Series: You take one more step toward me, Staff Sergeant, and you won't just lose your stripes—you'll be facing a court-martial before dinner, I said, my voice steady despite being only seventeen years o...

Part 1 My stepfather, Staff Sergeant Victor Delgado, laughed in my face, grabbing my wrist tightly right in the middle of the crowded Fort Cavazos [more…]

The air in Major General Bradley’s office was cool, almost sterile, a sharp contrast to the humid Texas heat outside. I sat on a plush [more…]

I pushed open the front door to our base housing duplex. The familiar scent of my mother’s Vietnamese cooking usually calmed me, but tonight it [more…]

The house fell silent hours later, the only sound the hum of the air conditioning. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, the [more…]

My fingers flew across the keyboard of my backup rig, the old Nokia connected via a custom-made adapter. The screen glowed with lines of code, [more…]

The next morning, I left for school with a lightness in my step I hadn’t felt in years. The weight of Victor’s lies and my [more…]

Miles away from the quiet military housing, in a dimly lit, abandoned auto repair shop on the outskirts of Killeen, Hector Reyes tapped his fingers [more…]

The South Vietnamese Veterans Association dinner was held in the large community hall in Killeen, draped with flags of both the US and the former [more…]

Victor stormed into the house after the veterans’ dinner, his face contorted with a fury I’d never seen. He didn’t yell, didn’t scream. Instead, a [more…]

I slipped back into my room, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Linh was teetering on the edge, about to sign away [more…]