The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan Page B

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.