Being Henry David - By Cal Armistead Page 0,51
can’t be sure.
There’s a link on the website to the local newspaper called the Naperville Sun. I take my disappearance date, April 10, which is listed on the Missing and Exploited Children site and I search the archives of the Naperville Sun for a couple days before my disappearance. There are articles about local politicians, church suppers, and ads about local stores having sales. Nothing seems familiar.
That’s when I see the headline on the sports page, and a dim lightbulb of memory switches on somewhere in a dark back hallway of my brain.
NAPERVILLE SOUTH BOYS TRACK TEAM FACES RIVALS
The track team is posed in one of those year-book-type pictures with the guys standing in two rows, wearing team uniforms with numbers. The taller guys are in the back. I scan their faces and stop. One of them is me. Not smiling, just standing there like I want the photographer to take the picture already so I can leave. And then there, right under the team picture is another photo, an action shot featuring some dark-haired guy with arms pumping, legs flying like something’s chasing him. His face is a grimace, eyes wide, mouth open like he’s sucking air. The guy is me.
Senior Daniel Henderson trains for spring track season at Naperville South. Henderson excelled last year and is expected to challenge or break longstanding school records this season. The Naperville South runners will face off against their rivals from Aurora West this Saturday at home.
With detached curiosity I stare at this Daniel Henderson, huffing and puffing his way through a race, examine the contorted face of a stranger. I feel nothing.
But then slowly, a sensation creeps up on me, like a ripple circling from a stone thrown in a pond. It grows into a wave, starting somewhere in the roots of my hair, reaching tendrils into my scalp and neck and face, and I feel the flush, a red burn spreading over every surface of my skin. And then, with a deep shudder to the bone, to the brain, to the heart, I switch places and I become that boy.
Cold April air rushes down my throat, prickles my lungs. Arms and legs pump like pistons and I’m a machine, oblivious to everything but my muscles on fire, my body propelling itself through space, weaving past the other runners, toward the finish line.
Except that in truth, I’m not running around the high school track in Naperville, Illinois, at all. I’m bolting for the library door. Sprinting past Thomas, who looks up in surprise.
His voice, too loud for the library, is like sounding an alarm: “Hank, what’s wrong?!”
I almost fall down the concrete steps, vision bombarded with black-red flashes as the beast roars to life from its pit inside me. But it’s not just one beast, not anymore. It divides itself into a billion smaller versions of itself, each with curled claws, red eyes, rising, choking, leaping at my throat, trying to kill me for starting to remember what is crucial to forget.
Down the sidewalk, toward town. Feet pounding on pavement. Left on Thoreau Street, right on Walden. Cross Route Two. Arms pumping, keep moving. Running until I reach Walden Pond. Running along the path that rings the pond, then branching off and bolting into the woods. Crashing through the underbrush. Still running, sweat streams down my face into my mouth, salty. Past the railroad tracks, deeper into the woods. Trying to outrun the snarling beasts, desperate to find the calm that comes with running.
And somehow I find a way to outrun the terror by forcing myself back in time, before the memory of lights swirling red and blue, before the pink ballerina broken, before the blood.
Settling my body into the cadence of running, the steady inhale, exhale pattern that keeps my heart from beating out of control, I begin to remember my life.
The last good day was cold for early April. My breath came in white clouds as I went for my morning run around the neighborhood, nothing too long or crazy, just a chance to stretch my legs and wake up my brain. When I got home, I wheeled the green trash barrel to the curb, like I did every Friday morning of my life. The sky was milky and the air smelled like snow, but I was sure it wouldn’t dare snow, not this weekend. The next day was the big meet against Aurora. That night, I had plans.
The recycle bins went next, overflowing with empty cereal boxes, newspapers,