Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

As I stood there watching, the younger me slipped his hand into Beth’s hand. Amazingly, even as I watched from the edge of the scene, I felt the warmth of her palm against mine, the grip of her fingers. And suddenly… suddenly, I felt more than that. Suddenly, I felt the love for her flooding into my heart. I was remembering. Finally, finally. I was remembering how much I loved her. It overrode the nervousness I felt. It overrode everything. It welled up in me like a rising tide and all I wanted to do was tell her about it.

Beth and I walked together along the sidewalk, through shadows and pools of light thrown down by the street-lamps. I stood and watched from the sidelines, feeling her hand in mine, feeling the incredible nervousness and fear of telling her what I was about to tell her. Would I be able to find the right words? How would she respond? I knew she was too kind to laugh at me or say anything cruel. But would she shake her head? Would she turn away?

We reached her car. She stood with her back to it, facing me. I looked down at her. We were in deep shadow, but I was close enough to see her eyes. Her blue eyes. Her gentle eyes.

“What were you going to say?” I heard her ask me- and as I stood on the edge of the scene watching, I felt the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she spoke-it was like I was in two places at the same time, inside the scene and observing it from the outside. “Before the movie started,” Beth went on, “I said it felt a little wrong for us to be there and you said, ‘I feel…,’ and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say? Do you remember?”

I could feel my past self working up his courage, trying to keep his voice steady so he didn’t sound squeaky like some dumb little kid. It felt like the scariest moment of my life up to that time.

“Yeah, I remember,” I told Beth. “I was going to say: I feel like nothing about you and me being together is wrong. I feel like when we’re together, it’s just right, like it’s supposed to happen. It’s weird too because it’s not like in the movies with music playing or fireworks or-or anything that I expected. It’s just like… I don’t know, like a little click, like-You ever do jigsaw puzzles? And you find the right piece and it clicks in? It feels like that.”

Beth said, “It feels like that to me too.”

Then I kissed her. I felt her lips against my lips, the softness of her as I put my arms around her and pulled her to me.

Standing on the edge of the scene, I closed my eyes and it felt as if I and my past self were melding into one, that I was there again, with Beth in my arms again. It felt so good to remember, finally to remember the sweet ache of loving her…

Then I opened my eyes and…

Beth was gone. The street was gone. For a moment, I felt heartbroken, missing the touch of her lips on mine. But then I saw…

I was at home. In my room. My old room! I couldn’t believe it. I was so glad to see it, so glad to be back. There were my karate trophies on the shelf! My Lord of the Rings poster on the wall! My bed, my desk…

And me! Sitting there, at my desk. Doing my calculus homework, poking numbers into the calculator set beside the computer keyboard, working out a differential equation. Or trying to. Because I couldn’t. I couldn’t concentrate on the equation at all. All I could think about was Beth.

I had Schoolyard up on my computer screen. It was a program my high school had that let students IM and e-mail and update one another and hand in homework and get teachers’ comments and stuff like that. Normally I didn’t go on it much. Everyone could see you were there and IM you and it was pretty distracting, so I stayed off so only my close friends could IM me, which was distracting enough. But Beth liked to go on and talk to her friends, so I went on to talk to her.

That was pretty much all I wanted to do now. Talk to her. I mean, I knew I needed to get that calc homework in by tomorrow, but… it was such a good, giddy, happy feeling to be trading messages with her. Even standing there on the outside of the scene, watching the younger me at my desk, I could feel that happiness inside me. I could feel how in love with her I was and how good it felt to know that she was in love with me. And I was so glad that I could finally remember, that it was all coming back, all of it.

I remembered how everything-even Alex’s murder- faded into the background of our lives as Beth and I discovered the depths of our feelings for one another. We were together every moment we could find, walking, talking, laughing, feeling like we had stumbled on the whole point of our lives and that that point was for the two of us to be together, to find each other, like two halves of a single person that were created to snap into place.

As I stood there, watching my younger self-wishing I could be back in his body, in his world, in that past, happy life-I looked over his shoulder and saw a new message appear on the monitor. Beth: i don’t think it’s fair, that’s all. My younger self tapped back at the keyboard: y not talk to her? Beth: and say what? “Hey, I’m a much better writer than that grade you gave me?” I tapped back: sure, y not? you want me to? Beth: no!!!!!! And me: why so many!!!? Beth: cuz I no what yer like, CW. no karate chopping my eng teacher!

My younger self and I both laughed.

Then my younger self and I both stopped laughing. Just as we were about to tap an answer to Beth into the keyboard, the monitor went completely black.

My younger self blinked, startled. “Oh, no,” he said aloud. He slapped the side of the monitor. “Come on!”

He-I-was beginning to jiggle the On/Off switch at the base of the monitor when the screen crackled in a strange way and a message rolled across the bottom of it. The message was in white letters on the dark background.

It said: Open your cell phone, Charlie.

With that, the monitor flashed back on again. There was the Schoolyard home page with the last message from Beth still there, just as before.

Puzzled, I-the younger me-looked around and saw my cell phone lying on the desk, at the opposite end of the keyboard from my calculator. I picked it up. It wasn’t ringing or anything. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. All the same, I shrugged and opened it as the message directed.

Instantly, a man’s voice said: “If you want to know who killed Alex Hauser, come to the Morgan Reservoir in half an hour.”

“What?” I said. “Who is this?”

“Come alone. Don’t tell anyone.”

“How do you know who killed Alex? Who am I talking to?”

“If you tell anyone, I’ll know. Do you understand me? I’ll know and I won’t show up.”

“Wait, listen…,” I began.

“Do you understand me?”

The younger me looked around the room as if searching for help. Finally, I raised my hand in a gesture of surrender. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand you, sure.”

“Do you want to know who killed Alex or not?”

“Yes, of course I do, but…”

There was no click, but the silence at the other end of the line became somehow suddenly more complete.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello?”

No answer. The mysterious man was gone.

The present me stood at the edge of the scene, at the edge of my old room at home, watching the past me as he sat there wondering what to do. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I wanted to call out to myself, to warn myself, to say: Don’t do it. Don’t go. Stay where you are. Answer Beth’s message, stay with Beth, love Beth, have your life.

But at the same time, I thought that I could feel what was going through the heart and mind of the past me; I could feel his curiosity, his desire to find Alex’s murderer and clear himself of any possible suspicion… and I could feel something else too. I could feel his sense of adventure. His need for excitement. His burning ambition to get out of his small-town life and do something important and thrilling and dangerous. I was already planning to try to get into the Air Force Academy. I had even gotten my mom to let me take some flying lessons by way of preparation. But I couldn’t apply to the academy until next year. This was now.