Mission

by Jason Myers

Genres: YA Family

Synopsis

Wake up and do something! Kaden Norris's life is shattered when his older brother -- his best friend and hero -- is killed in Iraq. All Kaden has left of Kenny is a letter, urging him to break away from his sheltered life and to go to San Francisco to visit his cousin, James. Kaden is blown away, as James introduces him to a life filled with drugs, sex, and apathy. He goes from extreme high to extreme low, having no idea what to expect. And when Kaden uncovers secrets about his family that have been kept from him for years, his entire world comes crashing down. This may not be the trip his brother had envisioned for him, but it's one Kaden will never forget.

Release date: December 29, 2009

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 384

Sample

The Mission

Saturday, May 31st

THE CAR CREEPS TO THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY AND turns onto the gravel road, the tires kicking up a small cloud of dust that whips into a spiral in the dead air before disappearing just as quickly as it came. I roll my window down and swallow a heavy gulp of humidity and look at my mom and take a deep breath. She smiles real big, and it seems authentic, and this puts me at ease to a small degree. If she can feel good about my journey, then what is there for me to really, truly worry about?

My mom guides the car onto the boiling black asphalt in front of us, turns the radio up, and rolls her own window down halfway. Her long brown hair blows in the breeze coming in and shines in the sunlight. She looks so pretty. Way better than she ever has over the past six months. She’s wearing an olive green dress and white flats, and she slides her sunglasses over her eyes and says, “I’m so excited for you. You’re going to do great out there, Kaden.”

“I’m sure I will. It’s gonna be fun. New, ya know.”

“Something that you’ve never come close to living,” she says.

I turn my eyes out the front of the window. It’s so sunny today, and the sky is blue. White puffy clouds that look like zoo animals float everywhere above us. And a tiny bit of me still can’t believe that I’m doing this. That I’m going to San Francisco to see Chuck Palahniuk read and stay with my cousin James Morgan, and most important, that I’m seeing the final wish of my brother through. My best friend in the world. I’m doing what he wanted us to do before he died in Iraq. I’m taking care of the rest of the business he couldn’t be around to finish.

We glide past giant spaces of green country, horses, cows, hogs, and big houses that have stood in place for generations. My flight leaves the Cedar Rapids airport in two hours, and I am due in San Francisco at three twenty this afternoon.

That Patsy Cline song, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” comes on, and my mom looks at me and says, “Just remember one thing while you’re running around out there with James.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t put too much stock into everything he says. He goes off about a lot of things.”

“Like what, Mom?”

She runs a hand through her hair and sighs. “Just things. He runs his mouth, and not everything is always worth listening to. He can get really carried away sometimes.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. Not one stinking clue. So I shrug and I say, “Got it.” And we barely speak the rest of the ride. The rest of the way spent with me thinking about my brother, Kenny, and how big of a kick he’d get out of knowing I was actually going through with this.

I miss him so much.

My mom pulls up in front of the United Airlines terminal. She gets out. I’m trying to show that I’m not nervous. For her sake, not mine. I step outside and walk to the back of the car and help her pull my suitcase from the trunk. Then she hands me three hundred dollars and says, “I know we already gave you three, but here’s some more plus a prepaid phone card. I want to be sure you have everything you need out there.”

“I’ll be fine, Mom.”

“I know you will, sweetie.” She pats my head and hugs me and says, “Call me when you land. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

She hugs me again, and I drag my suitcases into the airport and check in for my flight. I make it through security with no hassles and sit down next to these big windows that look out over the concourse and, beyond that, the endless miles of farmland and country that surround this place.

I have no idea of what to expect. I’m on my way to see my cousin, whom I’ve met once, in a city I’ve never been to, and the deep unknown of these two things combined is putting me on edge, so I slide my billfold out and pull a letter from it. The last communication I ever had with my older brother, Kenny. The words on the paper that changed my life forever when I first read them on that brutal winter day in December:

Kaden,

What’s up, man? If you’re getting this letter, you already know that I’m not making it back from this desert of murder and madness. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to. I’m so sorry, man. Sorry that I’ll never be able to see you again and throw the football around with you again and talk about girls and go creek dipping and quarry jumping with you in the summer at Leland’s property. I just wasn’t ready and prepared, and maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this day-to-day hell. That’s what Iraq is, Kaden. It’s hell. The brutal scent of death is around every corner and along every single road in this godforsaken place. This isn’t just a bunch of American soldiers shooting at shit, this is having to bear over hundred-degree temperatures. Frozen night commands. This is trying to look at a hostile crowd of people of all ages and trying to figure out which one is trying to kill you that day. We know nothing about the people or the place we’re going up against each day. The only thing we know is that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to figure out who the enemy really is. A group of insurgents who arrived here to fight the jihad from one of the neighboring countries? Or members of a family who seek revenge on the soldiers who’ve turned their relatives into collateral damage, destroyed their neighborhoods, driven their people out of the area, and turned their country into a lawless melting pot of religious ideology and horrific street justice more brutal than you are ever shown on the screen of the televisions back home. I’ve seen decapitated bodies slung from buildings while entering certain neighborhoods. Children missing hands and eyes. It’s fucking sickening. Me and some of the other guys in our unit would get physically ill at times while we rampaged through houses and buildings, only to find a group of Sunni men lying face-first on the floor, hog-tied, bullet wounds in the back of their heads. Or a baby, man ? I saw the body of this baby girl who couldn’t have been more than three years old in a trash can in this house. Her throat had been slit and intestines pulled through her stomach. The rest of her family was found stacked together in a pile in the living room with all of their throats cut too, and there was a huge warning note written in Arabic about the consequences of working with the Iraqi Police and U.S. Commanders. I mean, what the fuck, man? What is this madness we’ve been committed to. Our presence, my presence, has brought brutal death to over one million Iraqis, and they’re not all insurgents, Kaden. Hardly any of them really are. We shoot at everything that makes a sudden movement. We hog-tie men and women in the middle of the night in front of their children before whisking them away in black hoods under the rotten cloak of Bringing Democracy to these people, which is just a code phrase for American Imperialism. It’s not right, and all of our soldiers should leave. I have already left, little bro. In a
flag-draped coffin that I’m not sure I’m really worthy of being buried in. We need to leave now before more Iraqis are slaughtered on these killing fields, before more of our soldiers are bled to death in these blinding whirlwinds of sand.

I know what you must be thinking, Kaden. Who is this guy writing you this letter? Where did your older brother go? Where is the kid who was so eager to leave for this fight and win this war for this just country’s noble cause?

Well, here I really am. This is who I was turned into. Telling you all of this is the responsible thing for me to do. Telling you how ashamed I was before my death by what I had taken part in: Blind homicide. Vast torture. The pointless destruction of homes. The massive roundup and incarceration of innocent Iraqis.

The list could go on, Kaden. And I’m certainly not the only one in my unit who grew despaired by how we all became complicit in the destroying of a country and its citizens’ lives. Nobody is into it anymore. Most of us just want to go home. That was when I first started reading books again. One of the other soldiers on the base was really into this writer Chuck Palahniuk. He’s the guy who wrote the book Fight Club. Anyway, this guy was always raving about Chuck’s books and how they were really helping him cope with being in Iraq. He’d been fighting for two years, and the only moments of life he had enjoyed during those years were the moments of downtime when he was able to be swept away into another one of Chuck’s stories and was almost able to completely forget for those few precious hours where he was and what he was facing. The true life-or-death scenarios he encountered in the neighborhoods and villages in and around Baghdad for fifteen hours a day.

The guy told me that anytime I wanted to get into one of his books, to just ask him. He had all of them there. I asked him what I should read first, and he told me to start with Fight Club. That I should read his books in the order they came out, because put together they reminded him of one giant text, each new novel a different chapter. So I asked him for Fight Club, and from the very first line of the first chapter I was hooked, Kaden. I read the entire book that same night. Those hours spent reading were some of the best I’d ever spent in my entire life. Something inside of me took a drastic turn. I felt awakened for the first time. Reading those books, it was like there was an author speaking directly to me and to the way I felt about my place in the world.

Most of the characters in his books were so easy to identify with. Characters who were lost and drifting amid a plastic culture. Characters who felt betrayed by the end results of doing what they were told would make them happy. It made me think hard about how natural the violence inside of us is. But how we should use it in ways other than killing people. The way we bottle things up and are scared of everything and scared of feeling life and living among each other. It was a revelation. A revelation that happened too late.

I mean, I always felt like that myself. How Dad always told us that you do this, you do that, you get through school, and you get a job, then get married and have some kids and then retire and then die. And that’s Happiness. He raised us as if that’s the only way of life there is and that anyone who strayed from that path was somehow not worthy in his eyes, and even though I think Mom didn’t really agree with him, I don’t think she knew how to ever go against his word and how he thought about shit.

It’s strange to have all of these feelings about this right now. And it’s so strange to write a letter to your best bud in the world in this fashion. Already dead. With no chance of ever being able to say this to you face-to-face, man. I can’t say for certain or anything like that, but I really think that if I’d thought about what would’ve made ME truly happy in life beyond Dad’s direct approval, then I don’t think I would’ve joined the military.

And this is why I’m writing this letter to you, Kaden. Because I need to know that you heard all of this somehow. I want you to start getting into good shit right now and do something fucking rad with your life. I want you to be happy, man. Read Chuck Palahniuk. See if it’s for you. My goal was to come back on leave and take you out to San Francisco this summer to catch him do a reading for his new book and meet him. Our cousin James, the author, he lives out there. I asked him about it in an e-mail, and he told me it would be rad to have us out there for that. But I’m not gonna make this one, buddy.

If you’re reading this letter, you’ve already said good-bye to me. I thought about this for a couple of months. That’s how important this is to me. I had to have the letter come from somebody in the States without sending it from here because of some of the vague information that’s inside about operation details my unit was involved in. I couldn’t have the military read it, so I had to pack it with Brady. It was also the only way to get it past Dad. I don’t want you showing this letter to either him or Mom, Kaden. I’m gone. And they shouldn’t have to have their final memories and thoughts about me rehashed and then smashed into rubble. Just let them have their peace about what they thought I still believed about this war and this military. You’re the one who matters now. I love you. Be something. Be anything. Go see what the fuck is out there, man.

Your brother,
Kenny

I fold the letter and put it away. Take a deep breath. I miss him so much. Every time I read that letter, all I can think of is him and me shooting the shit about girls. Well, him telling me about girls and how to deal with them and how to talk to them. He always had lots of real pretty girls around. They were always calling the house and showing up unannounced and waiting for him after football and basketball games in high school. With every last feeling in my gut I miss my older brother, Kenny, so fucking much.

I walk to a vending machine and buy an A&W Root Beer, and then I sit back down and take another breath. Soothing the nerves. I’ve never flown by myself before. Never done much of anything by myself before. And here I am, fifteen years old, about to be in San Francisco for a week with James Morgan. A person I only know through the outrageous stories and tales from the mouths of other family members. Most of the stuff not very flattering. Most of the stuff pretty fucking ruthless. There was the big uproar he caused with some comments he made on the Charlie Rose show, when he apparently looked fucked on cocaine and went: “I’m pretty sure that the only thing in my life that has ever held me back is the loose association I still have with my parents and my brother and my sister. Once I cut those red chords completely, the sky’s the limit, baby.”

Or this one in Rolling Stone: “The only good thing I can say about my family is that they sucked. My mom and dad were Republicans, and I lost my virginity before my brother did, and he was four years older than me. I was banging chicks when I was thirteen behind toolsheds and concession snack stands while the rest of my family was busy affirming their future roles as people of no significance whatsoever. I mean, I gave my sister her first cigarette when I was twelve and she was fifteen. I was on a path to greatness by then.”

He’s not in touch much with his immediate family, but him and my mom have always had a close relationship. She’s always talked glowingly of him and always talked about taking a trip to San Francisco to see him, much to the dismay of my dad. The only time I’ve ever met him was at a reading he did in Minneapolis for his second book. He nodded and said what’s up to me, and then he spent the next hour talking with my mom over a cup of coffee at a table while I wandered aimlessly through the aisles of the bookstore, bored out of my mind. At that point I’d never read a book that hadn’t been assigned to me in school. I was never a very big reader before Palahniuk. Never had the urge to read before my older brother’s letter came in the mail.

a. my flights

I board my connecting flight to O’Hare. I have a window seat, and I buckle myself into it and put my head against the glass. I’m tired from the night before with Jocelyn. I already miss her so much. It was hard to walk away from her on Pheasant Road. Hard for me to let go of her hands and kiss her lips that last time. And I can still taste her on my lips. I can still smell her on my skin.

The flight is only half full, and I get the row to myself. It’s a short time in the air. Forty minutes it says on my boarding pass, and I know the perfect way to pass the time. I take out James’s second novel, Dickpig: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Groupie, the last one he wrote, and I start reading it, because I’ve never read a word that James Morgan has ever written, and from what I understand of the guy, he totally seems like someone who would get really agitated about something like that.

b. dickpig: confessions of a heavy metal groupie

Hailed as an instant cult classic by the New York Times on the front cover of the paperback edition, Dickpig tells the story of twenty-one-year-old Irene McClusky, a chubby girl from Providence, Rhode Island, who follows her favorite metal band of all time, Hippopotamus Death, around the United States and Canada during their summer tour.

A real summer vacation.

James dedicated the book to “all the trolls and frumpy babes stalking the back rooms of venues across North America. Stalking like vultures ready to pounce on the black carcass mass of beards and leather and wicked solos. I love you all dearly.”

He has lyrics from that band Slayer and lyrics from the Melvins before page one.

I flip the page and read:

I was twelve years old the first time I ever hid a sandwich under my armpit. It was during a class trip to this prehistoric museum in downtown Providence. The museum served lunch that day to all the kids visiting. The lunch consisted of a bologna sandwich, a bag of plain potato chips, a chocolate chip cookie, and a carton of milk. While the museum volunteers brought out the food on these big trays and set them on these large tables in the front of the cafeteria, it was made clear to us at least three times that each student was only allowed one of each item. They practically pounded it into our heads.

What bullshit! I’m not gonna lie at all. I was really fucking fat when I was twelve. I still am. And I knew that one bologna sandwich wasn’t gonna cut it. I had to get more. There were at least fifteen sandwiches left over, just sitting on a platter, not being eaten at all. It was like they were taunting me. It was driving me nuts. So I devised a plan to get more, as I dipped the cookie in my milk and ate it. What I did was I waited until there was some serious traffic near the sandwich trays. I hovered closely, and when I saw that nobody was looking, I snatched another sandwich and shoved it up the bottom of my Limp Bizkit T-shirt and underneath my right armpit, where it wedged all neatly between a fat roll and the underside of my arm. After that was finished, I excused myself to the bathroom, where I sat inside a stall and scarfed it down in three bites.

This whole thing would become a pattern for me as I grew up. Just last week, while I was getting nailed in the butt by Ralph, the drummer for this band Wasted Fly, a blueberry muffin popped right out from underneath my left tit. It was insane. I’d jammed that fucker under there at least four days before I fucked him.

I pull my face out of the book.

What the fuck?

I’m like, Holy shit! What the hell is this? I can’t quit laughing. Seriously. I’m still laughing as I step off the plane in Chicago.

My next flight is full. I have a middle seat, and it is hell. There’s an old lady to my left, who keeps snapping and popping her bubble gum, and then this fat guy on my right, who whistles through his nose every time he takes a breath. I can’t stand it, and I don’t have an iPod. Never knew what that was all about until now.

I put my head against the seat and close my eyes and try and focus on Jocelyn. An image of her and me lying on our backs in a meadow full of yellow flowers and sunlight soothes me.

They announce the in-flight movie: Quantum of Solace. And after we take off, I buy a set of headphones and plug in. Not ten minutes later, barely after the opening credits and action are over, my eyelids get heavy and drop. I’m gone. Off to dreamland.

c. my dream

Me and Kenny are walking down the gravel road next to the house we grew up in. The house is in really bad shape. It’s been deserted, and it’s crumbling, and the roof’s caved in, and there’s all these vines and weeds wrapping around it. Kenny and I are moving at a pretty good pace. I’m not sure where we’re going. It’s cold and dark, but the moon is shining real bright, and Kenny looks really worried. His face is even sad. Every time that I start lagging, he grabs my shoulder and pulls me ahead and goes, “Kaden, we have to keep moving.”

“But I’m tired.”

“I know you are. But we have to keep moving. We have to.”

I never ask him why. I just try and keep pace, even though it feels like something is following us. But when I look over my shoulder, there’s only pure darkness. A wall of black midnight. It’s like the Nothing in that movie The Neverending Story. It’s stalking us.

Then Kenny just stops moving.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

He looks at me, and his face is expressionless. He doesn’t even look the same at all.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him again.

And he shakes his head. He goes, “It’s time.” And then something grabs a hold of his leg, and he slams to the ground and is being dragged away from me.

I grab his arm and try to pull him back toward me, but I’m not strong enough. His arm rips out of my grasp, and I fall to the ground, and Kenny gets dragged through the black wall and disappears, and I sit there. I’m exhausted. Crying. I hear a crow cawing. I look up, and I see three of them perched on a power line, silhouetted by the moonlight. I look behind me. The black wall of midnight is slowly creeping toward me, but I’m too tired to move. I wipe my face and turn my head and see someone’s hand come flashing at me out of the corner of my eye and slam into my face.

My head jerks forward. Eyes snap open. The plane is descending into the San Francisco Airport. There’s drool on my chin and shirt. The blue bay water is everywhere. It looks like we’re going to land in it. A little girl across the aisle asks her mom if planes can float, and her mom laughs, and then the runway appears from nowhere and we hit it, we land. The sun beams bright. My bad dream is over. And I’m here in this brand-new place for the first time ever.

d. complications

I go straight for the bathroom after I get off the plane. I splash water on my face and take a long piss, and then I wash my hands and check myself out in the mirror, making sure I look as rad as I can. And I think I do. I’m wearing a blue and gold flannel, a pair of white jeans rolled up my calves, a pair of penny loafers, and the gold chain I lifted out of my brother’s room the night after his funeral.

I run my hands through my curly blond Afro. I rinse my face again. Wish for a second I didn’t have so many freckles. Then I dry my hands off and find the nearest pay phone, take out the prepaid phone card my mom gave me, and call her to let her know I landed okay.

“Is James with you right now?” she asks.

“Not yet. I’m on a pay phone. I haven’t even got my bag yet.”

“All right. Well, have a great time, sweetie. Tell James I said hi.”

“I will.”

“And just remember what I told you, Kaden. About not listening to everything James says.”

“Right.”

“He goes off a lot.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Just remember.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Good.”

I get off the phone and ride an escalator down to the United bag claim area, and this funny thing happens to me. Nobody’s there to greet me. As all the other people from my flight hug family members or friends or go about things like they know nobody is gonna be there for them, I look desperately around and see no one who resembles James. Not one single person is there to jump out of nowhere, grab me, get my attention, and ask me how my flight was and if I’m hungry and what I wanna do first.

I’m feeling uneasy about everything. I am. But I keep myself under control and make myself not panic and think that maybe James is just running late. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.

That’s gotta be it, I convince myself while I wait for my bag to spit out.

But by the time they come around to me, there’s still no one there, and I’m starting to get pretty concerned. I don’t have a cell phone or anything like that on me. Only thing I got is an address and phone number for James.

I dig the number and the phone card out of my pockets and find another pay phone and call James. Four times it rings before going to voice mail, so I leave him a message about how I’m standing at the bag claim waiting for him, anyone, to fucking pick me up.

This is destroying me. It really is. I could cry. And I could break someone’s face. A dramatic surge of emotion overwhelming me. I think about calling my mom and telling her what’s going on. How this whole thing is a bunch of bologna. Horseshit. I want to, but I also don’t want her to freak out and do something like book a flight out here. Or call James and pick a huge fight with him over the phone. That wouldn’t be good for anyone. The way I’ve heard it about James, you really shouldn’t try and test his patience, even though, from what I hear, he’s pretty fucking good at testing everyone else’s patience.

I decide to just man up for the moment. I walk over to a pop machine near the exit and buy a root beer and go outside.

It’s a zoo. Cars whizzing by. Horns honking. Shuttle buses stopping and going. Airport security shouting instructions at people.

To my left I see a taxi pickup stop. I decide I’m going to just take a cab to the address I have written down and go from there. Be adventurous and see what happens. But right as I start to make my way over to the taxis, a girl’s voice screams my name.

Stopping right in my tracks, I look over my shoulder and see this blue Volkswagen with a girl inside of it creeping up along the curb with the passenger-side window open.

“Kaden Norris,” she calls out again.

“That’s me.”

The girl slams the car into park. “Awesome!” she says, then steps out of the car, and I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love right there.

She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen who’s ever said a word to me. Boy, she’s so pretty.

She’s Latin. I’ve never met a Latin girl before. She has this real light brown hair, almost blond, that’s pulled back into a ponytail. A Marilyn Monroe–like beauty mark above the left side of her lips. Her body is banging. Athletic and tight and real sleek. She’s wearing short navy-colored running shorts with a single white stripe going up each side, a tight white V-neck shirt, a pair of white socks pulled to her knees, with three black striped rings around each of them, and a pair of black Adidas. She’s so hot. She even has an Indian head tattooed on the inside of each forearm.

“Who are you?” I ask, setting my bag down.

“My name is Caralie. I’m your cousin’s girlfriend.”

“Where’s he at?”

“He couldn’t make it,” she snaps, snatching my bag up.

“Is he okay?”

Caralie stops moving. She looks like she doesn’t know where to begin or even how she might answer that. She says, “I guess it depends on what you mean by okay.” Then she whips around and drags my luggage to the car and throws it in the trunk. “Let’s go.” She smiles.

Well, I mean, kind of smiles.

e. the drive

We shoot past the terminals and onto the highway, the front windows rolled down, the warm Pacific breezes whipping past me, through me. I notice, in between me and Caralie, the printed-out picture of me that I sent James in an e-mail a few months ago so he would recognize me when I got off the plane. And Caralie, she looks real agitated. She’s holding her phone to her ear and shaking he