Restart by Gordon Korman
I leave the house and step into a beehive of activity. Boxes and furniture are scattered all over the lawn next door. Four big guys are loading everything into a moving truck. That’s right—the Tottenhams are moving today. Supposedly, they’re really nice neighbors who were great to Johnny and me growing up. Mom is sad that they’re moving. I have no clue, of course. When you’ve got amnesia, it’s hard enough to relearn the important people in your life. You tend to lose the crowd on the fringes.
I’m cutting across the grass in the direction of Brendan’s when two of the movers step out the front door carrying a large framed painting. I gasp and, for a second, forget to breathe.
It’s her!
The little girl in the blue dress trimmed in white lace—my only memory that stuck with me through the accident! I think about the hours I spent agonizing over that image—where it came from, and whether I might have hallucinated the whole thing. But no, here she is, the same red ribbon in her blond hair. I see details that aren’t in my memory—like she’s standing in a garden surrounded by flowers, and there’s a little watering can in her hand.
I didn’t imagine her at all. I remembered her from the painting in my neighbors’ house!
I run over to Mrs. Tottenham, who is wringing her hands over the handling of a carton marked SUPERFRAGILE!!!
“That painting!” I exclaim, my voice hoarse. “Did you ever show it to me?”
“Oh, hello, Chase.” She chuckles. “That’s just a reproduction, of course. An original Renoir would be worth tens of millions of dollars.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say breathlessly. “But why do I know it? Did I ever see it in your place?”
“I don’t think so, dear,” she tells me. “It was hanging in the upstairs solarium.”
I follow her pointing finger to the glassed-in sunroom on the second floor of the house. So I didn’t see it. But I did! How else could it be the only image to make the trip through my shattered memory?
My eyes travel from the Tottenham home to ours next door. Could I have looked inside their solarium from one of our upstairs windows? No way. The entrance to our house is around the corner, facing away from theirs. Our dormer is in front. That sunroom faces nothing but a chimney and some sloped shingles. The only way to see that painting from our place would be to climb to the top of our roof and peer over the peak down into the huge glass window.
And suddenly, I just know. I run back inside, tear up the stairs to my bedroom, and step out onto the perch that was so much a part of my old life. I start to climb, my rubber-soled sneakers clinging to the rough shingles. The dormer, which houses my room, is beside me. But that leaves a sloped path about three feet wide, leading straight up to the top.
As comfortable as I am on the section of roof right outside my window, the steep slog to the peak is another ballgame. The grade is sharp, and the higher I go, the clearer the image of exactly what must have happened over the summer becomes—and how far I must have fallen. The ground seems so distant it should be in another zip code. I’m amazed I didn’t dash my brains out on the grass.
I get on my hands and knees, and my ascent becomes a crawl. I feel a little more secure this way, especially as I near the apex, where I can use my right arm to cling to the dormer. I’m pretty scared, but I’m even more determined to get up there. For me to remember the little girl in blue, she must have been the last thing I saw before the accident. That makes sense, since the roof is the only place I could have seen her from. I can’t explain it, but I’m positive the key to what happened to me lies a few feet ahead.
I stretch out my arm, get a grip on the top of the A-frame, and haul myself up to gaze down at the Tottenhams’ house. There it is, the floor-to-ceiling window of the sunroom. I can even make out the large faded rectangle on the wall where the picture must have hung.
Okay, I think, this is where I was when I fell. But it still doesn’t answer the big question: Why did I come up here? Was I spying on the Tottenhams in their sunroom? I was rotten enough. But why would I care what they were doing? Besides, according to Mom, we were friends. I could have just knocked on their door. Why bother to climb halfway to the moon?
Frustration wells up in me, mingling with my disappointment. So the little girl in the blue dress tells me where I fell from, but that’s it.
As I inch my way back from the peak, I extend my right arm, steadying myself against the cedar shakes on the side of the dormer. No sense repeating my swan dive off the roof, although it’s no more than I deserve. I almost slip as one of the shakes pulls away. A terrified gasp escapes me as I slide a little before stopping my descent with my feet. I hang on like a fly to a wall, while the racing of my pulse returns to normal.
That’s when I catch a glimpse of blue behind the dull brown of the loose shake. There’s something back there, wedged in behind the loose wood. I know what it is even before I reach for it.
My hand closes on the silky blue ribbon, and as I draw it out, I feel the weight of the military decoration attached to it. The gold five-pointed star catches briefly on some insulation. And there it is, Mr. Solway’s Medal of Honor—stolen, hidden, forgotten, and discovered again.
Then, as if finding the medal has unclogged a drain, the memory of my accident pours back into me. It starts at the apex of the roof, with me gloating over the brilliance of my hiding place, while peering down through the sunroom window at Mr. Tottenham next door. He’s in the lotus position on the floor, performing awkward yoga in front of the painting of the girl in blue. That’s what does me in—the hilarious sight of my overweight neighbor twisted into a pretzel, looking like a giant mutant lemon in his skintight fluorescent yellow workout suit.
I let go for just a second, reaching for my phone to get a picture of this one-man comedy routine. And the next thing I know, I’m skidding down the roof, the rectangular pattern of the shingles becoming a blur as I pick up speed.
I claw madly at the slope, desperate for a handhold, a foothold—anything to stop my descent. It’s no use. My momentum is too much. I’m falling.
When I hit the eaves I flip over a little, giving me a terrifying view of the yard as it screams up to meet me. I know dizzying acceleration, and—
I brace for impact, but the memory ends there. I don’t have to hit the ground a second time.
So that’s how it happened—the mishap that turned my entire life upside down and almost killed me. Serves me right for snooping on poor Mr. Tottenham. How is it my business if he wants to do yoga in form-fitting spandex? But that was the old Chase. Everything was his business, because he said it was.
What was I planning to do with that picture if I’d managed to get the phone out of my pocket? Show Aaron and Bear and the football team? Post it on Facebook? Print up fifty copies and plaster them all over town?
I sigh. Who knows why that Chase did what he did? I should probably just be grateful I don’t have to be him anymore.
The medal clutched tightly in my palm, I climb down gingerly, careful to keep both hands and feet on the roof at all times. My mind is whirling. Brendan’s house will just have to wait. Nothing there can be as important as returning this to its rightful owner. I have to see Mr. Solway.
Near the eaves, I slide on my butt to my window and throw a leg over the sill.
“Chase?”
Uh-oh. Mom.
“You promised you wouldn’t go out on the roof ever again. Do I have to nail your window shut—?”
I just blow past her. “Sorry, Mom,” I toss over my shoulder. “Gotta get to Portland Street.”
“I’m not finished yelling at you yet! Have you forgotten what happened to you last summer? Do you have amnesia about the amnesia?”
I run down the stairs, calling, “I’ll explain later.” In the kitchen, I snatch a soft dish towel off the drying rack and wrap it around the medal. I jam it in my pocket and blast out the door.
My black eye doesn’t hurt anymore, although I look like I lost a game of chicken with an Amtrak train.
I’m the only one in my family who finds the changing colors around my eye socket so intriguing. In a weird way, it’s easier on me. If I’m sick of looking at myself, all I have to do is stay away from mirrors. My parents don’t have that option. When they see my black eye—in any of its stages of evolution—they’re stricken with guilt.
“Maybe it was the wrong decision to bring you home,” my father reflects sadly.
“Of course it wasn’t wrong,” I try to assure them. “I hated Melton.”
“But aren’t you afraid that”—my mother lets out a short wheezing sob in C sharp—“it might be starting up again?”
Afraid? Sure I am. When Chase, Aaron, and Bear were all over me last year, it was painful, humiliating, and downright scary. If you can’t even ride your bike without a lacrosse stick sailing out of nowhere and sending you flying, life becomes impossible. You know it’s not your fault; you know those guys are idiots. And yet you can’t help thinking you somehow deserve it; that you might be just a teeny bit less worthy than everybody else. After all, how come no one is picking on any of them?
But as worried as I am about all that, I think what bothers me the most is how wrong I was about Chase. I honestly believed he’d changed. I was even starting to like the guy. It goes to show how mistaken a person can be.
My parents’ reaction is bad enough. My sister’s is off the chain. Every change in the bruise topography of my face launches her into a new revenge fantasy about what she would do to Chase “if I were in charge of the world.” Some of these are so brutal and, in some cases, so downright gross, that I have to cut her off.
“Come on, Shosh!” I exclaim as the two of us head for Brendan’s house on Sunday morning. “Listen to yourself. Like you’d ever put another human being through a wood chipper!”
“I never said another human being,” she replies evenly. “I said Alpha Rat. And if you were paying attention, I said I’d feed him in feetfirst. That way, he gets to watch while his whole lower body—”
“Enough!” I interrupt. “You wouldn’t do that. Nobody would do that. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t do that.”
“Only because the wood chipper hadn’t been invented yet,” she tells me sullenly.
“Anyway,” I sigh, anxious to change the subject. “I wonder what Brendan wants.”
“What do you think?” she snarls, still in a bad mood. “He has another stupid idea for a YouTube video, and we’re the cast and crew.”
“The text said that’s not it,” I remind her.
“It better not be. Otherwise, Brendan’s going in the wood chipper.”
That’s my sister. No problem’s ever so small that she can’t overreact to it.
We start up the Espinozas’ front walk and come face-to-face with Kimberly.
“Oh, hi, guys.” She gives me a long, hard look. “Your eye is—better,” she adds dubiously.
“I’m okay,” I say quickly. I don’t want Shosh to nominate any more candidates for the wood chipper.
“You also got the text?” my sister asks Kimberly.
She nods. “And Chase is coming too.”
What? Chase?
Shosh grabs my arm and starts dragging me back down the walk.
Brendan explodes out the front door and runs up to us. “Where are you going?”
“Chase Ambrose isn’t coming anywhere near me or my brother!” Shosh seethes.
“That’s why I invited you! Chase is innocent!”
She keeps pulling me along.
“Well, not totally innocent,” Brendan pleads. “But he didn’t hit Joel on purpose! He was just as blindsided as we were! I’ve got proof!”
“What proof?” I ask.
“One Man Band,” he explains. “The video survived. And it proves that Chase was trying to stop Aaron and Bear.”
“We’re going home,” Shosh insists.
“You go home,” I tell her. “I’m staying.”
“Here?” she demands. “With that guy coming over?”
This time, I don’t let her push me around. “I want to know what happened. I have to see it for myself.”
And she stays too, probably because she thinks I need protection. A lot of guys would be embarrassed about that, but I’m at least a little bit grateful. At any minute, Chase is going to walk in Brendan’s front door, and I can’t predict how I’m going to feel about it. I’ve seen him around school here and there. Still, this will be the first time since the fire extinguisher incident that we’ll be in the same room together.
We establish ourselves on the living room couch and Brendan sets up his computer on the coffee table. “I transferred this from one of the flip-cams,” he explains. “I brought it home to shoot something else and this was on it.”
He puts out some snacks, and we settle in to wait for Chase. Twenty minutes go by. Then we’re up to half an hour.
Kimberly is impatient, mostly because Chase is the only reason she’s here. “Where is he?”
Brendan texts again. No answer.
“Well, what did you expect?” Shosh scoffs.
“He said he was coming,” Brendan insists.
“He cares as much about you as he cares about everybody else except himself—zero. Face it—he blew you off.” My sister stands up. “Let’s go, Joel. We’ve already wasted enough of our lives, courtesy of Chase Ambrose.”
I turn to Brendan. “Play the video. Chase can see it some other time.”
We fast-forward through most of it, watching musician Brendan popping up all around the risers, playing different instruments for his “one man band.” He switches into regular playback once the tuba sequence comes up. I feel my stomach muscles tense. As much as I’ve been bullied, I’ve never had the opportunity to actually watch it happen before.
The impatient expression on Shosh’s face is replaced by one of intense concentration.
“I don’t get it,” Kimberly puts in. “All I see is Brendan. Where’s everybody else?”
“You and Joel are there, but you’re both out of frame,” Brendan explains. “Keep watching.”
We hear Aaron and Bear fling the doors open, even though they’re off camera. The first thing we actually see are two jets of white foam that catch Brendan full in the face. He goes down, tuba and all. It would be funny if I didn’t know what was coming next. When the streams of foam change direction to some target offscreen to the right, I know I’m the one in the line of fire. There’s a lot of yelling going on, and I hear my own voice in there with Brendan, Kimberly, and the two attackers.
After a few more blasts of foam, Aaron and Bear step into the frame, appearing on the left side of the screen. The next part I remember all too well. Aaron and Bear are tossing instruments all over the place and trashing the band room. I try to take on Aaron, but he shoves me down into the foam.
It’s hard to watch, but not as hard as I thought it would be. This is not who I am, I tell myself. It’s just something that happened to me. Somehow, seeing it unfold in real time, in high-definition video, I’m able to expand the fracas in the band room to include every rotten bullying thing that was ever done to me. And here I am, alive, undamaged—well, except my eye.
I’ve been victimized, but I don’t have to let that define me as a victim.
I’m back—back at home and back to myself.
That’s when Chase makes his appearance on the computer screen. He seems totally stunned by what he finds, even when Bear thrusts the fire extinguisher into his arms. I sit forward eagerly, because that’s my fire extinguisher—the one that’s about to bash me in the eye. As I watch Chase and Bear struggling over the shiny metal cylinder, I tense, knowing it’s coming any second
It doesn’t come. Chase wins the tug-of-war, and my face gets in the way. That’s all that happens.
Brendan pauses the video. “An accident,” he says triumphantly.
“I agree,” I tell him.
“Wow, Chase must be really strong,” is what Kimberly gets out of it.
Shosh’s cheeks are bright red as she digests the truth. My sister judges everything and everybody so harshly that when her judgment falls on herself, it’s like the end of the world.
“He still lied,” she says, tight-lipped.
“He’s not perfect,” Brendan agrees. “But think of the trouble he would have been facing if he’d gotten blamed for all that. If it was you, and you saw an easy way out, wouldn’t you take it?”
Shosh is stubborn. “I wouldn’t be in a mess like that, because I don’t hang around with pond scum!”
I look at her. “We have to at least talk to him.”
I’m expecting more of an argument. But she nods. “And I can think of plenty of things to say.”
“One of those things should be ‘I’m sorry,’” Brendan puts in pointedly.
She glares at him. “We’ll see. But if it is, it’ll be the last item on my list.”
“Where is Chase?” Kimberly asks in annoyance. “Brendan, you said he was going to be here.”
Brendan is already on his phone, talking with Mrs. Ambrose. He frowns, thanks her, and hangs up. “According to his mom, he’s on his way to Portland Street. She said he was in a real hurry.”
“Did he forget to come?” I ask.
Brendan shakes his head. “He said he’d be here. He just texted a couple of hours ago.”
Shosh stands up. “Let’s go over to Portland Street.”
“Young man, we’ve been waiting nearly half an hour,” the Dumbledora tells me. “You promised to set up the card table for us.”
“We’ll get to it,” I tell her. “We’re busy.”