Chapter One

The phone rang at 6 a.m. Even though I expected it, my heart leapt at the shrill sound. I lunged for the receiver, picking it up before the ring ended, and looked over at my roommate. She'd burrowed deeper undercover. I could only see a skein of hair on the pillow. Good.
I glanced at the clock to begin the countdown. My mom and I had exactly fifteen minutes for the phone call.
Technically, everyone was allowed two fifteen-minute DSN, the military phone system, calls a week, but we rarely managed two. Usually it was one call, which you might think meant we could talk for thirty minutes, but the army didn't work that way.
"Hi, sweetie," my mom said. Sometimes the connection was clear; other times it crackled and buzzed, her voice fading in and out. We had a good connection this time. I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice, trying to breathe it in, trying to soak in it. "How are you?"
I spent three minutes telling her about a paper I'd turned in and an upcoming final that worried me. "How are you doing?" I asked. I couldn't skip that even though I knew she wouldn't tell me anything important.
"It's 120 degrees today," she said. "Don't believe what people say about 'dry heat.' It's like stepping into an oven. And summer's just starting. Just another beautiful day in Baghdad. Oh, and yesterday we had a sandstorm."
"Was it as bad as everyone said it would be?" A deployment to Iraq sucked on many levels. For my mom, the weather was high on the list.
"It was worse. The sky turned orange. It was like the thickest fog you've ever seen, like a fine misty rain, but it was sand." I winced. "The sand