The truth of the matter

PART II
CHAPTER SIX

Agony and Remembrance The pain hit me instantly. It spread through my veins like acid and then filled my body like a raging flame. I tried to hold back my screams, but it was impossible. There was nothing left of me but the fire of pain and my body was pulled tight against the handcuffs and the screams came out of me against my will, wrenched from my chest by the agony.

And then… then… Well, what happened then was about as weird an experience as I’d ever had-and I have had some weird ones for certain.

Just as I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, just as it seemed I was going to die from the pain alone… just then… it seemed I sort of separated myself from my body. I don’t know how else to describe it. My body was there-hurled backward in the chair, all my muscles straining, my mouth open, the screams pouring out of me-but I couldn’t feel it anymore. I-the mind I, the soul I-was drifting away from that tormented figure. What was happening to it there in the chair began to seem distant, meaningless. The real me was slipping off into darkness… then deeper into darkness… leaving behind the pain-racked Charlie in the chair… leaving him further and further behind while the blackness engulfed me… Finally, the body-Charlie was gone… there was only me, this other me, in the darkness and then, up ahead of me in the distance… a circle of light…

The circle grew bigger… bigger… It was coming toward me… and now…

I stepped through it…

At first, I only heard voices:

“So you did see Alex last night?”

“Yes. Like I said.”

“And you argued with him?”

“Yeah. I guess you could call it that. He argued with me anyway.”

Then I saw. I was standing at the edge of a small room with dingy white soundproofing on the walls. There was a video camera hanging in one corner. It stared down at three people sitting at a small table and…

Weirder and weirder and weirder. Weird to the point of super-weirdness. Because now, to my amazement, I saw that one of those people sitting at the table was me. Right: I was standing at the edge of the room watching- and what I was watching was myself sitting at the small table. And if that sounds bizarre, believe me, it was.

The person sitting next to me at the table was my dad. Sitting across from us was none other than Detective Rose.

So now I knew where I was-where and when. This was the interrogation room of the police station in my hometown of Spring Hill. It was the day after Alex’s murder, the first day I couldn’t remember. Only I was remembering it. Or at least I was seeing it-seeing it happen right there in front of me.

As soon as I’d heard about Alex’s murder, I had told my dad about how I’d seen him the night before and how we’d gone for a drive together. Alex had been angry because he’d heard I was getting friendly with Beth and he and Beth had had sort of a thing for a while. He was angry about that and about a lot of other things too.

Anyway, my dad had taken me to the police station to see Detective Rose, who was investigating the murder.

All this was stuff Beth had told me. But now I was remembering for myself. Not just remembering, but actually seeing what happened right in front of my eyes.

“What did you argue about?” Rose said, talking to the me who was at the table. His voice wasn’t friendly or unfriendly. The flat features of his face weren’t mean or nice. His eyes were watchful, that’s all. He seemed to be studying my face as I answered him, searching it for any signs that would reveal whether I was lying or telling the truth.

I watched me too. It was strange to see myself from a distance like that-to see myself as I was a year ago. I was about six feet tall, thin but with broad shoulders and a lot of muscle def from all the karate and workouts I did. My face was lean and serious with moppy brown hair falling over the forehead. My eyes looked innocent, open, honest, direct, and unafraid. I wondered if they looked the same today.

I-the me in the past-shrugged at Rose’s question. “We argued about… stuff, you know. Alex was feeling bad about his folks getting divorced. He and his mom were having money problems and things. He was having all kinds of doubts about… you know, life, his faith, the things he believed in. He said he had some new friends who were telling him that everything he’d learned in the past was all untrue. I guess we argued about that too.”

“He said he had new friends?” said Rose. “Did he tell you who these new friends were?”

I shook my head. Back then, I had no idea what Alex was talking about. Now I knew that one of his “friends” was Mr. Sherman, the history teacher. I knew that Sherman had taken advantage of Alex’s unhappiness and uncertainty and used them to recruit him into the Home-landers. But our conversation that night had convinced Alex that he’d been making a mistake. He tried to pull out of the Homelanders-and Sherman stabbed him to death so he couldn’t reveal the organization’s existence.

As I say, I knew all that now, but the scene I was watching took place a year ago, and the Charlie I was watching had no clue what was going on.

“All right, so you argued,” Rose said to him-said to me, I mean, “and then Alex ran into the park.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I tried to stop him…”

“But you didn’t follow him?”

“No. I knew he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I just went home.”

“So you’re telling me you weren’t even aware he was murdered in the park just a few minutes after he walked away from you?”

“Of course I wasn’t aware of it. I didn’t hear about it until this morning. Believe me, if I was aware of it, I wouldn’t have kept it secret.”

“And you don’t know why he was whispering your name when he died?”

“No. No. I wish I did.”

Well, just in case things weren’t weird enough-what with me watching from the sidelines and the younger me sitting at the table-things now got even weirder. Because now, while I was still in two places at once, suddenly, I could actually feel what the younger me was feeling, experience what he was experiencing. I felt his sorrow-my sorrow-at Alex’s death. I felt his guilt-my guilt-about fighting with Alex the last time we’d been together. I felt confusion about what had happened afterward. Now it was as if I was watching the scene and living it at the same time.

I saw my younger self turn to my father. I saw my father give me a small smile, a small wink. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about anything. Just tell the truth and you’ll be fine.”

Again, it was as if I was living through two experiences at once. I felt my younger self reassured by my dad’s presence. I knew my dad would protect me, that he’d make sure the police didn’t make any mistakes. And at the same time, I wished I could reach out from where I was and touch his shoulder, get him to turn to me, get him to see that I was still there, still alive. I missed him. I missed my mom too. I wanted to tell them that, tell them that I missed my life so much and was trying so hard to find my way back to them.

“Would you be willing to give us a DNA sample…?” Detective Rose was saying at the table.

But as he spoke, I felt myself being pulled away from him, pulled back into the darkness beyond the edge of the scene, back and back…

Then, suddenly, horribly, there was nothing but pain again, nothing but the coiling, fiery snake of pain lashing and thrashing and biting inside me. For a single, agonized instant, I was in the chair again in the Panic Room…

And then, again, I-the soul I-was drifting free…

I was standing on a sidewalk, outside a movie theater. It was nighttime. The show must’ve just been over. People were coming out the doors, back into the street. I could hear the murmur of their voices as they talked about the show.

I looked around me. I knew this place. It was a dingy old theater out near the airport. They played older films here, films that had left the first-run theaters closer to the center of town. Kids only came to this theater when they wanted to get away from the usual crowd, like when they wanted to go on a date and not run into any of their friends.

I watched the people coming out of the movie. I knew what I was going to see a second before I saw it-I knew who I was going to see too: me. Me and Beth-we were about to come out onto the sidewalk together.

We had been seeing each other for a while now, meeting out by the river to walk together and talk. Because of Alex’s murder, it somehow didn’t feel right for us to go out on an ordinary date. But finally we had. We had come here. We had come to see the movie-or at least to be alone together in the dark theater.

And now I saw us, trailing out behind the rest of the people.

Beth had told me about this too. But she hadn’t told me about how nervous I was. She couldn’t have because she hadn’t known. But just like in the interrogation room, I could feel the scene inside me even as I witnessed it outside me. And the nervousness was huge. Unbelievable. I was practically terrified about what I was going to say.

As I stood there watching, the younger me slipped his hand into Beth’s hand. Amazingly, even as I watched from the edge of the scene, I felt the warmth of her palm against mine, the grip of her fingers. And suddenly… suddenly, I felt more than that. Suddenly, I felt the love for her flooding into my heart. I was remembering. Finally, finally. I was remembering how much I loved her. It overrode the nervousness I felt. It overrode everything. It welled up in me like a rising tide and all I wanted to do was tell her about it.

Beth and I walked together along the sidewalk, through shadows and pools of light thrown down by the street-lamps. I stood and watched from the sidelines, feeling her hand in mine, feeling the incredible nervousness and fear of telling her what I was about to tell her. Would I be able to find the right words? How would she respond? I knew she was too kind to laugh at me or say anything cruel. But would she shake her head? Would she turn away?

We reached her car. She stood with her back to it, facing me. I looked down at her. We were in deep shadow, but I was close enough to see her eyes. Her blue eyes. Her gentle eyes.

“What were you going to say?” I heard her ask me- and as I stood on the edge of the scene watching, I felt the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she spoke-it was like I was in two places at the same time, inside the scene and observing it from the outside. “Before the movie started,” Beth went on, “I said it felt a little wrong for us to be there and you said, ‘I feel…,’ and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say? Do you remember?”

I could feel my past self working up his courage, trying to keep his voice steady so he didn’t sound squeaky like some dumb little kid. It felt like the scariest moment of my life up to that time.

“Yeah, I remember,” I told Beth. “I was going to say: I feel like nothing about you and me being together is wrong. I feel like when we’re together, it’s just right, like it’s supposed to happen. It’s weird too because it’s not like in the movies with music playing or fireworks or-or anything that I expected. It’s just like… I don’t know, like a little click, like-You ever do jigsaw puzzles? And you find the right piece and it clicks in? It feels like that.”

Beth said, “It feels like that to me too.”

Then I kissed her. I felt her lips against my lips, the softness of her as I put my arms around her and pulled her to me.

Standing on the edge of the scene, I closed my eyes and it felt as if I and my past self were melding into one, that I was there again, with Beth in my arms again. It felt so good to remember, finally to remember the sweet ache of loving her…

Then I opened my eyes and…

Beth was gone. The street was gone. For a moment, I felt heartbroken, missing the touch of her lips on mine. But then I saw…

I was at home. In my room. My old room! I couldn’t believe it. I was so glad to see it, so glad to be back. There were my karate trophies on the shelf! My Lord of the Rings poster on the wall! My bed, my desk…

And me! Sitting there, at my desk. Doing my calculus homework, poking numbers into the calculator set beside the computer keyboard, working out a differential equation. Or trying to. Because I couldn’t. I couldn’t concentrate on the equation at all. All I could think about was Beth.

I had Schoolyard up on my computer screen. It was a program my high school had that let students IM and e-mail and update one another and hand in homework and get teachers’ comments and stuff like that. Normally I didn’t go on it much. Everyone could see you were there and IM you and it was pretty distracting, so I stayed off so only my close friends could IM me, which was distracting enough. But Beth liked to go on and talk to her friends, so I went on to talk to her.

That was pretty much all I wanted to do now. Talk to her. I mean, I knew I needed to get that calc homework in by tomorrow, but… it was such a good, giddy, happy feeling to be trading messages with her. Even standing there on the outside of the scene, watching the younger me at my desk, I could feel that happiness inside me. I could feel how in love with her I was and how good it felt to know that she was in love with me. And I was so glad that I could finally remember, that it was all coming back, all of it.

I remembered how everything-even Alex’s murder- faded into the background of our lives as Beth and I discovered the depths of our feelings for one another. We were together every moment we could find, walking, talking, laughing, feeling like we had stumbled on the whole point of our lives and that that point was for the two of us to be together, to find each other, like two halves of a single person that were created to snap into place.

As I stood there, watching my younger self-wishing I could be back in his body, in his world, in that past, happy life-I looked over his shoulder and saw a new message appear on the monitor. Beth: i don’t think it’s fair, that’s all. My younger self tapped back at the keyboard: y not talk to her? Beth: and say what? “Hey, I’m a much better writer than that grade you gave me?” I tapped back: sure, y not? you want me to? Beth: no!!!!!! And me: why so many!!!? Beth: cuz I no what yer like, CW. no karate chopping my eng teacher!

My younger self and I both laughed.

Then my younger self and I both stopped laughing. Just as we were about to tap an answer to Beth into the keyboard, the monitor went completely black.

My younger self blinked, startled. “Oh, no,” he said aloud. He slapped the side of the monitor. “Come on!”

He-I-was beginning to jiggle the On/Off switch at the base of the monitor when the screen crackled in a strange way and a message rolled across the bottom of it. The message was in white letters on the dark background.

It said: Open your cell phone, Charlie.

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. Then 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.”