Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(6)

“I guess if I was ever to enlist it would be in the army,” Jenou says. There’s a false note to her nonchalance that pricks Rio’s interest.

“You enlist? They’ll have to draft you, Jen, and then hunt you down with a net.”

Jenou does not immediately laugh. Rio sets down her burger and leans forward. “Jen?”

“Did I mention that this town is really boring?”

“Jenou Castain, what are you thinking?”

“Well, everyone knows sooner or later this war goes to France, which means Paris. Haven’t you always wanted to see Paris? City of lights? City of love? City of lovers? City of my rich and handsome future husband? You know, I come from French stock.”

“Yes, you’ve mentioned it a hundred times, but, Jen, are you serious?” Jenou has always craved travel, especially to romantic France. She has always—well, since age twelve anyway—insisted on the French pronunciation of her name. Not a solid American j sound like jump, but a soft zh. Zhenou. Or Zhen for short. Jenou.

Jenou looks up from her burger with the slyly defiant expression Rio has seen on many occasions, most often occasions that end with Jenou on the wrong end of a stern lecture from parents or from the pastor or even, on one occasion, from the chief of police.

“You haven’t thought of it?” Jenou asks.

“Me? I’ve got months before I’m of legal age and—”

“Oh, do you really think you couldn’t get around that?” Jenou puts on her most worldly-wise face. “Where there’s a will there’s an eraser and a typewriter. Easiest thing in the world.”

“My mother would lock me in the barn with her cows.” Rio makes a joke of it, forcing an unsteady laugh. But she doesn’t shut the conversation down. She feels like a trout must feel after realizing there’s a hook inside that tasty worm.

But then Strand looks over at her, and it’s more than an arguably accidental glance this time—it’s a look. Which Rio returns as boldly as she is able.

“I guess she would,” Jenou allows. “But your little cutie-pie Strand?”

“He’s not my cutie-pie!”

“He got his notice. He ships out next week.”

“What?”

“Drafted. As in, Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States.”

Strand suddenly looks different in light of this development. He’s a good-looking boy, a serious boy with dark hair and skin only lightly afflicted by adolescent pimples. Now he looks at once younger and older. Too young at barely eighteen, and yet old enough legally. Too old for school books, too young for a rifle and a helmet.

She pictures him in an olive drab or khaki uniform. She imagines polished brass buttons and a hat with the brim riding low over his eyes. Yes, he would look pretty sharp in that uniform. He has the shoulders for it, and the narrow waist. But Jenou is still talking, so Rio has to break off contemplation of just what else Strand would look good in.

“If you enlist, they say you get to choose what you do. You know, like are you a typist in an office somewhere, or are you getting shot at. If you wait to get drafted, it’s straight to the front with bang-bang and boom-boom. You know I can’t stand loud noises.”

Rio has heard this before, everyone has, it’s common knowledge, though Rio’s father bitterly dismisses it as nonsense. “I was in the last war,” he said. “Believe me, the army sends you wherever they want you, and if you think you’re arguing about it, then you don’t know the army.”

“I guess if I was to be drafted, I’d want to go to the front,” Rio says. She wants to sound bold, to match Jenou and Strand, and Rachel too. Is Jenou serious? Surely not. But Strand doesn’t have the option of being unserious, does he? Not if he’s gotten his notice.

“What? Oh, you think you’d kill some Jap for what he did to Rachel?” Jenou nods knowingly and pops a fry into her mouth.

“Maybe,” Rio says, defiant. But it troubles her to think that revenge would be her motivation. It isn’t really true either. Sure, she would like to find a way to somehow deal with her sister’s death, but she really has no desire to kill anyone, not even a filthy, cowardly Jap.

No, if she were drafted then she’d want to do her part. That’s it: a desire to do her part.

Her part.

Her part.

The entire conversation is now making Rio uneasy. It feels almost as if Jenou is tempting her. It wouldn’t be the first time, and now she’s remembering that time at the gravel quarry, she and Jenou walking along the edge high above eerily green water of uncertain depth. Jenou had jokingly suggested jumping, and Rio had been seized by a sudden desire to do it. She hadn’t, but for a few seconds she had wanted to.

It bothered her at the time; it bothers her now as she recalls the emotion, that “what the heck?” feeling. A sense of reckless liberation, of breaking away. The freedom of foolishness. Had Jenou jumped in herself, Rio would have followed.

Now Jenou is considering jumping. And Rio feels the pull again.

Everyone would be amazed.

Who? Rio? Rio Richlin enlisted? Why, I never!

“It seems to me,” Rio says, not really even talking to Jenou anymore, “it seems to me that this being the first war where they let girls fight, we ought to make a good account of ourselves.”