“Hey, you coming out with us tonight?”
“Huh?” Frowning, I spared my roommate Norton a glance, my fingers still on the keyboard of my laptop. “What did you say?”
“Tonight. A bunch of us are going over to Corelli’s room to hang out for a while. You coming with?”
I swiveled in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. “It’s Tuesday night, Norton. Tuesday. As in, we have classes tomorrow. Formation at five-thirty. Football practice after classes.”
“I know what day of the week it is, Lassiter.” Norton mimicked my incredulous tone. “I also know that I need a fucking break now and then. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re the straight-arrow robot everyone says you are. But even you gotta let off some steam once in a while.”
The irritation that was almost always at a low simmer within me these days threatened to boil over.
“I’ll let off steam after I’ve graduated. After the football season is over. After we beat fucking Navy.”
“Yeah, I doubt it.” Norton leaned against the door jamb. “After graduation, you’ll be laser focused on your first duty assignment. You’ll want to be the best damn platoon leader in . . . what branch are you thinking about now? I can’t remember.”
I shrugged. “It’s between armored and engineering.”
“Exactly.” He pointed at me. “The most intense, challenging branches in the army. You aren’t going to slack off in that job, bud. You’re going to up the ante. You’re going to be working around the clock. No time for fun.”
“What’s your point?” I pushed back from my desk a little. I’d already lost my train of thought. I might as well look at this exchange as an opportunity to sharpen my debate skills, although Norton wasn’t exactly a worthy opponent.
“I don’t have a point, I just have an opinion. And it’s this: if you can’t ease up now, it’s never going to happen. You’re going to live your life planning to find your joy, have a little fun, to take one night off to drink and shoot the shit with your friends, but it’s never going to happen. You know why? Because you just can’t do it. You can’t let down the side for one fucking minute. I’ve known you since the man in the red sash told us to drop our bags, right? We got through Beast together, we survived plebe year. We’ve been brothers on the football field. I know you, Dean. I know you better than anyone else here. And what I know is that you’re never going to get to a place where you can enjoy your life if you don’t decide to give yourself a break.”
I stared at my friend and roommate for a long moment.Shit, maybe Norton was a better sparring partner than I gave him credit for being. I sucked in a deep breath before I spoke.
“Norton. Buddy, listen. I hear you. I’m not arguing with you. I’m not even going to say that you’re wrong.” I stared down at my hands. “But also . . . you can’t see this the way I do.”
“Bullshit.”
One side of my mouth quirked up. “Norton, what would you have done if you hadn’t come to West Point?”
He scowled at me. “What do you mean?”
“If you hadn’t gotten your appointment, if you hadn’t been accepted, if the powers that be had determined that there was someone just slightly more qualified than you are to be given this incredible education at the expense of the American people—hell, if you had woken up one morning and realized that you’re not cut out to be an Army officer for the next ten years, where would you have gone instead?”
Norton tossed up one hand. “What does that matter?”
“Humor me. Tell me. Where would you be if you weren’t my roommate, harassing me about having no life?”
Norton rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess I’d have probably gone to Harvard or Penn. Maybe, if I’d made the decision on the wrong day, I’d have gone to California and wound up at Stanford.”
“Right.” I nodded. “You got into all of those schools, didn’t you?”
Norton studied me a moment before responding. “I did.”
“And you didn’t have to stay up nights, trying to figure out how you’d pay for your education at the schools you’d been accepted to, did you?”
He shook his head slowly, realization beginning to dawn. “Dean—shit, man. You know my family—” He swallowed. “No, all right? No, I never worried about being able to pay for school. I’ve known all of my life that I had a golden ticket to wherever I might want to go. Wherever I could get in. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“It’s not what I want to hear, Norton. It’s just the truth. It’s the basic difference between you and me. You had a choice. You grew up surrounded by the idea that you would always have a choice. If you didn’t come here, you’d have ended up somewhere else brilliant and graduated with honors, even if you didn’t study hard, because you’re not only from a family that’s wealthy—like generations of wealthy—you’re also pretty much a fucking genius.”
“Don’t say that like it’s an accusation. I didn’t ask to be born smart and with a golden spoon up my ass.” Norton stalked back into the room as he snapped at me. “It was the luck of the draw.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, dude. I’m glad for you. But in case you haven’t figured it out in three plus years, your experience and mine aren’t the same. That golden spoon? It’s not up my ass or in my mouth or anywhere else near me—or anyone else I know. I grew up hand-to-mouth in a town where the average income is one of the lowest in the state. None of my friends talked about where they were going to college. No one talked about the future at all because we all knew where we’d be after high school graduation—if, in fact, we made it that far. We’d be at the factory, doing what our parents had done. Living the same lives.” I balled up my fists. “But that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted more. I read about West Point, and that looked like a pretty sweet deal to me. It was a way out. And I took it.”
“I get that.” Norton’s tone had softened considerably. “I understand.”
“You don’t, but that’s okay. All I need you to see is that I can’t afford to fuck any of this up. I don’t have a plan B. I don’t have a soft landing if this doesn’t work.” I tapped on my desk. “So yeah, I’m going to bust my ass to get the best grades, choose the perfect branch, and make the most of this opportunity. And damned if I’m going to apologize for doing it.”
