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“She’d kissed Jamie on the cheek and cried when, at last, he was out of sight. Months later, off at Denison, she sat with classmates and watched the draft lottery live on the grainy common-room television. Jamie’s birthday—March 7—had come up on the second pick. So he would be among the first to be called to fight, she thought, and she wondered where he had gone, if he knew what awaited him, if he would report, or if he would run. Beside her, Billy Richardson squeezed her hand. His birthday was one of the last drawn, and anyway, as an undergraduate, he had been granted a deferral. He was safe. By the time they graduated, the war would be over and they would marry, buy a house, settle down. She had no regrets, she told herself. She’d been crazy to have considered it even for a moment.” — Celeste Ng