The Long Way Home (7 page)
I also remember what happened the night Alex was murdered. I was in the mall parking lot outside my karate studio after a lesson. I was just tossing my bag into the back of my car—my mom’s car, really, but I was driving it. Alex and a couple of his not-so-nice friends came up to me. I guess Alex had heard about me asking Beth out. Even though he wasn’t seeing Beth anymore, he was pretty angry. At first, it almost looked like he and his pals were going to start a fight with me. But Alex had second thoughts and he kept things cool.
Instead, he got into the car with me. We took a drive together. It was the first time we’d talked in a long while. Alex was about as upset as I’d ever seen him. He told me how it was at his house since his father left and about his mother crying and all that other stuff.
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, my family had its problems like everybody, but this sounded really tough, tougher than anything I’d been through. I just tried to listen to him and be encouraging. I tried to get him to keep strong and not give up on things.
I had a card I used to carry with me in my wallet. An index card Sensei Mike had given to me. He’d written something on it, something a former prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, had said when his country was in danger during World War II:
“Never give in; never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty; never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force: never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
I tried to get that idea across to Alex. It was easy for me to say, I know, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. You have to keep going. I’ve learned that for a fact now. No matter how bad it gets, you have to keep looking for a way through.
But Alex didn’t want to hear that. As hard as I tried to be helpful, our conversation turned into an argument, a big one. I’d stopped the car near the Oak Street park at that point. We were still sitting inside, still talking, and the conversation was getting very intense. Alex started saying all this stuff about how everything people told you was a lie and how you couldn’t believe in anything and everything had to be torn down and started again. It was crazy stuff as far as I could see, but he said he had all these new friends who agreed with him and he trusted them.
Finally, he got really angry. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about or what he was going through. He got out of the car and I got out after him. He was really yelling at me—so loudly that a woman who was passing by walking her dogs stopped to look at us.
Then Alex ran away. I tried to stop him, but he ran off into the park. That was it. That was all that happened that I saw.
But there was more in this newspaper—this newspaper story I was holding up in the church moonlight. I had to strain to make out the words, but I could read it. According to this, Alex never made it out of the park alive.
There were a couple of kids in the park—that’s what the paper said. Their names were Bobby Hernandez and Steve Hassel. They were just a couple of middle-school kids who had gone into the park to smoke and drink beer where no one could see them. They told the newspaper that they heard Alex and me arguing with each other on the street. A few seconds later, they said, they saw Alex come running into the park. He paused under one of the park streetlamps. That’s when they saw his face—that’s how they could identify him later. After that, they said, he walked off into the shadows. They could still make out the shape of him, though. He seemed just to be standing there, thinking about something.
According to these kids, Bobby and Steve, another guy came up to Alex after a while. This other guy was in the shadows, too, so they never did see his face, but they could see that he and Alex stood talking together as if they knew each other. After a while, these kids said, Alex and this other guy started arguing. The kids couldn’t hear what they were saying because they kept their voices low, but they could make out the tense, angry sound of their words.
Finally, said Bobby and Steve, this guy who was talking to Alex stepped in really close to him. He took hold of Alex’s shoulder with one hand and his other hand went to Alex’s chest. The next thing the kids knew, Alex had dropped to his knees and the other guy was running away, disappearing into the darkness of the park. Then, as the kids watched, Alex pitched over and fell to the ground.
“At first, we didn’t know what was going on,” Bobby Hernandez told the newspaper.
“We were, like, scared, man,” said Steve. “ ’Cause we didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing in the park.”
“But the dude just kept lying there and he didn’t move,” added Bobby, “so finally we had to go over and see what was wrong.”
What was wrong was that Alex had been stabbed in the chest.
“It was intense,” said Bobby. “There was blood all bubbling out of him, and his shirt was, like, soaked with blood, all red and everything.”
“He couldn’t move no more, but he was still breathing,” said Steve. “His eyes were all, like, open. And he just kept saying this name over and over again. He just kept saying, ‘Charlie, Charlie . . .’ ”
The kids called 911 on one of their cell phones, but Alex was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.
I lowered the page and let it rest on my chest. There was a lot in the newspaper story I hadn’t known before. The day after Alex died—that was the day my life disappeared. The next morning—what I thought was the next morning but was really a year later—I woke up captured by the Homelanders. All my memories of that missing year were gone.
How do you know if you’re the good guy or the bad guy?
I lay there on the pew. I stared up at the window, up at the half-moon in the sky with the clouds blowing by beneath it. I thought about Alex, about him lying on the ground with the blood coming out of his chest. I thought about him whispering my name with his last breaths. I remembered how we had been kids together and played ball in the streets and played video games and went to the movies. It hurt to think of him, lying there like that, gasping my name out to strangers as he died.
I remembered what I did the rest of that day. At least I thought I did. I remembered how I went home and did my homework and IM’d with Josh and talked to Rick on the phone. I even remembered going to bed. Wouldn’t I have remembered if I’d done anything to hurt Alex?
I mean, wouldn’t I?
I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe I didn’t remember. Maybe something snapped inside me and it was such a shock that I forgot it all. The police said I killed him. The jury said so after listening to all the evidence. Maybe I was a murderer. Maybe I belonged in prison, the way everyone said I did. Maybe when the cops tried to capture me next time, I shouldn’t run away at all but just give myself up.
But down deep in my heart, down deep in every part of me, I just couldn’t believe it. I knew I was not that guy. No matter how angry I got at Alex, I wouldn’t stab him, kill him. That was crazy. I wouldn’t kill anyone. I wouldn’t hurt anyone, not unless I absolutely had to. That was something I learned in church all the time, something I learned in karate class all the time, something Sensei Mike drilled into my head. Blessed are the peacemakers. Even if someone slaps you, turn the other cheek. Do everything you can to avoid a fight—everything—walk away if you have to, even if people call you a coward, even if you
feel
like a coward. The only time you fight is if there’s no other choice. If you have to defend yourself or someone else or if you have to defend something even more important than yourself, like your freedom or someone else’s freedom. I believed that was right. I believed it a hundred percent. I couldn’t remember the entire year after my argument with Alex, and because I couldn’t remember and because the police were after me and the court had found me guilty, I was afraid; I suspected the worst of myself. But whenever I looked into my own heart, I knew I hadn’t killed him.
At least, I thought I knew it.
About a month before this, the police had caught me and arrested me. They were about to put me in a car to take me back to prison. But just before I got in, someone— I don’t know who—someone in the crowd around me—loosed my handcuffs so I could escape. At the same time, he whispered something in my ear.
He whispered, “You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.”
You’re a better man than you know.
I had to believe that. I had to believe I wasn’t a killer. I had to believe I could find this Waterman and clear my name. It was all I had to hang on to.
I lay there staring up at the moon. I didn’t know where to begin looking for this Waterman. I didn’t even know who he was. But I knew where to begin looking for proof of my innocence.
I had to go back—back to Spring Hill. I had to find out what really happened to Alex. I knew the police would be waiting for me there. I knew they would be looking for me. I would have to keep low, keep away from them. And I would have to keep away from my friends too. The last thing I wanted was to get them involved in this, get them into any danger or trouble.
But if there was proof that I wasn’t a murderer, that’s where it would be: Spring Hill. If there was proof that I was a murderer . . . well, it would be there too. Either way, whatever the truth was, I had to find it.
I closed my eyes. I started to say a prayer. I started to ask God to help me figure out what to do next.
Before I could finish, I was asleep.
I woke up in the dark. After weeks on the run, I’d taught myself to do that. When you’re a fugitive, you can’t waste the dark. It’s precious. In the dark, you can travel. You can go from place to place unseen. If the sun catches you sleeping, you can be discovered. Once the sun rises, you’re exposed, you’re a target. You have to take advantage of the dark.
I was shivering with cold as I stumbled back to the bathroom. I washed up as best I could and got ready to go. As I stepped out of the church into the chilly darkness, I realized that I knew exactly where I was headed. An idea had come to me while I slept. I guess that was the answer to my prayer.
I knew now where I could go, where I could hide out in Spring Hill from both the police and my friends.
I traveled quickly, skirting the woods, crossing the fields. As I got closer to town, the buildings grew closer together. I passed a small airport, then a school, then a housing development with plenty of empty lots full of overgrown grass. I was still staying off the roads, but I couldn’t get very far from them anymore. They were always visible, the headlights rushing by in the dark. The whisper of moving traffic reached me everywhere.
I’d drunk my fill of water in the church bathroom before I left, but the hunger came back to me now and it came back full force. I had to find something to eat in a big hurry or I wasn’t going to be able to go on much longer.
I had money—the two hundred dollars I’d taken off the knife-man in the library. But spending it wasn’t going to be easy. My run-in with the police in Whitney would’ve been on the TV news and in the morning papers. There’d be pictures of me all over town. It was too risky for me to try to go into a store. The chances I’d be recognized were just too great.
So I looked for a vending machine. I remembered there were some outside a bowling alley I’d been to a few times. Sure enough, they were still there. I stocked up on peanut-butter crackers and chips and chocolate bars. Not exactly health food, but it was all they had and I was starving. When I thought I had enough, I took it all out into the darkest part of the parking lot and sat cross-legged on the pavement and stuffed as much of it into my face as I could. What was left—not much, a chocolate bar or two—I saved in the pockets of my fleece for later.
I traveled on. As I got closer to the edge of town, everything began to be more familiar. I saw a mall I used to hang out in sometimes. I saw a movie theater I used to go to. There was a gas station I sometimes used.
It was a weird feeling to see these things and remember. I felt as if I were my own ghost haunting the places I used to live. It made me ache inside. When I had lived here, when I’d had my ordinary life, believe me, I didn’t wake up every morning and shout hooray or anything like that. I didn’t thank heaven every day for how lucky I was. I would’ve felt like an idiot doing stuff like that. It was just home to me. It was just life. It was just ordinary.
But now, shivering out here in the dark, with the whole world my enemy—now every memory had a sort of golden light around it. I felt as if every minute I’d lived here had been beautiful and blessed. There was so much I couldn’t remember—a whole year gone. But there was so much else, so many other years, and they all came flooding back to me.
I passed streets where I used to ride my bike when I was twelve years old. I passed a ball field where I used to watch Alex play Little League so we could grab an ice cream after the game. I saw my elementary school, a long, low gray building that hadn’t changed in all the years I’d lived here. I saw a pizza place where Josh and Rick and Miler and I used to meet to plan our strategy for mock trial class.
