The Truth of the Matter by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    I—the present me—wanted to reach out and stop the old me, but I couldn’t. All at once, I was fading away from the scene, helplessly drawn back out of my room, back and back into . . .
    Nothing. Blackness. Where was I now?
    My room was gone. The trophies, the poster on the wall, the computer, my former self. It had all vanished.
    And suddenly, I was scared. Very scared. I was alone in the darkness and now there was . . . something . . . a noise . . . an awful noise . . . someone screaming . . . terrible screaming in the distance . . . And I knew: it was me, it was me, in the chair in the Panic Room, screaming in pain . . .
    I didn’t want to go back there, back to that room, back to that chair, back to that agony.
    I turned this way and that, looking for another way out.
    There . . . up ahead . . . a dim gray light . . .
    I moved toward it.
    Now I was on a street. No, a country road. It was night. Dark. No streetlights, no houses. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking.
    I looked around, confused. I saw a sparkle, very faint—the stars on water. My eyes began to adjust. I recognized this place. Reservoir Road, up in the wooded hills above my hometown. I could see a hill of dark trees rising up against the night sky to my right, a sandy slope falling away to my left. There was the Morgan Reservoir at the bottom of the slope, the water glinting in the starlight.
    I looked around. I half expected to see myself—my younger self—as I had seen him before. But he was nowhere to be found. I was alone. I looked down and . . .
    What was this? I wasn’t wearing my fleece anymore. I was wearing a windbreaker. I could feel the brisk air of early autumn on me.
    Slowly, I lifted my hands, touched my cheeks, felt my hair. I understood.
    I didn’t see my younger self because I was my younger self. I had become my own memory.
    The fear, then, was all mine. I knew why I was afraid too. I was here to meet the man behind the mysterious voice on my phone.
    If you want to know who killed Alex Hauser . . .
    Before, back in the safety of my room, I’d been excited by those words, excited at the prospect of this mysterious meeting, at the idea that I might possibly solve Alex’s murder. But now, now that I was actually out here, out here alone in the dark with no one knowing where I was—now suddenly it occurred to me: what a knucklehead I’d been! What an unbelievably stupid idea it was to come out here to meet some voice on the phone without even letting anyone know I was doing it! I mean, didn’t I think? Didn’t I realize? There was only one person who could possibly know who had killed Alex—and that was the murderer himself! And the only reason the murderer would want me to come out and meet him on an empty road in the middle of the night . . .
    Well, let’s just say visions of autopsy scenes from CSI: NY flashed in my head, with me starring as the body!
    I thought I better get out of there—fast, before this killer clown showed up. I was about to turn around, about to head back to my car, my mom’s SUV parked on the road behind me . . .
    But before I could, two lights flashed at me out of the darkness. Headlights. On for a moment. Then off.
    There was another car parked on the Reservoir Road.
    This didn’t seem like a memory now at all. I didn’t feel separated from my younger self. I felt I was my younger self again. I felt I was there, really there, really standing in the dark on the road, expecting to see the person who had killed Alex Hauser come leaping out at me at any moment.
    I stood where I was, uncertain. Did I go toward the headlights and find out who had called me? Or did I do the smart thing and jump in my mom’s car and drive out of there, tires squealing,