The truth of the matter

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Rude Awakening Okay, I’ll do it.

For a long second after I spoke those words, I didn’t know where I was. The limousine, the street, the dojo, the high school-they had all seemed so real that my mind couldn’t take in the fact that they had vanished like a dream. But they had. They were suddenly gone completely.

My sense of my own presence seeped into my consciousness slowly. It was not a good feeling. My head was throbbing. My stomach was turning. My body was bruised and aching from its fall off the rock to the forest floor. Leaves and sticks and pebbles were pressing painfully into the side of my face.

With a sense of growing misery, I began to remember where I was. My home was gone. My family was gone. My life-Beth-everything… I was here, in the forest, alone. Armed guards were searching for me everywhere. And all because I had told Waterman: Okay.

I couldn’t open my eyes-not right away. Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe I wanted to pretend for another moment that I was still back in Spring Hill. But strangely, as the reality of the situation forced itself into my mind, I realized that things were different now than they were before I lost consciousness. I mean, I guess things were the same-the situation was the same-but I was different- my feelings about the situation had changed-and somehow that changed everything else.

Before this last memory attack, I had been pretty much on the brink of despair. I’d felt sorry for myself. I’d been angry-angry at God, even-so angry I could hardly even pray except to call up to heaven bitterly: What do I do now?

But remembering that day-that awful day of decision before I’d made my choice, before I’d told Waterman okay-made me feel different.

Because now I knew: I had chosen to do this thing. I had chosen the path that had led me here and I had chosen it, knowing that it might lead here. I had loved Beth and I had left her behind. I’d loved my parents and I’d left them behind. I’d loved my friends and my home and my life, even though I hadn’t really realized how much I loved them-and I’d left them all behind.

And here was the thing, the weirdest thing: I’d left them behind because I loved them. Beth and my parents and my friends and my life-my free, American life. I loved them, and if I had a chance to protect them from the people who wanted to destroy them, then I had to take that chance even if it meant I would never see them again. I hadn’t asked for that chance. It wasn’t fair that it had fallen to me. It wasn’t fair that it had all gone wrong and left me in this place, in this hardship and danger. It wasn’t even fair that these people-the Homelanders- had organized to attack us, to hurt us, to kill us…

But life doesn’t do fair. I don’t know why it’s that way, but it sure is. I mean, it wasn’t fair that I got to grow up in a nice, safe community, while some other kid in some other place was maybe getting shot at or couldn’t get enough to eat. It wasn’t fair that I had a happy home with parents who loved each other while Alex’s mom and dad couldn’t stay together. A lot of things aren’t fair and I don’t think they ever will be, not in this life, I mean.

I understood all that when I got in the limousine with Waterman. I made my choice because I understood it. I knew it wasn’t about things being fair. It wasn’t about them being easy or safe. It was about who I was, who I wanted to be, what I wanted my life to be about, what I wanted to stand for, live for, even die for if I had to. It was about what I wanted to make out of this soul God gave me.

So I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t bitter anymore. I wasn’t in despair. What am I supposed to do now? wasn’t much of a prayer, I guess. But God had answered it anyway, because that’s what he’s like. I knew now what I was supposed to do. I knew exactly.

I was supposed to keep fighting. I was supposed to keep going, as long as I could, as far as I could. I was supposed to refuse to give in. I didn’t know if I was going to win in the end. I didn’t even know if I was going to survive. But I knew that I was supposed to look at this situation I was in right now-look at this trap that seemed to have no way of escape-and I was supposed to find a way-or die trying-for the sake of the people I loved.

With a new determination in me, I opened my eyes.

The Homelander guards-five of them-were standing in a circle around me where I lay on the forest floor. They had their machine guns trained on me. They had their fingers on the triggers.

I stirred slowly. I became aware of footsteps crunching through the nearby brush. The next moment, as I started to sit up, the sixth Homelander, Waylon, came storming out of the forest to join the others.

He walked straight past the guards without stopping. He stood over me as I struggled to rise.

He smiled. Then he let out a single curse and kicked me in the face, sending me spiraling back into unconsciousness.