You know, I feel like I did pretty well. I thought it might take me weeks to write another post, but look at that -- I’m back already. It hasn’t even been a whole week yet. And I’m alive and well and not sitting in a locked basement anymore. (Not a fun way to spend your weekend, by the way.) I’m not going to elaborate, but the point is that right now, I’m just glad to be breathing -- and to be able to keep writing this story.
I have mixed feelings about that, actually. See, I found out how they found us, and as it turns out, it was a hack job. I don’t know who did it, but I know that whoever did, they turned me in to them, and before I knew it, I had to pull out the chapstick. Like I said before, I know that you’re one of three categories, and I know that I have readers of all three categories. And even if you aren’t out to get me, I know someone else is. I think I fixed the immediate problem, but, begging your pardon for my suspicion of you, I need to be a whole lot more careful about everything I say, especially when it refers to how I write these posts.
Translation: I’m going to be trying to focus on what happened back where I’m telling you, and not talk a lot about what’s happening right now. If you’re the right person, what’s going on right now doesn’t immediately concern you, anyway.
But I’m off track already (I’m quickly finding that I digress a lot) and I need to get straight to the point and tell you what I’ve been thinking about telling you for quite some time now.
This story isn’t really about me.
I thought I’d throw that out there right now, since I didn’t really make that clear in the beginning. I made a big deal about whether you believe this whole thing or not, but the thing is, whether you believe it or not, it’s not about me.
I know what you’re saying now. Who’s it about then?
You know the answer by now.
I can’t really say. Not yet, anyway. Not until I know that I can trust you. Not until I know that the benefits outweigh the risks. And so for now, let’s continue to pretend that this is just an interesting story -- although if you are who I am beginning to hope you are, you know that it isn’t.
Let’s get on with it, then. I’m wasting time.
I followed Clara out the window. At first glance you might think that it was a really bad idea, but the truth is that I preferred having to run from policemen to going to jail. Pretty much it was either trust Travis or trust this Clara Stone person, and call me paranoid, but I wasn’t too inclined to trust Travis.
She climbed out ahead of me, and I squeezed through after her. We both landed on the top of a dumpster in a dark alleyway. She slid down to the concrete below, motioning for me to follow her, which I did.
I was under the impression that she knew where she was going for the first five minutes or so. Clara kept to the back alleys, and I agreed with her. Better back here than out there. Here it was dim and gloomy, but at least it was safe from people who might spot me and take me back to the police station. At that moment, all I knew was that I did not want to be under the charge of Travis, Larson, and the others -- men who would decide whether I was innocent or guilty.
I may have known that very clearly, but what I didn’t know was that I would be spending a lot of time in alleyways.
When we came to a dead end, she hesitated for a second, seemingly uncertain of where to go. Then she whirled around and marched in the opposite direction, back where we came from.
“You know where we’re going, right?” I whispered.
“Yes!” she insisted, then added after a moment’s thought, “I’m just not entirely sure how to get there.”
At that precise moment, the sound of sirens reached me. I smacked my forehead.
“Great! They’re looking for me now!”
Clara glanced behind her, then back at me. Her expression was strange -- not quite suspicious. More like...afraid? But not of the sirens.
Afraid of me?
“You didn’t do it, right?” she asked quietly.
Suddenly I was fed up with the whole situation. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” I snapped. “All I know is that if you get caught now, they’ll call you an accomplice and throw you in jail with me, because they’re sure to think I’m guilty now that I ran out on them. Oh yeah, and Travis won’t be on my side anymore, not that he ever was to begin with, but…” I trailed off and whirled around to stare at the graffiti on the wall that marked the dead end. “So you had better help me get out of here.”
I turned back around at her silence. I expected Clara to get angry too, but instead she had just pulled her backpack off of her shoulders and begun rummaging through it. “What…what are you looking for?” I asked, taken off guard.
It took her a moment to reply. “For…my…sunglasses.” Upon finding the mentioned sunglasses, she lifted them up and offered them to me.
I stared at them for a moment. “How are these supposed to help? Do I wear them like a disguise?”
Clara shook her head like I was stupid. “No, of course not. They’re a GPS.”
“What?”
She sighed, shaking her brown ponytail. “Put them on and press this button here.”
I took the glasses and examined them. On the left side, there was a button disguised as a “Made in China” sticker -- but upon closer inspection, I could tell that it was definitely a button.
“Okay…why do I need a GPS?”
Obviously I was taking too long. Clara took the sunglasses and placed them over my eyes, pressing the button at the same time.
Instantly, the world lit up. Everything had a different color and label. Words and numbers flashed across the screen, confusing my vision so that I could barely see anything.
“I’m going to run into a wall with these!” I protested, saying the first thought that came into my head.
“Focus past the messages,” Clara instructed. “Just see what you need to see.”
I decided to take her advice, and as soon as I ignored the codes and labels, everything became clearer.
“Now, look down at your lower left.”
I obliged, and I saw written across the bottom of the screen:
Travis Thatcher: 4269
“What are those numbers?”
“His…tracking…number,” Clara said distractedly. I glanced over to see her working furiously on a touch screen phone. “There we go. Blink twice.”
As soon as I had done it, another screen appeared -- this one with a longer string of numbers, and a pair of coordinates.
“Blink three times.”
The screen morphed into a map of the town, and I saw a red dot back at the police station.
“That’s where he is?” I asked.
“Mmm-hmm.” Clara nodded, still typing frantically with both her thumbs. “Still at the police station, or has he left yet?”
“Still at the station,” I said quickly. “Does that mean that the sirens aren’t for me?”
“They still could be,” Clara admitted, “But it’s less likely. At any rate, if Travis isn’t going anywhere yet, things are going better than I’d hoped. Keep an eye on him until we get there.”
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“The bus station,” she responded, stowing her cell phone in her pocket. “Let’s go.”
“But they’ll be looking for me there!” I insisted. “It’s the most obvious place!”
She narrowed her eyes. “They’ll be looking for us there. And of course they’ll be there -- but we’ll be hiding in a back room that no one else knows about. They’ll expect us to try and head out sometime in the night, but by, say, ten o’clock tomorrow morning, they will have given up and decided that maybe we found another way out of town. That’s when we’ll take a bus and get out of here.”
She started to turn out of the dead end, but I grabbed her arm.
“Wait.” Clara paused and turned to me. “Why are you doing this in the first place? Where are your parents, anyway? You’re just going to catch a bus out of town?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Where are your parents?”
“Dead,” I said coolly.
“Same here,” she replied.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because Travis thinks you’re guilty.”
“Do you know Travis?”
“Never met him before in my life.”
“Then how -- ”
“Look, Nathan,” she interrupted, gesturing down the alley, “I’ll explain everything when we get to the bus station -- trust me, it won’t take long -- but for now, we need to get there without being caught. So please, let’s just go.”
When Clara finally stepped back and let me lead the way -- she really didn’t have any idea how to get to the bus station, or any sense of direction at all, really -- we made good time. I figured out how to use the sunglasses pretty quickly, since I had an okay history with technology, and kept an eye on Travis Thatcher the entire way down. He didn’t move anywhere until halfway there, but when he did, his red dot began moving away from where we were heading.
“They’re going the wrong way!” I burst out. “Travis is heading the opposite direction!”
“The airport is a forty-five minute drive from there,” Clara said hopefully. “Maybe they thought we headed there, and decided to cut us off.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I still had a thousand questions about Travis, Clara, and this mysterious system and crime I was supposed to have committed -- but I had a promise of a somewhat explanation, and I would have to cling to that for a few more minutes.
You, however, may have to wait longer.
Sorry.
-Nathan T. Dalton
Why didn't Clara use the glasses herself, from the beginning? Why did she wait until you were lost? Who does she know to have such advanced, expensive technology (not that you can tell me)? Pretty cool, kind of like a marauder's map for the whole world.
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