They told her her father was gone, leaving her to accept a painful loss. But everything changed when eleven Marines walked in, revealing a truth that challenged what she had been led to believe.
The gym at Pinecrest Elementary had been transformed in the way school gyms always are for special occasions—earnest, slightly overdone, and filled with a kind of hope that tries very hard to outweigh reality. Crepe paper streamers stretched from one basketball hoop to the other, sagging just enough in the middle to remind you that gravity always wins eventually. Balloons were tied in clusters at the corners, some already losing air, their surfaces dulled by the warmth of too many bodies in one place. A folding table near the wall held plastic cups of fruit punch that tasted more like sugar than anything else, alongside store-bought cookies no one really wanted but everyone took anyway out of habit.
It should have felt cheerful. For most people there, it did.
