The long way home

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nightfall I stood at the window of the Ghost Mansion parlor. I gazed out through the gap between the last shards of glass, down at the gravestones under the trees. A chill wind blew and the leaves tumbled past the headstones. The statue of the cowled, mourning woman sent its eerie stare out over the scene.

My friends' voices came from behind me. Josh was still reliving his adventure. "Did you see that?" he asked again and again. Beth, of course, was really nice about it. She kept telling Josh how wonderful he'd been and what a good fighter he was and how scared he must've been and how much courage it took to do what he did.

Rick and Miler took a slightly different approach.

"You are such an idiot," Rick explained to him. "If there was any justice in the world, you would be so incredibly dead by now."

"Plus, you scrim lak wooman," said Miler in his ridiculous Russian accent. " 'Eeeeee.' I speet on you. Ptui."

"You guys are so mean," said Beth.

I gazed out the window and watched as the light in the cemetery shifted, the sun angling overhead as afternoon came on.

Finally, I turned around and faced them. Rick was sitting on a sleeping bag, his back against the wall, one leg stretched out, the other bent so he could rest his arm across the knee. Miler lay on his back on Beth's blanket, his hands behind his head, as if he were outdoors at a picnic watching the clouds roll by above.

Josh sat Indian-style with his legs crossed, his hands moving as he described his harrowing escape.

Beth was kneeling on the blanket. She was loading what little was left of the lunch she'd brought me back into her carryall.

In a powerful burst of feeling, it came to me again how glad I was to have them here, how glad I was to see them after being on the run for so long, after being alone for so long. I'd never realized before how much my friends meant to me. I never knew how wonderful my life was until I lost it.

"Listen," I said. The word came out hoarsely. I could feel the old loneliness and sadness coming over me again, like clouds gathering.

Josh was still gabbing away. "I mean, you should've seen the look on their faces. This one guy? He looked like…"

"Hey, guys," I said, forcing myself to raise my voice. "Listen."

Josh's words trailed off. He and the others looked up at me.

I licked my dry lips. "You've got to go now," I told them. "You've got to. You can't stay here anymore."

For a long second, no one answered. They just sat there, staring at me, as if they hadn't heard.

"You mean, like, take off for a while, let you get some sleep?" Miler said then.

"No. I mean, like, go. Like get out of here. Leave me alone and let me do what I came here to do."

Another silence. It was as if they were a long way off and it was taking awhile for my words to reach them.

"But… that's all we want," said Rick. "That's why we came here-to help you do that."

"I know," I said. "But you can't. It's too dangerous. You saw what just happened."

"But…"

"No, listen to me, Rick. Either you go or I have to. I can't do this while I'm worrying about one of you guys getting hurt."

"Hey, that's stupid-," Rick began.

But Beth said, "No. Charlie's right." We all turned to listen to her. Beth was like that. Whenever she talked, everyone always stopped to listen. "Josh got away today, but it could've been worse. It could've been a lot worse. He might've gotten hurt. Or he might've alerted the police to Charlie. The police could be following any one of us. They know who Charlie's friends are. The bad guys probably know too. We could lead them right to him. I know we're trying to help, but we're really just making things more dangerous."

I nodded. That was exactly what I was thinking-and now that Beth said it, I knew it was right. My heart felt like it weighed a ton.

"So what are you saying?" said Rick. I think he already understood; he just didn't want to face it any more than I did. "You saying we gotta just… go? Just, like… leave you alone here? Just say good-bye and not see you anymore and just hope you don't get arrested or killed?"

"Pretty much," I told him. "That's pretty much what I'm saying. Yeah."

"Well, I won't," said Rick. "I'm not doing that. It's crazy." No one said anything. "It's crazy," Rick repeated, looking around at the others for support.

Miler took one of his hands out from behind his head. He reached over with it and patted Rick's ankle.

"It's not crazy, Rick-O," he said. "It's true. I guess we all know it."

"No," said Rick. "No, man. We can't just leave him alone here."

"We won't just leave him," said Beth. "We'll bring him supplies. Food and some money and some new clothes and shoes."

"Beth," I said, "I can't take those things."

"Yes, you can," said Beth. "In fact, you have to. You have to let us help you, Charlie. We need to."

"That's true too," said Miler.

Rick nodded heavily. His big round face looked so sad it almost seemed angry. "See, that's the thing, Charlie. That's the thing you don't get about all this. You being out there-alone-with everyone after you-that's just like- it's just like a piece of us is out there."

"That's right," said Josh.

"That's right," said Miler.

"Every time we see on television that you got chased or attacked or accused of doing something we know you didn't do, that's just like it was happening to us too."

"Even when we don't see it," said Beth. "Even when we don't know it's happening, it's like it's happening to us."

The guys nodded.

"You gotta let us help you," said Rick. "Then it's like we're not all so far away from each other."

"Right," said Josh. "I mean, if we can at least give you some stuff to take with you, then it's like you can look at it and know we're there and we'll know you're doing that and we'll know you're there. It'll be like… I don't know…" He couldn't find the words.

"Like the old days," said Miler. "At lunch and stuff."

Rick smiled at the memory. "Yeah, like when we'd be all laughing and everything."

They were quiet a second.

Then Rick added, "Man, I miss that."

Then we were all quiet. I felt the cool autumn air from the window on my neck, and a thought flashed through my mind that it wasn't the chill air at all but the chill finger of that cowled woman in the graveyard as she reached out her hand trying to stop the things she loved from dying.

"Hey, I have an idea," said Josh, making his voice bright.

"Uh-oh," said Rick. "We're in trouble now."

"No, really. I could set up webcams for all of us. You know, Charlie, so maybe sometimes you could stop in at one of those cybercafes or something and get a computer and we could see each other."

"Hey," said Rick, surprised. "That's actually a good idea. That's actually not stupid."

"And anyway," said Beth, her voice brighter too, "it's not like it's going to be forever or anything. Charlie's going to find out who killed Alex, and then the police will understand they have the wrong person and they'll help him find…" Suddenly her face kind of crumpled up. She put her head down in one hand and sobbed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Rick and Miler and Josh looked away, looked at the floor, looked anywhere. I went to Beth and tried to put my arms around her, but she waved me off, saying, "I'm okay. I'm sorry, I just… I'm okay now."

And she was. I moved away from her.

"Okay," said Josh. He clapped his hands together. "Let's make a plan."

We did. It was a good plan too. First they were going to bring me some stuff I could use: money, food, a backpack, warm clothes, new sneakers. Whatever else they could think of: a good flashlight and one of those sleeping bags that can be crushed down almost to nothing and other stuff like that. Plus, they were going to bring me duplicate car keys and text me to tell me where they'd parked their cars during the day so I could go and get a car if I needed one while I was here. Plus Josh was going to hook them all up with webcams and fix me up with some Internet connections in their names so we could link up with one another sometimes and I could tell them if I needed something, or we could just see one another and talk and they could pass messages on to my parents too. For now, they'd leave me with the laptop so we could still communicate. Later, when I'd left town, I'd be able to get in touch through other computers. If we didn't talk too long or anything, we might do it without being noticed and traced.

"It'll be like you have-what do they call that?" said Rick. "Oh yeah: a support network."

Everyone in the parlor seemed to like that. We all repeated it several times. "A support network, yeah."

Miler said, "It'll be like: The terrorists have guns and bombs and knives and stuff. And the police have cars and sirens and computers and nationwide communication. And you have us."

I tried to laugh. "Sounds like a fair fight to me."

For the rest of the day, Beth and the guys came and went, each of them bringing things they either had at home or had gone out and bought at the store. Josh set up the webcams on each person's computer and we tested them on the laptop. They brought me duplicates of their car keys. They pooled some money for me, and Beth even thought to buy me a wallet to hold it in. Rick brought me an excellent Swiss Army knife with about a dozen tools in it. I promised to leave all the stuff I didn't need in the house when I left so they could come and pick it up.

By the time they were finished with everything, it was almost evening. The sun had fallen low and spread a sort of peaceful, golden light on the stark branches of the trees around the cemetery. I was wearing my fleece, plus a thick windbreaker Beth had lifted from a box her mother had been going to send to the Goodwill. Even so, the air coming in through the broken window had the first touch of night in it and I could feel the cold.

I looked around the room. I had plenty of food to eat now-packaged meat and bread and apples and cheese- a feast practically-all put into lots of plastic containers to keep the mice out. I had cash if I needed to buy anything. I had water and sleeping bags and the computer.

"Place is like the Batcave now," said Rick. "Like the Fortress of Solitude. Charlie Headquarters."

We were all standing around the room, our hands in our pockets, our shoulders hunched against the cold. Our talk had become halting and awkward. We knew it was getting to be time to say good-bye.

Finally, our voices trailed off to nothing.

"Well…" said Rick.

"Yeah," said Miler. "Well…"

I could feel the sadness settling over us. I imagined it dropping down from the ceiling like a heavy velvet shroud.

"Hey," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Stay on the Web. I'm gonna turn up on your computer more often than a second-rate starlet."

"Yeah," said Rick. "Only keep your underwear on, all right? I have a weak stomach."

I stepped up to him. We gripped hands, slapped each other's shoulders. I did the same with Miler. The same with Josh.

"You did great today," I told Josh. "You were monster."

"Yeah," he said. "I was monster. Thank you, Charlie."

I watched them file out of the room. I heard their footsteps on the stairs. I heard the front door opening and closing. I knew what they meant about a piece of them being out on the road with me, because I felt like pieces of myself were leaving with them.

Then the house was quiet, and I was there alone in the parlor with Beth.

We talked for a while. We talked about how we would see each other on Josh's webcams. We talked about how Beth would tell me the rest of our story. We talked about how I'd eventually remember everything and how we would get back together and everything would be all right. It was all kind of awkward, though. Kind of halting and strange. I knew we had been in love with each other and I could feel that love coming back to me. But I couldn't remember and she could. She was still further down that road than I was. She had to go slow so that I could catch up.

"I guess in a way I'm lucky," I told her. "I get to fall in love with you twice."

"Charlie…" she said, her voice breaking.

"Don't," I said. "Don't, Beth. God has a plan to bring us back together. I'm sure of it."

"I'm sure too. I just hope it's one of his really short-term plans…"

Finally, she had to leave.

I stood at the top of the stairs as she walked down them. She was just a shadowy figure in the deeper shadows of the house. Then, when she opened the front door, the golden light of the dying afternoon poured in over her. She paused there and looked back over her shoulder, lifting her face to me where I stood on the landing above her. The gold light glistened on her cheeks where the tears were. My heart ached and I knew even then that she would be part of me forever.

Then the door shut with a thump and she was gone.

I walked back into the empty parlor. I returned to the window. I looked down at the graveyard below. For one more moment, the sunlight held that tinge of gold, making even the cemetery kind of beautiful in some strange, sad way. Then the gold leaked out of the light. The scene became dull and somber. An aura of blue crept into it- the first hint of evening.

I stood there a long time, waiting for night to fall. Waiting until I could go out into the darkness and begin searching for some answers.