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.