Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

We were working on half-life pesticides, which somehow morphed into talking about radiation, which led into a discussion on nuclear weapons. As usual.

“Arkansas has a thirty-six percent chance of being annihilated. A high probability that if the blast doesn’t get us, the fire will,” Max said behind me. “You know there’re eighteen silos in this state. That’s eighteen potential death traps. There’s one twenty-five miles from here.”

“Calm down, man,” Rodney said, pouring a beaker of bleach into a beaker of vinegar. I grabbed it out of his hand and threw it in the sink before he decided to wage chemical warfare on us. I didn’t need Max’s doom and gloom to become a reality.

“Leave it,” Mr. Truitt said. “I don’t want y’all cutting yourself on the shards of glass.”

“Was I not supposed to do that?” Rodney asked as if he were stupid. But he wasn’t. He was just stupid at science.

But that was Mr. Truitt’s plan all along. I did the work, and Rodney got the credit—an A credit for his transcript that made premier schools with powerhouse athletic programs look at him as much more than a 2.5-GPA basketball star.

Mr. Truitt placed a new rack of beakers on the workstation in front of us.

“I’ll do it,” I said, knowing full well that I was being taken advantage of—again.

“It takes approximately thirty minutes for our Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile to hit Moscow. It takes approximately thirty minutes for their R-36M—known by NATO as SS-18 Satan—to hit our target, which, for all purposes, could be Blackwell or Hattieville, or what happened at Damascus could happen at one of those,” I said.

Damascus, Arkansas, was a little shit-hole town home to nothing except for the Little Rock Air Force Launch Complex. Fifty-some miles from Little Rock. Thirty-some miles from here was a secret thing that everyone here always knew was in the ground. That became a government cover-up.

My dad spent a lot of time in the bunker there, and then he spent a lot of time in the bunkers at the other nine missile silos around us. There were eighteen missile silos around Arkansas total. I didn’t see Dad a lot anymore. Mom was too preoccupied with Dennis to worry about my psyche, so I focused on school. It was the only thing that made any sense in my life.

On our first day in class, Mr. Truitt laid down the rules:

1. No eating or drinking.

2. No long sleeves.

3. Tie back hair.

4. Wear protective glasses.

5. Wear protective apron.

6. Wear closed-toe shoes.

7. Don’t smell the chemicals.

8. Don’t play around.

9. Wash your hands.

10. Do not pull the safety shower string.

If someone pulled the safety shower string, water would flood the room. Everything would get wet, and the person responsible would see the principal and be doing worksheets for the rest of the term.

While others thought about it or pretended to pull said string, I never did—but now that string was freedom.

I got up from my stool, leaving Rodney on his own, and went over to the shower and pulled. And it rained. It rained hard.

I had done it. I did the one thing that made the vein on the right side of Mr. Truitt’s neck pulsate. Oh boy, was he mad.

Talk of suspension. Talk of calling my mom. I was looking at hard time—

But I would pull that string again.

I was done with partners and raising the GPA of my fellow classmate. They wouldn’t use me anymore. No longer a tool for some trophy. Laura Ratliff was free of the oppressive regime of Griffin Flat athletics. Worksheets, lots of worksheets, would be in my future.

“Laura Ratliff, principal’s office. Now,” Mr. Truitt screamed, his finger pointed at me and then the door.

Ooh s and aah s followed me out.

“Dead girl walking!” Max said, giving me a thumbs-up. He was trying to suppress his laughter and failing.

I sat in front of the principal. He stared at me through his glasses, the lenses so thick his eyeballs were magnified, and then at my permanent file, which was also thick. Thick with accolades, not demerits.

“Laura—” Principal Parker started, leaning back in his chair. His tie sat on his belly, and his mustache still had crumbs from this morning’s breakfast. “I’m disappointed in you,” he said, tapping his left hand’s fingers like he was playing a piano. The faint spot on his finger where a wedding ring once sat was hardly visible now. His wife had died. She didn’t leave him like my mom left my dad. “Truly disappointed.”

Disappointed was something my mom would say.

Principal Parker looked at me and shook his head. And it wasn’t meant in a sarcastic way.

“I’m sorry,” I said, lying through my teeth. But I knew that was what he as the principal wanted to hear.

The principal’s office was one place not to talk back—even if you knew deep down in your heart that you did the right thing, not just for your sanity but for the athletes in this school to finally do their own work. Fight the power—oh, whatever, it didn’t matter. Principal Parker was talking suspension. A day. Worth it.

But then he brought up Mrs. Martin, and I felt my heart sink as I slumped into the chair.

Mrs. Martin was the supposed confidante for all students at Griffin Flat High School, but she was the one in danger of having a nervous breakdown. And according to Principal Parker, pulling the safety shower string that resulted in gallons of H 2O being sent down in a waterfall and flooding a portion—a tiny portion, I may state as fact—of the chemistry lab classroom meant that I, Laura Ratliff, was on the verge of going full-on cuckoo, as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [10] It’s a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey and a major motion picture starring Jack Nicholson. It takes place in a mental institution. cuckoo. And I guessed liability issues deemed that I needed to see Mrs. Martin. Now, she had seen me in her tiny closet of an office before, ever since that Monday after the town found out about the dissolution of my parents’ marriage by way of a third party.

Mrs. Martin always talked in questions. “How does it make you feel?” was a given, but “What are you going to do about it, Laura?” was one of her favorites.

We’d talk about my parents’ marriage and how I wished it would have been. I wanted parents like Jennifer and Jonathan Hart. I wanted parents who loved each other. I wanted a grandfather like Max. I wanted a dog like Freeway. I guess I wanted to be Laura Hart, not Laura Ratliff. But like Hart to Hart , [11] It premiered in 1979 and stars Robert Wagner as Jonathan Hart, CEO of Hart Industries, and Stefanie Powers as Jennifer Hart, a freelance journalist. They jet-set around the world solving crimes. I wanted to be part of that family. I would have gladly walked Freeway. my family was canceled prematurely.

I moved from Principal Parker’s office to down the hall to see Mrs. Martin and sat in front of her, trying to figure out what her angle was going to be this session. I didn’t think anyone forced me to sit there. I mean, not really. I was not obligated at all to be here. Yes, the administration had to get permission from my parents. But I had the right to say no. Well, at least I thought I could. Though I never tried.

“Laura Ratliff,” she said, taking my file out of her filing cabinet and laying it on her desk. Then she pulled out a new yellow notepad from her bottom drawer.

I grabbed a Snickers from her bowl of candy, tore it open, and popped it in my mouth.

“Congratulations,” she said, sitting at her desk and finding an ink pen that actually worked.

She collected pens, especially ones that held no ink.

“Thank you,” I said. “It was my finest moment. Honestly, I probably should have pulled it sooner.”