Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Forget language immersion training in a foreign country, it was like being marooned on another planet, she thought. The most regimented planet in the galaxy.

Cadets marched the halls and squared their corners like robots, and snapped their heads toward her when they passed, shouting, “GOOD AFTERNOON, MA’AM!” She was amazed how much the cadets could squeeze into their days—classes, sports, military training, mandatory lectures—and she followed Vargas as she zipped from obligation to obligation, jotting down the jargon that peppered the cadets’ everyday speech in her journal. Corey walked a few paces behind, imagining herself scooping up as much of the flotsam of their conversations as possible for later deciphering. Mealtimes—ostensibly a break in the orchestrated madness—were even worse. The “swabs” sat at attention in their seats, staring straight ahead and peppering her with trivia questions and delivering long, memorized screeds. They banged their elbows on the table if they wanted more chicken nuggets, rattling Corey’s frayed nerves, until she begged Vargas to grant them carry on to eat like ordinary human beings.

At the end of the day, Corey stretched out on her uncomfortable bed, which Vargas kept calling a rack and put Corey in mind of a medieval torture device. She sighed.

“Wow, this place,” said Corey. “I could never get the hang of it.”

“Give yourself a break. You’ve been here less than a day. We’re not about to ship you off to the fleet.”

“I’m just not wired to…to…”

“To what?”

“To be a leader.”

“Aren’t you already?”

Corey laughed. “God no!”

“Come on,” said Vargas. “You’re a rock star.”

“Writing songs is not…this.”

“Maybe, but on bad days, especially early on, songs make all this bearable.”

“So why are you here?”

“Why are you here? That’s the mystery everyone’s been asking me.” 

“You first.”

“Fine,” said Vargas. “It’s in my blood. My father was in the Coast Guard. He’s alumni and among other things, the first Cuban-American commanding officer of a Coast Guard patrol boat. This was a no-brainer for me.”

“Did he push you into it?”

Vargas shot her a look. “No one pushes me into anything. Not even my parents. If anything they tried to talk me out of it. Your turn.”

Corey sighed. “I don’t know…it sounds fucking dumb when I say it out loud, but I was with,” she said, gesturing toward the large COAST GUARD logo in white block letters on Vargas’s sweatshirt, “one of you. He even brought me to a ball here a couple of weeks ago.”

“My parents were here for that!”

“Stop making me feel old. Anyway, it was weird and heavy and inscrutable and we broke up.”

“Was he a dick?”

“No! He was a perfect gentleman.”

“Prince Charming?”

“Not quite a prince…”

“Captain Charming?”

Binder Man, she thought then shook her head. “It wouldn’t have worked out. But I did what I do and got a song out of it, the start of a really good song I think, and I realized there was a lot more in there—in me—and I had this crazy idea that if I came here I might understand. I might crack the code. Am I making any sense?”

“Are we still weird and heavy and inscrutable?”

“More so! I have never felt so out of place in my entire life. Half the time, I don’t even know what the fuck you guys are saying. I just wish there was, like, a key. A Rosetta Stone.”

Vargas narrowed her eyes. “But there is.”

“What?”

“There is!” she said, running to her closet. She threw open the doors and pulled down a small lockbox from the shelf. She spun the combination lock, twisting left-right-left-click, and opened it. When she turned around, there was a small, strangely curved blue booklet in her hand.

Ta-da!” said Vargas, a bright, genuine smile on her face, the first Corey had seen on her. All day, the cadet had kept herself in check, shoulders back, chin up, offering little more than a wry smirk. Now her eyes were wide and the wild, expectant smile revealed her to be, in fact, a vivid, beautiful young woman. 

“I have no idea what I’m looking at.”

“This is the key!” said Vargas.

“Yeah, but what is it?”

“It’s my Running Light.”

Something about it struck Corey. Maybe it was the title, maybe the way Vargas held it or just the look on her face, but it carried import, that much Corey understood, and she leaned in.

“Running lights are the navigation lights on a vessel. Red on the port side, green on starboard,” explained Vargas. “It tells other vessels your position and relative angle, and helps them to determine if there’s a danger of collision. It’s also the name of the cadet handbook. We get it on our first day and have to memorize it cover to cover. It contains all of the indoc.”

“Indoctrination,” said Corey. “I know that one.”

“Yes! All the nautical terms, the crazy speeches, the customs, all of it.”

She handed it over and Corey started to flip through its small pages. Her eyes grew wide. Vargas was right. It was the Rosetta Stone.

“Why is it curved?”

“Had to carry it around in my back pocket for the entirety of swab summer. That’s a loving mold of my backside.”

Corey laughed.

“Can I study this?”

“You can keep it.”

“I can’t keep this. It’s yours. It has your ass print.”

“Which means it’ll slip right into your back pocket. How cool would it be if my Running Light helped Corey Lyondell write a song? It beats sitting in a lockbox. Even better, once you memorize it, you’ll understand us and maybe you can get back together with Captain Charming.”

Corey’s shoulders sagged and she smiled sadly, looking at the hopeful, naive young woman before her. She was bright and bold and beautiful and had her entire life ahead of her, and somewhere in there would be heartbreak. Vargas didn’t understand it yet, but give it time, thought Corey.

“It’s not that simple. It doesn’t work like that.”

Vargas’s hopeful smile was replaced by a suspicious leer. “Why not?”

“You can’t have it all. You’re young. You’ll see.”

Vargas thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Bullshit. I’m young and.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m young and I have a 4.0 at the most selective school in the country. I’m young and the Alfa Company Commander. I’m young and the captain of the sailing team. I’m young and I’m training to save people’s lives, and not in some abstract way. Literally pulling them out of the water. It’s not a matter of age, it’s a matter of excellence. And excellence is a matter of will. No offense, but you don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t have in this life. Nobody does. I’ll have what I want. Because I’ll take it.”

Corey’s mouth hung partially open, trying to form a retort, but she could not. Instead, she stared at the cadet in front of her, in her gym gear with a ponytail and no make-up, and who was radiant not because of her looks or her age, but by her power. The self-assuredness—the confidence—floated off her like waves over a sizzling grill on a hot summer’s day. Corey couldn’t muster or manufacture a fraction of that audacity— not when she headlined her first solo show, not when Damsel got a four-and-a-half star review in Rolling Stone (fuck you and your withheld half-star, Bentley Donns), not even when Limelight went to Number One on the charts.

Corey had to remind herself this young woman was half her age, but she may as well have been dressed down by an admiral. Never in her life had she been so thoroughly schooled, not by Lou, not by Kincaid, not by anyone, because no one who had ever spoken to her in such a manner could back it up like this young woman.

“I…I’m sorry.”

“Look,” said Vargas, “I meant what I said at formation. I loved Damsel. I wore it out growing up. So did a lot of other girls.”

“Thank you.”

Vargas shook her head, now trying to make Corey understand. “I love those ballads, those sad songs, but I don’t need them anymore. So if that’s all you’re going to write,” she said, gesturing toward the Running Light, “you may as well give that back.”

Corey clutched the tiny blue booklet to her chest. “What do you need?”

“I need an anthem.” 

“I’ll write one for you.”

“Make it ten.”