Seth shakes his head. “Why are you doing this?”
Regine makes an angry, frustrated sound. “Because if it isn’t your fault, Seth, if it’s just a shitty thing that happened to you, well, shitty things happen all the time. Tommy got shot in the head! I –”
She bites her tongue.
“What?” Seth asks challengingly. “What happened to you?”
She looks into his eyes, her own blazing.
He doesn’t look away.
“I was thrown down the stairs by my stepfather,” she says.
Tomasz takes in a surprised breath.
“He started drinking more,” she says, her eyes not moving from Seth’s, “and decided that a slap now and then was okay. Then a punch. My mother tried to explain it all away, tried to make it seem normal and bearable, but I fought that bastard. I fought him every stupid time he tried to lay his hands on me. But one day, for whatever reason, he went that extra step. Probably didn’t even mean to, the piece of shit, but he did. He wanted to beat me and I was saying no and he knocked me down the stairs and I hit my head and I died.” She furiously wipes away the tears that have appeared on her cheeks. “And my mother, who I loved more than anything, she didn’t stop it either. That was her job, and she never stopped him.”
She looks around them, into the sun, at the comically tall grass they’re all standing in. “And this world? This stupid, empty world? I don’t care if it’s hell. I don’t even care. If it’s real or not real, if we’ve all woken up from some online thing or if this is all your stupid imagination, Seth, I don’t care. All I know is that I’m real enough. And Tommy’s real enough. And however much of a hell this is . . .” She suddenly quiets, as if the energy’s been leached from her. “However awful it is, it’s better than there.”
63
“I did not know,” Tomasz says, taking her hand in his still-wrapped own.
“How could you?” Regine says, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “I never said.”
The sun beats down on them, hot again, and Seth notices once more the lack of insect noise. There isn’t even any wind. There’s just the three of them, in the stillness of an overgrown cemetery.
“Are we not some funny kind of group?” Tomasz says. “Child abuse, murder, and suicide.”
“None of which happened for any good reason at all,” Regine says.
“Is that why you’re so mad at me all the time?” Seth asks. “You think I did it because I felt sorry for myself? While you two had really rough times?”
Regine gives him a look that doesn’t need words attached to it.
“I didn’t kill myself because of what happened to my brother,” Seth says. “It was shit and it just got shittier, but it wasn’t the reason.”
“So why, then?” Tomasz asks.
“Is this from when you said you risked happiness?” Regine asks. “With the guy with the funny name?”
Seth doesn’t answer for a moment, but then nods.
“Well,” Tomasz says, looking at the tombstone, “if there is more to this story than you thought, maybe there is more to that one, too. Maybe there is always more.”
The sun rises higher in the sky. Seth’s still reeling from all the things this morning has brought, all the new but strangely familiar hurt waiting to be felt. He’s exhausted again, despite the night’s sleep. His feelings are knotted together, so tight he can’t unwind them. Pain and anger and humiliation and loss and longing.
But maybe more, too.
He looks back at Owen’s name and wonders if Tomasz is right. There was more to this story.
Was there more to Gudmund?
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Regine says after a moment, “but are we going to stand here all day? Some of us were interrupted before we’d eaten breakfast, and some of us would like to get back to that, if that’s okay with some others of us.”
“Yeah,” Seth says. “Yeah, all right.”
No one says anything as they make their way back through the grass, occasionally bumping into hidden tombstones. They reach the low wall, and Tomasz clambers over.
“Have you ever thought of trying to go back?” Seth asks as Regine moves to step over, too.
She stops. “Go back?”
“Not to your old life, maybe,” Seth says. “But if it’s all just programming and memory manipulation . . .” He shrugs. “Maybe you could go back and it’d be better.”
Her face is still hard, but sad, too. “Knowing what you know, how would you be able to look your parents in the eye? Or your brother?”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“What is taking such a time?” Tomasz calls from over by the bike, unable to pick it up because of his hands.
“Nothing,” Regine says. “Just another unhelpful idea from Seth –”
But Seth doesn’t let her finish.
“TOMASZ!” he shouts –
Because he sees the Driver –
Running fast around the corner from the nearby church, its crackling baton already up –
Heading straight for Tomasz.
Tomasz turns and screams, tripping over the bike in his rush to get away. Regine is already sailing over the low wall, pounding into the street, straight for Tomasz.
Seth is right behind her, but they’re not going to make it –
Because here the Driver comes, its baton sending flashes and sparks from its tip.
It was waiting for us, Seth thinks. They hadn’t heard the engine. It had to have been there all along. But how could it possibly have known –?
Tomasz is yelling in Polish, trying to scramble away crabwise from where he’s fallen –
“NO!” Regine is screaming. “TOMMY!”
And Seth hears the anger in her voice, which makes so much more sense now that he’s heard her story –
She’s protecting Tommy –
Like she wasn’t protected –
The Driver makes a terrifyingly smooth leap over the bicycle, not slowing its stride as it closes in on Tomasz –
Regine is moving faster than Seth has ever seen her, so fast she’s pulling away from him –
But it’s too late –
It’s too late –
The Driver has reached Tomasz –
Tomasz is raising his bandaged hands to protect his head –
Light streams from the tip of the baton as the Driver swings it down –
And strikes the arm of Regine, who has thrown herself between Tomasz and the Driver.