The long way home

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Real True America Back at the Ghost Mansion, I tried to sleep. Maybe I did sleep a little. I don't know. Mostly I lay awake, staring into the dark, wrapped in my sleeping bag against the cold that came in at the windows.

It wasn't the spooky creaking of the old house that disturbed me. It wasn't the scrabbling of the mice in the walls. It wasn't the moaning of the autumn wind in the trees outside or the leaves rattling through the graveyard there or even the thought of the mourning woman, cowled and staring blank-eyed into nothingness.

The ghosts of the haunted house didn't scare me anymore. It was reality that was terrifying. It was my own racing thoughts that wouldn't let me rest.

I kept going back over what I'd said to Mike. I kept thinking about what Beth had told me, about the day I was arrested. I had come to her that morning on the path by the river, she said. I had told her about all the evidence there was against me.

"How could that happen?" she'd asked me.

It was a good question. How could it have happened? How could Alex's blood have been on my clothes? How could my fingerprints have been on the knife that killed him?

And what about Alex? What had he been involved in? Who had he known? Why had he been going to see Mike and why did he want his friends to keep it secret? Who could have killed him if I hadn't?

It was still dark outside when I got up, but I could hear a few birds twittering and I knew that dawn was near.

I crawled out of the sleeping bag. I stood bouncing on my toes and hugging myself, shivering in the cold. When I warmed up a little, I sat cross-legged in front of the laptop Josh had left for me. I turned it on.

I had to use the computer sparingly. Josh had given me two batteries, but with no electricity in the house there was no easy way to recharge them. I figured I'd get about four hours of use from them all told.

I went to work. I called up a search engine and started looking for the site called something like Real True America-the site Mike had seen Alex looking at when he was at the library.

It wasn't easy to find. It took me nearly forty-five minutes of trying different combinations. It turned out what I was looking for was not a site, but a page on a site that had a harmless-looking title like "A Student's Guide to American History."

The page was headlined: "Real True America: Debunking the Myths, Getting the Facts Straight." There were a lot of links on the page, but I only had to go to a few of them before I realized what they were. Basically it was a list of every bad thing that had ever happened in this country, everything people had ever done wrong. You know the stuff: slavery and some of the unfair attacks on American Indians and so on. Some of it really was bad and some of it only looked bad when taken out of its historical context. And there was none of the good stuff at all. Nothing about the Constitution and the way it preserved and protected the freedom God gave people to do and think and become whatever they could. Nothing about the fact that America's influence had brought that freedom to places where it had never been and protected it in places where it was under attack. There's so much about this country that is unique in history and great for humankind. But none of that was there. It was only about the bad stuff people do, which happens in America just like it happens everywhere else.

It's easy to make something sound bad if you only tell one side of the story. That's what they did here.

So this was the sort of stuff Alex was looking at. I scrolled through it quickly, keeping track of my battery meter as it got lower and lower. I was about to turn the computer off, when I found a link that said, "The Great Proposition." It sounded important, so I hit it and was taken to another page.

This is what it said: For too long, America has sought to impose its way of life on the rest of the world. It's got to stop. Americans have got to learn that the so-called "Truths" they hold "self-evident" aren't really truths at all, but just cultural perspectives, which might be different somewhere else. Concepts like "liberty"-which can lead to unfairness-or freedom of speech-which allows people to say offensive things-or "rights" given us by a "Creator" to such selfish goals as "the pursuit of happiness"-these may seem good to you, but who's to say they are good for everyone? To believe in any absolute truth is oppressive. Absolutism is the meat of tyrants. Real morality is always relative to situations and cultural traditions.

I caught my breath as the last words seemed to leap out at me from the monitor. I remembered those words. I remembered when Mr. Sherman had spoken them to me in class, almost exactly as they were written there on the page. Had he read it here?

Or had he written it?

The moment the thought occurred to me, it made a kind of sense. I didn't know whether Mr. Sherman and Alex had ever talked to each other, but if they had, I could really see Sherman filling Alex's head with a lot of the ideas that seemed to confuse him just before the end. That didn't mean Sherman was some kind of villain or something. He was entitled to his opinions just like anyone. But it might mean that he knew a lot more about how Alex had gotten killed than he let on.

I remembered something else too. I remembered how Beth had told me that Mr. Sherman was my friend during my trial, that he stuck with me and believed in me and talked to me all the time. That hadn't made a lot of sense to me when she said it, but what if he'd been trying to sell me the same ideas he'd sold to Alex?

As I sat there, staring at the words, trying to figure out what it all meant, a noise came out of the computer's speaker. It was kind of like the sound of a door opening- a signal that one of my friends had come online. In one corner of my computer, there was a list of my friends: Beth, Josh, Rick, and Miler. It was Beth who had just signed on.

I clicked on the webcam symbol and waited to see if she would turn on the camera Josh had given her. A moment later, there she was, her face filling the monitor. She was wearing a bathrobe and her hair was in tangles, but she was pretty anyway, and her eyes were smiling and sweet. Suddenly the Ghost Mansion didn't seem so bleak and empty.

I saw her look over her shoulder as if she was worried her parents would come in and see me on the screen. She leaned into the machine and spoke in a low voice as if she didn't want anyone to hear.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

"I hoped you'd be there. Are you all right? Did you get any sleep? Did you have enough to eat?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine. Don't worry so much."

She gave a wry little laugh. "You can't have that wish, Charlie. I worry a lot."

I smiled. It was actually kind of nice to have her worry about me. "I was just looking at some stuff, trying to figure some things out."

"How's it going? You find anything?"

"I'm not sure. You remember you said Mr. Sherman was my friend during the trial."

"Uh-huh. He was great. He talked to you almost every day. You know, trying to keep your spirits up and everything."

"You ever hear any of our conversations?"

I could see her thinking about it. She shrugged. "Not really. Nothing important anyway. But I remember you guys had lunch a bunch of times during the trial and took a couple of drives together, just the two of you."

I nodded. I wondered. Was Sherman using our talks to try to convince me of the stuff I'd just seen on the Web site? To try to turn me against my country and the things I knew were true? Was he the one who'd been trying to convince Alex?

Beth's voice came through the computer, tinny-sounding on the little speaker, but still warm and nice, like her. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm just thinking: a guy who's on trial-who maybe thinks he's being framed by the government or by the police-he might be pretty bitter, you know. He might be open to someone telling him bad stuff about his country."

"I guess. So?"

Before I could answer her, there was another noise like a door opening. Josh had signed on. I would've preferred to go on talking to Beth alone, but I needed to talk to Josh too. I clicked the webcam symbol again. A second later, the screen space divided and there was Josh's geeky, pasty face next to Beth, blinking out at me through his glasses.

"Hello, you young lovers, you," he said with a big, stupid grin that became even bigger and stupider as he leaned into his webcam. "Just the sight of your fresh faces makes these old bones come alive again."

I shook my head. "Listen, you idiot. I need you to help me out with something."

"I live to serve."

"What if I needed to get into somebody else's computer? Find out what kind of stuff he had on there."

He thought about it. "Would this someone's computer be password-protected?"

"Probably, yeah. Almost definitely."

"I might be able to set you up with an e-mail that would break into his computer, but it would depend on him opening the mail and it might take some time. Also, his protection software might spot it."

"No," I said. "That's no good. I need to do this fast."

"Okay," said Josh-and now he sounded like he was really enjoying himself. "I'm gonna send you something really cool, some really cool software. It's called Private Eye. All you gotta do is download it onto a disk, personalize it to your computer, then upload onto the other guy's computer. Then, on your computer, you'll be able to read every keystroke he makes, his e-mails, everything. And when he types in his password, you'll get it-and then you can get into his computer and get anything you want."

"Cool," I said.

"Wait a minute," said Beth. "How's he going to do that? How's he going to upload the program onto the person's computer?"

Josh rolled his eyes. "Well, duh, Beth. He goes to the guy's computer and puts the disk in."

"Well… that's not legal, is it?"

Josh smacked himself in the face with both hands as if this was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

"Beth," I said gently. "I'm already wanted for murder. It's not gonna matter much if they tack on a charge of breaking into a guy's computer. They can't exactly send me away for longer than life."

"I know," she said. "But… if you have to go to the person's computer yourself, you could be caught."

"He could be caught anyway!" Josh cried out. He laughed at her, a wild high laugh. He was being incredibly obnoxious.

"Josh," I said.

He laughed wildly some more. "What, dude?"

"Shut up."

"Oh." He stopped laughing. "Look, you could send it to him in an e-mail, but it's more dangerous that way and he might not execute the file."

"Just send me the program. I'll take care of it."

"Right, right. Here it comes."

I saw Josh fidgeting around on the monitor. A moment passed, then a file came over. I opened it and a download bar appeared at the bottom of my screen and started filling up quickly.

"Also, I need some way to keep my computer charged a little longer," I said.

"No problem. You get my car today. I'll leave it at Lake Center with a wire under the front seat. You can hook up to the lighter slot. Oh, and one other thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't let anyone find out you put this program in or they'll be able to trace it right to you. It's just like you're visiting a Web site. It's really easy for them to find your physical location. Seriously. If they have the right software, it'd take them about a second."

"Charlie," said Beth, "this sounds really dangerous. Please be careful."

"Beeee caaaaareful, Charrrlie," Josh sang in a falsetto voice, imitating Beth.

Another door-sound came over the computer. Then Rick was onscreen.

"What's going on?" he said.

"Josh is making fun of Beth because she cares what happens to me," I said.

"Nice, Josh," said Rick. "What are you, ten years old?"

There was another door sound. Miler. Now the screen was divided into four segments. All my friends were online.

"What's happening?" said Miler.

"Josh is ten," said Rick.

"Hey, Josh, happy birthday."

"Very funny."

"Will anyone see Mr. Sherman today?" I asked.

"I will," said Rick. "My stats class is in the room right next to his."

"What time?"

"Eleven a.m."

"Perfect. Do me a favor," I said. "Text me when you have him in sight."

"I will do it, mein kommandant."

The download bar was filled. "Program complete," the message said.

"All right, that's it," I said. "I gotta jump off to save my batteries."

"Beeeee caaaaareful, Chaaaarrrrliie," Josh sang falsetto again.

I moved the cursor and turned off his webcam. He winked out into nothingness-which actually improved his personality.

"Take it easy, guys," I said to Rick and Miler. Then I turned them off too.

Now it was just Beth again, like it was before.

"I really do have to save my battery," I said.

"Charlie," she said. "I don't care what Josh says. Really do be careful."

I smiled. "No one cares what Josh says. Anyway, it sounds a lot nicer when you say it."

She smiled too.

Then I shut down the computer and the darkness of the Ghost Mansion closed around me and I was alone again.