Nisa Halsey tapped her feet anxiously as her father turned the minivan through the gates of the Naval Academy. Just down the road she could see them -- hundreds of teen-agers just like her pressing through the doors of a large building.
"Nervous, nervous," Nisa said, lowering two small bags out of the back of the van. "I don't know what's going on."
Her mother, Anita Halsey, a captain in the Army National Guard, looked back at her daughter, just 17. "Just know one thing: They can't eat you; they can only yell."
Induction Day is the academy's first day of school. And for most of the 1,212 in the Class of 2006, it is when the summer after high school graduation gives way to a jarring new world where what they do for virtually every minute of every day is decided by someone else.
It is the start of plebe summer -- six weeks of grueling training that bear no relation to any customary notion of summer.
Sixteen-hour days begin at 5:30 a.m. and afford just 20 minutes of "personal time" before lights go out at 10 p.m. in a dorm room without air conditioning. When midshipmen finish those six weeks, they still have four years of rigorous academic coursework ahead of them. And then they owe the country five years of military service.
'This is it'
Nisa was in the ninth grade at a small private high school in northeastern Maryland when her father first asked her to consider the Naval Academy.
He thought it was destiny. Her last name was Halsey (that she was no relation to the famous World War II Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. didn't matter). And she was born on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
But she didn't see it that way, not at first. She had visited Los Angeles on vacation, relished its big-city bustle, and thought she would like to go to the University of California there. "I don't need anyone to tell me how to fold my underwear," she snapped at her father.
She admired her parents and their military careers -- her father is a master sergeant in the Army National Guard. But they had enlisted straight out of high school. She wanted more.
In the 10th grade, a brochure from the academy arrived in the mail. The school's 10 percent acceptance rate and the high SAT scores of incoming students impressed her. So after her junior year, she went to Annapolis for a weeklong summer program, undergoing a scaled-down version of basic training. She liked the structure -- the fact that everyone did the same thing, that every time you cleared one hurdle another was set in front of you.
"This is it," she told her parents.
But when she got her acceptance letter, she had new worries -- about leaving the familiar routines of Charlestown, the small town by the North East River where residents knew her so well that they waved when she passed.
"The hardest thing will be being away from everyone," Nisa said at her kitchen table the other day.
Her parents had their own fears. For her mom, it was boys -- they outnumber girls 5 to 1 at the academy.
Her father, Sonny, realized that after Sept. 11, the Naval Academy wasn't just the all-expenses-paid college education they had talked about. It was also a ticket into war zones, to places where people put their lives on the line for their country.
Getting prepared
Nisa graduated from high school early this month, ranking second in her senior class of 11.
Her parents threw a graduation party in the back yard and rented a karaoke machine. Nisa sang along to "Indian Outlaw" by country singer Tim McGraw. A week later, Nisa went on a cruise to Mexico.
But in other ways, this was not a normal teen-age summer.
At her friend's swimming pool, while the other kids tanned in lounge chairs or swatted one another with foam noodles, she swam laps. While they watched television in the evenings, she was at the YMCA doing pushups.
Her friend's mom took her to a salon a month ago, and the long, straight hair she had worn parted in the middle since eighth grade dropped in a clump to the floor.
"Everyone was like, 'Why are you getting it done now?'" she recalled. "I said I needed some time to get used to it."
'Instant obedience'
Nisa had slept just three hours when her alarm clock sounded at 4 a.m. yesterday. After breakfast at a forlorn Waffle House, Nisa, her parents, her brother, and her best friend started the 80-mile road trip to Annapolis.
The yelling her mother warned about started almost as soon as Nisa set foot in Alumni Hall.
"From now on, the first and last words out of your mouth will be sir or ma'am," Midshipman Stephen Ryan barked at the lines of incoming plebes. "Get your Reef Points out and start studying the academy's mission," another blared, referring to the hardcover blue book of Annapolis basics that plebes are ordered to hold to their nose for much of the day.
Nisa affixed a pin to her shirt that said "Halsey '06."
But what got Lt. Shane Vath's attention was the brand name on her shirt.
"What's your name? Abercrombie & Fitch?" he taunted.
The long lines inside moved glacially, and much of the next six hours was spent waiting in them. Nisa got an eye exam, took a breathalyzer test, had seven vials of blood drawn from her arm. She applied her signature to dozens of documents.
She was issued a laundry bag nearly big enough for her to fit in. And then academy workers began stuffing it with $2,000 worth of uniforms and equipment: Two pairs of white sneakers, 18 athletic shirts, three camouflage ripstop jackets.
The muscles in Nisa's thin arms tightened as she hoisted the bag onto her back. The weight, more than 50 pounds, made her stoop forward.
By 12:30 p.m., trainers had ordered the plebes into rigid lines to teach them to salute and stand at attention. Nisa crisply raised her right hand to her forehead, but a midshipman clasped her elbow and raised it a notch.
"Instant obedience," one of them shouted.
At last the buses arrived to take Nisa and the other plebes to the Bancroft Hall dormitory. She shouldered her bag up the stairs, and for the fourth time yesterday her last name drew notice.
"Miss Halsey, do you know what well-known Navy officer shared your name?"
"Sir, yes, sir."
"Do you know what he was famous for?"
"Sir, no, sir."
"You better find out, because a lot of people will be asking you."
"Sir, yes, sir."
Then, finally, a moment of peace. She was ordered into her dorm room, a cramped place with three bunk beds, and told to unpack. She looked remarkably collected for someone who admitted feeling overheated, tired and lightheaded from not having eaten since 5:30 a.m.
"I know I'm going to break down sooner or later," she said. "I just don't know when."
Oath of Office
At nearly 6 p.m., the plebes filed into folding chairs in Tecumseh Court. It was the Oath of Office ceremony, and parents craned their necks, trying in vain to pick their son or daughter out of the lagoon of identical white uniforms and blue-rimmed caps.
"When I sat where you are today," the academy's new superintendent, Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, told the class, "I had your sense of uncertainty as well as the sense of adventure ahead."
Soon, the newly minted midshipmen were filing out.
Those with parents in the officer corps climbed the steps to Memorial Hall for a second, more personal swearing-in ceremony. Under the arching ceilings and grand chandeliers, Anita Halsey, dressed in her green Army uniform, asked her daughter to raise her right hand.
They had reached "so help me, God" when the tears came. The mother and her daughter melted into a hug.
"I really hope this is what she wants," Anita Halsey said, dabbing tears as her family walked down the steps into the hazy sunshine.