You got nowhere to go, West.
Blond Guy was right about that, wasn’t he? For so long, it seemed, one idea had inspired me and kept me from giving up hope.
You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.
Ever since that moment when I’d been arrested, when the police had been leading me to the patrol car to take me off to prison… ever since that moment when someone had somehow unlocked my cuffs and whispered those words in my ear, my one hope had been that I might find Waterman, that he might tell me the truth about what had happened to me.
Well, I’d found him, all right. And with the help of that drug the crow-faced woman had injected into my arm, I was beginning to remember the missing year of my life, beginning to get at that truth I’d wanted so badly. The reason I’d been convicted of Alex’s murder… the way I’d fallen in with the Homelanders… I hadn’t remembered all the details yet, but I could pretty well guess what they were. And Beth… my love for Beth… I knew it was there all along, but I’d forgotten it. How desperate I’d been to get that memory back again-and now I had.
But what good did any of it do me? Waterman was dead. All his compatriots had vanished. If there was anyone left who could prove I wasn’t really a killer, I didn’t know who it was or where he was. Detective Rose and the rest of the police were still trying to arrest me for murder. The Homelanders were hot on my trail, guns at the ready. I still couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to my parents without putting them in danger. I couldn’t go to see Beth. What good was the memory of loving her now?
I stared up into the mist, and I felt totally alone. I tried to pray. I did pray. At least I said the words, asking for guidance, asking for help. But my heart wasn’t in it. I could feel myself holding back somehow, keeping my distance from God.
Somewhere in the Bible-I couldn’t remember where just then-it says you’re supposed to be happy about the hard things that happen to you, you’re supposed to be grateful for the “trials” you go through because they test your faith and harden your endurance. Well, I definitely wasn’t happy-or grateful. The truth is: I was angry, ticked off to the maximum. I was sick of trials, sick of being tested. I was eighteen, for crying out loud. I was supposed to be getting ready for college. I was supposed to be with my girl. I was supposed to be preparing for life. It wasn’t fair that things should be so hard for me, so dangerous. It wasn’t fair that there was no one to help me, that God wouldn’t help me, that I was all alone. I wanted my life back, my ordinary life. I wanted to go home. It wasn’t fair.
What am I supposed to do now? I asked God bitterly, thinking about that horrible scene in the bunker lounge, Waterman lying there in a pool of blood, dead. No one left to help me. No one left who knew I was innocent.
What am I supposed to do now?
And the answer came back to me:
You got nowhere to go, West.
I let out a long, slow sigh. I rolled over and pushed up to my knees. I looked off into the woods and could just make out the four Homelander guards disappearing among the trees. The tendrils of mist curled around their vanishing figures. The sunlight fell in beams behind them, lighting patches of the forest floor.
Exhausted, heartsore, I moved to the edge of the rock and went down until it became too steep to keep walking. Then, I slipped over the side. Digging my fingers into the outcropping, I reached down with my feet until I found some purchase in the earth and stone. I began the climb back to the forest floor.
Well, I thought, at least I’m safe for now. I suppose that’s something. I suppose I ought to be grateful for that.
And just then-just as I thought that-I felt the pain flaring inside me again-that pain brought on by the drug Waterman had given me.
I had time to think, Oh, no! Not now!
And then the attack came full force, the writhing flame of agony twisting inside me.
Crying out, I lost my hold on the rock. Suddenly, I was falling, falling, falling into darkness and memory.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Choice It was different this time. I had nothing like that feeling I’d had before that I was leaving my body. I was just suddenly somewhere else. I wasn’t even aware that it was a memory. I was completely there-completely present in the past without any idea that I had fallen from the rock, that I was lying on the forest floor now, writhing in pain…
I was in school. I was sitting at my desk in English class. Mrs. Smith was in front of the room, sitting on the edge of her desk holding a book. Mrs. Smith was one of my favorite teachers. She was a young woman with a very happy, upbeat personality, always smiling and joking and laughing with the students. She was a little on the round side, but I thought she was pretty all the same, with long blond hair and sort of an open face that always looked pleasantly surprised.
She was reading from the book in her soft voice-a play by William Shakespeare: “‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream…’”
The kids in the class-including my friends Josh and Miler-sat around me at their desks, listening. Most of them-including Josh and Miler-looked pretty bored.
My desk was near the window. I turned away from Mrs. Smith and the others and looked out at the school grounds. There was a square of open grass surrounded by low buildings. It was lunch hour for the younger kids, and I could see some of them out on the kickball field and others studying at outdoor picnic tables and some just sitting together and talking, joking around. I watched them sadly.
Have you ever had to get through a day, smiling at people, talking, as if everything were normal and okay, while all the time you felt like you were carrying a leaden weight of unhappiness inside you? That’s what it was like for me. I had been at this school now for three years. Before that, I had been at middle school for two years with most of the same kids. And before that, most of us had been together at elementary school. I could stroll across this campus from one end to the other and never be out of sight of a familiar face.
This school, these people, this town-this was my life, my whole life. Sure, I always knew I’d leave it someday. I always figured there’d be college. I had a secret hope that maybe I could get into the Air Force, be a fighter pilot. I knew there’d come a time when life would take me other places.
But what was happening now, this was different. It was terrifying. And it was hugely sad.
I want you to understand completely what I’m asking of you. You’ll be taken away from your family, your school, your friends, your girlfriend. They’ll all believe you were convicted of murder. They’ll believe you’re a fugitive who’s escaped from prison. They may even come to learn you’ve become a member of a group of terrorists… If it all goes wrong, we’ll never admit we know you, we’ll never tell anyone the truth. Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.
That’s what Waterman had said to me that first night we’d driven around the hills in his limousine.
Since then, there had been other nights. Waterman and I had met by the reservoir again and again. He and his driver-the man I came to know as Dodger Jim-had driven me to what they called a safe house: a cabin hidden in the woods. Waterman had shown me videos there on a laptop, videos of the Homelanders. As I watched the vids, he explained who they were, what they’d done.
He’d shown me their leader, who called himself Prince. He was a Saudi Arabian terrorist who’d blown up buildings in Britain and Israel. In Tel Aviv, he’d planted a bomb in a school, killing twenty-seven little children. Now he was here, recruiting Americans to act as his proxies in his war against the West and against our liberty.