Just Regular Teenage Problems

They called it a near miss, but I called it a regular Tuesday. A passerby would probably describe my day-to-day life as something out of a Die Hard movie, without the ever-present Christmas theme. If I was the kind of person who went to a therapist, they would probably have a theory on this...or at least ask me how I felt about that. Nonetheless, there was a reason I didn’t go to therapy. I didn’t want to talk, especially about such trivial things as my feelings.

“Hey Mark, you okay man?” Dan asked me, raising his eyebrows as if he already knew the answer.

“Fine,” I mumbled in reply. I turned away from him and proceeded down the hallway. 

I knew what people thought about me, and Dan was just like everyone else in this regard. They thought I was too reckless, careless, and didn’t have any regard for authority. 

Dan followed me. “You know you have to report this,” he said as he stopped directly behind me. The reluctance in his voice was clear, he knew I was not going to report this to Ethan, but good on him for trying to follow the rules.

“We’ll see about that,” I sneered, as Dan had inevitably expected. He just stood there, unsure of what to do next. 

“Man, I wish you would just take it easy for once. Not everything has to be life or death,” he rolled his eyes as he turned around and started back down the way we had come. 

I shifted and glanced over my shoulder at him, already halfway down the hall. No one really knew why I did the things that I did. They just saw what they wanted to see, or rather, expected to see based on what they already knew about me. I was a sixteen year old high school dropout who didn’t have a penny to my name. The agency had recruited me when I was still attending Eton Collegiate. Or that had been what they had told me. The truth was, I couldn’t remember my life before the Agency, and I had no idea why. They had made me this way, they had taught me that this, in fact, was life or death for me. It was this or nowhere for me.

I waited a few more seconds until he rounded the corner and then continued in the other direction. Dan thought it was too dangerous but I didn’t care. What did I have to lose? This was my life, and no one could control what I did. I think that was one of the reasons that the Agency had picked me. I didn’t like to listen to authority and often chose to get myself into situations that were difficult to get out of.

Today was one of those situations. I had discovered that there was possible evidence that the Agency had overlooked. I didn’t know if Dan knew about this evidence but by the way he had walked out of here, I didn’t have to worry about him knowing if I had found it or not. 

Dan and I had arrived at the office around lunch hour, when the halls were mostly empty. I hadn’t told Dan why I wanted to go to the Green Room, just that there was something that I needed to check on. The Green Room was well known as being off limits to personnel, save for a very few select agents. However, I had “found” a key card in a “random” cupboard in a “random” agent’s office. At least this was what I had told Dan when he asked how I planned on gaining access to the room. 

The truth is, I didn’t want to remember who I had been before the Agency had recruited me. But I also didn’t want anyone else to either. The evidence supposedly stored in the Green Room was my records. Everything the Agency had kept about my past and my screw-ups, as they called them. I imagined my file was a thick one, perhaps with an elastic band keeping it together. There was only one way to find out. After I found my file, I planned to burn it. Something about the Agency didn’t seem right. I couldn’t explain it, not even to Dan, but something was not sympatico. 

Dan had abandoned me because we had almost just been caught, and well, if we were caught we would most likely be terminated. That was the term they used, though I don’t exactly know what it means. I suppose you would only find out what it meant if you were terminated. Either way, I was willing to take the risk.

I walked back to the door at the end of the hallway. It was a solid metal door made of stainless steel. There was a keypad next to it, which I slid the stolen key card across. The keypad beeped once….twice...and boom, the latch unlocked. 

I slowly opened the door but it was so heavy that I could only get in open enough to squeeze through. The first thing I noticed was the filing cabinets lining all four walls. The second thing was that the room wasn’t even green. What kind of trick is that?

I heard footsteps coming down the hallway and attempted to quietly shut the door. They probably made that door so heavy so no one could sneak in unannounced. The filing cabinets appeared to be in alphabetical order so I decided to start at the Ds for Dawson, Mark Dawson. As I flipped through the folders I got a tingly feeling on the nape of my neck, almost as if someone was watching me. I peered around the room but didn’t see any visible cameras. How could someone be watching me? 

I reluctantly turned my attention back to the file folders, but couldn’t seem to find my name. There was Daimler, Derbecker, but nothing between those two names. Where could it be?

“Hello Mark,” a woman’s voice from behind me called out. I hadn’t heard any footsteps behind me but it was obvious a presence had already been inside the Green Room when I had entered.

I turned around to see who had been watching me and was surprised to see a young girl, likely no older than fifteen. She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way, with dark curly shoulder length hair and piercing brown eyes. Her eyes glared at me as if they could see right through me, as if they could see everything I had ever done. 

“Who are you?” I asked, feeling that tingling feeling all the way down to my toes now.

She inched closer to me and sized me up with those soul-eating eyes. When she returned my gaze she whispered, “The more important question, Mark, is who are you?”

“What do you mean?” I shuffled backwards and almost tripped on my own feet. There was something about this girl that wasn’t right. Just like the Agency wasn’t right. Why was she in here? What did she know about me? “I - I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t want to know.”

“Oh Mark, dear, how could you not remember me?” She slithered even closer to me and shot me a coy smile that was full of secrets. 

“I don’t remember anything,” I murmured as my back hit the filing cabinet against the wall. She had cornered me and I hadn’t even noticed. 

“Don’t you see Mark? I’m only in your head,” she smirked, obviously quite amused. 

The girl proceeded to swish her hair like the teenager she appeared to be and turn away from me. I reached out to grab her arm but it dissolved into a fine powdery mist as soon as my hand made contact. I didn’t understand what had happened. She was there. She seemed as real as Dan was, but yet she had simply vanished.

Suddenly I was overcome with a sense of fear and urgency. There was definitely something amiss here. My file seemed to be missing and I had no idea why or if there was a connection between it and this disappearing girl. I shuffled to the door, opened it just enough to squeeze back out, and found myself face-to-face with Dan. 

“Hey man, you find what you were looking for?” He asked, seemingly unknowing that he had just abandoned me to sneak into the Green Room alone. 

“No,” I replied monotonously, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m leaving.”

“Man, I told you. I told you that you didn’t want to go in there,” he raised his eyebrows and smiled at me as if he was telling the funniest joke he had ever thought of. He waited for my response but when none came, he frowned with confusion. “What happened in there?”

“Nothing, I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled, looking down at my feet. I didn’t want to admit that I was scared. That was so unlike me. But, how could I know it wasn’t like me? I didn’t even know who I was.

Dan grasped for my shoulder and led me back towards the exit. We walked slowly together until the hallway curved. I could not bring myself to glance back at the door to the Green Room. I didn’t want to see that girl ever again. I didn’t want to confront my past.