Chapter 7

Sevina

They call the foster care— I’m still a minor— and ask the director to come over.

It takes three hours of explaining to sort this mess out before we’re allowed to leave. The Director mumbles a quick apology and asks me how am I going to further pay the rent because that’s all he cares about. I say I’ll find another job.

Once I’m home I don’t bother to undress or to take-off my shoes as I plunge on my sofa. The breeze from the window caresses my face and I wrap my hands around myself, resting my head on the armrest. I wait for the salt to gather in my eyes, but my tear ducts stay dry. Images, words, feelings nag and bite at me, and swerve into the corners of my mind as soon as I try to focus on one in particular. I should concentrate, at least try and memorize what I saw in Willow’s life before I forget it, but I don’t know what to think…

Unwitting, I lose a sense of time, but it feels like hours’ tick by. Night steals the daylight, humming of peak hours comes and goes…

On the next day I end up at Will’s front door. I don’t precisely recall the string of thoughts that led me to her and I dread meeting her again, but the need to have someone close overpowers the fear. She’s the only choice I have. The only one who was close to Rovy. I’d rather try consoling her than consoling myself or grieving alone.

Will lives in Berthold’s, the middle-class district along the side of Coats. I couldn’t find her at the police station, so I asked other cops where the funeral would be held and what was Will’s address to which I received what I had expected. Zilch. So I searched the web phone archives for her address and hoped it’d be the right one.

“Who is it? I don’t need your condolences!” A raspy answer reaches me after I push the buzzer.

I lean my head against the door. “It’s Sevina, I ugh… swung a chair at you back at the station.”

“Piss off!” Piss off? She sure is rude for someone of a British descent. I heard those guys are nice.

I buzz the door again but she stays silent. The thought of returning to my apartment makes bile rise in my throat, so I slide down by the brick wall next to her door, hug my knees and think I’ll finally cry. My only friend is gone, together with the connection I had to a brighter future, or even love. Mrs. Brice— the closest person to a mother— is gone with him. Every inch of me wails in a symphony of deprivation and loss, the likes of which never felt this lucid before…

So this is how it feels, to experience pain. For real.

Oh, It’s different. It doesn’t fade nearly as fast as the feelings from people’s heads do.

I’m back home on my sofa again.

This tragedy happened because Will had to find a way to survive. This fact it’s easy to remember from the fading memories of her life, as it stands out the most.

“Will, I need to talk to you,” I address the door again on the third day. “I… they were close people to me too. I know you’re angry, but—”

“I don’t care who they were to you!” The door creaks open and before I can gape inside water splashes into my face. The door slams shut and I stand alone, water dripping from my cheeks and gathering at my chin.

I give up for a few days and they flow past in a blur. No invites to a funeral or cremation appear in my e-mail, which, I think, is thanks to Will, and I wouldn’t be able to force myself to attend all the same.

At school, as I’ve always done, I sit with my nose in my digital pad and nap during periods. After the classes out of habit I stroll the direction of the restaurant and each time I halt, understanding all over again that no one’s waiting for me. There’s no Rovy to talk to. No Mrs. Brice or her warm glance. Even floors don’t need my worthless mopping anymore.

I try to walk out the pain by sauntering to buy myself some ice-cream. Back on my sofa I sit with the little box in my hands, staring at it pointlessly. After a while it melts and I put it into the freezer. Instead I nuzzle my head into my arms and imagine the restaurant, imagine what could’ve been. When I see their faces in my mind my lips curve into a merry smile. Not only to Rovy and Mrs. Brice; I’m a welcoming person to everyone, even my co-workers. It’s the restaurant’s three-year anniversary and we’re a one big, happy family, celebrating round a long dining table. I imagine Rovy toast and the table roar. Both, Will and Corrin are a part of my illusion… Where are they now? She must be lying somewhere in a ditch, drunk. And him, I have no idea. I was too focused on Will’s problems to pay Corrin any attention…

A loud knock shakes me up from the dreamless sleep and wrapping the blanket around myself I scramble to stand.

“It’s Brice— uh, Willow—open up!” I crack open the door. Will manages a bogus smile. “Macelaw?”

“It’s Sevina.”

“Yeah…” She totters in place, attempting to look less rigid and formal. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school or something?”

“It’s Saturday.” Actually, I think it’s Sunday.

“Oh, right… I’m sorry… about the water and the… the brawl.” She hesitates. Her face is plum and I can tell she’s been drinking. “This whole thing is messing with my head.”

“It’s okay. I swung the chair,” I say, hiding my surprise at her unwarranted appearance. She has a conscience, otherwise she wouldn’t be here and she wouldn’t be drinking. “Come in?”

“No, thanks. Apologize to your friend for me, will you?” She pivots on her heel, leaving.

“Do you think he killed them?” I call out before she disappears in the stairwell. I hope it’s not too soon, but I want to know.

She turns her head over her shoulder. “Might be, they released him, though. No evidence.” She faces the stairwell. “Maybe, I was too furious. To the point of seeing an enemy in everyone.”

“Happens to all of us.”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “All right, Macelaw, take care.” She puts her hands into her pockets, slouches like an old hag and walks off.

“It’s Sevina!” I call after her.

…

I’ve never ventured far off Coats, but I begin admiring Berthold’s as I walk the streets for the fifth time. The district is like a different city; it’s infrastructure diverse, colors extending to more than dirty yellow and buildings of different shapes and sizes. Most of the structures are up-kept, with clean walls and orderly alleys, green spots popping up between wider streets. But it’s nothing like the city center I visited it once. It almost blew my mind with its density— the colors, the lights, every culture you can find on Earth in one place. Skyscrappers rise taller and grander than in any other city in The United Nations. The media says the second west coast metropolis will be even more colossal. It’ll hide more shit too… or perhaps not. Maybe, it’ll supersede Havason with even lower crime rate.

Would Rovy still be alive if I encouraged him to leave that day in the Chinese bar? If I left with him? Had I opened up to him earlier we might’ve been on the road now, off to our uncertain future together. At least, we would have a future. It would be true if I… did so many things differently.

“Have you... been in a fight?” I frown when Will’s bulky face peeks through the door, her eyes red and one welted into a slit.

“It’s not the best time.” She’s about to disappear but I’m not letting her off easy. I won’t be able to handle loneliness anymore, and I know it is possible to talk to her. After all, she did visit me to say sorry.

“Wait!” I lift the bottle of liquor. I guessed she might need one, but she already stinks of alcohol. Will halts, peeking at the label through the tiny crack with curiosity.

“Are you even twenty-one?”

“Do you care?”

She thinks it over. “No, I don't. All right, come in.”

I don’t remember her apartment vividly anymore, but the stench of spoiled food is enough to paint the picture. The kitchen, to the left of the apartment, though modern looking, is piled in carton boxes and plates. Flies circle above the sink.

“You okay?” I step over the packages, papers, and tools strewn around the floor. “Your eye? Who did—”

“He’s in a hospital.” She grasps the bottle from my hands and stomps to the kitchen. “A-a bar fight. Forget about it.”

I stop in the living room, adjoining the kitchen, and search for a cleaner place to sit. “You shouldn’t drink.” She didn’t look that blitzed from behind the door.

Will scoffs as she brings two glasses to the coffee table and we sit on two separate couches where I fight the urge to open the curtains and crack the window.

Will takes a whiff of the bottle and fills in both glasses to the brim.

“I don’t drink,” I say.

“Suit yourself.” She gulps hers in one long swing, then mine. “Thanks.” She sinks deeper into the couch.

“It’s nothing,” I let out, trying not to drown in misery with her. It’s still better than drowning in my own.

“How did you get it, anyway?”

“You should know, you’re a gumshoe,” I say. “One can get all sorts of shit in the Coats, despite their age.”

I was a meek brat in the foster care. Before my buddies turned against me I would buy liquor from the subway stands in exchange for more food from the other teens. They were too lazy to get it themselves so I received the coins to do it for them. I carried their cash from hands to hands too to gain small favors, which whether repaid or not depended on their mood. I’m no street rat, but I know my way around Coats.

“Yeah, well, I’m suspended.” Will tilts her head back and lets out a dreadful giggle. I stare at her with my hands placed on my knees and my ankles crossed. Her white shirt is ripped on her upper arm. “You’re bleeding.” It’s stained with dried red.

“Son of a bitch had a knife.” She takes a pull from the bottle and throws me an uncertain glance. “It’s my fault they died.”

I let it sink in before I ask. “Why?” I still have a vague idea from her seeing life.

She rolls her head around her shoulders and bugs. “I’m a-a selfish idiot, that’s why. My brother, God! How could I’ve been so stupid? So blind? I never thought I was. Not that much! They didn’t—” she chokes on her own saliva, hacks it up and swallows it with another swing. “Me and my brother, we came to Havason together. We were shit-poor. I said this place has prospects. A fresh city after a war. A future. We had to pull through. I wanted him to think I was right…” She sneers at herself with disgust. “He met Miranda, had Rovy and settled down. And I became a cop. Detective later. You know what being a cop’s like?”

“No,” I say.

“It-it’s shitty...” She stumbles with her words and takes a sip to hide it. “I kept believing life’s good here and I wanted everyone to think I was right.”

She holds the bottle to her swollen eye and stills as if finished. “Your fault? How was it, Will?” I remind her.

With a drunken look on her face she breathes out. “I’m a rat. I snitched for a crime lord, covered for his deeds.”

I keep looking at her, connecting the dots in my mind.

“I got involved with them during one case when I saw some things I shouldn’t have. The liaison from the crime family found me, threatened me. They let me live in exchange for information. Who, when, where, you know?” The liquid in the bottle ripples as she brings it to her mouth. “After a while I wanted to leave. Since I’m a detective they let me. And then, a few months later, out of nowhere my brother gets shot. No warning. No nothing. The official statement was mugging. I tried contacting the boss of the family I snitched for, but no one let me. Liaison denied my bosses involvement and I thought maybe… maybe it was a coincidence.”

“It was?” I prompt.

“No. Now I know it was them,” she says. “Back then I didn’t. I was lost. Miranda—” Mrs. Brice “— opened the restaurant, but the truth was she and Rovy couldn’t fund it properly.”

“So you went back to snitch.”

She nods, with guilt, with pain. “What an idiot I was. I went back in and it was intel again, until

six months ago, liaison asks me to cover for a murder. Some dirty lawyer, he said. Lots of cases go unsolved anyway, so he provided me with enough paper to pay for myself and for that damn restaurant and I agreed. My partner joined. We were doing as was asked and the murders never made it into the media. But there was another dead family to cover, and another. Lawyers, politicians, businessmen. Boss wanted something from them. But they, they felt like innocent people. I couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted out, for good.”

She talks as if killing guilty people is okay.

“No one let you leave?” I ask, but there is no answer. Will’s head is tilted back, her eyes closed. “Will?”

She squeezes the glass in her grip. “They did, but they didn’t tell me about the cost. My partner was found dead last night. He had no relatives. But they didn’t kill me, they killed my family.”

I throw her a glance. “It’s not your fault.”

“The bloody hell it’s not!” She snaps, her red eyes bulging.

“When did you last sleep?” I ask.

She passes my concern with a swill down and begins mumbling something under her nose. We sit until she’s wasted and I run out of patience first.

“Come on.” I get up.

“Why?”

If she hits me, she hits me, though I hope she won’t. I grasp her good arm and yank her up.

“Don’t you tell me what to do in my own flat!” Despite herself she allows me to guide her to the bedroom. We’re both in pain and as weird as it is I find comfort in doing what I’ve always been a coward to do for others, comfort in helping her.

“Come on, Will, sit.” I nudge her onto the mess of sheets that’s supposed to be a bed and try to grip the bottle. She lifts it above her head, bottom up, and spills the remaining spirit on us. I shudder, containing the You bitch in my throat.

With the bottle in her hand she lays by herself, tears escaping her shut eyes. I sit on the edge of her bed, watching her.

Is this how people fall apart? Yes. I know better. That’s exactly how it happens.

Gulping her tears, she drifts off with her bottle under her armpit and her other hand clutching its neck so tightly I’m forced to leave it. After a ten-minute rummage through a pile of toiletries in her bathroom I manage to dig out a med kit and patch up her arm. Then the spicy odor, emitting from the kitchen, forces me to clean it up.

…

Loud grunting wakes me the next morning, and I realize I fell asleep in the living room. I open my eyes and stay on her sofa, unmoving with my hands folded under my head and knees pulled close to my body until Will staggers out, her palm glued to her forehead, and stops short with a need a moment to recall frown.

“I told you things last night, didn’t I?” She grumbles, noticing her patched arm. “You cut my shirt? Why did you cut my shirt, you little shit?”

I had cut her sleeve to apply the bandage, though it was already torn.

I sit up. “You were bleeding. And yes, you said some things last night.”

“It was a good shirt, I—” She notices the clean kitchen. “Did you cook anything by any chance?”

“I’m not your maid, Will.”

“Then why did you come here?” She cocks her head at me, authoritative. “To rip my shirt, to get me even more drunk, to weasel your way into affairs you have nothing in common with?”

I stiffen. You ungrateful asshat! But it’s all true.

“You weren’t being selfish.” I ignore the sting of her words and meet her face. “You wanted to provide, for your brother, for yourself. You were trying to survive. People can’t be blamed for the need to survive. If anyone should be blamed, it’s the man who was killing those people. Or anyone who’s killing people in the first place— anyone who benefits from the weak and the needy.”

Her eyes soften with guilt as if she listens to the words of a toddler who speaks of adulthood. I want to appear as serious as I can, and do so by frowning and glancing into her eyes a couple times. She notices. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Fine. It’s just a… condition, it freaks me out when I look at people for too long.” Even I know it came out stupid. I should’ve kept my head down.

“All… right.”

“When you get back to the department,” I continue, “are you going to find out what happened? Address the authorities?”

Slogging to the kitchen, she cackles. “What? You bloody crazy? That crime family, they might’ve had news reporters and other agents to help them too. If it went public devil knows how many people would die. Besides I’ll never get the case and I’m the last of all people who can do something. None of us can.”

“Why not? They killed your family and your partner because they wanted you to come back. You hold the power.”

“I’m suspended, on a brink of being fired, so I hold shit.” She opens the fridge and rests her hand on the door. Keep the cold in! I want to tell her, but refrain. “They kill people. They wanted to scare me into submission, wanted to scar me, and they succeeded. If I try to do anything I’ll probably end up at the bottom of the Lawless Lake, after a week of torture.” Her words are stiff. She is afraid. “They have their nails in my skin now. That’s how they play with governmental agents. They break you. I should be glad they let me live, however long it’ll last. In a way, they own me now. If I don’t want to risk them going after my innocent co-workers, all I can do is sit quiet or go back to work for them.” So it’s not only her life she’s worried for.

“But you could still—”

She slams the fridge door shut and twirls to me, aggravated. “Do you go around talking, socializing with everybody when you’ve got your condition? Do you jump into action when you’re not meant to do it?”

“No.”

“So, you’ll understand what I mean.”

“But I jumped at you… with a chair,” I add, slouching.

“And what good has it done you?” I’m here because of that fight, because of fear of everything that’s happening. But Will won’t be the one who understands me. “It’s how it works. Strong rule, and weak, well, stay weak. Even we at the station know that.” She slumps into the armchair beside me, rubbing her temples. “I screwed up. Got no one to blame but myself.”

The one to blame is the man who murdered those governmental people for hell knows what, who ordered the strike on Rovy and the one who executed it. What is this crime family doing? Killing so many people as Will says. The mob was always present in Havason. It’s no secret. But it does its own thing. At least that what I thought because of the low crime rate in the city. I never imagined it has its claws so deep even in the police, exploiting desperate people like Will. That man on the top scares and gains leverage possibly on hundreds of others, making them fight for survival. He is to blame. Not her.

I take in a deep and silent breath. “Will,” I say.

“Yeah?” Her eyes stay closed.

“If you had a chance for a payback, would you do it?”

“I’d shoot his head clean off!” She straightens in her chair, her teeth grinding and her fingers in tight fists, promising revenge. As if to prove her point she trains her eyes on mine… and I accept it.

Accept it all again.

Three seconds and I gasp as cold shivers rush over me. I prop my hand on the sofa, fear and dizziness bolting through me.

“Are you feeling all right?” Will’s voice drowns in the buzz of my mind.

Seeing her life for the second time is not that bad, but her hate still gets to me as my fingers curl into fists and I try to contain her anger. “I’m fine.” I pant out, staring past her. “Looked for too long.”

“All right,” she lifts her palms, her one eyebrow jumping with confusion.

No words can express her despondency, hatred she feels for herself and for the world. The wave passes and I gulp, lowering my head with exhaustion and feeling the beads of Rovy’s bracelet with my shivering fingers. I kept my eyes on hers out of my own accord. Why? Because I’m as lost and helpless as she is? Either way. I’ve never done it willingly before.