ID 224354623 © David Wood | Dreamstime.com
“Stuart, time for school,” Mom shouts up the stairs.
Checking to make sure all the books I need for today are in the clear backpack, I notice the red binder for permission slips is still on my desk. “Shit, I forgot today is career day.” I grab the folder and shrug the pack onto my back, racing down the steps, passing by my sister taking down the laundry.
She graduated last year when she turned thirteen. Lucky her. Guys have to stay in city-school until sixteen. Girls switch to support-school, which was only a half day. Like I said, lucky.
Waving the red folder at Mom as I approach, she grabs a pen from the table where everyone dumps things when they come in. “Long night?” I comment; I really shouldn’t but the bags under her eyes had bags. The baby we got assigned as part of Angela’s support-training had colic so the woman-folk of the house spent the night walking the tyke around to keep it quiet while me and Mom’s latest deployment husband got the needed rest to do our jobs right.
Hey, school is a job! Especially, once they had peeled off the girls to support-school. I hope Angie gets extra credit for Red Face so she doesn’t end up like Mom, forced to marry an Army Unit and provide comfort whenever one of them was between deployments. A permanent match was so much better.
She was smart. And a really good cook. It could happen, even for a girl from the Northside.
Well, we would find out next month when she hits fourteen and goes up for matching.
Speaking of matches, “Thanks for the sign-off,” I grab back the folder from Mom. “I really hope the recruiters like me. I did well on all the tests.”
Her sad smile as she clicks the pen close twists my gut. “I hope you get what you want too.”
Today is the day everything will be decided for me. I give her a hug before running out the door.
I know, what am I doing hugging her at fifteen? I’m nearly a man. Well, I don’t hug her much anymore, but today it just felt right, okay?
I join the men-folk and other school-age kids at the bus stop. All the kids have clear-packs like mine, as required by the Department of Education and Patriotism Instruction. Donald and Bobby have the back of theirs lined in some bulletproof fabric, but the Millers always put on airs. The dingy, smoggy pre-dawn hour carries the diesel fumes from the extra generators needed at the nearby datacenter where their dad, they only had one, lucky dogs, works as a manager. Mom started with one, but after he died and the Every Man Every Woman Act passed in ’31, she got paired with 19th Battalion.
The bus is only ten minutes late, which means I got to the school forty-five minutes early for morning cardio. But better than taking the seven o’clock red-line and arriving thirty minutes late, if it even had room for the kids which most days it did not. Working men get first shot at the seats.
Anyway, I had time to drop my stuff off in the locker and hang with the boys. Our half-year class of ’42 would be graduating come December, the early class of ’42 long dispersed into their assignments.
“What are you going to try for, Donny?” I drop beside him on the bleachers waiting for the coaches to show up.
Donny is different from Donald Miller, who was different from Vance-Donald, etc. Some days it seems like half my class is named Donald, but it is actually only nine of them. Donny and I team up and go door-to-door getting cyber-coins for moving stuff and fixing things. For the last week, he had been bouncing a lot of ideas around, but today is the day.
“Oh, I’m hoping I can qualify for votech.” He rubs his jeans. “I think I could do good working in mechanics. The last set of aptitude tests say machinist would be a good fit.”
“What we talking ‘bout?” Mike falls on the metal seat to Donny’s other side. Then he responds to himself as he twirls the pencil he always carries with him. His brain hears things a couple seconds behind everyone else. “Machinist. Nah. They ain’t matching Northside fodder with glitter unless your dad already gots the job. You’re Army, like the rest of us.”
“I’m planning Navy.” I declared.
Both of them laughed. “You? You hate getting caught in the rain. Being surrounded by water? Bah-ha-ha.”
“Alright fodder chumps.” The two uniformed coaches show up exactly at seven-fifty-five. “Down for twenty, then we run stairs.”
And like that, we in the dirt doing pushups.
When the girls were around, we only had to do the run. And, we only had to run on the track. I miss those days.
***
At the door to the library, I turned over the sheet my mom signed emancipating me so I could sign up for a career to start the day after I turn sixteen in February. I inhale deep and step into the carpeted area. This is it. The rest of my life.
The tables normally set around the library had been lined up in front of the bookcases. The recruiters were sitting behind the tables, and my classmates stand in front of them hustling for the best options they could get. Army has the north wall and most of the boys are there, including Donny. I glance around and don’t see any options other than military. Marines, ICE, National Guard, Internal Enforcement Patrol. And the one table I care about which combines Space Force, Air Force, and Navy in all their flavors.
I frown as I walk over to their little corner of the world. The summer crowd got the Federal Teamsters from the Department of Interstate Transport as well as City Services recruiters. Did our tests not qualify for government work to meet our ten years of civil service, or are they beefing up the ranks to invade Canada or Mexico again?
I hope it is Canada. Whenever they do Mexico, the stores stop getting fresh produce for a while.
I stop at the Navy table where the two men sit chatting to each other. After a moment, when they don’t stop talking about one of them qualifying for Comfort Matching, I wave at them and say, “Hey, guys.”
The one beside the computer sighs and says, “Name.”
“Um, okay. It’s Robert Kennedy Hamilton.”
He types my name in. “Birthday February 9th?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t qualify. Go over to Army.” The computer guy turns back to the other guy and starts talking again. “Get the youngest one you can for your cyber. Train her up right.”
I interrupt, trying not to think about my sister ending up with someone like them. “Hey, now. I’ve seen my aptitude tests, I qualify for Navy, especially the Seabees.”
“They upped the standards kid, you don’t qualify.”
“But—”
“You don’t qualify. Go join the foot soldiers.”
“Could you at least tell me how close I am to qualification?” I don’t like the whine in my voice. It sets my voice cracking, but I have to know. “I got a month left, maybe I can raise something.”
The other guy, the one with wings on his shoulders shook his head. “No can-do my guy. Just go over there. Everyone here is going into the same barracks come December 26th. Just roll with it.”
I blink and start walking over to the Army table.
I don’t get a choice.
I watch as my classmates get turned away from all the other tables but Army.
None of us are getting a choice.
(words 1,299, published 6/15/2025)