The Book of Matthew (The Alex Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

“No problem,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Me, neither,” she said, turning her attention back to what had to be at least two dozen pairs of shoes.“I’m an open book.”

I smiled to myself. I was starting to get the feeling that Lisa Carter and I would get along just fine.

II.

It was a sunny Saturday in late April 1992 when my parents and I took a guided tour of Kilmore University, which was about an hour from our home in suburban Philadelphia. I was a junior in high school. My seventeenth birthday was a week away.

We toured the west side of campus and then crossed Main Street to the east side. Brick dormitories stretched out across a hundred yards in a horseshoe shape around a large grassy courtyard. A few students were strewn about, playing Frisbee in the grass, walking between buildings, sitting on benches smoking cigarettes.

“So, my dear, what do you think of the campus so far?” my mother asked me.

“Nice,” I said.

The tour guide smiled. “That’s the Student Health Center,” he said, pointing to a white stucco building up on a hill off in the distance. He then pointed to the building next to it. “And that’s the new Student Activity Center. Real state-of-the-art.”

The Student Activity Center, or SAC for short, was a mixture of brick and glass, with sharp angles and a curved roof. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It offered quite a contrast to the cookie-cutter rectangular dorms that surrounded it. The SAC was a beacon on campus, the tour guide informed us, a place always brimming with activity.

The campus as a whole was littered with neo-classical academic buildings and landscaped gardens and marble fountains, as well as the ordinary brick dorms and buildings with white stucco facades. It was a sure sign of age and beauty and of time and progress. A place to get inspired. Kilmore University was the kind of place I wanted to spend four years learning to become a writer.

Ah, yes. I wanted to be a writer. Novels, I thought, but I wasn’t sure of that at first. So I tested the waters as a young girl by writing poetry. Most of it was nonsense—populated with puppies and rainbows and with lines that rhymed. My poems had to rhyme because I figured anybody could write a poem that didn’t rhyme. Only smart writers knew how to rhyme.

Then in the seventh grade I wrote what I considered at the time to be a masterpiece of American Literature and I knew I wanted to be a novelist.

My history class was studying the American Civil War. We were charged with writing a research paper on the topic of our choosing. It could literally be about anything we wanted; our teacher suggested such topics as slavery, the roles of women or African Americans in the war, medicine and tools used to treat the wounded, individual battles, etc.

But instead of writing a drab report, I wanted to do something different. So I stepped into the shoes of then-President Abraham Lincoln and wrote a heart-felt letter to a mother of a fallen soldier. It went something like this:

October 18, 1863

Dear Mrs. Quinn,

It is with a heavy heart that I write you today.

As you know, our country is engaged in civil war. As a result, we’ve all paid a heavy price—none greater than the loss of a husband, a brother, a friend, a son. In your case, Ms. Quinn, it is your son that I speak of.

The three-day battle on the fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, marked the turning point in this war and resulted in an outstanding Union victory. But it wasn’t won without major consequences. This battle was the largest and bloodiest of the entire American Civil War. Over 51,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing. Among the dead was your son.

He was valiant and brave in the face of battle, risking his own life in front of sharp bayonets and gun fire for two days in the sweltering July sun. In the end, however, it was a cannon ball blast in the waning hours on the third day of battle that claimed his life. He fell to the blood-soaked soil a hero. He served his country for the Union cause, and for that, he did not die in vain.

In one month’s time, on the nineteenth of November, Soldiers' National Cemetery will be dedicated in Gettysburg near the battlefields. I was asked to make “a few appropriate remarks,” so I will be delivering a speech in honor of the men, like your son, who made the ultimate sacrifice. As I am a simple man, I think I shall call the eulogy, simply, my Gettysburg Address. As the mother of a fallen soldier, if you have the means to do so, you are welcome to attend.

Please accept my deepest condolences.

Yours,

A. Lincoln

Researching that time in our history and crafting that letter made me realize that I wanted to tell stories, write about the days when our country was young and volatile and the future was uncertain but full of promise. There’d be men in my novels with handle bar mustaches who wore top hats and walked with fancy canes. There’d be bustling city streets paved with dirt and full of manure from horses that pulled carriages. And there’d be women in hoop skirts shading themselves with parasols and fancy hats with flowers.

Those were the times and places and people I wanted to write about. But it all meant nothing if Kilmore couldn’t teach me how to do it.

I had heard Kilmore University had a good liberal arts program, so I asked the tour guide about it.

“The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is very strong here,” he said, pausing to fold his hands in front of him. “Forty-two undergraduate degrees available.”

He seemed to whip this number out of nowhere, without hesitation. I thought it odd that he would know the exact number of undergraduate degrees available. But then I realized he was probably trained to memorize all kinds of weird and miscellaneous facts about the college for parents’ sake. They’re the only ones who seem to care how many majors are available. Parents love knowing their kids have options.

After an hour our tour was over and the guide walked us back to the administration building where we parked. This is when he told us about the town of Kilmore, the tiny suburb that depended on the university to keep its economy strong. There were several restaurants and a few banks and a grocery store or two, plus a car wash and a hardware store.

“And there’s also a bowling alley, a movie theater and miniature golf!” he said enthusiastically.

This all excited my parents, who up until this point were only casual observers walking behind me and the tour guide, allowing me to run the show, letting me ask all the questions. My mother stated that maybe I could get a part-time job downtown.

As if I wouldn’t have enough on my plate.

“I don’t have a car,” I reminded her, glaring at her to see if she’d cave to the pressure and finally take me to get my license.

We were all quiet for a minute until the tour guide said, “Most freshmen don’t. But don’t worry. You’ll make lots of friends here. Friends with cars.”

I shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

The tour guide looked over his shoulder at my parents, and, sensing they were out of earshot whispered to me, “There are three bars within walking distance that are known to have a relaxed attitude towards underage drinking.” Then he winked, as if that was the icing on the cake, the biggest selling point he had to offer.

Not that he needed it. I was already sold.

I nodded. “Good to know, thanks.”

The tour guide said goodbye and left us in the parking lot. I stretched an arm around my father’s neck and began fake sucker punching him in the gut as we walked the rest of the way to the car. He took his fake beating like a man, pretending to reel back with each blow that didn’t hit his stomach. I released him when my arms grew tired and when I thought he had had enough.

“So, you like Kilmore?” my mother asked.

“It’s pretty cool,” I said.

She agreed. “Yes, I think it’s pretty cool too. Rad, even.”

My mother always knew the language du jour of teenagers. It must’ve been the school nurse in her. She spent her days surrounded by teenagers, taping sprained ankles, wiping bloody noses, bandaging cuts and scraps and burns. So how could she not pick up a few words and phrases here and there from the students? Once in a while she’d try them out on me.

As if.

Whack.

Bitchin’
.

Now it was
rad
.

So while she always knew the current teenager vernacular, she always sounded so uncool trying to speak it. She must’ve known how ridiculous she sounded this time, trying out
rad
for the first time, because she shrugged her shoulders as if to say she gave it a shot and knows she failed.

My father laughed at her. “Nice try, dear,” he said, rubbing her back with a calloused hand.

My father’s hands were always calloused, usually rough, his fingernails sometimes bruised. Comes with the territory when you’re a carpenter.

My father liked to build wood shelves for my mom and hang them around the house so she could display her knick-knacks and figurine collections. He always seemed to get hurt in the process, though, and oftentimes came home from work with minor injuries—wood splinters, mostly, or sawdust in the eye, or a nicked finger from a close encounter with a table saw. Once he came home with a nail in his foot.

My mom the nurse was always prepared to care for him, ready to dole out whatever line of first aid was needed. She treated him out of love, I’m sure, but when you get down to it, I think she was paying him back for all the shelves. Either way, their respective lines of work complimented their marriage perfectly.

He made a birdhouse for me once, when I was perhaps five or six years old. It was the first thing I saw him build. Four simple pieces of wood, a few hand movements, and it suddenly appeared. It was like magic. My father was a modern-day Merlin. The next day I hung the birdhouse from the maple tree in our front yard, where it stayed for many years.

From then on I spent a lot of time with my father in his basement workshop, watching him build tables and chairs and more shelves for my mom, and learning to identify the tools of the trade: Standard and Phillips head screwdrivers. Straight and curved claw hammers. Pincers and chisels and carpenter’s squares. The various grits of sandpaper. Circular saws and table saws and reciprocating saws and band saws. A million different sizes of drill bits.

I figured my father the magician needed a trusty assistant, and since I wanted to know it all and I wanted to learn from the master, who better to fill the role? Considering my size and my clumsy little fingers, I was never much help to him, though, but my memorization skills enabled me to hand him most any tool he needed. And I did succeed in keeping my father company. I think that’s all he really wanted anyway.

I rolled my eyes at my mom when she whipped out the word
rad
during the walk back to the car after our tour of Kilmore University. I hadn’t the patience for her annoyingly cute ways at the moment. I was still mad that she said nothing when I mentioned getting my license. But that was soon overshadowed by the excitement of telling my boyfriend Bobby all about Kilmore University.

As I got in the car and strapped myself in, I thought about how cool it would be if Bobby went to Kilmore too.

I.

The front door was locked so I sat down on the curb and waited.

I was early, as usual. I am always early for everything.

The moon was low in the darkening sky and a nippy autumnal breeze whistled in my ear.

I looked up at Kentmore Hall, its brick exterior, its large, dark windows, the clock tower that pointed up towards the sky like an arrow. A bronze plaque mounted next to the large wooden front door declared the building was built in 1874.

I didn’t know much about this building, other than it must be one of the oldest buildings, if not the oldest, on campus. I didn’t remember touring it that day with my parents more than a year ago, but we might have. We saw so much that day, had received so much information. The tour guide might’ve mentioned something about it in passing, but at the moment I couldn’t recall.

Moments later, a young man rushed up to the door. I watched as he dug a hand deep into the front pocket of his jeans. He noticed me, smiled quickly, and then looked away to unlock the door with the keys he had pulled from his pocket.

“Waiting for someone?” he asked.

After several tries the lock clicked and he shoved the keys back into his pocket.

“Matthew Levine,” I said.

He gazed at me in surprise. His eyes were deep green and reminded me of pond water: dark and dull, yet alluring. He had a thick heap of almond-brown hair and a pale face flushed pink with cold. Sitting there watching him from ten feet away, I decided that he was beautiful.

“I’m Matthew Levine,” he said.

…

The first few weeks of college were hard. I got lost on campus. I had trouble sleeping. I worried no one would like me. The food took some getting used to. So did sharing a room.

At times like those, when I was anxious or scared or embarrassed, I thought about Dr. Cramer. He would tell me to give no mercy to my negative emotions, face them head on, and send them packing. Then he would tell me to get a hobby.

I decided that’s what I needed to do: take up a hobby.

But there were so many student organizations and activities on campus. How could I possibly choose?

The answer hit me unexpectedly.

I was in Psych 101, sitting in a cavernous lecture hall, waiting for class to begin. This girl named Heather two seats to my left was bragging to two other girls about how her boyfriend played in the university orchestra. She was spouting loudly for all to hear about how good he was with his “instrument.” As I sat there scribbling in my notebook it hit me: I should learn to play an instrument. The instrument I wrote about in my diary.