As I used the hanger to separate the pile of clothes, I replayed the conversation I'd just heard in my head. No, it wasn't my own doing; the voices were playing in my head on an uncontrollable loop. Will probably didn't know about the war on the border yet. If he knew, how would he react? Great! Andrew, I'm going to beat the hell out of that Tubbs bastard (maybe even more vulgar than that, but I can't imagine it)! He sees war as just a game of plastic soldiers colliding with each other, easily won by charging around like a hero in a storybook. Idiot.
There was a small, lumpy white mark on the crotch of his underwear. I pinched the edge of the hanger and pulled the underwear away. I had some idea of what might happen to a thirteen-year-old boy while he slept. It was surprising that someone like him could experience normal physiological phenomena. It was quite unbelievable and unpleasant to think of him as a teenager at the same stage of development as me. Aside from serious anthropologists, few people were willing to consider those who stood outside the group's image. Perhaps because of the risk of slipping from expressing individuality to being out of place, everyone was extremely vigilant, carefully living within the so-called "image" and striving to live up to the social consensus. There were also many who boldly stepped outside the circle. Will was probably the loser among them, living outside the standards of adolescent education since birth.
If Will joins the army someday, will he desert? That's probably a no-brainer. You can't expect a man who treats war like a joke to fare well on the battlefield. Yet, I have to put up with this idiot, and maybe even move inland with him in a few days. I don't want to leave home at all. If the Tubbs hadn't attacked, if we hadn't lived on the border, if I hadn't had that idiot Will Walker by my side, would my life have been so different? I don't know, but it would have been better.
There aren't so many ifs in this world. After forty years, we had to leave our homeland again.
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