Operation Yes (2 page)

No. No. No.

Gari watched her mom make the call. Maybe Bo would pick up and then forget to give the message to his mom and dad.

“Hello, Donna? Oh, it's good to hear your voice! I really need to talk to you and Phil.”

Gari imagined one word on a giant billboard outside Aunt Donna's window in North Carolina. (Did they have billboards on Air Force bases? She'd never been on one to know.) But if they did, it should say:

 

NO

 

In her head, she wrote the details of her protest across the white space. Say this, Aunt Donna, say this:

She thought about adding some loudspeakers to the side of the billboard:

 

I can't believe you'd let her fly across the country by herself!

What about school? Wasn't Gari accepted to Seattle Junior Academy?

What can you be thinking, heading off to
IRAQ
with the Army and leaving her with us?

 

Gari added a scrawl of red paint across the imaginary sign:

 

No. Please, say no.

Bo's mom answered the phone. It was 7:05.

“Yes. Yes. Of course she can,” his mom said. “When?”

Then again:

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Don't worry about it, Paula, please. Yes, it'll all be fine. I'll get Phil.”

She motioned for Bo to get his dad, who had just come home, and who was sitting, reading glasses on his nose, behind an enormous pile of papers that required his signature as the base commander. When his dad came into the kitchen, Bo's mom covered the receiver with one hand and said, “It's your sister. The Army needs her back. She wants Gari to come live with us.” She slipped the phone into his outstretched hand. “I said yes.”

Gari? Bo flashed on a memory of a skinny girl who had come on vacation with them at the lake one year. Him, doing a brilliant shark imitation. Her, with a tree branch. Him, on the way to the emergency room, blood pouring down his leg.

“Will they let her on base?” he asked.

“Of course,” his mom said. Her eyes followed his dad as he took the phone out onto their deck, where he liked to pace as he talked. “She'll have an ID card. Same as you.”

“Is she going to be in my class?”

“Probably. We'll work everything out in the next few weeks.”

“She won't be here for the air show, will she?”

“Yes, that will be nice. You could show her around.”

No way. No way was he sharing that day with her. But instead, he said: “My teacher has a tattoo.”

“Hmmm?” his mom replied. She was circling a date on the calendar tacked to their kitchen wall and making a line extending out from it over the numbers that marked the days.

Bo looked out the double doors to the deck. His dad was still pacing and talking.

“How come you didn't ask me?” said Bo.

“Ask you what?” said his mom. She stopped drawing the line and left it, dangling, with a little arrow pointing onward.

“Nothing,” said Bo. He opened the fridge and picked up a tub of something brown. Hummus. What was that? Not for his lunch tomorrow, he hoped.

The other phone in the house rang. His dad's official work line. His mom picked it up. She listened and then said to Bo, “Command Post.”

He headed out to the deck. His dad was still talking, but he looked quizzically at Bo.

“Command Post,” Bo said.

His dad squeezed Bo's shoulder.
Thanks
, he mouthed back.

He knew his dad would call the Command Post as soon he hung up with Aunt Paula. He might have to go out to the flight line. Or make a classified call from Wing Headquarters.

Bo walked back into the kitchen just as the doorbell rang.

“I'll be right there!” his mom called out. “You can walk over to the BX and get pizza,” she said to Bo. “Don't forget to feed Indy. I'll be home by nine.”

She grabbed a large white binder labeled
Scholarship Planning Committee
and headed for the door.

“I'm sorry,” she said to the woman waiting for her. “My sister-in-law called, and … oh … I'll tell you in the car. Things are always a mile a minute around here. Sometimes, I …” She looked back at Bo.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Hanging in there,” she said. She stepped back a few paces and grabbed her cell phone off the hall table. She whispered to Bo, “It's not a skull and crossbones, is it?”

Bo shook his head. He pointed to his left side. “A bird. Tiny.” He was used to his mom finishing conversations with him minutes after he'd started them. She didn't forget or miss much; she just didn't always catch the ball right when he threw it.

Bo didn't walk to the Base Exchange to get pizza. The Command Post call turned out to be the weather station, notifying his dad that there was “lightning within five” — a thunderstorm within five miles of the base. Bo could have told you that from the still, heavy air. And because his dog, Indy, had settled into her spot in front of the double doors to the deck. In August, in North Carolina, a storm rolled through two or three times a week. It was a miracle, his dad said, that the maintainers ever fixed any airplanes on the flight line at night at all.

His dad made scrambled eggs with pickles and toast. They
ate at the kitchen counter and watched a dark tarp of clouds unroll over the sky.

“School good?” asked his dad. “Your teacher okay?”

Bo shrugged. Miss Loupe looked different from any other teacher he'd ever had. She'd put on an entertaining show for a few minutes before going on to be a regular teacher for the rest of the day. But if Mrs. Heard had hired her … yeah, AND taught her …

“She's okay,” he said. “Better than Mr. Nix. But school still stinks.”

“As bad as a marine's feet?” his dad teased.

“At least grunts
do
something all day. We just sit there. I hate school.” Bo popped a pickle into his mouth and savored its crunchy sourness.

“Hate it or not, I expect better this year.”

Bo didn't say anything. Every time he messed up, he not only went to the principal, but his dad also had WORK for him to complete. Scrubbing the driveway. Pruning back the wild, thorny bushes at the edge of their backyard. Cleaning the tops of doors and the back inside corners of kitchen cabinets. “You are a Work In Progress,” his parents liked to say. “You work. You make progress.”

“No imitating Mrs. Heard,” his dad clarified.

He'd only shown those sitting near him how he could mouth along with her words during the morning announcements. If he hadn't stuffed his down jacket under his shirt to look more authentic, Mr. Nix wouldn't have noticed.

“No somersaulting.”

He had
wanted
to show Trey how it was possible to jump over a lunch table in a single bound. Wasn't it more responsible to have gently somersaulted over it instead?

“No Private Mishaps, Major Shenanigans …” His dad picked up a triangular piece of toast and pretended to make it enter a downward spin in midair.

“… or General Tomfoolery,” Bo finished, grabbing the toast before it crashed into his eggs. “I know.”

You try it
, he wanted to tell his dad.
Try being as good as everyone thinks the commander's son should be without seeming like you're better than anyone else.
He didn't know if he could be good all the way until next summer, when his dad would get a new assignment from the Air Force. He bent the toast triangle in half, lined it with a triple row of pickles, and stuffed the whole grenade into his mouth. Explosions of sour juice went off as he chewed. School: No loud noises. No cool moves. No making things up. It was all toast and no pickles.

The official phone rang again.

“Besides,” said his dad as he got up to answer it, “Gari's going to get here, and she'll be plenty out of sorts. I don't want you setting a poor example.”

Bo swallowed his last bite of pickle grenade. He didn't think Gari was going to be fooled if he said he was in love with school. And if that tree branch he remembered was any clue, she could handle herself fine. But his dad was looking at him, waiting for a response before he picked up the phone.

“Yes, sir.”

His dad nodded his approval.

“Colonel Whaley,” he said crisply into the phone. “Yes, yes. Well, bad news doesn't get better with age. Tell me now.”

He started out onto the deck, realized it was pouring, and headed into his home office.

His dad, Bo thought, always said yes. He wished he didn't have to do the same.

Gari crept out of bed and grabbed her cell phone. She punched 2 for Tandi's home number. It was late, but Tandi would be up. Gari's mom said school had started today in North Carolina, but it hadn't yet in Seattle, at least not for all the good private schools, like Seattle Junior Academy.

“It's for sure now.” Gari jumped right in. “The stupid Army needs nurses. They want my mom back. Yeah. A hospital in
Iraq.
”

She settled under her covers. It was getting cold again at night. She could hear the rain against her window, pattering quietly. Everything was normal on the outside.

“She said the hospital's on an American base, where she'll be safe. I said, What about the shooting and the rocket attacks and the people who hate us? Is the news just making that up?”

She listened.

“I know. None of it makes sense. And why her?”

She closed her eyes in the dark. Then her eyes were open again. She sat all the way up.

“No, she can't. She CAN'T.”

She listened again and then hugged her knees to her chest. Did Tandi want her mom to go to jail?

She said in a fierce whisper, “Well, YOU don't know one thing about the Army, and neither does whoever said that.”

She could feel her voice rising but she couldn't stop it.

“When the Army says,
Jump!
you're supposed to say,
How high?
Not:
Wait a sec while I tie my shoe and would you mind if I didn't JUMP AT ALL?
”

Gari flopped back down on her pillow. The back of her neck felt damp, as if she'd left the window open and the rain had come inside.
Why didn't Tandi get it?

“Sorry. Sorry. Are you still there?”

She changed the subject.

“Look, I can still be your campaign manager. You
will
be class president. I've got these amazing posters planned —”

She forced herself to focus on her great idea for Tandi's posters. She couldn't give a speech for Tandi — the thought of that made her palms sweat. She'd rather eat a bathtub of worms. But she could make the best posters anyone at SeaJA had ever seen.

 

Vote for Tandi Starr — a light as bright as day!

 

Wouldn't that look great in phosphorescent paint, glowing on signs all over the school? She'd sketch some plans to show Tandi she was serious.

Her mom might have to jump for the Army, but Gari didn't have to.

“Don't worry. I'll talk to my mom tomorrow. She's got to let me stay.”

I'll make it work out. I will.