I Am Number Four

Mr. Harris sits at his desk when I enter the office. He is smiling in a way that terrifies me, the same prideful smile that he had on the day he pulled Mark from class to do the interview.

“Sit down,” he says. I sit. “So, is it true?” he asks. He glances at his computer screen, then he looks back at me.

“Is what true?”

On his desk there is an envelope with my name handwritten in black ink. He sees me looking at it.

“Oh yes, this was faxed to you about half an hour ago.”

He picks the envelope up and tosses it to me. I catch it.

“What is it?” I ask.

“No idea. My secretary sealed it in the envelope as soon as it arrived.”

Several things happen at once. I open the envelope and remove its contents. Two sheets of paper. The top is a cover page with my name on it and “CONFIDENTIAL” written in large black letters. I shuffle it behind the second sheet. A single sentence written in all capitals. No name. Just four black words on a white canvas.

“So, Mr. Smith, is it true? Did you run into that burning house to save Sarah Hart and those dogs?” Mr.

Harris asks. Blood rushes to my face. I look up. He turns his computer monitor towards me so that I can read the screen. It’s the blog affiliated with theParadise Gazette . I don’t need to look at the name of the author to know who has written it. The title is more than enough.

THEJAMESHOUSEFIRE: THEUNTOLDSTORY My breath catches in my throat. My heart races. The world stops, or at least it seems to. I feel dead inside. I look back down at the sheet of paper I’m holding. White paper, smooth in my fingertips. It reads: ARE YOU NUMBER 4?

Both sheets fall from my hands, drift away, and float to the floor, where they lie motionless.I don’t understand, I think.How can this be?

“So is it?” Mr. Harris asks.

My mouth drops open. Mr. Harris is smiling, proud, happy. But it’s not him that I see. It’s what’s behind him, seen through the windows of his office. A blur of red coming around the corner, moving faster than what is normal, than what is safe. The squeal of tires as it zips into the lot. The pickup truck throwing gravel as it makes a second turn. Henri leaning over the wheel like some crazed maniac. He hits the brakes so forcefully that his whole body jerks and the truck comes screeching to a stop.

I close my eyes.

I place my head in my hands.

Through the window I hear the truck door open. I hear it close.

Henri will be in this office within the minute.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“ARE YOU OKAY, MR. SMITH?” THE PRINCIPALasks. I look up at him. He attempts his best look of concern, a look that lasts only a second before the toothy grin returns to his face.

“No, Mr. Harris,” I say. “I’m not okay.”

I pick the sheet up off the floor. I read it again. Where did it come from? Are they merely screwing with us now? There is no phone number or address, no name. Nothing but four words and a question mark. I look up and out the window. Henri’s truck is parked, fumes rising from the exhaust. In and out as quickly as he can. I look back at the computer screen. The article was posted at 11:59 a.m., almost two hours ago. I’m amazed it took Henri this long to arrive. A sense of vertigo seeps in. I feel myself sway.

“Do you need the nurse?” Mr. Harris asks.

The nurse,I think.No, I don’t need the nurse. The nurse’s station is the room beside the home economics kitchen.What I need, Mr. Harris, is to go back there, fifteen minutes ago, before the hall monitor arrived.

Sarah must have the pudding on the stove by now. I wonder if it’s boiling yet. Is she looking towards the door, waiting for me to return?

The faint echo of the school doors slamming shut reaches the principal’s office. Fifteen seconds until Henri is here. Then to his truck. Then home. Then where? To Maine? Missouri? Canada? A different school, a new begi

I haven’t slept in almost thirty hours and only now do I feel the exhaustion. But then something else enters with it, and in that split second between instinct and action, the reality that I’m going away forever without the chance to say good-bye is suddenly too much to bear. My eyes narrow, my face twists in agony, and—without thinking, without truly knowing what it is that I’m doing—I lunge over Mr. Harris’s desk and crash through the plate-glass window, which shatters into a million little pieces behind me. A scream of shock follows.

My feet land in the outside grass. I turn right and run across the schoolyard, the classrooms passing in a blur to my right, across the lot and into the woods that lie beyond the baseball field. There are cuts on my forehead and left elbow from the glass. My lungs are burning. The hell with the pain. I keep going, the sheet of paper still in my right hand. I shove it into my pocket. Why would the Mogadorians send a fax?

Wouldn’t they just show up? That is their main advantage, to arrive unexpectedly, without warning. The benefit of surprise.

I take a hard left in the middle of the woods, weaving in and out of the forest’s density until it ends and a field begins. Cows chewing cud watch with blank eyes as I streak past. I beat Henri to the house. Bernie Kosar is nowhere to be seen. I burst through the door and stop dead in my tracks. My breath catches in my throat. At the kitchen table, in front of Henri’s open laptop, sits a person I immediately think is one of them. They’ve beat me here, have worked it out so that I am alone, without Henri. The person turns around and I clench my hands into fists and am ready to fight.

But it’s Mark James.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on,” he says, a look of fright evident in his eyes. “Who the hellare you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” he says, pointing to the computer screen.

I walk to him, but I don’t look at the screen, my eyes instead focusing on the white sheet of paper sitting beside the computer. It’s an exact replica of the sheet in my pocket except for the paper that it’s printed on, which is thicker than the fax. And then I notice something else. At the bottom of Henri’s, in very small handwriting, is a phone number. Surely they can’t expect us to call? “Yes, it’s me, Number Four. I am here waiting for you. We’ve been ru

“Is this yours?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “But it was delivered by UPS at the same time that I got here. Your dad read it as I showed him the video, and then he sprinted out of the house.”

“What video?” I ask.

“Watch,” he says.

I look at the computer and see that he’s pulled up YouTube. He presses the play button. It’s a grainy video, of poor quality as though it has been shot on somebody’s cell phone. I recognize his house immediately, the front of which is in flames. The camera is shaky, but through it can be heard the dogs bark and the filtered gasps throughout the crowd. Then the person begins walking away from the crowd, to the side of the house, and eventually to the back. The camera zooms in to the rear window where the bark is coming from. The bark stops and I close my eyes because I know what is coming. About twenty seconds pass, and in the moment that I fly through the window with Sarah in one arm and the dog in the other, Mark hits the pause button on the video. The camera is zoomed in, and our faces are unmistakable.

“Who are you?” Mark asks.

I ignore his question, instead ask one of my own: “Who took this?”

“I have no idea,” he answers.

The gravel pops beneath the truck tires in the front of the house as Henri pulls in. I stand straight and my first instinct is to run, get out of the house and get back to the school, where I know Sarah will be staying late to develop photos—until her driver’s test at four thirty. Her face is just as obvious as mine is in that video, which puts her in as much danger as me. But something keeps me from fleeing, and I instead move around to the other side of the table and wait. The truck door slams shut. Henri walks into the house five seconds later, Bernie Kosar dashing in ahead of him.