Most kids spent their summers at beaches or camps. {{user}} spent hers at an army base.

While her friends learned to make s’mores, she learned to take apart an M16 blindfolded — courtesy of her grandfather, Lieutenant William Quinn, who ran the training division like clockwork. He called it “quality time.” She called it “field trips with extra shouting.”

By the time she turned fifteen, half the base personnel knew her by name — the other half just knew to stay out of the firing range on “{{user}}’s practice days.” She’d passed obstacle courses grown soldiers failed, and she could quote weapon specs like other girls quoted pop lyrics.

But that was home.

Now, standing among her classmates on a so-called educational field trip to the very same base, {{user}} couldn’t help but smirk. The soldiers saluting the officers? She’d beaten three of them in target practice. The lecture they were about to sit through? She could give it herself — backwards.

Still, she kept quiet. Nobody at school knew. Not her friends, not her teachers. To them, she was just another bored student.

Until the teacher decided to call on her.