Shadows

But maybe, somehow, they’d be together again. At least they would be if it was anything like Adam thought it was going to be.

It.

That was how he always thought about what he’d decided to do. Even tonight, when the time had finally come, he still put no other name to it.

Dressed, he moved to his computer and turned on the screen. It glowed softly in the dark, and Adam sat down at the keyboard. When the menu came into focus, a menu Adam had designed himself, he stared at it for a few seconds, then chose one of his utilities programs from the list.

Slowly, almost regretfully, he began deleting all the files from the eighty-megabyte hard drive in the computer. Finishing the task, deleting the directories and subdirectories one by one, he stared silently at the new directory tree, which now showed nothing more than the utility program he was using.

He could still change his mind. After all, the files weren’t really gone yet — all he’d done was erase the first letter of the file names. The data itself was still there on the hard drive. If he wanted to, he could recover it all in just a few more minutes.

He hesitated, then made up his mind.

His fingers working quickly, he typed in the commands that would begin washing the disk, going through the whole drive, recording a series of randomly selected digits over all the existing data.

The computer would go through the process three times. When it was done, nothing at all would remain except the single utility program.

It would be gone, all of it. All the programs he’d learned to use in the five years since he’d gotten his first computer, all the data he’d compiled, all the games he’d not only loved, but reconstructed to suit himself, reworking the codes so that no one but he could play them.

In a way, it was as if he was wiping his life out, obliterating it, so that no one would be able to search for clues as to why he’d done what he’d decided to do.

After all, it wasn’t anybody else’s business — it was his life, and he could do anything he wanted to with it.

The computer beeped softly, indicating that its task was completed.

Adam dropped the utility program out of memory, and when the “C:” prompt appeared, typed a single line:

C ERASE* *

He pressed the enter button, and a question appeared:

ARE YOU SURE? ALL FILES WILL BE ERASED. N (Y)

For a fleeting moment he was once again tempted to change his mind. Then, taking a deep breath, he hit the Y key. When the final question reappeared, giving him one last chance to reverse his course, he pressed it again.

A second flicked by, and then the “C:” prompt reappeared. Though the computer was still functioning, there was nothing it could do, for Adam had stripped away everything that made it useful. Now it was nothing more than a blank memory, waiting for data to fill it up.

Adam typed for a few seconds, then turned off the monitor, plunging the room again into total darkness. Moving silently to the door, he opened it a crack and peered out into the dimly lit hallway that ran the length of the second floor.

The hall was empty, and he could hear nothing.

He stepped into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind him, its soft click resounding in his ears with an unnatural loudness. He froze, half expecting the doors along the hall to open as the other kids peered accusingly out at him.

Nothing happened.

The silence of the building closed around him like a shroud.

He crept to Jeff’s door, pausing for a moment. Should he go in and say good-bye to his brother?

No.

Better just to disappear into the darkness of the night.

Moving silently down the hall, he came to the top of the broad staircase that curved down to the floor below and listened once more.

Silence.

The chandelier hanging in the entry hall had been dimmed for the night, casting only a soft glow through the spacious room. For a moment Adam gazed at the crack under Hildie Kramer’s office door.

Was there a light on inside?

He wasn’t sure.

He crept down the stairs, clinging to the wall as if its mass could somehow shelter him from any eyes that might be watching, waiting for him.

At last he came to the front door. He twisted the knob slowly, as if even the faint sound of its sliding bolt might betray him. Pulling the door only wide enough to slip through the narrow opening, he moved out onto the porch, waiting in the deep shadows of the loggia until he was certain no one was on the grounds in front of the house. Then, at last, he made his move, darting across the lawn, scuttling from tree to tree like a small animal exposed to predators. Only when he was through the gate did he allow himself to breathe easily.

When his pulse, racing from the tension of his clandestine departure from the Academy, finally settled into a normal rhythm, he moved off into the night. Though the air was unseasonably warm, even for mid-September, he felt a chill run through him.

But his mind was made up.

Twenty minutes later he stood in front of the house he’d grown up in, the old shingled two-story house his parents had bought when he was only two years old. Three blocks from the beach, it was surrounded by a neat lawn that was his father’s pride, with enormous camellia bushes growing on either side of the front porch. Adam’s eyes drifted over the house, pausing briefly at the second floor, on the room that had once been his. A lot of his stuff, he knew, was still in that room, waiting for him when he came home.

Now it would wait forever. He would never come back to this house again.

Another tiny doubt assailed his mind. For just a second he had an urge to go into the house and wake up his mother. Maybe he should talk to her about what he was going to do

No!

Jeff’s threats rang in his mind, and Adam knew what she’d do.

Call the doctor and have him taken away.

Away, where he’d never be able to do what he wanted again.

He turned away from the house and moved on to the town’s small business area, pausing in front of the stores to look at the displays in their windows. There was nothing in any of them he wanted, nothing he would miss.

He walked on, glancing warily around every few seconds, ducking into deep shadows whenever a car approached. He couldn’t get caught now, not when he was so close.

He started back toward the Academy, moving quickly now, feeling every minute passing. He came to the gate, edging through it, then skirting around the lawn, staying near the fence. Finally he moved toward the mansion itself.

He gazed at the darkened windows of the enormous house, and then his eyes moved up to the fourth floor, to the odd cupola perched atop the structure almost like a bird hunching above its prey.

He could see lights glowing in Dr. Engersol’s windows.

He stared at those lights, shining brilliantly while the rest of the Academy slept.

The rest of it, except for him.

Ducking his head and hunching his shoulders, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

It was time to get on with it.

The train moved fast down the track, for it was barely a train at all. Nothing more than an engine, a couple of empty cars, and a caboose. There would be no stops on the trip — there never were — for this was no more than