Only slowly did the rest of the world make its way back into my consciousness. By then, I was already drawing myself up, drawing myself out of that last punch and into the movements of my final salutation. I gathered myself again into the front position, my feet together, my arms up in front of me, my right fist covered by my left hand just beneath my chin. Power through self-discipline. I was done.

That was when I heard them, saw them: the students and teachers in the auditorium. They were on their feet, all of them. They were clapping as hard as they could. Some of the guys were hammering the air with their fists. Some of the girls had covered their mouths with their hands. And then all of them were clapping and screaming and cheering as I stood in front of them, bringing my breath under control.

I let my eyes shift to the right, just a little, just enough to get a glimpse of her. Beth had covered her open mouth with both hands. For another second or two, her eyes remained wide with fear and horror, as if she were still waiting to see what would happen when I struck the block. But now she let the hands fall. She took a deep breath of relief. She laughed. The fear and horror went out of her eyes and something else came into them, something I can't describe but could feel flowing through me like a warm river.

Then Beth was applauding too, shaking her head with amazement and laughing and applauding, taking her eyes from me to look at Marissa and Tracy and shaking her head at them in amazement just as they were shaking their heads at her right back.

Slowly, I let my hands drop from front position to hang at my sides. I nodded my head sheepishly to acknowledge the cheers.

Nice going, Harley-Charlie, I thought to myself.

The audience went on clapping and cheering, and Beth went on clapping and cheering for a good long time, it seemed like.

It was just a day, you know. Just another ordinary September day. But I remembered nowa"it flashed through my mind: that momenta"that moment standing on the stage while Beth and everybody clapped and cheereda"which was, I have to admit, one of the coolest moments of my life so far.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Black Square

Now that moment seemed a lifetime agoa"an impossible lifetime that had somehow vanished into nothingnessa" there in a flash and just as suddenly gone. Beth was gone and my friends and my school and Princ.i.p.al Woodman and my moment of glorya"all of it, the whole world I knew, the only world I knew, was gone, and the only cinder blocks around were in the walls of this prison hallway. There was nothing elsea"nothing I could make sense ofa" except the pain racking my body and the stampede of footsteps as the guards closed in on mea"and that black square, that one black square of hope, coming closer up ahead.

I ran for the black square. I told myself again it was a window that had been painted over. It had to be a window. What else could it be?

It didn't matter. I had to believe there was a way out. I had no other choice. The footsteps behind me were getting louder and louder, closer and closer, and I could hear shouts and curses now and a deep growl of a voice giving the order to "Go, go, go, get him, go, go, go!"

I ran as hard as I could, drove toward the black square, stretching my legs, pumping my arms, putting aside the pain that burned like fire in every part of my body. That black square: It was just like the cinder block at school, I told myself. It was no different from the cinder block. I just had to drive my mind through it, drive my mind straight through to the other side of it. Then my body would follow. At least I hoped it would.

The square kept looming larger as I kept getting closer, but stilla"stilla"I couldn't seea"couldn't be surea" if it was a window or just some black paint slopped onto the surface of the concrete.

I was almost there, just a few strides away. I glanced back over my shoulder. For another half second the hall was emptya"empty except for the big lump of chunky thug still lying unconscious on the floor where I had dropped him.

Then the guards came careering around the corner. I caught a glimpse of the first twoa"two mena"dark, Middle Eastern-lookinga"both dressed the same, dressed the same as I was in black pants and a white shirt. They were carrying those machine guns, those automatic rifles you see on TV all the time: Kalashnikovs, they're calleda"AK-47s. They were carrying them in their hands with the straps around their shoulders. As they spotted me, those first two guards dropped to their knees. They brought the rifles to bear. Two more men had already come around the corner behind them. They leveled their rifles also, pointing them at me above the heads of the first two. Four guns were trained on my back.

There was no more time to watch. I faced forward. The black square was now only a half step away. I threw myself at it headlong, full force.

The guards opened fire. Terror flashed through me. The stuttering coughs of the AKs seemed to drown out everything, every hope of survival, every thought of anything but death. Chips of concrete flew everywhere. My heart seized up at the stinging whine of ricochets. And then part of the black square shattereda"a gla.s.s pane: it was a window after all!

The very next instant my body hit it. My arms were crossed over my face, my head was turned away. I hit the black square with my shoulder, struck the window's sash with jarring violence. The sash snapped and gave way.

There was a long, tumbling moment of fear and singing bullets and the coughing Kalashnikovs and the breaking wood and gla.s.s.

Then I hit the grounda"hard. The impact made my bones ache. Gla.s.s and wood rained down on top of me. Bullets whispered by overhead.

After the dark hall, the sunlight was blinding. The air was cool and fresh and filled my gasping lungs. I felt an unreasoning surge of hope and crazy joy. I was outa"out of the prisona"out in the open air!

But there was no time to think about that. Already I was rolling away from the window, fighting to lift myself to one knee. Already I heard more of those thunderous footsteps inside the building behind me, the prison I'd just broken out of. I heard more shouts: "Don't let him get away! Let's goa"go!"

Dazed and stupid with panic, I knelt on the hard earth and looked around. I was in a broad compound of some sort. I saw gray barrack-style buildings. A fence with barbed wire on top. Guard towers rising against the forest behind them. Inside the towers: men with guns.

Somewhere, an alarm bell started ringing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw red lights begin to whirl and flash. I heard those guards shouting: "Get him!" Those thundering footsteps. The roar of an engine . . .

An engine. Where? My eyes wide with fear, I turned toward that roar. I saw a big old pickup truck bouncing over the rough ground near me. I caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel. He seemed oblivious to the emergency unfolding around him. The alarm and shouts and whirling lights hadn't reached him yet, hadn't registered on his brain. He was still relaxed, steering the truck with one hand, leaning the other arm on the frame of the open window. The truck was heading toward a gate in the fence, the exit of the compound. The guards there were swinging the gate open to let him out. They were just now pausing, just now trying to figure out what all the noise and fuss were about.

All this I took in in a single second. In the next second, I had to acta"had to act without even thinking.

I ran at the truck. Just as it pa.s.sed me, I leapt at the window.

I caught hold of the window frame. The drivera"a square-jawed white guy in his forties, maybea"turned to me in stunned surprise, his jaw dropping, his mouth a wide O.

There was no running board, nothing to rest my feet on. There was nothing I could do now but grip the frame of the open window and try to pull myself inside. With all the wild force of my terror, I yanked myself halfway through the window. I heard the driver curse. He swung the wheel. I felt the truck swerve hard, lifting up on one side. I clawed my way over him, into the cab.

The truck swerved again. The driver cursed again as I tumbled in on him. He tried to punch at me, but I was right on top of him. We were too bunched up together for him to get any force into the blow. His fist beat weakly at my shoulder. I wouldn't have felt it at all except for the fact that I was already bruised and burned and beaten, already in so much pain.

But that didn't stop me. I was in the truck now, sliding over the driver, falling into the pa.s.senger seat.

I caught a quick glimpse of the scene racing by outside the window. I saw the guards with their Kalashnikovs come storming out of the prison barracks in which I'd been held. They were all shouting at one another. One of them was pointing here and there, giving orders to take up positions. Another one was lifting his rifle, training it on the truck. But he couldn't get a shot at me, not without killing the driver.

But the driver . . . he had a gun of his own. It was a sidearm, a pistol, in a holster on his belt. He was driving with his left hand now, reaching for the gun with his right, unsnapping the flap of the holster to get at it.

He hadn't taken his foot off the gas. He kept the truck going full speed. He wrenched the wheel, trying to keep me off balance while he drew the gun.

It worked. Balled up on the seat next to him, I was thrown hard against the dashboard, then thrown back against the seat. I reached out my hand to brace myself against the dash, to steady myself. The driver had his holster open now. His hand closed around the handle of his gun. He started to draw it out.

I pulled my knees tight into my chest, then shot both legs out in front of me. I landed a powerful double kick to the side of the driver's head.

I heard him grunt above the engine's roar as the double blow struck him. The truck swerved again, lifting up so high on one side this time that I thought for sure it would turn over. The driver's gun hand flew up in the air.

The pistol flew out of his grip, bouncing off the back of the cab, sailing back past me to drop onto the cab floor.

Quickly, I squirmed my body around, going after the gun. I reached down. I felt it. I grabbed it.

I was thrown against the dashboard again as the truck lurched suddenly to a stop. I struggled to sit up while the driver sat still behind the wheel, shaking his head, dazed.

I grabbed his shirt collar. I put the gun against his temple.

"Get out!" I shouted.

The truck had now pulled up next to one of the barracks at the far edge of the compounda"far, I mean, from the prison barracks where I'd started out. Out the window, I could see the armed guards rushing across the compound toward us. The driver looked at me sideways, angry, confused.

"Get out now!" I shouted, pushing the gun up hard against his head.

That reached him. Frightened, he fumbled for the handle of the door. The guards outside saw the door opening and pulled up short. They lifted their AKs.

As soon as the door cracked open, I gave the driver a hard shove. He was big, but he was still dazed from the kick to the head. He went tumbling out the door like a side of beef and dropped hard onto the ground. Even as he was falling, I was sliding into his place behind the wheel.

With the driver out of the way, the guards outside had a clear shot at me. I saw them lifting their rifles again, pointing them at the open door of the truck.

But now I had the steering wheel in my hands. I had the gas pedal under my foot. There was no time to close the door. I just hit the gas.

The truck jolted forward. The door swung wide, hit its limit, and bounced back, slamming shut. At the same moment, the guards outside opened fire. I heard the deadly sputter of their guns above the engine's roar. I heard the bullets ripping into the steel of the truck. I couldn't see where they hit. I didn't plan to wait around and find out.

I floored the pedal. I wrenched the wheel. The scenery outsidea"the fence, the towers, the barracks, the guardsa"it all went into a swirling blur as the truck turned and turned. I caught sight of the compound gates, the guards standing beside them. I pulled the wheel back over. Dust flew up on every side of me as the truck righted itself and shot forward.

A cloud of dust rolled up over the windshield. I peered through it desperately, trying to see the way. Dimly, the world outside took shape again. There were the gates, there were the gate guards. Only seconds had pa.s.sed since I'd broken out of the barracks. The two guards had been swinging the gates open to let the truck out. The gates were still opena"or half-open, anyway. As I drove the truck toward them, I saw the two guards frantically trying to push them shut again.

The engine roared and I roared, my eyes peering through the dust, pinned to the closing gates. As the truck sped toward him, one of the guards let his gate go. He left it half-open and turned to level his machine gun at me.

The next moment, a jagged bullet hole appeared in the windshield, a spiderweb network of cracks instantly stretching out on every side of it. I heard the bullet sing past my ear. I heard it rip into the back of the cab just behind my head.

Panicked, I wrenched the wheel again, but before the truck could get out of the line of fire, I guess another bullet must've struck because now the windshield shattered completely.

The truck was turning as it hit the gates. It hit off center, but that seemed to help somehow: the hood shoved the half-open gate open wide. I stomped on the gas again. The truck let out another throaty roar and fired forward through the gates and out of the compound.

This is what I saw in that next insane, panicked, terrified second. I saw a dirt road leading through a small field of gra.s.s and wildflowers. I saw the field end in foresta"what looked like deep forest that went on a long, long way. I saw the dirt road become a dirt trail that vanished among the trees. I saw the blue sky and big, lofty clouds blowing by over the treetops.

I wrenched the wheel one more time, straightening the truck on the dirt road. I sped toward the trailhead, toward the protection of the forest.

I never made it.

The road was rough. There were deep holes in the dirt. Big rocks strewn about everywhere. It wasn't a road made for fast travel. And I was traveling fasta"very fasta"as fast as that truck could go. The pedal was hard against the floor. My speed was increasing with every second. The cool air was streaming in on me through the broken windshield, and so was the blinding dust. Gra.s.s and white wildflowers, meadow and woods and sky were rushing by the windows on either side. The truck was bouncing crazily, lifting up high on every rock, dropping down hard, diving and jolting with a sickening crunch into each new hole.

I didn't care. I paid no attention. I never touched the brakes. I never let up on the gas. I could still hear the rattling coughs of those machine guns behind mea"at least I thought I coulda"that sound was stuck in my imagination now. I could hear it in my mind, anyway, and I could practically feel the bullets flying after me, searching out my flesh, trying to tear into me, to tear me apart. All I wanted was to get to those trees. That's all I cared about. To get into the darkness of the woods before the guards and their guns caught up with me.

But it was no good. It was too fasta"too fast for that road, those rocks, those holes. I was too wild with panic, too desperate and afraid to keep control of that speeding truck for long.

It was a rock that did it in the end. A great, flat gray rock hidden in the rough dirt road until the last minute. I saw it only a split second before my left front tire hit it with full force. At that speed, that was all it took. The pickup lifted into the air. The steering wheel became useless in my hands. I wrenched it to the side, tried to land the truck again, but it made no difference. I had no control. The truck went over. It hit the ground with a force that made my eyes rattle. The next thing I knew, it was turning over and over, hurling me this way and that inside the cab.

Instinctively, I let go of the wheel. I threw my arms up to protect my head. There was nothing now but nauseating chaos. I caught glimpses of the trees turning sideways through the jagged frame of the broken windshield. I saw the sky turning and the clouds turning and everything rolling over and over. My body was smashed against the ceiling, then against the door, and then thrown sideways across the pa.s.senger seat.

Then it was finished. The truck lay still. There was silencea"only it wasn't really silencea"it was just my own muddied consciousness, too shocked and battered to take in anything going on outside. I don't know how long I was like that. Not long, I guess. It was probably just a few seconds before my mind began to clear, before the sounds of the world started to come back to me. They were the same sounds as before, the same sounds that seemed to have been surrounding me for hours now, maybe forever. The sound of the chattering rifles, the sound of shoutinga""Get him! Go!"a"the sound of running footsteps, m.u.f.fled now as my pursuers left the compound and came toward me across the meadow.

I lay in the cab of the truck, dazed. I lay there and listened to the sounds. The sounds made me feela"I don't knowa"very sad and very tired somehow. I felt much too tired to do anything, to try to run anymore or fight or escape. I just wanted all these evil people to go away. I just wanted them to leave me alone. I wanted to be home again, back in my own house, in my own bed, waiting half-awake for my mom to call upstairs and tell me it was time to get ready for school. Why were these people hurting me? Why were they after me? How could I stop them? I was just a kid. I lay there in the cab of the overturned truck and I just wanted to break down and cry with weariness and frustration.

Lazily, my head rolled to one side. My vision seemed dull. The world seemed covered with shadows. Through those shadows, I could make out the light of day. I could make out the scene through the truck window. The world out there seemed to be very far off. It seemed as if it had nothing to do with me.

There they were. Same as before. Those men. Those men running after me. Those men with rifles coming to get me, coming to drag me back to the compound and strap me back in that chair and shoot that poison into me and watch me scream and scream until I was dead.

There they were. Coming closer every second.

And I was just too tired, too sick, too beaten to go on running anymore.

CHAPTER NINE.

Lunch

Lying there, my spirit broken, my mind flashed back in time again, my heart went home. A series of images swam swiftly through my dazed brain. That last morning . . . my karate demonstration . . . Beth . . . Alex . . .

It seemed now like a sweet, simple time: the last good day. It seemed now that my life had been perfect then. I had food to eat, and a house to live in, parents to take care of me. I lived in a wonderful, free country where I could say what I wanted and do what I wanted and be anything I had the talent to be. No one was shooting at me or beating me up or strapping me to chairs and trying to inject acid into me. I should have woken up every morning and thanked G.o.d for his blessings. I should have headed off to school each day whistling a happy tune.

But at the time, it didn't seem like that at all. At the time, I thought I had plenty to worry abouta"plenty. I mean, I was in high school, for one thing. What could be more worrisome than that? For another thing, this was the year I had to take calculus. It was insanely hard, and I worried it would wreck my grade point average. And if it didn't, there was Mr. Sherman, my history teacher, to worry about. I thought he was out to get me because I argued with him all the time, and a lot of the time I won. For instance, he stood up in cla.s.s once and said all these nasty things about America. He said America was racist and violent and greedy. So I just got up and told him that he was wrong and that the facts proved him wrong. I told him, sure, people in America make mistakes because people everywhere make mistakes. But when you came right down to it, there was not one place on Earth where people had any freedom or dignity or human rights and America hadn't helped it happen or helped it stay that way. I challenged him to name one placea"one single place on Eartha"and he couldn't, because there isn't one. Ever since then, I'd been getting lower grades on my papers for his cla.s.s.

So that made me worry I wouldn't get into a decent college. And that made me worry I couldn't fulfill my secret ambition in life, which I hadn't told anyone because I worried it would make my mother's head explode in terror and because I wasn't even sure it was realistic anywaya" and I worried about that too.

And maybe more than anything, I worried about Beth Summers. Whom I couldn't stop thinking about and who seemed kind of impossibly out of my league. Every time she even got close to me, I started to sound as if my IQ had dropped forty points and someone had superglued my tongue to the top of my mouth. "Heddo, Bet, it gud to tee you." Plus there was a rumor that she had kind of a thing for someone else and that he had kind of a thing for hera" and that this someone else was Alex Hauser, who happened to technically still be my best friend.

Josh Lerner had pa.s.sed this story on to me in his IM guise as the supremely irritating GalaxyMaster. He said that this past summer, when both Alex and Beth had been working part-time at the Main Street Blender-Benders, they had become good friends. They'd started walking home after work every day, and Alex had talked to her about his folks splitting up and all the trouble in his life. Of course, Beth had listened to him in that way she had that made you feel like you were the only person on Earth. So Alex had fallen for her because . . . well, who wouldn't?

The way GalaxyMaster told it, Beth had sort of fallen for Alex, too, really developed a crush on him. But that was about the time when Alex started hanging out with the jerks he was hanging out with, and doing the stuff he was doing and talking the way he was. Egged on by his new buds, he'd started getting rude and creepy with Beth, pushing himself on her and bothering her to do a lot of stuff she didn't want to do. Well, you can figure it out for yourself.

Anyway, the upshot wasa"so the story wenta"that Beth told Alex she didn't like the way he was acting and Alex said fine, what did he care, there were plenty of other girls around, and so have a nice life and good riddance. And he stormed off. And Beth realized that was for the best, but she was still really sad about it because she really did have a thing for Alex, and she felt as if her heart was broken.

That was the story, anyway, according to GalaxyMaster. And I have to admit it made things with Beth a bit more complicated. See, Alex and I had known each other since we were in kindergarten, and we'd been best friends for a long time. For years, he spent practically every Sat.u.r.day at my house, and when he wasn't there, I was at his. We rode bikes together. Played ball together. For a while, Alex had even taken karate lessons with me. Then he'd gotten more into baseball and joined the Legion League and didn't have time for karate. But that was okay. We were still friends, we'd still hang out together and go for hikes or to the movies or whatever.

Then, about a year ago, after a lot of arguments and yelling and crying all around, Alex's dad moved out. Not just out of the house either. He moved to a whole different city. His mom didn't have as much money as before, and she and Alex and his brother had to move to another part of town. That meant Alex had to change schools, too, so we hardly saw each other at all. After a while, Alex even stopped coming by my house on the weekends. In fact, he pretty much stopped talking to me altogether. I mean, I'd try to make contact. I'd call him. I'd e-mail. I'd even drop by his new place, even though it was almost forty minutes by bike. But Alex didn't seem interested in talking to me anymore. He didn't just ignore me. He kind of snorted and rolled his eyes when he saw me coming. He practically told me to go away and leave him alone. So I did leave him alone. But I sent him one last e-mail. It said, basically: Look, I know you're going through a hard time, but just so you know, I'm still your friend and if you want to talk about it or just hang or whatever, you know where I am. I still hoped he'd take me up on the offer because he was always a good guy and I missed seeing him.

Now, look, I wasn't going to not ask Beth out because it might annoy Alex. She could make her own decisions and he could fend for himself. But it was just one more thing to worry about, if you see what I mean. Not to mention the little matter of working up my courage to talk to Beth in the first place.

But that problem, strange to say, suddenly solved itself.

It happened right after my karate demonstration. I was feeling good. In fact, after the way everyone clapped and cheered for me, I was feeling really good. Really. Everyone was coming up to congratulate me. People would start clapping again when they saw me walking past in the halls. Guys were giving me approving punches in the shoulder as I walked past, and girls . . . well, maybe it was my imagination, but they just seemed to be looking at me a little differently, smiling at me a little more and so on. Breaking a cinder block with your fist may not be the most useful skill you can develop, but it sure seems to impress people. Even Mr. Sherman made a joke about it in history cla.s.s: "Charlie may be a small-minded tool of America's fascist overlords," he said, "but given his self-defense skills, I'm not sure I'd want to say that to his face." Well, whatever.

After Sherman's cla.s.s, it was time for lunch. I sat at my usual table. Josh Lerner and Rick Donnelly were already there with their brown bags when I approached with my lunch tray. Wednesday was mac 'n' cheese day, the one day I sh.e.l.led out the extra cash for a hot lunch at school. Rick and Josh looked up from opening their bags long enough to jut out their chins in welcome. At the same time, Kevin Milesa"Miler Miles, we call him, because he runs long-distancea" joined us with his mac 'n' cheese. We all sat down together, same as always.

"So, dude," Josh said to me. "You are the man of the hour." Josh was a geek and looked pretty much like he'd been made at the Geek Factory: short, hunch-shouldered; big, thick gla.s.ses over a constant, nervous smile; a tight head of black curly hair.