“Well . . . anyway . . .” I finally managed to say. “They think I was one of them and that I betrayed them. They want me dead. And they’re dangerous, man. I mean, like, really dangerous. If they figure out that you know where I am, they’ll come after you for sure.”
“He’s right,” said Rick to Miler. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Would you stop?” I said—although I couldn’t help laughing myself this time. “This is serious. They’re serious. One of them tried to knife me in the library.”
“In the library?” said Josh. “Gee, I hope he was quiet about it.”
Frustrated, I closed my eyes, lowered my head, pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. These guys didn’t get it. They thought it was all some sort of big joke, some sort of big adventure.
Rick put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, as if he was reading my mind. “We do get it. We understand. It’s real. It’s dangerous. And believe me, Charlie, we’d all rather be somewhere else. But what are we gonna do: Leave you out here alone to fend for yourself? Let you get arrested the first time you stick your ugly face out the door? The way I look at it—the way we all look at it—we don’t really have any choice. You’re our friend, you’re in trouble, and you’re innocent. So here we are.”
I had to turn away again. I looked out the window, down at the cemetery. It was all blurry for a couple of seconds, but when my eyes cleared, I saw the mourning woman again with her blank stare from under her cowl and her grief-stricken gesture at the empty air. So much was gone, I thought to myself. My family, my school days, my safety, my childhood, a year of my life. I’d lost so much.
But not everything. My friends were here. My friends were still here.
“Okay,” I said. I turned back to them quickly, speaking brusquely to hide my emotions. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it . . . But if we’re gonna do this, we gotta do it right.”
“Okay,” said Rick. The others nodded. “Like how?”
“Well,” I said. “Like, how did you all get here?”
“We parked over in the Lake Center Mall,” said Miler. “Then we cut through the housing development to those woods back there. No one could’ve followed us without our seeing them.”
“Good,” I said. I took a few pacing steps into the room. “That’s really good. You gotta do stuff like that every time you come. Change things up. Make sure no one’s watching.”
“Okay,” said Rick. “What else?”
“Well, you can’t tell anyone. Not anyone.” I looked at them, searched their faces. “The more people who know, the more danger there is. No matter who it is, no matter how much you may think you can trust them, you can’t tell them I’m here or that you’re working with me. Not your parents, not your teachers, not your girlfriends, no one.”
There was a long silence in answer. Miler and Rick looked at each other and Josh looked at both of them and then they looked at me.
I felt something sink inside me. They’d already told someone.
“What?” I said.
They all looked away.
“Who did you tell? Don’t you understand? There’s no one else we can trust.”
Rick took a deep breath. He screwed one eye shut and sort of looked off with the other eye at nothing in particular. “There’s just one other person,” he said.
And just then, as if on cue, I heard the front door open on the first floor. I tensed. I glanced at my friends. They continued to look away from me.
The front door gave the same soft, high moan as before and then a soft thud as it swung shut again. There were footsteps rising quickly up the stairs.
It came to me then. I knew who it was. My breath caught. Suspense pulsed through my body. I turned slowly to face the door.
The footsteps crested the stairs and came down the hall toward us. I saw her in the shadows first, her figure obscure but still recognizable. And then my breath came back and something—my heart, I guess—seemed to crack open inside me and a kind of wild heat flooded through my body.
Beth Summers stepped into the doorway and into the light of day that was pouring through the window.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Beth
I guess there must be more beautiful girls in the world than Beth, but not to me. I mean, a lot of guys looked at her and kind of shrugged. They thought she was just okay. But not me. I mean, I knew she wasn’t gorgeous or glamorous or anything the way some of the other girls in school were. She was of average height with a graceful figure. She had ordinary, honey-brown hair that fell around her face in ringlets. She had small, smooth features: blue eyes, a quick kiss of a mouth.
But somehow, after you talked to her for a while, after you got to know her, she started to look really awesome. I thought so anyway. After you found out how warm she was, how kind, how interested she was in what other people had to say. It changed the way she looked . . . I don’t really know how to describe it.
She was wearing khaki slacks now and a pink sweater and a long blue coat against the autumn chill. She had one of those extra-large purses over her shoulder—I don’t know what they call them—a carryall maybe.
She stood there—just stood there—a long time, and I just stood there and we looked at each other, not knowing what to say. It was a strange situation, that’s for sure. It was awkward. Really awkward.
On my side, I felt the same way I’d always felt about her. I liked her a lot, more than I knew how to put into words. Back in school, whenever I saw her, I felt a kind of emptiness inside me, as if there were a Beth-shaped hole in me that I hadn’t known about until I met her.
But now—now there was a history between us.
See, somehow, during this year, this missing year, Beth and I had fallen in love with each other—but I couldn’t remember any of it. I’d won the love of the single sweetest girl I’d ever met, and I couldn’t remember how or what it felt like. I couldn’t remember our first date or our first kiss. If there were private jokes we had, or secrets we’d shared, they were all gone. We had been in love . . . and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember any of it. It made me feel—I don’t know what—stupid? No, guilty. It made me feel as if I’d done something wrong to her. As if she’d given me some wonderful and expensive Christmas gift, and I’d lost it.
Before I could figure out what I was supposed to say to her, she gave a little ticktock wave of one hand and said, “Hi, Charlie.” Her warm voice was low and uncertain, but it seemed to bring some light and heat into that empty, dusty, drafty, deeply shadowed room.
I licked the nervous dryness off my lips before I answered her. “Hey, Beth,” I said as casually as I could. “It’s good to see you.”
Rick cleared his throat. I’d forgotten he was there. I’d forgotten all the guys were there.
“Well, uh . . .” Rick said.
“Yeah,” said Miler. “We gotta . . . uh . . .”
“Right,” said Josh. “We got a lot of things we have to . . . uh . . .”
“Exactly,” said Rick.
They bumped into one another as they all started moving at once. They gathered up their sleeping bags and their litter—all except one bag and one flashlight. They left those for me. Then they headed quickly for the door.
Beth smiled to herself and looked down at the floor. She came into the room and stepped aside so the guys could get past her.
Josh was the last one out. Just as he was leaving, he turned back to me and said, “What we’re gonna do: we’re gonna go get some stuff. Stuff that’ll help. I got all these good ideas for how we can start to find out . . .”
Rick grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him out of the room.
Beth and I stood silently, each avoiding the other’s gaze. We listened as the guys’ footsteps thumped down the stairs. We heard the door down there open and thud shut. Then we were alone.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came to me. We went on standing there a long time.
Finally
, Beth gave me a nervous smile. She moved past me over to the window. She set her carryall down on the floor. She put her hands in the pockets of her coat and shivered.
“It’s really chilly in here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The window . . .” I gestured lamely at the broken pane.
She seemed then to come toward me almost by accident, as if she was just wandering around the room, you know, and just happened to find herself standing right in front of me. Then she was close, looking up at me, her eyes on mine. She went up on tiptoe and kissed me.
It was just a quick kiss, quick and soft, but it made the warm, empty feeling flood through me again.
“Hi, Charlie,” she repeated. It was almost a whisper this time.
“Hi,” I just managed to say.
“I know you don’t remember. But I remember.”
Then, as if she had embarrassed herself, her cheeks turned red and she moved away.
“I brought you some food,” she said quickly.
“Oh, hey, that’s really nice.”
“It’s just some sandwiches and an apple. A couple of bottles of water. But I figured the guys wouldn’t think of it or they’d just bring you chips or Pop-Tarts or something.”
“Yeah.” I gestured lamely again—this time at the empty soda bottles lying on the floor.
“You hungry?” she asked me.
I nodded. I was really touched she’d thought to bring me something. “I’m pretty much always hungry,” I said.
She went back to her bag. Crouched down over it. She pulled out a plaid blanket and handed it to me. “So we don’t have to sit in all this dust.”
“Right.”
I spread the blanket out on the floor. She went into her carryall again, meanwhile, and brought out sandwiches and apples and grapes, all neatly stored in plastic bags, plus some bottles of water.
We sat on the blanket together. The sight of the sandwiches made my mouth water. It had been days since I’d eaten anything decent, anything that hadn’t come from a vending machine. Also, I was glad to have something to do, you know, something to look at besides her, something to occupy me so I wouldn’t have to think of more stuff to say.
I ripped into the first sandwich—chicken and cheese with mayo on a fresh roll. The taste of it—all the freshness of it and the flavor—was pretty shocking after so many weeks of scrounging for whatever I could find. The sandwich seemed practically to explode in my mouth and the taste traveled all through me.
“Good,” I said with my mouth full. “Really good. Really.”
She smiled. She sat there and watched me eat. It felt like she was practically studying my face. When I stole glances at her, I could see her eyes glistening in the daylight that came in through the window. It made me feel funny to have her look at me that way—you know, as if she had been wanting to see me for a long time and now that I was here, she couldn’t take her eyes off me. It made me feel good. In fact, I had to keep from getting a stupid-looking smile on my face. I forced it down, but it kept coming back. I finally hid it with another bite of the sandwich.
“Has it been terrible?” Beth said finally.
“Has what been terrible?”
“You know, having to run away all the time. Is it really bad?”
I shrugged. It had been a long time since anyone had asked me a question like that—a question about how I was feeling. Used to be, I’d hear it every day, practically every hour. I’d wake up and my mom would say, “How’d you sleep?” I’d go to school and my friends would say, “How’s it going?” At night, at dinner, my dad would say, “How was school?” Sometimes it could even feel annoying, you know—like why does everybody have to ask me questions all the time?
But when it stops, when nobody asks—when nobody cares how your day was or how you slept or how it’s going for you—then you miss it, I can tell you. You miss it a lot.
So when Beth asked, I suddenly wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to try to explain to her how it felt to have everything you cared about and loved suddenly vanish. I wanted to tell her what it was like to be on the road, hunted, day and night, with nowhere you could call home. I wanted her to know what it did to you to have the world think you were evil and to wonder sometimes yourself whether you were or not.
I wanted to tell her—but I couldn’t find the words.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “It’s kind of lonely sometimes.”
She nodded. “I think it must be. Must be scary too.”
I shrugged again. She was right, of course. It was scary. It was scary all the time, every minute. But I didn’t like to tell her that. “I guess,” I said. “I guess it’s kind of scary sometimes.”
“I’d be scared,” she said. “I’d be scared all the time. I am scared all the time.”
“You are? Why? What are you scared about?”
“I’m scared for you, Charlie,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested it had maybe been kind of a stupid question. “I mean, I try not to think about it, but I can’t help it. I think of you out there all alone with the police after you and I get so worried I . . .” Her eyes glistened even more. She didn’t finish.
I tried to think of the right thing to say. “Don’t be scared,” was all I could come up with. “I mean, here I am, right? I’m okay. I’m gonna be okay.”
“I know,” she said hoarsely, trying to smile. “I know you are.”
“I’m sorry, Beth. I’m sorry you have to worry like that.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”
“I don’t know whether it is or not.”
“It’s not.”
“Maybe . . . but I’m sorry anyway. I’m sorry you have to worry. I’m sorry I can’t be here to . . . you know, to keep you from worrying and make you feel better. And you know what I’m sorry about more than anything?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t speak. She was trying too hard not to cry.
I told her, “I’m sorry I can’t remember. Us, you know. I’m sorry I can’t remember us.”
She nodded. She managed to get the words out. “So am I. A lot.”
“I try to. I try so hard. It’s really frustrating. Sometimes it feels like . . . it’s all still there, inside my brain, just out of reach. Like when you can’t remember a word or the name of a song or something, but it’s right on the tip of your tongue. It feels like that. And then sometimes . . . sometimes I have dreams. You know? Dreams about you and me. Just you and me walking together or talking or something. And then I wake up and . . . I don’t know whether I was remembering something that really happened or if it was just a dream.”
“That does sound frustrating.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Talking to Beth was kind of an amazing thing. The way she listened to you—it made you feel like you were the only person in the world, the only thing she was interested in or really cared about. I mean, I didn’t want to complain too much. Mostly I didn’t want to say anything that would make her worry even more than she already did. But it sure felt good to say these things to her, to tell her about all these things I’d been keeping inside me during all the weeks when I had no one to talk to.
“It’s like that with a lot of stuff,” I said. “All the stuff I can’t remember. A whole year—it’s just gone. Not just you and me but . . . how I got arrested. My trial. I can’t even remember . . .”
The words stuck in my throat. Beth reached out and touched my hand gently. “What, Charlie?”
“I can’t even remember if I’m guilty or not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alex. I can’t even remember if I killed him.”
“Oh, Charlie.” Her hand closed over mine. “Of course you didn’t. I know that. We all do.”
Man, I have to say: it was hard not to cry when she said that. I would’ve rather the Homelanders stormed into the room just then and shot me dead before I let Beth see me cry, but it was hard not to. For a long time, I couldn’t say anythi
ng at all.
Finally, I forced the words out. “The police . . . The jury . . . They all think I did it.”
“Well, they’re wrong, that’s all. They’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m sure they didn’t mean to. They were trying to get it right, but somehow things just got mixed up.”
“And now there are these people. These terrorists. They think I’m one of them.”
“Oh, Charlie, you have to know that’s not true.”
“I want to. I want to know it, Beth. So help me, I want to know it more than anything. I mean, I’m not trying to say I’m anybody special or Superman or anything like that, but . . . I always thought I was all right. You know? I thought I was a decent guy . . .”
“You are. Of course you are. You’re more than that.”
“Then why do they all . . . ?” I lifted the last of the sandwich, but I didn’t eat it. I couldn’t. My throat felt so tight I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it down. “I try to figure it out, but I can’t. You know? It doesn’t make any sense. If I’m really innocent, why would everyone say I was guilty? I feel like, if I could just remember what happened . . .”
“You will. You just have to keep trying. I’m sure you will.”
I put the sandwich down. I reached into my fleece and brought out the papers I’d got in the library.
“It’s why I came back. To see if I could piece it all together and figure it out. I mean, if I didn’t kill Alex, someone else must’ve done it, right? The paper said it was someone he recognized, someone he knew. If it wasn’t me, then who was it?”
She took the papers from me. She paged through them silently for a few moments. As she did, the tears welled in her eyes again. One tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. I could feel it—that tear. I felt it like a punch. I reached out with one finger and brushed it off her.
“Don’t cry,” I said.
“It was just . . . it was so awful. The trial and everything.”
“You were there?”
“Every day, whenever I could be. And afterward, I’d come to your house . . . It was just getting started between us and . . . they took you away from me.”