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    The Last Thing I Remember
    The Last Thing I Remember
    The Last Thing I Remember
    Ebook264 pages4 hours

    The Last Thing I Remember

    By Andrew Klavan

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    High schooler Charlie West just woke up in a nightmare.

    He’s strapped to a chair. He’s covered in blood and bruises. He hurts all over. And a strange voice outside the door just ordered his death.

    Charlie West is a good kid. The last thing he can remember, he was a normal high-school student doing normal things—working on his homework, practicing karate, daydreaming of becoming an air force pilot, writing a pretty girl’s number on his hand. How long ago was that? And more to the point . . . How is he going to get out of this room alive?

    By calling on his deepest reserves of strength and focus, Charlie manages a desperate escape . . . only to find out that this nightmare isn't ending. There's a whole year of his life that he can't remember—a year in which he was convicted of murdering his best friend and working with terrorists.

    Now, with the police hunting him and a band of killers on his trail, he's got to find the answers to some of the deepest questions there are: Who am I? What do I stand for? And how am I going to stay alive?

    From Edgar Award winning and bestselling author Andrew Klavan comes the first installment of The Homelanders series.

    • Exciting young adult suspense novel
    • Approximately 82,000 words
    • Part of the Homelanders series
      • Book 1: The Last Thing I Remember
      • Book 2: The Long Way Home
      • Book 3: The Truth of the Matter
      • Book 4: The Final Hour
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateJun 7, 2010
    ISBN9781418575755
    The Last Thing I Remember
    Author

    Andrew Klavan

    Andrew Klavan is an award-winning writer, screenwriter, and media commentator. An internationally bestselling novelist and two-time Edgar Award-winner, Klavan is also a contributing editor to City Journal, the magazine of the Manhattan Institute, and the host of a popular podcast on DailyWire.com, The Andrew Klavan Show. His essays and op-eds on politics, religion, movies, and literature have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and elsewhere.

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    Reviews for The Last Thing I Remember

    4/5

    13 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Lots of adventures and a twist.
    • 4/5
      This young adult novel had an interesting premise - sort of a Bourne Identity for the teenaged set. Not bad. Decent enough that I started Book 2 of the series today.
    • 4/5
      Very suspenseful - some parts really had me at the edge of my seat so to speak. I was disappointed that we did not really find out more about what had happened in the year Charlie can't remember. Looking forward to the second book.
    • 4/5
      A quick and thrilling read, Charlie West wakes up embroiled in a literal nightmare. He's a likable character mostly because he's got a streak of integrity a mile wide. We could only wish that more almost 18 year old boys could be this upstanding. I already want to read the sequel to find out more!
    • 3/5
      This book started off really, really good that hooks the reader from page one. Charlie West, 16, wakes up but he's not in the same place he went to bed. As he wakes up, he feels that his arms and legs are bound to a chair, he can't get out. Worse yet, he's been tortured. It seems that he has a lot of information that some very bad people want, but Charlie can't remember anything. He doesn't know who these people are, or why they kidnapped him, or any of the information that the bad guys want. He can't remember. He'll do whatever he had to in order to survive. Sounds like a great plot, and the first part of the book is really good. It hooks the reader in from the first page and we go with Charlie and see how he survives, and tried to piece together who he is and what the men want. Again, that's a great start to the book. This book has great writing in the first half, and great characters and fantastic character development with some really nice plot twists. The problem for me is that we, as the reader, we read over and over and over and over again that how Charlie loves America and is full of patriotism and how Charlie has a solid belief in God. For me, it was over done, almost to the point it was getting on my nerves. I have no problem with Charlie telling other characters how much he loves America, and God, just don't tell us all the time. Mention it once, maybe twice, but that's it. I'd rather if the author spent less time on Charlie's patriotism and his religious beliefs, and more times tellings us about the bad guys who are after Charlie and who Charlie really is. This is a great book to get boys in 6th grade on up hooked on reading. This book has non stop action that will draw them in, and the writing style is simple and straight to the point. Actually, I did like that about the book. Over all, it wasn't a bad read, and I'll look forward to reading the second book in the series.
    • 5/5
      This action packed book is one I believe my students will love. Charlie West wakes up to find himself strapped to a chair. He’s been beaten, tortured and hi has just heard the orders given to kill him. What he doesn’t know is how he got there, who the people are, what they want and most importantly why they want him dead. This story is told through flashbacks and reflects a lot on his karate training. Although he escapes from his captors he must find the answers to all of his questions. I actually received the second book in the series to review and realized I wanted to read the first one before reading the second book. What follows is my review of the second book.
    • 4/5
      “Charlie wakes up in the beginning of the novel in a torture room. His memory is gone, and the last thing he remembers is going to sleep after the best day of his life. He was the king of school when he dazzled his classmates with a karate demonstration and had the girl he’s loved for months agree to go out with him.As Charlie tries to make sense of the situation he soon realizes he’s about to be killed and with a little luck and a little karate he manages to escape….only then when he’s running for his life does Charlie learn of the horrible reality as it crashes down around him. In the midst of the shootouts, spinouts and hand to hand fight scenes do we get the full effect of Jason Bourne meets Shooter in which Charlie faces incredible oppositions and takes us down this non-stop, fast paced action thriller. It grabs your attention with a hero to cheer for and delivers a first person narrative of a strong believable character.
    • 4/5
      Charlie wakes up strapped to a chair. He's in a locked room with no way out but the door. He can't remember how he got there. But he knows that they are coming to kill him.That's how the book starts, and naturally, Charlie finds a way out of the room, or the book would be pretty short. But Charlie is off on a big adventure. Not only does he have to figure out how to get away, but he needs to know who these people are, why they are after him, and what happened to get him into this trouble in the first place. He can remember being at school, hanging out with his friends, his family, his karate demonstration, but he doesn't know how he got to where he is now.I liked this fast-paced book and I liked Charlie. I wasn't quite so crazy about the occasional pro-America stuff, but it didn't keep me from enjoying the book. After all, Charlie is hoping to be a fighter pilot, and there's nothing wrong with loving your country. It just sort of seemed a little heavy-handed. And I liked the spiritual aspect in it, but I wasn't expecting it. Charlie finds some of the answers he's looking for, but it obvious that he has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants to clear his name and get back at the people who are after him. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series. I think this would be a good one for my 13 year old to read. He'd really enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      Talk about first sentences that grab a reader! "Suddenly I woke up strapped to a chair." That's how this book starts, and the action is pretty much non stop after that. 17 year old Charlie West escapes from his initial predicament, and starts to recall tantalizing bits and pieces of what turns out to be an entire year that has gone missing from his memory. Those memories include school, and a girl that he likes, but the reader doesn't get to find out what happened between them. Charlie has no memories that explain why he is strapped to a chair and is about to be killed.THE LAST THING I REMEMBER is the first in a new series called THE HOMELANDERS.
    • 4/5
      A very enthralling beginning, in which Charlie West wakes up strapped to a chair after being tortured. He can't remember how he got there. The last thing he remembers is going to sleep on a normal day. We get flashbacks to that last day as he slowly remembers the details, but he never gets any further than that night. The flashbacks and present scenes are mixed very well, keeping me interested in both settings, but after a while I started to notice some...things.First of all, the writing isn't too great. Andrew Klavan tends to use repetitive structure, to often beginning with 'I'. By the thirtieth page, the story is not exciting enough to get away with dramatic short sentences, either.And then you get to the ending, and you're left with a, "what?" running around in your head. The entire book feels like a buildup to something that doesn't happen. Maybe the second book will finally bring a climax, but this whole novel feels more like a prologue.
    • 2/5
      Waking up in a strange place strapped to a chair with a bleeding body is Charlie West's nightmare. How did he get here and how is he going to get away? An adventure packed first book to the Homelander Series. Too much emphasis on 'God' and 'America' to appeal to New Zealand readers.
    • 5/5
      This book has been billed as "24" for teens. In a way it is. What attracted me to it (as an adult), aside from the author's reputation, is that by today's standards, Charlie West is an unlikely hero. He is not a rebel- he loves his family, his country, his life; he even gets good grades. He is not a brooding loner- he has friends and even a girlfriend. He is strong, physically and mentally. He prays. A lot. Given all of that, how does an author make such a character interesting? By putting him in an impossible situation and seeing what happens. That of course is where Klavan shines as a writer, exploring what makes this character tick, and in a way making the readers question their own personalities. If everything you have and know is stripped away, what is left? What makes you carry on? These are really questions that go well beyond the YA genre, and Klavan deserves a lot of credit for bringing them up under the guise of a simple thriller.

      A couple of warnings. There's a lot of violence for a teen book, which is not unexpected given the subject matter, but it's not as graphic as it could be (cleverly, the torture part happens before the book opens). Also, this definitely qualifies as a conservative book and even borderline Christian fiction, so be warned if that's not your cup of tea. Finally, this is Book One of 4, and it's not self-contained. If you get into the story, don't be disappointed it does not get resolved. The mystery of Charlie's memory loss unfolds over time, intermingled with some pretty awesome action sequences. Be patient and you will be rewarded if you stick with the series till the end.
    • 3/5
      Charlie West, teen black belt, wakes up strapped to a chair, burnt, bruised and confused as the last thing he remembers is going to bed at home. He apparently has been tortured as part of an interrogation and his persecutors are told to kill him. Thus begins the story of his escape from the room alternated with flashbacks to the last day he remembers as he fights and flees throughout this y/a thriller.

      I began this to pre-read it to see if my son would like it (he will once he finishes the series he's reading now) and to see just what a Christian y/a thriller might look like. It gets a 3 because it kept me interested enough to continue even though there was more action and violence than I typically care for in one book. This book is "Christian light" as in no scriptures or real prayers, although the sequel a bit less light.
    • 3/5
      This book is a fast paced page turner.
    • 3/5
      A (young) man wakes up in a cell where he's been tortured and is about to be killed, and the last thing he can recall - he assumes from the day before - is going to sleep after a red-letter day: impressing the entire student body with his karate skills, meeting his love interest, and arguing with a formerly close friend. This is a cool setup for a thriller with a Robert Ludlum pace (albeit this is targeted at a YA audience).Unfortunately, the protagonist is unconvincing, a weird combination of 1950s sanctimony and modern-teen digital multi-tasking. The plot includes segments that smash suspension of disbelief (escaping from gunmen through a sinkhole and network of very narrow caves, when there's no indication the hero has ever been underground before, even in a large cave? Not likely). Plus, there's a real undercurrent of right-wing loopiness in the plot - not just in the conspiracy theory - most thriller conspiracies are actually pretty loopy - but in the apotheosis of Winston Churchill (never give up!) as the hero's lifeline, and the way the narrative takes for granted the virtue of the hero's unexamined religious beliefs. Annoyingly, none of the major questions are answered by the end of the book - apparently, the books in this series are not intended to stand on their own.

    Book preview

    The Last Thing I Remember - Andrew Klavan

    Title Page with Thomas Nelson logo

    © 2009 by Andrew Klavan

    All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

    Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

    Page design by Mandi Cofer.

    Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

    Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

    978-1-4185-7575-5 (e-book)

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Klavan, Andrew.

       The last thing I remember / by Andrew Klavan.

             p. cm. — (The Homelanders ; bk. 1)

       Summary: High school student Charlie West awakens bloody and bruised in a concrete bunker, only to discover that he has lost a year of his life and remembers nothing about escaping from prison after being convicted of murdering his former best friend, or why he is being pursued by both the law and a group of terrorists trying to bring down the government of the United States.

    ISBN 978-1-59554-607-4 (hardcover)

          [1. Amnesia—Fiction. 2. Terrorism—Fiction. 3. Fugitives from justice—Fiction.

          4. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.

          PZ7.K67823Las 2009

          [Fic]—dc22

    2009001857

    09 10 11 12 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

    Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

    THIS BOOK IS FOR JACKSON KLAVAN

    Contents

    PART ONE

    CHAPTER ONE : The Torture Room

    CHAPTER TWO : An Ordinary Day

    CHAPTER THREE : Kill Him

    CHAPTER FOUR : The Word of the Day

    CHAPTER FIVE : My Right Leg

    CHAPTER SIX : One Shot

    CHAPTER SEVEN : My Karate Demonstration

    CHAPTER EIGHT : The Black Square

    CHAPTER NINE : Lunch

    CHAPTER TEN : Leave Me Alone, Winston Churchill

    CHAPTER ELEVEN : The Woods

    CHAPTER TWELVE : Into the Dark

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN : Sensei Mike

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN : Alex

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN : Argument

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN : The Cave

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN : Angeline

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN : Dateline

    CHAPTER NINETEEN : Police

    PART TWO

    CHAPTER TWENTY-Rose

    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE : A Voice in the Crowd

    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO : Radio News

    CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE : Seconds

    CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR : Shelter

    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE : A Cryin the Night

    CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX : Crazy Jane

    CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN : Cans

    CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT : Beth

    CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE : Death Over Indian Canyon

    CHAPTER THIRTY-The Battle for the Bridge

    CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE : To Find the Truth

    READING GROUP GUIDE

    PART ONE

    CHAPTER ONE

    The Torture Room

    Suddenly I woke up strapped to a chair.

    What . . . ? I whispered.

    Dazed, I looked around me. I was in a room with a concrete floor and cinder block walls. A single bare lightbulb hung glaring from a wire above me. Against the wall across from me was a set of white metal drawers. A tray was attached to it. There were instruments on the tray—awful instruments—blades and pincers and something that looked like a miniature version of those acetylene torches welders use. The instruments lay on a white cloth. The cloth was stained with blood.

    The sight of the blood jolted me into full consciousness. I tried to move my arms and legs. I couldn’t. That’s when I saw the straps. One on each wrist holding me to the chair’s metal arms. One on each ankle holding me to its metal legs. And there was blood here too. More blood. On the floor at my feet. On my white shirt, on my black slacks, on my arms. And there were bruises on my arms, dark purple bruises. And there were oozing burn marks on the backs of my hands.

    I hurt. I kind of just realized it all at once. My whole body ached and stung inside and out. My shirt was soaking wet. My skin felt clammy with sweat. My mouth tasted like dirt. I smelled like garbage.

    Have you ever had a nightmare, a really bad one, where you woke up and you could feel your heart hammering against the bed and you couldn’t catch your breath? Then, as you started to understand that the nightmare wasn’t real, that it was all a dream, your heart slowed down again and your breathing got deeper and you relaxed and thought, Whew, that sure seemed real.

    Well, this was exactly the opposite. I opened my eyes expecting to see my bedroom at home, my black-belt certificate, my trophies, my poster of The Lord of the Rings. Instead, I was in what should have been a nightmare, but wasn’t. It was real. And with every second, my heart beat harder. My breath came shorter. Panic flared up in me like a living flame.

    Where was I? Where was my room? Where were my parents? What was happening to me? How did I get here? Terrified, I racked my brain, trying to think, trying to figure it out, asking myself in the depths of my confusion and fear: what was the last thing I remembered . . . ?

    CHAPTER TWO

    An Ordinary Day

    An ordinary day. That’s it. An ordinary September day. That’s all there was before the insanity began.

    That night—that last night—I was in my room, working on my homework as usual. I had a history paper due. What Is the Best Form of Government? A classic Mr. Sherman assignment. Mr. Sherman liked to pretend he was some kind of radical. He wanted us to question our assumptions and think outside the box. It never seemed to occur to him that sometimes the simple, most obvious answer might be the right one. What Is the Best Form of Government? I wanted to title my paper, Constitutional Democracy, You Doofus, What Do You Think? But somehow I figured that might not be the best way to get a good grade.

    So as ten o’clock rolled around, I was sitting at my computer, working on my arguments. About how people had the right to be free and choose their own leaders. About how leaders who thought they should be in charge no matter what, who thought they had all the answers or some super-duper system that was going to make things fair and perfect for everyone—people like kings and dictators and Communists—always wound up messing their countries up in the end, telling everyone what to say and do and murdering the people who didn’t fit in with the way they wanted to run things.

    It was hard work—and it didn’t help that, at the same time I was polishing my deathless prose, I had Josh Lerner—GalaxyMaster, as he calls himself online—on the Instant Messenger. GalaxyMaster was watching an ancient episode of Star Trek on YouTube and sending me a message every time something cool or stupid happened. Which was, like, every two seconds. And which I could see for myself anyway because I had the same episode running on the upper right-hand corner of my computer, even though I’d turned the sound down low so I could listen to George Strait piping out of my iPod dock.

    GalaxyMaster: look at that rock! sooooo papermachier!

    BBelt1: i know josh. im watching it.

    GalaxyMaster: Ooooo its so heavy. i cant lift it. roflmayo!

    BBelt1: josh I can c it.

    GalaxyMaster: that klingon mask is so fake!

    GalaxyMaster could be kind of a dork sometimes. Plus he was making it tough for me to hold up my end of the conversation with Rick Donnelly, who was on my headset. I’d called him to tell him about the argument I’d had that evening with Alex Hauser, but then we’d gotten to talking about the history paper. Rick had Sherman for history too, and he was totally aware of Sherman’s high level of doofy-os-itude. But Rick was the kind of guy who was always trying to play the angles, always trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear. His paper made the argument that Communism was theoretically the best form of government, but it just hadn’t been done right yet.

    That’s nuts, I told him. They ought to have a sign outside those countries, like at McDonald’s or something: ‘Communism: Over 100 Million Murdered.’

    Hey, said Rick. "All I know is that with Sherman, radicalism is where the As are. Follow the grades, my son. Follow the grades."

    I laughed and shook my head and went on writing about the joys of liberty.

    So that, basically, was me—just before ten on an ordinary Wednesday night in September. Writing my paper and IMing with Josh and talking with Rick and watching YouTube and listening to tunes on my iPod dock—and starting to fade out after a long, long day.

    Then the clock in the living room downstairs chimed the hour. I could hear it through the floor. And about a nanosecond later, my mother—with a predictability that sometimes made me wonder if she were really some kind of automated device—called from the bottom of the stairs:

    Charlie. Ten o’clock. Time to get ready for bed. I sighed. To my shame, I had the earliest school-night bedtime of any just-turned-seventeen-year-old I knew, and except in dire circumstances, it was nonnegotiable.

    Hey, I gotta shut down, I said to Rick.

    You’re such a wuss.

    You’re a Commie.

    If it’ll get me into college.

    See you in the a.m. I clicked off and typed into my IM:

    BBelt1: g2g.

    GalaxyMaster: wuss.

    BBelt1: nerd.

    GalaxyMaster: cya.

    BBelt1: bye!

    Then I saved my paper into Sherman’s online homework file and shut down the computer.

    Ten minutes later, I was lying in bed, paging through the latest issue of Black Belt magazine.

    Five minutes after that, I laid the magazine on my bedside table. I reached up for the switch of the reading lamp set in the wall above me. My eyes went around the room one last time, from the computer to the tournament trophies on my shelves to the black-belt certificate framed on my wall to the movie poster of The Lord of the Rings. Finally, I looked at the back of my hand. There was a number written on it in black marker. That made me smile to myself.

    Then I snapped the light off. I said a quick goodnight prayer.

    In sixty seconds, I was sound asleep.

    CHAPTER THREE

    Kill Him

    Then, all at once, I woke up. There, in that bare, terrible room. Strapped to that chair. Hurt and helpless. With the awful instruments on the tray winking and glinting in the light from the single bare bulb dangling above.

    How had it happened? Had I been kidnapped from my bed? Why? Who would’ve taken me? Who would want to hurt me? I was just a regular kid.

    In my first panic, I struggled wildly, tying to break free of the straps. It was no good. They were made of some kind of canvas, strong. And the chair was bolted to the floor. I couldn’t budge it. I thrashed and pulled, trying to rip myself out of the chair or to rip the chair out of the floor by main strength. Finally, I slumped, out of breath, exhausted.

    The next moment, I heard voices. I tensed. I lifted my head, held still, listened. They were men’s voices, murmuring, right outside the room, right outside the metal door.

    My first instinct was to shout to them, to scream for help. But something stopped me. If I was here, someone had put me here. If I was hurt, someone had hurt me. Someone had strapped me in this chair. Someone had used those instruments on my flesh. The odds that the men outside that door were my friends seemed very slim.

    So I kept my mouth shut. I listened to the low voices, straining with all my might to make out what they were saying over the pounding of my own pulse.

    . . . Homelander One, said one voice.

    A second voice said something I couldn’t hear.

    Then the first voice said, We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.

    When the second voice answered, I could only make out part of it: . . . two more days . . . can send Orton . . . knows the bridge as well as West.

    West. That was me. Charlie West. What were they talking about? What bridge? I didn’t know about any bridge.

    The flame of panic roared through me again. Without thinking, I renewed my struggles. Trying to pull my arms up, trying to wrestle my body free, trying to tilt the chair one way or the other. Useless, all of it.

    Tears came into my eyes—tears of terror and frustration. This couldn’t be happening. It didn’t make any sense. Where were my mom and dad? Where was my life? Where was everything? It had to be a nightmare. It had to be.

    Now there were footsteps in the hall outside. Someone new was approaching.

    Here’s Waylon, the second voice said.

    The footsteps stopped outside the door. The first voice spoke again—louder this time, clearer, more formal than before. It was the voice of a man speaking to his superior. It was easier for me to make out the words.

    Did you reach Prince? the voice said.

    The new voice answered—the voice of authority. Waylon. It sounded like an American name, but the voice had a thick foreign accent of some kind.

    I reached him. I told him everything.

    We did exactly what he said. Exactly what he told us, the first voice went on. I could hear his fear, his fear of what Prince might do to him if he failed.

    The kid may be telling the truth. You have to consider that, said the second voice. I could tell he was frightened too.

    Waylon answered them with a voice that was ironic and smooth. He was enjoying their fear. I could hear it. Don’t worry. Prince understands. He doesn’t hold you responsible. But whatever the truth is, the West boy is useless to us now.

    I was straining so hard to hear that my body had gone rigid, my head leaning toward the door, my neck stretching out, my hands pulling hard against the straps.

    But for another second or two, there was nothing. Only the silence and my trembling breath, my wildly beating heart.

    Then in the same smooth, cool, ironic voice, Waylon said softly, Kill him.

    CHAPTER FOUR

    The Word of the Day

    I’ve heard that when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes in an instant. That’s not what happened to me. I was too wild with panic, too crazy with confusion to remember my whole life. Instead, my brain was desperately trying to grab hold of something— of anything—anything that made some kind of sense, that offered some kind of explanation for this sudden madness, this pain and terror. But there was nothing, nothing that explained it, nothing I could hold on to. I felt as if I were slipping down a sheer wall of ice, slipping down and down and down into emptiness, my fingers scrabbling for even the smallest handhold in the smooth, unbroken surface.

    Eyes wide, body pulling wildly and uselessly against the straps, my mind raced back over that last day, the last day I remembered, hours flashing through my brain in a single second as I went back to before I had gone to bed that night, before I had finished writing my history paper, before the argument with Alex, back and back to the beginning of the morning . . .

    The alarm clock had gone off at 7:00 a.m., a pounding bass and a wild guitar blasting out of the iPod dock. I reached out sleepily and felt for the off switch. Hit it and sank back into a half doze. Then, exactly ten minutes later by the digital numbers on the clock, my mother’s voice reached me from the bottom of the stairs.

    Charlie! It’s seven o’clock! Time to get ready for school!

    I groaned and rolled over, swinging my feet to the floor, sitting up on the edge of the mattress before I’d even opened my eyes. When I could, I stood up. I staggered out of my room and directly into the bathroom next door.

    I assembled myself. Showered the bod. Brushed the teeth. Shaved the beard, which still sprouted only in patches on my cheeks, chin, and neck. Viewed the finished product in the mirror. Not bad. Tall enough—edging up toward six feet. Slim but with good shoulders, and a lot of muscle def from all my workouts. The face? I don’t know. Presentable, I guess. Lean, serious, with a mop of brown hair spilling into it. Brown eyes. I’m good with the eyes. I try to keep them honest, you know. I try to make it so they’re not afraid to look straight at anyone.

    I went back to my room to get dressed. But before I started, I tore off the page of my desk calendar. It was a Word of the Day calendar, and I liked to read the new word and memorize it while I put my clothes on.

    Today’s word: timorous. Timid, fearful, prone to be apprehensive.

    Timorous. That was a good one. It was the perfect word to describe my mother.

    Now don’t get me wrong. Mom was a pretty good mom, all in all. There were a couple of times in my life when she even approached Mom Greatness. She was just . . . timorous. Timid, fearful. Prone to be apprehensive. As in frightened out of her wits about every little thing.

    Are you feeling all right? You don’t look good. Do you have a fever? Wash your hands after you touch that or you’ll get sick. Don’t walk on the road after six, the cars can’t see you. Don’t go into that section of town. Put on your jacket, you’ll catch cold. On and on and on. When I rode my bike, she was afraid a car would hit me. When I drove the car, she was afraid I’d hit another car. Oh, and my karate— she hated that. If she’d had her way, I would have had to wear a full set of metal armor before going to practice. In fact, if she really had her way, I would’ve worn a full set of metal armor and then stayed home.

    When I came down to breakfast that morning, she was turning a couple of fried eggs in a pan. As I walked to the kitchen table, passing about two full feet behind her, she said, Careful, it’s hot.

    Dad was at the table already, reading the paper. The Word of the Day for Dad would have to be: oblivious, meaning unmindful, unconscious, unaware. He wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he could be pretty cool, pretty smart about things. But he was an engineer for a corporation that manufactured a lot of the secondary systems that go into airplanes—guidance and communication systems and things like that. And sometimes—­times like now—when he was involved in some important project, his mind got occupied and it took a lot to get his attention. You basically had to win first prize at a karate tournament or get the Best Grade Point Average of the Year award or wreck the car or set the house on fire before he even realized you were there. Otherwise: oblivious. Unmindful, unconscious, unaware.

    And finally: overwrought would have to be the Word of the Day for Amy, my older sister by one year. Overwrought—extremely or excessively excited or agitated. Emo to the extremo, in other words. In fact, as I poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down next to my dad, I could already hear her shouting from the door of her room down the hall: Mo-om! I just don’t have any others! Whatever that meant. Something about clothes, probably. Whatever: the Amy crisis of the day. Overwrought.

    Ah, the cry of the wild older sister in her natural habitat, I muttered, rooting through the newspaper for the sports page.

    Hush, Mom said—but she laughed a little as she said it. She put a plate of eggs and toast in front of me and hurried off to deal with Amy before the poor child got so full of girlish anxiety that she

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