Dec 20 2008
Change- Thanks a Fu**ing lot!
All names have been changed—
“Thanks a fu**ing lot!” That’s what my best friend said to me after I told her what had happened. She was the first person I had called, dazed and confused, reeling from the past seven hours I had spent with NCIS Agents Smith and Johnson. I had left her five messages before heading to Hubbard Hall. I had searched her room. I had spoken to the plebe on duty- “Have you seen Miss Belko? When was the last time you saw her?”
We had created coordinating class schedules, so that we could take full advantage of our senior year liberties. Last military duty- lunch. Then we were in a pair of jeans and darting off campus, or meeting at the gym to perform stairmaster penance for the breadsticks we had consumed the night before. Every day like clockwork, we met. But this day, she was gone. And I had been summoned.
When it was all over, it was my best friend I had called.
“Where the hell have you been!” she screamed.
“Well… I guess you told them,” I responded.
“What! Who! What the fu** are you talking about! I didn’t talk to anyone! What did they say to you? Are you talking about NCIS? You idiot! Did you say something to them?!”
She was screaming at me. I was silent. Any emotion I owned that day, had been stolen by the subterfuge of an interrogation.
“I told them what happened. They told me that they had just met with you and you gave them all the details. I looked all over for you. I thought they were telling the truth. I only confirmed what they told me YOU had said.”
“Thanks a fu**ing lot, Anne. Thanks a fu**ing lot. You…”
And then I hung up. She was in mid-sentence. I had just given her a piece of information that turned her world upside down, shattered a dream she aspired to when she was five years old. A dream she was within months of grasping. A dream I had just smudged away within a few seconds.
I couldn’t believe I had been so trusting, so naive. You see movies of the evil interrogator, conjuring up a treacherous plan to get the guy to talk. But weren’t we in a place that had beaten us into the ground, in order that we would rise to higher ground- to never forsake honor, loyalty, and integrity? I should have known…
From that day on, I entered another world at the Naval Academy. Every man for himself. Don’t trust anyone. Rules don’t apply. Patriot Games at the USNA. I thought being in that spartan room with those two agents had been the worst of it. I was wrong. Very wrong.
