Introduction

(When Melody Grace McCartney was six years old, she and her parents witnessed an act of violence so brutal that it changed their lives forever. The federal government lured them into the Witness Protection Program with the promise of safety, and they went gratefully. But the program took Melody's name, her home, her innocence, and, ultimately, her family. She's been May Adams, Karen Smith, Anne Johnson, and countless others--everyone but the one person she longs to be: herself. So when the feds spirit her off to begin yet another new life in another town, she's stunned when a man confronts her and calls her by her real name. Jonathan Bovaro, the mafioso sent to hunt her down, knows her, the real her, and it's a dangerous thrill that Melody can't resist. He's insistent that she's just a pawn in the government's war against the Bovaro family. But can she trust her life and her identity to this vicious stranger whose acts of violence are legendary?

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Excerpt

Name me. Gaze into my eyes, study my smile and my dimples and tell me who you see. I look like an Emma. I look like an Amy. I look like a Katherine. I look like a Kathryn. I look like your best friend's sister, your sister's best friend. Introduce me. Yell for me. Let me run away and call me back. Run your fingers through my hair and whisper my name.

Call me whatever you want; it's just a name, after all.

When I was born, my parents assembled a string of vowels and consonants so magical, so rhythmic and haunting, that the human form had yet to be married to such beauty.

When I was six, it was taken away.

And because of my ineptitude and innocent inability to keep a secret, they took it away again when I was eight.

And at nine. At eleven. Twice at thirteen.

Not to worry: the Federal Government was quick to replace the old with the new, to clean up the mess and move us along to the next bland, underpopulated town, to another dot on the map that serves as nothing more than a break from the interstate, a pit stop on the way to some greater place; you know them, but forget them. There has to be a Middletown in almost every state, and I've already lived in or near three of them.

But as temporary as it was, each instance was home, the place where Mom and Dad would be waiting at the end of the day, where the bills got paid, the lawn got mowed, and the mail was delivered. And it had to be. This was the consistent, perverted promise of the Federal Witness Protection Program.

*****

Today is Tuesday, which means I'm sitting at the head of a classroom facing a semi-arc of high school juniors, all with their heads bowed, taking a geometry pop quiz. They are not the brightest bunch, having to take geometry as juniors and all, but they are sweet and genuine and seem to have more character than the Advanced Placement Calculus juniors I teach in the following period-especially since most kids do not elect to take math as a junior. I spend as much time teaching them proofs as I do the works of Euclid or Gauss or Pythagoras because it is the proofs that will serve them well in life; they're learning logic. Though I may be less effective than I hope; sadly, today is Tuesday and they are taking that pop quiz-the same day of the week, every week, that I give a pop quiz-and there are always a few who are surprised.

Life will be cruel to them.

But above all, I try to teach one central lesson in every class-and if they get this I will make sure they pass: Each and every equation brings an absolute certain conclusion. Well, that and don't divide by zero. You see, certainty brings security. Security brings trust. Trust brings love.

Pascal was quite the romantic, eh? And who knows what Edmund Landau was really thinking when he popularized Big O Notation, but I like to pretend.

These kids, America's future at its most average, are getting something from me that they're not getting from the loud, furrynostriled political science teacher whose classroom backs to mine-that is, an understanding of life.

Under my wing, you'll learn that every problem has at least one solution, that logic may follow more than one path as long as it reaches the correct destination, that it's always best to break an equation down into its simplest parts before solving it. And then and only then will you reach a conclusion and find the warmth of certainty, a certainty you will need when you're grabbed from your bed in the middle of the night for the third time and whisked off to another town in another state, having left behind friends you will neither see nor communicate with ever again, where you will sit and listen to your parents cry themselves to sleep and keep secrets from you that you will only occasionally be privy to when their prayers turn into a discernible loud whisper, and you will need that certainty when your father looks at you at the breakfast table and tries to ask you to pass the Cheerios but pauses for three seconds-three seconds-to search for your name from the many pedestrian identities that have come and gone from your life, though not so long ago assigned to you by a federal employee.

So yes, Furry Nostrils can keep his histories of battles and conflicts gone by; we're fighting the real war right here in Geometry.

I reach behind my neck and grab my auburn hair and try to twist it into a ponytail, but it's a teacher's-salary haircut in the growing-out phase and the best I can do is leave myself looking like a svelte samurai. I put my arms above my head and stretch, and as I glance across the room I see one of my students, a boy named Benjamin, staring at my chest-likely a struggle at any distance, really, but his gaze is steady and undeterred. He, at sixteen, is only ten years my junior, but his interest in my body is just as much perverse as it is illegal. I drop my arms and sink in my chair and notice his gaze remains unchanged and it occurs to me he's not looking at me, he's looking through me. Suddenly he snaps his fingers and smiles, bows his head, and begins fervently writing on his quiz sheet.

I, you see, did not follow the path of logic and my punishment was arriving at the wrong conclusion. I, indeed, failed.

I glance at the clock and sigh. “Time's up,” I say.

A few kids groan but the majority get up from their seats and deliver the quizzes to my desk, each giving me a saddened smile as though they were aware of my embarrassment. And with each passing student, I covet something, and not the tangible things I might logically want-less mousy hair, a wider smile, green eyes instead of hazel, a 4 on my dresses instead of an 8, less clock and more hourglass-but the things I see in them:

A stable home, friendships, a heritage, a history, a legacy.

A future.

One of the worst parts of being in the Federal Witness Protection Program-or WITSEC, for the sake of verbosity-is that you will never be any of those things you dreamed about as a child, unless your dream was of cold anonymity. You will never be a famous ballet dancer or an all-star shortstop. You will never be an Oscar-winning actor or a world-class journalist. You will never be a congressman, a judge, a CEO, a rock star.

You will never be.

Your job as a pawn in the WITSEC game is to be quiet and deal with it. You'll make a great mail carrier, data-entry specialist, cosmetologist. And yes, you'll make an excellent teacher. Don't worry about not having a degree or the proper credentials and certifications-because you've got them now. Just be quiet, keep to yourself, and stay under the radar and the government will give you the best thing they have to offer: You get to live.

The price is an existence of tedium. You have just become irreparably average. You are not special. You are not unique.

You are not a prime number.

And as these kids walk past my desk, each with varying amounts of hope and potential, I can't help thinking that I am experiencing the slowest death known to mankind.

The geometricians shuffle out and the future MIT grads take their places on the warm wooden chairs. I assign them a problem on implicit differentiation that should take about fifteen minutes to solve, an attempt to buy myself some time to grade the geometry pop quizzes.

Okay, maybe grade is the wrong word.

Tim, for example, always manages to answer questions correctly when called upon, but actually shakes when a test is put before him, and he sweats right through however many layers of clothing he happens to be wearing that day. His quiz is a mess of scribbled-out mistakes. He gets a B.

Sharon, this wispy Jewish girl, comes to school three out of five days a week, and only after the bruises have started to heal. Even though she finished merely half of the questions, she gets an A.

Then we have Derek, a guy dumb enough to not understand the importance of birth control, yet smart enough to unconditionally love his girl while she drops out of school to have their baby-all while his best friends are out enjoying underage drinking and girlfriend swapping. A+, Derek.

About half of the class gets my subjective grading and the rest take it on their chins like typical juniors.

Sure, I'm credentialed by the state as a teacher, but I don't work like one. My interest-okay, obsession-with math is genuine, and has been since the first time I was ripped away from the life I loved. I buried myself in numbers and word problems where an answer was certain (or at least in the back of the book) and I knew I'd found something I could count on. But grading? My curriculum? The PTA? Who cares. The interest for that all sits in the part of my career that I spent no time earning: a bachelor's degree and the teaching certification that goes along with it.

One of my prior contacts at WITSEC suggested I not pursue a college degree for real, that I might have to abandon that persona at some point and start fresh, and who's to say I'd even stay in one place long enough to get a degree anyway. It's much easier to be handed one, with a snappy grade point average and all the bells and whistles. Just as it is easy to be handed an address, a credit history, a name.

I'm Sandra Clarke, by the way.

For now. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

(1) From the first sentence of the story, the narrator asks you to take part in the action. Why do you suppose David Cristofano decided to tell this story in the first person from the point of view of a woman? Who would have more at stake in witness protection, a man, woman, or child?

(2) Early in the novel, Melody appears conflicted in having feelings for both Sean and Jonathan. What is driving her need for affection? When does she realize she has made a decision? What solidifies this decision?

(3) At various points in the novel, the reader is given a glimpse into the previous six identities Melody has had. Which identity acts as a turning point? What event occurred that changed the trajectory of her life?

(4) The roles of good and evil are repeatedly swapped in Melody's life. Do both sides-the Feds and the Mafia-possess both good and evil, or are they really polar opposites of one another? How does Melody influence your view of each side?

(5) Though romantically inexperienced, Melody longs to be noticed by both Sean and Jonathan, trying different ways to capture their eyes. In what ways has she felt invisible to men her whole life? How has she overcompensated?

(6) Due to her constant relocation, lack of parental guidance and inability to form lasting relationships, Melody has the body of a woman but the emotional and experiential psyche of a girl. How is this dangerous? What additional problems does this pose for her, given the life she must lead? How does it influence her interaction with all of the men in her life?

(7) Melody's initial interplay with every authority figure-Farquar, Sean, Donovan, Sanchez-is semi-hostile. What makes Melody react this way? How does Jonathan's influence have her responding differently by the time she meets his family?

(8) Melody and Sean share a few conversations that expose the failings of WITSEC for both the protectors and the protected. From each of their points of view, how is the system not working? How does it work as intended? How is WITSEC more or less vital to the Justice Department today?

(9) Jonathan tries to distinguish himself from his Mafia ties in several ways. How has he successfully achieved this? In what ways is he a typical Mafioso?

(10) Melody is scarred by the explicit violence she witnesses at age six. Repeatedly, she attempts to rid Jonathan of his reactionary viciousness to seemingly topical problems. Though later in the story, she finds security in his violent behavior. What changes her mind? Would you react the same way? Why or why not?

(11) Throughout the entire novel, the importance of identity is explored. How is the life Melody has led different from that of a foster child? Of a prisoner? Of an individual living under communist rule? How are they the same?

(12) How do the tangible things in Melody's story-the food, clothes, cars, hotels-reflect her happiness, security and satisfaction? Are these things metaphorical or incidental? Would her story be different if things were reversed? Why or why not?

(13) Being in WITSEC for twenty years has had a negative impact on Melody. In what ways has it made her stronger?

(14) What is the significance of the chapter titles? How do they differ? What is the special significance of the final chapter's title?

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