=== PAGE: journal:007_the_near_miss ===
====== Entry — Age 14, after the near-miss ======
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I don't want to write about it in detail. I'm going to write around it instead.

There was a surge. It came at the wrong moment. The objective was lost and someone could have been seriously hurt and wasn't, but only just, and the not-quite is sitting in my chest like a stone.

I knew in the debrief. Before he said anything, before the room rearranged itself, I knew from the way he looked at me — or rather the way he didn't look at me, a specific quality of not-looking, which is its own kind of look — that something had changed.

He said my ongoing deployment would be reviewed. He said it evenly, neutrally, in the tone he uses for things that are already decided.

//Mom made dinner as usual. The soup. I couldn't eat it. She didn't comment. She never comments. I've always appreciated that and tonight I appreciate it more than usual.//