The last thing I remember

CHAPTER FOUR

The Word of the Day I’ve heard that when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes in an instant. That’s not what happened to me. I was too wild with panic, too crazy with confusion to remember my whole life. Instead, my brain was desperately trying to grab hold of something- of anything-anything that made some kind of sense, that offered some kind of explanation for this sudden madness, this pain and terror. But there was nothing, nothing that explained it, nothing I could hold on to. I felt as if I were slipping down a sheer wall of ice, slipping down and down and down into emptiness, my fingers scrabbling for even the smallest handhold in the smooth, unbroken surface.

Eyes wide, body pulling wildly and uselessly against the straps, my mind raced back over that last day, the last day I remembered, hours flashing through my brain in a single second as I went back to before I had gone to bed that night, before I had finished writing my history paper, before the argument with Alex, back and back to the beginning of the morning… The alarm clock had gone off at 7:00 a.m., a pounding bass and a wild guitar blasting out of the iPod dock. I reached out sleepily and felt for the off switch. Hit it and sank back into a half doze. Then, exactly ten minutes later by the digital numbers on the clock, my mother’s voice reached me from the bottom of the stairs.

“Charlie! It’s seven o’clock! Time to get ready for school!”

I groaned and rolled over, swinging my feet to the floor, sitting up on the edge of the mattress before I’d even opened my eyes. When I could, I stood up. I staggered out of my room and directly into the bathroom next door.

I assembled myself. Showered the bod. Brushed the teeth. Shaved the beard, which still sprouted only in patches on my cheeks, chin, and neck. Viewed the finished product in the mirror. Not bad. Tall enough-edging up toward six feet. Slim but with good shoulders, and a lot of muscle def from all my workouts. The face? I don’t know. Presentable, I guess. Lean, serious, with a mop of brown hair spilling into it. Brown eyes. I’m good with the eyes. I try to keep them honest, you know. I try to make it so they’re not afraid to look straight at anyone.

I went back to my room to get dressed. But before I started, I tore off the page of my desk calendar. It was a Word of the Day calendar, and I liked to read the new word and memorize it while I put my clothes on.

Today’s word: timorous. “Timid, fearful, prone to be apprehensive.”

Timorous. That was a good one. It was the perfect word to describe my mother.

Now don’t get me wrong. Mom was a pretty good mom, all in all. There were a couple of times in my life when she even approached Mom Greatness. She was just… timorous. Timid, fearful. Prone to be apprehensive. As in frightened out of her wits about every little thing. Are you feeling all right? You don’t look good. Do you have a fever? Wash your hands after you touch that or you’ll get sick. Don’t walk on the road after six, the cars can’t see you. Don’t go into that section of town. Put on your jacket, you’ll catch cold. On and on and on. When I rode my bike, she was afraid a car would hit me. When I drove the car, she was afraid I’d hit another car. Oh, and my karate- she hated that. If she’d had her way, I would have had to wear a full set of metal armor before going to practice. In fact, if she really had her way, I would’ve worn a full set of metal armor and then stayed home.

When I came down to breakfast that morning, she was turning a couple of fried eggs in a pan. As I walked to the kitchen table, passing about two full feet behind her, she said, “Careful, it’s hot.”

Dad was at the table already, reading the paper. The Word of the Day for Dad would have to be: oblivious, meaning “unmindful, unconscious, unaware.” He wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he could be pretty cool, pretty smart about things. But he was an engineer for a corporation that manufactured a lot of the secondary systems that go into airplanes-guidance and communication systems and things like that. And sometimes-times like now-when he was involved in some important project, his mind got occupied and it took a lot to get his attention. You basically had to win first prize at a karate tournament or get the Best Grade Point Average of the Year award or wreck the car or set the house on fire before he even realized you were there. Otherwise: oblivious. Unmindful, unconscious, unaware.

And finally: overwrought would have to be the Word of the Day for Amy, my older sister by one year. Overwrought-“extremely or excessively excited or agitated.” Emo to the extremo, in other words. In fact, as I poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down next to my dad, I could already hear her shouting from the door of her room down the hall: “Mo-om! I just don’t have any others!” Whatever that meant. Something about clothes, probably. Whatever: the Amy crisis of the day. Overwrought.

“Ah, the cry of the wild older sister in her natural habitat,” I muttered, rooting through the newspaper for the sports page.

“Hush,” Mom said-but she laughed a little as she said it. She put a plate of eggs and toast in front of me and hurried off to deal with Amy before the poor child got so full of girlish anxiety that she exploded in a cloud of pink dust.

“So,” murmured my dad’s voice from somewhere behind his newspaper. “What’ve you got going on today?”

Even when he was in one of his oblivious phases, Dad seemed to feel it was his dadlike duty to ask me questions about my life from time to time. I’m not sure it was part of his duty to actually listen to the answers. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure he was actually behind the newspaper at all. I sometimes thought I could’ve ripped it away suddenly and found a mannequin sitting there with an MP3 player periodically spouting questions like “So-how’s your schoolwork going?” and “So-how’s the high school social scene shaping up?” The real Dad would have already been at his office.

Anyway, this time it was “So-what’ve you got going on today?” And I’m pretty sure I could’ve answered, “Today I unleash the first devastating attack in my long-planned war for world domination,” and not gotten more than a “Hmm-that sounds interesting” from behind the paper.

I was about to try it when my jaw dropped open and my eyes went wide. I suddenly remembered something. I’d been so busy checking out my Word of the Day that I hadn’t actually looked to see what day it was.

“Oh no,” I said. “Is this Wednesday?”

“Hmm-that sounds interesting,” said the Dad mannequin behind the paper.

I looked at the top of the newspaper. Yep, it was Wednesday, all right. Wednesday, September 15.

“Today’s the day I give my karate demonstration!” I said. I had completely forgotten about it. The trouble was, I’d agreed to give the demonstration last June before school let out for the summer. The principal, Mr. Woodman, had asked if I’d do it, and I said sure, and he said save the date and I said okay-but I never wrote it down. I remembered it sometimes, and sometimes I forgot. Lately, I’d forgotten. I hadn’t even been practicing for it.

I felt the first breath of airy nervousness in my chest, and my little heart went pitty-pat. It wasn’t that I was unprepared. I practiced karate almost every day, and I was always ready to strut my stuff. And I knew I had a freshly washed gi and all the other materials I needed in my closet upstairs.

No, what made me nervous was that the demonstration was going to be given in first assembly. The entire eleventh grade would be watching. And the class officers- president, vice president, and treasurer-would be sitting, as always, in their official seats in the front row.

And the class vice president was Beth Summers. Who was so beautiful and so nice I can’t even talk about it.