The Truth of the Matter

  My desk was near the window. I turned away from Mrs. Smith and the others and looked out at the school grounds. There was a square of open grass surrounded by low buildings. It was lunch hour for the younger kids, and I could see some of them out on the kickball field and others studying at outdoor picnic tables and some just sitting together and talking, joking around. I watched them sadly.

  Have you ever had to get through a day, smiling at people, talking, as if everything were normal and okay, while all the time you felt like you were carrying a leaden weight of unhappiness inside you? That’s what it was like for me. I had been at this school now for three years. Before that, I had been at middle school for two years with most of the same kids. And before that, most of us had been together at elementary school. I could stroll across this campus from one end to the other and never be out of sight of a familiar face.

  This school, these people, this town—this was my life, my whole life. Sure, I always knew I’d leave it someday. I always figured there’d be college. I had a secret hope that maybe I could get into the Air Force, be a fighter pilot. I knew there’d come a time when life would take me other places.

  But what was happening now, this was different. It was terrifying. And it was hugely sad.

  I want you to understand completely what I’m asking of you. You’ll be taken away from your family, your school, your friends, your girlfriend. They’ll all believe you were convicted of murder. They’ll believe you’re a fugitive who’s escaped from prison. They may even come to learn you’ve become a member of a group of terrorists . . . If it all goes wrong, we’ll never admit we know you, we’ll never tell anyone the truth. Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

  That’s what Waterman had said to me that first night we’d driven around the hills in his limousine.

  Since then, there had been other nights. Waterman and I had met by the reservoir again and again. He and his driver—the man I came to know as Dodger Jim—had driven me to what they called a safe house: a cabin hidden in the woods. Waterman had shown me videos there on a laptop, videos of the Homelanders. As I watched the vids, he explained who they were, what they’d done.

  He’d shown me their leader, who called himself Prince. He was a Saudi Arabian terrorist who’d blown up buildings in Britain and Israel. In Tel Aviv, he’d planted a bomb in a school, killing twenty-seven little children. Now he was here, recruiting Americans to act as his proxies in his war against the West and against our liberty.

  Then there was one of Prince’s top lieutenants. He called himself Waylon. He was an Iranian. He’d helped kill American and British soldiers in Iraq. When he was finished there, he’d gone after civilian targets, kidnapping and killing journalists and Western aid workers in Afghanistan. He liked to torture people and kill them slowly and then send the videos to their families. Waterman showed me some of those pictures too.

  And he showed me other things. Snapshots of Waylon meeting with Mr. Sherman, my history teacher. Intercepted e-mails in which Sherman told Waylon about how he was recruiting my friend Alex to join their team . . .

  These were the people who had come to America to fight against us. Every night we met he showed me more videos, gave me more of their literature to read, literature full of hatred—hatred of Americans, Britons, and Jews—hatred of liberty, which they called a tool of the devil—hatred of anyone who disagreed with or opposed them.

  And every night we met, Waterman asked me again: Would I join with him in fighting them? Would I give up my home, my friends, my girl, my life to try to stop them?

  Now here I was, back in school on what was supposed to be an ordinary day, trying to pretend that everything was normal, while those words of his weighed on me and turned everything into suspense and sadness:

  If it all goes wrong, we’ll never admit we know you, we’ll never tell anyone the truth. Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

  “‘The Genius and the mortal instruments / Are then in council,’ ” Mrs. Smith read on. “‘And the state of man, / Like to a little kingdom, suffers then / The nature of an insurrection.’”

  Right, I thought. That was me: my mind and my heart fighting with each other. Or my “genius” and my “mortal instruments.” Or, like, whatever. The point is, I didn’t know what to do.

  I looked at Mrs. Smith and I felt a lump in my throat as if any moment I might just break down crying. How could I say yes to Waterman and just let this life of mine disappear, break the hearts of the people who loved me, say good-bye, maybe forever, to my parents, my lifelong friends, the people I loved?

  And Beth . . .

  The bell rang.

  Mrs. Smith snapped the book shut. “Read this scene again at home and we’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said.

  I just sat there, not moving, staring at her, wondering if I’d even be here tomorrow, wondering if I’d ever be here—or see any of these people—again.

  “Hey! Ho! I know it’s poetry, man—but wake up.” It was Josh, slapping at my shoulder. I looked up at him. Josh was kind of a geek—kind of the Ur-Geek, actually— the Geek on whom all other geeks were modeled: short, narrow with hunched-up shoulders. Short curly hair and thick glasses and a nervous smile. “It’s time for some of us to have lunch and others of us to gaze stupidly into our girlfriend’s eyes while little heart-shaped bubbles come blipping out of our ears and nostrils.”

  “You make it sound so romantic,” said Miler Miles beside him. “Or maybe disgusting is the word I want.” Miler was a track star: small, lean, with short blond hair and green, go-get-’em CEO-of-the-future eyes.

  I went on sitting there, just sort of gazing up at them stupidly. My buddies. They’d been snarking like this at each other for years now. Josh’s geekiness could push the needle on the annoying meter into the red sometimes, but he was really smart and we all liked him anyway. And Miler—he was just a regular guy now, but he practically had “I will be a gazillionaire businessman one day” flashing in big lights over his head.

  What would it be like never to see them again? Not just because we’d gone off to college where we could communicate online and meet up on vacations and so on. But never to see your best friends again at all? Or talk to them at all? Or even be able to tell them the truth about yourself? To tell them you weren’t the bad guy you were supposed to be?

  Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

  “Uh, hello? Earth to Starship Charlie,” Josh said.

  I blinked. I realized I’d been sitting there staring at them. I tried to think of something funny to say—something that sounded normal. “Oh, sorry. What you were saying was so interesting I guess I dozed off.”

  It was lame, but it was the best I could come up with. I gathered my books and shoved them into my backpack. Slung the backpack over my arm as I got up and joined Josh and Miler.

  “It’s hard to communicate when you’re wrapped in a cloud of loooove,” said Josh, singing the last word as if it were opera.

  “Or maybe it’s just hard to communicate with a member of a subhuman species who can’t get within ten feet of a girl without melting into a pile of quivering mucus,” Miler said.

  “How can you tell when Josh melts into a pile of quivering mucus?” I asked. “I mean, what’s the difference?”

  “Good question,” said Miler.

  “Har har,” said Josh, but he smiled nervously because—well, because he always smiled nervously.

  Miler and I bumped fists and laughed. My heart felt as if it were made of lead.

  The three of us walked outside into the crisp, cool air. We strolled together across the grass toward the cafeteria, nodding or waving every three steps or so at someone we knew.

  I heard Waterman speaking again: We want to rush the case to trial as quickly as we can and basically railroad you into prison for murder.

  Prison, I thought. What would it be like to be in prison
for murder? Would they be able to protect me from the real murderers all around me or would I be on my own? I could just imagine my mother coming to see me on visiting day . . .

  “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 bumped into three people coming outside. It was two younger students—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 look—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 me— how familiar it was. How reliable the smells of it were. Hamburgers Monday, mac-’n’-cheese on Wednesday . . . The food was—well, it was no better than it is at anybody else’s school cafeteria and we were always making jokes about it—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 cafeteria—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 long—this cafeteria had been a huge part of my life. We’d had some big laughs in this place—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. Cummings 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 embarrassing 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 glass, sobbing. Let someone else leave his life and his friends and his girlfriend behind forever. It’s probably all baloney anyway. I mean, Sherman—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 mo
ving 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 Waterman—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 badly—and it better be something really, really important—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?”