Then there was one of Prince’s top lieutenants. He called himself Waylon. He was an Iranian. He’d helped kill American and British soldiers in Iraq. When he was finished there, he’d gone after civilian targets, kidnapping and killing journalists and Western aid workers in Afghanistan. He liked to torture people and kill them slowly and then send the videos to their families. Waterman showed me some of those pictures too.
And he showed me other things. Snapshots of Waylon meeting with Mr. Sherman, my history teacher. Intercepted e-mails in which Sherman told Waylon about how he was recruiting my friend Alex to join their team…
These were the people who had come to America to fight against us. Every night we met he showed me more videos, gave me more of their literature to read, literature full of hatred-hatred of Americans, Britons, and Jews-hatred of liberty, which they called a tool of the devil-hatred of anyone who disagreed with or opposed them.
And every night we met, Waterman asked me again: Would I join with him in fighting them? Would I give up my home, my friends, my girl, my life to try to stop them?
Now here I was, back in school on what was supposed to be an ordinary day, trying to pretend that everything was normal, while those words of his weighed on me and turned everything into suspense and sadness:
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.
“‘The Genius and the mortal instruments / Are then in council,’ ” Mrs. Smith read on. “‘And the state of man, / Like to a little kingdom, suffers then / The nature of an insurrection.’”
Right, I thought. That was me: my mind and my heart fighting with each other. Or my “genius” and my “mortal instruments.” Or, like, whatever. The point is, I didn’t know what to do.
I looked at Mrs. Smith and I felt a lump in my throat as if any moment I might just break down crying. How could I say yes to Waterman and just let this life of mine disappear, break the hearts of the people who loved me, say good-bye, maybe forever, to my parents, my lifelong friends, the people I loved?
And Beth…
The bell rang.
Mrs. Smith snapped the book shut. “Read this scene again at home and we’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said.
I just sat there, not moving, staring at her, wondering if I’d even be here tomorrow, wondering if I’d ever be here-or see any of these people-again.
“Hey! Ho! I know it’s poetry, man-but wake up.” It was Josh, slapping at my shoulder. I looked up at him. Josh was kind of a geek-kind of the Ur-Geek, actually- the Geek on whom all other geeks were modeled: short, narrow with hunched-up shoulders. Short curly hair and thick glasses and a nervous smile. “It’s time for some of us to have lunch and others of us to gaze stupidly into our girlfriend’s eyes while little heart-shaped bubbles come blipping out of our ears and nostrils.”
“You make it sound so romantic,” said Miler Miles beside him. “Or maybe disgusting is the word I want.” Miler was a track star: small, lean, with short blond hair and green, go-get-’em CEO-of-the-future eyes.
I went on sitting there, just sort of gazing up at them stupidly. My buddies. They’d been snarking like this at each other for years now. Josh’s geekiness could push the needle on the annoying meter into the red sometimes, but he was really smart and we all liked him anyway. And Miler-he was just a regular guy now, but he practically had “I will be a gazillionaire businessman one day” flashing in big lights over his head.
What would it be like never to see them again? Not just because we’d gone off to college where we could communicate online and meet up on vacations and so on. But never to see your best friends again at all? Or talk to them at all? Or even be able to tell them the truth about yourself? To tell them you weren’t the bad guy you were supposed to be?
Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.
“Uh, hello? Earth to Starship Charlie,” Josh said.
I blinked. I realized I’d been sitting there staring at them. I tried to think of something funny to say-something that sounded normal. “Oh, sorry. What you were saying was so interesting I guess I dozed off.”
It was lame, but it was the best I could come up with. I gathered my books and shoved them into my backpack. Slung the backpack over my arm as I got up and joined Josh and Miler.
“It’s hard to communicate when you’re wrapped in a cloud of loooove,” said Josh, singing the last word as if it were opera.
“Or maybe it’s just hard to communicate with a member of a subhuman species who can’t get within ten feet of a girl without melting into a pile of quivering mucus,” Miler said.
“How can you tell when Josh melts into a pile of quivering mucus?” I asked. “I mean, what’s the difference?”
“Good question,” said Miler.
“Har har,” said Josh, but he smiled nervously because-well, because he always smiled nervously.
Miler and I bumped fists and laughed. My heart felt as if it were made of lead.
The three of us walked outside into the crisp, cool air. We strolled together across the grass toward the cafeteria, nodding or waving every three steps or so at someone we knew.
I heard Waterman speaking again: We want to rush the case to trial as quickly as we can and basically railroad you into prison for murder.
Prison, I thought. What would it be like to be in prison for murder? Would they be able to protect me from the real murderers all around me or would I be on my own? I could just imagine my mother coming to see me on visiting day…
“You all right?” said Miler.
I blinked at him, coming out of my thoughts. “What?”
“You just groaned. Are you sick or something?”
“Oh… no, I was just… I just remembered I forgot to study for my calculus quiz,” I lied.
“No big deal. You didn’t want to go to college anyway. You can always work at Burger Prince. Of course, if you want to move up to Burger King, you will need a BA.”
As we reached the door of the cafeteria, there was a burst of laughter and we nearly bumped into three people coming outside. It was two younger students-and Mr. Sherman. They’d obviously been joking about something together.
“Hey, guys, how’s it going?” said Mr. Sherman, slapping Miler on the shoulder.
Josh and Miler said it was going okay, but all I could do was stand there and stare. Mr. Sherman was a youthful-looking guy, trim and fit with a friendly smile. I’d had him for history two years in a row. Was it really possible he was the one who stabbed Alex Hauser in the chest? Was it possible he was a member of a group dedicated to terrorizing and killing Americans?
“What’s the matter, Charlie?” he said with a grin. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No… hey, Mr. Sherman…,” I answered quickly, but my voice trailed off. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Sherman gave me kind of a strange look-but then he was moving off across the quad, followed by his two students. I heard the sound of their laughter fading as they moved away.
I was still watching them go as Josh, Miler, and I stepped into the cafeteria.
I’d never really thought much about the cafeteria before. You don’t, you know. It’s just the cafeteria. You go there, you eat your lunch, so what? But now, it struck me- how familiar it was. How reliable the smells of it were. Hamburgers Monday, mac-’n’-cheese on Wednesday… The food was-well, it was no better than it is at anybody else’s school cafeteria and we were always making jokes about it-like,
How can you tell the difference between rubber and a Spring Hill High hamburger?
You can swallow rubber.
And the colored plastic chairs were uncomfortable and there were all kinds of annoying high school social rituals like this kid won’t sit with that kid, and the popular girls always sit over there and giggle about the popular guys, and the sad-sack guys always sit over there and make snarky jokes about the popular girls, and so on…
But it’s strange about this stuff. When you might be about to lose something forever, you begin to think about it in a different way. This cafeteria-with its so-so food and uncomfortable chairs and all the general social stupidity that could keep you awake nights if you thought about it too long-this cafeteria had been a huge part of my life. We’d had some big laughs in this place-me and Josh and Miler and Rick. Like the time Josh was telling some stupid story and gesturing wildly with his milk carton and the milk flew out and hit Mr. Cummings smack in the face. And we’d had some big drama here too, like the time I faced down Mike Hurtleman because he’d dumped Owen Parker in the garbage can headfirst. This is where I was sitting at lunch one day not too long ago when Beth first came up to me, when I first worked up the courage to ask her if I could call her and she wrote her phone number down on my arm…