One week has passed since the explosion. Since then, I've spent every day answering questions. Sometimes it's the asking, sometimes it's Homeland Security, sometimes the port police or the Seattle police. Once it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Mr. Watts is always with me, but there's nothing that anybody asks that I don't answer. I'm not hiding anything; I'll answer questions for as long as they want to ask.
The FBI found the black Mercedes in the Shilshole marina parking lot. Inside were a bunch of maps of Puget Sound and of Seattle. The Ballard Locks, the Aurora Bridge, the ferry routes—all of them were circled in red. But so were the Space Needle and Safeco Field and the University of Washington, so nobody is really sure what they were trying to blow up. Mr. Watts says they probably didn't care, that they just wanted to blow up something and kill a lot of people. But the only person they killed, beside themselves, was my dad.
There was a memorial service for my dad three nights ago. A huge crowd of people filled Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church. I sat in the front row with Melissa and her father and mother. As people filed in, I couldn't keep myself from looking around, hoping to see my own mother. She must have heard what had happened; it had been in the newspapers and on television. I had a small hope that she might actually be in the church, be close to me, but be afraid to talk to me. I wanted her to know that it was all right, that she could talk to me, that I didn't hate her. Once in a while, I'd catch a glimpse of a woman who looked something like my mother, and my heart would start to pound, and then I'd look closer and see it wasn't her.
I was glad when a female minister finally stepped to the podium and said a prayer. After she finished, men I didn't know spoke about how good a soldier my father had been in Kuwait, and how he had died a soldier and a hero. Melissa cried and her mother cried and even Mr. Watts cried. Around us complete strangers cried. But I didn't. Even after all the speeches at the memorial service, even after seeing the coffin with the American flag draped over it, I didn't cry. I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't.
I've been staying at Melissa's house all this time. When her father suggested I move in that first night, I told him no. "Where else can you stay?" he asked, and I didn't have an answer. I sleep in a guest bedroom that's bigger than the Tiny Dancer.
Yesterday the FBI was done with me at three o'clock, which was earlier than they've ever been done with me before. The questioning was finally coming to an end, though one agent told me they might be talking to me off and on for years to come.
"When are they going to arrest me?" I asked Melissa's dad once we were alone.
"What?" he said.
"When are they going to arrest me?" I repeated. "I know I broke the law; I know I helped terrorists; I know I'm going to jail."
He shook his head. "I've worked it out with Mr. Benjamin. As long as you cooperate, nobody is going to arrest you. You were a pawn in all this; the FBI knows that and so do the police. Your father died a hero. His picture was on the front page of all newspapers around the world. There's no way the government is going to put you in prison."
"But you don't understand, Mr. Watts," I said. "I have to go to jail. I have to make up for what I did."
He folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward. "You're right, Chance. You do have to make up for what you've done. But serving time is not the only way to do that. And it's not close to being the best way."
"Then what is the best way?"
He shook his head. "You'll have to find that out for yourself."
He drove me to his house and dropped me off. "I've got to get in to work," he said. "Someone will probably be home. If not, there's a key under the mat. Just let yourself in."
I walked up the long driveway and knocked on the door. Melissa answered. I'd been sleeping in her house for a week, but this was the first time I'd been alone with her. She hugged me, and I held her close. Then she led me by the hand into her living room and had me sit down next to her on the sofa. For a while, neither of us said anything. It was almost as if we didn't know each other.
"What are you going to do now, Chance?"
"What do you mean?" I said.
"I mean when all this settles down. What are you going to do?"
"I guess I'll finish the school year somehow," I said. "After that, I really don't know."
"Listen. I've got it all figured out. I've already talked to my mom and dad about this, and they are one hundred percent behind it."
"Behind what, Melissa?"
"They want you to stay here, with us, indefinitely."
"Melissa—"
"Hear me out," she said. "My brothers are both away at college. They only come home for a week now and then, and you can see how big our house is. I'll be gone in the fall, so my mom and dad aren't worried that we're going to become secret lovers or anything like that. You could go to Shoreline Community College. My parents will pay the tuition. After a couple of years, you could transfer to the University of Washington or wherever you want to go."
I shook my head. "I can't do that, Melissa."
"Why not?"
"I just can't."
"At least think about it, OK? Do that much."
***
After dinner, her mother and father took me out into the living room and said basically the same things to me, only in a different way. "Your father and I were best friends once," Melissa's dad said. "He'd look after Melissa if anything happened to me. You know he would. So let me look after you."
I started to object, but Melissa's mother gently put her hand over my mouth. "Don't say anything now, Chance," she said softly. "Think about it. Think about it for as long as you want. Everything has been happening so fast. There's no hurry at all."
I spent most of last night wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Melissa's parents meant every word they said; I knew that. They wanted me to stay. And it made sense, in a fairy-tale sort of way. They would take me into their magic house and make me a part of their magic family. I could go to college, maybe become a lawyer, be like a third son to them. They would give me Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays, and they wouldn't even notice all that they were giving me. It was just the way they lived.
But that was what stopped me. It was the way they lived. It wasn't the way I lived. If I moved into Melissa's house, their life would become my life. The Tiny Dancer, my dad, my mom—all that had happened might become unreal—like a story a stranger tells you about something that happened to someone else. But it hadn't happened to someone else—it had happened to me. It was my life—both good and bad—and nothing was going to take it away from me.
I cried for my dad then. For the first time ever, I cried for him. Because rocking back and forth on a boat headed nowhere wasn't the life he'd wanted. Now he was dead, and he'd never get to live that life. I don't know whether the drinking took it from him, or whether he drank because his life had gotten away from him. I'll never know, just like I'll never know why my mother hasn't come back to be with me, not even now, with my dad dead. But I do know my life isn't getting away from me.
It's just before seven in the morning. I'm sitting in Melissa's solarium looking out over Puget Sound. The sunlight is on the Olympic Mountains; some early sailors are out on the water. I can hear Melissa downstairs talking to her mother and father. They're probably talking about me.
In a few minutes I'll have to tell them. After that, I'll go to the bus stop and take the number 75 out to Northgate and enlist in the army.
Maybe enlisting is a big mistake, just like Melissa and her parents and Kim Lawton and everyone else thinks. Maybe it isn't. In a way it doesn't matter. Because if it is a mistake, when the time comes I'll do something else. One thing I'm sure of—I am going somewhere someday. I'm going for myself, and I'm going for my dad, too.