Free choice

"Wait!" the boy shouted, trying to catch up with the girl walking a few meters ahead of him.

A picturesque, pink-orange twilight stretched above them. The red sun was slowly sinking below the horizon. After a sultry summer day, a pleasant chill was creeping in from the north. Night would soon fall. The two young people, without responsibilities, without supervision, wandered around the neighborhood. He reveled in the sweet idleness of July days in her company; she was constantly looking for something to do with her empty hands, her carefree mind. She could never sit still at school—but during the holidays, she never rested at home, in her own room, in bed. She was always on the move, practically running—and he was chasing her like a fox chasing a fox.

"Slow down a bit, girl," he panted, catching up with her, grabbing her shoulders from behind. "The Olympics aren't for three years. They're not recruiting the team yet."

"Don't whine, or I'll really start running, and then you'll never catch up with me," she replied, without stopping, without turning to him, and without taking his hand from her shoulders. A gust of wind lifted her long, straight blond hair, tickling the boy's face.

"I'll just stand there, catch my breath, and wait here," he replied, releasing her and stopping, "until you circle the earth, and I'll catch you when you double me.

" "Okay," she shrugged.

"Hey, wait!"

They wandered aimlessly through the empty streets to the park. They lingered for a moment at the edge of the greenery. The gloomy silhouettes of the trees cast grotesquely long shadows on them. The sun was low, and this evening's rays fell almost horizontally on the ground.

"Are you coming?" the girl asked impatiently.

Nominally, it wasn't a park, and it wasn't listed as such on any official sign. Just a stretch of undeveloped land, where no one built anything, and the growing grass and weeds were unmowed, and the trees uncut. People called it the Park, or the Garden. No one—or at least, few—visited this place. Despite the greenery, despite the trees, despite the soothing shade, an unbearable, cemetery-like atmosphere emanated from it. If you stopped and looked for a moment, a cold shiver ran through you, and sweat broke out on your forehead. Your eyes would dart nervously, until your face would turn in the opposite direction, and your legs would start a panicked retreat. Prowling in such a place could only be fun for bored, adrenaline-hungry kids.

Gosia walked through the trees fearlessly. She wasn't a teenager who liked to be scared. This place didn't evoke a perverse fear in her; it evoked a pleasant thrill of being alone with an undefined threat. It was as if she completely ignored the grave atmosphere that hung among the branches like an old spider's web. It's quite possible, though, that she simply wasn't impressed. Just a park. Trees.

The sounds of Gosia and Adam's conversation—their banter, nagging, and teasing—rumbled hollowly among the trees, as if in a cardboard box. Apart from their voices and footsteps, not a single sound, not even the faintest, could be heard in the Garden. Nothing lived in the tree hollows, and not a single bird perched on a branch.

"You, I wonder if you could get drunk with these leaves?

" "Get drunk... Nothing, just get drunk..." Adam shook his head. "Do you really have no better things to do?

" "Maybe not," she said sarcastically, without even turning to him; she stubbornly walked forward.

"Junkie."

"Jesus, Adaś, you're making me out to be a drug addict, an alcoholic, and generally an icon of decadence," Gosia replied, making a face of a beaten puppy. "And I just want to try something new.

That's all Gosia. Just try." It was completely natural to her—almost like breathing in and out. It's highly likely that she acquired this organoleptic reflex as soon as she learned to breathe, and perhaps only her lack of teeth saved her infant thumb from being bitten off. As she grew older, learned to walk, and small, unattended objects began to appear in her surroundings, she didn't hesitate to try something or other. She passionately ate sulfur from matches. She tried cigarettes. She bit and swallowed. She swallowed a plastic block in kindergarten. She didn't like the taste—but somehow it worked out. In art class, she stole from her classmates and munched on wax crayons. She washed it down with crayon water. She liked eating bread with strawberry toothpaste. Milk didn't disgust her. By the age of eight, she already knew the taste of wine and beer, and the feeling of being high after a hundred. She ate an earthworm without ceremony. Despite all this, she lived to the age of ten in good health and without any internal organ damage unusual for a ten-year-old. As a teenager, she was the first to try marijuana—just to try it. She got high and then giggled like a fool for hours. She never touched anything harder—not so much out of common sense, but for the simple reason that cocaine didn't seem worth trying. She didn't become a loyal friend to weed either. Partly because no one was giving it away for free, and Gosia didn't stink of pennies, and partly because, enriched by a practical knowledge of marijuana, she set out in search of new experiences. Recently—at seventeen—she had discovered that maple leaves did the same thing as marijuana, for free.

Now, driven by a new curiosity, she jumped up and down, trying to pluck a red leaf.

Adam, her age, faithfully trudged after her, silently hoping that one day her thirst for knowledge would turn to him.

"Give me a boost!" Gosia commanded.

The boy ignored the order. He passed her and walked slowly on, shaking his head. Behind him, the girl stubbornly jumped, leaping high into the air, her fingers inches from the red leaf.

The tree wasn't old. It had apparently grown here right after the war. Fifty years—nothing compared to the thousand-year-old oaks. And yet it made an impression. Not so much surprising as repulsive. It looked hideous, repulsive; menacing. It was covered with completely black bark. No moss grew on its sturdy trunk on the north side. No bracket fungi grew on it. Nor had it produced any fruit. Only leaves grew on it. Red, glossy leaves. A fierce crimson regardless of the season. Apparently, it had always been that way. Supposedly, it had sprouted, sprouted from the ground, all black, and the first buds on the young branches were scarlet, not green. It had never produced flowers, acorns, or chestnuts. It didn't shed pollen. It didn't wither or lose its leaves in the winter. It was as if dead. From the moment it emerged, like a living, developing, growing corpse.

"Come here!" Gosia exclaimed irritably.

"Gonia, give it up!

" "No, no, no mercy!

" "So what?" Adam exploded. Still with his back to her, he began a fiery rant. "So what? Are you going to tear off a stupid red leaf and eat it? Is that what you want? Or maybe shake the whole tree until all the leaves fall off and eat them like chips? Gosh, Gonia, I like you, but sometimes I just don't understand you. Are maple leaves bad enough? Are they bored? You absolutely have to find something new, and it has to be leaves from this tree, right? God, what a brat you are! Just try... This "just try" thing of yours is driving me crazy! What are you—an animal that can't stop itself? Even an animal can sometimes stop itself! But no, Gosia, no, Gosia has to..."

He grew tired. He fell silent, pouring out a torrent of bitter words in one breath.

Gosia didn't answer him.

But she never was silent. She should have interrupted him after the second sentence, yelled, scolded him—and finally, ingratiatingly, made peace with him, because she didn't want to wander the city alone afterward. She liked him.

Only after a long moment did he realize she'd actually said something. His angry words drowned her out. He heard her; his ears heard her. But his brain didn't. It wasn't forceful enough to disorient him. She didn't argue with his words, didn't shout at him. The echo of only one word echoed inside his skull—"Got it!"

Adam glanced back. Gosia was lying on the ground—her eyes closed, her face expressionless. He ran to her and started shaking her, certain she was joking. But when she didn't react to the tickling that usually made her squirm and roar with laughter, panic began to grip him. He lifted her head and felt the back of her skull with his fingers, searching for any lump or cut. But he found neither bruise nor blood. He placed his hand on her forehead. It was cool.

"Jesus... Jesus..."

His hands began to shake. Trying to control his tremors, he pressed two fingers to her white neck, where—as he remembered—an artery ran. However, he felt no pulse beneath the pressed area. He withdrew his hand as if burned. He looked at the two fingers reproachfully. Liars! Perhaps he'd lost feeling in his fingers. Or perhaps he'd simply placed them in the wrong place. He roamed his gaze over the body of his limp friend. His hands were flying, his mouth trembling, and his breathing ragged.

He was ashamed. For a moment, he fought the embarrassment that would have been appropriate in any other situation—then he pressed his hand firmly against her breastbone, pressing her left breast, trying to feel for a heartbeat. It didn't budge beneath her frail ribs; he felt as if he'd broken them while searching for a pulse.

He neither heard nor felt her breathing, bringing his face close to her mouth.

Stunned, shaken, and panicked, he recalled his old first aid lessons.

He pulled the stupid red leaf from her mouth and tossed it aside in disgust. He pinched her nose and leaned over her.

For nearly fifteen minutes, as if in a trance, he alternated between artificial respiration and cardiac massage.

Then for an hour he sobbed, cradling her in his arms—cold and limp.

***

Adam wandered aimlessly through the city. Finally, no one asked him anything, no one shouted at him, no one looked at his hands.

He hadn't had a moment's peace since they'd found him in the park, holding the dead girl. He was in shock. He sat completely still, clutching Gosia tightly to him. He saw policemen walking toward them. They loomed briefly in the field of vision of his bulging eyes, fixed unblinkingly on some indefinable point. He didn't react in any way to their questions, their nudges, and finally their screams. He heard them—but he couldn't bring himself to do anything: a gesture of understanding, a word of defense. He didn't have the strength to protest as they yanked the girl from his arms. He didn't object when the ambulance took her away in a black bag, and he was taken to the police station in handcuffs. He didn't answer the officers who bombarded him with questions, which drove them mad—but he had the right to remain silent. He remained silent, unable to utter a single sound, staring into the void.

Only when Adam's mother, who had arrived at the police station, looked into his unblinking eyes did the invisible barrier—like a one-way mirror through which he viewed the world—break down. The still, expressionless face contorted in an expression of boundless grief, and salty tears leaked from the corners of his focused eyes.

"Mommy..." the boy whispered, barely audible.

The woman embraced him. She cried with him.

"Everything will be alright, Adaś... You'll see..." she explained, trying to sound cheerful.

"Mommy... Mommy, she's dead...

" "I know, sonny... I know...

" "It's my fault..."

"It's not your fault at all, Adaś," she explained, stroking his unruly hair.

To him, or perhaps, really, to herself. Because at that moment, only he knew what had happened—and no one had been able to extract the truth from him. So they had developed their own nightmarish, repulsive, untrue, slanderous theories—and he couldn't contradict them; the truth was stuck in his throat. Only the sight of his mother, her voice, and her warm embrace opened his mouth. Then he began to explain. His neck ached from shaking his head, his throat from repeating "no" over and over again. No, he hadn't murdered Gosia. No, he hadn't hit her. He hadn't strangled her. He hadn't beaten her. He hadn't stabbed her. No, they hadn't argued about anything just before her death. No, he hadn't intended to have sex with her, either before or after. No, he hadn't wanted to rape her. No, he had tried to save her. No, the rib bruises could have been caused by the chest massage. No, he held her like that because he loved her, and she had just died. No, he hadn't tried to conceal her death from the police. No, he hadn't called the police immediately because he was too shocked to do anything. No, he hadn't called an ambulance because he was trying to save her himself. No, he didn't have an alibi. He was with her when she died—that was a fact. He didn't try to deny it. No, he didn't have an alibi.

"Is the fact that I loved... I love this girl since childhood any kind of alibi?" he asked, looking bitterly at the officer across from him, wringing his hands.

"No... Unfortunately..." the officer shook his head. He felt sorry for the boy, but he had to tell him the truth. The old truth that from love there's only one step to hate, and from hate only half a step to a heinous crime. The same scenario repeated a thousand times in every corner of the earth—only the names, the place, the time, and the murder weapon had changed. And although the constable, as a human being, sympathized with the boy sitting across from him, seeing only a child battered by a nightmare, not a criminal, as a public servant he had to extract the whole truth from him and wait for forensic medicine to confirm his testimony.

"Exactly..." the officer began after a long silence. "You say you loved that girl..."

Adam merely nodded, staring at the intertwined fingers of their hands resting on the table.

"I'm sorry to ask, but you understand, we need to establish certain facts..." the officer explained, averting his gaze as Adam scowled at him. "Were you dating?"

"No...

" "But you say you love her...

" "Yes...

" "Did she know about it?

" "No," Adam replied curtly, pursing his lips.

"But why?"

"And why would she need the love of a seventeen-year-old scoundrel? When a girl is seventeen, she's thinking about twenty-year-old brunettes with brown eyes, not a friend her age, a friend from the sandbox... You were never my age and didn't chase after a girl like Gosia?

" "Sure.

" "Well, you understand... Girls need some romantic outbursts, fairy-tale princes arriving on white horses, unknown charm, and stuff like that... And she had me every day. Besides, I don't look like Prince Charming, do I?"

Here they both laughed softly. After a moment, however, the mirth faded, and their faces fell; they had to return to the unpleasant conversation in which they maintained a pretense of politeness, but neither could trust the other.

"And, tell me, wasn't this situation tiring you?"

"Of course it was," Adam replied, then sighed heavily. "Following someone like a shadow and never being able to have her... It's exhausting... Hearing that she likes me, adores me, that I can make you laugh, comfort you... Sweet... But what good is it if she was already drooling over this or that handsome idiot with a driver's license?

" "And it didn't drive you crazy?" the constable probed. He probed Adam from a very specific angle. "Didn't you feel like doing something with it? Anything.

" "What can I do? I'm not God," the boy shrugged.

"But you didn't think about getting yourself together, standing in front of her, looking her in the eye like a man and confessing how you feel?

" "God, never... I melted like butter in front of her. I probably would have ended up crying my love into her shoulder, and that wouldn't have been very manly...

" "Haven't you ever tried to act tough? Just to impress her?

" "No way!" She knew I was a wimp, I could barely run, and everything... I can't even pretend to be tough... I don't have the muscles to flex enough to make a girl's eyes pop out of her head.

"Would you have the strength to hit her?"

Adam looked at the officer, his gaze freezing.

"Never. I'd have beaten some guy, and maybe even beaten him up... a paralytic or a phlegmatic... But a girl? My hand would sooner wither and fall off than I'd raise it to hit a girl. And Gosia even more so... Besides, she'd kick my ass if I'd even slapped her." Adam smiled weakly as he said this.

"So you couldn't do anything to Małgosia just because you couldn't have her?"

"No. Never.

" "And don't you remember anything else from that evening... Anything?

" "No, nothing comes to mind..."

"But... something violent right before you realized what happened?"

"I told you I don't remember much from the moment we entered the park. I remember walking among the trees, and then only that Gosia was lying dead. That's all...

" "You also said you weren't arguing about anything... So what were you talking about?

" "I don't remember! Nothing.

" "But you remember you weren't arguing," the man pressed.

"Well, yes... But that's like tearing a page out of a notebook full of writing and not remembering what was on it, even though it was obviously not the Invocation from Pan Tadeusz.

" "So, in short: nothing..."

The police pathologists didn't find anything either. Gosia wasn't beaten, stabbed, or shot. No one pushed her, she didn't bump into anything, she didn't break anything. They found Adam's fingerprints on her, a lot of them—on her face, neck, her shirt. His saliva on her lips. His tears on her neck. She had slight constriction of her ribs, but no bruising; No other defensive reflexes of a living organism were present. Whatever trace Adam left on her body, he left on her only after her death. Toxicological analysis also revealed nothing. Gosia had no alcohol in her blood, traces of intoxicants, toxins, or other dangerous chemicals. Her blood was clean. She had not been drunk, poisoned, or high. Her body showed no traces of any physical or chemical factors, externally or internally. There were no tumors, bruises, skin discolorations, dilated pupils, or contusions to internal organs. There were no traces of blood found under her fingernails, nor any fragments of skin that would have remained there if she had fought or defended herself before her death. It was also not a heart attack. It was as if she had died suddenly and without cause. Adam's testimony only confirmed this, and his words were supported by his family, including Gosia's mother, who had known the boy since childhood and was convinced of his innocence; the girl's father did not pass judgment. He worked all day, didn't know his daughter's friend, and didn't know what to think of him. He was a nice guy, seemed pleasant and relatively harmless—but what does appearance really say about a person?

In the end, they released the boy, due to lack of evidence—whether of a crime or sudden death.