Please search the song 'Kangaroo Cry' by Blue October while reading this. It adds to the reading experience.
Kangaroo Cry
The letter was sitting on his desk when he'd come home from school that day.
It was fairly obvious. Just sitting there on the plastic top of his desk, wide enough to contain any form of acceptance that seemed to need infinitely more room than a rejection. His name was printed on the front—Ethan Lawrence Morgan, 28 Orchard Circle, White Chapel, Virginia.
That wasn't anything strange. Most letters, actually, whatever letters were still being sent after the advent of the Internet, had printed recipient and sender addresses. And since he'd turned 15, his father had begun putting his letters on his desk instead of just yelling for him to get it from the kitchen table.
What was different about this letter, the one that was oh-so-obvious against the plastic top of his desk even among the clutter and mess otherwise filling the space, was what it stood for.
So many paths extended from this point. He'd been studying modern theories on time and it's inner workings, as it had so much to do with his life in a way it had no affect on any other. His particular favorite was time envisioned as an infinite tree that continued to collapse upon itself.
The past was singular and unchangeable—the trunk of the tree. Nothing he said or did would change it. The present, with the choices and split decisions he was to make in the space of mere seconds, was the first break between branches.
Each branch, one following a path that only differed because of the choice he'd made in the present, extended towards the future, breaking more and more infinite times, each break symbolizing a choice, until all that was left were near-microscopic twigs.
For the shortest amount of time countable, just after the past and before he made his choice in the present, the tree stood still, it's twigs immobile until his decision was made. Once it was made, the first branch that was chosen became part of the trunk, the rest fell away, and what was once the second split became the first. The cycle then repeated itself with a different set of choices, different consequences, different branches and twigs but always the same trunk.
Two main branches grew from the trunk that ended at that letter. He could rethink his decision and throw the letter into the well-used shredder underneath his desk and follow one branch, or he could climb the second and pick up the letter and open it.
Throw it down or pick it up. So many consequences stemming from each side, pros and cons were impossible to weigh.
Throw it down or pick it up. His friends and family were of no help. He didn't want them to affect his decision. He wanted his choice to be final before he made his announcement, so they wouldn't be able to make him change his mind. His father probably knew of the choice he was making now, but Ethan knew he respected him enough to let him make the choice on his own.
Throw it down or pick it up. His mother and sister would cry, he knew it.
Throw it down or pick it up. Benny would probably break something.
Throw it down or pick it up. Rory… he didn't know what Rory would do.
Throw it down or pick it up. He didn't even want to think about what Sarah would do.
Throw it down…
…Or pick it up.
Down.
Or up.
Up.
Or down.
Up.
Down.
Down.
Up.
Heaven.
#ell.
Life.
Death.
Warm.
Cold.
Light.
Dark.
Peace.
War.
Ethan picked the letter up.
"You did what?"
Three voices screeched as one and Ethan forced himself not to wince. His ears had always been a little more sensitive than most, though, so it took a lot of self-control—something he took pride in having a lot of.
He stood tall in the middle of his living room, his shoulder back and his spine straight. His feet were pressed together tightly, heel to heel and toe to toe. He kept his head level, meeting his loved ones' eyes squarely and not looking away.
He'd made his decision. He was not backing out.
Out of the four other shapes in the room, only one was sitting. That one had his salt-and-pepper head inside his hands, his elbows propped against his knees. Part of Ethan begged to know what his father's face looked like, whether he had some sort of familial support in this or whether he was totally alone.
He'd made his decision. He was not backing out.
His mother, his sister, and his best friend since before kindergarten were on their feet. Like he's guessed, his mother was dissolving into tears, salty water pouring form her eyes and making wet trails down her soft cheeks. Jane was staring at him incredulously without blinking, as if removing her gaze even for that short amount a time would replace him with the thing he wished to become, or worse, the thing he hoped against all hope he would not become.
His chosen branch led to both futures. But he'd made his decision. He was not backing out.
Benny was neither crying nor in denial. He was furious. The 19-year-old was on his feet, and was shouting unintelligible words in every language he knew—and he knew several languages—and throwing his arms around erratically. An unfortunate sidetable found itself in the path of his tirade. A blink later, it was in the kitchen, the leg it had landed on broken off and splintered several times, the ceramic lamp that had been on top of it shattered into pieces sharp enough to draw blood.
He made his decision. He was not backing out.
"I made my decision. I am not backing out. No matter what you say."
He heard and saw his mother begging and pleading. He heard and saw his sister scream and cry, felt her cling to him desperately, and watched as she stormed from the room. He heard and saw Benny come up into his face, looking down at his puny head five feet, eleven inches off the ground from his immense six-foot-five height, roaring at him, calling him names and saying things they both knew he would never think otherwise.
He never took his eyes off of their faces until they were out of sight. He never flinched as Benny shouted at him, just kept his gaze on his friend's tearful and livid grey eyes.
"My decision. I am not backing out."
Ethan sat against the old angel statue in the cemetery in the very center of White Chapel, running his fingers through the prickly grass and feeling the biting, cool breeze blow through his slightly overgrown ebony locks.
He plucked a yellow blade from the ground and began twirling it around his middle finger and thumb, watching as the tiny piece of plantlife began to roll itself into a tiny tube.
The willow trees around him, weeping over the bodies laying beneath even their roots in the spring and summer, had died last October and shriveled to dead, black skeletons sharp against the pale blue sky.
Even the grey gravestones he knew so well looked different now—sharper, more defined, and above all, greyer. The nippy February air was acting with his eyes and pulling things into even better focus than usual, a more pronounced effect than it gave others.
Dry leaves left behind from the fall followed the path of the otherwise invisible breeze, picked up from the lines around untended gravestones that presided over forgotten bodies and memories, tossed head over heels countless times, and thrown across the grass, reaching for some goal they would never reach.
Ethan sighed and felt backwards, his jacket sleeve tugging slightly uncomfortably as his bare, cold hand touched the nearly frozen granite he was sitting against. He looked up—the angel statue had not changed.
She was still kneeling on a pedestal so ancient that the words that had been inscribed upon it had faded away, her wings still drooped over the back of that same granite cube, and her same, perfectly carved hands covered what would've been the same, perfect face.
So much more had changed though. He looked around the abandoned graveyard. Four years ago, this would have been the last place in town to be empty. Teenagers in dark clothing and glasses, if the sun had chosen to show its face that day, would be skulking around the wooded edges and hidden behind the rows of names and dates.
It would not have been this quiet. Fighting sounds would've erupted from some corner, a human bravely fighting for his life and soul with his fists and feet, or a small animal battling for the same cause with tooth and claw.
His mind unwillingly escaped back into past memories. Four years ago, in the middle of the August sun, he, Benny, and Sarah had hidden behind the large gravemarker there and watched as a group of darkly-dressed teenagers dug into this very spot and retrieved a small, ancient box with an easy to mispronounce Latin name.
Ethan closed his eyes and his mind to the memory. That was four years ago. Life was so much more difficult at eighteen than it had been at fourteen. It had been simple then—keep your grades up, keep the evil in White Chapel down, watch both with a careful eye and try not to embarrass yourself in the middle of the school. None of the above were easy, but it was nothing compared to the load now hefted upon him with adulthood impending at the end of the schoolyear.
Why couldn't things be simple again?
"Why can't I be fourteen forever?" he asked, looking to the unblemished winter sky for an answer that was not forthcoming.
"Be careful what you wish for."
Ethan jumped and automatically reached for the enchanted dagger sitting on his ankle—four years of sneak attacks from the evil undead and magical that came to White Chapel like mosquitoes to a bug zapper had given him that instinct—not expecting a voice to answer his mostly rhetorical question.
"Hey, relax, nerdboy," Sarah said with a chuckle, holding up her hands in surrender. Ethan relaxed his muscles as if on command and smiled hesitantly as she sat down next to him.
The two of them sat together for a moment, watching the silent graveyard with the eyes of passersby—that's all they were, passersby through time. After they, well, Ethan, was gone, the graveyard would still exist. And so would Sarah, as long as no one tried the impossible and came at her with a wooden stake.
Even if he were dead at the time that happened, he would rise from his grave and bring whatever psycho tried to hurt her back down with him.
"How'd you know I was here?" Ethan asked, his head following a single brown leaf as it tumbled its way over the grass.
Sarah shrugged. "This is where you go to think, nerdboy." She turned and smiled at him slightly. "And you have a lot to think about, huh?"
Ethan snorted. She had no idea. "And I guess I can't call you nerdboy anymore, can I?" she continued. "Nerdboys don't feel the need to do what you did. Nerdboys aren't that…"
"Stupid? Crazy? Idiotic and suicidal? Trust me, Benny's already…"
"Honorable," Sarah said, cutting him off. He stared at her, surprised and slightly confused. He'd thought she would… hate him for this choice. "Brave. Decent. Fearless. Patriotic."
Ethan shook his head. "I am by no means fearless, Sarah." He sighed and leaned his head against the cold granite pedestal, closing his eyes and letting his mental defenses fall. This woman knew him like no other person on Earth did, except maybe Benny. He didn't have to keep secrets from her, and he knew she would respect his decision, somehow. He just knew. She wouldn't use anything to try and change his mind. "I'm... to be honest, I'm terrified."
Sarah nodded, as if absorbing the words like a sponge. "Good. That proves you're still human." She put a hand on his shoulder, met his eyes carefully as he looked at her, and smiled. "But if not fearless, then faithful."
"Always faithful," Ethan said lowly, turning his head away from his friend's gaze for the first time that night, looking into the grass below him, an unending maze of yellow strands mixed into each other. "Semper fidelis."
"Semper fi," Sarah nodded. "I don't think I ever told you, or anyone, for that matter, but… my dad was a Marine." Ethan's head snapped up to hers in surprise. "Yeah. And my grandpa before him. Great-grandpa before him… the line ended with me." She shrugged. "I was never Marine material, you know? There aren't many female Marines in the first place, and before my senior year, I would have never passed the fitness test. My dad's only regret was that he never got to pass on the dog tag chain to his son. He always made sure I knew he'd never trade me for anything, you know, but still. It was tradition."
The two settled into silence for another minute. "What… happened to him?" Ethan asked nervously. He had never seen Mr. Brightman around White Chapel before and his location was something of a source of gossip and legend around the town.
The woman bowed her head slightly. "I talk to him every day," she told him softly. "No matter what, if I have to wait til the dead of night or the wee hours of morning, I always find a time to talk to him."
Ethan nodded. "I think I'd like that, when I get shipped overseas. For someone to talk to me, everyday. That way I'd remember that I'm fighting for something, you know? That what I'm doing, what I'll eventually be going through is for a good cause and for good reason. It'd help, I guess."
Sarah smiled proudly. "When you get shipped overseas?" she repeated. "Not 'if'?"
He shook his head. "I got the acceptance letter this morning and told my family and Benny a couple hours ago… one of whom I'm sure called you, which is why you're almost 100 miles from Georgetown when you should be in a class." Sarah scoffed uncaringly and Ethan smiled. One of Sarah's philosophies was that, as an immortal, classes could always be retaken. Emergencies involving friends took precedence every time, no matter what.
"I'm due at bootcamp after I get my diploma," he continued. "A few weeks after that, I'll be shipped out. The Corps works quickly, you know."
Sarah nodded. "I know." She turned and cupped his cheek with one of her hands. Ethan's eyes widened slightly. "I know what it seems like, with your family and Benny right now, but don't you doubt it. They're almost as proud of you as I am right now."
"Almost?"
She smirked. "Because no one in history could've ever had more pride in you than I do at this moment, Ethan Morgan," she told him frankly. "You'll be fighting for peace and for good, just like you do here—but in a bigger, grander scale."
Ethan smiled. "…Thanks, Sarah."
She leaned in closer to the boy she'd babysat her senior year of high school and gently pressed her lips to his. It was a short kiss, one of someone crossing the bridge between the lands of friend and love, chaste and sweet and so full of promise for the future that Ethan nearly fell into a vision…
…or that could've been the normal, warm weightlessness he felt whenever she touched him.
"You're welcome, nerdboy."
Ethan opened his eyes and saw Sarah walk away from the angel statue in the no longer empty graveyard. He smiled contentedly, weights on his shoulders and heart lifting easily into the air at the mere memory of the first kiss he'd just had.
"…I should've enlisted ages ago."
-May-
Ethan sighed and sat against the cheap plastic seat, holding his olive green duffel bag on his knees. Through the window, he saw Sarah, his parents, Jane, Rory, and Grandma Weir waving at the olive green schoolbus that had been claimed by the Corps, unsure which man clad in olive green was the one they were saying their farewells to.
He smiled ruefully and picked up his hand, chuckling as an excited Jane pointed to the window and tugged on her parents' sleeves—they'd been waving at some poor stranger who was probably thinking they were a pair of psychos right about now.
Ethan looked past the small group standing outside the bus and up to the looming brick building of White Chapel High School and the spreading trees to every side of it. Less than a week ago, he'd walked across a stage inside the theater inside that building and taken ahold of the piece of paper that told the world that he had finished his twelve years of schooling, finished his childhood and teenagerdom, finished his life at White Chapel all together.
His time in the town was done. Jane and her friends would take over on the vampire front, fighting evil when it came knocking and welcoming those who sought refuge from that same evil. It was up to some other computer-savvy troublemaker to rig the PA system in the school now. Some stranger would have the locker he occupied for the last four years of his life now.
A different time in his life had begun. One filled with the color olive green and absolutely no magic. One surrounded with buzz cuts and shiny dog tags, guns and helmets, with respect and dignity even in the mud and grime of war. It was up to him to protect the innocent again, but innocents he'd never even glimpsed at before, innocents from an entirely different continent. It was up to him to represent his country, up to him to stay loyal and true to the very death.
It was up to him to stand alone in the chaos he was about to voluntarily enter.
"That your family?"
Ethan turned and saw the new recruit sitting behind him looking expectantly at his face. He was a thin boy of African descent with his hair cut in a short curly style that reminded him of an afro after someone had pulled out a lawnmower. His eyes were wide and brown and his jaw was slightly too thin for his head, but he seemed nice.
"Yeah. Mom, Dad, sis, friends, neighbor. Your's?"
He shrugged. "I'm from Becca's down on fourteenth."
Ethan winced inwardly. 'Becca's' was the short name for St. Rebecca's, an orphanage meant especially for military orphans who'd lost both their parents in the war. "I'm sorry."
"They died fighting for their country." He sat up a little straighter. "I've told everyone I've ever met since I got the news that I'll be a Marine just like my dad was. I'm that much closer, now."
"Congratulations. I'm Ethan."
"Tom."
After a relative, amicable moment of silence, Tom spoke up again. "…We're gonna be Marine buddies, aren't we, Ethan?" Ethan turned and looked at the other man in surprise. Tom's face turned a light shade of red. "No one else I know from Becca's is enlisting in the Corps, and… I'd like a friend from White Chapel to talk with sometimes, you know?"
Ethan smiled and opened his mouth to reply with a positive answer when he was cut off.
"Ahem." They both looked up at the voice.
Standing in the aisle of the school bus, wearing an olive green uniform holding identical olive green duffel, was a 6'5" 19-year-old with a slightly-mad grin Ethan couldn't not remember.
"…Benny?" he asked in total, unrestricted shock.
"If you're gonna be his Marine buddy, you're gonna have to be mine too," Benny warned Tom, grinning to let him know he was joking. "We're basically brothers. Which means I can shove onto the seat next to him even if he's being a hog."
Ethan didn't care as Benny all but squished him into the wall of the bus. "…Benny? Ho… What are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "I signed up." Ethan's mouth dropped. "E. We've been joined at the hip since basically birth. I was planning on going to the same college as you and I'm not gonna let a little thing like a war keep us apart." He smiled. "Besides. Once I started thinking about why you must've done it, it started seemingly like a cool decision, you know?"
Ethan grinned. "Yeah, I guess. You stalker."
"Hey, I am not a stalker! Tom, was anything I said stalker-ish?"
Tom grinned at being included in the banter between two friends that had obviously known each other longer than he'd been alive.
"Only everything."
Ethan began cracking up as Benny started protesting loudly, spluttering indignantly and leaning over the seat to lightly punch their new friend in the shoulder.
He was right, the old chapter of his life finished as the bus started up and began to drive away, Benny still yelling at their new friend, who was rolling on his pleather seat, giggling. He looked outside the window once more and smiled as he saw Sarah still waving at the very front of the group he considered family. Trails of tears wound their way down her face from underneath her sunglasses, shining in the sunlight of the day so brightly he found that he could use them as an excuse as his own eyes began to water.
Her face was filled to the brim with emotion; sadness and pride, regret and satisfaction. Her lips were placed in a smile so small he had to squint to see it and though he couldn't see them, he knew her her beautiful brown eyes were wide and gleaming brighter than he'd ever seen them in his entire life. It was the saddest face he'd seen, but it was among the proudest, and he knew that the thing that would keep him going was that face, coupled with the happy one she would endow upon him when he returned.
He was right. The new chapter was beginning.
But he wasn't going it alone.
Sarah smiled sadly as she dropped her bag on her couch once she got to her house from saying goodbye to Ethan and Benny. They had been joking and laughing as they were driven away, so she knew they would be okay. Especially with that new friend of theirs, the black boy in the seat behind them.
She smiled as she passed the mantle in her living room, blowing a kiss to the object resting on it. She used to literally kiss it, but after the lipstick smudge started becoming harder to wash off, she stopped forcing luck.
Sarah sighed and sat down on the couch, looking at the starred-and-striped banner given to her years before she'd moved to White Chapel, folded into a neat triangle and placed inside the glass case.
"Hey, Daddy, guess what? Ethan and Benny joined the Marines today…"
Hey everyone.
I know things like this story are a little outside my normal parameters, but I missed celebrating the United States of America's 235th Fourth of July this year because of a thunderstorm that struck the town we were staying at for vacation. I didn't think much of it until last night, when I ran into the song, which I recognized from the NCIS soundtrack.
When a joey-a baby kangaroo-realizes it has lost its way, it lets out a cry that its mother can discern from all others. If the mother isn't within hearing range, it continues to give its cry even though the sound will eventually attract predators. It is considered one of the saddest sounds on the face of planet Earth.
Blue October took this information and wrote a song in dedication of all those courageous volunteers that make up the American Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, and the Marine Corps.
This story is also dedicated to them. When you find yourself down, remember the country you are serving and the people you are protecting, the friends and family that love you and the communities that welcome you, and smile, because we are thinking of you too. There are no words grateful enough to say to you.
Happy belated Fourth of July.
~Tibki