The last thing I remember

CHAPTER TWO

An Ordinary Day An ordinary day. That’s it. An ordinary September day. That’s all there was before the insanity began.

That night-that last night-I was in my room, working on my homework as usual. I had a history paper due. “What Is the Best Form of Government?” A classic Mr. Sherman assignment. Mr. Sherman liked to pretend he was some kind of radical. He wanted us to “question our assumptions” and “think outside the box.” It never seemed to occur to him that sometimes the simple, most obvious answer might be the right one. “What Is the Best Form of Government?” I wanted to title my paper, “Constitutional Democracy, You Doofus, What Do You Think?” But somehow I figured that might not be the best way to get a good grade.

So as ten o’clock rolled around, I was sitting at my computer, working on my arguments. About how people had the right to be free and choose their own leaders. About how leaders who thought they should be in charge no matter what, who thought they had all the answers or some super-duper system that was going to make things fair and perfect for everyone-people like kings and dictators and Communists-always wound up messing their countries up in the end, telling everyone what to say and do and murdering the people who didn’t fit in with the way they wanted to run things.

It was hard work-and it didn’t help that, at the same time I was polishing my deathless prose, I had Josh Lerner-GalaxyMaster, as he calls himself online-on the Instant Messenger. GalaxyMaster was watching an ancient episode of Star Trek on YouTube and sending me a message every time something cool or stupid happened. Which was, like, every two seconds. And which I could see for myself anyway because I had the same episode running on the upper right-hand corner of my computer, even though I’d turned the sound down low so I could listen to George Strait piping out of my iPod dock.

GalaxyMaster: look at that rock! sooooo papermachier!

BBelt1: i know josh. im watching it.

GalaxyMaster: Ooooo its so heavy. i cant lift it. roflmayo!

BBelt1: josh I can c it.

GalaxyMaster: that klingon mask is so fake!

GalaxyMaster could be kind of a dork sometimes. Plus he was making it tough for me to hold up my end of the conversation with Rick Donnelly, who was on my headset. I’d called him to tell him about the argument I’d had that evening with Alex Hauser, but then we’d gotten to talking about the history paper. Rick had Sherman for history too, and he was totally aware of Sherman’s high level of doofy-os-itude. But Rick was the kind of guy who was always trying to play the angles, always trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear. His paper made the argument that Communism was theoretically the best form of government, but it just hadn’t been done right yet.

“That’s nuts,” I told him. “They ought to have a sign outside those countries, like at McDonald’s or something: ‘Communism: Over 100 Million Murdered.’”

“Hey,” said Rick. “All I know is that with Sherman, radicalism is where the As are. Follow the grades, my son. Follow the grades.”

I laughed and shook my head and went on writing about the joys of liberty.

So that, basically, was me-just before ten on an ordinary Wednesday night in September. Writing my paper and IMing with Josh and talking with Rick and watching YouTube and listening to tunes on my iPod dock-and starting to fade out after a long, long day.

Then the clock in the living room downstairs chimed the hour. I could hear it through the floor. And about a nanosecond later, my mother-with a predictability that sometimes made me wonder if she were really some kind of automated device-called from the bottom of the stairs:

“Charlie. Ten o’clock. Time to get ready for bed.” I sighed. To my shame, I had the earliest school-night bedtime of any just-turned-seventeen-year-old I knew, and except in dire circumstances, it was nonnegotiable.

“Hey, I gotta shut down,” I said to Rick.

“You’re such a wuss.”

“You’re a Commie.”

“If it’ll get me into college.”

“See you in the a.m.” I clicked off and typed into my IM:

BBelt1: g2g.

GalaxyMaster: wuss.

BBelt1: nerd.

GalaxyMaster: cya.

BBelt1: bye!

Then I saved my paper into Sherman’s online homework file and shut down the computer.

Ten minutes later, I was lying in bed, paging through the latest issue of Black Belt magazine.

Five minutes after that, I laid the magazine on my bedside table. I reached up for the switch of the reading lamp set in the wall above me. My eyes went around the room one last time, from the computer to the tournament trophies on my shelves to the black-belt certificate framed on my wall to the movie poster of The Lord of the Rings. Finally, I looked at the back of my hand. There was a number written on it in black marker. That made me smile to myself.

Then I snapped the light off. I said a quick goodnight prayer.

In sixty seconds, I was sound asleep.