Operation Oleander (9780547534213) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Sample Chapter from THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  With special thanks to my editor, Daniel Nayeri, for patiently watching this book emerge and guiding me along and to my agent, Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary for believing in me. To members of my writing group (Ellen, Corey, Erin, Lezlie, Lorrie-Ann, and Sydney), your feedback and friendship have been invaluable. Thanks also to senior editor Jennifer Greene and associate designer Opal Roengchai—and everyone at Clarion—for making this book so beautiful. And to Tom, there aren’t enough words to convey my appreciation for your love and friendship.

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2013 by Valerie O. Patterson

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Patterson, Valerie O.

  Operation Oleander / Valerie O. Patterson.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Seventh-grader Jess and her friends establish the Order of the Oleander to collect supplies for an orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan, where two of their parents are deployed, but when disaster strikes and many blame the Order, Jess must find a way to go on.

  ISBN 978-0-547-24437-2 (hardback) [1. Charity—Fiction. 2. Orphanages—Fiction. 3. Soldiers—Fiction. 4. Afghan War, 2001—Fiction. 5. Bombings—Fiction. 6. Clubs—Fiction. 7. Afghanistan—History—2001—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P278152Oth 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012023166

  eISBN 978-0-547-53421-3

  v1.0313

  For my parents,

  and for all those who serve

  One

  WHITENESS EXPLODES behind my eyelids, and my eyes shoot open. I’m not sure if I am awake or still asleep and dreaming. My heart beats hard and fast and tight, as if trapped inside a small glass jar.

  Light glows around my bedroom shades like a solar eclipse.

  It’s morning. Early. I’m awake after all.

  The noise builds again in the distance. First a crackle. Then a sizzle.

  Silence.

  Then boom.

  Boom.

  BOOM.

  Firecrackers. Just firecrackers.

  Somebody down the block with leftovers from last night’s Fourth of July. I lie there in bed, trying to force my heart back to normal.

  Across the room, Cara sleeps in her toddler bed. She always wakes up when I try to sneak out of the room in the morning, but now she could sleep through a war zone.

  My ears strain to hear anything more. Maybe it’s finished. Maybe some dad or military police officer on the block has tracked the kid down and yelled at him.

  I don’t care.

  Just that the noise stopped.

  Because, after last night, I hate fireworks. The way the lights flamed in the sky and made people sitting on the beach look like silhouettes of soldiers waiting to go into battle.

  The clock radio by the bed blinks 12:00 in red over and over like warning lights on a runway. The power must have gone out overnight. It happens during Florida thunderstorms.

  With the clock out, I don’t know what time it is. I told Meriwether and Sam I’d meet them at the post exchange, the PX, at eight to staff the booth.

  I don’t know what time it is in Afghanistan, either.

  Rumors of troop movements have spread through the post like a game of telephone. Have you heard? Surge. Maybe this week. No one knows what’s true.

  Already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, I fling off the thin sheet and dash for the kitchen. I plug in the computer and press the on button, holding it hard until the machine strums to life. The monitor glows for seconds with a gray, empty light. Then the login page appears, and I enter my password.

  The screen flickers.

  I tap my fingers against the keyboard. Hurry up.

  In the upper right-hand corner, the time shows. 6:44 a.m.

  Late afternoon in Afghanistan.

  I click through to my e-mail.

  Pressing the icon to get mail is like entering a code that sends Dad’s message across a wire from Afghanistan to here, and I imagine cables running undersea, across deserts. As if Dad’s physically connected to me by a cord, knotted and strong. Something that can’t unravel.

  I know it’s really just a signal through a satellite. It seems impossible, almost magical. Something not to trust.

  Only, his e-mail is there.

  I check the date and time of his note. As of this morning, Dad was still alive in Afghanistan. I try not to think about it this way, but I can’t help it.

  I reach toward the wall and pick up the chewed-end pencil—Cara’s—tied to a string. I mark an X on the calendar for yesterday, July 4. One day less to go before he comes home.

  A ritual, marking off the days on a calendar until a whole month, and then another, and another, is crossed out. Only then—it has to be in the proper order—do I open the e-mail message. It’s short.

  Dear Jess: I attached a video and some new photos Cpl. Scott and I took at the orphanage. Guess which photos I took. (Hint: They’ll be the catawampus ones.) See how great Warda looks? What a difference you all are making. The school supplies are a big hit. Keep them coming.

  Love, Dad

  PS—We roasted hot dogs on the Fourth over the burn pits. The buns were AWOL, but the dogs tasted like home. What I would have done for sparklers.

  Sparklers.

  Last year, when it got dark enough, Dad brought out sparklers. The bright flowers danced, and the smell of match tips lingered in the air. We ran up and down the beach, waving our wands of light until they fizzled.

  Then the real fireworks started. The firemen lit them off a barge towed out into the gulf. The rockets shot into the air. I couldn’t see them when they lifted off, but you could hear them. The swoosh of power jetting them up, followed by silence until they burst overhead. Green and red and blue and white sparkles showering the sky. Dad said the blue was the rarest color. I forget why.

  I open the attached photo, and my hand squeezes the computer mouse. Warda’s photo. Her wide green eyes are like those of the Afghani girl from an old National Geographic magazine Ms. Rivera tacked to the bulletin board at school. She said it was taken when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Gunships fired on villages, and bombs disguised as toys glittered in the village roads, tempting children to pluck them off the ground like piñata candy.

  Warda’s eyes are just like those from the other photo. Startled, haunting, seeing more than they can express. As if there’s something just beyond the reach of the camera, something she can’t forget. They’re like the photo I found in an old album in the utility closet after we moved on post. A phot
o with curled edges. A girl wearing a faded T-shirt and a hat, haunted eyes staring out. Mine.

  In this shot, Warda stands straight, stiff, facing forward. Dad’s on one side of her, and Meriwether’s mother, Corporal Scott, kneels on the other side of Warda and smiles. But it is Warda’s eyes that draw me in, and somehow her eyes are my eyes. I am the girl thousands of miles away in an orphanage, Dad’s hand on my shoulder. And I am safe.

  I download the other photos and the video of the children playing in the courtyard, the milk goat we raised money for grazing on weeds in the background. We named it Zebah. It’s a name that’s easy to say. Sam and I dig deep inside for a voice that rumbles out into a big long zzzz sound when we pronounce it.

  Against the pockmarked building, oleander bushes battle to survive. Dad said they bloom in the same shades as here. That’s what gave me the idea for Operation Oleander, the plan to donate supplies to the orphanage. It’s why I’m meeting Meriwether and Sam at the PX so early. I print out the photos and upload the video to my MP3 player so people get to see what they’re supporting.

  I type a reply.

  Dear Dad:

  Great photos. Our hot dogs had buns.

  I don’t say we didn’t go to the post fireworks, that we stayed home. I don’t ask about the surge and if it’s started.

  Instead I write,

  Remember the fireworks last year? How perfect they were? Love, Jess.

  I hit the send button and let my fingers linger over the keys. Feel the connection being made and the message reaching back across the distance to Dad.

  Inside the house, everything is quiet. No more firecrackers. No more booms. No noise comes from my bedroom. Cara is still asleep, and Mom’s door is shut tight.

  I sign off the computer, make sure Mom’s coffeepot is programmed to brew at eight, grab my iPod, and head out the door. When the key clicks in the lock, I rattle the doorknob just to make sure it’s secure before I walk toward the PX.

  Two

  FOG CLINGS to the tops of the pines and palm trees lining the streets of the Fort Spencer Army Post housing area. Spider webs gleam wet along the chainlink fences and in the thick bougainvillea at the house on the corner. Pine straw and torn leaves from last night’s storm mingle with bits of soggy red paper. Leftovers from someone’s ticker tape. But no one’s around. Whoever set off the explosions has retreated like an unseen enemy.

  A few cars are parked outside the PX when I get there. The doors, cloudy with condensation, whoosh open, and I step into the corridor. It doesn’t look like much. Just like a mall before the stores open. Kids’ artwork plasters almond-color walls, and slick tile floors echo when I walk through, even in flip-flops. But the hallway is the perfect location. Anyone who shops on post walks through these doors.

  We’re ready for them.

  I’m unpacking the storage closet in the manager’s office off the hallway next to the PX when Meriwether strolls in. She yawns and pulls the sleeves of her pink hoodie below her fingers as if it’s winter. That’s summer in Florida—hot and humid outside and pneumonia-cold inside.

  “You’re early.” I unload a box of chips and pretzels onto the table.

  “Don’t get used to it,” Meriwether says. “Dad was called in. Some computer glitch. He dropped me off. Promised to bring frappés back.” She grins from under her hood. Meriwether’s dad works on post as a civilian.

  “For me, too?”

  “That’s what he said. You know he likes you more than me.” Meriwether folds her arms and shivers. She stamps her feet as if it were February and snowing. Not that it does that in Clementine, Florida. Ever.

  “He does not.” But inside I smile. Mr. Scott’s very nice. He just doesn’t know what to do with Meriwether sometimes. He acts like she’s some sort of complex rope puzzle he can’t solve now that Mrs. Scott has been deployed.

  “Is Sam coming?” she asks.

  “He’s supposed to.” Sometimes Sam makes excuses not to come to the PX to help out. He acts embarrassed to be asking for contributions to charity. Or maybe he’s uncomfortable hanging out with enlisted soldiers’ kids like Meriwether and me.

  “He’d better come.” Meriwether unfolds three metal chairs, one for each of us, and plants them behind the table where we sit down.

  “You just want him to introduce you to Caden.” Caden is a junior lifeguard at the post pool. He was in our class last year, but he didn’t talk to Meriwether or me unless he had to for a school assignment.

  “Not true.” But the corners of her lips curl up.

  I can tell she’s about to start talking about him, so I say, “Come look. Dad sent some new photos. Your mom took some of them. There’s new video, too.” I pull up the album. “There’s Warda and your mom.” I point to the photo of Warda with my dad and Meriwether’s mother.

  “Where?” Meriwether pushes back her hood and swishes her blond hair over her shoulder. She leans over the iPod and squints.

  “Why don’t you just wear your glasses?”

  “I’m working on Dad to get me contacts.”

  That means she’ll get them. Eventually.

  “Well, what do you think?” I hold my breath. I think it’s the best photo yet. That we’ll take in lots of donations as a result. I want her to be as excited as I am. “See how much better they all look?”

  Meriwether doesn’t answer right away.

  My breath leaks out, like a punctured bike tire.

  She bends closer, until her face almost touches the screen.

  “Don’t you see how much healthier Warda looks, how she’s finally smiling?” I ask.

  “You think so? She still doesn’t have any shoes on.”

  “What?” I search the photo. I hadn’t noticed Warda’s bare feet. I’d just seen her eyes. They drew me like perfect moon shells on the beach.

  “But the school and the food. You have to see the goat,” I say.

  Meriwether scoots her chair away from the table. “Oh, no, you don’t, Jess Westmark. I see what you’re trying to do. We agreed to do this for two months. You forced me into it, remember? You said we’d have the rest of the summer to ourselves. For the pool. The beach. First it was a goat. Then school supplies. No more. You promised.” Meriwether folds her arms.

  “But, Meriwether, just think . . .”

  “No, I mean it. Oceanography camp’s in August, and school starts at the end of August. That’s next month. We collected enough school supplies for a year. And Sam promised to take us sailing. Maybe with you-know-who. I don’t want to be stuck in this hallway till oceanography camp.”

  “I know it’s boring,” I say. But it’s not, really. Not when you have a mission.

  “No kidding.” Meriwether sits there all hunched over, frowning, and I’m just feet from her, close enough to touch her arm. It scares me, how we can be so close and so far away from each other at the same time.

  Finally, Meriwether grabs my arms and pulls me to my feet. “Okay, Jess, let’s just do this. The sooner we set up today, the sooner we’re out of here.”

  “Okay, okay.” I surrender. But I’m smiling.

  Meriwether centers the tablecloth and lines up packages of chips and cookies in decorative baskets we took from her house weeks ago. “Mom won’t miss these. Not for another six months,” she said. Until the end of deployment. That’s what Meriwether didn’t say out loud.

  There are lots of things we don’t say aloud anymore.

  I prop up the poster about Operation Oleander and our efforts to support the orphanage in Afghanistan. Updated photos go into the album display.

  “You know, your mom took some of these.” I point to some of the pictures in the album.

  Meriwether focuses. “She did?” She studies them as if she can figure something out about her mom by looking at the photos she took.

  “Good morning, ladies.” Ms. Rivera, our English teacher from eighth grade last year, stands at our table. “Hope your summer reading is going well.”

  “Hi,” Meriwether and
I say together, and nod.

  “How’s it coming?” Ms. Rivera points toward our display.

  “Okay,” I say. “We’re making one more push, you know, this month.” I want to say we’ll keep supporting the orphanage into the fall. Next to me, though, Meriwether fidgets with the poster, straightening it.

  “Yes. The rest of July,” Meriwether says. And no longer, she means.

  Ms. Rivera nods at the photo of Warda and Dad and Corporal Scott.

  “Jess, you look so much like your dad.”

  My smile freezes to my face. Not really. We both have gray eyes. But my face is shaped like a heart, and his is large and oval. He freckles and I tan. Meriwether bumps my knee under the table, breaking the winter ice sealing my lips together.

  “Cara really looks like him.” She has the same cowlick where her part goes, the same oval face, skin so pale it looks see-through in the sun.

  “She must be adorable now,” Ms. Rivera says, and drops five dollars and a packet of watercolor pencils into the donation basket.

  “She is.” When she’s not being a brat. “Thank you.” I push away what Ms. Rivera said and reach under the table for a box. “Oh, I forgot to put the flowers out. Do you want one? Any contributor gets one.” I pull out the paper oleanders I’d made.

  “Sure,” Ms. Rivera says as a couple walks toward the table.

  I hand one to her, then arrange the rest in a clear plastic vase. We need another pack of pink and white tissue paper to make more. Just folding the paper makes me feel good. The softness under my fingers. When the tissue flowers open, they seem to bloom in my hands.

  “I’d better run. Looks like you have some more potential donors.” Ms. Rivera winks and hurries away.

  As the couple approaches, I can see the man’s dressed in tan-brown fatigues. The woman wears a sundress, and she rests her hand over her belly, protecting it.