The Truth of the Matter

  With that, the monitor flashed back on again. There was the Schoolyard home page with the last message from Beth still there, just as before.

  Puzzled, I—the younger me—looked around and saw my cell phone lying on the desk, at the opposite end of the keyboard from my calculator. I picked it up. It wasn’t ringing or anything. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. All the same, I shrugged and opened it as the message directed.

  Instantly, a man’s voice said: “If you want to know who killed Alex Hauser, come to the Morgan Reservoir in half an hour.”

  “What?” I said. “Who is this?”

  “Come alone. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “How do you know who killed Alex? Who am I talking to?”

  “If you tell anyone, I’ll know. Do you understand me? I’ll know and I won’t show up.”

  “Wait, listen . . . ,” I began.

  “Do you understand me?”

  The younger me looked around the room as if searching for help. Finally, I raised my hand in a gesture of surrender. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand you, sure.”

  “Do you want to know who killed Alex or not?”

  “Yes, of course I do, but . . .”

  There was no click, but the silence at the other end of the line became somehow suddenly more complete.

  “Hello?” I said. “Hello?”

  No answer. The mysterious man was gone.

  The present me stood at the edge of the scene, at the edge of my old room at home, watching the past me as he sat there wondering what to do. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I wanted to call out to myself, to warn myself, to say: Don’t do it. Don’t go. Stay where you are. Answer Beth’s message, stay with Beth, love Beth, have your life.

  But at the same time, I thought that I could feel what was going through the heart and mind of the past me; I could feel his curiosity, his desire to find Alex’s murderer and clear himself of any possible suspicion . . . and I could feel something else too. I could feel his sense of adventure. His need for excitement. His burning ambition to get out of his small-town life and do something important and thrilling and dangerous. I was already planning to try to get into the Air Force Academy. I had even gotten my mom to let me take some flying lessons by way of preparation. But I couldn’t apply to the academy until next year. This was now.

  I—the present me—wanted to reach out and stop the old me, but I couldn’t. All at once, I was fading away from the scene, helplessly drawn back out of my room, back and back into . . .

  Nothing. Blackness. Where was I now?

  My room was gone. The trophies, the poster on the wall, the computer, my former self. It had all vanished.

  And suddenly, I was scared. Very scared. I was alone in the darkness and now there was . . . something . . . a noise . . . an awful noise . . . someone screaming . . . terrible screaming in the distance . . . And I knew: it was me, it was me, in the chair in the Panic Room, screaming in pain . . .

  I didn’t want to go back there, back to that room, back to that chair, back to that agony.

  I turned this way and that, looking for another way out.

  There . . . up ahead . . . a dim gray light . . .

  I moved toward it.

  Now I was on a street. No, a country road. It was night. Dark. No streetlights, no houses. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking.

  I looked around, confused. I saw a sparkle, very faint—the stars on water. My eyes began to adjust. I recognized this place. Reservoir Road, up in the wooded hills above my hometown. I could see a hill of dark trees rising up against the night sky to my right, a sandy slope falling away to my left. There was the Morgan Reservoir at the bottom of the slope, the water glinting in the starlight.

  I looked around. I half expected to see myself—my younger self—as I had seen him before. But he was nowhere to be found. I was alone. I looked down and . . .

  What was this? I wasn’t wearing my fleece anymore. I was wearing a windbreaker. I could feel the brisk air of early autumn on me.

  Slowly, I lifted my hands, touched my cheeks, felt my hair. I understood.

  I didn’t see my younger self because I was my younger self. I had become my own memory.

  The fear, then, was all mine. I knew why I was afraid too. I was here to meet the man behind the mysterious voice on my phone.

  If you want to know who killed Alex Hauser . . .

  Before, back in the safety of my room, I’d been excited by those words, excited at the prospect of this mysterious meeting, at the idea that I might possibly solve Alex’s murder. But now, now that I was actually out here, out here alone in the dark with no one knowing where I was—now suddenly it occurred to me: what a knucklehead I’d been! What an unbelievably stupid idea it was to come out here to meet some voice on the phone without even letting anyone know I was doing it! I mean, didn’t I think? Didn’t I realize? There was only one person who could possibly know who had killed Alex—and that was the murderer himself! And the only reason the murderer would want me to come out and meet him on an empty road in the middle of the night . . .

  Well, let’s just say visions of autopsy scenes from CSI: NY flashed in my head, with me starring as the body!

  I thought I better get out of there—fast, before this killer clown showed up. I was about to turn around, about to head back to my car, my mom’s SUV parked on the road behind me . . .

  But before I could, two lights flashed at me out of the darkness. Headlights. On for a moment. Then off.

  There was another car parked on the Reservoir Road.

  This didn’t seem like a memory now at all. I didn’t feel separated from my younger self. I felt I was my younger self again. I felt I was there, really there, really standing in the dark on the road, expecting to see the person who had killed Alex Hauser come leaping out at me at any moment.

  I stood where I was, uncertain. Did I go toward the headlights and find out who had called me? Or did I do the smart thing and jump in my mom’s car and drive out of there, tires squealing, just as fast as I possibly could?

  I know, I know. The smart answer was obvious. I should never have gone out there in the first place. There could be no good reason to follow a mysterious voice into the darkness. There could be no good reason to stay here now that I’d come to my senses. I felt as if my heart were hammering in my throat—and that meant my body was trying to tell me something. It was trying to tell me: Hey! Don’t be an idiot! Go home where you belong!

  But I couldn’t. What can I say? It was a guy thing. I knew I should never have come, but now that I was here—well, no way I was going to run for it. I didn’t want to feel like a coward. I didn’t want to let my dead friend Alex down. I wanted to finish what I’d started and find out who his killer was and be a hero, even if it got me killed. A guy thing, like I said. So no matter what the consequences, running away was just not an option.

  Before I even came to a conscious decision, I was already moving along the road toward the place where I’d seen the headlights. With every step, my heart beat even faster. My body tensed as I tried to prepare myself mentally for any surprise attack. Soon, I could make out the shape of the car on the road ahead of me. It was a long black car of some kind: a limousine. Now I was close enough to see the silhouette of the man sitting behind the wheel. Was that him? I wondered. Was that the man who had killed Alex?

  But as I took another step, the back door of the limousine came open. The light inside went on. I could see the driver was not alone. There was someone else sitting in the backseat.

  I came around the side of the limo, closing the final distance to the rear door. The light inside was very dim. It didn’t illuminate much. The driver’s face was still in shadow—though I could make out a deadpan expression and cold, lidded eyes. And the man in the backseat was obscured by the top of the door frame. From where I was, I could only see him from the neck down, the suit and tie beneath his open overcoat.

  I took another step toward the open door. T
hen I stopped. I bent down to get a look at the man’s face. I didn’t know him. He was older, fifty or something. A serious sort of person, a businessman or something like that.

  “Get in, Charlie,” he said. It was the voice I had heard over my cell phone.

  I hesitated. Hadn’t my mother been telling me since I was a child that I should never get in a car with a strange man?

  The strange man in the car took out a wallet and flipped it open. I saw the government identification inside. I recognized the name of the agency. “Come on,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to talk.”

  Well, my mother always was a worrier. And I was a black belt, not a child anymore.

  I took a breath and slipped into the limo’s backseat. I pulled the door shut and turned to the man beside me.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Charlie,” he said quietly. “My name is Waterman.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Out of the Past

  Then I woke up. I was lying on the floor of the Panic Room. I was curled up on my side. The cot was right above me, as if I’d been lying on it and had fallen off. My clothes were damp with sweat. I smelled. And the room stank of puke.

  I felt as though I had been lying there unconscious for a long time. I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe it. Almost ten hours had passed! It must be nearly morning now.

  I started to uncurl. Bad idea. I was hit with a sharp cramp in the stomach. I gave a growl and clutched at myself, curling up again, until the pain passed. Then, again—more slowly, more cautiously this time—I started to unwind my body. I rolled over.

  The first thing I saw was the chair—the metal chair in the middle of the room. It stood above me, looming, threatening, frightening, the handcuffs dangling from the chair-arms, where they’d held my wrists.

  I groaned and turned onto my back. The light from the fluorescents on the ceiling seemed to slice right through my eyes into my brain. Flinching, I raised a trembling hand to shield myself. With the other hand, I reached out blindly until I found the edge of the cot. Then I slowly pulled myself into a sitting position.

  From there, climbing over the cot, I worked myself to my feet. For a moment, all I could do was stand there, swaying. The room seemed to turn and tumble this way and that. My stomach seemed to turn and tumble with it. I was light-headed. I was afraid I was going to throw up.

  I moved to the steel toilet on the wall. That’s where the smell of vomit was coming from. It made me feel even sicker. I reached out quickly and flushed the toilet, turning away so I wouldn’t have to watch the swirl.

  I moved to the middle of the room. I moved like an old man, my legs stiff, my feet shuffling. I had to pause after a moment, resting my hand on the back of the chair to keep myself steady.

  I felt like I had been run through a blender. For a minute or two, I was so dazed from the experience, I couldn’t even really remember what had happened. Then it came back to me in flashes: the injection . . . the pain . . .

  How much time had passed? I wondered. How long had I been in the chair? How long had I been lying on the floor?

  The rest of it was coming back to me now too. The way I’d separated from myself, as if my soul had left my body. The way I’d stood on the sidelines and watched my own memories unfold . . . and the way I’d become one with the memory of myself standing in the dark on Reservoir Road . . . living through that walk to the car again and then . . .

  I straightened. I whispered: “Waterman!”

  I remembered now! That mysterious message on my computer monitor. The mysterious voice on my phone. Reservoir Road in the middle of the night. The mysterious black car. Waterman.

  Even in my weakness and sickness, my mouth opened and I let out a syllable of joy and hope. I gripped the back of the chair, holding myself steady. Yes—yes!—I was beginning to remember! I was beginning to remember it all. The days after Alex’s murder. Beth and I falling in love. Then that message . . . that voice on the phone . . . that moment when I got in the car with Waterman . . .

  I stood there, gripping the chair, fighting hard to remember what had happened next. I closed my eyes. I strained to see it. It seemed just out of reach, like a word you can’t remember that’s right on the tip of your tongue. I wanted so badly to get my memory back, to recall my life, but . . . No. Nothing. It just wasn’t there. It hadn’t come back to me. Not yet.

  I opened my eyes. I looked down at the metal chair.

  We’re going to give you something that will make you remember, Waterman had told me. I wish I could say it was going to be painless, but it’s not. I wish I could say it was going to be instantaneous, but it’s going to take time. Still, in the end, everything that has happened will come back to you.

  Everything, I thought. Everything will come back. That’s all that mattered. I didn’t care how much pain there was. I’d take the pain. I just wanted to remember my life.

  Now my gaze lit on the steel chest standing against one wall. There was a tray on the chest that hadn’t been there before. There was a plastic bottle filled with water on the tray. There was a sandwich on a paper plate wrapped in plastic. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was.

  I let go of the chair and moved unsteadily across the small Panic Room toward the chest. When I reached it, I saw there was a 3 x 5 index card lying between the water bottle and the sandwich. There was a note written in block letters on the card.

  The note said: Eat. Drink. Build up your strength. You’re going to need it.

  There was no signature, just a doodled symbol, a hastily drawn stick-figure house—a square with a triangle roof on top and an X filling up the square.

  I picked up the water bottle. It was one of those bottles with the built-in straws. I sipped at it gratefully. It was a shock when the cold water first hit my stomach, but then I felt the cold flooding through me, clearing my head, strengthening my body. I felt steadier almost at once.

  I picked up the sandwich plate and carried it back to the metal chair. I unwrapped it. Turkey and cheese. I took a bite. It tasted good, but when it went down, there was a moment when I thought it would come right back up again. Then the moment passed, the food settled, my stomach settled. I felt hungry. I ate the rest of the sandwich quickly, lifting the water bottle in between bites.

  As my body felt stronger, as my mind cleared, I thought about what had happened. I tried to figure out my situation. Waterman had been honest with me. He’d said he was going to give me a drug that caused me pain and brought my memory back and that’s what he’d done. It made me think maybe the rest of what he’d said might be true as well.

  We’re the good guys, Charlie. If liberty is better than slavery, like you said—if the people who work for liberty are the good guys—then we’re the good guys, though we can’t always be as good as we might like . . . We have to be sure you’re still on our side . . .

  The good guys . . .

  As I took the last bite of the sandwich, I lifted my eyes to look at the wall, at the space on the wall where the secret door had been. I remembered more of what Waterman had said.

  The Homelanders are close. Very close. They’ve hacked some of our files. We don’t know how many. We don’t know how much they know. But they know about me. They’ve been watching me for weeks. It’s only a matter of time before they find this place and strike and try to kill us all . . . The people in this bunker are some of the only people left who can stop them. If they get to us, then we’ve got no chance.

  I realized I had to talk to Waterman. If I couldn’t remember what had happened with him in that car, then maybe he could explain it to me. In any case, I had to convince him that I was still on his side, that I was still one of the good guys, that if I could help him fight the Homelanders, I would do it, no matter what it took.

  I set the paper plate down on the floor next to the water bottle. I stood up, my body stiff, but much stronger now. I moved to the space in the wall where the secret door was. I lifted my hand to knock . . .

 
Before I could, I was startled by a pounding that hit the wall from the other side. It was loud. It seemed to shake the room. It sounded as if someone was hammering his fist against the wall, just a little ways off to my left. I froze where I was, my hand lifted.

  The pounding came again, moving now, coming toward me. Boom, boom, boom. As if the person was probing along the wall, trying to find an opening. Maybe trying to find the secret door into the Panic Room.

  Who was it? Were they looking for me? Did they know I was here?

  The pounding got closer and closer until finally it was directly opposite me. It was coming right through the wall across from me. Whoever was pounding was standing just a few inches from where I was standing with only the wall—and the invisible door—between us.

  I stood frozen where I was. Waiting. Would he find me?

  But the pounding continued moving along the wall. It went past me and on into the corner. There, finally, it ended.

  All this time, I had stood rooted to the floor with my hand lifted, stopped in that moment when I’d been about to knock, about to call Waterman for help.

  Now I lowered my hand. Whoever that was pounding on the wall, I felt pretty sure it wasn’t Waterman.

  Slowly, breaking free of my frozen surprise, I moved back to the wall. I pressed my ear against it. I listened.

  The wall was thick. Very thick. The Panic Room had been built as a hiding place, not to be discovered. That made it hard to hear anything on the other side. There were voices—low, deep male voices—but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I pressed more tightly against the wall. I held my breath, straining to hear.

  There was more conversation, dim, distant, wordless. I stood there, frustrated, unable to make out any of it.

  Then an angry shout. For about two seconds, maybe three, the furious voice reached me clearly. It was a deep, hollow voice screaming in a language I didn’t understand. Arabic, it sounded like.

  The moment I heard it, the moment I heard that voice, my head snapped back away from the wall. A thrill of fear flared inside me. The voice faded from my hearing as I staggered back a step from the wall. I stared at the space. My mouth had gone dry. My legs felt weak.