mepurfield

Novels and movies about the war in the Middle East seem to be the norm. How can it not when art always reflects reality.  And a lot of them seem one sided. But with Peggy Tibbetts’ new young adult novel PFC Liberty Stryker, she not only takes us into the war fueled by terrorist acts and political and corporate dictators struggling for power, she also gives the reader a chance to make up their mind about it by experiencing it first hand through the eyes of a nineteen year old girl.

We’re introduced to Libby Stryker who’s on the lowest totem pole in the army. She’s stationed in the Middle East and plays caboose in the unit’s caravan when on missions. Libby drives the truck with Skittle, a young black man with a penchant for rhymes, who is not only a good friend and potential lover, but also her protection in the male dominated army that treats the women soldiers like meat that are obligated to be raped. 

Libby comes off as a tough, crude, and ghetto-ish older teen even though her parents are a high ranking military man and a respected journalist. When her father dies during 9/11 in the Pentagon crash, she finds herself joining the army to fight for revenge. But then her caravan is ambushed and the enemy captures her. Libby discovers that she’s not a POW but a part of a secret mission with a man known as Captain who must reach Bagdad.

Libby and Captain trek across the desert and the war ravaged cities where the reader, as well as Libby, learn about what war does to the average person. Tibbetts doesn’t hold back. You will find some headless children in here and many surprises at who’s at fault. She also finds friends in unexpected places. As Libby tries to figure out the war and who's really the bad guy, she also goes through a personal struggle of dealing with the memory of her father and who he really was: the man she remembers or the man that he secretly was.

PFC Liberty Stryker continues Tibbetts’ explorations of fathers, self-made and real prisons, and the search for personal truth as she did in her previous novel Letters to Juniper. This novel is not for the faint of heart or those turned off by violence. But if you should take a chance on it, you will find a great page-turner.

TREK ACROSS THE GARBAGE FIELD

“Lorelei,” she whispers. “Remember.”

I look up at the blurred red void. The throbbing pain attacks my head. I close my eyes to see if that will lessen the ache. No luck. I’m screwed either way.

I remove the scarlet blanket from my head and sit up on the floor. My consciousness rushes with memories of last night’s party. Jorge lays face down on the couch, still naked except for Arianna’s thong and push-up bra. Arianna doesn’t seem to be around unless she’s in one of the bedrooms. I spot a few snoring guys on the floor and one stretched across the wooden coffee table. None of them are Foley. He must have left already. He likes to get a full six hours of sleep before he starts his shift.

So who called my name?

I shrug and then rub my temples. Doesn’t matter. I’m up.

I take the cell phone out of my skirt’s back pocket and check the time. Damn, it’s 4:36 A.M. No wonder Foley left me here. I probably told him to do it. It’s happened before. I get so engrossed in the music and the dancing and the people that I don’t want to leave.

I use the tall lamp in the corner to help me up to my feet and walk across the shrapnel of chips and popcorn on the floor, trying to be aware of bottles and cans that will surely make me trip and land on my face.

Blinding green lightning flashes through the room.

My legs weaken as the floor drops.

I stare up at blinding white lights.

The paper crinkles under me like I’m on one of those doctor’s tables. My legs are spread. My claves float above the table even through ice coats them. A little girl’s upside down face blocks my view. She may be around six or seven. Her long light brown hair dangles close to the sides of my face. Her old pink eyes stare into mine. I might know her but I’m not sure.

My heartbeat increases.

Chills clamp my spine.

“Say it,” she says.

“S-say what?” I ask.

“I can’t see you anymore.”

“What?” I ask.

Green lightning flashes again.

All is gone for a sec until…

The back of a man’s head. He has cropped brown hair and hunches over.

Thunder.

A crimson explosion from the back of his head.

I open my eyes and grab the throbbing pain in my skull. I’m at the other side of the room. How the hell did I get here? The last thing I remember is walking across the floor. I must have blacked out. Figures.

I check my cell again. 5:03 A.M.

I’m going to be so late for my first day of senior year.

 
THE UNBEARABLE PRESSURE OF TARDINESS

You would figure by now I’d be used to going to school with a hangover. I guess there’re some things that you just can’t adapt to.

I run down the school hallway as the final bell rings. After crossing the threshold, I stop short inside homeroom. Even though I’m the last one to enter, I can’t help but be impressed with my stamina since my brain is thumping against my skull and my stomach feels like it swallowed a thousand centipedes.

Instead of desks, large stations with black stone tops, sinks, and propane gas spouts for science experiments form three rows. Each station has two people on stools. Mr. Gulager glares at me from behind the master station at the head of the class. I flash him a smile and point to the only empty stool in the middle row towards the back, the one next to Tara Cunningham who I’ve been sitting next to for the last four years.

“Um, over there?” I ask.

“You’re late, Lorelei.” Mr. Gulager frowns so hard his bushy eyebrows and ridiculous graying mustache look like they’re going to collide around his nose and hold it hostage. “How many years have you had homeroom with me? By now you know I don’t tolerate tardiness.”

I nod my head and zip up my hoodie before he can see that I’m wearing a Fuck Buttons spaghetti strap tank that shows off my belly ring and the wings of my tat. Why hand the man more reason to give me shit?

“Yes, sir,” I say.

He glances at the same faces from the last four years and begins his speech about ‘tardiness’ and how it screws up the whole morning. And there I am: standing by the door, watching everyone’s bored face and trying to keep from falling asleep standing up. When he finishes, he motions for me to sit.

I exhale a gracious, “Thank you,” and walk to the stool as the man continues to talk.

“Being late is no way to live your life,” he says. “Punctuality is the structure of life, Lorelei.”

With my back to him, I roll my eyes. Holy guacamole! This guy has such a hard-on for lateness. It’s effin homeroom. Not like I’m late for my period. Now that would be something to freak out about. Besides, it’s the first day of school, you know?

Mr. Gulager stops talking as I sit on the stool. I slouch forward, cross my arms, and close my eyes. The room is quiet (the way Gulager has trained us to be) and I’m so tempted to take a 5-minute power nap. I think twice about it since I’m in deep shit as it is for my first day of senior year. Man, I wish I had some weed on me so I can sneak right off after homeroom, but my stash is in my locker.

After attendance, faking the pledge of allegiance, and the start of morning announcements, I sneak my phone out of my hoodie pocket. I cross my legs and hope to God Mr. Gulager can’t see the phone hidden behind the table.

I check my text messages as the kid over the loud speaker spouts bullshit club information and when try-outs are for the lame sports the school takes way too seriously. I have two messages from Fatima and one from Foley. Fatima’s first message asks where I was last night. We’ve been friends most our lives so she probably knows the answer to her own question. I open Foley’s. He asks if I need a ride to Chuckie’s party tonight. Chuckie? Ah, in Lakehurst. Right. I sneak a quick text back to him: f yeah, baby. The coast clear, I slip the phone back into my hoodie pocket and case the classroom.

At the table up one row and to the right, a new guy throws me a smile. He needs to lose that mini Mohawk. His clothes seem too perfect - khaki cargo shorts, tennis sneakers, and solid blue T-shirt – like his mommy picked them out for him. He’s kind of cute, and I might give him a throw if the chance should arrive this year.

For kicks, I open my hoodie and lean forward so my cleavage presses out over the low cut collar. He might be able to see some of the biker demon on my right breast, maybe even some of my bra. I catch his eyes staring and his mouth smiling wider. To seal the deal, I flash a slight kiss. The guy blushes and places his hands over his lap. Yeah, like I don’t know what he’s trying to hide. Mission accomplished, I turn away and congratulate myself on a job well done.

I spot another new guy sitting to my left. He’s a super cutie in jeans, black Doc Martins, and an old Fear T-shirt. He scores major points for the T. I’ve only met one boy during my four years who has ever heard of Fear. New Super Cutie’s black, curly hair stops at his neck and his bangs dangle over his eyes. Hands down, I want him. I’m already imagining how he looks naked and on top of me. But the boy pays me no mind. For some odd reason, he focuses on sketching in a notebook. I keep staring, waiting for him. C’mon, I mentally scream, what is so important that you have to draw instead of check me out?

He finally looks up. New Super Cutie stares into my eye, his face blank. I smile, wink at him, and give him a view of my thigh. He glances at my legs, but his expression doesn’t change. He looks back into my eyes and then continues his sketching.

Holy guacamole!

I feel my face flush red. What is his problem?

I turn forward. Brian Callahan leans over his desk and grins at me. He’s probably remembering the time we fooled around at that party in Point Pleasant last month. He arches his blond eyebrows and motions to my breasts. I pout and ease my shoulder together. I doubt he can see much from that distance, but the action sets him off. He fakes a death on his stool and smiles.

Yeah, New Super Cutie has to be gay.

 
THE GAP OF IMMATURITY

Leaving homeroom, I walk down the hall and find Fatima waiting for me at my locker. She looks good in a Radiohead T-shirt she bought when we saw them live last summer in Jersey City and tight jeans even though she has those stupid Hello Kitty patches on the thighs that match the Hello Kitty earrings and charm bracelet. You figure her obsession with Hello Kitty would be a cause for alarm. It’s her hair that makes me flinch. I’m still not used to the amount of bleach she used on it. I want to tell her because of her pale skin that she almost looks albino, but I don’t have the heart to make her cry since she thinks she did such a great job.

“So tell me tell me tell me,” she says as I open my locker.

“God, put a plastic bag over my head,” I say.

I rummage in my backpack for the spliffs I stashed earlier.

“You went to that party last night, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So?” She pouts. “You promised to take me with you.”

I turn to her and inhale. “No, I didn’t.”

But I also didn’t say I wasn’t going to take her. I glance into her extreme light blue eyes. People always say Fatima has one of the freakiest stares in school. I never got that feeling. I always thought there was something childlike in her eyes. Through out high school we always had a lot of classes together and got the same kind of grades. Where I just didn’t try for my Cs, Fatima studied hard for them. For some reason her brain just couldn’t wrap with ease around information. I’ve often wondered if she was slightly retarded or had a learning disorder or something wrong. Then I would grow mad that her religious parents or the thick teachers never picked up on it to help her. 

“You went off with Foley again, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, what’s the big deal?”

She studies her shoes, the weight of her sadness holding her face down. God, I just want to slap her. Instead I say, “I asked him if you could come with us. But he wanted to be alone with me. Okay?”

The lie lifts her head up, but the sadness still remains. “Yeah, okay.”

“Listen, I’m working on him. I’ll keep trying.”

I’m amazed at how the lies just keep falling out of my mouth. I’ve been stringing Fatima along ever since she found out about my nightlife. No way in hell I’m going to bring her along. She’s very pretty and has a nice body and isn’t even aware of it. Some guy could easily persuade her to some bedroom or bathroom and take advantage of her, take her virginity and flush it down a toilet. I just wish she would move on and focus on other things.

I pocket the weed, grab my Wayfarer sunglasses, and close the door.

“Just like you keep trying to set me up with one of Foley’s friends?” she asks.

Problem number two: Fatima wants a boyfriend. But no guy in this school wants to date a girl he thinks is retarded. Have sex with that kind of girl? Yes. But not date.

I decide to stop lying and say, “Trust me, Fatima. You don’t want to go out with Foley’s friends. They’re jerks.”

She shrugs and picks at the corner of her notebook.

The bell for first period blares. The hall clears out.

“Wanna light up with me?” I ask.

“Nah, gotta start off the year like a good girl.” She steps away. “What’s your first class?”

“No idea.” I say.

She laughs again. But it’s true.

As she rushes to make her first period class, I run down the hall to the back of the school.

 
ILLUSIONS OF SMOKE

Owel High School is not really in Owel, New Jersey. Some idiot built the building just at the border of Farmingdale. Acres of barren land and trees surround the school. If you stand on your toes you can make out an old rock quarry and the train tracks that run past it. We’re so far from civilization that if a bomb explodes no one but the yokels in the few clapboard shacks in the woods would hear us die.  A baseball field, a few tennis courts, and a football field that hosts the games of our sub par team - the Rebels - frame the huge two-level building. I rarely go to the sporting events, unless some guy wants to drag me to one and promises to take me to a party afterwards. Oddly, I have never been in the East wing of the school where the college prep and advance placement classrooms are rooted. I would never be caught dead in those rooms and the faculty would never make the mistake of putting me there either. They like to keep all the remedial classes together. Sophomore year I had all my morning classes in one corridor. I just zigzagged across the hall at the sound of the bell. Maybe the faculty thinks we’re so stupid we might get lost roaming the corridors.

I sneak out the entrance by the gym and slip on my Wayfarers before my eyes freak from the bright sunlight. No one’s around this time of the morning. I look out to the woods and the back corner of the parking lot. It’s almost the perfect place to smoke. ‘Almost’ meaning that everyone knows to smoke here, even the teachers and security guards. To keep from suspicion, I take apart cigarettes and mix the weed with the tobacco to create spliffs. To the average eye it appears like I’m just smoking an unfiltered cigarette. They could also pass for clove cigarettes, which a lot of kids have been smoking lately. I still don’t take any chances, though. As soon as a guard or janitor walks by, I’m out of there.

I finish the spliff and stub it out with my checkered Chuck Taylor sneaker. I still have twenty minutes of first period left. The nausea starts to fade from my stomach, but this headache is relentless. I figure I can drop down to the school nurse and score some aspirin. It would be a good excuse of why I missed 1^st period. I smile, proud of myself. Looks like today might not be so bad.