Full Circle: 1980 - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Ten

Tonight is one of those quiet nights that remind him of home.

His room is lit by a single lamp, sitting hot on the corner of his desk. It casts a slashed glow that blurs at its edges, like a porch light up against an endless autumn night. It's just enough to make out his reference texts, arched across the tabletop with fresh spines that ain't yet broken in. This year's first cool evening creeps in through a cracked window and Matt reckons he ought to close it before he goes to sleep tonight, but he lets it be for now. Sometimes Virginia smells like Nebraska and the skies stretch between the states.

His roommate took off in the third week of training, leaving Matt on his own. He was a nice enough guy, recruited out of Brown a few months earlier than Matt. Maybe the allure wore off a few months earlier too, because it didn't take long until he was packing his bags and swearing that he could make more money in tech for far less strife. Maybe there was some truth to that, although Matt ain't here for the money.

That being said, he doesn't know what he is here for, but that's a question for another day when he doesn't have to write 1,000 words on the functions and methods of Presidential intelligence briefings.

His eyes are starting to cross as he skims through columns of tiny, encyclopedic fonts, spared only by the occasional image or chart. Absentminded solace sits in the uneven tap of his pencil, resting just between his first and second finger, eraser bouncing off of his books. They don't warn kids about the paperwork before recruiting them. If in his senior year of high school, the Army recruiter had told him he'd be writing the same essays, only harder, longer, and on far less accessible information, Matt imagines he may have explored other professions more thoroughly before signing his name on the dotted line.

Of course, it wouldn't have changed much, but at least he would've had a better idea of what he was getting himself into. Maybe he would've practiced his thesis writing just as strictly as he ran his miles or trained his pushups.

He hears a woman's voice, passing through the hallway on the other side of his door, and his mind wanders to Abby and Rachel. They're probably turning in analytical works of art, with strong arguments and critical discussion. They're smart like that—both of them, even if in their different ways. For his part, Matt prefers translation and working with other peoples' words, because he keeps stumbling over his own. If he keeps falling one step behind, eventually he's going to get lapped.

Would it really be so bad, if he didn't graduate?

At some point he'll have to come to terms with the fact that Lincoln may be a hardass, but he ain't a dumbass. Before he left for Camp Peary, Matt had a good, safe job with the Army, stationed at a desk. Maybe it hadn't been the most exciting, and maybe it wasn't the most challenging, but Cooper had treated him right. They had given him a good set of headphones and a decent salary that could feed a family someday.

Matt's wanted a family his whole life. He's only wanted to join the CIA for a few months. Maybe his short-lived roommate had been onto something, allowing the allure to fade.

He turns another page of his book at the same time there's a knock on the door.

It's too light to be one of the guys, but it lacks the usual shave-and-a-haircut rhythm that Abby carries in her fist. On his way over, shuffling across carpet in the fading light, he pieces together that it must be one of the guards, making some kind of round—although it's strange that they would start patrolling now, when so many weeks have already gone by.

He pulls the door open wide, a natural welcome in his words. "Evenin', how can I help—?"

He doesn't get the full sentence out before two pairs of hands grab him at each shoulder and yank him into the hallway. His heart jumps up into his throat, then sinks into his stomach, and there's an innate cruelty to the immediacy of it all. In a single second, his night has gone from quiet to chaos, and he just doesn't have the mind to keep up with it.