Alex wiped his face against his sleeve. “Why didn't you drive her?” he asked. It was all he could think to say.

And suddenly Ben was right up in his face.

“I… didn't… do… anything… wrong!” he said, his voice rising to a shout.

Alex started crying again. Ben stalked off.

A little while later an alarm sounded from Katie's room. A whole team of doctors and nurses converged, and Alex's parents had to go out. Alex was too scared to ask what was happening. He thought he knew anyway and didn't want anyone to tell him he was right.

Ben came back. They all paced wordlessly.

Alex wanted someone to touch him the way Ben had when he led him from the room, but it seemed like everyone was keeping away from everyone else. His father kept trailing his fingers back and forth along the wall, as though trying to anchor himself to something. His mother had her knuckles knotted into her hair and looked like she was about to pull out fistfuls. Sometimes a shoe would squeak on the linoleum floor, but other than that the corridor was horribly silent.

Alex lost track of time. After a while, Dr. Rosen came out. Alex saw his face and instantly knew-another newfound, unpleasant adult realization.

“I'm very sorry,” Dr. Rosen said. “We did everything we could. I'm sorry.”

Alex saw the tension just go out of his mother's legs, and Ben leaped forward to support her. His dad was saying, Oh God, no. Oh my Christ, no. Dr. Rosen was telling them something about donating organs, and he was so sorry to press but Katie could give the gift of life to others, and they had to decide quickly. Alex tried not to think about what it meant that they might take Katie's organs, but he couldn't help imagining.

His parents went back into the room to say good-bye. Ben lingered for a moment, and Alex thought maybe he didn't want to leave Alex behind. But then he turned his back on Alex and followed his parents in. Alex wondered whether it was because he was mad at what Alex had said. But why hadn't he driven Katie? He was supposed to, his dad had said so. Why?

Alex stayed outside. He couldn't go in there again. He just couldn't. He didn't want to see his sister dead. He wished he hadn't gone in before. He couldn't get the image out of his mind.

Alex's recollections of the rest of the night were mercifully unclear. He remembered his parents fighting about Katie's organs. His father saying it's what Katie would have wanted, and how would they feel if it were Katie who needed the transplant? His mother shouting that they weren't going to cut up her little girl. In the end, they didn't sign the forms. Alex was secretly relieved.

There were more fights in the days after, and although they mostly happened from behind his parents’ closed bedroom door, Alex could hear plenty. Funeral arrangements. Where Katie should be buried. More about the organs, even though it must have been too late for that. Most of all, it was about Ben not driving her and whether Alex's dad had told him to.

Alex had never heard his parents fight this way, and it scared him. He wondered if it was possible they could even get divorced. He had friends whose parents were divorced, but he'd never thought it could happen to him. His parents had always seemed to love each other.

There was a funeral at Ladera Community Church, a burial at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto. Over five hundred people came to the funeral-teachers, neighbors, Ben's friends, Alex's friends, the entire junior class. Everyone loved Katie.

Come on, he thought. Drop it. Focus.

But it was hard to focus. The truth was, bad memories never died. No, at best they were quiescent, just waiting for the right circumstances to pop up like an evil jack-in-the-box and say, Miss me? Don't worry, I'm still here! And I'm not going anywhere, either. Never, ever.

He wondered whether it was like this for other people. Did everyone grapple with shit like this when they were stressed?

He wondered for a moment about Ben, about whether he was ever bothered by any of it. Yeah, right. The irony was stunning-the guy who caused all of it, including what happened afterward, probably slept like a baby at night.

10 KING OF THE WORLD

Ben was getting bored in Ankara. Waiting for a target was one thing; he had a sniper's patience for that. But waiting for information was different. Hort still hadn't been able to find out anything about the Russian, if in fact the guy was Russian, and had told him to stay put until they'd cleared it up. So he read and worked out twice a day and visited a few famous archaeological sites.

The Ankara Citadel was impressive, he had to admit. He went early one morning on a whim. It was set on a hill a kilometer high, and the city below was invisible, covered in mist. He thought of the people who had built it, gone now, but having managed to cleave a monument to a mountain in however much time they had.

He thought of his parents. See, guys? I'm getting some culture. I told you I would.

He smiled. Their ideas of culture had always been different from his. They'd been dead set against the army from the time he'd first started talking about it in high school. His father wanted Ben, who showed none of Alex's aptitude for science, to be a lawyer. Ben found the proposition about as attractive as an offer of a lobotomy and a lounge chair.

His father had pressured him to apply to college. “Why not keep your options open?” the old man had argued. “Give yourself a choice. If you get into a good school, you can take advantage. And you can always join the army afterward, as an officer. Then you'd have all the advantages and opportunities of a college degree plus the military.”

Ben knew what the old man was really thinking: By the time you've graduated from college, you'll have outgrown all this silliness. He was just trying to keep Ben on the “right” track long enough for Ben to get stuck in the grooves.

There had been recruiters at Ben's football games and wrestling matches, and he knew there was interest at Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Penn, a few other places. But his grades weren't so hot. He figured he could apply to some schools to placate his dad but that in the end nothing would come of it. Then he could say, Hey, I gave it a shot, but it didn't work out. Hello, army.

It almost worked. But the old man was on the Board of Trustees at Stanford, which also happened to be the school most interested in Ben's football prowess, and he pulled some strings. Ben was accepted. Then the old man started in with a new pitch: Stanford will be great. You'll actually be able to play there, whereas at one of the higher-ranked schools you would have been red-shirted your first year anyway. Plus it's the best education, it'll serve you well as an army officer.

Ben knew the old man had a point, but he just didn't want to go to school so close to home. In fact, he wanted to be far from home, overseas far. He couldn't exactly explain why. It wasn't that he didn't love his family, and the Bay Area was a good place to live, and Stanford was a good school, and yeah, he could play football there and wrestle, too, but… he just wanted more for himself, something fresh, something he felt he was cut out for in a way his dad and certainly Alex never would be. There was something special inside him, he could feel it, and going to college three miles from the house he grew up in… it was wrong. It would have been like betraying himself, in a way he couldn't quite understand, let alone articulate to his dad.

He had decided, fuck it, he wasn't going to Stanford or anywhere else; it was his life and he was joining the army. He had talked to a recruiter and found out he could be guaranteed a slot in Airborne, which was the feeder to Ranger Battalion, which could lead to Special Forces-everything he'd always wanted, everything he knew he could be the best at. He would learn languages, train indigenous forces, have adventures ordinary people could barely imagine. He decided he would break the news to his parents right after the States. He'd be facing the best wrestlers in California there, and he couldn't afford any distractions.