed that something bad had happened, and she assumed that she had been called to her dad's office because she was the only one who'd be able to hear the news. This had her apprehensive; her dad was not someone who displayed emotion a lot, even through a conspicuous lack thereof, and so Mina was wondering just what could have him so worked up. The possibilities were both nerve-wracking and tantalizing. Had somebody died? Was the mom or dad of one of her friends a traitor? Had there been a big defeat somewhere far away, that other people didn't get to know about because their dads didn't work in The General's private bunker system?

Peter Mashall was seated behind his desk. The office was sparse, but in a tasteful way; it was neither sterile nor impersonal. The single bookshelf contained a great many books, most of them regarding history or tactics. There was a globe, a computer, and a mug full of pens that Mina had made in third grade. The mug was really really ugly, lumpy clay with her tiny fingerprints visible all over it in its pinched sides, even under a too-thick layer of fire-engine-red glaze. She'd quietly suggested to her dad a few times that it would honestly really be okay if he didn't want to keep it on is desk anymore, that she could make him a better one or buy him something that actually looked good, but he'd dodged the subject and those were uncharted waters she had not been keen to foray into.

"Mina," he said, voice level and cold, "sit. Please."

Her dad was a slender man, but not exactly thin. His eyes and lips were narrow, and his dark brown hair was always immaculately buzzed. His eyes were the same green as Mina's, and when she looked into them she always felt proud of that. Her siblings had her mother's brown eyes.

She sat.

Her dad looked at her. His hands were folded, right over left, a tight little bundle on the desk, and that turned Mina's stomach because it was also unusual. Her dad's hands were actually fairly large, rough and steady and firm. She had never seen him bunch them up like this. He didn't say anything for a while, just looked at her, searching her face with an expression she couldn't place.

"What's going on?" Mina asked.

"You have a friend," her dad said. "Ford."

"Danni," Mina said. She hadn't seen Danni in a couple days, come to think of it. This was concerning, but it was also somewhat exciting. "Is she okay?"

"Do you know who her father is?"

"You said he works in intel," Mina supplied. "I don't know his name. She's only sort of my friend."

"Bernard Ford. He does work for intel. He's very highly placed, though of middling competence."

This was one of many things about her dad Mina admired: he could and would cut down others casually, not out of meanness but out of understanding. If her dad said Danni's dad wasn't good at his job, it wasn't because he hated the man, but because Mr. Ford simply didn't do well enough. Unfortunately, Mina had learned, there were politics at play even in the military, and sometimes people were promoted more because they knew the right people than because they would be good at their new jobs.

"Is he okay?" Mina was thinking now that maybe Danni was gone because her father had done something really bad.

"Presumably," Mina's dad said, "aside from a hangover."

That, Mina knew, meant he drank too much. A lot of people in the military, and also outside of it, drank too much. Mina's dad drank only a very little bit, and only on special occasions. He favored a drink called brandy, which he'd let Mina sniff and once even stick the tip of her tongue into, and it was disgusting. Drinking too much, her dad had told her, could make you feel very good if you were stupid.

Mina said nothing for a time, and her dad looked at her and his lips twitched up and then down.

"Mina," he said, "do you love America?"

"Yes?" she said. His brows furrowed at the hesitation in her voice, like he thought she was unsure if she loved America or not rather than being unsure why he was asking her something so obvious, because he never asked her pointless things, so she said it again: "Yes."

"Do you think that the country is in good hands?"

"Yes."

"Do you think the system works?"

"Yes," Mina said, her unease mounting.

"Do you have sympathy for those who would tear the country down?"

"No."

"Then why the fuck are you spouting traitorous propaganda in history class?"

Peter's voice climbed in an instant to a raging, thunderous boom, and Mina jerked backwards so hard she almost toppled the chair. She sat there for a moment in incomprehension, blinking, a tightness forming in her throat the only thing she could focus on, doing her best not to cry not from anything that had been said but from the suddenness of it all. Her dad's hands were flat on the desk now, and he was standing, leaning over it towards her, glaring at her like she'd never seen him do, not even when she was seven and was pretending to be a soldier and threw a rock "grenade" straight through the living room window.

"W-what?"

His eyes narrowed.

"You've been arguing in class," he said. "You've been saying that the system is wrong. You've been saying the government is misguided, inefficient, but now you say you don't believe this."

The tightness was mounting, strangling her even as her father's voice slid closer to normal; it was still raised, still angry, but no longer was he shouting. His words slipped out in a hiss, however.

"Explain."

It all made sense now, at least. This was all a horrible mistake. Mina's little experiments had been misinterpreted somewhere, and now her own father thought she was a traitor. That hurt, of course. She didn't get it, didn't get how he could believe such a thing of her, but it would also be easily cleared up. He was offering her that opening now, so all she had to do was convince him of her actual beliefs. She swallowed, but the tightness just bobbed painfully up and down.

"We have," she started, and swallowed again and squeezed her eyes so as not to cry from the pain, "we have debates. Mr. Vantassel likes to end class with a debate."

Her dad said nothing, but he sank back into his chair, palms still flat on the table.

"Most of the class doesn't think," Mina said. This was a common refrain between her and her dad, the bemoaning of the lack of analytical capabilities in not only Mina's classmates but the population at large. "So sometimes, I argue for the other side."

He looked at her, one corner of his mouth trembling.

"Why?"

Why? Mina frowned, swallowed past the pain again. What did he mean why?

"Because people need to think," Mina said. "You told me that. You told me that you have to understand a position to really believe it. They don't. They just say the same things again and again."

"So you decided to educate them." Her father's voice was a growl now.

"Nobody else will," Mina said.

She didn't say the rest. She didn't say that she liked the looks she got, liked the attention from Vantassel, the shock on Eve's pudgy mug, the way Danni looked over her shoulder in fear of being observed. On any other day, Mina might have admitted these things; she had a hard time keeping secrets from her dad, and when he caught wind of deception he'd usually manage to coax an admission. Right now, though, she wanted everything simple and casting her in the most flattering light possible. She thought they were approaching a resolution, but her dad's body language wasn't right for that, which was confusing and scary.

"Mina," he said, "I had a performance review today."

She said nothing now, watching him, waiting. She had learned from him that prompting had a time and a place, but it was not a universal tool.

"I've been working very hard," he said. "It's competitive. But I've done well. A promotion would mean a lot. And I'm the most qualified, by far."

She waited, as he caught her gaze.

"But I didn't get promoted," he said. "I didn't get any acknowledgement, except for when Bernard Ford had a couple beers too many and told me there's no upwards mobility for somebody with a traitor for a daughter."

His words were cold, mean, and Mina stared. She clenched her jaw, because the alternative was to lose track of it and let it hang open.

"I've worked for this for two years," he said, "and you ruined it for me. For fun."

"I didn't," Mina said, and as she found her voice it came out choked and whiny and she hated it. "I'm not a traitor. I just did what you told me."

"What I told you? I told you to tell people the government is broken? I told you to plant the idea with the kids of my bosses that I'd encourage you to think our government is dysfunctional?"

"You told me to think," Mina said.

"So maybe you should've tried that." He was shouting again, standing again, and Mina wanted both to jump to her own feet and to sink further back into the chair and curl into as small a ball as she possibly could. "You should've thought about the consequences before you turned two years of my life into a waste, before you ruined my reputation. I work under The General, Mina. There is no place for doubt there."

She was crying now, and had been maybe for a little while. She could barely feel the tears on her cheeks, the trickle of snot from her nose. She was wearing a pale pink t-shirt that was soft and a little too small now that she was growing, and it was one of her favorites and a drip from her nose fell and landed right in the middle of it.

"I just did what you told me to do," Mina sobbed, and he shook his head, just like he shook it when he talked about the fools he worked with.

"Go," he said. "We'll talk more later."

The shouts from downstairs had died down about ten minutes ago. Mina was in bed, comforter pulled up over her head even though it was almost summer and was really hot and it made her feel like she couldn't breathe. She didn't want to breathe. She wanted to just suffocate and die so her parents would come and find her and realize how awful they were and wish they'd been better and cry over her.

The door creaked open and Mina lay very still, pretending to be a corpse.

"Mina?" Her father's voice was quiet. It was flat, like normal, but that felt cold now in a way it had not a few hours ago. Mina said nothing.

The floorboards groaned, but only a little, as he walked closer. His steps were soft and measured. He made less noise when he walked than Mina did, and she was pretty sneaky.

The mattress shifted beneath her as he sat on the bed. When he put his hand on her shoulder, Mina jerked violently, trying to shrug it off. She was surprised when he pulled away.

"Mina," he said, "can we talk?"

She briefly considered holding her silence, but the nervousness from earlier had not abated. She would have trusted silence yesterday. Today, she wasn't sure what it would be met with.

"What if I say no?" she asked.

It was really hot under the comforter. Her back and tummy and arms and legs were sticky with sweat, because she was still wearing all her clothes.

"I'd be disappointed," her father said, "but it's okay. And we'll talk later."

Now she did fall silent. She closed her eyes and focused on the stifling heat, and waited, expecting all the while for him to get up and go, but he didn't. She wondered how long had passed. It seemed like an incredible amount of time, hours or maybe a whole day, but she started counting in her head and it felt about the same length by the time she got to fifty, and it was hard to breathe but she thought if she started suffocating with her dad right there he'd probably intervene.

Mina finally pulled the covers down and poked her head out, her scalp prickly with sweat and her hair hanging in her face.

"We can talk," she said.

As she looked now more closely at her dad, she saw that his eyes were red, just a little. She'd never seen that before, and it made her anxious.

"Mina," he said, "you didn't mean wrong. I realize that."

She blinked, waited. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and she let it lie there.

"You made a mistake," he said. "A big one. You hurt me a lot. But I..."

He sniffed, like he had a runny nose but wasn't carrying the handkerchief he always had on hand.

"I also made a mistake. It was wrong for you to do what you did, but it was wrong for me to yell at you. I let my disappointment take over. I'm still disappointed, but I think you understand that now."

He looked at her, raised an eyebrow, and Mina turned away.

"I do," she said.

"So," he said, "I think we understand each other and the situation now, don't we?"

"Yes," Mina said.

"Good." He squeezed her shoulder. "You made a mistake, Mina, but I love you. I want you to know that."

"I love you too," she said, because what else could she say?

"Just don't do it again."

He stood and left the room, and Mina choked back the tightness in her throat, and she wanted to scream after him "I just did what you told me, so how is this my fault at all?" but she didn't.

The gym locker made a satisfying, echoing, metallic boom noise. It was a match for the sort of hollow thump of the skull impacting it and the pained cry from the skull's owner. The other girls turned, saw, stared, froze.

"Oh shit," Eve whispered.

Danni stared at Mina with wide eyes just starting to tear, and reached for the back of her head, tentatively like she was afraid of what she'd find. Mina had her by the collar of her gym shirt, which she knew was a poor tactical decision but that didn't matter because Danni was small and weak and pathetic. She'd given this little smirk as Mina walked towards her but she wasn't smirking now. Gym class was starting soon but they still had about five minutes to finish dressing out. That was plenty of time.

"M-mina," Danni choked, "what—"

But Mina wasn't really in the mood to listen to Danni's stupid whining so she pulled the girl forward and then slammed her backwards again, and again there was that loud booming clang and Danni yelped.

"I'm not a traitor," Mina said.

Danni reached up, grabbing for Mina's hands, and Mina knew that was potentially a good decision on the girl's part, that she could control Mina's movement if she got her hands, so Mina let go of Danni's collar and when the girl stumbled backwards and leaned against the locker Mina stepped forward with her and slammed her right elbow into Danni's gut. The girl wheezed and dropped to the ground, clutching at her belly, and Mina took a quick moment to look around, surveying the dozen pairs of wide eyes from mostly half-dressed girls, almost daring someone to step in. She'd take them, she thought. She'd take anyone, anyone at all, she'd fight them all at once if she had to and she'd win because she was right.

"Danni called me a traitor," she said.

"I didn't," Danni sobbed. "I didn't, Mina."

Mina kicked at the girl but missed, her tennis shoe striking the lower part of the locker and again making that wonderful boom.

"That's not what your dad said," Mina said.

"Please," Danni said, "Mina, please, why are you doing this?"

She sounded almost genuine, and Mina was struck for a second by that. What if Danni had made a mistake of her own, and an innocent one? What if she'd told her dad about the debates and had said merely that she didn't know where Mina stood, or what if she even had given a more accurate portrayal, but her dad had misunderstood? Or what if her dad had heard it from somebody else, some other parent? He was supposed to know things. That was his job. Maybe Danni was getting what Heather deserved.

Mina looked at the girl on the floor, considering her options. She could haul Danni up, then smash her into the locker yet again, face-first this time. She could lash out with her foot again, aim for the ribs or somewhere else easy to hit. She could lift her foot and stomp down.

She could acknowledge that she could be wrong and apologize.

Mina pursed her lips, and bent over a little, and extended her hand. Danni blinked through her tears, uncertain, but grasped Mina's hand desperately and allowed herself to be helped to her feet. Mina nodded to her, smiled, then twisted Danni's arm for a better angle and smashed the girl's face into the locker once more. Danni cried out, and this time a streak of blood was left along the dull grey metal, blood dribbling out of Danni's nose, drops of blood speckling the floor.

Maybe Mina was wrong, but probably she wasn't. And besides, she couldn't fight Danni's dad. She couldn't fight someone whose identity she didn't know. But she could fight—well, beat—Danni.

Mina bent over to haul the girl up once more, but a murmur swept through the observers and then Coach Kirkwood was there, grabbing Mina roughly by the back of her own shirt and pulling her bodily away from her victim.

It was all downhill from there.

Mina's suspension was a week long, and that was lucky. It was the same time that would have been added to her service for the incident, the principal told her, had she been a few years older. She escaped expulsion due to a number of factors: she was young, her record was clean, she came from a good family, and Danni said nothing to counter Mina's assertion of having been provoked by slander.

The chewing-out from her father stung still, but it was more expected now, which robbed it of much of its power. He did not praise her tactics, as she had half-expected him to. He told her he was worried about her, told her that what she had done—even if she was right—was not the way to go about settling problems, told her that if anything this would just cause him more trouble at work. The knot in Mina's throat wasn't so tight this time. She let herself not care so much. Her father had always had all the answers, and she had loved and admired that, but it seemed now that sometimes this meant he would espouse different ideologies in different circumstances. Mina decided that she'd just have to pick for herself, then. She picked the ones that made sense, that felt right, just like he'd taught her.

In class, she explained that there had been a real push for term limits. "Lincoln didn't, Washington wouldn't, Roosevelt shouldn't," she said. She didn't really understand or care that much about term limits, didn't think it would change anything, but she did her reading because she wanted to be right. She kept Danni's gaze and smiled.

By the time Mina moved away from home, she rarely spoke to any of her relatives.

Mina's aunt and uncle were named Rebecca and Rubin, respectively, though Rebecca preferred "Becky." They were middle-aged, even more so than her real parents, and they made poor surrogates. Their last name was Stewart. Becky was Mina's mother's older sister, and she lacked ambition, a trait shared by her husband. They worked low-level office jobs, bitched about them constantly, but made no material efforts to improve their position. This pattern held when it came to Mina: they told her not to steal and cause scenes and accumulate suspensions, but as long as she promised that she'd stop they didn't bother to impose any material consequences upon her. This was something that, if she didn't respect, she at least liked about them. If anything she did was a big enough deal to fall back on their heads, yeah, they'd make it more of an issue, but otherwise they'd just suffer their charge in mild discomfort.

Rubin was the one who was spying on Mina more actively. Once a week, he'd call her parents and tell them what she'd been up to. He'd tried to spin it at first, but Mina's father was no fool, so now Rubin just gave a resigned report of her activities. He made token effort to keep this secret, placing the call when Mina was out of the house or seemingly occupied, but she'd caught him in the act often enough to know the score. Maybe he actually let her, thinking it would be further incentive to behave. If so, that displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation.

Rubin and Becky took care of Mina because they were paid to do so. It was her parents doing the paying. Mina had agreed to move out willingly, and her aunt and uncle had agreed to take her the same way, but she knew the real incentive had been financial. Rubin had driven an old, battered sedan when Mina moved in, but soon he had a nicer, newer SUV. Becky's jewelry collection seemed to expand every month or two. Exactly how much they were getting, Mina didn't know or care. They took care of her, fed her and provided her with some money of her own—not a stupendously generous allowance, but a little went a long way when you were good at nicking shit—and gave her space.

The resentment she held towards them was obligatory. They were caught in the crossfire, collateral damage, and like any good soldier Mina tried to minimize unnecessary civilian casualties. She'd wind them up, but at the end of the day she sort of liked them, and she thought they liked her when she wasn't explaining her evolving views on the flaws of the government or returning from a night out escorted by the police. They didn't have kids of their own, and Mina had never asked why, partially because she wasn't sure if it would hurt them or not. It wasn't like she wouldn't say it just because it would cause them distress, of course, but if it was a real stinger she didn't want to waste it casually. That sort of ammunition was best saved for special occasions.

The first boy Mina ever fucked dumped her when she told him that it got her really hot how much he bothered her aunt and uncle.

His name was Dennis but he went by Daniel. He was a year ahead of her, and he was one of the darkest-skinned kids in class. He wore glasses with circular lenses, and had an actual goatee, and he was smart and quiet and good at staying out of trouble while having an air like he had to make use of that skill a lot, and all of this made him very interesting to Mina. They started talking at the end of her sophomore year, and while they had no interaction over the summer come the start of the next year they fell back into touch, and soon he rather hesitantly asked her out. She'd dated before and had boyfriends before, sort of, but mostly just in passing, even though she'd kind of been thinking she wanted something more serious for a while.

They'd been together maybe three weeks when it happened, had gone to a few movies where Mina had gone ahead and bought a ticket and then slipped around to a side door to let Daniel in and then they'd stayed through their movie and then slipped over to another theater afterwards to make it a double feature for the price of a single ticket, eating concession stand style candy liberated from Dollar Tree and smuggled into the place in Daniel's book bag. There had been other dates, getting coffee (and no way around paying for that) and just hanging out and walking around and kissing, but this one was different.

This time, Mina was at his house, which was actually a medium-sized apartment. The plan had been to meet his family, but it turned out his parents and kid sister were at a birthday party or something that nobody had told him about and would be gone for a couple hours, so they sat around in his room for a while talking about how awful school and a lot of the people there were, and then they started making out, lying on his bed pressed against each other, and Mina sort of on a whim grabbed his hand and slid it up the back of her skirt to cup her ass. When he hooked his fingers under the waistband of her panties, she was taken a little aback, and even more when he slid them down, and this hadn't been what she'd been planning at all but it was strange and new and exciting and dangerous and it wasn't as good as she'd been expecting but she didn't regret it later. It would get better over time, she thought, and it did a little bit. It was risky, and Daniel had mixed feelings about it even though he was more experienced; his other girlfriends had had him wear condoms but Mina said it would be okay as long as he pulled out and that mostly worked okay and the one time they messed up she laughed and said that it was okay, if she got pregnant it'd just mean she'd get a little more leeway before her service started or maybe some cushy office job and that actually did get her thinking a little but Daniel got a friend to go to the drugstore and pick up some pills and Mina had to admit she was a bit relieved.

She should've seen the end coming sooner. It was when she brought Daniel around to meet her aunt and uncle that things got messy. She already knew they were a little apprehensive about it—they'd seen Daniel when dropping her off at school, and she'd given them a few details, and she hoped her father was blowing his top even though he'd never actually seemed that personally interested in race.

Daniel borrowed his family's car to drive Mina home from school, thinking he'd make a good impression. On the way, Mina said he should pull over, she really wanted to suck his cock so her family would smell him on her breath. This look somewhere between lust and horror passed over Daniel's face, and eventually one side took over and he pulled them into an old parking garage, and Mina sucked his cock but when she was done he handed her a tin of Altoids from the glove compartment and she ate three without complaint, crunching them and then inhaling and savoring the way the air felt so cold on her tongue it actually hurt.

All through dinner, Rubin and Becky were polite, but too polite, polite like they didn't know how to deal with their discomfort and so were over-compensating. Mina made sure to hang off of Daniel whenever possible, to kiss him on the cheek at every opportunity, to stand behind him and drape her arms over his chest. Her caretakers would look the other way or cough, but they didn't tell her to knock it off. Maybe they were afraid, though of what she couldn't say. She didn't even know precisely what their objection was, whether they were racist themselves or whether they were apprehensive about what Mina's father would do when he heard or whether they just didn't know how to grapple with her blossoming interest in romance. She didn't care. She loved the reaction, and after she and Daniel had excused themselves following a silent dessert they sat in the car, chatting in the relative privacy. They were supposed to be going out to the movies, but a few blocks from the house Daniel pulled over and admitted that he'd been petrified the whole evening.

"Fuck them," Mina said, and then she smiled at him and leaned over and added, "Fuck me."

But Daniel wasn't feeling it. He wasn't feeling the movies, either, or much of anything except maybe to talk about what all had happened and he couldn't find the words. So they parted, and Mina cruised around the neighborhood alone for a couple hours and went home and lied that the movies had been great.

"He seemed like a nice young man," Becky said, and Mina said, "Thanks," and everyone knew that they were just being polite.

And then a few days later, Daniel did find the words, and he didn't think the whole thing was quite as sexy as Mina did, and she found herself single again and when she passed him in the halls after that she made sure to look the other way. He entered his service immediately after graduation, and Mina wanted to wish him luck or something, even though she had moved through a number of other romantic partners by then, but she didn't. She just imagined a world in which she said goodbye.

Mina's first sentencing was in the giant white courthouse, and she was still naive enough to be afraid. She'd had encounters with the police before, slaps on the wrist for vandalism and boosting little things, but generally her age and appearance and family pedigree had kept her from receiving more than a stern talking-to and token admonishment from her guardians.

Somewhere in there, though, someone had actually taken her name down and entered it into some kind of official file. She didn't understand the specifics, but she did understand the result: a whole lot of hand-wringing and drama over a can of spray paint and the back of the laundromat building down the street. Really, Mina felt sort of slighted by the whole thing; had she known she'd end up actually for-real arrested, she thought, she would've sprayed the front of the building instead.

She dressed nicely for her court appearance, in a pale pink dress that she hated. Her aunt had bought it for her as a gift, and she'd worn it precisely once since, because she thought it made her look young and docile. That was to her advantage in this situation, however, and indeed it would become her courthouse dress soon enough. She'd toyed with the idea of wearing a suit, but anything that seemed nonconformist was likely to play poorly with the judge, and she wasn't self-destructive enough to throw away advantages needlessly.
There was no jury to convince. Mina had, following the advice of her uncle—which she was sure actually came from her father—accepted a deal which included an admission of guilt for a class three misdemeanor charge of "Criminal Mischief," whatever that meant. Mina actually sort of liked the sound of "Criminal Mischief," but she did not like the vagueness of the range of punishments.

Judge Linda Loper was a stern older woman, with grey hair pulled into a tight bun and outrageously large glasses and a mole beside her lip. She gave Mina an opportunity to speak for herself, and Mina turned on the waterworks like she normally did, claimed she'd been stressed out by school and frustrated in her artistic ambitions and it had been a mistake, such a huge mistake, she wasn't like this normally, honest, promise.

Her display pretty clearly made Becky and Rubin, standing behind her, uncomfortable. Mina heard them shifting, and she knew what they were thinking: everything Mina was saying was total bullshit. Her only remorse was that she'd gotten caught, and she'd be right back to her destructive tricks as soon as the heat died down. They couldn't say this, though, couldn't sell her down the river, because that would reflect just as poorly on them.

When the sentencing finally came, the judge looked at Mina for a long time. Finally, she spoke.

"You're a bright young woman," she said. "I can tell. You come from a good family, and whatever troubles you're facing, I hope and pray that you can look inside yourself and defeat them. That being said, actions have consequences, and in this case your consequence is as follows: One day will be added to your mandatory service."

Mina held her breath, waited for the other shoe to drop, as behind her, Becky let out a little gasp.

"Here is what I want," Judge Loper continued. "The military is a right of passage. When you serve, you will form bonds with your comrades. You will come to trust each other, to depend on each other, to put your lives in each other's hands. You will start training with a whole group of others, just like you. For five years, you will live together, fight together, and together put yourselves on the line for our country. It is an honor and a privilege, but a burden as well.

"After five years, your friends, your comrades, will either go home or begin their second terms. Everyone who's been with you from the start will leave, but not you. You will spend one more day there, alone, and you will spend that day thinking about why you have been separated from your fellows. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone can change their direction in life. You can be so much more. If you've made the most of your opportunities, then that last day shouldn't be so bad. There will be shame, but also pride, pride that you are at last washing clean the sins of your youth.

"But if you have not corrected your course, then that one extra day will be the first of many. It will be the first day of the rest of your life, and it will set the tone of your entire existence.

"Is that clear?"

"Yes, your honor," Mina said. And then Judge Loper smiled, convinced perhaps that she'd scared Mina straight, and they were all very moved together by the moment, the redemption of the good girl gone wrong. Rubin put his hand on Mina's shoulder and squeezed, and she smiled, and they all thanked the judge profusely.

But Mina was lying still. What was welling up inside her was not gratitude or introspection, but hurt and humiliation and resolve. As they exited the chamber, Mina stuck a stick of gum in her mouth, chewing vigorously, sucking the sharp mint taste away until she was left with a wad of colorless flavorless matter, which she disposed of, when her guardians' backs were momentarily turned, by pressing hard into the ornate scrollwork running the length of the main hallway.

The first girl Mina ever fucked she ended up dumping because her aunt and uncle weren't bothered by the situation at all.

The girl was called Nina Russell, and Mina picked her despite her upsettingly similar name because she seemed safe. Nina went to East High School, not National Summit, and she was quiet not in a shy or studious way but merely a reserved one. She was a friend of a friend and an open lesbian, and she was very pretty, a couple inches shorter than Mina and somehow both curvier and more graceful, with the widest brown eyes and curly hair that fell to her shoulders and magically never got in her face.

Mina was very apprehensive at first, for a number of reasons. She thought that she was just dabbling, maybe, that she wasn't actually attracted to girls—never mind sporadic evidence to the contrary throughout most of her life—and was just trying for something new and forbidden that she'd hate and regret. Indeed, she wasn't totally sure of herself until a few weeks into their relationship when she found herself sitting naked on Nina's pink-sheeted bed, the girl's ears tickling her thighs as the feeling of an unexpected breath made Mina blush a deep deep red. Okay, she thought, as her girlfriend's—and that was a strange concept still, having a girlfriend instead of just being a girlfriend—tongue and fingers brushed gently over her and into her, okay, this is alright. I like this. I'm not faking and I like this.

Mina found that she also enjoyed reciprocating, enjoyed the different flow of sex and love, and for a while she thought that maybe what she and Nina had would be something more and mean something more than what had come before. This was what Mina told herself every time, though, and all too soon the fissures started to show.

Rubin and Becky liked Nina a lot. They liked that her name was so similar to Mina's. They liked that she was quiet and they certainly liked that she didn't get into trouble with her school or the police, that she never stole anything or broke anything just because she could and the world made her angry.

"Why don't you have Nina over for dinner?" Becky would say, whenever she thought Mina was in danger of working herself into a mood, because Nina didn't like it when Mina was a petulant bitch and would tell her as much. And Mina would sometimes have Nina over, but sometimes she'd pretend to call but not do so, and she was torn by frustration because if she was avoiding having her girlfriend around that wasn't good, but she needed space sometimes too, to burn off her feelings in ways that Nina wouldn't care for.

The whole fact of Mina dating a girl barely even rated a passing mention, and that was frustrating because Becky and Rubin were so awkward, so on edge about so many other things, but in this one area they skewed towards not even just apathy but support. Sometimes, Mina thought they actually liked Nina more than her.

Mina had picked Nina because the girl was safe, but that had been with an eye towards having a calm port amidst the storm that was the rest of her life. Instead, they formed a stable ship on a smooth sea in a sheltered bay with not a hint of wind in sight, and while for some that might be ideal, Mina felt the doldrums coming on and within a couple months was panicking. Nina didn't like the same things Mina did. Nina worried about her, told her she should try to avoid getting in so much trouble, told her not to steal, not to fight. Nina thought that getting extra time slapped onto one's service wasn't something to laugh off.

"That's your life," she'd say. "Those are extra days you'll be in danger. And we probably won't be serving together, so it's more time apart."

It finally came to a head when Mina was getting dressed and preparing to take off after an afternoon at Nina's house—they spent most of their time at Nina's house, because she only had one parent, a dad, and he worked evenings so they were mostly unsupervised. Nina didn't feel comfortable with the idea of fucking at Mina's house when there was a chance, no matter how slim, that Becky might burst in with a tray of cookies.

"Next time," Mina said, as she adjusted her bra, "we should bring someone else too."

"Um," Nina said, looking up from the foot of the bed, where she was searching for the t-shirt Mina had mostly playfully thrown as far as she could, "what?"

"You know," Mina said. "Like, we get a guy and give him a really great day."

The truth was, Mina didn't actually know any more than Nina must've. She knew her way around the internet, had watched some stuff she was sure her family wouldn't approve of, knew that sex didn't necessarily involve only two people, but this idea was coming almost on a whim. She'd heard the terms "polyamory" and "threesome" but hadn't thought about them much beyond as academic curiosities. Mostly, she was trying to figure out some way to push back against the dreariness that was mounting. She liked Nina. She really did. Nina was sweet and kind and loving in a way that blew Mina away sometimes, and she had a quiet cleverness that most of the world didn't get to see, but that was the whole problem. So maybe, Mina thought, maybe they could just do something crazy, spice things up, and pick a thing that was absolutely goddamn sure to piss off her family if they found out about it, which she would make sure they did, with the added bonus of making Nina appear edgy and dangerous and an accomplice instead of a good influence.

"Um," Nina said, very quietly, "I'll think about it."

And when she called, four hours later when Mina was getting ready for bed, thought about it she had. Nina's voice warbled, like she wasn't sure whether to cry or scream, and of course she landed in the middle and did neither, just sounded moderately upset. Mina hated that.

"I don't want other people," Nina said, "I want you. Just you. I don't like guys, Mina."

Maybe another girl, then? Mina suggested, and that broke through, and she got the tears she wanted, and the shouting, and all the time Nina was pushing the same message: I love you, I love you, I don't want to share you, I just want us to be happy together, why do you have to be so crazy and destructive all the time?

What Mina should've said was "I love you too, or at least I like you a lot, and that's why this has to end." What she should've said was, "What I need and what you need, those are so different, and it hurts but I just don't think we're right for each other right now." The paths to the inevitable end result were countless, but what Mina settled on was:

"I'm sorry, Nina, but you're boring. You're just not adventurous at all."

Mina's first real fight since middle school was over almost as soon as it began, and she won.

Mina and three classmates had been at a Starbucks, working on a group project. The tension had already been rising, because Kathryn Pohl (who demanded she be called Kate) had been forced to stoop below her lofty station and work with those who held something less than a perfect 4.0. Mina was normally content to let the teacher's pets take the lead, but in this specific case they were working on a history presentation on the causes for the United States' entrance into the first World War and Mina just wasn't comfortable with the level of brownnosing Kate seemed to think would secure high marks. The other two members of the group, a weedy boy named Delbert Wagner and a fat girl named Dora Matherly, were no help—Delbert was always distracted on his phone and would make vague, noncommittal noises even when directly queried, while Dora would decree literally anything said to her "a good point," and agree with whoever spoke to her most recently.

Nothing had been resolved over their two hour session. What work had been done was scattered and of poor quality, and Delbert had bailed fifteen minutes early, leaving Kate and Dora and Mina there to awkwardly accomplish more nothing. And so, when finally the three left, it was in a universally dark mood.

It could have ended there. It should have ended there. But all three girls took the bus, and from the same stop, and it was winter with snow softly falling and black ice caking the roads and the buses were late even by Denver RTD standards, so they had to sit together and stew. For a while, they were like that, a bench sized for four, with Mina on one end, an empty space, then Dora, then Kate. Puffs of condensation issued from their mouths. Mina blew big ones like she was smoking a cigar.

"I'll just do it," Kate finally said, standing. Mina blew a puff. Kate was a big girl, not in that she was fat, but that she was tall, at least four inches taller than Mina, and well-built. She was in some sort of junior cadet thing, which she liked to talk about enough that Mina had learned quickly to tune out details.

"Um," Dora said, "do what?"

"The project," Kate said. "I'll just do it myself."

"Oh, right." Dora was buried in a huge puffy coat and a scarf and was actually wearing snowpants, which Mina hadn't tolerated in about half a decade. It wasn't even that bad of weather, and as far as she knew Dora wasn't going to zip off and go sleeding on the way home. Mina had on a skirt, granted worn over tights and longer than she might normally have favored and paired with a wool coat. Kate was dressed more like Mina was, except her clothes all fit perfectly and her shoes were somehow clean even after walking through the snow.

"That sounds like a good idea," Dora continued, nodding.

Kate looked at Mina, challenging, but Mina was paying attention to the cars rolling past, wondering whether they'd all make it home safely or not. She imagined a fiery wreck, bloodied bodies blackened by flame, and all the while the snow falling. She imagined Kate one of those corpses, crushed up inside an SUV.

"I'll just write out what everyone has to say," Kate said, "and you can read it off. And you should be fine, because nobody else will be doing well either."

"Okay," Dora said. "I can do that."

"I'm not worried about you." Kate stepped over in front of Mina, interposing herself so as to block the view of the street. "You'll play nice, right, Mina? You'll read what I write and then we'll be out of each other's hair with good grades."

"Nah." Mina shrugged. Her hands were in her pockets, to keep warm, and balled into fists, also to keep warm. "I'll say what I want."

"You'll—" Kate started, taking a step forward and reaching out and laying her hand on Mina's shoulder, and just like that Mina's instincts kicked in and she shot up from her seated position and drove her elbow into Kate's solar plexus. The girl coughed, her eyes bugging out and her mouth gaping open so she looked especially stupid, and she stumbled backwards and fell on her ass in the snow and Mina thought, should've worn snowpants too, huh?

Dora screamed and Mina took a look at her, and one at Kate who was still on the ground, clutching her belly and whimpering and maybe starting to cry.

"I guess I'll go to the next stop," Mina said.

She felt powerful as she walked away, like she'd just taken a real, material step towards freedom. She felt a good deal less powerful when she failed the project, booted from the group and tossed into detention because of something that Kate told the teacher. So far as Mina could tell, the physical fight was never explicitly mentioned to anyone, which she could respect, and she could also respect when, two weeks later, Kate sucker-punched her as she stepped out of the stall in the restroom and left her crumpled on the tile, quietly sobbing just like the other girl had done.

"Why do you do this?" That was the question on everyone's tongues. Her judges, her teachers, her relatives, her classmates, they all wanted to know why Mina couldn't hold herself together, often even in the face of immediate repercussions. She gave many answers. "Because I'm right," she'd say, or "because nobody else will stick up for them," or "because it's fun," or "I don't even know."

But she did know. It was a conversation she was having, albeit a decidedly one-sided one. Every suspension, every lecture, every arrest, every sentencing was another punctuation mark, another interjection or rejoinder.

I loved you, dad, Mina was saying. I loved you and you betrayed me.

No matter how hard I try, I'll never forget what you did.

So you're not allowed to forget about me either.