Hello everyone!!!!!! I'm backkkkkk!!!! Finally, right?! I am finishing up Ron's story. The basic concept is going to come out more, in the next, and last, few chapters. I think there will be about two more after this one. If you like it, review. If you don't, review. Get the pattern? LOL. Lana, thanks for the great reviews, and I luv Ben Affleck too, so I'll be starting a piece of fan fiction about him soon. Hope u like it. Ideas welcome. (As well as criticism!)




The vacation was over. Ron's family had returned from the paradise otherwise known as Hawaii. To her, Pearl Harbor was no longer a dreamed up and very much though about place in her mind. It was now a memory. Alive with vivid details and real true people. She and Helen had exchanged addresses on their last day. They had promised to write.

Promises however, are easily forgotten when an eight year old girl returns home and stays out till ten on warm summer evenings, chasing after Mickey and Danny. When everyday life resumes. So Helen's address sat safely in Ron's desk drawer.



Over the years, Ron slowly grew from a loud and spunky kid into a thoughtful and smart girl. But her curiosity never faded. And neither did her love of Pearl Harbor tales. She still loved to hear her father's voice, full of emotion and remembrance, tell tales of love and war. To her, war wasn't this heroic, courage filled story. It was a horror filled tragedy that had taken a piece of her parents, as well as Danny's father. She hated it, she hated it with all her heart.



"Boys and girls, your English teacher and I are collaborating on this project. It's worth 20% of both your English and History grades." The last sentence snapped the sleepy class out of the Twilight Zone. They groaned, in unison.

"But Ms. Hevrin!" Billy Mason moaned.

"Don't interrupt me, Billy. Please, do let me finish." All eyes were on the teacher, perhaps for the first time all year. "This is an essay, a five page essay." Another round of groans. She paused, waiting for them to die down.

"Of you family history. The essay is due, on my desk, next Monday. That gives you a full week." The class began whispering among themselves, who to write about. Only one girl, near the front of the classroom, remained quiet.

Her sun bleached blond locks were neatly braided, but a few loose curls fluttered freely around her face. Her deep hazel eyes looked beyond the teacher. In her mind, Ron remembered her father's pained expression when he spoke about the tragedies of war.

"I'll write the truth!" She whispered to herself fiercely. "I'll show them that it isn't some heroic fairy tale. They'll see . . ."


*****************

Lucky



I am extremely lucky. I have both a mother and a father. Doesn't fill out your definition of lucky? Perhaps you believe lucky is being rich? smart? beautiful? talented? For me, lucky is just having two parents. Why?

Because my brother doesn't.


"You're so beautiful it hurts." My father lay in my mother's lap while she nursed his broken nose.

"I think it's your nose that hurts." She replied, smiling.

"No. It's my heart." Her smile widened and my father stared in awe at her young and beautiful face.



They fell in love. Plain and simple. Complications were scheduled for a later date.



"Evelyn, I have to leave for England. I'm going to war."

"But you're in the US Air Force! They can't just ship you off to England!"

"They didn't. I volunteered."



My father wasn't "eager to die, just to matter". My parents kept in touch. They wrote many letters to each other. Soon after my father left, my mother and my father's best friend, Daniel Walker, got transferred to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

That's where they received the news. My father's plane had been shot down into the English Channel. Daniel, or Danny, had been the one to tell my mother the news, just as my father had wished. And that was that.

Until two months later, when my mother and Danny bumped into each other at the movie theater. They went out for dinner and ended up falling in love.

A few weeks later, my mother discovered that she was pregnant with Danny's baby. But she didn't want to tell him yet. That night, she stayed in the hospital a little later than usual.

When she left the building, my father stood before her. Flesh and blood. Alive. His plane had gone down, but he had gotten out and was rescued by some French fishermen. It had taken him three months to get to Pearl Harbor.

To see my mother. But he sensed that something wasn't right. And when he saw Danny, coming to tell my mother the news, he understood.

That night my father and Danny met in a bar. My father had gotten a bit drunk.



"You're a rotten drunk Rafe. You always were." Danny told him.

"Well, you're a rotten friend. That's a new development." My father responded.

They got in a fight that night, in the bar. When the police arrived they ran away in Danny's car. To the beach, where they talked. And fell asleep. That night was December 6th, 1941.

They awoke to the sound of airplanes being flown over their heads in the morning. Within minutes, until everyone realized what exactly was going on, bombs were dropping. Torpedoes were shooting through the water. Ships were exploding. Bodies were flying through the air. People screaming.



"Just get me to a god-damn airplane, Danny!" My father yelled.



Danny did. They both went up in two of the few airplanes that were left. They took down seven of the twenty nine Japanese planes that fell.

Meanwhile, my mother and all the other nurses tried to help all of the wounded sailors that were coming in. At the same time praying and hoping that their own sweethearts were still alive.

The air filled with putrid smells of burning flesh, sweat, and smoke. Fiery explosions lit up the sky, killing. Killing sailors. Killing children. Killing people. Killing.

After the attack died down, Danny and my father went to the hospital, where my mother was.



"What can we do, Evelyn?" They asked.

"Blood. We need blood."



She put IVs in their arms, and while their blood trickled into Coke bottles, they watched a feverish man die before their very eyes.

And then there was the Arizona. The watery grave of thousands of young sailors. They were buried, or sunken, alive. But nothing could be done. To this day, they lay there.

After this day, my father and Danny were asked to participate in a mission.



"Do you know what top secret is?" Colonel Doolittle asked them.

"Yes, sir." My father answered. "It's the kind of mission you get medals for. But they send them to your relatives."



The mission was later known as The Doolttle Raid. It required them to take off of aircraft carriers, close to the Japanese coast, fly over Japan, bomb Tokyo, and keep flying, to land in China.



"You're going to learn to get these planes up in 467 feet. Because at 468, you're dead." Doolittle warned them.



They learned. But getting the planes up wasn't the problem. Keeping them there was. Five hours before they were supposed to take off, Japanese ships neared their aircraft carriers. If their mission was to remain secret, they would have to take off immediately.

But they were father from the coast than they were supposed to be. And their planes would be too heavy if they carried the extra fuel. So they lightened their load. By throwing off their guns.

They bombed their targets, not knowing if they had enough fuel to make it to China. They did. But there were Japanese soldiers camped there. They landed.

Danny was shot twice in the chest by the Japanese.



"Danny, you can't die now! You know why, Danny? 'Cause you're going to be a daddy."

"No Rafe. You are."



They buried him in my backyard.

My brother's name is Daniel Walker Jr. Daniel Walker was his father. His father was taken by war.

I am extremely lucky. I have two parents. But pieces of them are missing. Like Danny's father; taken by war.





Ron tore her eyes from her paper, wanting to see some sort of reaction from her classmates.

She met their eyes silently. They sat, stunned for a long moment, blinking. Then they slowly raised their hands and began to clap.

Ron grinned happily and sighed mentally, with relief.

"Very good, Veronica." Ms. Hevrin looked truly surprised.

She had never thought that one of her sleepy pupils could possibly write something so powerful.

She got an A, loud and red sitting proudly on the first page. Her mother and father had tears in their eyes when she read it to them. Then she tucked it away, into an old cardboard box that held her favorite old stories and her proudest achievements. And it lay, forgotten, for a long time.