"Only next time, you oughta break the cinder block with your forehead," said Rick. Rick had a big cheerful face, dark brown, the color of chocolate. He was one of the tallest guys at school. Tall and so thin, he looked like a big wind would bend him double. But he was actually strong and quick and was one of the best players on the school"s basketball team, the Dragons.
"Oh, that would be so cool," said Miler. He drove his head down toward his macaroni tray and made a crashing noise. Miler was a small guy, lean and compact, with short blond hair and a kind of long face with sharp green eyes. I always thought Miler ought to have a little sign on his forehead that said, "I am going to be a corporate lawyer one day and make a gazillion dollars." It was one of those things you could tell just by looking at him.
"Or wouldn"t it be cool if, like, you drove your head into a cinder block and it didn"t work?" said Josh.
"Hey, thanks a lot," I said.
But Rick laughed. "Yeah. What if you just, like, drove your head into the block and it went, like, splosh, you know, and there"d be, like, brains and blood everywhere."
"Yeah!" said Miler, laughing. "And Mr. Woodman would say, *Hmm, well, Harley-Charlie, I guess you"ll have to practice that move a little more.""
"Harley-Charlie," said Josh with his trademark snicker. "I loved that. That killed me. What do you say from now on we just call you Harley-Charlie all the time?"
"Hey, Josh," I said. "You remember what happened to that cinder block when I punched it?"
"Yeah."
"Well, what do you say, from now on, you don"t call me Harley-Charlie at all?"
"Whoa!" said Rick, and he gave me a high five.
Josh snickered into his ham-and-cheese sandwich.
"You know what else would be cool?" said Miler Miles. We all turned to him to find out. But we never did. Because he didn"t say anything else. He just sat there, kind of staring into s.p.a.ce.
"Well?" said Josh. He snickered some more. "He"s, like, you know what would be cool, and we"re, like, what, and he"s, like, just sitting there . . ."
Somewhere during Josh"s vivid recap of events, it occurred to me that Miler wasn"t just staring into s.p.a.ce. He was actually staring at something. Or someone. So I turned around to see what it was.
What it was was Beth Summers.
She had come up right behind me. She was just standing therea"I guess she was waiting for a chance to get my attention. She had her purse over one shoulder and her books in her other hand as if she was on her way somewhere else. Which made sense, because she didn"t usually have lunch the same period as me.
"Beth!" I blurted out, surprised. I stood up. I"m not sure why I stood upa"I just did. I stood up and twisted around out of my chair and faced her.
The guysa"Josh and Rick and Milera"all sort of sat there staring up at the two of us, Josh with the words dying on his lips, Rick and Miler with their lips sort of parted. They looked about as stunned as the people in New York City when they looked up and saw King Kong for the first time. It wasn"t that Beth was too good or too stuck-up to talk to me or anything. She wasn"t like that, not at all. And it wasn"t that I was the least popular guy in school either. That would officially be Al Dokler. It was just that she was Beth and I was me, and if I"d told one of these guys she was going to come over to my lunch table to talk to me, he would"ve said, "Yeah, only in your dreams," and I would"ve thought, Yeaha"he"s right. Only in my dreams.
But here she was. And there was no point just standing there, staring at her like an idiot. So instead I stood there and stared at her like an idiot and said, "Hi, Beth. What"s going on?"
"I just wanted to tell you how cool your thing in a.s.sembly was today," she said. And there was that whole nice, warm business I was talking about. The way she said it, as if no one"s thing in a.s.sembly had ever been cool before.
"Thanks," I said.
"When you came down on that block? When I saw what you were going to do, I was, like, oh my goodness, he"s gonna kill himself, like, break his hand into a hundred pieces. Then, when you actually broke through the block like that, I was, like, so, so relieved." She really sounded like she was so, so relieved too. So, so worried about me, and so, so relieved. It was nice.
"Thanks," I said again. I was really pushing the conversational envelope here.
"Anyway, it was cool. It was really cool," she said.
And guess what I said? "Thanks."
Then she stood there for another second, as if there was something else I was supposed to say. I felt like there was something else I was supposed to say, but for the life of me, I couldn"t think of what it might be. I didn"t want to say thanks again, and I couldn"t figure out anything else, so I just did the whole stand-and-stare-like-an-idiot routine again.
Finally Beth raised her free hand and gave that little metronome wave girls givea"ticktock, ticktocka"and said, "Well . . . I just wanted to tell you that. I"ll see you around, okay?"
"Okay," I said. At least it wasn"t "Thanks." Then I did some more idiotic standing and staring.
With a smile that registered approximately a 9.5 on the Sweetness Scale, Beth turned and started walking away from me, walking toward the cafeteria door.
"Hey, Beth?" I said. I didn"t mean to say it. I didn"t even know I was going to say it until I heard the words coming out of my mouth. But somehow I couldn"t just let her walk away like that.
Beth stopped at the door. She turned back to me, waiting expectantly. She"d moved far enough away so that I had to take a few steps after her to catch up. That was good with me. It got me away from my table, from the staring eyes and flummoxed expressions of Josh and Miler and Rick.
I came up to stand in front of Beth again. I had that feeling again that there was something I was supposed to say, something she was waiting for. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I just stood there with my mouth open for what seemed like about half an hour.
Finally, Beth laugheda"not in a mean way, just in a kind of what"s-going-on way. "You forget what you wanted to say?" she asked me.
"No. No, I didn"t forget," I said. "I just . . . I wanted to say . . . It"s just . . . it"s just I really like you, Beth."
I couldn"t believe I said that. I just blurted it right out. I felt like such an incredible idiot.
But Beth didn"t laugh at me or anything. She just kind of opened her eyes wider and looked really surprised. "Oh," she said. "Well, thank you . . ."
I stumbled on quickly, without thinking, because I didn"t want there to be any more stupid silences. "The thing is: it makes me really nervous when I talk to you."
She looked even more surprised. "It does?"
"Yeah!" I said. I laughed. It was actually kind of a relief to just say it out loud like that. It was a relief not to try to hide it or to pretend to be cool with her. "I get, like, really nervous. I feel like my tongue is superglued to the top of my mouth."
"Agh, I hate when that happens."
"No kidding. I really gotta stop messing with that stuff."
She laughed. She had a nice laugh. "Well, I"m glad you like me anyway," she said. "I like you too." She actually said that. I swear I"m not making this up.
"Really?" I said. "Cool. So you want to, like, go see a movie together or something?"
It was that easy in the end. Suddenly I"d just said it. Suddenly it was just out there.
And just as suddenly, Beth said, "Sure, that"d be fun. Only nothing scary. I hate scary movies."
"Me too," I said. I don"t know why I said that. I love scary movies. It just came out because I guess I wanted to make sure she went on liking me.
"My mom doesn"t let me go to them anyway," said Beth. "She says they"re disgusting."
"Right, no scary movies. We don"t even have to go to a movie at all. We could just get a pizza or something."
"Oh, I love pizza."
"But no scary pizza."
She laughed. "Right. Or we could go see the Dragons play. Anyway, why don"t you just call me and we"ll figure something out? Here."
She handed her books to me and I held them while she fished a marker out of her purse. Then she took my free hand in one of hers. She wrote her phone number on the back of my hand with her marker.
"That tickles," I said.
"It"s a very funny number," she said.
I laughed. While she finished writing, I took the opportunity to study the way her hair fell forward across her face. It was a nice way. Definitely nice.
"There," she said. She gave me my hand back. I gave her back her books. "Your tongue still superglued?" she asked me.
I moved my tongue around in my mouth to check. "What do you know?" I said. "Stuff"s not as strong as they say."
"There"s no truth in advertising." She shifted her books back under her arm. "Well, I"m really glad I stopped by."
"Me too."
"So I"ll see you, right?"
"Right. Definitely. You"ll definitely see me."
That"s what I thought as I stood there watching her walk away. That I"d see hera"definitely. I glanced down at the number written in marker on the back of my hand and I thought: I"ll call her and I"ll see her. Just like that. The way it felt . . . it almost didn"t seem real to me. It seemed like something I would daydream. It was something I would daydreama"that I had daydreameda"only I wasn"t daydreaming now. It was all real.
Then she went out the door, out of the cafeteria, and she was gone and I never saw her againa"never again that I remember, anyway.
Because when I woke up the next day, the daydream was over and I was right in the middle of my worst nightmare.
CHAPTER TEN.
Leave Me Alone, Winston Churchill
I lay dazed in the cab of the upside-down pickup truck. I was in the middle of the field, about two-thirds of the distance from the compound to the forest trailhead. The guards with their Kalashnikovs were running across the field toward me.
But I wasn"t thinking about them. I was thinking about Beth. Her smile flashed through my mind again, that 9.5-on-the-Sweetness-Scale smile. I saw her as clearly as if she were right there in front of me. I saw her turn her eyes to me. And she spoke! Only it was the weirdest thing. I could see her face, I could see her lips moving. But the voice that came out was not her voice. It was a deep voicea"a man"s voicea"and it had a British accent.
It said: Never give in.
I groaned. I shook my head slowly back and forth: no, no, no. I thought: Leave me alone, Winston Churchill. I"m tired now. I can"t do anything more. Leave me alone. Let me talk to Beth.
I tried to make him go away. I tried just to concentrate on Beth, just to see her there and hear her voice instead of his. But the harder I squinted, trying to hold on to the sight of her face, the more she seemed to fizzle and fade like the TV picture at my house when a strong wind blows tree branches in front of the satellite dish. The image of her became choppy and transparent, and I could look right through her and dimly make out the window of the overturned truck and the upside-down world beyond it and the upside-down meadow out there with its green gra.s.s and its white wildflowersa"and the upside-down guards with their upside-down guns, running as fast as they could right toward me.
Coming to get me. To drag me back to the compound. To kill me.
Never give in.
There he was again. Whispering insistently in my ear. Bugging me.
Leave me alone, I told him again. I"m tired. The battle is over. I lost.
Never, never, never, he answered.
Was this guy the biggest pain in the neck ever or what? Always saying the same thing over and over and over like a broken record. I couldn"t imagine how he ever got elected prime minister of Great Britain. He didn"t understand. He didn"t grasp the complexities of the situation. He didn"t knowa"he couldn"t knowa"how much every bone in my body ached, how every muscle screamed with pain. He couldn"t know how tired I wasa" more tired than I"d ever been in my lifea"and how dazed and frightened I was after being tortured and shot at and banged around inside this stupid truck. All I wanted was to slip away inside myself and be with Beth again and see her smile and hear her voice.
I tried to explain it to him. There"s nothing else I can do, Winston Churchill, I said. This is just the way it is now, okay? Sure, it"s kind of sad, them coming to kill me and me being only seventeen and everything. And I wish it weren"t happening. I really do. But I mean, it"s not my fault! I don"t even know how I got here. I don"t even know what"s going on. I tried my best to get away just like you told me, and I failed. That"s all. It didn"t work, okay?
Never give in, said Winston Churchill in my ear. Never, never, never, never.
I sighed wearily. All right, I thought. I"ll try. It"s not going to help, but I"ll try.
Using all my strength, I forced my eyes open wide.
Everything came clear in front of me. I could see that only a second had pa.s.sed since the truck had rolled over. My memory of Betha"my conversation with Winston Churchilla"all this had flashed by in only a moment. The guards were still just coming through the gate of the compound, just beginning to cross the meadow toward me. If I could get myself movinga"if I could get myself out of this trucka"there might be timea"there might just be time for me to make a run for it into the forest and find a hiding place among the trees.
That thoughta"that hopea"sent new strength and energy coursing through me. It gave me strength. I started moving.
The first thing I had to do was twist my body around so I could get out through the window. It wasn"t easy. As soon as I started to move, a shock wave of pain radiated through me. Every sinew in my body seemed to have been scorched raw. There seemed no place left inside that wasn"t in agony.
Never . . . Winston Churchill started to say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! I said back to him. I"m moving, I"m moving.
And I did move, a ragged cry squeezing out between my gritted teeth as the pain surged through me again.
I twisted around in the upside-down cab and started squirming my way out the open window. I felt as if my muscles were on fire, but even though it made me cry out again, I kept going. I got my hand through the windowa" got it out onto the earth outside. I dug my fingers into the dirt and pulled myself farther.
Grunting and coughing, I crawled halfway out of the truck. I turned onto my back. Drew up my legs. The rest of me came clear and I rolled over, tumbling away onto my face. As I did that, something fell off me. I heard it land with a soft thud on the gra.s.s and looked for it. It was the guna"the pistol the driver had tried to pull on me. I grabbed it. Quickly shoved it into my waistband. Then I was working my way off the ground, up onto my knees.
I looked over the meadow toward the onrushing guards. They were still far away, still too far to get a good shot at me. All I had to do was stand. All I had to do was run. With a little luck, I might just make it into the darkness and protection of the forest.
I was about to give it a try when an idea came to me. I paused, reached back into the truck. I grabbed the keys dangling from the ignition. This was the only vehicle I"d seen in the compound. If they couldn"t drive it, they would have to chase me on foot. I"d have a better chance.
I pulled the keys out. I noticed the keychain was one of those black plastic things with the push-b.u.t.ton flashlight in it. That might come in handy too. I shoved it into my pocket.
Now it was time. I gritted my teeth again. I had grabbed hold of the side of the truck. I used it to pull myself to my feet, almost sobbing now from the pain. I glanced back at the guards. They had slowed down for a second. I think they were startled to see me moving. They actually stared at me and pointed.