Which, I would like to point out, is not nearly as bad as it sounds since, for example, you don’t need a search warrant to go through someone’s trash. Seriously. Once it hits the curb it is totally fair game—you can look it up.
But somehow I knew that the Office of Operative Development and Human Intelligence was probably far less concerned about the trash thing than it was about what came after the trash thing. So I was fully prepared when Polygraph Guy said, “Did The Subject follow you during your Covert Operations final examination?”
I thought about Josh appearing in the abandoned warehouse during finals week, bursting through walls and commandeering a forklift to “save” me, so I swallowed hard as I said, “Yes.”
“And was The Subject given memory-modification tea to erase the events of that night?”
It sounded so easy coming from him, so black-and-white. Sure, my mom gave Josh some tea that’s supposed to wipe a person’s memory blank, erase a few hours of their life, and give everyone a clean slate. But clean slates are a rare thing in any life—especially a spy’s life—so I didn’t let myself wonder for the millionth time what Josh remembered about that night, about me. I didn’t torture myself with any of the questions that might never have answers as I sat there, knowing that there is no such thing as black-and-white—remembering that my whole life is, by definition, a little bit gray.
