Three numbers appeared on the screen: 911.
I groaned out loud.
Nine-one-one was part of our personal code: it meant that a situation was so bad—that things had gotten so far out of hand—that there was no possible way out except to come clean and tell your parents about it.
And my heart sank when I saw that because I knew Joe was right. And telling my parents about hanging out with Jeff Winger was not going to be a good time.
ME: It’d have to be my dad.
JOE: Right.
ME: It will be bad.
JOE: Major bad.
ME: He will really give it to me. He will give me The Look.
Once again, there was a pause before Joe answered. Then . . .
JOE: Eat The Look. 911.
I stared at the screen for a long time, but finally I nodded. I signed off. I got up, carrying my heavy heart with me. My heavy heart and I shuffled to the door.
I stepped out into the hall—and was startled to see my dad standing right there in front of me.
My dad is tall, thin, long-faced, and bald. I remember when I was a little kid, it was always easy to draw him. I just made a very, very long stick figure with a long bald head. Oh, and round glasses. He wears round glasses too.
I stepped out into the hall and there he was towering above me—his back, anyway, because he was just passing by my room on his way to the stairs.
“Hey, Dad,” I said.
He turned around as if he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He blinked behind his round glasses as if I had woken him from a dream.
“Hey, Sam,” he said.
I knew right away that something was wrong. Usually my dad has a sort of serious-but-happy expression on his face. I know that sounds like it doesn’t make much sense, but it does when you see it. I mean, my dad’s not the kind of guy who always walks around with a great big grin or who’s always making loud jokes and guffawing (like Joe Feller’s dad, who’s a salesman). He’s more the type who’s always thinking about something, so he looks serious, but he seems to like thinking about it, so he looks happy too.
But right now, he did not look happy. Not at all. In fact, even through the light glinting on his round glasses, I could see there was an expression of pain in his eyes.
“You got a minute?” I asked him.
He blinked again. He looked like he had to think very hard to come up with the answer. Then he said, “I was just heading out. There’s an emergency over at the Bolings’ house. Is it something urgent or can it wait?”
I hesitated. I knew what "an emergency at the Bolings’ ” meant. Mr. Boling was a close friend of my dad’s—maybe his best friend. They had known each other since college, when Dad was a student and Mr. Boling was one of his professors. Mr. Boling had taught my dad a lot and even helped him decide that he wanted to become a preacher. Later, when Mr. Boling retired from the college, he had helped Dad get the job at East Valley Church here in Sawnee. I guess you might say Mr. Boling was Dad’s mentor. He was a lot older than my dad, obviously. And now he had gotten sick. Really sick. As in: things did not look good. I knew my dad wanted to be with his friend in case this was the last time he’d get to see him.
So I sort of put on a relaxed voice and said, “Oh no, it’s not urgent. Go on over to the Bolings’. We can talk later. I hope things turn out all right.”
My dad smiled sort of sadly. “I’ll see you later, Sam,” he said.
He turned and went down the stairs.
I stood alone in the hallway and sighed. I guess I was a little relieved I didn’t have to tell my dad about Jeff Winger, but mostly I was disappointed because I’d already worked up the courage to tell him and I knew I really needed his advice. I didn’t think my mom would be as helpful. It’s not that my mom isn’t smart or anything, it’s just that she tends to give advice that would be good if you were going to take it, but you’re just not going to. I mean, she’ll say stuff like, “Report him to your teacher,” or “Just explain to him that it’s not right for him to take your lunch money.” That sort of thing. My dad’s advice is more practical is what I’m saying.
So I stood there and I heard the front door close downstairs as my dad went out to see his friend. And then I sort of put my hands in my pockets, wondering what I should do. Then, without really deciding, I kind of wandered down the hall to my dad’s study.
I’m not sure why I did that exactly. I just felt like it. It made me feel better to be in his study somehow.
The lights were off in there except for the small reading light on his desk. He was always forgetting to turn that off when he went out. The light shone down brightly on the Kindle he’d been reading from and then sent a sort of faint glow out over the rest of the room. The rest of the room was mostly books, shelves of books on every wall except one wall that had windows overlooking the backyard. There were also a couple of chairs for people to sit in when they came to visit and talk.
The desk was big—a big old wooden thing that nearly stretched from one wall to another. I walked around it and plunked down in my dad’s chair. The chair was big too—a big leather swivel chair with a high back. My mom had gotten it for Dad for Christmas a few years back. It was soft and comfortable.
I sat in the chair and swiveled back and forth. I had my right hand in my pocket. It was wrapped around the Buster. I rubbed its cool metal in my fingers. I was thinking: What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? Over and over again like that. Not a prayer exactly—I was too ashamed to pray. It was more like a chant in my mind. But I guess it was kind of a prayer too, since I was secretly hoping God would take pity on me and send an answer—fast.
As I swiveled and thought, my eyes went over the desk, the computer, the letter opener, the penholder, the Kindle under the reading lamp. Then I sort of swiveled around and looked over the books on the shelves, which were sort of sunk back in the shadows.
There was other stuff on the shelves too. Photographs of Mom and my brother and me. There was a drawing I’d done when I was, like, I don’t know, five or something: a crayon drawing of a rocket ship. I don’t know why Dad framed that and kept it, but he did. There was a drawing by my brother, John, too. And there was other stuff: tokens and souvenirs that people had given Dad or that he’d brought back from some trip or something. An old coin mounted on a block of wood. A carved cross from a church in Africa. Some of this stuff was hard to make out in the shadows, but I’d seen it so many times, I already knew what it was.
But then I saw something I didn’t recognize, something I hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was new, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed it. It was a small statue of an angel. Even in the shadows I could tell what it was because its wings were spread. It was lifting a sword too, so I guessed it was the archangel Michael. He’s the head of God’s armies and does battle with Satan in the Bible, so they pretty much always show him with a sword.
Like I said, I’d never noticed the statue before, so I got up out of the chair and walked over for a better look. It was just a small statue, not much bigger than my hand. I picked it up and took a closer look at it. It was Michael, all right, with his angel sword raised up. And at the base of it, there were some words engraved:
RECTE AGE NIL TIME
The words gave me a strange feeling. I thought they were probably Latin, but I didn’t know how to read Latin and had no idea what they meant. All the same, I got this weird notion in my head that the words were directed especially at me. Maybe I just needed advice so badly I was ready to find it anywhere, but still, I had this powerful feeling that the angel statue was answering that chant of mine: What do I do, what do I do? It came to me that if I could find out the meaning of those words, I would know.
I set the statuette down on the shelf and left the room. Headed back down the hall to my room.
My room is not at all like my dad’s. It’s a lot messier, for one thing. And there aren’t as many books. Mostly the walls are decorated with posters, which are mostly from my favorite video games. Like o
ne has “The Evolution of Mario,” showing how Mario went from being all pixilated in the old days to being three-dimensional now. Then there’s Batman from the Arkham Asylum game and the Prince of Persia and so on. Then there’s my bed and stuff. And then there’s my computer, which is a MacBook, on a big table that is cluttered with all my books and papers from school.
So I sat down at the computer. I called up Google and typed in the words I’d seen on the angel statue: Recte Age Nil Time.
The translation appeared on the monitor at once. I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath.
Because now I didn’t think those words were the answer to my prayer. I knew they were. I knew they were the advice I’d been looking for.
I guess in a funny way it was those words that started all the trouble. It was those words that changed everything.
The translation on the screen was:
DO RIGHT. FEAR NOTHING.
7
Someone in the Woods
Do right. Fear nothing.
Good advice. And I won’t pretend I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Sure I did. It was the “fear nothing” part I was having a hard time with. How are you supposed to fear nothing? I mean, if you’re afraid, how are you supposed to turn it off?
After school that day, I rode my bike up the long road toward the barn. My stomach felt hollow and cold like an empty canyon with a wind blowing through it. That was the fear, I guess. I was afraid of what would happen if I told Jeff I wasn’t coming anymore—and I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
It was still afternoon. There was plenty of light, but the light was starting to get that kind of rich color it gets as the day shades toward evening. The road was rugged and broken. My tires bumped over the ruts and pebbles, and I had to work hard to keep the handlebars steady. I wove between deep holes in the macadam to keep the wheels on the smoother surfaces. It took a lot of concentration. I couldn’t really pay much attention to the scenery around me.
The scenery was just trees mostly anyway, a sparse forest on either side of the pavement. When I did get the chance to glance up, I saw the light from the sinking sun pouring through the winter branches in beams. The woods were still and silent. The only sound anywhere was the rattle and bump of my bike going up the hill.
Then suddenly, there was a snap—a loud, startling crack.
Without thinking, I looked up toward the sound. The second I did, my front tire hit a rut. The handlebars twisted in my hands. I had to brake hard to keep from losing control. The bike stopped, my feet going down to the pavement to hold it steady.
I sat there, staring into the woods, staring at the place where the sound—that loud crack—had come from.
I had seen something—something moving there. Just before I stopped the bike, I’d seen a figure—a person—darting behind a tree. That sound I’d heard—it was the sound a branch makes when it’s lying on the ground and someone—or something—steps on it.
My heart started beating hard. My eyes moved slowly over the trees.
Someone was out there. Someone was in the woods.
It was an eerie feeling, sitting there on my bike, alone on the road in the afternoon with nothing but trees on either side of me, knowing someone was there, hiding, watching me. I didn’t like it.
My first thought was to start pedaling again and get out of there, get up to the barn. But I hesitated. I didn’t like the idea of running away either—especially when something I couldn’t see might be chasing after me. No, I thought it would be better to find out what was there.
So I shouted, “Hello?”
There was no answer. Silence from the woods. A big silence that seemed to fill up everything.
I was about to call out again when a movement caught my eye. A head peeked out from behind a tree.
I let out a sigh of relief. It was a girl. I recognized her right away. Her name was Jennifer Sales.
You remember Mark Sales, the track star, right? The handsome one Zoe Miller was always talking to. Well, Jennifer Sales was Mark’s younger sister. His weird younger sister, to be more precise. Weird was definitely the best word to describe her.
She was a hunched, shy, quiet girl, a small girl, small and thin. My age, sixteen. She had long, straight brown hair that framed a pale, serious face. She was actually kind of pretty in a shy, bookish way. But she always seemed to be off in her own world, living inside her own head. She kept to herself at school and moved along the hallway close to the walls as if she were someone’s shadow. When you did try to talk to her, a lot of times she’d say stuff that was . . . well, weird, like I say. Like she would rhyme words or string words together that didn’t make much sense. She did it as if it were a joke—she’d say it was a joke if anyone noticed it—and she’d laugh as if she thought it was really funny. But sometimes I got the feeling she couldn’t help doing it, that the words just came out of her before she could stop them.
A few kids had made fun of her once or twice, calling her names or laughing at her. But Mark set them straight and it didn’t happen again. Mark was a good guy, but he was a big guy too, and you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. He loved his sister. He said she was just different, that’s all, like maybe she was a poet or something. Anyway, most of the kids in school were decent types and tried to be nice to her when they could. In the end, though, she just seemed to want to be left alone, and a lot of times she was.
Jennifer stared out at me from around the tree with big eyes—as if she were afraid of me, as if I might be a monster or something. Now that I knew who it was, I didn’t want to annoy her or anything, but I was a little worried about her. I mean, what was she doing out in the middle of nowhere like this, out in the middle of the woods with no one else around? If it had been anyone else, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me, but this being Jennifer—I don’t know, I thought she might be lost or something.
So I called out to her. “Hey, Jennifer. How’s it going?”
The minute I said her name, she seemed to relax a little. She kind of edged out from behind the tree—although she still stood close to it as if she might need to duck back behind it at any second.
She lifted her hand in a shy greeting. “Hey,” she said.
“You all right?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Sure.”
I looked around me. There was no one else in sight. “Are you all alone up here?”
She nodded. “I’m just walking. And talking,” she added—mostly, I think, because it rhymed.
I didn’t have much else to say to her, and I thought of just saying good-bye and taking off again. But still, something about this just didn’t seem right somehow. It was a long way back to town on foot. I’d hate it if I left her alone up here and something bad happened to her.
“Are you all right?” I asked again. “Are you lost or something? Do you need me to walk you back to town?”
“No.” She pointed behind her into the woods. “I have my bike. My bicycle. My-cycle. So I can go around and around. And down. Down the hill. Home.”
You see what I mean about the way she talked. It was really strange. “Okay,” I said. But I still felt bad just leaving her here. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
Up till this point, Jennifer had remained standing next to the tree, one hand resting on it as if she wanted to make sure it wouldn’t run away from her. She was wearing jeans and a pullover shirt with big horizontal green stripes on it. It was still pretty chilly, especially around this time of day, so she also had on a blue woolen jacket, although she kept it unbuttoned. The sun was behind her, the beams falling all around her. She stood in a little pool of shadow, a dark figure. It was hard to make out the expression on her face.
But now she stepped away from the tree. I heard the leaves crunch under her shoes as she walked slowly toward me. She stepped out into the road and kept coming, slowly, step-by-step as I sat on my bike watching her. She walked right up to me. She stood close. Really close. So clo
se I could actually feel her breath on my face.
She leaned toward me, staring at me, studying me. I just sat there on the bike. I didn’t know what to do or say. I let her look as much as she wanted.
“Sam,” she said finally. It was as if she’d just figured out who I was. “You’re Sam Hopkins.”
“Sure, Jennifer,” I said. “You know me. You’re in my English class.”
“I know you,” she echoed. “I put you in my cell phone.” She took her phone out of her pocket and held it up—still staring at me. “I put everyone in school in my cell phone.”
“Well . . . great,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
She put the phone away again. “Your father’s a priest,” she said then.
“Well, we don’t call them priests, we . . .”
“A priest is a father,” she said. “Your father’s a Father. Father Father. Farther and farther. My father’s farther and farther away.”
She murmured all this in a low, quick voice, and all the while she went on staring at me. It was really spooky. Then she smiled. And you know what? That was even spookier. It was a sort of small, secret smile. Her eyes glittered, as if she was about to share something with me, something very special that she’d never told anyone else.
“You know what I’m doing here?” she said.
I sat there on my bike, staring back at her. I was kind of hypnotized by her, by the way she was staring at me like that, and by her secret smile and glittering eyes. I slowly shook my head. “No,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
She leaned even closer, edged even a little closer to me. And she whispered, “I’m looking for the devil.”
I felt a chill go through me and I shivered. It was a strange thing to say, and the way she said it made it sound even stranger. Up there alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods, just me and her, it was actually kind of frightening.