Chapter 5 - Don’t Make a Scene
Tyler laughed when Ethan did not react.
“Lame,” he said to the phone. “He didn’t even blink. This guy’s a total statue.”
Lauren’s face tightened, but her first expression was not horror.
It was embarrassment.
“Tyler,” she hissed. “Enough.”
Jonathan slid his phone into his pocket and glanced toward the rope as if the whole situation were an inconvenience someone else had created.
“He’s thirteen,” he said. “Don’t make a scene.”
The veteran near the front slowly removed his cap.
A little girl clutched her father’s hand.
A woman in black pressed her lips together so tightly they turned white.
Still, no one shouted.
That silence should have warned Jonathan.
Instead, he took it as space to manage optics.
“My son didn’t mean anything,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s just soda.”
Just soda.
On a Tomb Guard’s boots.
At Arlington.
On Memorial Day.
Tyler zoomed in with his phone, catching the dark shine on Ethan’s boot, the can dented on the marble, the restraint he still thought was funny.
Then the livestream comments began moving faster.
His smile faded by degrees.
“People are freaking out,” he muttered.
Jonathan held out his hand. “Turn it off.”
Tyler pulled back. “No, wait. It’s blowing up.”
That was when the relief commander’s footsteps began.
The sound was sharper than Ethan’s.
Not louder.
May you like
Sharper.
Like the cemetery itself had decided the moment was over.
