Collateral

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Authors: Ellen Hopkins

BOOK: Collateral
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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Ugly in Black

Poets Write Eloquently

Loving Any Soldier

Of Course, If You Ask

Too Late for Me

We Talk for an Hour

I Never Met Him

Still, to a Point

In the Meantime

Strange

Meaning Imagined Cheating

January 2007

I've Never Been Much of a Flirt

Something Special About That

I Had to Envy

It was Kind of Fun

So, Somehow

Ended Up

With a Kiss

My Bank Account

Game Well-Played

Tickets Purchased

I Save the Question

Every Soldier's Story

Celine's Story

So He's a Pog

The Music Stops

Easy Flirtation

My Beginning

At Least

Neither Did I Ask for Specifics

That Kind of Love

Breathless

When I Woke Up

Clutter Always Bothers Me

That Kind of Foreplay

Leviathan

Darian Lives

They Say Military Wives

She Glances at the Others

I'm Half-Worried

We Make It Safely

She Is Serious

As Kids

Laughter Snort-Chokes

The Great Thing

I'm Afraid to Ask

It Took Me

We Spent Our First Sunday

The Short Exchange

All Resistance Weakened

The “My”

Size Definitely Mattered

I Am, by Nature

Not Only Was he There

The Spaghetti

I Was Up in Time for Class

At the Time

A River

I've Never Considered Myself

I Can't Bring Myself

Her Family?

Not My Place

The Rules Are Simple

All Comfy in Blue Flannel

We Both Laugh

This Isn't Fun Anymore

Tired and Buzzed

Our First Year Together

School of Infantry

College

I Knew

Round Three

Love Can Complete You

I Did Get Regular Calls

All Signs Pointed

The Weight of Silence

The Timing

I'm at a Loss

I Start to Turn Away

The Real Question

I Manage

I Pace the Apartment

Slow Burn

In the Days

When Cole Arrived

As the Weeks Wore On

Some Time Later

An Uglier Mess Was Brewing

I Could Barely Watch the News

In Cole's Case

When I Finally Heard

Delusions

Secrets Suck

Silly Me

Now, This New Secret

I Nudge Harder

I Don't Blame

What Coalesces

I Am Over the Pacific

Spring Break 2008

At Least

After All That Hurrying

For the Next Week

We Did Pick Up

Rather Than Investigate

He Didn't Wait

By the Time

Saying Good-Bye

Oh, to Breathe You

As Wilderness

No Lei Awaits Me

He Won't Get the Message

They Turn Aggressive

I Decline

I Consider Leaving

Waiting for a Soldier

It Has Been Only

Five Minutes Ago

Cole and I Don't Argue

Our First Argument

In Retrospect

I Threw the Phone

By the Time I Finished

She Was Joking

I'd Like to Say

Which Set the Stage

We Made It Home Untoasted

He Wasn't Kidding

After Dinner

Rarely

One Thing You Learn

It Was the First Time

My First Instinct

I Was Genuinely Hurt

People Stare

I Leave Cole Dripping

I Was Always

So I Control

The Sound of Sirens

It Is Almost Noon

The Grunt Code of Honor

There's a Nice Picnic Area

After Lunch

Cole Left for Iraq

Cole's Battalion Touched Down

Living Conditions

I Combed the Internet

The Thing About Tequila

Every Now and Then

It Felt Anything But

It Was a Breeze-Soft Kiss

He Did not Apologize

His Care Package Wish List

Moving Targets

Evasion

That Thought

Two Hours of Sleep

He's So Sincere

He Doesn't Elaborate

The Door Closes

It's Insanely Bright

But by the Time

I Am in the Cab

Lance Corporal Gleason

I Didn't See Him

Play

I Was So Looking Forward

He Did Cough at Dinner

It Started Out Fine

He Left Something Unsaid

Spence Went Ballistic

In the Morning

You Can Take a Soldier Out of War

It's a Very Long Plane Ride

Men are Awful Communicators

As the Bags

I Go Straight to the Base

I Knock Gently

An Important Question Dangles

Her Voice Has Risen

When We Get to Her Townhouse

But I Can't Ask Her Now

Words Have Power

She Leaves the Calzone

Some Secrets Bite

Cole Had Met Dale

Dale's House

That Would Change

It Was a Memorable Christmas

But That Was the Last Thing

Cole's Mom

Probably a Valid Philosophy

Lara Was His College Sweetheart

I Folded the Green Sweater

I Started to Pace

I Was in a Shadowed Space

I Am by Nature

To Rage

It Has Been a Long While

Can't Be

I Haven't Seen

No Matter

Bone Weary

Being an Adult

Deep in the Dark Heart

I Stumble Through the Day

Of Course He Does

Why Is He

I Chalk It Up

The One Time

A Trip to Kansas

She Was Pissed

I Had to Hand It to Spence

I Have to Admit

The Reported Statistics

I Asked Cole Once

All of Those Men

War Is All Kinds of Ugly

They Say Truth

Wrong Thing to Say

I Go Into My Room

I Do Sleep Through

The Rest of the Week

I Don't Hear

Saturday Afternoon

The Sudden Sexual Tension

He's Nodding

The Parking Lot

If I Really Were to Dissect

It Was a Bad Time

War Widows

That Image

We Didn't Know It Then

The Chasm Widened

I Spent a Lot of June

Cole Finally Caught Up

Close to Morning

Something Invisible

Spoken Word Poetry

He Chooses an Upscale Steakhouse

I'm Always Just

He's Infuriating

Conversation Slows

Liberated

Inside, Alone

Ghosts

Sleep Studies

Cole Was in Afghanistan

He Took Pride in That

Christmas 2010

I Had Enough

With the Xanax

A Week Later

I Never Saw Her Again

Prisoner

Cole Is a Month

With a Stop

With Only Coffee

I Would Protest

That Feeling Only Grows

Mom Finds Something

Eyes Stinging

It's a Stunning Revelation

The Door Opens Again

Last Fall

Whether from Within

So I Was Surprised

I Couldn't Manage More

Speaking of Calls

Truth

That Was What I Hoped For

Suspicion Breeds Bad Dreams

Something About November

Planning a Wedding

I Check My Calendar

I Hate Logic

I Spend a Couple of Hours

I Start My Own List

Let's See

And Yet

The Woodie is Totally Cool

Relationships

Swami's

All Squeezed

As the Time Approached

It Was a Wound

What Do You Say

The Rotting Lesion

The Pressure

I Stumbled to Cole's Room

Then he Came to Me

There Was Something Frantic

Haven

Some Things You Do

Seems to Be the Case

Either Way

No!

I Try to Put Away

The Disembodied Voice

Banter As Distraction

I Am, In Fact

Grown-Up or Not

I Never Hassled Cole

It Was a Rotten Day

There Were No Taliban

Decorum

No Need to Admit

I Carried the Vision

And, You Know

It was the Admission

Later, After

Water Never Disappears

For the Second Time

I'm About to Ask

What's Up

I Weave, Room to Room

That's Mom, All Right

I Outline My Reasons

I Want to Promise

The Party Goes

The Joke

Dar Makes Up

Which Somehow Brings Us

Late Christmas Eve Morning

When I Was a Kid

Just Like Santa

After Dale's Funeral

We Slept Together

Satiated

The Next Day

Cole's Reaction

The Color of Passion

Jumping Ship

I Never Met Luke

The Joke

Rough Day at the VA

That One

I Have Yet to Receive

How Could He

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