Hailey's War Read Online Free

I’d felt I deserved my outsider status, but often I wondered why the other kids didn’t see the CJ I knew. He was kind and funny; he was smart. And he was an excellent kisser. That part, of course, I would rather have died than let the other girls know that I knew.
    Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes about the South and kissing cousins. But most people I know have at least one I-didn’t-know-any-better incident in their early sexual history. CJ and I had just been experimenting. It wasn’t like we’d had anyone else to practice on.
    I’d started things, one night when we were outside on a sleeping bag after dark, waiting to watch a rocket launch from Vandenberg. Offhandedly I told CJ that I’d never kissed with an open mouth, and I wanted to learn. CJ said that I’d get a chance soon enough and to be patient. Patience had not been my strong suit, so finally he relented and showed me. And kept showing me. Those satellite launches got delayed a lot. It wasn’t like there’d been anything else for us to do.
    For about a year after that, making out was just something we did when we had time and privacy. It was mostly kissing, except that when I started getting my breasts, I let CJ cup them in his gentle, long-fingered hands. And the summer before we started high school—I admit there was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s involved in this—he let me touch him down low. He was hard, and when I wrapped my hand around him, I was amazed at how it felt, so powerful and yet vulnerable, all at once.
    Then CJ rolled away from me, breathing hard, and said, “We probably ought to knock this shit off.”
    And I said, “Yeah, I know.”
    So we stopped. We were going to be in high school next year; it was time to put away childish things. No big deal.
    In high school, we drifted apart a little. This was partly because Julianne scraped together the money to move us out of the Mooney home and into a rented house in town. But what really set CJ and me on different paths was something that happened to me in a bookstore, a few months before I finished eighth grade.
    I was looking for a present for Julianne’s birthday. I knew she didn’t want a book as a gift, but I was mad at her for moving us out of the Mooney house, where I’d felt comfortable. In theory, Julianne and I had moved “so Hailey can have her own room.” In reality, it was so she could have privacy to entertain the Air Force guys she liked. I hated the house—it was cramped and Helen Keller could have done a more tasteful job on the color scheme—and disliked most of the men she dated. I missed the Mooney house with its warmth and life. So there I was, browsing, when I passed a display of educational books and a thick volume caught my attention.
    It was
Wheelock’s Latin
. I wasn’t interested in foreign languages, but even so I picked it up and ran my finger along the words inside—difficult, opaque, more than merely foreign, almost alien—and somehow they dazzled me. This, I thought, was the language of ancient soldiers and empire builders, of discipline and honor. And it seemed to me that it was somehow my birthright, because of my father, who had been in my eyes a warrior. By the time I left the store, I’d not only bought my mother’s birthday gift but also the
Wheelock’s
, and it wasn’t long after that I understood that I would someday apply to West Point.
    That’s a pretty big leap in logic, I know. The ideas that you have at thirteen rarely stand up to the test of time. But they’re very powerful in the moment; you feel things at that age with an intensity that few people can still access in adulthood.
    Those feelings also run pretty hot and cold. I studied the Latin text voraciously for about five days before casting it aside in frustration. But I started up again when I began high school in the fall, and worked at it more slowly and patiently.