Chapter Thirteen

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, forgotten." Neil Gaiman

Memory, I've decided, is a very odd thing. To me, looking back at an event that is neatly finished (or seems neatly finished, you have no idea when a past event will come back to haunt you in new, interesting ways), they seem to have happened to someone else.

They are as intangible as the steam rising off a coffee cup, memories. They flit just outside of my grasp, as I try to remember exactly how that felt, or how that tasted, or smelt. Some memories are easy to relive. Unfortunately, most of these are the sorts of memories that set my cheeks on fire and give my stomach a turn, moments that indeed prove time-travel is possible, even if it is only navigable by embarrassment. Having my English teacher rip apart my essay in front of my entire class (in gross detail) is one of the worst I can recall. Shame floods back into my cheeks, and suddenly I am in sixth grade…. I remember my palms sweating and the way tears blurred, threatening to spill over.

But the most traumatic of memories, my time with them, seems like a dream. Another person's tale of adventure. I'm not sure I could act in the same way if I were in the same position again. Sometimes my calm, and my complete irrationality, seem very unlike me. I know at least one person who thinks of memories in a different way, but he is an irregular case, at best.

At worst, he's a lunatic with no regard to other's people's feelings. Not like someone with a track record like Toad's grew up in a household of loving, caring, share-your-feelings-types. In fact, of what he's told me, he never had a family at all. Betrayal wasn't foreign to Toad. He expected others to learn life wasn't fair, just how he'd learned.

"The Sentinel project was scrapped." He informed me. Some of the greatest words I thought I'd ever hear. But something about the tone of his voice, boredom, perhaps, told me this wasn't the end of the story. I was then told that my daddy hadn't been the one to save me.

In fact, he had been perfectly ready to sacrifice me for the good of the project. It was a group of government officials, who hadn't been totally sold with the Sentinel idea in the first place, that had scrapped it.

A group of people that didn't know me. Hadn't heard my first words, or seen my first steps. They hadn't taught me how to read, they hadn't received birthday cards from me, all hand drawn, since I was the age of three, or seen my first ballet recital. And yet, they all valued my life more than my father did. This was real betrayal.

With a resolve that I still admire, I looked up, and asked, "So. What now?" he responded with a slight look of surprise, and an even stranger hint of approval.

"I guess I take yeh back t'school." He shrugged, observing me like a rather interesting worm under glass.

"Right. How much school did you guys make me miss then?" I asked, too numbed to react, to talk about anything but the mundane. He paused, thinking about it.

"I'd say…a month, give or take a few days." A month. Absolutely surreal. An entire month. A measly month.

"Fantastic." I said. "Well. It's my senior year, anyway. They probably won't have realized I've been gone."

And to some effect, this was true. My grand journey, my dream, came to such an anti-climactic end. Toad brought me back to that tree-lined walk, and disappeared again. All of them flew out of my life, simply as that. My dull life took up right where it had left off. I don't think I've ever been so desperately alone as I did then.

That was, until late that night. After the police examinations, after being personally interviewed by what felt like every reporter on earth, and every student on campus, after having a dozen therapists' cards stuffed into an unyielding hand…after all the noise and the activity that passed numbly by my eyes and ears…

After all that, I went to take off my school issue sweater, and found something strange in the pocket. A smooth, rectangular something. A cell phone, unremarkable in every way. I turned it on, and found a number I had never seen before on speed-dial.

It took me several months to get the gall to call that number.

I'm not going to say this story has a fairy-tale ending. My father never makes an attempt to apologize, and I never make an attempt to contact him again. I don't suddenly develop mutant powers, and find I'm one of the great legends that I've read about and worshiped. I don't find a new, loving family with my kidnappers. I don't even finish my senior year of high school for another two semesters.

What I do find something that is oddly reminiscent of a friend. A dangerous friend, sure. It's not exactly safe to get into arguments with Toad, even though he's getting loads better at controlling his temper…but still, I tend to look forward to each time he comes to visit me on a brand new campus.

In the end, looking back at it all, I don't think it's possible to determine if someone is good or evil, hero or villain. Even the most revered people today, and throughout history, have a dark side. And even the most contemptible people have a streak of goodness. The problem is, most people never bother to look.