Something in my chest feels lighter with the laughing. Sharing my secret makes it less scary somehow.
“So Henry David isn’t your name.”
“Nope.” I pull Walden out of my waistband and hold it up to show Jack. “I just found this book next to me when I woke up, so I used the name of the guy who wrote it. Other than the clothes I’m wearing, it’s the only thing I own. I think it must be a clue.”
Jack shrugs and takes a deep drag of his cigarette.
“Either that or some random person left it at the train station and you just happened to find it.”
My jaw clenches. “No way,” I say. “It’s a clue.”
“Take it easy,” he says. “Okay, it’s a clue.” He stubs out his cigarette on the bottom of his sneaker. “So what are you gonna do? Go on national TV and be Amnesia Boy? The media loves that shit. You’ll be famous by dinnertime tomorrow.” From far away, we hear a police siren. “Just don’t say anything about me,” Jack says. “I like to keep a low profile. Way low.”
“Yeah, I think I need to do the same.”
Maybe you killed somebody.
Keeping a low profile is about the only thing I’m sure of. That, and the fact that I woke up with this book next to me. Therefore, it has to mean something. I touch the cover picture of pine trees at the edge of a lake. That’s where I want to be.
“Okay, Hank, or whatever your name is, I need to check in on Nessa and crash for a couple hours. Grab some drywall and make yourself a little shelter. Cool?”
“Cool. I’ll be fine.”
Jack salutes, then disappears into the shack. He andNessa whisper for a while, then there are soft sounds that could be laughing or crying. After that, silence.
Staring up at the moon, I try to feel sleepy, but now that I’m alone, my mind is racing and I’m wide awake with my heart hammering against my ribs. There are skittering sounds on the other side of the Dumpster, probably rats. The wind shifts, and even though the Dumpster is mostly full of construction trash, I get a strong whiff of rotting food and random nastiness. I pull a huge plank of particle board out of a pile next to the Dumpster, lean it against the back wall of the alley, and huddle underneath like it can keep me safe. I try to stop my hands from shaking.
To calm my twitchy brain, I take a little internal inventory, try to piece together what I know about myself so far. Okay, so I’m a teenage guy, probably somewhere between sixteen and eighteen years old. Hair, black; eyes gray. Not bad-looking either. There was only that quick glance in the men’s room mirror, but I know that much. I like burgers and soda, and I might be a smoker, although that cigarette left a weird taste in my mouth that kind of makes me want to gag. I have a bump and a cut above my forehead that stings if I touch it. I get real fidgety around the cops.
And there’s a black beast inside me that doesn’t want me to know stuff. It guards my memory, clawing at my insides and going for my throat if I get too close. So why did the beast wake up when Jack said, maybe you killed somebody? Is that what it won’t let me remember?
The black thing in me surges again, and I feel a pounding headache coming on. “Stop,” I whisper. “Go away.” But it crouches there, waiting to creep closer so it can attack, now while I’m alone and vulnerable. No. There’s a light shining down from the side of the building, bright enough to read by. So I open my book, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and that’s what I do.
This Thoreau guy wrote it in the mid-1800s, so the writing is a little weird for me at first. I have to read some paragraphs over a few times to figure out what he’s trying to say. But then I start to get into it.
Walden, as it turns out, is named after some pond in the woods in a town called Concord, Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau was in his late twenties when he went there to get away from the world and live alone in a little cabin for a couple years. He listened to the birds, walked around the pond, and just thought about stuff. Living