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  There being no doubt in his mind who they were talking about, Phil wasn’t surprised to hear, “Oh yeeaah! The cute chick with the strawberry hair? I’d like to give her some remedial training myself!” Phil wondered if there was anything he could do to put upperclassmen in their places. There turned out to be no need to intervene though, because the conversation took its own strange course.

  “Better be careful ‘Asswipe,’ she’s the Doolie that took out Sergeant Mason during self defense training this summer!”

  “Yeah sure! I heard about that. It was some kind of freak accident.”

  “Ok… You bet. Sure. Let me know when you’re ready to ‘freak accident’ the Sarge into the hospital and I’ll set up a match?”

  The 1st year cadets finally got a “weekend pass” to go into town for a little R&R. Some of the Doolies in their squadron had family that came into town for a visit. The lucky ones had a girlfriend or boyfriend show up. Most of them though, had no one but each other. Jason and Phil planned to head into Colorado Springs together and see what kind of nightlife they could scare up. It’d been four months since he’d chased any skirt, what with the strict “no fraternization” rules currently in effect at the Academy. They weren’t even supposed to think of the women cadets as female, though they could hardly avoid it.

  However, if they got caught fooling around, it was their ass, so Phil had pretty much stayed away. The only one in 22nd squadron that really caught his eye was Donsaii anyway and he knew all too well what would happen if he put the moves on her. So, all things considered, Phil was really looking forward to the weekend out.

  Jason showed up at his door at the appointed time carrying a bag with his civvies and damned if he didn’t have Denson with him! They stepped across the threshold into his room and broke out of their positions of attention. Sheeit, Phil thought, I’m gonna be a third wheel on a date! “Hey, you two goin’ sweet on me?” he asked.

  Denson looked at the floor and Jason scuffed a toe and said, “Naw, man, Denson here, she and I were just talkin’ about weekend plans and thought maybe we could share the cost of taxis around town to a few places.”

  Yeah sure, Phil thought, but he’d play along before Jason died of embarrassment. “OK, let’s go then.”

  “Wait one, Donsaii’ll be here in a sec.”

  Phil hardly had time for his heart to sink before another knock came on the door. Phil opened the door and Ell stood there at attention. He waved her in. She stepped in, broke attention, grinned crookedly at him and said, “I told you back at the ‘Hill’ we’d go out again at an academy.”

  His mind whirled; he vaguely remembered something like that, right before she busted his ass! Had she forgiven him? Was he supposed to have forgiven her? Did he forgive her?

  Phil didn’t know how or, later, even if he responded, but they headed into town. They weren’t allowed cars but a regular bus ran to town on the weekend to keep them from hitchhiking. They changed into civvies in a bathroom, had pizza at a local joint, and played some games in an arcade. Phil carefully watched Ell play and she performed no superhuman feats. She played very well, he’d grant you, but none of the unearthly performances he’d witnessed elsewhere. He won the game of air hockey she challenged him to. They wandered around the campus of Colorado College. Jason talked about trying to get some beer, but they were all under age and none of their fake ID apps would install on their new military AIs. Secretly Phil felt relieved not to do something that was illegal and could get him a bunch of demerits. He knew that he’d certainly have succumbed to peer pressure and drank beer with the rest of them if they’d gotten any.

  Jason didn’t push the idea very hard so they went to a nonalcoholic club that catered to underage college kids. They agreed it was lame, but they hung out there for a while anyway. Jason went out to dance with Denson, leaving Phil alone in a booth with Ell. The more he thought about it the more pissed off he got. He really wanted to chase the ladies in the place but here he was, stuck with Donsaii, the one chick in the entire world that he couldn’t make any time with! Ell sat there and stared at him while he stared out around the club, essentially looking at everything except Ell. Finally she leaned over to him and shouted over the beat, “Wanna dance?”

  “Nah. This place is too lame.” Actually, he thought, I could have a great time here if you weren’t with me.

  “Hey, you still pissed about Chapel Hill?”

  “Nah. Gotta find the can.” he got up and beat a retreat toward the restrooms. After he hit the head he cruised back the long way around the bar, checking out the babes.

  A real cutie caught his eye. She had brunette hair and it spilled down to the small of her back telling him she wasn’t a cadet. At that moment proof that she wasn’t a cadet made her much more attractive so he ambled in her direction. She looked up and caught his eye on her, “Hi.” No genius to that line, he thought, mentally kicking himself.

  “Hi yourself. You a Zoomie?” She grinned.

  Some people used the term “Zoomie” derogatorily when speaking of the cadets but he didn’t think she meant it that way. “Yeah,” he shrugged, “newly minted.”

  “Oooohh, how cute.” She winked at him, “A Doolie?”

  That didn’t sound as good. He realized that she was older, maybe twenty to his eighteen, a real chasm at that age when the woman is older than you. “Yeah,” he said, turning to survey the bar in preparation to beating another retreat.

  “Carmine!” she oozed, “Look what just tried to pick me up.” Brightly, “It’s a Doooolie.”

  Phil turned back. “Carmine” was a behemoth. At least six foot six, he probably had a “Wide Load” sign on his back and appropriate flashers on his shoulders. His brows crinkled together, actually, his eyebrows weren’t separate, just a single “brow,” but it had developed deep vertical furrows in the middle. His, narrow set eyes were focused on Phil and emitting about a thousand watts. Phil, waved his hands, palms out, “Hey, I didn’t mean nothin’. Just saying hello.” Phil was thinking to himself that as a championship wrestler, he should have nothing to fear, but this guy was B-I-G and looked like he was in shape too.

  “You thinkin’ to make time with my girl, puke?” The brunette lit up, she obviously loved this stuff.

  PUKE! Phil thought. He was sick of being called a “puke” by the upperclassmen. He couldn’t talk back to them but he sure as hell could talk back to this asshole. Phil took a deep breath to do so but suddenly his arms were full of Donsaii. She’d actually leaped up onto him and thrown her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

  “Phil!” Ell said brightly, “I’m so glad I found you again, I’m ready for that dance now!” She leaned in close to whisper in his ear, “And if you get in a fight with that man-mountain, it’ll bust up this place and the police’ll be all up in your ass. Enough demerits’ll stack up that you’ll march tours ‘til next summer.” She dropped off of him and stepped off toward the dance floor, dragging him by the wrist. He allowed himself to be led away without looking back.

  It was a slow dance and Ell put her arms loosely up around his neck saying, “Sorry, I haven’t danced much, so I really don’t know how.”

  Phil clumsily put his hands on her hips, in truth as he looked back on it later, a little fearful of how she might react. They swayed to the music. He noticed that her hips felt very firm and quite nice.

  Ell said, “I saw what that little bitch did and I know you could’ve taken that huge guy, being a wrestler and all. But it would’ve brought a lot of trouble and I thought maybe I could defuse the situation.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.” was all Phil could think to say. He wished he hadn’t sounded so surly.

  He daydreamed about that dance when awake and had real dreams about it when he was asleep for weeks after that, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to dance again that night. She didn’t ask him again either.

  He knew he was a fool.

  All men are sometimes.

  After t
hat one dance Ell and he returned to sit in the booth a while longer, watching Jason dancing with Joy. They didn’t say word one to each other. Ell felt crushed. She had known that Phil would hate being rescued from that situation, especially by her. But, though she’d considered it, she found she just couldn’t let him get in trouble when she might be able to prevent the fight in the first place.

  For his part Phil felt like he couldn’t leave Donsaii again after she saved his ass with the man-mountain, but he resented her for having ruined his shot at picking up some other girl. As he thought back on it later, his sitting there pretty much ruined her chances of meeting someone who wasn’t, like him, scared shitless of her. They were both relieved when Joy and Jason came over and suggested that they “blow this dump.” Phil thought they were going back out to the Academy but Jason wanted to stay out in the “free world” for the rest of the weekend. Turned out that this meant, “We should all crash in some motel for the night then wander around Colorado Springs some more tomorrow.”

  Yeah, Phil thought to himself, you think you can score some sack time with Denson, you sumbitch. But he didn’t want to be the weak weenie that ran back to base either. Then Ell said, “I don’t know…”

  Of course, the small town puritan doesn’t want to be stuck in a motel room overnight with a horny bastard like me, Phil thought. So, even though he really wanted to go back to base, he said, “Sure, I’ll cough up a share. I can crash on the floor.”

  Ell didn’t want to go back to base by herself and they were too cheap to get two rooms. So Phil wound up lying on the floor on one side of the bed, with Jason on the floor on the other side while Ell and Joy took the bed. Joy slipped off the bed on Jason’s side and she and Jason quietly “hooked up.” Not quietly enough. Phil thought he was horny before, but it didn’t compare to the way he felt after lying there all night listening to J&J quietly grunting and moaning. He couldn’t help thinking about the marvelous, but untouchable girl still lying on the bed.

  There was no way Phil would ever go after her again though.

  At one point during that interminable night, he realized that it was fall and must be close to the one-year anniversary of the incident when they first met.

  In any case, Phil didn’t get much sleep and felt like crap the next morning. Joy and Jason looked a mite peaked too, but not Donsaii. Oh no, she was bright and “perky,” full of energy and wanting to eat breakfast at the ungodly hour of 0900. First chance to sleep in that they had had in four months and she’s up at the crack of dawn! They finally had breakfast at a Waffle House about 10 in the morning and then Jason suggested Ell and Phil could check out the park next door while he and Joy went back to the room to “pack.”

  Ell would have none of it, saying she’d help them pack up. Phil practically had to drag her out to the park with him. Jason and Joy took an hour and a half to pack the few things they had in that room but they still managed to forget his toothbrush by the sink.

  Phil and Ell sat in awkward silence on a park bench for a while but then finally had kind of a nice talk. Later he couldn’t really remember what they talked about, but he did recall it being pleasant and warm and him thinking she wasn’t such a bitch after all. The four of them spent that pleasant fall day wandering around Colorado Springs, but all too soon they headed back out to the Academy to start the grind all over again.

  ***

  Jamal saw the light glowing in the front room of his apartment as he walked up and his stomach began to knot up. He wasn’t sure how anyone had gotten in but had no doubt that it was the work of his masters. Their contacts with him had never been the cause of much joy. He coded the lock and stepped inside, not at all surprised to see a stranger sitting in the darkness in one corner of the room. “Hello.”

  “Are you comfortable here in the big American university?” The man spoke Arabic.

  Jamal responded in kind. “Comfortable enough. Do you have a message for me?”

  “Kill an American.”

  “What!?” Jamal’s voice broke a little.

  “You heard the first time. Do you question your orders now?”

  “What? No! But who? And why? To what purpose?”

  “Some believe that you are becoming too comfortable here.” The man stood and walked to where Jamal stood. They believe that perhaps the great Satan himself is seducing you. Could that be?”

  “No!”

  The man drove his fist into Jamal’s stomach, doubling him over, then allowing him to drop to the floor. Unable to breath, Jamal gasped for breath.

  The man said, “Then do not question your orders! I will be back in a week. You will show me proof that you have killed an American.”

  The man let himself out as Jamal got his first few small gasps of air.

  ***

  Phil was in Advanced Math 202, having tested out of the standard Doolie courses 101 and 102 and 2nd year class 201. At first he was quite proud of being one of the only two Doolies he knew who’d jumped over three semesters to Math 202. His family, himself included, had always been good at math and his weakness on the admission tests had been in “soft” subjects like English and Literature. But 202 was hard! He’d never had a math course he thought was difficult before and his score on a recent quiz was like a hard slap in the face. Now he’d been called in to see the instructor!

  “Cadet Zabrisk reporting as ordered sir.”

  “Sit down Zabrisk.” His professor waved vaguely at the chairs in his small office. Phil wasn’t sure if he was actually allowed to sit in the presence of a real captain. After a hesitant movement toward the chair, he remained standing. “Go ahead, sit! I forget how timid you Doolies are; don’t have many of you in my classes.” Phil sat but compromised by sitting at attention like he did in the dining hall. “You’re having trouble in the class? A lot of Doolies do when they test into it.”

  “Yes sir, but I’ll catch up.”

  “No doubt, but I don’t want you getting buried. It’d be a shame to have to ship you back to 201. How about a little help?”

  “Help sir?”

  “Sure, a few sessions with a tutor might dig you out of your hole before it gets too deep.”

  “Tutor, sir?”

  “You haven’t heard about the tutoring program?”

  “No sir.”

  “It’s another way you can work off demerits. You help cadets in a subject you’re good at instead of ‘marching tours.’ You yourself could tutor in 101 or 102 once you get out of trouble in 202. If you like, I can set you up with a tutor. Usually it’s an upperclassman in a neighboring squadron so you wouldn’t be tutored by someone who’s also responsible for your discipline. If you had a classmate in your own squadron advanced enough, they would tutor you so it would be someone you knew, but there wouldn’t be a Doolie advanced enough to tutor 202.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  “Good, I’ll put you in for it and the computer will assign a one on one tutor for you. You’ll get a message through your AI to report to a room in study hall for it. Dismissed.”

  Phil went to his afternoon intramural session with mixed feelings. He feared that time with a tutor might be time wasted that would have been better spent studying on his own. Especially with a tutor who was pissed off to be working off demerits. An upperclassman would probably treat him like dirt anyway.

  During dinner Chuck whispered in his ear that he was to, “Report to room 543 in the study hall at 1930 hours for your tutor session.” Damn, they were prompt!

  When Phil appeared at the appointed time at room 543 he was stunned to see Donsaii sitting there at the table. He had no idea that she was in Math 202! “What are you doing here, I thought these things were ‘one on one.’”

  Ell looked embarrassed. “Are you here for a Math 202 tutorial session?”

  “Yeah,” he said disgustedly, dropping into a chair across from her at the little table. “Shoulda’ known ‘one on one’ was too good to be true.” He felt he had adequately hidden his dismay that she was also
in 202. He had always thought that, despite her phenomenal athletic feats, at least he was way smarter than she was. For sure smarter in math than anyone from Donsaii’s hick town. Actually it seemed pretty surprising that her small town high school would have had the Advanced Placement math curriculum to let her place out of 101 or 102, much less 201!

  Ell was horrified! Despite their horrible start, she really liked Phil. Sometimes she wondered why and hoped it wasn’t just because he looked so good with his shirt off. She didn’t want to be “so shallow.” His interactions with the other cadets were humorous and good spirited and everyone thought he was a lot of fun. It troubled her that he was so standoffish with her. This tutoring thing worried her because she knew he was proud and would be sensitive about being shown up. She hadn’t realized that he was in 202 and had never considered the possibility that he might come in for tutoring or she wouldn’t have listed herself available to tutor that level!

  Ell hadn’t said anything so Phil looked over at her. She looked a little pinched and out of sorts. “This may be a mistake…”

  “Oh, you aren’t in 202?” He kind of hoped his relief didn’t show in his voice.

  “Uh, no… I’m working off demerits for painting the West Wall.” Ell practically whispered, as if saying it quietly would make it less offensive.

  “You’re my tutor for 202!?” Phil was aghast.

  “Yeah, sorry.” She grimaced, “We can get you assigned to someone else.”

  Phil’s stomach knotted up. How in the Hell had she gotten so, so far ahead? “How? Morehead City schools couldn’t have AP classes that would get you past any of the math here at Academy could they?”

  Ell made an embarrassed little shrug, “No. I’m just kind of a math freak. I like it so much I study this stuff on my own. It’s kinda easy for me ‘cause I weirdly enjoy it. Then the testing ‘placed me out.’” She stood and picked up her slate. “Sorry. I don’t think you should have to be tutored by one of your own classmates.”