Free Scarred by J. S. Cooper

father was a cheat, and then my mom losing it. It had been too much to take. I had gone down a bad path. And then Eddie and I had done some stupid things.
    I hadn’t expected him to follow through on half of the things we had said. And then that night happened. And it was all because of me. But , instead of looking like the villain, I came off as the hero, and now Eddie was dead. I opened and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. My dear, dear Eddie. He hadn’t been such a bad guy. Not underneath it all. The marines would have sorted him out.
    I thought back to my first days at basic training. I had thought I was going to die, which had shocked me. I was fit, in good shape. I thought it would all be easy for me. But it wasn’t. Not one part of it was easy. I’d still been too hardheaded then. Everything had been too much. All I could think of was Lexi’s face on that night. The way she had looked at me as her hero with such genuine and open affection. Just like the way she had looked at me at Steak N Shake and the library.
    She was too innocent. Too beautiful. I’d never noticed it before in high school, but she had an ethereal presence about her. She was the sort of girl you wanted to protect. The sort of girl who got your heartstrings tugging. It seemed to me that she was the sort of girl that could get a man on the right path. But I had to dismiss her from my thoughts. She and I would never have a future after I told her the truth. And I could never truly date anyone without knowing who Miss was.
    I bit my lip , thinking about the short story Miss had written for me. I had read it to two of my closest friends in Afghanistan, while we were keeping watch for suicide bombers at our camp.
    Everyone took turns on night duty, it was the only way that was fair , but Daryl, Mike and I always tried to work on the same nights. We worked well together and got on well. Everyone had been a bit wary of me in the beginning, with me being the cute blond Midwesterner. They thought I’d have some sort of attitude or something, but I already knew what they knew. I was no better than anyone else. I won over Daryl and Mike pretty easily by sharing care packages that my mom sent me every week. Daryl used to say that he never ate so many Oreos when he was back in the States and we would all laugh.
    I liked to think of Daryl and Mike that way: laughing, singing and stuffing their faces with Oreos. It was the only way to remember them. The doctor had told me that it was the only way for me to live a somewhat normal life. He said I had to try to forget the last night we all did night duty together. It’s funny how your brain can never forget the things you want it to forget the most. Try as you might, some things never seem to disappear. I bet if I got Alzheimer’s, there would still be certain memories that wouldn’t fade away. I didn’t want to forget. But I knew I had to. Daryl and Mike were both only children. Daryl’s parents had died in a car crash and that was why he joined the marines and Mike, well, Mike never knew his parents. We were three lost souls. And they were both better than me. They both deserved to have made the trip back. We had served our time, done our duty to our country.
    I felt tears rolling down my face and I gulped. I wanted to sob and to scream and to shout , but I didn’t want to scare the girl. That stupid girl, I thought to myself as I cried. Why couldn’t she just leave?

Chapter 9
     
    The strange guy had started crying. I was sure of it. It made me feel embarrassed and tense. I wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to talk to me and so I was pretty sure that he didn’t want me to go over there to pat his back. And I didn’t want to go either. The alcohol was wearing off and I was actually pretty scared. I was lying in a field with a strange man just a few yards away from me. What if he tried to do something to me? I felt panic rise up in me and I started to feel hot and