The Truth Of The Matter Part 10

"You all right?" said Miler.

I blinked at him, coming out of my thoughts. "What?"

"You just groaned. Are you sick or something?"

"Oh . . . no, I was just . . . I just remembered I forgot to study for my calculus quiz," I lied.

"No big deal. You didn't want to go to college anyway. You can always work at Burger Prince. Of course, if you want to move up to Burger King, you will need a BA."

As we reached the door of the cafeteria, there was a burst of laughter and we nearly b.u.mped into three people coming outside. It was two younger studentsa"and Mr. Sherman. They'd obviously been joking about something together.

"Hey, guys, how's it going?" said Mr. Sherman, slapping Miler on the shoulder.

Josh and Miler said it was going okay, but all I could do was stand there and stare. Mr. Sherman was a youthful-looking guy, trim and fit with a friendly smile. I'd had him for history two years in a row. Was it really possible he was the one who stabbed Alex Hauser in the chest? Was it possible he was a member of a group dedicated to terrorizing and killing Americans?

"What's the matter, Charlie?" he said with a grin. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"No . . . hey, Mr. Sherman . . . ," I answered quickly, but my voice trailed off. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Sherman gave me kind of a strange looka"but then he was moving off across the quad, followed by his two students. I heard the sound of their laughter fading as they moved away.

I was still watching them go as Josh, Miler, and I stepped into the cafeteria.

I'd never really thought much about the cafeteria before. You don't, you know. It's just the cafeteria. You go there, you eat your lunch, so what? But now, it struck mea" how familiar it was. How reliable the smells of it were. Hamburgers Monday, mac-'n'-cheese on Wednesday . . . The food wasa"well, it was no better than it is at anybody else's school cafeteria and we were always making jokes about ita"like, How can you tell the difference between rubber and a Spring Hill High hamburger?

You can swallow rubber.

And the colored plastic chairs were uncomfortable and there were all kinds of annoying high school social rituals like this kid won't sit with that kid, and the popular girls always sit over there and giggle about the popular guys, and the sad-sack guys always sit over there and make snarky jokes about the popular girls, and so on . . .

But it's strange about this stuff. When you might be about to lose something forever, you begin to think about it in a different way. This cafeteriaa"with its so-so food and uncomfortable chairs and all the general social stupidity that could keep you awake nights if you thought about it too longa"this cafeteria had been a huge part of my life. We'd had some big laughs in this placea"me and Josh and Miler and Rick. Like the time Josh was telling some stupid story and gesturing wildly with his milk carton and the milk flew out and hit Mr. c.u.mmings smack in the face. And we'd had some big drama here too, like the time I faced down Mike Hurtleman because he'd dumped Owen Parker in the garbage can headfirst. This is where I was sitting at lunch one day not too long ago when Beth first came up to me, when I first worked up the courage to ask her if I could call her and she wrote her phone number down on my arm . . .

I mean, look, I don't mean to get all sentimental about it. It was just the school cafeteria. I didn't want to marry it or anything. But what would it be like when I was eating my meals in a cafeteria in prison and instead of sitting with people who dump kids in garbage cans or write phone numbers on your arm, I was surrounded by guys who would happily cut your throat?

"Dude!"

I blinked. I looked at Miler. "What?"

"It's just a calculus quiz," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"You groaned again."

"Oh . . . forget it," I told him. "I'm just . . ." But I didn't know what I was just doing.

"Anyway," Josh chimed in, "there's the steamy-dreamy love of your vaguely embarra.s.sing life."

I blinked again and saw Beth waving to me from a table across the room. She was there with Mindy and Jen, a couple of her friends.

"So if you sit with the girls," Josh said, "does that, like, make you a girl too?"

"Go on," said Miler. "Have fun. If you need me, I'll be over here trying to explain to Josh what girls are."

I was walking across the cafeteria toward Beth when suddenly I had the weirdest experience. It was almost like a hallucination. I had this powerful, powerful sense that I wasn't here in the cafeteria at all, that I was somewhere else, in the woods somewhere, lying on my side in a pile of leaves, twisting on the ground in pain and trying to pull myself out of it because there were bad men hunting me, because I had to keep running, keep trying to escape . . .

I shook my head and the vision was gone. I thought: That was weird. All this emotion and indecision must be starting to get to me. Then I continued walking across the room to Beth.

"Aren't you going to get anything to eat?" she asked as I sat down across from her.

I muttered something about how I'd had a snack earlier. The truth was, with that lump in my throat, I didn't think I could eat anything. I didn't want to eat anything. I just wanted to sit there. I just wanted to look at her. I just wanted to be with her. Because I might never have a chance to be with her again.

I sat down. Mindy and Jen started talking to each other, obviously trying to give Beth and me some time for conversation. I tried to think of something to say, something ordinary and cheerful. But my voice kept trailing off, and I guess I kept sitting there for long seconds just kind of gazing at Beth.

"Are you okay?" Beth asked me.

And I said, "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. I'm just . . ." And then my voice trailed off again.

And then, just like that, I thought to myself: I'm not going to do it. I mean, I don't have to do it. No one can make me do it. All I have to do is say no and Waterman goes away, right? The whole thing goes away just like that. They can find someone else to frame for murder. They can send someone else to prison to have his throat cut. Someone else's mother can sit on the other side of the prison gla.s.s, sobbing. Let someone else leave his life and his friends and his girlfriend behind forever. It's probably all baloney anyway. I mean, Shermana"a terrorist murderer? No way. Maybe this Waterman is just some nutcase who goes around pretending to work for the government . . .

As I went on thinking these things, the sadness began to lift from me. It really was as if someone had taken this huge boulder off my back. I began to feel practically lighthearted. Why had I been torturing myself like this? Just because some guy named Waterman showed up and proposed this insane plan didn't mean I had to agree to it. It wasn't written in stone or anything. All I had to do was say no, and the whole thing would go away.

I reached out across the table and Beth reached out and we held hands. A surge of feeling for her went through me. It wasn't the first time I'd felt certain she had been created especially for me, that we had been created especially to find each other and be together.

This is good, I thought. This is what really matters in life. I'm not giving this up for anyone.

And with that, my sadness was gone completely. I was happy, in fact. In fact, I felt great.

Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I was in the karate dojo. For a second, I felt confused. How had I gotten here? Wasn't I in the forest somewhere . . . ? lying on my side writhing in pain . . . ? people searching for me . . . ?

No. No, now I remembered. I was back in Spring Hill. I'd gone home after school. I did my homework. I borrowed my mom's car to drive to my karate lesson . . .

Now I and my sometime-karate-partner Peter Williams were moving together back and forth across the dojo carpeting. We were doing a paired kata, a kind of mock fight where I would move through one memorized series of punches and blocks and he would go through a complementary series so that every time I punched, he deflected it and struck back and then I deflected his punch and struck back and so on.

Sensei Mike moved along beside us, watching us, calling out instructions: "That foot should be right between his feet, Charlie. You're not close enough. You can't reach him with that punch. Come on, pay attention, West; you know better than that."

I was making a lot of mistakes. I knew the material really well and I was trying to keep up, but my mind just kept going back to my next planned meeting with Watermana"tonight. I kept thinking: I'll just tell him no, that's all. All I have to do is say no and things'll be back to normal.

But at the same time I was also thinking about my friend Alex. Stabbed in the chest, dying in the park, whispering my name with his final breaths. What if it really had been Sherman who'd killed him? What if he really was part of a terrorist organization out to attack America? How could things ever go back to being normal now that I'd heard what Waterman had to say? Once you know something, you can't un-know it.

"All right, chuckleheads, that's enough," said Sensei Mike. "Williams, bow out and hit the changing room. West, stay here and tell me what's on your mind and why you're messing up so badlya"and it better be something really, really importanta"like your shoes are on fire or something."

"No, no, it's nothing, Mike," I muttered. I didn't like to lie to him, but I'd promised Waterman I wouldn't tell anyone what he'd said. Government secret and all that. I stood there in my karate gi, my head down. I was still breathing hard from the exercise. "I'm just . . . distracted, that's all."

"Uh-huh," said Mike. I could tell he didn't believe me. Mike had this amazing ability to figure out pretty much everything that was on your mind just by watching your karate practice.

For a second, I stood there, not really knowing what to say, not wanting to lie any more than I had to, unable to tell the truth. Then, the words sort of just came out of me: "Hey, Mike, can I ask you a question?"

"No. And don't ever try it again."

I rolled my eyes.

Mike pulled his mustache down over his mouth with one hand, hiding a smile. "Go ahead, chucklehead. What question?"

I hesitated. Mike never talked much about being in the Army or what he did in the War on Terror. He never told anyone how the president gave him a medal for running to an armored truck under fire, getting hold of a big .50-caliber gun, and fighting off more than a hundred Taliban to save his fellow soldiers. He never told anyone about getting hit by a bullet that day and having to have a piece of t.i.tanium put in his leg where the bone used to be. But I'd looked him up on the Internet and found out all about it.

"You know that thing you did in Afghanistan? That thing you won the medal for from the president?" I asked him.

Mike's hand went on hovering at his mustache. He did that a lot, usually to hide his smile. Mike always had this smile on his lips and this look in his eyes like he was secretly laughing at something. It was as if he thought just about everything was a joke, as if the whole world was just one big collection of chuckleheads making a mess of things and it was all pretty funny. But now, his eyes had gone serious. The smile that usually hid behind his mustache was gone.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, I seem to remember something about that."

I wasn't sure I should go on. I knew he didn't like talking about it. But now that I'd started, I said, "Would you do it again? Knowing you could get killed. Knowing you might never get home to see your wife and daughter. Now that you've had time to think about it, I mean, away from the battle, if you could go back and make the choice sort of more, I don't know, calmly . . . would you still do it?"

For a long moment, Sensei Mike didn't answer me. The dojo was quiet except for the sound of Pete banging around in the changing room in back.

When he did speak, Mike still didn't answer me. He just said, "Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for somethinga" something that really mattersa"in the end you die for nothing."

Then, all at once, I was standing in the dark. I looked around me, dazed. Where was I? Oh yes, now I saw. I was at the reservoir again. Back at the place where I always met Waterman. There was my mom's SUV parked by the curb . . .

Tonight was the night. I was going to give Waterman my answer. I was going to make my choice.

I had that weird feeling of confusion again. How had I gotten here? Hadn't I just been in the dojo a second ago? But no, now it came back to me. After talking to Sensei Mike, I'd driven out to the end of Oak Street. I'd parked in the same place I'd parked that night Alex and I had our argument, that night he'd gotten out of my car and walked into the park where he was killed. I'd sat there behind the wheel of my mom's SUV and stared through the winds.h.i.+eld into the twilight descending on the park. I prayed silently. I asked G.o.d to help me figure out what I should do.

As always, the prayer helped. As I stood out by the reservoir now, I did have a clearer idea of what I was supposed to do. The only problem was: I didn't want to do it. I didn't even want to think about doing it. I just wanted to tell Waterman noa"no, thanks. I want to live my life. I want to go to college. I want to join the Air Force. And heya"by the way, I just fell in love. I mean, do you mind? Couldn't you just leave me alone? There has to be someone else you could go to . . .

But my thoughts were cut off as Waterman's limousine approached out of the darkness on the street ahead.

It came on slowly. Its lights were off so that it was just a large black shape against the blackness of the trees. It pulled to the curb and stopped. Its headlights came on once, then again. A signal.

I started walking toward it.

I told myself it was going to be all right. I told myself that all I had to do was say the word and I could go back to my life. Okay, so maybe I wasn't a hero. Maybe I wasn't Superman. Whatever. The truth was, I couldn't bear the sadness of leaving my parents, my friends, my girla" maybe forever. I couldn't stand the thought of their tears as they'd watch me taken away to prison for a murder I hadn't done. I couldn't stand the thought of the loneliness that would follow.

As I came near the limousine, the car's back door swung open. The light inside went on, and I caught a glimpse of Waterman sitting in the backseat, waiting. I had an intense feeling of dislike for the man. I wished he'd never come here. Why did he have to come anyway? Why did he have to come to me?

I got in the backseat. I pulled the door shut. The light went out and Waterman became a shadow in the darkness. I could only make out the shape of him turned toward me. I could only see the dark glitter of his eyes, watching, waiting.

"Well?" I heard him say quietly.

"Okay," I said, my voice catching in my throat. "Okay, I'll do it."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Rude Awakening

Okay, I'll do it.

For a long second after I spoke those words, I didn't know where I was. The limousine, the street, the dojo, the high schoola"they had all seemed so real that my mind couldn't take in the fact that they had vanished like a dream. But they had. They were suddenly gone completely.

My sense of my own presence seeped into my consciousness slowly. It was not a good feeling. My head was throbbing. My stomach was turning. My body was bruised and aching from its fall off the rock to the forest floor. Leaves and sticks and pebbles were pressing painfully into the side of my face.

With a sense of growing misery, I began to remember where I was. My home was gone. My family was gone. My lifea"Betha"everything . . . I was here, in the forest, alone. Armed guards were searching for me everywhere. And all because I had told Waterman: Okay.

I couldn't open my eyesa"not right away. Maybe I didn't want to. Maybe I wanted to pretend for another moment that I was still back in Spring Hill. But strangely, as the reality of the situation forced itself into my mind, I realized that things were different now than they were before I lost consciousness. I mean, I guess things were the samea"the situation was the samea"but I was differenta" my feelings about the situation had changeda"and somehow that changed everything else.

Before this last memory attack, I had been pretty much on the brink of despair. I'd felt sorry for myself. I'd been angrya"angry at G.o.d, evena"so angry I could hardly even pray except to call up to heaven bitterly: What do I do now?

But remembering that daya"that awful day of decision before I'd made my choice, before I'd told Waterman okaya"made me feel different.

Because now I knew: I had chosen to do this thing. I had chosen the path that had led me here and I had chosen it, knowing that it might lead here. I had loved Beth and I had left her behind. I'd loved my parents and I'd left them behind. I'd loved my friends and my home and my life, even though I hadn't really realized how much I loved thema"and I'd left them all behind.

And here was the thing, the weirdest thing: I'd left them behind because I loved them. Beth and my parents and my friends and my lifea"my free, American life. I loved them, and if I had a chance to protect them from the people who wanted to destroy them, then I had to take that chance even if it meant I would never see them again. I hadn't asked for that chance. It wasn't fair that it had fallen to me. It wasn't fair that it had all gone wrong and left me in this place, in this hards.h.i.+p and danger. It wasn't even fair that these peoplea"the Homelandersa" had organized to attack us, to hurt us, to kill us . . .

But life doesn't do fair. I don't know why it's that way, but it sure is. I mean, it wasn't fair that I got to grow up in a nice, safe community, while some other kid in some other place was maybe getting shot at or couldn't get enough to eat. It wasn't fair that I had a happy home with parents who loved each other while Alex's mom and dad couldn't stay together. A lot of things aren't fair and I don't think they ever will be, not in this life, I mean.

I understood all that when I got in the limousine with Waterman. I made my choice because I understood it. I knew it wasn't about things being fair. It wasn't about them being easy or safe. It was about who I was, who I wanted to be, what I wanted my life to be about, what I wanted to stand for, live for, even die for if I had to. It was about what I wanted to make out of this soul G.o.d gave me.

So I wasn't angry anymore. I wasn't bitter anymore. I wasn't in despair. What am I supposed to do now? wasn't much of a prayer, I guess. But G.o.d had answered it anyway, because that's what he's like. I knew now what I was supposed to do. I knew exactly.

I was supposed to keep fighting. I was supposed to keep going, as long as I could, as far as I could. I was supposed to refuse to give in. I didn't know if I was going to win in the end. I didn't even know if I was going to survive. But I knew that I was supposed to look at this situation I was in right nowa"look at this trap that seemed to have no way of escapea"and I was supposed to find a waya"or die tryinga"for the sake of the people I loved.

With a new determination in me, I opened my eyes.

The Homelander guardsa"five of thema"were standing in a circle around me where I lay on the forest floor. They had their machine guns trained on me. They had their fingers on the triggers.

I stirred slowly. I became aware of footsteps crunching through the nearby brush. The next moment, as I started to sit up, the sixth Homelander, Waylon, came storming out of the forest to join the others.

He walked straight past the guards without stopping. He stood over me as I struggled to rise.

He smiled. Then he let out a single curse and kicked me in the face, sending me spiraling back into unconsciousness.

PART III.