Page 76 of Second Alarm
"The buns," I say, with all the sincerity I can muster, "are very serious."
He claps my shoulder and walks away. I stand there with two bags of hamburger buns and briefly consider driving to a small town in Montana I've never heard of and changing my name to something like Rick.
I don't do that. I carry the buns to the grill.
The Academy Story gets told again.
This is inevitable. It's been told at every Station 7 gathering since I joined the house — how we haze new probies, how we haze old probies, specifically how we haze me, because I'm the only one here who was at the academy when it happened. Cal tells it. The official version is about the sprinkler system, the lineup, the water damage, and Instructor Walsh's face. The official version doesn't include Hanna. The official version doesn't have her in it at all.
Today Cal tells it by the grill with a beer in hand and at least twenty people within earshot — Hanna, Riley, me, Derek, Mrs.Patel and her nephew the bass-fishing accountant (thirty-one, tall, pleasant, and entirely the wrong height for Hanna), Chief Rodriguez, Big Jim, Gemma, and the new probie whose name I haven't memorized.
"So, picture it," Cal says. "Academy dorms. Second month. Brennan is running the floor, or thinks he's running the floor. Sprinkler inspection at seven a.m. Brennan has to lead it. Walsh is watching."
"Walsh was a monster," I say.
"Walsh was the monster. And Brennan, this beautiful idiot, apparently hasn't slept. He's spent his night doing — something. I don't know what. Reading, probably. He's a reader."
Hanna, to my left, takes a sudden interest in her macaroni salad.
"So, Brennan stands up in front of Walsh to lead the inspection, and he's wearing — " Cal pauses. "I've never told this part. Because I've been sitting on it."
"What," I say. I intend this to be calm.
"Because my cadet partner told me years later — " He's building now. I'm no longer calm. " — that Brennan was wearing, on this specific morning, a t-shirt that wasn't, in fact, his own t-shirt."
The grill crackles. Derek leans in. Riley's eyebrow is doing its thing. Hanna has stopped eating.
"Not his t-shirt?" Mrs. Patel asks.
"Not his t-shirt. He's wearing a t-shirt belonging to some other cadet on his floor — we never did find out who — and the shirt is two sizes too big, the shoulder seam halfway down his arm — "
"Cal."
" — and he stands up in front of Walsh like this, and Walsh looks at him, and Walsh doesn't say a word. Just looks. And Brennan — this Brennan, this man — " Cal is pointing at mewith his beer. " — doesn't know he's wearing someone else's shirt inside out. He thinks it's his. He thinks it's correct. He stands there for forty-five minutes leading a full inspection in somebody else's inside-out shirt and Walsh lets him."
The crew loses it. Derek bangs the tongs on the grill. Rivera slaps his knee. Riley's eyebrow climbs to new altitudes. Mrs. Patel is laughing with a hand over her mouth. Big Jim, silent, is shaking.
I'm still holding the tongs. I can't think what to do with them.
Hanna stares at me across the table.
Her face does absolutely nothing.
The Poker Face deploys with the efficiency of an airbag. Her eyes are a wall. Her mouth is a line. Derek, who's been running Poker Face odds on her since Week Two, looks at me once, quickly — the look says:my guy.
"Brennan." Cal wipes his eye. "You all right?"
"I'm here."
"You didn't know about the — "
"I didn't know about that, Cal, no." I pause. "Who told you that? You said a cadet partner?"
"Uh." Cal sucks his teeth. "I don't remember. Years ago. Some guy."
Hanna drinks water. Specifically, she finishes her water.
"It was me," Hanna says.
