Chapter 2
I did not argue. I did not look at Morrison. I simply waited, because waiting was the first thing my grandfather had ever taught me and it was still the most useful.
"What makes you comfortable with a rifle?" Patterson asked.
"My grandfather taught me. Long range, mostly."
Morrison made a comment about deer and back porches and the particular leisure of rural life. The laugh that followed from the edges of the room was thin and obligatory, the sound of people performing amusement because the authority figure had initiated it and they had not yet decided whether authority was worth trusting in this specific room.
I looked just past Morrison, not at him. "He called it paying attention."
The laugh stopped.
Patterson studied me for a long second with the expression of a man updating an assessment in real time. Then he walked to the far end of the table, lifted an M4, and brought it to me. No commentary. No fanfare. The implicit message was clean: if she fails, she returns to the handgun with everyone else and takes the embarrassment without a word.
I took the rifle.
May you like
That was the first time the room went quiet — the specific quiet of people who have just understood that something they expected to be short is going to take longer than they planned.
I did not fumble. My hand found the barrel, my shoulder found the stock, and the weapon settled into my body the way things settle when they have been practiced beyond the point of thought. Patterson saw it. Morrison saw it. The recruits closest to me leaned in without meaning to, which is what people do when they watch a thing that is being done correctly and want proximity to the correctness.
