![]() ![]() In his mind, he saw her and she was healthy. ![]() At home, he closed his eyes and tried to make her come back to life. Nick told O'Brien that she had died, and O'Brien left school and went home. Linda suffered from a tumor in her brain, and she lived only through that summer. Most of her hair was gone, and she wore a large bandage covering stitches across the back of her head. During class, Nick returned to his desk after sharpening his pencil and deliberately pulled off Linda's cap. O'Brien wishes that he would have stood up to her main instigator, Nick Veenhof, but he didn't. Linda began wearing the red cap she wore on their date to school, and her classmates teased her about it. The premise upset O'Brien but he saw Linda smiling at the screen. They went to a World War II movie whose premise was tricking the Germans by dumping the corpse of a soldier in a British officer's uniform and planting misleading documents on him. In spring of 1956, young O'Brien escorted Linda on their first date, chaperoned by O'Brien's parents. He believed that their love was a mature love, not childish love. Though O'Brien was only nine years old at the time, he believed he was in love with Linda, also age nine. O'Brien then segues into the story of a particular girl named Linda. He tells Kiowa that the dead man reminded him of a girl he used to know. The men proposed a toast to the dead man, but O'Brien would not join in. Others in the platoon spoke to the corpse in a mildly mocking way, but O'Brien could not even go near the body. He describes the first dead body he saw in Vietnam, that of an old Vietnamese man. O'Brien explains that stories can bring the dead back to life through the act of remembering.
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