Catching Tatum (8 page)

I did remember that, we were making out and a police officer knocked on the window and broke it up. The memory had always been good for a laugh, but not when I was breaking up with him and wanted him to beg me to stay.

“Yeah, good times.”

“The best.”

We walked to his car and he drove me to my house in silence. He actually got out when he dropped me off, something he hardly ever did anymore, and hugged me to his chest one last time. He kissed the top of my head and his fingers found their way to tangle in my hair, I was going to miss that. Then he got in his car and took off ... no backward glance this time. There were only two weeks left of summer and both were filled with silence from Cole. No calls, no begging me to change my mind, no knocks on my window in the middle of the night. No Cole Jackson. Even though I was the one who broke up with him, it definitely hurt me worse than it hurt him.

I saw him the first day of school and we waved like we never really knew each other, like all of the last year hadn't happened. Then at lunch I knew why, he already had a new girl on his arm—Stacy, an air-headed cheerleader, and she didn't even play ball. I was replaced. I wanted to be mad. In my head I was mad, he was a jerk! He probably went and found her the next day or even the night we broke up. Had he been flirting with her on the side the whole time we were together? Why did I ever love him? Why? But the anger didn't stick. The hurt was too big; more than yelling or slapping him, I wanted to curl up and cry. I felt so cheap and worthless. I loved him and he didn't even care.

The next day I caught him in the hall without her. “I see you're doing OK,” I said.

“I manage,” he said, high-fiving a kid from the team named Jimmy.

“When did you start going out with her?”

“Couple weeks ago.”

A couple weeks ago we had been together. “Wow!” I crossed my arms to keep from slapping him.

“Hey,” he said, arms out, palms up, making himself look bigger than he was. “You're the one that broke up with me, remember? Why, you miss me?” he said with a wink.

“Um ... not hardly ... not now. You walk around the school like you're God's gift to the ladies. You've been with everyone. I'm so done with you. You're a man whore.” Curious kids stopped walking in the hall to hear what was going on. I was not one to back down. Chuckles erupted from the crowd. I got him good. I smiled in triumph.

“Who's the whore, Tatum? … It ain't me. You were moaning in my bed begging for it before we were even going out.” I saw a girl behind him put her hand to her mouth. I felt exposed. What we did was our thing; he was crossing a line. Fire for fire, I shot back, “I wasn't moaning, I was crying cause you couldn't get it up. That's why I broke up with you. I was tired of you being my charity case.” I smiled and raised my eyebrows. Victory. “Peace,” I said and walked on. Then the terrorists attacked, and my stupid little relationship drama didn't matter anymore.

The whole nation gathered together to watch in shock and horror. I remember being in English that day and hearing the announcement over the speakers. There was no class; we all gathered around TVs and computer monitors and watched in disbelief. America's pain made me forget my own. Theo, Brett, and I all went to the same high school and all did cross-country together to stay in shape for baseball, but practice was canceled. How could we run and have fun when people were jumping out of burning buildings, and terrorists were cheering victoriously? When school let out, instead of going to the field we met up at Theo's Jeep and drove straight home. Occasionally one of us would comment on something we heard or saw, but it was mostly a quiet ride except for the radio, which was only giving news. The base was a scurry of activity when we finally got home. Heightened security, patrols and searches like never before. Dad was gone. He'd been gone before on deployments or missions that he couldn't talk about. His absence wasn't the problem—the suddenness was. We always had notice that he was going; this time, though, there was nothing, except an attack on U.S. soil. We got home and he was gone.

When he finally came home, more than a week later, he was different. Distant, tired, shut-down. I was on the couch watching news updates and trying to do homework by the light of a table lamp. He came in the door, shut it and just stood there. Mom saw him first and went to him. He took her into his arms. They held each other forever ... she held him. My dad, my strong, brave, Colonel Dad was broken and she would hold him together. I thought about them having each other. Then I thought about the women who jumped out of the buildings, who perished in the Pentagon or the field. Who did their husbands have to hold them together? During the embrace, the boys made it into the living room, too. The four of us, Theo, me, Brett and Trav, watched quietly, all of us thinking the same things: Where had he been? What had he seen? What was going to happen now? After he was finished with mom he hugged each of us in turn. Long hugs that said more than any words ever could. I never saw a tear, or heard a sob, but almost wished I did. He held it all in. He was never quite the same after that. I supposed correctly that he was working at the Pentagon, but he never wanted to talk about it. I don't know if he couldn't or wouldn't but he didn't for the longest time and we didn't push him. The images from the news were bad enough; I could only imagine what it was like to be there.

He had two days, forty-eight hours, to rest and recover before he had to go back. He didn’t know when we would see him again. It was like that for weeks. Unlike that first week, though, he called and talked to us regularly.

The attacks changed everything, not just for America, for us. We always had an emergency plan, but now Mom made it way more detailed. We put emergency kits in the cars and in the house. We got cell phones, too. Before then it was just Mom and Dad, and Theo, who had his own phone because he had a job and wanted one, but Mom and Dad decided they wanted the rest of us to have them, too ... for emergencies. Mom was way more paranoid about where we would be and when we would be there. And she left us notes about her daily activities. In case it happened again, we needed to know where to look for each other.

We had lived on several bases—moves were part of our life—but I kind of assumed Andrews AFB would be home for the remainder of Dad's Air Force career. I was wrong. Something about the attacks, something he couldn't talk about, got him orders to move away ... far, far away.

This transfer took us to McChord AFB in Washington State, all the way on the other side of the country, where it is gray and rains almost every day. Except for the quickness and urgency behind it, the move was like all the others that came before. We got the orders, Dad went first, right away, and we tied up loose ends before they packed us up and shipped us out shortly after. My mom was usually a cheery lady, except right after new orders; they shook her up. It was probably because she grew up on the farm in Ohio. She lived in the same house her dad had grown up in until she met my dad. They called that plot of land that her WOP of a grandfather left the coal mines and tenements of Pennsylvania to homestead, home for generations. Moving wasn't in her blood like it was the rest of us, but adventure was. The wanderlust in me always said “Let's go!” when a move popped up, but Mom needed a plan. I felt like she always had to get her head in the game for a move first, then she was fine. It was a little easier that time because every good American wanted to do something to help or react to the terror attacks, and we had something to do.

We headed out just before Thanksgiving and, even though it meant missing a big chunk of school, mom wanted to drive the trek to McChord instead of fly. We stopped at the farm for a week on the way, even though it was out of the way. Everyone was evaluating what mattered most in life; family mattered most to my mom. She wanted time with us while she still had it. Thomas was already gone, it was Theo's senior year, and he had plans to enlist and leave the nest right after graduation. She wanted time with her parents. She wanted us to know our roots, spend time in the soil. It felt good to go and visit the farm. It always did, only it felt more like home that time than ever before. Nothing there ever changed except the tractors and irrigation equipment. The house was still the same old house with shiny wooden floors that were so polished from wear they didn't even creak anymore. The barn was the same old barn; it did have a fresh coat of paint smeared over the ancient layers that sometimes appeared here and there where quarter-sized flecks had chipped away. Gramma and Grampa were the same old grandparents–ageless, timeless, and steadfast. There was something inside me that appreciated how things there could stay the same even if I couldn't imagine living life like that. The farm was a beautiful, gentle reminder that not everyone needed to venture out like I did, not everything needed to change, and there was nothing wrong with staying the same if there was love and contentment in the sameness. We stayed a week before we ventured out to our new home, the last base I ever called home.

I'm not sure if it was 9/11, or my breakup with Cole, or the move, but something inside me changed that fall. I wasn't the same girl I had been. Too much was different for me to stay the same. I didn't want to be that desperate girl who fell for the first guy to smile at her anymore. I wanted to be strong and brave like the people on the Pennsylvania flight that took the terrorists down. I wanted to be different.

So ... I cut my hair; it seemed the most logical place to start.

I didn't even think about the scar when I cut it off. I was tired of it always in my way. I hated tangles; they would make me so incredibly, unbelievably mad. Sometimes I cried in the mornings trying to get the brush through my hair after a night in bed. I tried to flip it up on my pillow, to sleep with it in a ponytail, even a shower cap, anything I could think of to keep it from tangling. Nothing worked. I move like a maniac when I sleep and woke up every morning with a snaggle of rats. If that wasn't bad enough, my hair reminded me of him, he who I hated, who loved to run his fingers through it. I hated that memories of him were stuck in my hair as thick as the tangles.

A couple weeks after we settled in at McChord, I lost it one morning and had my last fit over tangles and chopped it off. I knew as soon as I sawed the scissors through the left half that I had made one of the biggest mistakes of my life but it was too late by then. I wanted my mom to fix it. I was so embarrassed I didn't want the boys to see me. I screamed for her to come to me, “Mom!”

“What?”

“Come here, now! I need you.”

“Tatum, I'm making lunches. You come here.”

“No! I need you now ... it's an emergency!”

“There are pads under the sink.”

“Oh, my gosh! It's not that! Come here NOW!!!”

“Tatum Rose, I swear if this is a joke you're going be on solo dishes duty for the week.”

“It's not a joke. Come here!”

Usually the boys would have been all over a crisis like that but since mom mentioned the pads they stayed far, far away.

She opened the door, and stared, then finally asked what I had done to myself.

I thought I was in trouble. I couldn't read her face. Usually she was easy to read; her face betrayed all of her emotions but I couldn't tell until she started laughing. Then I was mad.

“Mom! It's not funny. Help me!”

“What were you thinking?” she asked through her chuckles.

“The stupid brush got stuck! I hate my hair!”

“So you cut it?”

“I thought it would be better shorter. Can you fix it?” I started to cry.

“Oh, sweetie, I can't fix this!” She could stitch up my face without batting an eye but she couldn't fix my hair? Maybe her saved memories taught her some jobs called for outside help. By then she was laughing hysterically. She had more tears than me. That's when the boys clued in that it was OK to come look. Trav was first.

“Whoa! Tatum, you look like Theo on that side.”

“Shut up! Jerk!” I said, throwing the brush straight for his face.

“Knock it off,” Mom said. “Trav, go find a hat for your sister.” She laughed some more.

“I'm not going to school like this! You can't make me!”

“No, but I can't fix it either. You're going to put it in a hat and we'll go get it fixed. I’ve got to get a picture for Daddy first. He's going to die!”

“Mom! No!”

“These are the moments parents live for! Yes!”

“No! You can't show that to anyone, ever!”

“Just Daddy ...”

“NO!” I kept blocking the camera shot with my hands.

“Tatum, knock it off. Let me get a picture. Trust me, you'll laugh about this later.”

“No, I won't. Don't take a picture!”

Eventually she got one, but I deleted it from the camera when she wasn't looking. I kind of wish I hadn't now ... it's a moment of time lost forever, even though it's seared into one of those top-shelf bottles in my memory cave. It probably was hilarious but at the time it was pure tragedy. I wore the hat all morning and the boys laughed at me until they left for school. We had to wait until noon to finally get in to the Do or Dye Salon. The lady did her best but there was one chunk I cut so short the best she could do was a bob that started level with my scar. My scar screamed at me when she turned me around to look in the mirror. It had never looked so big or ugly in my life. I was Scar Face again.

“It's not that bad, Tate … you think it looks way worse than it does,” Mom said to me on the way home. I kept flipping the visor down to try to find a way to pull my hair over enough to cover it up.

“But they'll call me Scar Face!”

“You're in high school now. It's not going to happen like that. Those were mean little girls.”

“High school girls are mean big girls.”

I swore I would never cut it again. The problem was I hated my hair! It pissed me off, got tangled and greasy and ratty, and I had to take care of it, and get the stupid brush through it. I couldn't do it for the rest of my life … but boys liked long hair and despite my broken heart and appreciation for a beautiful feminine form, I definitely liked boys more, so I compromised ... I grew dreads!