I Am Number Four (22 page)

“I cut it on a branch in the woods.”

“How convenient,” he says, and again writes something in his notebook. “You know I can tell when I’m being lied to, right?”

I ignore him, keep walking away with Sarah’s hand in mine. We head over to Sam.

“I’ll find the truth, Mr. Smith. I always do,” Baines yells behind me.

“Henri is on the way,” I say to Sam and Sarah.

“What the hell was that all about?” Sam asks.

“Who knows? Somebody thinks they saw me run in, probably somebody who drank too much,” I say more at Baines than Sam.

We stand at the end of the driveway until Henri arrives. When he pulls up he steps out of the truck and looks at the smoldering house far off in the distance.

“Ah, hell. Promise me you weren’t a part of this,” he says.

“I wasn’t,” I say.

We get into the truck. He pulls away while looking at the smoking rubble.

“You guys smell like smoke,” Henri says.

None of us reply, making the drive in silence. Sarah sits on my lap. We drop Sam off first, then Henri pulls out of the driveway and points the truck towards Sarah’s home.

“I don’t want to leave you tonight,” Sarah says to me.

“I don’t want to leave you either.”

When we arrive at her house I get out with her and walk her to the door. She won’t let go of me when I hug her good night.

“Will you call me when you get home?”

“Of course.”

“I love you.”

I smile. “I love you too.”

She goes inside. I walk back to the truck, where Henri is waiting. I have to figure out a way to keep him from finding out the truth about tonight, from making us leave Paradise. Henri pulls out and drives home.

“So what happened to your jacket?” he asks.

“It was in Mark’s closet.”

“What happened to your head?”

“I hit it trying to get out when the fire first started.”

He looks over at me doubtfully. “You’re the one who smells like smoke.”

I shrug. “There was a lot of it.”

“So what started it?”

“Drunkenness is my guess.”

Henri nods and turns down our road.

“Well,” he says. “It will be interesting to see what’s in the papers on Monday.” He turns and looks at me, studying my reaction.

I keep silent.

Yes,
I think,
it most certainly will be.

I CAN’T SLEEP. I LIE IN BED STARING THROUGH
the darkness at the ceiling. I call Sarah and we talk until three; I hang up and lie there with my eyes wide-open. At four I crawl out of bed and walk out of the room. Henri sits at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He looks up at me, bags beneath his eyes, hair tousled.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he says. “Scouring the news.”

“Find anything?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure what it means to us yet. The men who wrote and published
They Walk Among Us
, the men we met, were tortured and killed.”

I sit across from him. “What?”

“Police found them when the neighbors called after hearing screams coming from the house.”

“They didn’t know where we lived.”

“No, they didn’t. Thankfully. But it means the Mogadorians are getting bolder. And they’re close. If we see or hear anything else out of the ordinary, we’re going to need to leave immediately, no questions asked, no discussion.”

“Okay.”

“How’s your head?”

“Sore,” I say. It took seven stitches to close the cut. Henri did it himself. I’m wearing a baggy sweatshirt. I’m certain one of the cuts on my back needs stitches as well, but that would require me to take my shirt off, and how would I explain the other cuts and scrapes to Henri? He’ll know for sure what has happened. My lungs still burn. If anything, the pain has grown worse.

“So, the fire started in the basement?”

“Yes.”

“And you were in the living room?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know it started in the basement?”

“Because all the guys came running up.”

“And you knew everyone was out of the house by the time you went outside?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

I can tell he’s trying to get me to contradict myself, that he’s skeptical of my story. I’m certain he doesn’t believe that I merely stood out front watching like everyone else.

“I didn’t go in,” I say. It pains me to do so, but I look him in the eye and I lie.

“I believe you,” he says.

I wake close to noon. Birds are chirping beyond the window, and sunlight is pouring in. I breathe a sigh of relief. The fact that I was allowed to sleep this late means that there was no news to incriminate me. If there had been, I would have been pulled from bed and told to pack.

I roll off my back and that’s when the pain hits. My chest feels as though somebody is pushing down on it, squeezing me. I can’t take full breaths. When I try there is a sharp pain. It scares me.

Bernie Kosar is snoring in a ball at my side. I wake him by wrestling with him. He groans at first, then wrestles back. That is the beginning to our day. Me rousing the snoring dog beside me. His wagging tail, his dangling tongue immediately make me feel better. Never mind the pain in my chest. Never mind what the day might bring.

Henri’s truck is gone. On the table is a note that reads: “Ran to the store. Be back at one.” I walk outside. I have a headache and my arms are red and splotchy, the cuts slightly raised as though I’ve been scratched by a cat. I don’t care about the cuts, or my headache, or the burning in my chest. What I care about is that I’m
still here, in Ohio, that tomorrow I’ll be going back to the same school I’ve gone to for three months now, and that I will see Sarah tonight.

Henri gets home at one. There is a haggard look in his eyes that tells me he still hasn’t slept. After he unloads the groceries he goes into his bedroom and closes the door. Bernie Kosar and I go for a walk in the woods. I try to run, and I’m able to for a little while, but after a half mile or so the pain is too great and I have to stop. We walk on for what must be five miles. The woods end at another country road that looks similar to ours. I turn around and walk back. Henri is still in his room with the door closed when I return. I sit on the porch. I tense every time a car passes. I keep thinking one of them will stop, but none of them do.

The confidence I felt when I woke up is slowly chipped away as the day wanes. The
Paradise Gazette
isn’t printed on Sunday. Will there be a story tomorrow? I suppose I expected a call to arrive, or the same reporter to show up at our doorstep, or one of the officers to ask more questions. I don’t know why I’m so worried about a small-time reporter, but he’d been persistent—too persistent. And I know he didn’t believe my story.

But nobody comes to our house. No one calls. I expected something, and when that something doesn’t
come, a dread creeps in that I’m about to be exposed. “I’ll find the truth, Mr. Smith. I always do,” Baines said. I consider running into town, trying to find him to dissuade him from any such truth, but I know that would only encourage suspicion. All I can do is hold my breath and hope for the best.

I wasn’t in that house.

I have nothing to hide.

Sarah comes over that night. We go to my room and I hold her in my arms, lying on my back on the bed. Her head is against my chest and her leg is draped over me. She asks me questions about who I am, my past, about Lorien, about the Mogadorians. I’m still amazed at how quickly, and easily, Sarah believed everything, and how she’s accepted it. I answer everything truthfully, which feels good after all the lies I’ve told over the last few days. But when we talk about the Mogadorians, I start to get scared. I’m worried that they’ll find us. That what I did will expose us. I would do it again, for if I didn’t Sarah would be dead, but I’m scared. I’m also scared of what Henri is going to do if he finds out. Though he is not biologically, for all intents and purposes he is my father. I love him and he loves me and I don’t want to disappoint him. And as we lie there, my fear begins to reach new levels. I can’t take not knowing what the next day will bring—the uncertainty is sawing me in
two. The room is dark. A flickering candle burns on the window ledge a few feet away. I take a deep breath, which is to say, as deep a breath as I
can
take.

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks.

I wrap my arms around her. “I miss you,” I say.

“You miss me? But I’m right here.”

“That’s the worst way to miss somebody. When they’re right beside you and you miss them anyway.”

“You’re talking crazy. She reaches up and pulls my face to hers and kisses me, her soft lips on mine. I don’t want her to stop. I don’t ever want her to stop kissing me. As long as she is, then everything is fine. Everything is right. I would stay in this room forever if I could. The world can pass by without me, without us. Just as long as we can stay here, together, in each other’s arms.

“Tomorrow,” I say.

She looks up at me. “Tomorrow, what?”

I shake my head. “I don’t really know,” I say. “I guess I’m just scared.”

She flashes a confused look at me. “Scared of what?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just scared.”

When Henri and I get home after dropping her off I go back into my bedroom and lie in the same spot where she was. I can still smell her on my bed. I won’t sleep tonight. I won’t even try. I pace the room. When Henri
goes to bed I walk out and sit at the kitchen table and write under candlelight. I write about Lorien, about Florida, about the things that I’ve seen when our training first began—the war, the animals, childhood images. I hope for some sort of cathartic release, but there isn’t one. It only makes me sadder.

When my hand cramps I walk out of the house and stand on the porch. The cold air helps ease the pain of breathing. The moon is nearly full, a side of it ever so subtly shaved away. Sunrise is two hours away, and with that sunrise comes a new day, and the news of the weekend. The paper falls on our doorstep at six, sometimes six thirty. I’ll already be at the school by the time it arrives and, if I’m in the news, I refuse to leave without seeing Sarah again, without saying good-bye to Sam.

I walk into the house, change clothes, and pack my bag. I tiptoe back through and quietly close the door behind me. I take three steps on the porch when I hear a scratching at the door. I turn around and open it and Bernie Kosar comes trotting out.
Okay,
I think,
let us go together.

We walk, stopping often, standing and listening to the silence. The night is dark but after a while a pale glow grows in the eastern sky just as we enter the school grounds. There are no cars in the lot and all the lights are off inside. At the very front of the school, in front of the pirate mural, sits a large rock that has
been painted by previous graduating classes. I sit on it. Bernie Kosar lies in the grass a few feet away from me. I’m there for half an hour before the first vehicle arrives, a van, and I assume it’s Hobbs, the janitor, arriving early to get the school in order, but I’m wrong. The van pulls up to the front doors and the driver gets out and leaves it idling. He’s carrying a stack of newspapers bound by wire. We nod at each other and he drops the stack by the door and then drives off. I stay on the rock. I glance contemptuously at the papers. In my mind I’m hurling curses at them, threatening them to deliver the bad news I’m terrified of.

“I wasn’t in that house on Saturday,” I say out loud, and as soon as I do I feel stupid. Then I look away, sigh, and jump off the rock.

“Well,” I say to Bernie Kosar. “This is it, for good or bad.”

He opens his eyes briefly, then closes them and resumes his nap on the cold ground.

I tear the binding away and lift the top paper. The story has made the front page. At the very top is a picture of the burned rubble taken the next morning at dawn. There is a gothic, foreboding feel to it. Blackened ash is forefront to naked trees and frost-covered grass. I read the headline:

J
AMES
H
OUSE
G
OES
UP IN SMOKE

I hold my breath, a miserable feeling centered in my gut as though horrible news is about to find me. I race through the article. I don’t read it, only look for my name. I reach the end. I blink my eyes and shake my head to rid myself of the cobwebs. A cautious smile forms. Then I scan through it again.

“No way,” I say. “Bernie Kosar, my name isn’t here!”

He pays me no attention. I run across the grass and jump back on the rock.

“My name isn’t here!” I yell again, this time as loudly as I can.

I sit back down and read the story. The headline is a play on Cheech and Chong’s
Up in Smoke
, which is apparently a movie about drugs. What the police believe started the blaze was a marijuana joint being smoked in the basement. How that information was discovered, I have no idea, especially because it is so wrong. The article itself is callous and mean, almost an attack on the James family. I didn’t like the reporter. It’s apparent that he doesn’t like the Jameses. Who knows why?

I sit on the rock and read the article three times before the first person arrives to unlock the doors. I can’t stop smiling. I’m staying in Ohio, in Paradise. The town name doesn’t seem so foolish to me anymore. Through my excitement I feel as though I’m overlooking something, that I’ve forgotten a key component. But I’m so happy that I don’t care. What harm can come
now? My name isn’t in the article. I didn’t run into that house. The proof is right here, in my hands. Nobody can say otherwise.

“What are you so happy about?” Sam asks in astronomy class. I haven’t stopped smiling.

“Didn’t you read the paper this morning?”

He nods.

“Sam, I wasn’t in it! I don’t have to leave.”

“Why would they put you in the paper?” he asks.

I’m dumbfounded. I open my mouth to argue with him but just then Sarah walks into the room. She comes sauntering up the aisle.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I say.

She bends down and kisses me on the cheek, something I’ll never take for granted.

“Somebody’s in a happy mood today,” she says.

“Happy to see you,” I say. “Nervous about your driver’s test?”

“Maybe a little. Just can’t wait until it’s over.”

She sits down beside me.
This is my day,
I think.
This is where I want to be and this is where I am. Sarah on one side, Sam on the other.

I go to class as I’ve done all the other days. I sit with Sam at lunch. We don’t talk about the fire. We must be the only two in the whole school not talking about it. The same story, over and over. I never hear my name
spoken once. As I expected, Mark isn’t in school. A rumor spreads that he and several of the others will be suspended for the theory the paper has spouted. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I don’t know if I care.

By the time Sarah and I enter the kitchen for eighth-period home ec, my certainty that I’m safe has taken a firm hold. Such a strong certainty that I’m confident I must be wrong, that something has been overlooked. The doubt has been creeping up throughout the day but I’ve been quick to push it back down.

We make tapioca pudding. An easy day. In the middle of class, the kitchen door opens. It’s the hall monitor. I look at him and I know immediately what it means. The harbinger of bad news. The messenger of death. He walks straight up to me and hands me a slip of paper.

“Mr. Harris wants to see you,” he says.

“Now?”

He nods.

I look at Sarah and shrug. I don’t want her to see my fear. I smile at her and walk to the door. Before I leave I turn around and look at her again. She’s bent over the table mixing our ingredients, wearing the same green apron that I tied on her my first day, the day we made pancakes and ate them off the same plate. Her hair is in a ponytail and loose strands dangle in front of her face. She tucks them behind her ear and as she does she
sees me standing in the doorway watching her. I keep staring, trying to remember every minute detail of this moment, the way she grips the wooden spoon in her hand, the ivory look to her skin with the light coming in the windows behind her, the tenderness in her eyes. Her shirt has a loose button at the collar. I wonder if she knows about it. Then the hall monitor says something behind me. I wave at Sarah, shut the door, and walk down the hall. I take my time, trying to convince myself that it’s just a formality, some document we forgot to sign, some question about transcripts. But I know it’s not just a formality.