Saving the Princess

Chapter 1

The day starts like any other for Sarah. When she moved to the city she expected this world of excitement and lights instead she got a small apartment with an upstairs neighbor who like to vacuum when she and husband got into a fight, which happened every other day. Sarah looked out the window and sighed, “I miss home.” It wasn’t any place special just a quiet country farm with her parents’ conservative values and a safe loving environment. Like many teenager she was eager to escape and applied to any college anywhere other than there. In college she learned that the world was not like her home. It is a place that changes and moves fast and loud. She saw that it was a world full of suffering and longing. She wanted to be a part of that world to make a difference. When she graduated she got a job as a social worker in the city. Most of the time she felt like she was making a difference, but lately....

Sarah looks around at the piles of folders burying everyone’s cubicles. Most of the workers looked tired and lost among the paper. She sits at her desk and look at her never ending schedule. It was full of lost children looking for someplace safe. Home wasn’t a word many of those kids recognized. This morning she had a young man coming in for his weekly meeting. Most of the time she went to them, but as they get older they preferred to come to her. The last thing they want is an older women coming around and ruining their reputation. 

Peter walked in looking tall and thin. He had on his usual smug smile and “gangster” clothes. She smiled at him as he slouched down in the chair across from her. He was a challenge to get through school, bouncing from one foster home to the next and any friends he had were joining the gangs that preyed on kids like him. He was schedule to graduate high school in a couple of months. Sarah picked up his file and look over his record. Peter watched her under his bored looked and then announced, “I want to join the marines.”

“What?” Sarah could not hide her shock.  She carefully sits his file and down and folds her hands on top of it. “Are you sure? You’re smart enough to go to college. You could do anything you want. Why do you want to ruin your life by being a soldier?”

He looked at the papers on her desk and flicked at the torn edge of one of them, “I can’t afford college and my grades are not good enough for a scholarship.” He tore a little bit of the paper. “I can’t stay here. I need to do something. They can pay for me to go to school.” He looked up at her, wanting her approval. 

She groans and picks up the file again. She did not want to see another potential scholar get lost in the world of testosterone and warfare. Peter could do anything with his life if he would just focus and work towards it. She flipped through his folder again. He was right, with his current grades there would be no scholarships, it didn’t matter how well he tested. Maybe the military was not such a bad option, maybe he can do for as long as he needed to go to school. She hated the idea, but what other options did a foster kid really have. 

Sarah let out a huff and dropped her folder on the table. “If you really want to do this, let me talk to some people here and we will get a recruiter to come and talk to you.” 

The look of relief fills his face and he smile, “Thank you.” Peter stood and before Sarah could stop him and try to talk him out of the military he jogs out of her cube.

“I’ll call you when I get it set up.” She yells after him, not sure if he hears her.

Sarah shakes her head and stands, she surveys the cube filled room till she see Betty bouncing brown curls and jangling jewelry. Betty looks more like a teenage rock star than a social worker, but the look works for her and the kids seem to relate to her better because of it. Sarah walks over her and asks, “Are you still seeing that marine recruiter?”

Betty turns and smile, “Oh yes.” She has this naughty look in her eyes and blushes. “Do you want me to see if he has any single friends for you?”

 Sarah cannot help herself but to giggle, “No, the last thing I need in my life right now is an overgrown teenager. I was just wondering if you think he can come by here one day and talk to Peter?”

“Peter wants to join the Marines?”

Sarah shakes her head, “Yes, thinks it is the only way out of his life.”

Betty pulls her cell phone out and scrolls to a number and begins to write it on a sticky note, “It is not a bad life.”

Sarah takes the note and turn, “I just think he can better.”

Later that afternoon Sarah and Betty are sitting at a picnic table in the nearby park. Betty looks at Sarah over their salads and asked, “What is your problem with Peter going to the military?”

“No problem, I just think it is a waste of time for him.”

“Why?”

“Has anyone in the military ever done anything to make the world a better place? Peter is smart enough he can do so much. He can change the world. As a soldier he will be just another mindless robot following orders and shooting guns.” 

Betty shakes her head and eyes Sarah, “There is more to it than that?”

She shifts in her seat and finally lays her fork down. “My mother said that the army changed my grandfather. He used to be a loving gentle man with dreams and goals and when he came back he was cold as ice.” 

“Wasn’t your grandfather captured in the war?”

“Yes, but he would never have been captured if he was not a soldier.” She took a sip of her drink and look at Betty, “Why are you for it?”

“My father was soldier in Vietnam too. Granted I was born after his time in the war. I never knew what he was like before that.” She paused and looks to her plate. When she looked up again she said, “He never really talks about it, but when he does you can hear how much he loved and respected the people he was there with. He said ‘You don’t fight for the man who sent you in; you fight for the man on either side of you.’ You know, the military paid for his training and school. He said he was going nowhere until a judge said military or jail. He chose military.” She picked up her fork of lettuce and eats it.

“Military or jail?” Sarah raised an eyebrow at her friend.

“Yeah well, you can say my father was a wild teenager. Nothing violent. But he was a trouble maker.”

Sarah just laughs. Sarah had met Betty’s father he was a cranky old man who like order and discipline. He always complained about Betty’s job. But she loved and respected him and Sarah could see why she believed her father about the military. 

After lunch Sarah sat at her desk trying to get motivated to start on the next stack of files. She thought back to the stories her mother told her. About how, before the war, her grandfather would swing her mother up in his arms and called her his little princess. She would go and hide and wait for her father to come find her. He was her noble knight fighting the dragons to save her and she was his little princess. After the war he came home a hollow shell of the man he was. He was no longer the knight she knew and loved. He was a tired man who complained about being spit on and called baby killer when he got off the plane. 

Sarah thought back to the hard dark look of her grandfather eyes as he watched the news on television and grumbled, he never got a parade. Anytime he started complaining, Sarah grandmother would make some comment about what he was like before the war and the fact “he volunteered” to go. Her grandfather would get this annoyed angry look and walk out of the house and sit on the swing on the porch. He would only speak of what happen to my cousin Steve who had been to Afghanistan. They would sit for hours on the back porch swing and drink beer. Sarah did not ever really remember them talking, just swinging and drinking.

She shakes the memories from her head and reaches for the sticky note with the recruiter’s number on it. She would do her job and schedule him to come in early next week to talk to Peter. As she hangs up the phone she mumbles, “I may not agree with his decision, but I am going to make sure when he signs the papers he does not get screwed.” Next she calls Peter and let him know it was all set up. He sounds so happy and relieved on the phone. As Sarah resigns that she has lost this battle she shuffles Peter file to the side of her desk and starts on the next one.

The sky wants to rain and the clouds block what little afternoon light there is as Sarah walks to from the subway to her apartment.   She turns from the busy street down a quieter alley. The shops garbage and boxes line the wall. In another hour or two the local homeless will fill this area looking for someplace warm and safe to sleep. Sarah is glad to see the rush of people of the other side of the alley. As she passes a trash can she hear a rustling sound behind her. Sarah turns and there is nothing there, she turns back and begins to walk faster not sure what is going on.  A moment later a sharp pain hits her back. The black alley floor gets closer and closer. Her head hits the ground with a sickly thud and when she looks up a man is standing over her. He is blurred and she cannot keep her eyes open. Sarah can feel him hauling her up and with one of his arm going around her waist. She tries to scream but nothing comes out. The Stranger half carries and half drags her back up the alley. A screeching sound, and then she feels herself thrown onto cold metal. The man jumps on her and pins hers to the floor. She is sure she is about to be raped and tries in vain to remember everything she has ever learned about self defense. She feels the burn of the needle as it buries into her stomach. The world begins to get hazier. Spinning lights and then dark. That was Friday.