The Sneak Freaky

For a moment, she felt sorry for Naomi and wondered what she must be going through with her husband so far away, fighting in a war that was becoming more and more unpopular. There were reports that American troops were massacring villages of people and that bombs were being dropped on innocents. Wasn’t Naomi’s husband a bombardier? Wasn’t her brother a Marine fighting in Vietnam? Mim wondered if all she was hearing on the news was true. But she’d heard from others that Americans were being blamed for things that guerilla troops from Korea were doing.

Mim heard so many stories on the news every night about the fighting and the count of wounded and dead. She had listened to the commentators expressing views she did not fully understand and she’d listened to opinions from Roger and other Marines from Camp Lejeune. Mim wondered what she should believe. Everything was changing, and changing fast. Certainly, she had changed since high school, but so had Naomi, who was now so much more aloof, as if she didn’t want to be bothered. As if she wanted to keep the rest of the world away from her life. She was nothing like the carefree, popular girl from high school. Had the war changed her too?