Children of the Uprising Collection

by Megan Lynch

  Samara gently traced Denver’s eyebrow with her middle finger. “That’s just it. You didn’t know.”

  The real twist of the knife was planning the funeral. The funeral director was a sad-looking man whose face appeared permanently stretched downward, basset hound style, from the years of mirroring the faces of bereaved families. Though he nailed the facial expression, he came off as anything but sincere whenever he opened his mouth.

  “Mrs. Steiner,” he said, cupping her hand in both of his, “I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your husband. I’m told it was an automobile accident? I have it there are no remains to be buried?”

  “Yes, the car was totaled and just went up in flames.” She was glad the tears weren’t far behind as she repeated the lie the agency had taught her. They seemed to deter him.

  “We’ll have a lovely memorial service then,” he said. “Pardon what may seem like callousness, but we do have to talk expenses. How much are you prepared to spend?”

  When Denver told him, he gave a little flummoxed chuckle. “Mrs. Steiner,” he said, “with that amount, we could have a service, yes, but please consider that the little extras really make the legacy of the dead more…meaningful. For example, for an extra thousand, you could have a little reel of holovideos from his entire life playing as your guests enter.”

  “All his baby holovideos are back in America. We’re refugees.”

  “Recent ones, then. And then an additional twelve-hundred would ensure that there are valet drivers at the door—”

  “Not many of us have a need for valet parking.”

  “All right, all right. At least consider hosting a memorial luncheon, where his friends can be together and talk of the finest memories they hold of dear Steve Steiner.”

  “His name is Stephen.” Denver gritted her teeth. As much as she wanted to tell this guy to buzz off and let her grieve without trying to wring more of Bristol’s money out of her, appearing to be cheap also felt disrespectful to Stephen’s memory. What would he have done if it had been her? Oh, why couldn’t it have been her? “I’m sorry. Can I give you a call a little later today? I thought I was ready, but I’m not.”

  He did a little half-bow as the corners of his mouth sagged downward. “Of course. I’ll be available this afternoon.”

  On the walk home, Denver’s heart hurt. Literally hurt. She stopped and sat on a bench at one point, trying to remember whether or not she’d learned the symptoms of a heart attack. Was it breathlessness? She was certainly breathless. A feeling of dread? Vision jolting? If this was a heart attack, she welcomed it, but she had the suspicion that it was nothing but her world falling into pieces without Stephen.

  Stephen. The only one who’d ever made her feel whole. Chosen. Cherished. The reason she’d survived this long. She wanted nothing more than to turn back time. She wanted to be with him again in the woods, running from Metrics. He had been so sick, and she’d never before taken care of someone so fervently, wanting them to get better with everything inside her. She wanted to go back to when they’d first arrived at St. Mary’s, the Unregistered hideaway in the hills not far from the city, where they’d sneak away to make love to each other, thrilled that they no longer had to log their activity for Metrics’ records. She wanted to go back to Olympic Village, with their baby growing inside her and the freedom to do what they’d never fully been able to do—get to know each other. She wanted to go back to the train rides to London for training and the lazy weekend mornings in bed and even the last walk home together, when both of their palms were so sweaty that they’d given up on holding hands and threaded their arms around each other to walk instead.

  An older man waiting for the bus asked if she was okay, and instead of answering him, she slumped downward and hoped he’d go away.

  “Hmph! How d’ya like that?” he said loudly. “Seems about right—an immigrant who won’t show basic respect!”

  She wanted nothing more than to rise up and slap his face. But Stephen didn’t die so that his cause would be negated. It was up to her, both in big ways and in small, to make sure his death wasn’t in vain.

  She straightened up and smiled. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize you were speaking to me. I have a bit of a cold today, but I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”

  The man hmphed again and hurried away. Denver looked after him and silently thanked him. He didn’t know it, but he had just charged her with a new mission: carrying on her husband’s legacy.

  Chapter Twelve

  Samara had asked if she could speak at the memorial service. Denver hadn’t liked the idea at first. There would be representatives there from the office of the first minister, and whatever she said was sure to get back to Clovinger.

  “I understand,” said Samara. “But there’s always going to be time to grieve in your own way. This is our chance to make sure—”

  Denver hadn’t even looked up, but Samara could tell that she had just snapped back online by the tone of her voice. “Just do it.” She cleared her throat and spoke more evenly. “Whatever you have to do. Just do it.”

  “I promise I’ll speak as a friend, not as a politician.”

  She chuckled reflexively. “You know that’s not what he’d want.”

  And so Samara began composing the eulogy.

  The service itself felt like a nightmare, a sorrow beyond Samara’s ability to fully take in. A reality too shattering to be real. Two hundred American refugees stood, dressed in the darkest clothes they’d been able to find in the donation piles, just outside the doors of the church, while the few Scots in attendance meandered in. This had been Samara’s idea as well, to go in together as a group so that Denver would not have to walk down the aisle alone. When Denver arrived, arm-in-arm with Bristol, Samara gently signaled, and everyone walked through the doors and took their seats.

  Denver’s vacant face killed Samara, because she remembered the same reaction when her baby inside her had died. It had taken her months to return. She wondered how long it would be until Denver showed back up at her door with a bottle of wine and two plastic cups, if she ever would again.

  Samara followed Denver and Bristol to the front pew, which had a dust-covered “reserved” sign hanging from it. She recognized people from Clovinger’s office—a man and a woman—in the pew behind them, and nodded her head at them. They returned the nod but lowered their eyes when Denver turned her head to look.

  There were photos—only photos, no holos—of him in frames covering a little table in front. Large candles on candlesticks that stood strong on the stone altar behind the table. With the intense candlelight behind them, the photos were shadowy, though the metal frames caught the light and shone. It gave the impression that his life had gone dark, that someone had turned out the lights to his life and not realized he was still in there.

  The organ screamed on, finally settling on a resolving chord, and when the people were silent, Samara walked to the altar with her eulogy written on a piece of paper in her hands. Only when she heard the paper shaking did she realize she was trembling.

  “Thank you all for coming to celebrate the life of Stephen Steiner. As most of you know, I’m Samara Shepherd, and I was privileged to call Stephen my close friend.

  “Stephen was born in 2031 in a place that didn’t have a name because the people there didn’t think places needed names. We were raised to believe, as people who live there still believe—that our government had taken over the world and was ruling benevolently. For Stephen’s entire childhood and adolescence, he believed he was being taken care of, despite being born a Four under our ranking system. His family was forced to work long hours for basic food rations and virtually no medicine. Because of the tight work schedules of Fours, his parents didn’t see their son much, but Stephen always spoke highly of them and felt fortunate to have been raised in a loving home.

  “Stephen befriended an Unregistered citizen during his job training, and his natural impulse toward empathy moved him to action. Two ye
ars into their friendship, he joined the Red Sea, a resistance group named after its benefactor, a charitable organization in the world he hadn’t known existed. He worked for the Red Sea, helping Unregistered citizens escape to Canada until the Relocation.

  “Stephen was very much in love with his wife, Denver. A story he loved to tell was how he was the only man in our country to choose his own wife. After seeing her profile, he was so smitten that he single-handedly hacked into the pairing database.”

  Some in the crowd gasped. Many chuckled. The man and woman behind Denver looked around at all of the people for whom arranged marriages had been the norm.

  “He wasn’t able to actually pair himself with her—though not for lack of trying—but he did manage to add himself to her candidates. And you need no better proof that they were meant to be. They were pair-ied and married, as we like to say. He helped his Unregistered brother-in-law escape the Relocation, and then escaped himself with his new wife. His bravery saved a family and created a new one.”

  Bristol reached his arm around his sister’s shoulder. Denver raised a tissue to her eye and blotted.

  “I can’t say much here about the details of Stephen’s role in bringing justice to our country or safety to our people. I can, however, say that he was a courageous, thoughtful man who loved to the point of hurt. No one knew the pain of compassion better than Stephen. He felt connected to others, and responsible for them. He entwined his destiny with the destiny of others. He was brave enough to fully open his heart to both the incredible beauty of the world—love, friendship, freedom—and the incredible horrors. I challenge all of us to take up his example and do the same.”

  After the service, Samara looked for a signal that she should follow Denver and Bristol back to the apartment they’d shared, up until a week ago, with Stephen. The siblings walked away from the church with low-hanging heads, deep in conversation, so Samara turned and walked the opposite way. Without thinking, she walked toward her favorite place in the city.

  The bookshop had initially been a novelty. Back home, people projected words they wanted to read in their air on their watches, if they read at all. Reading for fun wasn’t in vogue. When she’d first stumbled upon the shop, it had taken her multiple walks around the shelves to fully grasp what was actually happening here: there were books. They hadn’t been destroyed. And, for just a bit of money, they could be hers.

  Of course, she didn’t have money, now or then. But she still loved to go and walk among the books and take in their scent.

  She nodded to the owner, now a good friend. A stout little man with buttons always tugging apart in his mid-section, the owner lowered his head to look over his round black glasses and mouthed, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded again, a little too vigorously, and then wandered toward the biographies.

  One of Clovinger’s own books was there on the little table. Samara put her fingers on the matte dustcover. Why had she never thought to read it before?

  “That was beautiful.”

  Samara snapped to attention. Taye was standing on the other side of the table, looking at her intently.

  “Taye? Oh my god!” Samara didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or run away. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  He was taller than she remembered, or maybe he was just standing a little taller. Once her good friend—though he’d wanted to be more than that—she’d lost track of him after he’d left Olympic Village to work, illegally, outside of London. A warehouse, if she remembered correctly.

  “I heard about Stephen. You were great back there.”

  “You were at the funeral?”

  “I was.” He looked down and slid his hands into the pockets of his dated corduroys. “Do you want to take a walk?”

  “Sure, I’d like to walk.”

  They found themselves moving toward Calton Hill, the park they frequented back when they’d first arrived here in Edinburgh and had nothing to do all day but wait. Samara was aware of their increasing proximity to St. Andrew’s house, though she refused to acknowledge it out loud. She could be patient. She could wait for Clovinger’s office to contact her. And anyway, Taye was busy talking about his own adventures.

  “The guys are nice, but it’s hard to hear them complain. All they do is complain all day long. It’s too cold. Their back hurts. Their wives don’t appreciate them. It never stops. I find myself keeping pretty quiet.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” said Samara with a laugh.

  “It’s hard to connect with people who taste sour in their vanilla lives. Sometimes I want to grab them by their shirts and tell them, ‘Look, punk, my two brothers were treated as sub-human for the first five and eleven years of their lives! My parents are dead! I hid from a government that wanted me dead, and escaped across the ocean before they could find me!’ Think about it—what would they say if I came out with that?”

  Samara smiled and shook her head. “Maybe that you were trying to out-complain them.”

  “Exactly. Truth be told, it’s not that bad at all. I come home feeling tired—a good tired—and then I get to sleep without being afraid some Metrics officer is going to rip my blankets off me.”

  “And where are you staying?”

  “Well…” Taye dropped his gaze to the ground. “I met this girl.”

  “And you live with her?”

  “I did, but no, not anymore.” Taye crossed his arms in front of his chest and drew in a deep breath. “This is why I wanted to see you. I keep in touch with the guys from Olympic Village every now and then, you know, and—when they told me that someone had died trying to go back home, I was so afraid it was…I thought you might have…”

  Samara’s heart rose in her chest. This could not be happening again, not after everything she’d been through this week.

  Taye blew the rest of his breath out of pursed lips and continued walking. “I’m moving back to Edinburgh, Samara. For good.”

  “Well, maybe not for good. We’re still working on getting them to allow us to stay here.”

  “That’s what I mean. I’m here to help you. I’m staying here.”

  They walked along in silence after that, breathing in the crisp spring air. Samara felt the heat of his hand next to hers more than once.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Even though Bristol had just gone for a walk that morning, he put a light jacket on in the afternoon too. He needed to get out of the apartment again.

  For Bristol, Stephen’s death created a black hole. Even though he was able to paint his mother after years of processing what it was like in that kitchen the moment she’d found that both of her children were gone, this was completely different. One day Stephen lived with them in this apartment, and the next, he did not. He never would again. The toothbrushes in the bathroom looked alone without Stephen’s. Neither he nor his sister had gotten the hang of cooking for just two again yet. There were always leftovers, just enough for a plate for someone who wasn’t there. His brother-in-law’s brown boots, always by the door, were gone, and it seemed that they and everything else about Stephen had merely disappeared. Vanished. Vaporized into nothing.

  That’s how it was with his creativity, too. He’d been painting at a studio across town when Cindy called him on his watch—she was the only one who had his number—and told him what the aid workers at Olympic Village had told her. He’d put her on speaker so he was able to keep practicing, but when she told him that Stephen’s plane had gone down, the brush dropped from his hand and he simply hadn’t picked it back up. He sat there for a long time, staring at nothing, until finally he just left, the brush still on the floor and the canvas still set up.

  He had created nothing for seven days. He ignored Cindy’s calls.

  In the park, life went on. Kids flew kites and couples ate ice cream. Bristol wished he was in the mood to reach out again to Samara and ask if she’d like to join him, but these haunting reminders of death were devastating and he didn’t even really
want to feel better. He thought about his father. About Nan and Lydia, the Red Sea volunteers in America who’d saved him. He thought of Stephen.

  Bristol took a loop around the park and then took the long way back home. He approached a busy bridge that extended over a river and did a double take. There was someone under it with a hood over his head, scooting sideways on the balls of his feet, moving toward the center. From the top, no one would be able to see him, but Bristol was on the sidewalk just before the ramp.

  “Hey!” he called to the person in the hoodie.

  Jude turned to look back at him, his face streaked with tears.

  “Jude?” asked Bristol.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” said Jude, shouting to be heard above the traffic on the bridge. “It’s my fault Stephen is dead. I know I can make myself do this, and I know I have to.”

  Bristol’s pulse electrified. His breath became urgent; his body felt light. “Come back, Jude. It isn’t your fault.”

  “It is! I gave us away!”

  Bristol’s mind asked, screaming, whether or not it could be true. He decided he didn’t care. “Even if you did, your death won’t bring him back.”

  “I’m the one who deserves this. He only wanted to help.”

  “Come back, Jude. This isn’t going to make it right.”

  Jude let out a sob.

  “Think of Samara,” Bristol said quickly. “Think of Cork.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about either of them.” He turned to Bristol, the wind whipping his coarse curls away from his face. “They should both be free of me.”

  Bristol had always wondered, vaguely, if there was something wrong with Jude’s head. Now that he was hanging in the air and talking nonsense, there was no doubt in his mind. He had no experience talking with the mentally unstable, so he tried talking to Jude like a small child.