Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“I’m not sure this is meant to sit on,” she muttered darkly.
I snorted, taking a look around at the fifteen other students currently sitting on it. “I think that you’re allowed, otherwise all of these other kids wouldn’t be doing it.”
She huffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
My lips twitched. “So, tell me about your school experience.”
Why did you hate it so much?
“I’ve already given you a little bit of my background. Honestly, it’s probably not anywhere near as bad as my teenage brain made it out to be. I took about sixty college credit hours in high school by the age of seventeen. Seventy-five percent of them I had to actually take at the local community college after school. I pretty much took them from the age of fourteen to sixteen. College boys aren’t really nice to girls that young, and the girls weren’t very nice either. All I wanted to do was be there to learn and to get the credits. The community college I attended, and the times that I attended, were all at times where the classes were mostly full of a younger college crowd—eighteen and nineteen-year-olds. They were all still quite immature, rude and just impossible. Pretty much, it was like I was still in high school.”
I grunted. “I loved high school. Loved college, well, some online classes anyway. Loved the military. It’s hard for me to imagine how one could hate it.”
“Why did you leave the military then?” she asked.
I touched my throat.
“I was a drill sergeant. Was for a while—quite a few years. I yelled—a lot—during my time as a drill sergeant, and I’d gone through a lot, put my body through so much. But…my voice just couldn’t handle it anymore. One day I was yelling at this fresh-faced kid…making him roll in the sand after we forced him to put sunscreen on when his mother had sent him some contraband...”
“Sunscreen?” she interrupted.
I nodded. “Sunscreen. They’d put the sunscreen on—or anything sticky really—then we’d make them roll in the sand. We’d call it a sugar cookie. Then we’d make them do PT with it caked on their bodies. Anyway, I’d been yelling at this kid, and all of a sudden blood started spewing from my mouth as I yelled. It hurt. Bad. But I kept going, worked through it. I went to sleep that night, woke up the next morning, and straight up, I couldn’t talk. Turns out, I’d damaged my vocal cords so badly that it was permanent. What you hear is the end result of that injury. I still can’t yell or raise my voice. That level of my voice is gone—just not there.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “What happens when you try to yell?”
I snorted. “Nothing. I can talk like this, but when I try to raise my voice, nothing but air comes out.”
“Huh,” she muttered. “And you can’t be a drill sergeant without yelling.”
“Correct,” I confirmed. “But I left the military in good hands.”
“How?” She turned on the concrete barrier and reached over to touch the water with one finger.
“My brothers. All of them followed in my footsteps. Three of them are still in, and one of them retired just last year.”
She opened her mouth to continue with that line of questioning, but the doors across the way burst open, and the students started pouring out.
Both of us watched as one by one, the students left the building.
Finally, Frankie exited, and her face was crestfallen.
I was halfway across the forecourt that separated us before I’d even realized I’d gotten off my ass.
“Frankie!” I called, thankful that my voice seemed to carry over the crowd.
Frankie’s head shot up, and the look of pure, unaltered happiness that lit it up made my heart full.
She started running to me, and before I knew it, Frankie hit me.
She wrapped her arms around me tight, and she started to cry.
I felt Cora’s presence, which had been right at my side, fade into the background.
And once it was just the two of us, I felt the loss of Cora’s presence like part of me had been ripped away.
But I decided to ignore it and investigate the why of that particular problem later.
Right now, my little girl needed me.
***
“Cora,” Frankie said. “You bought the property that dad wanted to buy. He was convinced that someone was going to buy it, and then build something noisy on it and wake him up all day and night.”
Cora’s eyes went wide. “Well…if anyone is waking anyone up, it’s him doing that to me. The first night I met your dad, he kept me up for more than three hours by starting his truck over and over again.”
“I remember those days.” Frankie sighed as she dipped one of her fries into her ketchup. “I never notice it anymore, really. He’s done that for as long as I can remember.”